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National Vaccine Information Centre (NVIC) Note:
On October 19, we witnessed the Senate HELP Committee pass this bill out of
sub-committee.
It is critical that you take action today-immediately. This bill will go back
to the committee for a final review on Thursday-October 20, 2005 and then go
to the full Senate for a vote.
Being led by Republican Richard Burr (R-NC) and being spurred by fears of avian
flu, this bill was written and passed out of committee in a 24 hour period.
Most members did not even have the final language in front of them.
The version that passed will broadly eliminate liability for vaccines
and drugs.
Please read the press release, write to the members of the HELP committee,
write to your own Senator and your own member of Congress. Pass this alert to
your family, friends and other organizations you are involved with. Go to our
website and take action right now! www.NVIC.org
Don't wait for someone else to do it. This is a CODE RED alert to anyone who
is concerned about forced vaccination and holding drug companies responsible
for the products they create. www.NVIC.org
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Vaccine Information
Center (NVIC) is calling the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug
Development Act of 2005"(S. 1873), which passed out of the U.S. Senate
HELP Committee one day after it was introduced "a drug company stockholder's
dream and a consumer's worst nightmare."
The proposed legislation will strip Americans of the right to a trial
by jury if harmed by an experimental or licensed drug or vaccine that they are
forced by government to take whenever federal health officials declare a public
health emergency.
The legislation's architect, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), Chairman of the HELP
Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness, told the full HELP
Committee yesterday that the legislation "creates a true partnership"
between the federal government, the pharmaceutical industry and academia to
walk the drug companies "through the Valley of Death" in bringing
a new vaccine or drug to market. Burr said it will give the Department of Health
and Human Services "additional authority and resources to partner with
the private sector to rapidly develop drugs and vaccines."
The Burr bill gives the Secretary of DHHS the sole authority to decide whether
a manufacturer violated laws mandating drug safety and bans citizens from challenging
his decision in the civil court system. The bill establishes the Biomedical
Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA), as the single point of authority
within the government for the advanced research and development of drugs and
vaccines in response to bioterrorism and natural disease outbreaks such as the
flu. BARDA will operate in secret, exempt from the Freedom of Information Act
and the Federal Advisory Committee Act, insuring that no evidence of injuries
or deaths caused by drugs and vaccines labeled as "countermeasures"
will become public. Nicknamed "Bioshield Two," the legislation is
being pushed rapidly through Congress without time for voters to make their
voices heard by their elected representatives.
Co-sponsored by Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Senate
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY), and
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH), the legislation will eliminate
both regulatory and legal safeguards applied to vaccines as well as take away
the right of children and adults harmed by vaccines and drugs to present their
case in front of a jury in a civil court of law.
"It is a sad day for this nation when Congress is frightened and bullied
into allowing one profit making industry to destroy the seventh Amendment to
the Constitution guaranteeing citizens their day in court in front of a jury
of their peers," said Barbara Loe Fisher, president of NVIC.
"This proposed legislation, like the power and money grab by federal
health officials and industry in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Project
Bioshield Act of 2004, is an unconstitutional attempt by some in Congress to
give a taxpayer- funded handout to pharmaceutical companies for drugs and vaccines
the government can force all citizens to use while absolving everyone connected
from any responsibility for injuries and deaths which occur.
It means that, if an American is injured by an experimental flu or anthrax
vaccine he or she is mandated to take, that citizen will be banned from exercising
the Constitutional right to a jury trial even if it is revealed that the vaccine
maker engaged in criminal fraud and negligence in the manufacture of the vaccine."
The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is legally responsible for regulating
the pharmaceutical industry and ensuring that drugs and vaccines released to
the public are safe and effective. Drug companies marketing painkillers, like
Vioxx, and anti-depressants, which have resulted in the deaths and injuries
of thousands of children and adults, are being held accountable in civil court
while the FDA has come under intense criticism for withholding information about
the drugs' dangers from the public.
Since 1986, vaccine makers have been protected from most liability in civil
court through the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in which Congress created
a federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) that offers vaccine victims
an alternative to the court system. Even though the program has awarded nearly
$2 billion to victims of mandated vaccines, two out of three plaintiffs are
turned away. "The drug companies and doctors got all the liability protection
they needed in 1986 but they are greedy and want more," said Fisher. "And
the federal health agencies want more power to force citizens to use vaccines
without having to worry about properly regulating them.
If the Burr bill passes, all economic incentives to insure mandated vaccines
are safe will be removed and the American people are facing a future where government
can force them to take poorly regulated experimental drugs and vaccines labeled
as "countermeasures" or go to jail. The only recourse for citizens
will be to strike down mandatory vaccination laws so vaccines will be subject
to the law of supply and demand in the marketplace. The health care consumer's
cry will be: No liability? No mandates."
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) was founded by parents of
vaccine injured children in 1982 and co-founders worked with Congress on the
National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. For more information, go to
http://www.nvic.org .