Thread: FORCED INOCULATIONS BEGINNING OF BUSH'S BAD BIRD FLU PLAN

Like hell am I going to be made to get this flu shot! They don't even know when or if it will jump and if it does, what is any flu vaccine we have now going to do?

http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette179.html

MOUNTAIN VIEWS: FORCED INOCULATIONS BEGINNING OF BUSH'S BAD BIRD FLU PLAN

By John Hanchette

OLEAN -- Last week's column warned of imminent federal legislation that would toss powerful pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars and complete protection from liability suits in case untested and experimental bird flu vaccines damage American recipients. It drew heavy response.

The bill (S. 1873) -- a big congressional wet kiss to the drug industry -- is dressed up in a noble-sounding title: "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act."

In essence, however, it would force Americans to receive inoculations against a disease that has yet to kill one of them, while removing their constitutional right to seek redress in our courts in case of injury or death from the shots because of company negligence. The proposal, now moving its way through the Senate, would also ban citizens from using the Freedom of Information Act and other popular informational laws to discover whether the new vaccine (when it is finally produced) was effective and safe, and even whether anyone had suffered adverse reactions to it.

Some of the e-mails and letters were laudatory, but sadly and predictably, many readers missed the point.

One wrote that I could only have reached my conclusions if I started from the position that the pharmaceutical companies were "evil" and that the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and "practically every virologist and epidemiologist in the world is part of a conspiracy." Or was I saying that I have "some sort of privileged information that H5N1 influenza will never mutate and begin to infect humans and even if it does, it won't reach the USA?"

He ended by quoting some venerable Chinese philosopher's advice to "plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small."

Well, yes, point taken on the aphorism -- but that's exactly the philosophical tack I'm following here: identifying a cancerous piece of federal business and dissecting it while it is still an undivided cell. If this bill -- which is absolutely laden with hidden agendas -- metastasizes into actual law, Senate 1873 could further ruin an already devastated national health care system.

Sure, the bird influenza that has killed 62 Asians may mutate into easily contractible flu for humans. I acknowledge that. It may soon reach the United States. I acknowledge that. But my beef is the thematic hidden agenda in this dangerous Senate bill that is designed to protect wealthy corporate contributors from any consequences of money-motivated, irresponsible scientific research and development. The legal precedent would be ruinous and take decades to set right.

One thing the bill-backer friends of Big Pharma are trying to slip through with this legislation is a market exclusivity provision that would extend patents on hugely profitable drugs that are about to evolve into the category of cheaper generic medicines.

Further, it would prohibit federal drug buyers from contracting with generic medicine makers to save taxpayers billions of dollars -- a current admirable practice.

Further, it would allow federal health officials to purchase medicines, vaccines and other palliatives by simple fiat without taking bids.

Further, and most onerously, the bill would vastly broaden the definition of products eligible to be characterized as "countermeasures" to terrorism -- in other words, potentially classifying commonly purchased substances like ibuprofen and aspirin as terrorist-fighting devices.

I'm not the only one who's noticed the exclusivity aspect of this legislative turkey.

The Coalition for a Competitive Pharmaceutical Market (CCPM) is an unusually broad-based national coalition of organizations powerful on Capitol Hill in representing employers, health insurers, chain drugstores, generic drug makers and pharmacy benefit managers.

Last week, this huge group urged the Senate to revise the "biodefense" bill to remove the broadened definition of terrorism "countermeasures" because the proposal allows it to be done "in a way that could grant existing everyday medicines -- rather than novel products related to (defense) against bioterrorism -- multiple years of additional market exclusivity."

This, contends CCPM chairman Annette Guarisco, "would unnecessarily drive up prescription drug costs for private and public payers without advancing our nation's bioterrorism preparedness."

Even the big health insurance companies and pharmaceutical management lobbyists were startled by the brazen provisions at the expense of common citizens Senate 1873 portends.

Mark J. Rubino, chief pharmacy officer for Aetna Inc., states, "For private and public purchasers seeking to provide consumers with therapeutically equivalent, but more cost-efficient generic drugs, the market exclusivity provision included in the Biodefense bill takes us in exactly the wrong direction."

