S 1873: Pandemic Vaccine Bill To Put Drug Firms Beyond Reach Of Law
A bill recently introduced in the US Senate, the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005" aims to shortcut the testing procedures for new vaccines and drugs in case of a pandemic and to protect vaccine makers from legal liability in case the drug causes adverse reactions.
The National Vaccine Information Center has called the bill "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's worst nightmare." NVIC also has an action page with information and a link to the bill's text, as well as the names of Senate committee considering the bill.
Senator Richard Burr, describing the bill to Committee members said that the legislation "creates a true partnership" between the federal government, the pharmaceutical industry and academia to "walk the drug companies through the Valley of Death" in bringing a new vaccine or drug to market.
The bill gives the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services the sole authority to decide whether a manufacturer violated laws mandating drug safety and bans citizens from challenging his decision in the civil court system.
A government agency the bill proposes to set up - the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency - is to promote advanced research and development of drugs and vaccines in response to bioterrorism and natural disease outbreaks. The agency is to be protected from prying eyes by a specific exemption from the provisions of the Freedom of Information act.
The current Bird Flu Propaganda Epidemic may well be providing the perfect excuse to pass such a bill, while a pervasive press hysteria stokes the pharmaphilic fervor that seems to have gripped legislative councils not only in the US these days. A decision seems to have been made to prop up the failing pharmaceutical paradigm on health at any cost, even overriding safeguards and legal rights to challenge administrative decisions.
It is mind boggling to see how the option of strengthening immune response in a natural way has been completely abandoned in favor of propping up the drug companies' business with disease.
Jonathan Campbell urges all to start calling Senators and Representatives
Stop the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005
This is a very urgent alert.
This Act - on the face of it quite unbelievable - creates a new secret agency to "partner" with drug manufacturers for the creation of new vaccines and drugs. It places information about them outside of public view, insures that injury from them will never become public, and completely exempts the vaccine and drug manufacturers from any liability for vaccine and/or drug injury. The Act also specifically exempts this new agency from the Freedom of Information Act. The history of injury and poor efficacy of vaccines and anti-viral drugs has been completely ignored in the debate.
Influenza vaccines in particular have a very poor record of efficacy. Often they do nothing for stopping the virus, because by the time they have been developed the virus has mutated. They have caused injury to thousands of people (Guillain Barr Syndrome). Their toxic components (including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal and the petrochemical solvent squalene) cause toxic injury and reduce immunity to other disease. Anti-viral drugs have a long list of horrific side effects because they interfere with intricate body processes.
The two bills, Senate S1873 and House HR3970 must be stopped. Our civil liberties and health are in great jeopardy. If passed, and when combined with federal power under existing law (BioShield 1), in the midst of an epidemic (or perceived epidemic) the entire population may be forced to be vaccinated with experimental, dangerous, immune-compromising vaccines and we will have no recourse. President Bush is promoting this Act as part of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza.
Please call your Senators and Representatives now. The Congressional Switchboard is 1-202-225-3121. They will connect you to your Senator or Representative if you give them your zip code. Please tell them (in your own words) that you oppose S1873 (Senate) or HR3970 (House) because they are an extreme violation of our civil liberties and a dangerous precedent in secrecy and removal of liability.
- - - End of Jonathan Campbell's appeal - - -
And here is the NVIC's alert:
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Vaccine alert from National Vaccine Information Center
(www.nvic.org)Wednesday, October 19, 2005
CONGRESS SET TO PASS LAW ELIMINATING LIABILITY FOR VACCINE INJURIES
Washington, D.C. - The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is calling the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005"(S. 1873), which passed out of the U.S. Senate HELP Committee one day after it was introduced "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's worst nightmare." The proposed legislation will strip Americans of the right to a trial by jury if harmed by an experimental or licensed drug or vaccine that they are forced by government to take, whenever federal health officials declare a public health emergency.
The legislation's architect, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), Chairman of the HELP Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness, told the full HELP Committee yesterday that the legislation" creates a true partnership" between the federal government, the pharmaceutical industry and academia to walk the drug companies "through the Valley of Death" in bringing a new vaccine or drug to market. Burr said it will give the Department of Health and Human Services "additional authority and resources to partner with the private sector to rapidly develop drugs and vaccines." The Burr bill gives the Secretary of DHHS the sole authority to decide whether a manufacturer violated laws mandating drug safety and bans citizens from challenging his decision in the civil court system.
