Big Pharma Loves Bird Flu

Oohhhh, it's okay, I wasn't using that civil right anyway...

In the middle of last week, one short day after the bill had been introduced, the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee -- by a quick, simple voice vote of the full panel -- passed something called the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005."

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It would establish an efficient-sounding Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) to speed up and "provide incentives and protections" for the "domestic manufacture of medical countermeasures" -- vaccines and drugs -- that would help stop pandemic or epidemic sickness within the United States.

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Further, Fisher points out, the government, under this bill, "could force all citizens to use these drugs and vaccines while absolving everyone connected from any responsibility for injuries and deaths which occur" in their wake.

Sen. Burr is himself the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness. In his bill, BARDA -- the new R and D agency mentioned above -- would be established as the single point of authority in the federal system for the advanced research and development of vaccines and drugs in response to bioterrorism and outbreaks of natural disease.

And BARDA would operate in secret.

The agency would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires public public transparency -- making it almost certain that no evidence of injuries or deaths caused by drugs and vaccines labeled as "countermeasures" to bioterrorism or new disease epidemics would ever become public. The bill would not only provide Big Pharma impenetrable cover, it would exempt lots of federal cost oversight requirements, and would forbid government purchases of generic versions of such new drugs or vaccines, a current practice that saves taxpayers millions of dollars.

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The timing of the new attempt at congressional protection for Big Pharma -- the Burr bill -- is exquisite.

The wording "natural outbreaks" of disease and "pandemics" mentioned by Sen. Burr in his call for support of the bill are designed to make citizens and fellow senators alike think of one thing -- avian flu.

This new biological "threat" is increasingly on the minds of Americans and is reaching near-panic level in terms of public perception.

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How many human cases of the bird flu have been reported in the United States? Zero.

That's right, none. The bird flu, which originated in South Korea more than two years ago, rarely spreads from birds to humans, and hasn't even been shown to affect poultry yet in this country.

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The virus might be an eventual threat to the flocks of poultry farmers here, but many scientists seem to think H5N1 influenza won't sicken or kill humans on a mass basis unless its mutating properties change dramatically.

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Several Democrats in that chamber have criticized the Burr bill, but mostly from the perspective that it would do little to provide any response to an avian flu outbreak.

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

This legislation is obviously fast-tracked. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican, is a co-sponsor, as is Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire.

They obviously don't care that if signed into law, this proposal would eliminate both legal and regulatory safeguards, applied to vaccines and drugs, that need strengthening, not weakening or elimination. They obviously don't care if children or adults harmed by vaccines and drugs will have to forfeit their right to present a case in front of a jury in a civil court of law.

Don't think this never happens. The Food and Drug Administration is legally responsible at present for regulating Big Pharma, and for ensuring that vaccines and drugs released to the public are safe and effective. Drug companies marketing pain-killer and anti-depressants that have injured thousands are being held accountable in civil courts all the time. And the FDA has come under intense criticism for keeping information from the American public about drug dangers.

For almost two decades, vaccine makers have already been protected from most liability in civil courts through the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and a concurrent compensation program that offers victims an alternative to civil courts. That program has already awarded almost $2 billion to injured victims of mandated vaccines -- yet two-thirds of the plaintiffs are turned away from such compensation through vigorous defense of the manufacturers by Justice Department lawyers.

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She continues: "It's 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."