Mark Merritt, president of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, said, "This drug monopoly extension proposal is a sweeping and unprecedented measure that would rewrite drug-patenting and force working families, the disabled, and seniors to pay more for their prescription drugs. Perhaps most troubling of all, this measure has moved forward without any regard to the cost (effects) it would have on on Medicare, Medicaid, and private payers. America's working families, seniors, and small businesses deserve better."

Some who read the column accused me of overstating the liability protections for Big Pharma contained in the bill. Surely, they wrote, I was guilty of hyperbole or making things up. Surely, federal legislators wouldn't remove the cherished American right to redress wrongs or seek compensation for uninvited injury.

Oh, yeah? The language seems pretty clear to me. It provides incredibly broad and iron-clad protection from any American seeking legal remedy from Big Pharma and just about everyone else involved in protecting against bird flu. Look up the draft bill's Section 319F-3 (a) if you don't believe me.

"Authority -- As provided in subsection (b), and subject to subsection (b) (1) C, a manufacturer, distributor, or administrator of a security countermeasure, or a qualified pandemic and epidemic product, or a health care provider shall be immune from suit or liability caused by or arising out of the design, development, clinical testing and investigation, manufacture, labeling, distribution, sale, purchase, donation, dispensing, prescribing, administration, or use of a countermeasure, or a qualified pandemic and epidemic product, described in subsection (b) (1) (a)."

That just about covers the waterfront, as they say. The only avenue of relief an injured vaccine or medicine recipient or survivor could follow is requesting an investigation of their allegation by the Secretary of Health and Human Services -- who would have to find "clear and convincing evidence" of "willful misconduct" that "caused the product to present a significant or unreasonable risk to human health and proximately caused the injury alleged by the party."

There are at least seven tough legal tests contained in that one paragraph. And if the HHS Secretary refuses to even investigate the complaint of injury or death, such decision is completely "within the Secretary's discretion and shall not be subject to judicial review."

If the secretary does find for the complaining injured party -- which is extremely unlikely -- the drugmaker or distributor or health care provider named in the determination can petition the federal court in the District of Columbia for "judicial review" of the HHS ruling. But no subpoenas shall be issued, "nor shall other compulsory process apply," and no third parties can intervene. The drug company appeal "shall automatically stay the Secretary's determination for the duration of the judicial proceeding."

There are six more pages of legal gobbledygook backing this up, one of them defining the scope of protection from lawsuit as extending to allegations "relating to, or resulting from the design, development, clinical testing and investigation, manufacture, labeling, distribution, sale, purchase, donation, dispensing, prescribing, administration, or use of product" defined as measures against pandemics or terrorism. There, is that specific enough for you? Is that an imaginative figment?

Interpretation of this congressional language: Pigs will fly backwards and upside down before the common citizen gets any redress or compensation for injury or death resulting from a bird flu vaccine or medicine.

Why are vaccine safety advocates so adamant that John Q. Public might get screwed by all this protect-Big Pharma bird flu legislation? Because it has happened before.

In the 1970s, the panic over swine flu led to an ill-advised vaccine push that crippled many recipients and cost the drug makers millions.

In the 1980s, a dangerously reactive vaccine against whooping cough injured and killed thousands when a safer foreign alternative was already available but stubbornly unapproved by the FDA.

In the 1990s, the federal health establishment insisted -- and still insists -- there is no connection between toxic mercury preservatives in mandated childhood vaccines and the astounding increase in autism (from 1 in 10,000 births to 1 in 166 births), despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary.

Experimental anthrax vaccine is still being tested on troops without informed consent, and was almost tested on infants until a big public fuss erupted.

The yearly hoohah over getting your flu shots to protect against contractible human flu results in less than desired protection because the scientists are always fighting the previous year's struggle that has already mutated or died out.

Both the federal government and big pharmaceutical firms will go to almost any length to protect themselves from blame when vaccines are involved.

Now we read the government experts and private researchers are predicting a minimum of 200,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 2 million deaths if the Asian bird flu mutates into a disease that can be passed from bird to human and then human to human.

