[NVIC] Call To Stop Congress From Betraying You

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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.

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. 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

- 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 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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