New Ebola Vaccine: Manufacturers Seek Global Indemnity so that Patient Bears Risk
By Cathy Jameson
Drugmakers may need indemnity for fast-tracked Ebola vaccines
Drugmakers are looking for some kind of indemnity from governments or multilateral agencies against possible losses or claims arising from the widespread emergency use of new Ebola vaccines in Africa.
I did a double take when I read the opening paragraph of this Reuter’s article last week.
“…looking for some kind of indeminity…”
Indemnity? For a vaccine? Don’t drugmakers, especially the ones that make vaccine, already have indemnity?
Yes.
They do.
But it stops at the border.
I reread the paragraph and realized ohhhh, these drugmakers, who already have oodles of protection from the United States government, want to use that protection elsewhere—overseas. Kudos for thinking ahead, but I have to ask, if a company has to ask for the kind of protection these drugmakers are asking, should they be making that product, especially if it’s going into humans?
You’d think that protecting the consumer would be better practice. But, it sounds like drugmakers, who are seeking to expand their vaccine wares to other countries, are again only looking out for themselves.
Drugmakers that provide vaccines here in the US have been granted a no responsibility ticket when it comes to their vaccines. It protects not only those who create the vaccines, but protects those who administer them also. Simply put, manufacturers and medical providers can make and give all the vaccines they want. They are never held accountable for any of them, including the vaccines that harm or kill people.
Most other products consumers buy come with some sort of consumer protection. Nothing of the kind exists for vaccines. Here’s what we get, or don’t get, from vaccines:
We aren’t offered exactly what’s advertised.
We don’t get a guarantee that vaccines provide immunity.
We won’t see anyone come running to our rescue when a vaccine fails, or causes injury or causes death.
We can’t take legal action either.
Sure, Americans have access to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which does pay out some monies to some families who’ve been vaccine injured. But that government-run program has done more to aid the government than to assist those in need. And drugmakers are never part of the “justice” process of the NVIC Program. Why? On account of the protection the US government granted them, of course!
Drugmakers can do what they want, when they want. And they are now requesting to be able to do that with an Ebola vaccine in Africa.
I know that Ebola is a deadly disease. I agree that addressing the Ebola situation is important. I know that some areas have seen worse cases than others. But I also know that this disease can be treated and, if caught early enough, treated with success. So far, that success hasn’t included a vaccine.
Here’s some of what we know about the proposed Ebola vaccine, the one drugmakers are requesting indemnity for:
The Ebola vaccine has been called experimental in more than one news reports.
The vaccine contains a live virus and, like every vaccine, has some known side effects.
The Ebola vaccine has been fast tracked.
The Ebola vaccine manufacturers have skipped over protocols that usually require years to complete.
Vaccine trials have begun despite not conducting long-term safety studies.
Without going through the rigorous process of testing the vaccine, waiting for and documenting reports of reactions, one million doses of Ebola vaccines are projected to be ready in 2015.
Drugmakers wish to provide an experimental vaccine with no guarantees and which lack safety data to other people in other countries. Sounds like business as usual, doesn’t it?
American’s have been misled about vaccines for years. We’ve been used as guinea pigs and for pharmaceutical profit at the same time. And now countrymen and woman far, far away are being eyed as potential vaccine consumers. I pray that treating the current Ebola cases, as well as reducing the risk of exposure to others, happens soon. I pray it happens before this mass-produced experimental Ebola vaccine becomes available too.
I’d hate to see people in other countries be subjected to our pharmaceutical companies’ liability-free actions and irresponsibility. Too many here in our community have experienced that already and have seen vaccine damage first hand. No need to add that sort of suffering to another people, especially to a people who are already dealing with loss and devastation.
Cathy Jameson is Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-see-mechanism-spontaneous-hiv-cure-160704801.html
Maybe this will eventually provide clues to viral control sans vaccines. I wonder if it is the same way germs are attenuated?