"This is shoddy science at best and beyond belief that any reputable scientist could get away with such nonsense," writes Dr. Joseph Mercola, an alternative health physician and author of the popular Total Health Program. "Most of the people (in Asia) who acquired this infection were bird handlers who were in continuous contact with these sick birds. Does anyone in their right mind envision similar circumstances in the United States?"

The issue is certainly timely. This column's date of publication (Tuesday, Nov. 1) will see President George W. Bush go to the National Institutes of Health to tell us how he will spend -- at his executive discretion -- nearly $8 billion that was quickly added to the 2006 funding bill for HHS last Thursday in light of the concern over bird flu. He is expected to devote much of it to stockpiling vaccines once they are developed. The federal government has already committed to buying $162.5 million worth of experimental vaccines against the bird flu strain -- doses which may or may not protect humans -- from Chiron Corp. and Sanofi-Aventis. The feds are also ordering millions of doses of Relenza and Tamiflu, two human anti-flu drugs that seem to slow down the advance of bird flu but not completely halt it.

Meanwhile, the best possible outcome -- that the H5N1 bird flu strain fizzles out or never mutates to threaten humans -- is triggering a new concern among federal officials: that all the frantic warnings so far may have created a sense of public cynicism (or at least skepticism) over global health admonitions about pandemics.

"Will critics say we have been crying wolf?" worried HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt at the end of last week. Will the public "lose the sense of urgency we feel about this issue?"

Well, maybe, Mr. Secretary. But Americans would lend you a lot more credence if you ensured they were treated fairly.

_____

John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can be contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@aol.com.

And anything "experimental" can't be that great. They'll go ahead and inject millions and wait for the results. I won't even get a regular flu shot.

Originally Posted by gingerurp

And anything "experimental" can't be that great. They'll go ahead and inject millions and wait for the results. I won't even get a regular flu shot.

Well, it was on the News Last week that there testing the Bird Flu vaccine in Cincinnati.

I have had 1 flu shot in my life and I cannot even remember the last time I had the flu. I think I am better off without it! Who knows what is in it!

I would not MISS the flu shot because I HAVE had the flu and never want to have it again. I've never had the first minute's trouble from the shot.

But, to the subject at hand--I am NOT going to be a guinea pig for something that anyone associated with Bush dreams up! I'll give it a few years to see how many people drop over before I subject myself to the experiment!

The real kicker to this legislation is that they passed this law holding them (our Government and drug companies) exempt from lawsuits if theses force inoculations cause harm or death.

You can have the mercury laced Flu Shots if want, for me, I’ll take the Flu.

October 19, 2005

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?a ... dcn=e_gvet

Senate panel backs bill to create biodefense agency

By David Ruppe, Global Security Newswire
A key Senate committee Tuesday approved legislation that would create a new agency to direct government biological defense research and provide several new types of incentives that proponents say would encourage more private sector investment into countermeasure production.

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved by voice vote the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005 despite Democratic objections. A Senate floor vote could come next week. There is no such legislation in the House.

"We must ensure the federal government acts as a partner with the private sector, providing the incentives and protections necessary to bring more and better drugs and vaccines to market faster," the legislation's author, Senator Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in a statement after the vote.

Enacting the bill would mean "that we as a nation are prepared for a variety of threats that include natural, deliberate and accidental threats," said committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.

The bill is intended to add incentives beyond those approved in the "Project Bioshield" law passed last year, which was designed to encourage the private sector to invest in drug and vaccine production where the U.S. government would probably be the only buyer. Burr and others have said the law did not go far enough to encourage private sector investment.

Burr, who chairs the committee's Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness Subcommittee, said potential liability exposure and other factors have left companies reluctant to invest in new biodefense and flu countermeasures.

Critics say the new bill would do nothing to address the potential near-term threat of a deadly avian flu outbreak and that its provisions could drive up the cost of certain drugs and vaccines and greatly reduce the public's legal recourse for defective products.

"I hope ... that people don't think that this is going to solve the problem of the possible avian flu pandemic that is on our doorstep," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said.

