Here Comes the 21st Century Cures Act: Say Goodbye to Vaccine Safety Science

Posted 7/22/2015

by Barbara Loe Fisher

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It has only been a few weeks since the forced vaccination lobby rammed a bill (SB 277) through the California legislature eliminating the personal belief vaccine exemption so children will have to get dozens of doses of federally recommended vaccines or be denied a school education.¹ While California was being subjected to one of the most aggressive and expensive state lobbying campaigns² ever mounted by the pharmaceutical industry in partnership with medical trade associations funded by industry and government^{3 4 5 6} that same lobby was pulling an even bigger fast one on the American people in Washington, D.C.

Here comes the 21st Century Cures Act,⁷ which is a Pharma-driven bill⁸ blessed by the FDA⁹ that seriously compromises the integrity of the FDA drug and vaccine licensing process. ¹⁰ The 362-page bill sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives on July 10, 2015¹¹ and mandates that about $9 billion dollars be given to NIH to develop more drugs and vaccines and $550 million be given to the FDA to fast track products to market.¹² 

Bill Lowers FDA Licensing Standards

The bill allows the FDA to lower licensing standards for testing of experimental drugs, medical devices and “biological products” – a category that includes vaccines -^{13 14 15} so companies will no longer be required to conduct large, case controlled clinical trials^{16 17 18} to evaluate safety and effectiveness. Instead, FDA can accept novel statistical analyses ¹⁹ and “clinical experience,”²⁰ such as anecdotal evidence from patients.²¹

It is interesting that clinical experience and anecdotal evidence will constitute “good science” for the purpose of demonstrating a vaccine is safe before it is licensed, while clinical experience and anecdotal evidence has never been good enough to demonstrate that a vaccine is unsafe after it is licensed.^{22 23 24 25}

Greasing Skids to License Drugs and Vaccines

The 21^st Century Cures Act is being sold as a way for the FDA to quickly license experimental pharmaceutical products for people suffering with rare or life threatening diseases, whether or not those products have been adequately tested.²⁶ However, greasing the FDA licensure skids to make experimental drugs available for the sick and dying, who voluntarily choose to use them, is one thing, while greasing the skids to bum rush experimental vaccines to licensure that government will legally require healthy children and adults to buy and use, is something quite different.^{27 28 29 30 31}

Nearly every single vaccine that the pharmaceutical industry creates and the FDA licenses for child use is eventually recommended for all children and mandated by state governments for daycare and school entry.^{32 33 34 35 36} And, now, many adults are being brought into the vaccine mandate net as well.^{37 38 39}

Ensuring Drugs & Vaccines Dominate U.S. Health Care

Coming on the heels of the Affordable Health Care Act,⁴⁰ which guaranteed that the pharmaceutical industry and their products will continue to dominate the most expensive health care system in the world,^{41 42 43 44 45 46} there are so many breathtaking ways the 21^st Century Cures Act will endanger the public health that it is hard to know where to begin. The word “vaccines” is not being publicly uttered by anyone sponsoring the bill. However, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), which represents more than 1,500 pharmaceutical and other health product corporations, is already crowing about how they managed to influence Capitol Hill politicians to incorporate the “Vaccine Access, Certainty and Innovation Act of 2015” into the 21^st Century Cures Act.^{47 48}

Faster Track for Vaccines You Will Have To Take in Future

So, if the Senate approves and the President signs this life-threatening bill into law by the end of this year, what will happen to the hundreds of experimental vaccines that will be fast tracked to licensure and mandated for you and your children to get in the future? Just so you know, that list includes vaccines for HIV/AIDS,^{49 50 51} chlamydia,⁵² cytomegalovirus,⁵³ hepatitis C,⁵⁴ genital herpes,⁵⁵ syphilis,⁵⁶ gonorrhea,⁵⁷ e-coli,⁵⁸ norovirus,⁵⁹ tuberculosis⁶⁰ and many, many more.^{61 62}

Gutting Informed Consent Along with Science

First, the 21^st Century Cures Act allows the FDA to expedite licensure^{63 64} of new vaccines and expand uses for existing vaccines⁶⁵ based on:

