07/26/2026: Vaccine Court, Chess Boxing, Amy Sherald

0:07The chances of serious vaccine injury have been likened to lottery odds, lightning strikes. But if you are one of the unlucky few, you can file a case in vaccine court. I represent both vaccine-injured children and adults. Most of them will start the conversation by saying, I'm not anti-vax. Why do you think they need to tell you right off the bat they're not anti-vax, but? There's a lot of public pressure that people think you're some kind of a crazy person or you're out there. And also because most people have never heard of a vaccine injury. They're rare. Fighters from 18 countries are here, trying to knock each other's heads off.

0:45There's the bell. But wait, now the fighters strip off their gloves and play chess? This is chess boxing. Chess is battle on a board, and boxing is chess with my body. So when someone combined those two, I was like, yes, here's what I was made for. Amy Sherald's paintings have sold for as much as$4 million, and are often compared to work by the great masters of American realism. Does that make sense to you in any way? It's technically what I wanted as a black woman artist, American, for people to be like, yeah, Amy Sherrill, Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper. Like, I'm in the room with the guys. And so I think I'm okay with it.

1:29Yeah, I think I'm okay. Not a bad room to be in. No. Yeah. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Leslie Stahl. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

1:52If you've never before heard of the National Vaccine Court, you're hardly alone. As we first reported in October, it sits inconspicuously a few hundred yards from the White House and stands as a model of effective public policy, balancing the societal good of widespread vaccination with rare individual harm. Founded in the 1980s, the Court has, with little fanfare, paid out billions of dollars to Americans who have claimed injury after getting a vaccine. Today, with vaccine skepticism rising and given voice in the highest ranks of government, we wondered, can this singular court block out the noise, withstand the political winds, and stay true to its mission?

2:33You ready to go? Yeah. All right, say go. Go. Jacob Thompson is 13 years old. Here we go. He loves airplanes, swimming, and Chick-fil-A. Ma, ma, ma! But Jacob can speak only a handful of words and needs help walking more than a few yards. Jacob was born in St. Louis on New Year's Eve 2011, rounding out a family of four with sister May Lee and parents John and Wally. He a pilot for FedEx, she a recent immigrant from China. We had this perfectly normal, happy little baby. He would be able to jump up and down on my wife's lap and very alert, recognized who mom and dad was. At his six-month checkup, Jacob received a combination shot that included the recommended childhood vaccinations against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, or DTAP, all deemed safe and effective in clinical trials.

3:30Hours later, Jacob began to seize. Doctors hoped it was a one-time reaction. It wasn't. Within, I'd say, six months or less, He didn't know that we were mom and dad anymore, and he was slithering on the floor like a snake. Unrecognizable from the child you knew. By age two, Jacob could suffer up to 700 seizures in one day. He was diagnosed with a rare and severe form of epilepsy. Is he getting blue? The Thompsons became increasingly convinced that his condition could be traced back to his six-month vaccinations, and they began to seek accountability. They took their case to attorney Renee Gentry.

4:11That's circumstantial evidence because it's not direct evidence. She's a leading vaccine injury litigator and director of the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. Perfect. I represent both vaccine-injured children and adults. All of my clients are vaccinated. Most of them will start the conversation by saying, I'm not anti-vax. Why do you think they need to tell you right off the bat they're not anti-vax, but? There's a lot of public pressure when you say that you have a vaccine injury, that people think you're some kind of a crazy person or you're out there.

4:43And also because most people have never heard of a vaccine injury. They're rare. So rare that, while hard to quantify precisely, the chances of serious vaccine injury have been likened to lottery odds, lightning strikes. Bear in mind, in total, global immunization has saved an estimated 154 million lives, six lives each minute. But when an injury does occur, families can come to vaccine court, seen in this informational video. Part of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the court was established in response to a public health scare in the 1980s. The health of millions of children may be at stake.

