S 1873: Pandemic Vaccine Bill To Put Drug Firms Beyond Reach Of Law
CategoriesA 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),
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