DeLauro Amendment Repeals Liability Protection For Vaccine Manufacturers by Year's End

DeLauro Amendment Repeals Liability Protection For Vaccine Manufacturers by Year's End

First priority should be inoculating the American public from a deadly strain of flu, not inoculating drug companies from the threat of legal liability

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) today offered an amendment that repeals liability protection for vaccine manufacturers by the end of this fiscal year, September 30th, 2006. The amendment strikes a provision of law that protects medical vaccine and antiviral makers (such as companies producing avian flu vaccine) from legal liability in the event that a vaccine or antiviral is found to be defective or harmful. The provision was slipped into the Defense Appropriations bill last year by Senator Frist (R-TN), after the conference report had concluded. DeLauro offered the amendment during the full Appropriations Committee mark-up of supplemental funding for the War in Iraq and funding for Hurricane Katrina. Unlike other federal vaccine programs, this plan provides no means for victims who are seriously injured to seek compensation.

"At a time when we are facing the frightening prospect that millions of Americans could contract this deadly flu, our first priority ought to be to inoculate the American public from a deadly strain of flu, not inoculate drug companies from the threat of legal liability," said DeLauro. "How many of us would agree that a negligent distributor—someone who ruined a vaccine by mishandling it, for example—should be held harmless? Or the drugmaker who knows that their product is defective but chooses to sell it anyway. Do we really want to say that such a company is above the law?"

The liability protection was granted not only to vaccines being developed to prepare us for an avian flu outbreak, but applied to a far broader range of potential vaccines, medical equipment and just about anything else that the HHS Secretary deems appropriate.

"Last December, legislation granting liability protection to vaccine manufacturers was unilaterally inserted into the Defense Appropriations bill after the conference had closed. It was done in the dead of night, absent careful consideration, with no public hearings, no debate among members of this body - nothing," said DeLauro. "In short, it was the work of one person in one body, and it never should have happened. It has very serious implications and deserves equally serious consideration by this body which had no say whatsoever in its enactment. My amendment provides the time for Congress to do just that."

http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2006/March/vaccine_amendment_3_8_06.html