Posted by: JB | November 04, 2014 at 08:39 PM
We know some develop immunity to ebola without symptoms. Determining reasons for that would really be worth something.
With smallpox vaccine seen to increase risk of mortality from smallpox in the past, and evidence that flu vaccine increases susceptibility to other infections, live polio vaccine leading to polio outbreaks in the past, chicken pox vaccine sometimes leading to shingles transmission, etc. We get SV40 and RSV(? http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/the-real-history-behind-the-polio-vaccine/ ?) from contaminated polio vaccine also. Even here, with the current ebola outbreaks coinciding with vaccine campaigns, one might ask if those vaccines were contaminated or set up an immune vulnerability to ebola that triggered epidemics.
I don't know if I would say it's reckless or not to try a new ebola vaccine, but giving manufacturers more rope than they've already had?
Vaccine promoters have been lately accusing the "unvaccinated" of making a "dangerous" choice for everyone, but some review of vaccine history and a look at the current state of "informed consent" really makes that seem pretty ironic.
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | November 02, 2014 at 07:29 PM
I would say that they need to read the patient whatever facts are known about the vaccine at the time it is given. If it's live, that takes heavy metal toxicity off the table, but leaves it on the level of the MMR and vaccine encephalitis. Make it mandatory to read him the known facts on how common Ebola is and how deadly it is at that time in that area. Also, of course, how common and the nature of whatever adverse reactions are known to have occurred from the vaccine. Tell him the alternatives, offer antibody serum therapy, high-dose vitamin C therapy, ZMapp therapy, the homeopathic remedy Crotalus horridus, the herbal remedy gotu kola, as many as are reasonably possible, and whatever information is available on how well they have worked on others, and then let him make his choice. I have to say that as much as I hate and fear vaccines, if I were in an Ebola zone with a mortality rate of 50-90%, I might decide to get the vaccine and hope for the best.
Posted by: cia parker | November 02, 2014 at 01:20 PM
Behind all of this is the idea that the only way to deal with Ebola is a vaccine. How about improving the health of everyone through better diet with traditional foods, abstaining from sugary processed foods, and cleaning up their living conditions? Worked pretty well for scarlet fever. But oh no, not when there is a fortune to be made in disaster capitalism.
Posted by: Adam Mortenson | November 02, 2014 at 10:54 AM
Well, Cathy, I have some bad news for you. Check out the Forbes article entitled Ebola Vaccine And Treatment Makers Need Liability Protection dated 10/30/14. The article states that the ebola vaccine should be added to our PREP Act, an Act which "preempts all state laws that might limit distribution of the declared countermeasure" right here in our country. This is not, and has never been just about vaccinating everyone in Africa with an experimental vaccine. We, here in the US, are also very much at risk of being experimented upon with the very same unproven vaccines.
The sad joke to me is that we have people from this administration demanding that quarantines and travel restrictions NOT be employed to stop the spread of ebola in the US, yet at the same time, some of them are calling for steps to ensure everyone here in the US be vaccinated against the disease, a disease that shouldn't even be in our country in the first place, if quarantine and travel bans were properly instituted. How is forced vaccination with experimental, untested, possibly un-efficacious and unsafe vaccines with who-knows-what experimental, here-to-fore unapproved adjuvant less of a danger to our civil liberties, than forced quarantines and travel bans? That's my question for all of those self-proclaimed "bio-ethicists."
Posted by: Concerned Citizen | November 02, 2014 at 10:01 AM
"I’d hate to see people in other countries be subjected to our pharmaceutical companies’ liability-free actions and irresponsibility."
Unfortunately this has been going on in third world countries for decades. Many articles have stated that the Ebola outbreak in Africa coincides with a vaccination program that was going on in Africa.
-Why has the Ebola virus suddenly erupted in a region of Africa known as the “Meningitis Belt” (comprising all four countries affected – Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria & Sierra Leone)?
Because the WHO & CDC are deliberately trying to cover up their bloody tracks.
