Congress Set to Pass Law Eliminating Liability For Vaccine Injuries

    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./

SOURCE National Vaccine Information Center
Web Site: http://www.nvic.org