11-Week-Old ‘Anna’ Died Hours After Her ‘Routine’ Vaccines. Nearly 12 Years Later, a Court Ruled the Vaccines Killed Her
The family of Anna Sims is the first in more than a decade to receive compensation from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program following the death of a baby after routine immunization.
For the first time in over a decade, the family of an infant who died suddenly after receiving routine vaccines has won a settlement from the U.S. government’s vaccine court — and the strategy the parents used could provide a model for other families to break through a system that rarely acknowledges vaccine-induced infant deaths.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) in June awarded Abigail and Daniel Sims $300,000 for the death of their 11-week-old daughter, Anna Sims. Anna died in 2013, after receiving four vaccines at her two-month-old well-baby checkup.
The settlement was finalized in August, after the window closed for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to appeal the decision, first issued in March 2024.
HHS, which is the defendant in all vaccine injury cases in the VICP, initially asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to review and overturn the decision. However, the court upheld the vaccine court’s decision and denied the motion to review.
HHS did not appeal the court’s denial.
The ruling could set an important example for future infant death cases in the VICP, according to a working group of researchers and advocates studying vaccine-induced infant death that first reported the story.
They said cases like Anna’s are often classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or sudden unexplained infant death syndrome (SUID). However, Anna’s parents argued that she died of a vaccine-induced brain injury, not SIDS or SUID.
‘My heart is aching constantly,’ Anna’s mother said
Anna was a healthy, breastfed baby who had just begun cooing, smiling and rolling over in the weeks before she died on Dec. 16, 2013, hours after she received the routine Pediarix, Hib, PCV13 and RotaTeq shots at her 11 a.m. well-baby appointment, court documents show.
Anna’s father, Daniel, a stay-at-home dad caring for Anna and her two brothers, testified in court that Anna was quiet, “spaced out” and tired after the well-baby visit. That evening, he fed and burped her around 5 p.m. and placed her to sleep in her bassinet.
When he checked on Anna about 20 minutes later, he found her face up, with bluish lips and barely breathing.
In a panic, he called his wife, who worked at the hospital. They decided it would be faster for him to take her to the hospital than to wait for an ambulance. Daniel rushed Anna to the hospital, which was 6 minutes away.
Doctors pronounced Anna dead at 7:15 p.m., after emergency room personnel were unable to resuscitate her.
Anna’s mother shared her experience on the Circle of Mamas website in April, as she waited to see if the court would uphold the special master’s ruling:
“My beautiful daughter was only alive for 10 weeks and 6 days. She was so healthy until she died 6 hours after receiving her vaccinations. My heart is aching constantly, but until recently, I have kept quiet.
“If I dare mention that my daughter died 6 hours post vaccination, their first response is ‘but certainly you know that the vaccines didn’t cause her death, right?!’ To which I uncomfortably explain that was the only possible cause of death as everything else was ruled out.
“I have since found out that vaccine deaths are rarely reported to those vaccine safety studies the HHS and CDC are supposedly so thorough about.
“My daughter, Anna, is not the only hidden statistic.
“Vaccine manufacturers have NO liability for injuries or deaths caused by vaccines, we have all been told that vaccines are safe and effective, but inconvenient statistics are removed from their safety studies. The ethics violations are deadly.”
The Sims filed their complaint with the VICP in 2015. They fought for nearly a decade to receive compensation — a timeline that is not atypical in the vaccine court, according to the researchers.
Medical examiner’s report, expert witness testimony key in Anna’s case
Based on the medical examiner’s report and expert witness testimony, Anna’s parents alleged that her death was caused either by encephalopathy or a combination of encephalopathy, pulmonary edema and visceral congestion.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers representing HHS disagreed. They said that because the coroner concluded Anna died from “undetermined” causes consistent with SIDS or SUID — not considered to be related to vaccines — the VICP wasn’t obligated to compensate the parents for her death.
However, in 2024, VICP Special Master Mindy Michaels Roth ruled in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that Anna’s death was caused by vaccine-induced encephalopathy.
Attorney Pat White told The Defender that in most infant death cases that come before the court, the petitioners argue that the infant died of SIDS or SUID. White is part of a SIDS research group, led by Wayne Rohde, author of two books on the vaccine court.
A SIDS diagnosis is given when an infant under age 1 dies suddenly, typically during sleep, and an investigation into the death fails to yield a cause. However, 90% of SIDS deaths occur in the first six months of life, peaking at ages 1-4 months.
After birth defects and prematurity, SIDS is the third leading cause of death among infants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — yet the medical industry claims to remain puzzled about the cause.
In the VICP, entitlement to compensation is based on the Vaccine Injury Table — the list of vaccines, known associated injuries, and the time periods in which they must occur in order to qualify for compensation.