New Agency, Industry Incentives

The bill specifically would create a "Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency" within the Health and Human Services Department.

The new agency would act "as the single point of authority" within the federal government for research and development of medical countermeasures against bioterrorism and natural disease outbreaks.

Burr's legislation would also provide incentives that proponents said are needed to encourage the biotech and pharmaceutical industries to invest more for drugs and vaccines for biological defense and naturally occurring disease protections.

For instance, the bill would allow Health and Human Services to sign exclusive sales contracts with particular manufacturers for a particular product. It would forbid government purchases of generic versions of such new drugs or vaccines as well as public sales of the products for use as countermeasures.

The bill would also provide companies with liability protections for new countermeasures not yet licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, so that a company producing products for epidemics or biodefense could only be sued if the Health and Human Services secretary finds clear and convincing evidence it willfully engaged in misconduct that caused the injury.

The bill would provide rebates or grants to encourage companies to manufacture vaccines, medical countermeasures, and pandemic or epidemic products within the United States and would allow the government to help pay the costs of establishing domestic manufacturing facilities.

Burr's proposal would provide a "limited antitrust exemption" for the Health and Human Services secretary and the BARDA director that would allow them to collaborate and consult with industry on developing new countermeasures.

It also would exempt the new agency from standard Freedom of Information Act and Federal Advisory Committee Act requirements for public transparency and would exempt certain federal cost oversight requirements.

Less controversially, the bill also would compensate first responders for countermeasures they purchase and would provide money to encourage development of animal models on which countermeasures could be tested against diseases too dangerous to test on humans.

Doesn't Address Flu Threat, Democrats Say

Committee Democrats said they support the general aims of the bill and many of its provisions, including creating the new agency.

Democrats said, though, that the bill - targeted at longer-term research and development - does little to improve the country's near-term preparedness for responding to an avian flu outbreak. That would include funding the stockpile of antibiotic drugs and improving the public health infrastructure and surge capacity.

"Congress may wait for regular ordeals to deal with the pandemic flu, but the flu virus will not wait while we delay," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

"We need the capacity to develop the vaccines now. We need to appropriate money now," Harkin said. "We need emergency funding right now, probably to the tune of several billion dollars to begin to get grants out there right now ... to build the vaccine manufacturing facilities for flu vaccines. ... We need to get these facilities built in the next six or seven months."

Burr said including such provisions in the bill would have greatly delayed the measure. He said there is "ample time" to prepare such legislation and that the committee would soon begin work on it for passage next year.

Other Objections

Democrats said they also objected to how the liability provisions were written. Company liability protections should only apply when a product is used in an emergency, and not for other situations, Harkin said.

Kennedy said the liability protections should be accompanied by a "strong [federal] compensation program" in the bill, because "the rules should not be stacked against patients."

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., criticized the market exclusivity provision for preventing public sale of generic versions of new drugs and vaccines for use as countermeasures against dangerous diseases.

Clinton praised the proposed agency creation as "a good idea," but asked how it, as a coordinating agency, would "have more direct control than all the other coordinating positions have had."

Chairman Enzi said the committee would try to address Democrats' concerns by possibly amending the bill, but said mutually agreed upon changes would be made by Thursday at the latest.

There remain "fundamental differences" between Republicans and Democrats "that we have to work out," Burr said.

Democrats said they might seek to amend the bill on the Senate floor.

Some nongovernmental organizations have taken a harsher view of the bill's implications than the committee Democrats.

It "basically eradicates regulatory safeguards against the production of unsafe vaccines, drugs and devices that the government determines to be for pandemic, epidemic or bioterrorism/security countermeasure use, and then wipes out liability for any drug company or health care provider that makes or dispenses them," the Center for Justice and Democracy in New York said in a recent press release.

