Fwd: FW: Deal on Frist vaccine bill may be set

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FW: Deal on Frist vaccine bill may be set

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http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030408-031313-2419r

Deal on Frist vaccine bill may be set

By Mark Benjamin

From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk

Published 4/8/2003 3:30 PM

View printer-friendly version

 

 

WASHINGTON, April 8 (UPI) -- The Senate Wednesday may strike a deal on how

to handle hundreds of suits by parents who believe a common vaccine additive

caused a wave of autism during the 1990s when the substance, called

thimerosal, was heavily used, according to negotiators involved in talks on

Capitol Hill.

 

If negotiations are successful, parents of children allegedly injured by

vaccines in the early 1990s will still be able to seek compensation, but

only under a federal program that limits payments and not in court.

 

Those parents were outraged late last year when Republicans in Congress

quietly slipped a provision into homeland security legislation that would

have insulated vaccine giant Eli Lilly from thimerosal suits. Congress

repealed that provision two months later.

 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Senate Health Committee

Chairman Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Tuesday held a news conference to support

their " Improved Vaccine Affordability and Availability Act. " The original

version of that legislation would also have barred those families from

compensation, similar to the provision that was in the homeland security

bill.

 

But negotiators on Capitol Hill said privately that Frist might agree to

alter his legislation Wednesday to give those parents a one-year grace

period to pursue their claims -- but only in a federal program administered

by the Department of Health and Human Services that limits some claims to

$250,000. Those claims would be barred from court.

 

Frist said Tuesday he might be willing to alter his bill and allow some of

those complaints from the early 1990s to receive some compensation.

 

" We will look and see how far you should go back, " he said. " That is an

issue that we will look at tomorrow. "

 

Under the bill, new injuries from vaccines would also go into the federal

program, but would still have the option of later going to court.

 

Parent of autistic children criticized any effort to derail their claims as

a payoff to vaccine manufacturers.

 

" I think that you are either for mercury poisoning and drug companies, or

you are for vaccine injury compensations regardless of the time period and

you are for justice, " said Lara Bono, a North Carolina woman whose son,

Jackson, began exhibiting symptoms of autism on Aug. 14, 1990, four days

after receiving a series of shots containing thimerosal.

 

Bono says that within two weeks, Jackson stopped responding to his parents.

Two weeks later he would not make eye contact.

 

" Fast forward another couple of months and he was gone, " Bono said. " The

mercury was in his brain. "

 

Like most parents, she did not realize that thimerosal might have played a

role until the late 1990s, when vaccine manufacturers began to remove it

from vaccines.

 

The American Academy of Pediatricians did not call for the removal of

thimerosal from vaccines until 1999, though it says there is no evidence

proving a link.

 

Scientists disagree over whether thimerosal causes autism.

 

Gregg said his legislation would help prevent the threat of lawsuits from

crippling the vaccine industry.

 

" The fact is that our vaccine industry has been essentially wiped out and it

has been wiped out by fear of liability, " Gregg said Tuesday at a news

conference in support of his bill.

 

Frist said some lawsuits threatening the industry were " unnecessary and

expensive. "

 

Once a sleepy backwater of the global healthcare industry, vaccines are now

outpacing drugs in terms of sales growth. Global market is now at $6.5

billion. The total market is expected to top $10 billion by 2010. The

vaccine market had 14 percent compound annual growth throughout 1990s --

drug sales grew at 8 percent during the same time period.

 

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