1. Shorter or smaller clinical trials; and
2. non-traditional or adaptive trial designs and Bayesian methods of data analysis;⁶⁶ and
3. evidence from clinical experience instead of randomized, controlled clinical trials;^{67 68} and
4. use of biomarkers and surrogate endpoint measures⁶⁹ rather than actual clinical endpoints proving effectiveness.⁷⁰

Second, the new law would allow researchers to conduct “clinical testing” of experimental pharmaceutical products on people without first obtaining their informed consent^{71 72 73} if “the proposed clinical testing poses no more then minimal risk.”^{74 75} It is not clear who decides what constitutes “minimal risk,” but presumably that will be left up to industry and government officials. It is also not clear whether minor children can be enrolled in experiments without the informed consent of their parents.

Using “Best Guess” Statistics Instead of Good Science

Just for fun, I looked up the definition of Bayesian to see what will happen if the FDA lets drug companies use that method instead of large randomized clinical trials^{76 77 78 79 80} to determine whether an experimental vaccine is safe or not. Here is what the dictionary says about Bayesian:

“Being, relating to, or involving statistical methods that assign probabilities or distributions to events or parameters based on experience or best guesses before experimentation and data collection and that apply Bayes' theorem to revise the probabilities and distributions after obtaining experimental data.”⁸¹

The key phrase to focus on is “based on experience or best guesses before experimentation or data collection.” While we know federal agencies have been guessing for a long time when it comes to pronouncing vaccines safe and effective due to long standing gaps in vaccine safety science,^{82 83 84 85 86} it is irresponsible for Congress to bow to Big Pharma and codify into law the legal right for FDA officials to use flimsy “best guess” statistical methods and unreliable surrogate endpoints to support claims that a new vaccine is safe and really works, instead of requiring vaccine manufacturers to conduct in-depth biological mechanism research and large, well-designed clinical trials.

Moving numbers around in a computer is a poor substitute for actually proving an experimental vaccine does not kill and injure real human beings before it is licensed.

Congress and Pharma: Friends with Benefits

In 1986, Congress allowed itself to be blackmailed by the pharmaceutical industry and removed most civil product liability from vaccine manufacturers⁸⁷ and, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declared vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe” and completely removed all product liability from FDA licensed vaccines^{88 89 90} In America, nobody can sue drug companies when FDA licensed vaccines injure and kill people.

Not satisfied with a total product liability shield and with access to billions of dollars in American taxpayer money to build new vaccine plants^{91 92 93} and create hundreds of new vaccines,^{94 95 96} while getting government-paid free advertising⁹⁷ and enjoying a predictable market from “no exceptions” vaccine mandates, the pharmaceutical industry is now insisting that Congress give them a free pass on the science, too.

A Consumer’s Worst Nightmare

The financial public private partnership that Congress has directed government to forge with industry through a series of federal laws created over the past 30 years,^{98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106} is a drug company stockholder’s dream and a consumer’s worst nightmare. That lucrative partnership, which is using the “greater good” club to violate the human and civil rights of the American people in the name of a highly politicized “War on Disease,” has the potential to destroy more lives than any war our nation has ever fought.
The 21^st Century Cures Act is a prescription for disaster. Vaccine research, development and fast tracking should not be a part of it.

Act Now

If you want to make your U.S. Senator and Representative aware of what you think of the 21st Century Cures Act, become a user of the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal. The Portal can put you in immediate electronic contact with the people you elected to represent you in Washington, D.C. so you can politely, of course, give them a piece of your mind.

Stand up for your right to know and freedom to choose.

It’s your health. Your family. Your choice.

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California Enacts Vaccine Law That Forces Parents to Choose Between Human Rights and Civil Rights

Posted 7/2/2015

by Barbara Loe Fisher

From flash to bang, it took the politically powerful corporate, medical trade and government lobbyists just six months this year to gut the human right to informed consent to medical risk taking and the civil right to a school education in California. They did it by enacting a new law (SB 277) signed by Governor Jerry Brown on June 29, 2015 that denies parents the legal right to file a personal belief exemption to vaccination for religious and conscientious beliefs so their children can attend school.