The bill establishes the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA), as the single point of authority within the government for the advanced research and development of drugs and vaccines in response to bioterrorism and natural disease outbreaks such as the flu. BARDA will operate in secret, exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Advisory Committee Act, insuring that no evidence of injuries or deaths caused by drugs and vaccines labeled as "countermeasures" will become public.
Nicknamed "Bioshield Two," the legislation is being pushed rapidly through Congress without time for voters to make their voices heard by their elected representatives. Co-sponsored by Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY), and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH), the legislation will eliminate both regulatory and legal safeguards applied to vaccines as well as take away the right of children and adults harmed by vaccines and drugs to present their case in front of a jury in a civil court of law.
"It is a sad day for this nation when Congress is frightened and bullied into allowing one profit making industry to destroy the seventh Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing citizens their day in court in front of a jury of their peers," said Barbara Loe Fisher, president of NVIC. "This proposed legislation, like the power and money grab by federal health officials and industry in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Project Bioshield Act of 2004, is an unconstitutional attempt by some in Congress to give a taxpayer-funded handout to pharmaceutical companies for drugs and vaccines the government can force all citizens to use while absolving everyone connected from any responsibility for injuries and deaths which occur. It means that, if an American is injured by an experimental flu or anthrax vaccine he or she is mandated to take, that citizen will be banned from exercising the Constitutional right to a jury trial even if it is revealed that the vaccine maker engaged in criminal fraud and negligence in the manufacture of the vaccine."
The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is legally responsible for regulating the pharmaceutical industry and ensuring that drugs and vaccines released to the public are safe and effective. Drug companies marketing painkillers, like Vioxx, and anti-depressants, which have resulted in the deaths and injuries of thousands of children and adults, are being held accountable in civil court while the FDA has come under intense criticism for withholding information about the drugs' dangers from the public. Since 1986, vaccine makers have been protected from most liability in civil court through the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in which Congress created a federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) that offers vaccine victims an alternative to the court system. Even though the the program has awarded nearly $2 billion to victims of mandated vaccines, two out of three plaintiffs are turned away.
"The drug companies and doctors got all the liability protection they needed in 1986 but they are greedy and want more," said Fisher. "And the federal health agencies want more power to force citizens to use vaccines without having to worry about properly regulating them. If the Burr bill passes, all economic incentives to insure mandated vaccines are safe will be removed and the American people are facing a future where government can force them to take poorly regulated experimental drugs and vaccines labeled as "countermeasures" or go to jail. The only recourse for citizens will be to strike down mandatory vaccination laws so vaccines will be subject to the law of supply and demand in the marketplace. The health care consumer's cry will be: No liability? No mandates."
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) was founded by parents of vaccine injured children in 1982 and co-founders worked with Congress on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986
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The Alliance For Human Research Protection (AHRP) comments:
If the Administration were serious about preparing for an avian flu pandemic -- or for ANY health disaster for that matter -- the money would be spent on developing reliable infrastructures at the state and local level. What we witnessed in New Orleans was bedlam and health care workers abandoned without basic first-aid equipment.
Instead, the Administration is paying for vaccines that have no relevance to avian flu. The only beneficiaries of this $7 billion public give-a-way are the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, "Bush's plan would also make drug or vaccine companies less vulnerable to lawsuits over safety or side effects."
Indeed the public is utterly unaware about a radical bill, the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005" (S. 1873), that has already passed the Senate HELP committee in one day -- without so much as a public hearing! The bill, according to those who have read it, is "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's worst nightmare."
When the original Homeland Security Act was signed into law (2002), someone "mysteriously" inserted a clause giving Eli Lilly immunity from parents who were suing the company for its mercury-laced vaccines. See:
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/1102/15.php
The proposed legislation—S. 1873 -- will effectively strip Americans of the right to a trial by jury if harmed by an experimental or licensed drug or vaccine that the government forces them to take, whenever federal health officials declare a public health emergency.