As a result of the liability provision, the advocacy group said, families or victims of defective countermeasures could "have no recourse, no ability to file a claim or lawsuit, no way to collect any compensation even if the drug company or health care provider was negligent, reckless or in some cases intentionally harmful."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Nov14.html

THE WASHINGTON POST

Homeland Bill Rider Aids Drugmakers

Measure Would Block Suits Over Vaccines; FBI Powers Also Would Grow

By Dan Morgan

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 15, 2002; Page A07

Riding along on legislation to create a new federal Department of Homeland Security is a White House-backed provision that could head off dozens of potential lawsuits against Eli Lilly and Co. and other pharmaceutical giants.

Elsewhere in the sprawling measure is language that would help the FBI obtain customer information from Internet service providers and increase the penalties for computer hacking. These and other last-minute additions to the bill by Republican leaders could have implications well beyond the measure's immediate goal of protecting the homeland, congressional officials said yesterday.

Lawyers for parents of autistic children suing pharmaceutical companies over childhood vaccines charged yesterday that a new section in the homeland bill -- passed on Wednesday by the House and now before the Senate -- would keep the lawsuits out of state courts, ruling out huge judgments and lengthy litigation. Complaints, instead, would be channeled to a federal program set up 14 years ago to provide liability protection for vaccine manufacturers. The program, funded through a surcharge on vaccines, compensates persons injured by such vaccines, to a maximum of $250,000.

"The industry has seized the opportunity presented by a Republican House and Senate to immediately pass legislation to get the industry off the hook," said Dallas lawyer Andrew Waters. "To me, it looks like payback for the fact that the industry spent millions bankrolling Republican campaigns."

GOP officials said the provisions are merely aimed at protecting companies working on life-saving products from being dragged into costly litigation by trial lawyers. Pharmaceutical companies were among the largest contributors to Republicans in this year's elections, while trial lawyers heavily backed Democrats.

In the past several years, some families have alleged a connection between their children's autism and vaccines using the preservative Thimerosal, which contains mercury. Medical studies have not proven a connection between Thimerosal and autism, but companies stopped using the preservative several years ago.

Eli Lilly, once the largest maker of Thimerosal, is a major target in a spate of lawsuits filed since 2000. The company stopped making the product in 1980 but continued to buy it from other manufacturers and to resell it for another decade.

Company spokesman Edward Sagebiel said Lilly was "surprised when the language was inserted" because it had not actively lobbied for it in recent months. But he said the company "believes it is a positive step to help assure that manufacturers are protected from lawsuits that are without merit or scientific evidence."

Richard Diamond, a spokesman for retiring House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), said the provision was inserted because "it was something the White House wanted. It wasn't [Armey's] idea." But Diamond said the principle is good. "We don't want companies to be steered away from the business of making things that can save lives," he said.

Elsewhere in the bill, Republicans incorporated the entire Cyber Security Enhancement Act, which the House passed overwhelmingly in July but which made little progress in the Democratic-controlled Senate. To strengthen law enforcement's hand in protecting the security of computer communications, the legislation would increase penalties for hacking and other malicious computing. Privacy advocates have criticized some provisions, particularly those that would lower the threshold for Internet service providers to give law enforcement agencies customer communications without a court order.

The bill would make hacking punishable by as much as life in prison if the offender "knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death.''

Cut from the bill was a Democratic-backed provision that would have prevented the new federal agency from giving contracts to U.S.-based companies that use offshore addresses to avoid corporate taxes.

GOP aides said the language originally offered by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), and now incorporated in the bill, gives Texas A&M the inside track in hosting the first university center on homeland security, to be established within one year. DeLay was elected Wednesday to serve as the House majority leader in the 108th Congress.

Yesterday, Senate Democrats were considering trying to strip non-relevant provisions from the homeland security bill during the final debate. If successful, such a move could derail Congress's timetable for adjourning, by forcing a new round of House-Senate negotiations to resolve differences in the legislation.

Staff writer Jonathan Krim contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

http://www.newswithviews.com/BreakingNe ... king37.htm


SENATE BILL 1873: PRESCRIPTION FOR TYRANNY



Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
by NWV Staff Writer
October 26, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

Advocacy group issues Code Red Alert against Big Pharma bill

The National Vaccine Information Center, the country’s largest and oldest consumer-led vaccine safety organization, has issued a “Code Red Alert� against S 1873, the “Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005� -- a newly introduced congressional bill that would allow rapid development of certain drugs and vaccines, at the same time shielding the manufacturers from liability, even if their products turn out to be lethal.

