NVIC ACTION ALERT: To sneak in liability protection for vaccine manufacturers

[Guest guest]

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 07:30:16 -0900

" Sandy Gottstein " <sandymintz

URGENT POLITICAL ACTION ALERT!! PASS THIS ON!

 

 

 

 

E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER

 

Vienna, Virginia http://www.nvic.org

 

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UNITED WAY/COMBINED FEDERAL CAMPAIGN

 

#8122

 

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" Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since

1982. "

 

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NVIC ACTION ALERT

 

As the holidays approach and Congress gets ready to adjourn, some

Senators and Representatives in Congress with financial ties to the

pharmaceutical industry are trying to pull a fast one on you and your

family. These same politicians did the same thing in 2002 when they

tried to sneak in liability protection for Big Pharma by inserting the

thimerosal rider into the Homeland Security Bill.

 

Last night, legislators writing the Department of Defense (DOD)

Appropriations Bill slipped in language in the Conference Report AT

THE LAST MINUTE giving vaccine manufacturers TOTAL LIABILITY

protection if experimental vaccines injure or kill citizens whenever

the Secretary of Health declares an " emergency. " That " emergency "

could include everything from a " potential " bioterrorism attack to a

potentially bad flu year.

 

And you may not have a choice about whether or not to take those

experimental vaccines if your Governor follows the lead of the

Secretary of Health, declares an " emergency " in your state and trots

out the state militia to arrest, quarantine and forcibly vaccinate you

and your family. Laws passed at the state and federal level since

September 11, 2001 allow all of this to happen (go to www.nvic.com and

read a letter to Col. Robert P. Kadlec, M.D., a staffer to Senator

Burr which summarizes state and federal legislation since 9-11.).

 

But YOU can stand up TODAY and CALL YOUR OWN SENATOR AND

CONGRESSPERSON and make your voice heard before it is too late. CALL

NOW AND PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR LOVED ONES FROM BEING VICTIMIZED BY

DRUG COMPANIES AND THEIR ALLIES WHO WANT TO ESCAPE ALL RESPONSIBILITY

FOR VACCINE INJURIES AND DEATHS.

 

To find out who your Senator is, go to www.senate.gov

 

To find out who your Representative is go to www.house.gov .

 

CALL YOUR SENATOR OR REPRESENTATIVE by dialing 202-224-3121.

 

Every call or fax makes a difference. DON'T GIVE UP! OUR VOICES ARE

BEING HEARD!

 

 

 

http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/1215/p13s02-uspo.html

 

The Christian Science Monitor

 

December 15, 2005 edition

 

A measure to shield drug manufacturers from lawsuits in an effort to

encourage them to develop new vaccines is likely to be quietly

attached to a " must pass " defense appropriation bill within the next

few days.

 

If the US Secretary of Health and Human Services declares that

vaccines were being distributed during a national health emergency,

such as a flu pandemic, the bill would make it very difficult for

people who felt they had been harmed by vaccines to pursue legal

action against the manufacturer.

 

A broad swath of consumer-rights groups and open-government advocates

had succeeded in slowing the progress of a bill containing similar

provisions sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr ® of North Carolina. That

measure, introduced in October, would also establish a Biomedical

Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) that critics say

would be exempted from public and congressional scrutiny.

Congressional staffers have been meeting with concerned groups,

including a meeting planned for Wednesday, to revise Senator Burr's

bill. A revised version isn't expected to be introduced until next

year, though its future would be uncertain if the vaccine liability

shield is enacted separately first.

 

" It looks like the liability-protection language is in [the defense

bill], which will be very difficult for [members of Congress] to vote

against, " says Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine

Information Center, a consumer watchdog group in Vienna, Va. Backers

of the liability shield, led by Senate majority leader Bill Frist ®

of Tennessee, " were very smart in that strategy, " says Ms. Fisher, who

calls it " a threat to civil rights, to access to the judicial system,

and to human rights. "

 

The possibility of an avian flu epidemic, as well as the use of

biological weapons, have spurred interest in stepping up production of

new vaccines. Shield-law proponents has argued for years that the

world's giant drugmakers, so-called Big Pharma, would never take much

interest in that arena until they were given strong protections

against lawsuits.

 

You " want to harness " Big Pharma " to really kick this thing off, " says

Christopher-Paul Milne, assistant director of the Center for the Study

of Drug Development at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. " They have

the resources and the expertise and the manufacturing capacity to get

[development of new vaccines] done in a short period of time. "

 

Today, five or six big companies are making vaccines compared with

more than 20 several decades ago, Dr. Milne says. " Some of that is

because of the consolidation of the companies, " he says, but some is

the result of the high risk. To attract Big Pharma, " the potential

rewards are going to have to be high, " he says. In a national

emergency, vaccines might have to be produced quickly, and perhaps

without sufficient testing. In that kind of high-risk scenario,

" you're talking about the need for liability protection, " he says.

 

Senator Burr's bill, the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug

Development Act, would require plaintiffs to prove " willful

misconduct " by drugmakers. " 'Willful misconduct' is usually pretty

egregious activity, " Milne says. " It's going to be hard to sort all

that out to a jury or a judge. It's a pretty high threshold. "

 

" I would have to prove some scientist at Merck or some CEO somewhere

had made a determination to hurt me, " said Chris Mather, a spokeswoman

for the Association of Trial Lawyers for America, characterizing the

bill to the Associated Press last month.

 

If a liability shield is embedded in the defense bill, it may not

contain secrecy provisions that raised strong protests from

open-government advocacy groups. The Burr bill would nearly exempt

BARDA from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the Federal

Advisory Committee Act, which reports on the activities of government

agencies.

 

BARDA would also be screened from the kind of normal cost-accounting

procedures other agencies must follow, says Pete Weitzel, coordinator

of the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, whose member

organizations include the American Society of Newspaper Editors and

the Society of Professional Journalists. Those groups, along with

seven other CJOG members, signed a letter Nov. 3 asking that the

secrecy measures be stripped from Burr's legislation.

 

The level of secrecy that BARDA would operate under " is to the best of

my knowledge unprecedented, " Mr. Weitzel says. " I don't know of any

other agency in the government that has been given that kind of

authority. " Even the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are

subject to some aspects of FOIA, he says.

 

" [The Burr bill] was breathtaking in its scope in the way it wanted to

completely exclude this new agency from FOIA, " adds Lucy Dalglish,

executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

 

Rep. Dave Weldon ® of Florida, a medical doctor, has been among

those worried that too-strong liability protections for drugmakers

might cause people to hesitate to take vaccines in the event of a

pandemic. In 1976, the government's swine-flu vaccine program

collapsed when public fears spread about potential harm from the vaccine.

 

In a letter last week to congressional leaders, a group of a

half-dozen consumer advocacy groups, including Public Citizen and the

Consumer Federation of America, wrote: " Broadly shielding [drug]

manufacturers from responsibility for gross negligence, recklessness,

and other egregious behavior, and leaving victims with no recourse,

may cause more public harm than the pandemic disease itself. "

 

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Sandy Gottstein (Mintz)

PO Box 111818

Anchorage, AK 99511-1818

 

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" Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. " - Wendell Phillips

(1811-1884),

paraphrasing John Philpot Curran (1808)