Anyone who thinks the vaccine case now before the Supreme Court is merely a matter of giving injured plaintiffs their day in court has misconceived the stakes for those who reap the benefits of vaccines. The U.S. Supreme Court has just heard oral arguments in the case of Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, in which the parents of a severely disabled child wish to sue the manufacturer of a childhood vaccine for causing their child’s disability. At this stage, the dispute is over a purely legal issue: the scope of federal preemption. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act largely removed childhood...