US Congress: Under the Influence + Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

[Guest guest]

US Congress: " Under the Influence " of Big Pharma

 

http://vaccineawakening.blogspot.com/2007/07/us-congress-under-influence-of-big.\

html

 

" In all, at least 15 congressional staffers, congressmen and federal

officials left to go to work for the pharmaceutical industry, whose profits were

increased by several billion dollars. " I mean, they - they have unlimited

resources. Unlimited, " [Congressman] Burton says. " And when they push real hard

to get

something accomplished in the Congress of the United States, they can get it

done. " In January, one of the first things the new Democratic House of

Representatives did was to make it mandatory for Medicare to negotiate lower

prices

with the drug companies. But a similar measure was blocked in the Senate, due in

part to the efforts of the drug lobby. " - Steve Kroft, " 60 Minutes, " CBS News

, July 29, 2007

 

Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

 

This past Sunday, CBS's " 60 Minutes " took on the pharmaceutical industry in a

tough and well researched investigative report ( " Under the Influence " ) on the

strong-arm lobbying tactics of drug companies, who bully elected officials

into passing legislation that guarantees drug companies higher profits. This

report is an excellent example of what responsible journalists can do to inform

the American people about how they are being exploited by big corporations and

former " public servants " turned drug company lobbyists, who come back to

Congress to twist the arms of their old colleagues. It was painful to watch this

shocking report - congratulations to CBS for having the courage to produce and

air it - and it is worth reading the transcript at www.cbsnews.com and letting

CBS know you care about seeing more investigative journalism like this.

 

The pharmaceutical industry is twisting arms at the state level, too, to

secure guaranteed windfall profits for pharmaceutical products. The most recent

example is the aggressive lobbying campaign by Merck to get its new HPV vaccine

- GARDASIL - mandated in every state. They failed to do that this year because

there was a big parent backlash based on product safety and parental rights

concerns and state legislators heard the public's message loud and clear: no

HPV vaccine mandates for 11 year old girls.

 

However, the drug company lobbyists are working hard to get GARDASIL mandated

in California after all. To guarantee that the people never again have the

opportunity to stop drug companies like Merck from guaranteeing that their new

vaccines will be mandated, Pharma lobbyists have persuaded California Rep. Ed

Hernandez and others to introduce a law (AB 16) that would cut the voters and

the state legislature out of having any say whatsoever in future new vaccine

mandates. Cleverly, what vaccine manufacturers want to do is get a law passed in

every state that leaves only one person - the State Health Officer - with the

power to mandate new vaccines whenever the CDC recommends a new vaccine for

universal use.

 

It is much cheaper to strong arm one federal vaccine policymaking committee -

the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices - and one state

official in a state public health bureaucracy than to have to lobby hundreds of

politicians in 50 state legislatures to convince them to mandate a new vaccine.

Streamlining the U.S. vaccine mandating process would cut Pharma's lobbying

costs so windfall profits from vaccine sales in the U.S. can be even larger - a

projected $6.9B in 2007 - the highest for any country in the world. The power of

the people would be totally removed from the vaccine mandating process and

drug company lobbyists could concentrate all their efforts on strong-arming

politicians in Congress to create more prescription drug profit-making schemes

like the one CBS " 60 Minutes " just highlighted.

 

The National Vaccine Information Center has been calling for reform of the

mass vaccination system for 25 years. There have been too many instances in the

past where former government health agency employees, who develop, regulate or

promote mass use of multiple vaccines, have left their government jobs to

work for vaccine manufacturers. The first step is to prohibit elected officials

or staff or government health agency employees, who regulate or make

recommendations for use of products sold by the pharmaceutical industry, from

being

employed by that industry for at least ten years following their government

employment.

 

Government employees and elected officials responsible for ensuring the

public health and safety should understand that when they join government, they

are

choosing to become public servants and that the corporate world is not

accessible to them for at least a decade. This would prevent the revolving door

that

contributes to the kind of shameless exploitation of the people which CBS

illustrated so well in their July 29 report " Under the Influence. "