- THE "BIODEFENSE AND PANDEMIC VACCINE AND DRUG DEVELOPMENT
ACT OF 2005" (S. 1873)
-
- We saw something uncannily similar before in the 70's,
when there was that terrifying scare about the swine flu, which turned
out to have been nothing; 52 people died from the vaccine, but no one died
of the swine flu!
-
- Quoting from "Crab Wars: A Tale of Horseshoe Crabs,
Bioterrorism, and Human Health," by William Sargent, 2002, University
Press of New England, 124 pages.
-
- "The Rumsfeld history starts in 1976, when a military
recruit in New Jersey died from a flu that experts speculated might be
the 'swine flu" virus of 1918 pandemic fame. As Sargent tells it,
Rumsfeld, who was then and is again the nation's secretary of defense,
made the imminent "swine flu" a political issue to add some spark
to the campaign of President Ford, an interim leader without a cause. At
Rumsfeld's urging, the administration would ensure that "every man,
woman and child" was vaccinated. Huge amounts of vaccine were produced
and distributed quickly.
-
- Some batches were contaminated. This was in the days
before lysate. Six hundred people sickened and 52 died. The program was
stopped a month after the election. And nobody got swine flu. "It
was," writes Sargent, "modern medicine's most flagrant miscalculation."
-
- __________
-
- Before I discuss the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine
and Drug Development Act of 2005" (S. 1873), please take two minutes
and read this article off CNN, quoting from Fortune Magazine:
-
- Rumsfeld's growing stake in Tamiflu Defense Secretary,
ex-chairman of flu treatment rights holder, sees portfolio value growing.
October 31, 2005: 10:55 AM EST By Nelson D. Schwartz, Fortune senior writer
-
-
- NEW YORK (Fortune) - The prospect of a bird flu outbreak
may be panicking people around the globe, but it's proving to be very good
news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected
investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns
the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that's now the most-sought
after drug in the world.
-
- Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)'s chairman from
1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds
a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according
to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
-
- The forms don't reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld
owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the ensuing scramble
for Tamiflu have sent Gilead's stock from $35 to $47. That's made the Pentagon
chief, already one of the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at least
$1 million richer.
-
- Rumsfeld isn't the only political heavyweight benefiting
from demand for Tamiflu, which is manufactured and marketed by Swiss pharma
giant Roche. (Gilead receives a royalty from Roche equaling about 10% of
sales.) Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead's board,
has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005.
-
- Another board member is the wife of former California
Gov. Pete Wilson.
-
- "I don't know of any biotech company that's so politically
well-connected," says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners
in San Francisco.
-
- What's more, the federal government is emerging as one
of the world's biggest customers for Tamiflu. In July, the Pentagon ordered
$58 million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and
Congress is considering a multi-billion dollar purchase. Roche expects
2005 sales for Tamiflu to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million
in 2004.
-
- Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving
Gilead when he left Gilead and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001.
And late last month, notes a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld went even
further and had the Pentagon's general counsel issue additional instructions
outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian
flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.
-
- As the flu issue heated up early this year, according
to the Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered unloading his entire Gilead
stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the SEC and the
federal Office of Government Ethics.
-
- Those agencies didn't offer an opinion so Rumsfeld consulted
a private securities lawyer, who advised him that it was safer to hold
on to the stock and be quite public about his recusal rather than sell
and run the risk of being accused of trading on insider information, something
Rumsfeld doesn't believe he possesses. So, he's keeping his shares for
the time being.
-
- __________
-
- Following are my comments on Senator Frist's Bill:
-
- In addition to the $7.1 Billion it allocates (including
$1.35 billion for stocking up on the vaccine, enough to vaccinate 75 million
Americans, and $1 Billion for creating a new secret agency for surveillance,
BARDA, this bill includes a permanent absolution, a carte blanche, a get-out-of-jail
card for the pharmaceutical industry, the likes of which Americans have
never seen before.
-
- We would be giving up a lot, not so much just a lot of
dollars, but almost all potential claims against the pharmaceutical industries
involved in producing this vaccine, strangely reminiscent of the hysteria
which resulted in the Patriot Act, but this one has been crafted and tailor-made
for the pharmaceutical industries. In the last 5 years, it is increasingly
shocking how many of these government policies are written for the regulators
by those who are supposed to be regulated: to name just a few: in Energy
Policy, by Halliburton and by major Oil Company Executives; the so-called
"Cheeseburger Tort Reform," a few of which have actually passed
several state legislatures, which absolve fast food corporations of all
responsibility for obesity suits; FDA policies, which just transpose corporate
boilerplate mantras from industry websites [in other words, ask the FDA
for answers to your questions about a product's safety and consumer complaint
record, and they direct you to corporate website, from which you are supposed
to emerge complacent and convinced that everything is safe, and just peachy!
