Update: Drug Companies Immunity For Bird Flu Drug and Vaccine Production

Read "Senate Passes Last Minute Bill Giving Drug Companies Immunity From Deaths And Adverse Reactions Caused By Vaccines And Drugs Used For Bird Flu" by Kristin Keckeisen in Crusador eAlerts (12/23/05).

I recently posted a description of the exceptional protection for industry provided by the flu pandemic provisions of the Defense Appropriations Bill. This is an update by Kristin Keckeisen I found on the Internet:

In the final hours just before adjourning for the year, the Senate last night passed the Defense Appropriations bill that contained the pandemic flu preparedness provisions, including outrageous immunity protection for drug companies.......

What passed last night as part of the defense bill is not responsible. In fact, and sadly, it even includes a shield for reckless misconduct in some cases.

Even more outrageous than the substance of these provisions, if that's possible, is how these provisions were slipped into the conference report at midnight on Sunday. After many Senators and House members had already signed the conference report, Majority Leader Frist and Speaker Hastert privately conspired with the White House to add wholly new language containing the liability protections to the conference report.......

with the help of Senate friends such as Senator Ted Kennedy, we succeeded in defeating cloture on the Defense Appropriations Conference Report.

In the end, the Frist-Hastert language survived due to the politics surrounding the must-pass nature of the defense spending bill, combined with the rush to get home for holidays.

The Christian Science Monitor provides this update:

Another provision, granting immunity from liability to manufacturers of flu vaccine, was added at the last minute to the FY 2006 Defense Appropriations bill. Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who sponsored the measure, says that "appropriate, targeted liability protections" are needed to reestablish a manufacturing base in the US for vaccines. "A pandemic will occur," he says.

After protests from citizens' groups, a previous attempt by Senator Frist to add such a provision was repealed. But last week, Frist, with the approval of House GOP leaders, added the provision back to the Defense bill.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts dubbed the move "a massive Christmas bonus to the drug companies at the expense of nurses, firefighters, and ordinary Americans who will have to take untested vaccines and drugs and get no money for compensation if they are injured."