House Passes Bioshield Bill- Must Read

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Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

House Passes Bioshield Bill

 

Dear Members and Friends -

 

It is so important to write letters to the editor in your local

newspapers about this issue of BioShield passing -- this bill gives

$5.6 billion of YOUR tax dollars to the pharmas as an incentive to

develop more vaccines. I have an article by Lynne Born that was

published in Z Magazine called Smallpox Vaccine Has the Pox --

Bioshield Bill turns Pharmaceuticals into BioWeapons Factories.

http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/curTOC.htm

 

In her article she starts out with some startling figures that

should alarm everyone regarding the numbers of deaths and chronic

illnesses caused by pharmaceutical products:

 

" The bill [bioshield] pays for the warehousing of drugs and vaccines

for which the FDA has granted a special exemption from the usual

approval process to allow the countermeasures to be fast tracked

through FDA approval and used on the public with no human testing at

all, an unprecedented step for an industry that is already the 3rd

leading cause of death in the United States.

 

The pharmaceutical industry sustains a generally excellent

reputation as most people believe the drug companies always put

safety first in their humane mission to develop medicines to heal

the sick. But the facts belie this gentle reputation - between

100,000 and 200,000 people die each year from correctly prescribed

medications in the hospital alone, not including drug induced deaths

occurring outside the hospital or from incorrectly prescribed

medications. Compare these numbers to the 65,000 dead American

soldiers during the entire Vietnam war or the 20,000 dead from the

initial chemical release in the Bhopal disaster. No other industry

is responsible for such a shockingly high death rate repeated year

after year, a death rate that would probably cause great alarm and

Congressional hearings if it occurred in any other industry. And yet

even these numbers are underestimated as David Kessler who ran the

FDA for much of the 1990s has stated that from 90-99% of all adverse

drug reactions are never reported, which would make the actual death

and injury rate from legal drugs astronomical. "

 

What alarms me about this bill passing is the fact that 9/11 is

still being used as an excuse for Homeland Security, Patriot Acts I

and II and now BioShield -- and all this while we wait for the

results of an investigation into the events of 9/11 that has been

met with countless obstacles. It is high time we expose the illegal

actions of our congressmen and the entire Bush Administration.

~Ingri

 

 

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-

bioshield17jul17,1,7643

882.story?coll=la-headlines-nation-manual

 

THE NATION

House Passes Bill to Help Combat Bioterrorism In the Senate, funding

questions slow similar legislation seeking vaccines and treatments

against anthrax and other deadly agents.

 

By Vicki Kemper

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 17, 2003

 

 

WASHINGTON - The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Wednesday

designed to encourage private industry to develop vaccines and other

treatments needed to protect U.S. residents from acts of

bioterrorism.

 

The House's 418-to-2 approval of Project Bioshield, first proposed by

President Bush in his State of the Union address in January, comes

almost two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed

about 3,000 people and the mailing of anthrax-filled letters that

killed five people and injured 17.

 

Two Republicans, Reps. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Ron Paul of Texas,

voted against the bill. All members of the California delegation,

with the exception of Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson),

who did not vote, voted for the bill. In the Senate, similar

legislation has bogged down on when to fund the program - all at

once or year by year.

 

" This legislation will help spur the development and availability of

next-generation countermeasures against biological, chemical,

nuclear and radiological weapons, " Bush said in a statement released

by the White House. " I urge the Senate to act on this very important

legislation. "

 

The House bill would establish a $5.6-billion, 10-year fund for the

development, production and stockpiling of vaccines and other drugs

to combat such deadly biological agents as smallpox, anthrax,

botulinum toxin, Ebola and plague. A ready supply of such treatments

would serve as " both an antidote and a deterrent to future attacks, "

said Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

 

The Bush administration conceived of Project Bioshield as a way of

giving pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies financial

incentive to develop products for which there is no commercial

market.

 

" Without this clear commitment of funding in future years,

private-sector companies that are capable of such development simply

won't undertake the heavy investment and risk, " Rep. W.J. " Billy "

Tauzin (R-La.), the bill's sponsor, said Wednesday.

 

Industry response to the initiative remains unclear.

 

Last month, President Bush addressed the annual meeting of the

Biotechnology Industry Organization, telling executives to lobby

Congress if they were " interested in seeing more flexibility and

more research dollars for the sake of national security. "

Yet the House bill does not provide for one of the industry's key

demands: broad protection against lawsuits.

 

The bill is intended to give the departments of Homeland Security

and Health and Human Services new powers and personnel for assessing

bioterrorism threats and responding to them. In addition, the HHS

secretary would have the authority to declare a national emergency

and, under such conditions, make available to the public drugs and

vaccines that have not been approved by the Food and Drug

Administration.

 

Meanwhile, a smallpox vaccination campaign, the administration's

first major post-Sept. 11 effort to prepare the nation for a

possible bioterrorist attack, has all but stalled. Fewer than 38,000

people had been vaccinated against smallpox as of July 4, almost six

months after Bush unveiled his plan to inoculate up to 500,000

civilian health workers and 10 million police, fire and other

emergency personnel.

 

The campaign has been hampered by uncertainty about the threat of a

smallpox attack, concerns about the safety of the vaccine and a

delay in the provision for the compensation of people injured by it.

 

Six people who received the vaccine suffered heart attacks some time

later, and two of them died. At least 17 others suffered

inflammation of the heart. The Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, which has continued to investigate a possible connection

between the vaccine and heart ailments, advised people with heart

conditions or certain risk factors against being vaccinated.

 

Last month, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices

recommended that officials suspend the vaccination program until the

CDC's research had been completed.

 

*************************

--

Mary Wulff

Coalition for a Safe Lab

P.O. Box 1803

Hamilton MT 59840

http://www.oiruco.com

 

*************************************

Ingri Cassel, President

Vaccination Liberation - Idaho Chapter

P.O. Box 457

Spirit Lake, ID 83869

(208)255-2307/ fax 255-2607

vaclib

 

www.vaclib.org

" Free Your Mind....

>From The Vaccine Paradigm "