-
- But don't act so surprised! That is the way it was with
Asbestos, PCB's, DDT, Vioxx, Cyclamates, and so on, down a very long list,
which many at the FDA and in Congress would seemingly like the average
American consumer to just completely forget about.
-
- Senator Frist expects us to believe that on top of coughing
up $7.1 billion for more meds, that this is "just a drop in the bucket,"
as he puts it, "just 1% of the hit the economy would take if we do
nothing"! On December 9, Senator Frist said, "a $675 billion
hit on the economy is without question a grim prognosis."
-
- I would like to see the USA, its citizens, and its all-so
sacred Economy, take that chance, which I believe is even less remote that
than the 1 in 300 chance described by the Congressional Budget Office there
would ever be an major pandemic in this nation. Let's at least wait for
a bit, and see how the Chinese program attempting to vaccinate every fowl
in China turns out.
-
- Depending on which strain of the Avian Flu you speak
of, between 10 and 60 have died of it. The most recent at this writing
was a 9 year old Thai boy who handled some infected poultry poop from his
neighbor's chicken. Tragic, yet, no doubt for him and his family. Scary
to a few Americans, but to spend $7.1 billion, including $1.35 billion
to inoculate 25% of the American population at about $18 each? Then for
"surveillance," another billion dollars?Which corporate buddies
of this administration will profit from that billion dollars? A new division
of Halliburton?
-
- Then the Health and Human Services Secretary, Mike Leavitt,
former Governor of our neighboring state Utah, chimes with this comment
applauding Frist's speech, on December 9: "While the analysis estimates
a $675 billion hit to the American economy, it is clear that this impact
can be lessened by the actions we take today."
-
- Maybe these guys have whipped themselves up in their
pontifical lucrative ivory tower inside the Beltway to the extent that
they genuinely believe this hysterical nonsense.
-
- However, I don't believe it, and you shouldn't either.
-
- At the very least, it is very flawed economic thinking,
which is befuddled by hysteria and steeled by the cold hard logic derived
from the old cold warriors who invoke such hysterical medical nonsense
while it actually works, long enough for Roche and Tamiflu and a few other
big Pharm Buddies to rush in there, make a few billion dollars, get out
while the getting is good, and emerge with the biggest trump card of all,
which might even last longer than the Patriot Act, a law absolving Big
Pharm of product liability for the vaccine manufacturers!
-
- The bill refers to "Liability protection from civil
lawsuits?" What does that mean? Who pays for those injured by bad
vaccines? Or is the average American just supposed to "take the hit"
and absorb such losses with no recourse to the Courts? This bill is really
bad politics, bad medicine, bad economics, bad government, and terribly
bad legislation.[Frist blithely informs us that "to ally irrational
fear, communication must be the bedrock of every public policy response."]
-
- I am focused on real consumer protection in a different
field, getting rid of neurotoxic food additives, and even though it is
a different field than Bill Frist's and Donald Rumsfeld's Tamiflu, their
calculated mass hysteria about avian flu, and the ghastly draconian insult
to the history of medicine implicit in this bill, I recognize a cow-pie
while it is being formed and while it is coming out; that is what Dr. Frist's
bill is, a giant nation- sized cow-pie, emerging from the male cow with
the horns.... (with all due respect to all of the cows, including the bulls).
-
- This entire scenario reminds me of the play, "The
Emperor's New Clothes." When I was 12 and in the school play version
of "The Emperor's New Clothes," I played one of the two brothers
who swindled the Emperor into believing he had beautiful new glorious robes.
I can recognize similar tactics to manipulate the truth into a "New
World Order," implicit in Senator Frist's $7.1 billion Avian Flu Bill,
disingenuously titled the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug
Development Act of 2005" (S. 1873).
-
- Please call Senator Bingaman and ask him to remove his
heretofore good name from the list of those Senators supporting it.
-
- Bingaman, Jeff (D - NM)
- 703 Hart Senate Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone:(202) 224-5521
- Fax (202) 224-2852
- senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov
-
- Thank you,
-
- Stephen Fox
- Founder, New Mexico Nutrition Council
-
- 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 Committee one day after
it was introduced "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's
worst nightmare." 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. They will pass this bill by December if you don't take
vigorous action NOW.
-
- There are 18 Senators pushing for us to face forced vaccines
and forced drugging with untested/experimental drugs and vaccines giving
freedom from liability to drug companies. Contact them ALL. This bill is
called "The Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act
of 2005." The text is under Senate Bill 1873 [S. 1873].
-
- Surprising to me, on the list of 18 Senators pushing
for this bill, you will find:
-
- Bingaman, Jeff (D - NM)
- 703 Hart Senate Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone:(202) 224-5521
- Fax (202) 224-2852
- senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov
-
- To quote Rima E. Laibow, M.D., Medical Director of the
Natural Solutions
- Foundation:
-
- Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled
out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency.
These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy,
chicanery and cowardice.