5:24When families of injured children went to civil court and successfully sued the manufacturers of the DTP vaccine, an older version of DTaP, it caused all but one of those drug companies to pull out of the market, resulting in vaccine shortages. Congress acted, crafting a bipartisan bill that partially shielded drug manufacturers from liability so they would continue to develop life-saving vaccines. And at the same time, Congress acknowledged that vaccines can cause injury. As Bill sponsor Senator Ted Kennedy described, when children are, quote, the victims of an appropriate and rational national policy, a compassionate government will assist them in their hour of need.

6:07It was hailed as such a unique accomplishment back in the day because you had these disparate groups. You had the parents of vaccine-injured children together in the room with the manufacturers. and everybody agreed that this was the best case scenario. Is that fair to the public? They think they have an injury caused by a vaccine, but they can't sue the vaccine manufacturer directly. You can still opt out of this program and sue a manufacturer. You have to just start in this program, but it's a lower burden of proof in our program. So it's an easier thing for vaccine injured people to get compensation.

6:39Drug companies are not only not being sued, they're not part of the proceedings. Vaccine court is a no-fault court, Meaning in cases like Jacob Thompson's, negligence does not need to be proven, just that the vaccine more likely than not caused the injury. Vaccine court is not your typical court. There's no jury. Cases are decided in front of one of a judge's called Special Masters. Since the program began in the late 80s, 12 ,000 Americans have received almost$5 billion in payouts. There are no financial windfalls for lawyers. The court pays them by the hour. Where does all this money come from?

7:17A 75-cent tax imposed on recommended childhood vaccines goes into a trust fund earmarked for vaccine injury compensation. Last July, the Thompsons received a judgment of$2.1 million, based on the special master's ruling that it was more probable than not that Jacob's six-month vaccinations aggravated an underlying genetic mutation. Jacob also received a lifetime annuity to cover his future care. Is there any doubt that the vaccine caused Jacob's injury? We can't ever prove scientific certainty on it. Does that not mean, though, that some cases are being compensated when, in fact, the science might not support it?

7:58Sure, and that's what Congress intended. There's very clear indication that said it would be better to compensate somebody that wasn't injured than to miss somebody who was. How do you feel about that? I think that's fine. While vaccines are critically important public health tools, they're not magic. You know, you can have an allergic reaction to aspirin. So it's a lot of different factors come into play to have a person be injured by a vaccine. Their genetics, their immune system, that's why the no-fault part is critical. The vaccine caused it, but there's no bad actor in this case. The program is structured around a vaccine injury table, basically a conversion chart of vaccines and eligible injuries.

8:33If your child, for instance, got a rubella vaccine and developed chronic arthritis, within 7 and 42 days, you may be eligible for damages. The most common compensation is for shoulder injuries suffered from a misplaced injection. You can file for an injury not on the table. Overall, half of all claims have been dismissed. Today, vaccines on the table have jumped from the original 6 to 16, including the annual flu shot, though notably not COVID. As for the eligible injuries, autism is not one of them. That decision did not come easily, as retired special masters Denise Fowle and George Hastings explained.

9:15There's been a lot of talk lately about a possible link between vaccines and autism. This has been litigated and decided in your court 15 years ago. You know, I spent many, many years of my life almost full-time looking at that issue. In the early 2000s, cases alleging vaccinations caused autism flooded the court. Val, Hastings, and a third special master oversaw what was a class action of sorts, a vaccine court proceeding that spanned almost a decade, incorporating testimony from dozens of medical experts and hundreds of scientific articles. What did you ultimately conclude? Ultimately concluded, there simply was not the evidence.

10:01I hoped there would be. Why? Because the parents of children with autism go through so much. But Val said she could not decide cases based on sentiment. I had to apply the law, and the law was that if there is a preponderance of evidence of vaccine causation, I rule for them. If there isn't, I rule against them. All three special masters concluded there was no link between vaccines and autism. On appeal, eight additional federal judges unanimously upheld the vaccine court decisions. This has not been persuasive to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. After 30 years of steady rises in autism rates, I don't know if we know the answer to that.

