[NVIC] Forced Vaccination + No Liability = Tyranny

[Guest guest]

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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BL Fisher Note:

Drug companies, with the assistance of medical organizations and public

health officials, have been lobbying Congress for more tha 40 years for an

" exclusive remedy " federal compensation program which would completely

remove all product liability for injuries and deaths caused by mandated

vaccines. Parents, who worked on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act

of 1986, were able to protect the civil right to access the tort system for

vaccine injuries and deaths if a child was turned down for federal

compensation or offered too little, as well as in cases where criminal

negligence or fraud on the part of the drug company could be proved in

court. That right to go to court has been threatened by pharmaceutical

lobbyists joining with physician organizations and federal health officials

intent upon strengthening the forced mass vaccination system in America.

With government, industry and medical organizations like the American

Academy of Pediatrics advocating for the removal of informed consent

protections from mandatory vaccination laws, it is very dangerous to combine

the banning of lawsuits for vaccine injuries and deaths with draconian

forced vaccination policies. This amounts to a totalitarian approach to

health policy which leaves profit-making corporations and doctor officials

inside and outside of government totally unaccountable for their actions

when citizens follow their orders and then are harmed by vaccines, whether

that harm occurs in an emergency or non-emergency situation.

The call by President Bush to use the military to enforce quarantines in

the case of a flu pandemic is the wake-up call. Forced quarantine is the

first step. Forced vaccination is the second step as soliders with syringes

set up camp in the small towns and big cities of America.

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Business/101205_vaccine.html

The Hill

Immunity sought as avian flu shadow approaches

By Jim Snyder

Rising worry about a bird-flu pandemic is reviving drug-company hopes for

legal protections to produce vaccines.

The debate once centered on preparations for a terrorist attack that

released deadly strains of anthrax or smallpox. But the administration and

lawmakers are now rushing to prepare for a global flu outbreak that medical

experts say is almost sure to happen.

The Senate already has approved an amendment offered by Sen. Tom Harkin

(D-Iowa) that added $3.9 billion to the military spending measure to prepare

for the flu. The money will be used to stockpile medications to combat the

flu.

Lobbyists from pharmaceutical companies say a critical component of any

effort is immunity from lawsuits if a vaccination causes harm.

Without new legal safeguards, pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to

produce vaccines, a business that offers little reward but a lot of risk,

lobbyists say.

" Vaccines are not Viagra, " said Clerici of McKenna, Long and Aldridge,

which represents Sanofi Pasteur, a French company that has a

vaccine-manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania, and other pharmaceutical

companies.

" You aren't going to make a huge amount of money making vaccines. "

This month, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded Sanofi a $97

million contract to develop a new type of flu vaccine.

But a deterrent for wider participation among the industry is the potential

liability, which Clerici said is huge because the number of people who would

use a vaccine in a global outbreak likely will reach in the hundreds of

millions.

The debate over liability protection pits two rival lobbying powers against

one another once again: drug companies and trial lawyers.

The Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) opposes " efforts by some

in Congress and their friends in the pharmaceutical industry to use the

threat of outbreak as means to provide big giveaways to special interests, "

said ATLA spokeswoman Mather.

The association instead favors reforming the Vaccine Injury Compensation

Program, which set up a federal, court-like process through which alleged

victims of vaccination could seek financial compensation.

Created in 1986, the program has settled 1,200 vaccine claims worth $1.2

billion as of 2004. But it has come under criticism for being too slow in

giving victims redress.

Recent battles over liability protection were fought as Congress debated

Project Bioshield, an effort by the White House to develop " medical

countermeasures " to biological and chemical terrorist attacks.

After liability protection for makers of thimerosal, a vaccine component

some say may be linked to a rising incidence of autism, was attached to the

2002 homeland-security bill in the dead of night - it was later removed -

Congress had little appetite to attach liability protections to Bioshield

when it passed the act in 2004.

But as the so-called bird flu spreads around the globe, though it has killed

relatively few humans, Congress and the administration have taken new

interest in vaccine development.

Last week's news that the 1918 pandemic that killed at least 50 million

people was a mutated avian strain transferable by human-to-human contact has

provided additional momentum.

Several lawmakers have introduced bills or are drafting them to improve the

system for producing and distributing vaccines - both for flu outbreaks and

biological attacks.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Pat (R-Kan.), for example,

last week introduced the Influenza Vaccine Security Act.

The bill's provisions include shifting the liability from pharmaceutical

companies to the federal government for " personal injury or death resulting

from the manufacture, administration or use of qualified pandemic influenza

technologies. "

Mather said ATLA was still reviewing the bill. Chiron, the flu-vaccine

maker, is listed as a supporter of the bill.

Sen. Burr (R-N.C.), who is chairman of the Senate Health Committee's

Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness Subcommittee, has said he will

introduce a broad measure next week to prepare for a bioterrorism or flu

outbreak.

Doug Heye, a spokesman for Burr, said the bill, which is still being

drafted, is likely to borrow from a bill already introduced by Sen. Judd

Gregg (R-N.H.) that provides drug companies with liability protection.

" We need to provide incentives to companies to bring drugs and vaccines to

the marketplace, " Heye said.

Participation in Bioshield has so far been disappointing. Congress made

available $5.6 billion to drug companies to develop new drugs or vaccines.

But Clerici said only three contracts, worth a total of around $1 billion,

have been awarded.

Drug companies have " not participated at a level anticipated after

Bioshield, " Heye acknowledged.

But Mather noted news reports suggesting more companies are interested in

producing vaccines, even without liability protection.

Executives from pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoKline and Wyeth have

announced investments in vaccine production facilities, Maher said.

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