The recent Ebola outbreak in Africa coincides with a massive Meningitis Vaccine campaign targeting “150 million Africans”, many throughout Guinea & Nigeria.
The cost-effective vaccine, MenAfriVac®, (less than US$0.50 per dose) was “kept outside the cold chain for up to four days at up to 40°C”.
-http://vaccineresistancemovement.org/?page_id=11240
In order to understand the true background to the present and past "Ebola" epidemics, the following booklet from a colloquim held in 1977 is recommended for further personal study. It contains the collective proceedings of 3-day meeting between a large international group of members from the medical and science community also from the WHO which co-sponsored the colloquium held in 1977 in Belgium.
"Ebola Virus Haemorrhagic Fever" (http://www.enivd.de/EBOLA/pdf/ebola-hires.pdf )
Also, Dr. Stefan Lanka has an interesting perspective on Ebola.
The German biologist dr. rer. nat. Stefan Lanka had already explained years ago that Ebola was in his opinion caused by various vaccine experiments carried out in Africa. During a lecture in 2001 he had explained that "cells are destroyed by radioactivity, even if they call it Ebola; it is the consequence of irradiation through genetic vaccinations. These people would bleed to death internally and externally. The feared Ebola virus on the other hand has yet to be found or isolated."
And once more Dr. Stefan Lanka a few years ago: "All vaccination programmes in the third world are, from a scientific point of view, under the strongest suspicion of deliberate genocide, the decimation of the indigenous population away from the eyes of the world, even the so-called Ebola cases are in reality some of the worst vaccine-induced injuries, since in Africa they sometimes "work" with doses that are 1,000 times higher than in Europe and so these are more likely side effects of criminal human experiments."
(Source: http://www.krisenfest.org/gesundheit/infektionstheorie/)
The German Medical Review 118 of 29 June 2000 (Ärzte-Zeitung) had already admitted that vaccine doses with 100-1,000 higher concentrations than what is used in Europe had been given and had led to numerous deaths of African babies in the nineties.
Dr. Stefan Lanka commented on these "trials" naming them for what they were (or still are?) - secret genetic experiments on African people: "When you are poisoned with such a lethal doses, your liver stops creating the globulins needed for blood-clotting. You then start bleeding internally and externally, it is called hemorrhagic fever... and of course they are blaming it once more on a virus!"
(doses that are 1,000 times higher) I was unaware of this. So it seems that everytime an African child or adult is vaccinated they may be receiving 100% or more toxins than children/adults in the West. Many reports have stated the health of African children is fragile so we can now get an idea of what a child would suffer if Paul Proffit had his way of giving a child 10,000 vaccines at one time.
There has to be some legal way to have "regular citizens" sit on these government committees that makes decisions like the decision to provide blanket immunity to vaccine makers. COI is what has broken out and we, the citizens of the world need immunity from the vaccine makers so our rights will be protected.
Posted by: Danchi | November 02, 2014 at 09:51 AM
This is the line that got me: "We’ve been used as guinea pigs and for pharmaceutical profit at the same time."
The bodies of our children used for profit.
Does it get any more evil than that? Perhaps we should reconsider how we fight this battle. So far our efforts of pitting real science against their fraudulent studies have earned us the label of anti-vaccine.
What if we attack the manufacturers' and CDC's criminality?
Posted by: David Taylor | November 02, 2014 at 09:10 AM
I think its long past time, that the world starting start protecting itself from pharmaceutical companies.
Posted by: Barry | November 02, 2014 at 08:34 AM
They are playing off fear to get the indemity.
Asking for indemity -has worked out so well for the American People with the schools full of ADHD, ADD and autism - and colleges full of mental illness. I am sure they have basically had indemity anyway over in Africa - after all how is some one living in a mud hut going to sue when their little kid falls asleep when ever it eats, and there is that tetsee fly can be blamed.
Posted by: Benedetta | November 02, 2014 at 07:44 AM