10:46We should know the answer. We wanted to know RFK Jr.'s views about vaccine court, the court his uncle championed, because today, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he is imbued with the authority to add or redefine injuries on the vaccine table. He declined our request for an on-camera interview, but said via email that yes, he would like to expand the table, which he hopes will create an easier path to compensation. In particular, he wants to broaden definitions for seizures and encephalopathy, two neurological conditions that can be associated with autism. Although the original intent was idealistic, compassionate, and sensible, the court, RFK Jr.

11:30told us, has become a disaster for the families of injured children. Its effective function is delayed denial and systematic cruelty. Yeah, right there. Vaccine court delays are something Ryan Farrell knows only too well. Husband to Angela and father of three, Ryan worked as a lineman for a Boston-area power company, hanging electrical wires 100 feet high. Oh, yeah. On the job in 2017, Ryan cut his hand on rusty metal and got a tetanus shot. A few days later, the pain started. I felt like my back was just, like, being stabbed. He would take a shower. He was like, I feel like there's razor blades hitting my skin.

12:11Over the next few years, Ryan was hospitalized multiple times. Doctors diagnosed him with a rare autoimmune disease. I didn't want to live for a long time. You know, that's how I felt. When did you make the link that I had this vaccine? Maybe there's some correlation here. I made the correlation. Like most Americans, Angela Farrell had never heard of vaccine court. But she stumbled upon it online and found a lawyer. They filed a case in 2019. And only last July did the special master rule that tetanus shot more likely than not led to Ryan's illness. Do you feel like you were treated with compassion?

12:50I mean, the special master was kind to me and my family when we were in the courtroom. Court was intended to compensate people for vaccine injuries. I want to quote this quickly, easily, and with certainty and generosity. That couldn't be further from the truth. What do you mean? I feel like they made it way too, way too long. Ryan remains unable to work. And seven years in, he has yet to receive his full damages. The court acknowledges the delays. Citing a backlog of more than 3 ,000 cases, its chief special master has, in documents obtained by 60 Minutes, asked Congress for more resources four years running, saying it becomes more difficult each year to resolve the huge number of case filings in the expedient fashion they deserve.

13:37Congress has yet to act. Our reporting suggests that this inaction is in part because vaccination has become such a loaded, heavily politicized issue that legislators are reluctant to wade in. The Thompsons are not invested in the heavily charged vaccine debate. They're invested in their son, Jacob, an anguishing exception harmed by what's otherwise a public health force of good. I do wonder if people aren't going to hear your story and be terrified of giving their kids vaccinations. We're definitely not anti-vaxxers. We think, I mean, vaccines are great. They've done a lot to help people. But I think that parents need to know what can happen.

14:21If what you care about are vaccine-injured people and then being compensated, then you want this court to work, and you want this court to be here. I mean, we have this program that incentivizes the manufacturing of vaccines, but also acknowledges that in some rare cases, there are injuries and damages. It's bipartisan. It takes everyone's views into account. And everybody compromises, which is a dirty word now, but that's the goal of it. And it's helped these people. Jacob will be taken care of for the rest of his life because of this program.

14:58Sometimes it feels like the news is full of things that have never happened before. And that is not exactly true. In fact, it may have happened this very week, hundreds or thousands of years ago. I'm Sally Helm, host of the podcast History This Week from the History Channel. Trade embargoes? Thomas Jefferson tried them. Rent too high? We've been arguing about that for a while. Each episode is proof. The past isn't that far away. Listen to History This Week, available now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

15:34When we first heard about chess boxing, we thought it was a joke. Chess boxing? Could it really be a thing? Turns out it is, and it's just what it sounds like. Alternate rounds of chess and boxing. You can win by knockout or checkmate, whichever comes first. Don't laugh. This odd couple made it to the Paris Olympics as an exhibition match. Russia is the reigning champ. But as we first reported last fall, an upstart American team swung for the medals. Still think we're kidding? Come with us to the World Chess Boxing Championships in Serbia.

