Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on secret drug agency

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http://www.rcfp.org/news/releases/20051201-reportersc.html

 

 

PRESS RELEASE: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Contact: Lucy Dalglish, (703) 807-2100

Reporters Committee deplores secret health agency proposal

 

Dec. 1, 2005

 

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press deplores the effort

of Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to create a federal agency immune from

public oversight and the unfathomable failure of the Senate Committee

on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to consider Freedom of

Information principles in endorsing this bill.

 

Senator Burr introduced the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug

Development Act in late October, stating as its intention " to prepare

and strengthen the biodefenses of the United States against

deliberate, accidental and natural outbreaks of illness, and for other

purposes. "

 

It would create a Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency

that would not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, to the

Federal Advisory Committee Act and its openness provisions or to large

portions of the Federal Acquisition Regulations.

 

No federal agency has been given a blanket exclusion from Freedom of

Information requirements in the 40-year history of the act. Even

routine administrative details such as official travel expenses and

costs of office furniture would be withheld under this measure.

 

The bill would only allow public disclosures from BARDA when a " need

to know " is demonstrated, and then only when both the Secretary of

Health and Human Services and the director or the new agency determine

that disclosure will " not threaten national security. "

 

Through Freedom of Information Act disclosures, the public has in the

past learned that the government has conducted questionable medical

experiments on its citizens, such as injecting them with plutonium;

that it has not always identified a full range of side effects from

drugs such as recent smallpox vaccinations; and that its scientists

have not been any more omniscient than researchers elsewhere in

determining what is safe and unsafe for the public.

 

Reporters Committee Executive Director Lucy A. Dalglish said, " It is

frightening that senators would believe that secrecy in matters of

health will make us safe, and very disheartening that they would be so

willing so quickly to dismiss the importance of open government laws. "

 

Other sponsors include Senators Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), Judd Gregg

(R-N.H.), William Frist (R-Tenn.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and

Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.).