Is anyone worried yet? The most critical piece of info from this article: 

"This proposed legislation will strip Americans of the 
right to a trial by jury if they are harmed by either an experimental or 
licensed drug or vaccine they are forced by the government to take 
whenever federal health officials declare a public health emergency."

MOUNTAIN VIEWS: BIRD FLU SCAM TO COST US PLENTY
By John Hanchette
Niagara Falls Reporter 
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette178.html 
Oct. 25 2005

OLEAN -- The current U.S. Congress has many qualities that are not 
endearing, but one of the worst is its addiction to hidden agendas.
Case in 
point: 

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." 

It will probably hit the Senate floor this week for a full vote of that 
august chamber (and may have already done so by the time you read 
this). A similar companion bill is expected to be introduced in the
House of 
Representatives before week's end. The lobbying lubrication needed in 
that conservative chamber to ram it through passage will be even less 
than in the Senate. 

The Senate proposal (S.1873) -- authored and filed by North Carolina 
Republican senator Richard Burr, an obedient favorite of the current Bush 
administration -- sounds innocent and altruistic enough, right? 

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. 

Burr said in introducing the bill that it will simply give the 
Cabinet-level Department of Health and Human Services (HH the
"additional 
authority and resources to partner with the private sector to rapidly 
develop drugs and vaccines." 

So, who could be against such a lofty goal? Well, I could, for one. 
This bill is a slavering wolverine masquerading as a furry little lab
rat. 

First of all, whenever you -- as consumers, taxpayers and citizens -- 
hear any federal government source saying it wants "to partner with the 
private sector," you should grab your wallet with both hands and hold 
on tight. In this case, you should also take your children into your 
arms. I'm not the only one who's noticed the danger in this proposal. 

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information 
Center (NVIC) -- a private, non-governmental advocacy group pushing for 
safer vaccines -- calls the Senate bill "a drug company stockholder's
dream 
and a consumer's worst nightmare." 

It is, simply put, a legislative genuflection to Big Pharma -- 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. 

That's because this proposed legislation will strip Americans of the 
right to a trial by jury if they are harmed by either an experimental or 
licensed drug or vaccine they are forced by the government to take 
whenever federal health officials declare a public health emergency. 

This bill gives the HHS secretary the sole authority to decide if a 
drug manufacturer violated laws that mandate drug safety, and it bans any 
citizen from challenging the HHS head's decision in the civil court 
system. Big Pharma has been pushing for protection like this for several 
years. In this millennium, the angst and sense of loss following 9/11 
was manipulated to produce similar legislative efforts designed to 
protect drug and vaccine makers even if they manufactured products
that were 
not properly tested, nor clinically proven safe. 

"This proposed legislation," said NVIC's Fisher, "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." 

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. 

The Burr bill means, notes vaccine safety advocate Fisher, "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." 

Burr himself has acknowledged that "liability exposure" is one of the 
factors that has left drug firms "reluctant to invest" in biodefense and 
influenza countermeasures. 

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. 

David Daigle, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention, said the CDC has been experiencing an incredible average 
of 447,000 hits a day on its bird flu information Web site. He pegged 
the Internet traffic level "insane." 

Americans are avalanching health officials, newspapers, TV stations, 
their doctors and other public information sources with anxious questions 
about keeping bird-feeders in their back yards, whether they can eat 
turkey this Thanksgiving, and whether they should report sightings of 
dead birds along the roadside. (You can, you can, you don't have 
to.)Worried patients are asking their doctors for Tamiflu, designed to
treat 
ordinary human flu -- not bird flu. 

And guess the number of Americans who have died of avian flu already? 
Zero. 

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. Only 120 or so 
humans have ever come down with this rare viral strain of influenza --
H5N1 
-- and all of them in Asia. Most of the 60 deaths so far -- 43 -- have 
occurred in Vietnam. Thailand has the next largest number of deaths, 
13. 

The disease in birds is just now reaching eastern Europe through avian 
migration. Turkey, Romania, and European Russia have cataloged the 
dangerous strain. 

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. 

Can Senate Democrats stop the passage of Burr's bill? Not bloody 
likely. 

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. 

"The drug companies and doctors got all the liability protection they 
needed in 1986," says Fisher of the NVIC, "but they are greedy and want 
more." 

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." 

Amen to that.