16:17It's a quiet September Sunday in Loznica, a sleepy Balkan town in western Serbia. But inside the local sports arena, the bells are ringing for a different reason. The German comes out fast, jabbing and punching. He batters his Russian rival until a roundhouse sends him down. Fighters from 18 countries are here trying to knock each other's heads off. There's the bell. But wait, now the fighters strip off their gloves and sit down. It's chess time. Competitors have three minutes to vanquish their enemy on the board. If they don't, it's back to the slugfest for three more minutes. It's gloves on, gloves off, until checkmate, knockout, or judge's decision.

17:12This is chess boxing, where Knuckle meets nerd. When you first heard about it, did you know that it was a real sport? No. I thought it was like a Saturday Night Live skit. It was so absurd to me that someone would combine these two things. I have to admit, when I first heard about it, I laughed. It sounds crazy. It's the best thing about the sport. Chess is battle on a board. And boxing is chess with my body. So when someone combined those two, I was like, yes, here's my yin and yang. Here's what I was made for. Ladies and gentlemen, chess boxing fans around the world, thank you. Matt Thomas is a chess boxing evangelist.

17:50When we get to the later rounds. And coach of Team USA. He's built a squad of 15 American contenders from all walks of life. There's the lawyer, a Cornell math major, a military veteran. In 2018, Thomas became the first American to compete for a world chess boxing title. And you won. And I won, which the person who was the most surprised about that was me. So did you win by hook or by rook? Good question. It was actually by rook, yeah. Thomas dropped out of law school and went all in. Double jab, triple jab. He's a promoter, commentator, and fundraiser for a sport hardly anyone has heard of. No wonder chess boxing started out life in a French graphic novel.

18:41It was pure fiction until 2003, when it turned into fact at a real-life match in Berlin. It was an instant hit, especially in Russia. Now, America is catching up, one fighter at a time. I had the body of a chess player. I was just like a scrawny kid, you know. Meet William Gambitman Grafe, a New York State chess champ. He's been playing competitive chess since the age of five. Yep, good, good, good. We saw his take-no-prisoners approach... How'd I get in this horrible position? ...when he demolished four of us at once just for fun. Checkmate. Checkmate. Grafe told us he added 30 pounds of muscle to become a chess boxer.

19:27He's still only 160 pounds. Are you scared in any way? I'd be a little crazy not to be terrified. But why are you willingly deciding to step into a ring where you can get your head beaten in? Yeah, you sound like my mother. One of the things is sort of the opportunity to tell my story here of, like, A kid who played chess growing up, throughout school, and was to an extent ridiculed and ostracized. For being a scrawny chess player. Exactly. Okay, you know, I've been doing chess for a very long time. What better time to sort of try something new and challenge myself? Like his teammates, Grafe paid his own way to get here.

20:13There's no prize money in chess boxing, just the warmth of your country's flag. Matt Thomas told us that was enough to unite his rag tag team against the 800-pound gorilla, Russia. We're by far the underdogs. We're coming in with the red, white, and blue trying to upset people. No one thinks we're going to do well. No one thinks we're going to win. The Russians are the best. By a long shot. Yeah, so... Why? What makes them so good? They have it in over 500 schools and universities where kids are growing up with chess boxing. It is their sport, their focus. Making his chess boxing world championship debut, Wayne Clark!

20:53Wayne God King Clark was about to run into that Russian machine. A former Harlem Globetrotter, Clark traded hoops for the ring 11 years ago. He's got the stare down perfected. His chess, a work in progress. We first met God King in Times Square, where he'd taken out a billboard to drum up interest in the sport. Clark told us he had one uncle who was a boxer and another who was a chess master. And the next thing you know, the chess board would roll out, and they would be playing chess till 1 and 2 o 'clock in the morning, and I was just always around it. And so when I heard of chess boxing, I knew I was destined for it.

21:34So chess and boxing are part of your family's DNA. Absolutely. And have you seen this becoming more popular, more well-known? Yes. You know, we actually are doing a chess boxing tour in schools right now. So we started this last year, and the hope is that we can grow that all throughout the United States and introduce it to students' brains and brawn and how they both work together. In Serbia, we watched on the big screen as Clark made his opening moves. The chess boxing crowd cheers as loudly for a captured queen as an uppercut. And they're not shy with advice.