Nicknamed BioShield Two, after a related measure passed and signed into law last year [PL 108-296], S 1873 is a “drug company stockholder’s dream and a consumer’s worst nightmare,� says Barbara Loe Fisher, president of NVIC, in a hard-hitting press release. “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.�

Sharing Fisher’s concerns, journalism professor John Hanchette, rips S 1873 in the Niagara Falls Reporter, calling the 88-page proposed measure “a legislative genuflection to Big Pharma ÂÂ* the steamroller, powerful drug-making sector of the economy. The pharmaceutical mega-firms contribute millions to the coffers of congressional members, but if this is signed into law, they potentially could save billions."

“This bill is a slavering wolverine masquerading as a furry little lab rat,� Hanchette declares.

And that slavering wolverine is running on a fast track, its progress on the Hill fueled by media-generated hysteria about bird flu.

“The legislation is being rushed through Congress without time for voters to make their voices heard by their elected representatives,� Fisher warns.

Authored and introduced by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., S 1873 sailed through the powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee following a voice vote on Tuesday, Oct. 18, just one day after it was introduced.

It could land on the Senate floor any time this week or next and be approved without debate or roll call. Opponents fear a similar bill is being readied on the House side, but is being kept under wraps, away from public scrutiny.

To the bill’s author and co-sponsors -- Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Senate HELP Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wy.; and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. -- S 1873 is all about public safety, anti-terrorism and the national defense.

“We need to improve our ability to prepare for, and respond to, bioterrorism attacks and natural outbreaks with a comprehensive approach,� said Sen. Burr, who chairs the HELP Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness where the bill sat momentarily before being rushed to the full committee.

Burr told the committee that S 1873 “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 to market. 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.�

Specifically, S 1873 would:

*
Set up a new agency -- the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, or BARDA, to be the single point of authority within the federal government for the advanced research and development of medical countermeasures, including drugs and vaccines, in response to bioterrorism and natural disease outbreaks.
*
Encourage potential researchers, manufacturers, and health care delivery partners to commit substantial resources to bring new drugs and vaccines to market more quickly.
*
Provide incentive for the domestic manufacturing of medical countermeasures for pandemic and epidemic diseases.

“I believe we need to make sure someone in the Federal Government is partnering with the private sector to quickly develop drugs and vaccines should we need them,� said Burr in a press statement.

Shielding Big Pharma

The senator does not explain that Sec. 6 of the bill amends the Public Health Service Act [in Title 42 of the U.S. Code] by inserting a provision that manufacturers, distributors, and administrators of “a security countermeasure, or a qualified pandemic or epidemic product,� and health care providers using the product “shall be immune from suit or liability caused by or arising out of the design, development, clinical testing and investigation, manufacturing,� and so on, of the product.

“…No cause of action shall exist against a person described in subsection (a) for claims for loss of property, personal injury, or death arising out of, reasonably relating to, or resulting from the design, development, sale… use� … of a product “that is a designated security countermeasure or a qualified pandemic or epidemic product by the Secretary [of HHS] in a declaration …�

Nor does Burr’s statement let the public know that BARDA, the new agency, its working groups and advisory boards will be allowed to operate in secret, exempt from provisions of the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Advisory Committee Act [PL 92-463; 5 US Code].

FACA, a law not as well known as FOIA, provides that a person “suffering a legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute is entitled to judicial review thereof.�

In an interview with NewsWithViews, Fisher spelled out what all this means for someone who might be affected by one of the drugs or vaccines produced by a “partnering� company, which a person could be forced to take if the secretary of Health and Human Services declares a bio-threat or other medical emergency.

Denial of justice

“Not only can’t you get at them [a drug manufacturer] because it wipes out the ability to go court, to have your day in court, but it also shields them from the light to find out exactly what is happening with adverse events ÂÂ* because [with] this BARDA that they’re setting up, the information will all be protected,â€? she said. “If people are dying and having seizures after being vaccinated or using these drugs, you will never be able to get a handle on what is actually happening because it’s all protected. You can’t use FOIA, you can’t go to court, you can’t do anything.â€?