If a petitioner suffers a known injury within the short period prescribed by the table, it is presumed that a vaccine caused the injury. The petitioner is then eligible for compensation without proof of causation. This is called a “table injury.”
However, if a petitioner files for an “off-table injury” — an injury not listed on the table or that didn’t manifest within the specified time frame — the petitioner must prove by “a preponderance of evidence” that the vaccine caused the injury. Evidence can include medical records and expert witness testimony.
SIDS, though previously listed on the table, is no longer considered a table injury. That makes it much more challenging to receive compensation for a vaccine-induced infant death, according to Rohde, who told The Defender:
“In the early years of the program, infant deaths were compensated. Then a change occurred where our government adopted a policy of preventing infant deaths from being compensated, altering the definition of SIDS to become a disease, thus making vaccine-induced infant death extremely difficult or nearly impossible to be compensated or even recognized.”
‘Science is clear’: infants can develop brain injury within minutes after vaccination
In other recent infant death cases, the government has argued that the deaths were SIDS and, therefore, ineligible for compensation, White said.
However, in the Sims case, the government’s expert witness conceded that the autopsy was not thorough enough to rule out all other possible causes — which is usually when a death is designated as SIDS.
The government’s expert also conceded that Anna suffered an edema, or swelling, in her brain.
The parents’ attorneys presented “a logically coherent, biologically plausible sequence of events to prove that the vaccines she received were the cause-in-fact of her death less than 8 hours later,” according to the SIDS research group.
Dr. Robert Shuman, a distinguished neuropathologist and child neurologist, said the clinical symptoms and the pathological findings in the autopsy, which included evidence of brain swelling and pressure, provided conclusive evidence that Anna developed acute encephalopathy and died from cerebral edema, which resulted in brainstem herniation and cardiopulmonary failure.
He attributed this to a vaccine-triggered immune reaction.
Another expert, Dr. M. Eric Gershwin, a specialist in immunology, confirmed this was a plausible explanation.
According to the SIDS research group:
“Having this kind of exemplary expert testimony from unimpeachable and highly credentialed specialists in the specific field relevant to the petitioner’s theory of causation is the bare minimum of what is necessary to prevail in these infant death cases.
“The special master usually has to determine key issues by choosing between conflicting subjective interpretations of the agreed-upon facts, and if the government expert is more credentialed in the relevant field then that will conclude the analysis before it begins.”
The government’s experts argued that the baby’s behavior was not consistent with encephalopathy. The researchers said special masters have relied on the same arguments to reject similar claims in the past.
However, in this case, the special master found Shuman’s explanation more convincing and ruled that it met the burden to prove causation. The government’s experts were unable to offer any evidence to show the death was caused by factors unrelated to vaccination.
Rohde said Anna’s case was similar to many other cases filed in VICP, yet denied in court.
“The science is clear that these infants suffered an encephalopathy and/or cerebral edema within minutes or hours after vaccination,” he said. “Hopefully, with the Sims decision, our country will start to recognize the damage that can be caused to infants by vaccination.”
VICP awarded the Sims family an automatic $250,000 death benefit, plus $50,000 for the pain and suffering Anna experienced between her vaccination and her death hours later.
According to the SIDS researchers, the compensation money comes from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund, which is financed through a 75-cent excise tax paid by the vaccine manufacturers for every vaccine on the schedule.
That same fund was used to pay over $428,000 to the petitioner’s attorneys and experts, along with the undisclosed costs for the DOJ lawyers and experts to defend their case, according to the research group.
VICP designed to be fast, easy — it’s anything but
The VICP is a federal, no-fault compensation program for people injured by vaccines listed on the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule.
The program was established by Congress under the Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 to protect vaccine makers from liability for harm caused by their products and to adequately compensate people injured by them.
Although the VICP was designed to be a fast, easy and non-antagonistic process to compensate the vaccine-injured, in practice, it is very difficult to get compensated, especially for complex claims.
Families who file petitions for injuries argue their cases before a “special master” — typically a lawyer who previously represented the U.S. government — who manages and decides the individual claims.
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims appoints the special masters, who serve four-year terms.
Attorneys may represent the petitioners. The DOJ represents HHS — and often aggressively defends the government against the claims.
In VICP proceedings, there is no judge or jury, and the rules of evidence, civil procedure and discovery don’t apply.
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My heart goes out to Anna Sims' parents. As far as the compensation, it's about time. Now let's start giving informed consent to new parents. And coercion is not consent.
Brenda, thank you for writing this article. I appreciate you mentioning my class researching all legal decisions in the NVICP regarding Vaccine Induced Infant Death. Calling these horrible deaths as SIDS is a losing debate. Because we know the vast number of the baby's suffered encephalopathy injuries or worse. We will have more to speak on this subject. The study group is going back to the very beginning of infant death and trying to examine as many of the cases as possible. Very alarming.