FDA To Force Testing of Americans
<<< Back to main page
E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER
Vienna, Virginia http://www.nvic.org
BL Fisher Note:
The noose is tightening around the neck of the American public. Since
Sept. 11, 2001, federal and state health officials have persuaded Congress
and the state legislatures to pass legislation that will take away our civil
liberties and use the militia to arrest, quarantine and force experimental
drugs and vaccines on us without our informed consent whenever the unelected
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) declares an
"emergency." Now, the FDA has issued a rule that will allow public health
officials to pull us out of our homes and, without our voluntary informed
consent, use experimental medical tests to test us for "diseases" whenever
that "emergency" is declared.
Will there be any guarantee these experimental tests are accurate? Will
we
become guinea pigs in service to zealous public health officials and drug
companies profiting by our forced compliance?
What is certain is that if any of us are injured by the forced testing
and use of experimental drugs and vaccines, the public health officials and
drug companies responsible for harming us will not be held accountable in a
court of law. Congress made sure of that when it passed the Project
Bioshield and Pandemic Flu legislation during the past two years.
It is time for citizens to stand up and hold their elected officials at
the state and federal level responsible for what they have done. The
unchecked power that they have handed over to M.D./Ph.D. public health
officials in government health agencies is not only dangerous to the public
health, it is a threat to fundamental freedoms guaranteed under the U.S.
Constitution. Just as we don't have to be rocket scientists to understand
the flaws in the junk science DHHS passes off as proof that vaccines are
without significant risks, it doesn't take a constitutional lawyer to figure
out when our constitutional and human rights are being taken away.
Website
June 7, 2006
Informed Consent Waived in Public Crisis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:24 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a public health emergency, suspected victims would no
longer have to give permission before experimental tests could be run to
determine why they're sick, under a federal rule published Wednesday.
Privacy experts called the exception unnecessary, ripe for abuse and an
override of state informed-consent laws.
Health care workers will be free to run experimental tests on blood and
other samples taken from people who have fallen sick as a result of a
bioterrorist attack, bird flu outbreak, detonation of a dirty bomb or any
other life-threatening public health emergency, according to the rule issued
by the Food and Drug Administration.
In all other cases, the use of an experimental test still requires the
informed consent of a patient, as well as the review and approval of an
outside panel.
''To be candid, I hope it is a hypothetical problem. I hope we spent a lot
of time creating a rule we never have to invoke,'' said Dr. Steve Gutman,
director of the FDA's in-vitro diagnostics office.
Determining what constitutes a life-threatening public health emergency
would be left up to the laboratories doing the testing. That creates the
potential for conflicts of interest and other abuses, critics said.
''I don't like a rule like this because its most likely use is likely to be
a form of abuse. The emergency exception it creates will be stretched to
encompass non-emergency situations,'' said Jim Harper, director of
information policy studies at the Cato Institute.
The FDA said it published the rule to ensure the ability to identify quickly
whatever chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agent is involved in
a terrorist attack or natural outbreak of disease. Doing so could save the
lives of those being tested as well as of others exposed, the FDA said.
''Baloney,'' said Dr. Deborah Peel, chairwoman of the Patient Privacy Rights
Foundation, a watchdog group. ''This sounds like they're taking for
themselves the right to test individuals every time they declare a public
health emergency. There is no way getting consent would delay testing.''
The FDA said that obtaining informed consent in those cases would be
impracticable or unfeasible.
The rule lays out a scenario where a laboratory discovers what appears to be
an unusual bug in a sample taken from a patient before a public health
emergency was even suspected. With the apparent bug in the lab but the
patient gone, going back for permission to use a confirmatory but
experimental test -- often the only type of test available -- would
introduce ''unacceptable delays,'' the FDA said.
''They're basically overriding state informed-consent laws,'' said Sue
Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom. Blevins said her
group advocates for informed consent but that in emergencies it could be
sought after the fact.
''If they don't have the time to get it, at least inform them retroactively
what's been done, so people can keep track of what information has been
collected from them,'' Blevins said.
The rule took effect Wednesday but remains subject to public comment until
Aug. 7. The FDA said it published the rule without first seeking comments
because it would hinder the response to an outbreak of bird flu or other
public health emergency.
''Nobody said two airplanes would fly into the World Trade Center, did they?
We wouldn't have written the rule unless we thought it was a possibility,''
Gutman said.
The FDA said the lack of such an exemption impeded the public health
response to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, epidemic of
2003.
------
On the Net:
Food and Drug Administration rule