Fisher observed that one of the features of any lawsuit is the process of discovery, which allows lawyers, the plaintiff and defendant to go into the archives and files of the various parties (such as drug companies) to get information necessary to put a case together. By closing off access to the courts otherwise allowed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Public Health Service Act, and effectively shutting the door on FOIA and the discovery process ÂÂ* a huge shield is created for the drug companies.

“If they cut off the pass in terms of judicial review and they cut off the pass in terms of FOIA, you’ll have no ability to get a handle on what’s happening,� Fisher said.

Other concerns

There are other concerns. Opponents of this and earlier measures have focused on the possibility of forced vaccination and drugging.

There’s nothing about either forced drugging or forced vaccination programs in S 1873, which deals with matters of liability, not enforcement. But the danger of such programs is nonetheless very real and would be heightened if the bill is passed.

As Fisher sees it, S 1873 is one part of a bigger picture and must be taken in context with other legislation already on the books that this measure builds on ÂÂ* namely, the Homeland Security Act, the BioShield Act of 2004, and the Model States Health Emergency Powers Act, which is being enacted at the state level.

“Those define what the secretary of Health and Human Services can do when he or she declares a public health emergency,� she said. “This piece of legislation, the Burr bill, completes the circle in that it lets everyone off the hook in terms of liability. It completes the concentration of power in the hands of the secretary of Health and Human Services who is an appointee of the Administration, just like the Homeland Security Act [of 2002, PL 107-296] tipped the balance of power in favor of the Executive Branch.

“Where the authors of the Constitution tried to achieve a balance between the judiciary, the legislative, and the executive branches ÂÂ* we now have a concentration of power in the Executive Branch. These pieces of legislation taken together do not allow any oversight on what the Executive Branch is doing in the areas of declaring an actual public health emergency or an imminent or potential public health emergency and then setting into motion forced quarantine, forced vaccination and drug taking. There’s total immunity from liability (even in case sickness or death occurs) for anyone who is involved in that process, and there’s no judicial review.

“So it’s a tremendous amount of power concentrated in the hands of the Secretary of Health and Human Service.�

And this power, granted under last year’s BioShield Act, has already been exercised. As an example Fisher cited a recent case in Washington, D.C., in which federal court judge Emmett Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, declared the anthrax vaccine program to be illegal and issued an injunction against further mandatory use of the vaccine. He ruled that despite assertions by the Dept. of Defense and the FDA, the vaccine was “investigational� and “unapproved for its intended use,� and therefore could not be given to members of the armed services without informing them of the safety risks.

That was in October 2004, shortly after the passage of the BioShield Act which President Bush called for in his 2003 State of the Union address.

Fisher continued: “When he [Sullivan] did that, the secretary of HHS ÂÂ* with the secretary of Defense ÂÂ* issued an Emergency Use Authorization declaring an emergency. Under the law they did not have to tell anyone what that emergency is, the nature of the emergency. It is not reviewable. They issued this Emergency Use Authorization thereby circumventing the court’s injunction.â€?

Sullivan later agreed that the feds had the power under the BioShield Act and lifted the injunction, but said the personnel would have to be informed of the benefits and risks of the vaccine, and it would have to be made clear to them that the program was voluntary and they were not being forced.

But, Fisher points out, “This is a career killer. If you don’t get the shots, they can say you endanger yourself and the troops that you’re with.�

“So we know that once they’ve exercised the Emergency Use Authorization under Project BioShield in a military setting, they have the ability to do it in the civilian setting because this federal legislation -- S 1873 ÂÂ* sets it up for them in either setting,â€? Fisher said.

NOTE: All versions of S 1873 and any other legislation are linked to the House of Representatives website.

Capital switch board: 202-224-3121

jp--there are a couple of the vaccines that do NOT contain thimerasol. I THINK one is Fluvirin and I'll have to check on the other. I always make sure I'm getting one that doesn't contain that ingredient.