-
- We are, I am sorry to tell you, facing a uniquely dangerous
moment in our history. An industry with more money than sense and a government
with more greed than patriotism are conspiring to take away your right
to control your body, keep it safe and, if harmed, seek recompense from
the corporation which harmed you. I often write to you to alert you to
important health and health freedom issues. This letter is an urgent notice
about an immediate threat to your well-being and your liberty. If you do
nothing else to safeguard your health freedom, I urge you to take action
on this issue, pass this email to everyone you know and become a source
of information and strength to everyone you know. If there ever was a time
for activism, this is it!
-
- Tell the people you speak to that you are adamantly opposed
to S1873 and HR3970 since vaccines are dangerous and compulsory vaccination
violates your personal rights to self determination. Further, you flatly
reject the creation of a secret agency which would operate without public
oversight to created and compel the use of vaccines whose composition,
side effects and hazards are not only unknown, but would be kept permanently
hidden from the public.
-
- Let them know that you will not tolerate the loss of
compensation for harm and the loss of a trial by a jury of your peers to
determine the nature and extent of any such harm to you or your loved ones
and that a vote for these bills -- or others like them -- is completely
unacceptable if the member of Congress wants to stand for re-election.
-
- Make no mistake about it: Whatever you are vaccinated
with will be experimental and therefore dangerous. With no liability to
deter them, the vaccine makers can try anything they want or use any shoddy
techniques they like and you cannot claim any harm has been done to you
for the purposes of compensation. Not only that, the contents of these
forced vaccinations for who-knows-what are secret!
-
- Even if you believe in vaccines for you and yours, the
idea of a compulsory vaccine program administered by a secret agency with
zero accountability to you and the same legal liability for the companies
who make potentially lethal injections (zero once again) is a major threat
to your liberty and mine. I urge you to take action and ask your circle
of influence to do the same.
-
- Yours in health and freedom,
- Rima E. Laibow, MD
-
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
-
- Rima E. Laibow, M.D. is the Medical Director of the Natural
Solutions Foundation. She is a graduate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine
(1970) who believes passionately in the right every American to choose
a personal health path that is free of government or corporate interference.
-
- She has practiced drug-free, natural medicine for 35
years by seeking the underlying cause of every illness and ailment. During
this time, she has enjoyed remarkable success with a wide assortment of
cataclysmic problems and health promotion efforts.
-
- Like other healers who trust the innate ability to heal,
she believes in using nutrients and other natural options to find, define
and treat the problems which underlie degenerative, chronic diseases. The
key is supporting the immune and other crucial body systems. Dr. Laibow
has seen results from these techniques so often in her patients and in
her personal life, that she believes the medicine of the future is the
medicine of cooperation with nature.
-
- Dr. Laibow is the President of the NeuroTherapy Certification
Board. Because of Dr. Laibow's awareness of the wide variety of powerful
natural, non-toxic options available to treat the underlying causes of
disease, she is focused on maintaining these choices for all Americans.
Based on her understanding of the impact of poor nutrition and chemical/pesticide
toxicity on the declining health of America, Dr. Laibow is determined to
help Americans maintain their right to choose health promotion rather than
illness care in their efforts to protect themselves
-
-
- List of 18 Senators
-
- REPUBLICANS
-
- Gregg, Judd (R - NH)
- 393 Senate Russell Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-3324
- Fax: (202) 224-4952
- http://gregg.senate.gov/sitepages/contact.cfm
-
- Frist, William (R - TN)
- 509 Hart Senate Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-3344
- Fax: (202) 228-1264
- http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm? FuseAction=AboutSenatorFrist.ContactForm
-
- Enzi, Mike (R - WY)
- 379A Senate Russell Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-3424
- Fax: (202) 228-0359
- http://enzi.senate.gov/email.htm
-
- Burr, Richard (R-NC)
- 217 Russell Senate Office Building
- Washington, DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-3154
- Fax: (202) 228-2981
- http://burr.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home
-
- Isakson, Johnny (R- GA)
- 120 Russell Senate Office Building
- Washington, DC 20510
- (202) 224-3643
- Fax: (202) 228-0724
- http://isakson.senate.gov/contact.cfm
-
- Alexander, Lamar (R-TN)
- 302 Senate Hart Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-4944
- Fax: (202) 228-3398
- http://alexander.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home
-
- Bond, Christopher (R - MO)
- 274 Russell Senate Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-5721
- Fax (202) 224-8149
- http://bond.senate.gov/contact/contactme.cfm
-
- Roberts, Pat (R - KS)
- 109 Hart Senate Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-4774
- Fax (202) 224-3514
- http://roberts.senate.gov/e-mail_pat.html
-
- Ensign, John (R - NV)
- 356 Russell Senate Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-6244
- Fax (202) 228-2193
- http://ensign.senate.gov/forms/email_form.cfm
-
- DeWine, Mike (R - OH)
- 140 Russell Senate Office Building
- Washington DC 20510
- Phone: (202) 224-2315
- Fax (202) 224-6519
- http://dewine.senate.gov/
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