22:14Clark knew he had to win at boxing, but in the ring, his mojo deserted him. There was more wrestling than boxing. The Russian coach spurred his fighter on. Without a knockout, it was back to the board, headsets on to block out coaching from the crowd. Clark tried valiantly to fend off the Russian attack. Too late. Checkmate. How are you feeling right now? I didn't do my game plan. I didn't stick to my game plan at all. I wasn't the Wayne Clark I know I am in boxing at all. Is this harder than you thought it would be? Oh, the chess, yeah. The boxing was just stupid errors. I take full accountability for that.

22:54Through 75 fights... Representing Russia. Russia won victory after victory. Russia. Russia. Russia. But there were other contenders, too. We saw knockdowns and knockouts. There was a little blood, a lot of sweat, but no tears. We saw fighters who flexed and grizzled veterans who tried. We saw nervous newbies and women fighters who pulled no punches. Immediately a knockdown to start the fight by France! Then it was showtime for chess master William Grafe. Coach Matt Thomas told us chess players may look meek, but they are cutthroats. Those guys are Mike Tyson, but in the head. They want to tear you apart and make you doubt yourself and want to quit in the same way that a boxer would pick someone apart.

23:47They're picking you apart with their brain. In his first match, Grafe shredded his French opponent. Now he was facing a German champion. Grafe attacked lightning-fast chess moves setting him up for the win. When they got to the ring, Rafe channeled his inner Rocky and let loose with a flurry of punches. But it wasn't enough. He lost on points. I'm really proud that I did this, and I'm really proud of the way I went out. Do it all over again. As Iron Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Most people on the surface, when they hear about chess boxing, they think that the battleground is the chessboard or the boxing ring.

24:35And it is. You have to be good at both. But the real battlefield is the minute in between rounds. Thomas told us the best chess boxers learn how to control their breathing to switch from a high-octane fight to cold calculation. So the more that you can down-regulate, lower your heart rate, dump the adrenaline out of your system and let your amygdala chill out for a round, the more of your potential chest strength you're going to be using in the chest round. So this transition, this is key? Key. It's still to this day a competitive advantage that I think Team USA has over the rest of the world.

25:12Not as many people are putting as much time, effort, and preparation into the minute in between rounds. Halfway through the tournament, the scrappy underdogs of Team USA had two gold medals. But the Russian march to first place continued. We are this great rival for everybody. Peter Zhukov is a Russian businessman and the founder of the Russian Chess Boxing Federation. He told us chess and boxing are hardwired into Russia's history. In Soviet, old-school Russian boxing gyms, they would play chess after boxing training. They would just do it to develop certain qualities in their fighters. They play chess and checkers.

25:58To work a different part of your mind? Yeah. Zhukov was ringside for the last and most coveted title of the championships, the super heavyweight final. No surprise to see a Russian fighter here. His challenger? Hailing from the United States of America, James Canty III!

26:20Michigan's James Canty was the last American standing. A professional chess player, Canty has been boxing for only two years. He was up against a brawler with years in the ring. Canty knew the Russian would be looking for his head. The Russian charged, lashing out with a punishing right hook. Canty danced and dodged, taking blow after blow. Counter him and neck your hands up! But he hung on. Jazz! And on. Canty on the ropes. And then, in the third round of chess, checkmate. James Canty III had beaten the odds. We got it done. To become the new super heavyweight chess boxing champion of the world.

27:06He needed a chair. It's like when you went back in for that second round. Yeah, it's like the longest three minutes you ever my life, bro Longest three minutes of my life. I ain't gonna lie, but you took a licking and kept on ticking. I did You did I did and I'm a world champ and you're a world champ Coach Matt Thomas was giddy with excitement God I couldn't be prouder. I mean to have a USA Russia final to close out the seventh chess boxing world championship And to beat Russia for a gold. Let's go, baby Russia blitzed the medals for first place.