This legislation would with one swipe, strip Americans of their inalienable right to voluntary, informed consent. If passed into law, this would spell the end of the American democratic process.
Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org
Bush requests $7.1 billion to stop bird fluPresident Bush proposed a $7.1 billion plan Tuesday to protect the nation against a potential bird-flu pandemic by ramping up funding for vaccines and anti-viral drugs. Most of Bush's plan, which requires Congressional approval, would involve stockpiling and developing drugs to counter bird flu.
Bush proposed allocating $1.519 billion to buy vaccines, to keep people from becoming infected, and $1.029 billion for anti-viral drugs, to minimize the illness once someone is exposed to the virus. Another $3.6 billion would be to develop new vaccines or other treatments.
Bush's plan would also make drug or vaccine companies less vulnerable to lawsuits over safety or side effects. Federal officials haven't spelled out who would get the money. Chiron of Emeryville and Gilead Sciences of Foster City, which both have track records in this field, are likely candidates...
Meanwhile, according to the BBC, the UK is running on a similar plan:
UK: Flu jab for whole population planPlans to purchase enough vaccine to cover every person in the UK in the event of a flu pandemic have been announced by the Department of Health. Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said 120 million doses would be needed - two for everyone. But a vaccine cannot be developed until the exact strain of the flu virus causing a pandemic is known. And Sir Liam admitted cases of flu could be seen in the UK before a vaccine was ready.
See also:***Stop the Drug Industry Bailout on Avian Flu!***
"Republicans are exploiting anxieties about avian flu to quietly pass legislation that shields the drug industry from being held legally accountable when flu vaccines and other pharmaceuticals used to treat pandemic diseases cause death, disability or serious sickness. (Majority Leader Frist has attached it as a provision in a completely unrelated defense spending bill, hoping no one will notice)
Help us stop Sen. Frist and others from padding drug industry profits at the expense of American consumers. Write to your senator and demand no holiday giveaways to the drug industry!"(Public Citizen, www.citizen.org)
See also
National Vaccine Information Center
National Autism Association
The National Vaccine Information Center and the National Autism Association have issued alerts about S1873/HR 3970 and other legislation which eliminate liability for vaccine injury.MOUNTAIN VIEWS: BIRD FLU SCAM TO COST US PLENTY
The current U.S. Congress has many qualities that are not endearing, but one of the worst is its addiction to hidden agendas. Case in point: In the middle of last week, one short day after the bill had been introduced, the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee -- by a quick, simple voice vote of the full panel -- passed something called the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005." It will probably hit the Senate floor this week for a full vote of that august chamber (and may have already done so by the time you read this).OpEdNews.com - November 23, 2005
Pharma To Republicans - Time To Pay Up Again
Accountability from vaccine makers is something that parents of injured children have been seeking for years; but accountability appears more illusive with each year's passage. On October 27 2005, the Hartford Courant reported that "Congress is considering a bill that would allow the government to order that vaccines be given to every U.S. citizen in a national emergency, even if a vaccine has previously harmed some people." The Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005 (S 1873), is being pushed through Congress without giving voters the chance to make their objections known to their elected officials.SENATE BILL 1873: PRESCRIPTION FOR TYRANNY
Immunity sought as avian flu shadow approaches
Rising worry about a bird-flu pandemic is reviving drug-company hopes for legal protections to produce vaccines. The debate once centered on preparations for a terrorist attack that released deadly strains of anthrax or smallpox. But the administration and lawmakers are now rushing to prepare for a global flu outbreak that medical experts say is almost sure to happen.Martial law being readied - in case bird flu breaks out
List of Senators pushing for Senate Bill 1873 - Write and Call now
These are names and contact details of the members of the Senate Committee that passed the bill without as much as a public hearing...National Vaccine Information Center action page
Avian Flu Awareness
... a bird flu (avian influenza) information and action site.ELIMINATING BIRD FLU FEARS
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, DO - December 7, 2005
A level-headed examination of 10 important facts shows that the prevailing alarmist point of view is inaccurate, irresponsible and self-serving.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Wednesday October 26 2005
updated on Friday December 17 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/10/26/s_1873_pandemic_vaccine_bill_to_put_drug_firms_beyond_reach_of_law.htm
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