 

In order to sign the bill into law, Governor Brown had to abandon his long-standing legislative record as a champion of parental and religious rights and school education. NVIC called him out in a July 1, 2015 letter for failing to protect California families from segregation and discrimination based on vaccination and health care choices that parents make in the best interest of their minor children.
 

Click the image on the right to read NVIC’s July 1, 2015 press release and make a comment below.

 

Brute Political Power Wielded by Government and Industry Fast Tracks Oppressive Bill Into Law

 

Consistently throughout the legislative process, the numbers of California citizens testifying in opposition to the oppressive bill vastly numbered those testifying in support. The ramming of SB 277 through the California legislature despite strong public opposition was an impressive demonstration of the brute power that can be wielded by the public-private partnership between government and industry dominating the U.S. health care system in the 21^st century.

 

Disinformation about the measles outbreak at Disneyland and vaccine safety and effectiveness was used by mainstream media outlets to forward the forced vaccination agenda in the legislature in an attempt to neutralize the growing number of citizens standing up and defending their human and civil rights in our nation’s largest state. Even though thousands of men, women and children from all walks of life came again and again to Sacramento this year to attend public rallies and testify against SB 277 in Senate and Assembly committee hearings, the Senate voted 25 to 10 and the Assembly voted 46 to 30 to approve the legislation after contentious floor debates.

 

Waking A Sleeping Giant

 

During the six months the bill was making its way through the legislative process, many new grassroots groups focusing on health and medical freedom issues were formed in the state with a common goal of opposing SB 277. A longtime Sacramento lobbyist commented that he had not seen so many citizens packing the halls of the state Capitol for hours to testify and hold protests on the Capitol grounds since the Vietnam war. Another observer commented that the forced vaccination bill had awakened “a sleeping giant.”

 

Get Vaccinated, Homeschool or Go To Jail?

 

California now becomes one of only three states, along with West Virginia and Mississippi, that denies children entry to daycare and school unless they get dozens of doses of federally recommended vaccines or a medical doctor grants a medical vaccine exemption, an exemption that doctors deny to 99.99 percent of children under narrow federal guidelines. Parents who do not comply with the new law will have to homeschool their children and, if they cannot homeschool for financial or other reasons, they may be subject to truancy laws that include fines and imprisonment for failing to provide their children with an education.

 

Incremental Steps on the Road to Medical Tyranny

 

In truth, the road to medical tyranny in California began in 2012. That was the year that the same pediatrician-turned politician and medical trade groups lobbied the legislature to pass AB 2109, a bill to force parents to get a signature from a medical doctor or state designated medical worker affirming the parent had been “educated” about vaccination before filing a personal belief vaccine exemption. NVIC opposed that bill because we knew it was an incremental step toward ramming a forced vaccination law like SB 277 through the legislature down the line, which is exactly what was done.

 

Citizens Push Back and Win in Other States

 

Vaccine use recommendations are made by federal health agencies and medical trade groups but vaccine mandates are state laws. More than 100 bills were introduced in multiple states this year to restrict or eliminate non-medical vaccine exemptions or add more vaccine mandates. The majority did not succeed.

 

In Texas alone, more than 20 vaccine-related bills were defeated because families across the state stood up and successfully defended their informed consent and civil rights. Although California has lost, temporarily at least, the personal belief vaccine exemption and Vermont lost the philosophical belief exemption (while retaining one for religious beliefs), citizens fought for their informed consent rights by educating their legislators and blocked bills in Washington, Oregon, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maine and other states.

 

The Final Wake-Up Call

 

What happened in California in 2015 is America’s final wake-up call. Forced vaccination bills like SB 277 that seek to eliminate all non-medical exemptions are eventually going to be introduced in every state and they will not be limited to school aged children. Adults will be targeted, too, as government health officials, industry and medical trade groups advocate for more societal sanctions that include loss of medical care and employment to be applied to those declining to get every federally recommended vaccine.

 

What is at stake? If the state can tag, track down and force us against our will to be injected with biologicals of known and unknown toxicity today, there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the state can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.

 

Please get involved and actively participate in our democracy. If we do not take freedom for granted, we can reclaim and protect our human and civil rights in California and every state in America.

 

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