Until recently, Frist and his wife owned $26 million worth of HCA stock. They are currently being investigated on charges of insider trading in the sale of HCA stock in the weeks immediately before the stock's value plummeted, and conflict of interest charges involving his ownership of HCA stock which he had previously claimed he knew nothing about because in accordance with ethics rules, it was in a "blind trust."
According to the Center for Justice and Democracy, Frist has received more than $2.3 million from doctors, health insurers, drug companies and others in the health care industry, raising more cash from health-care interests than 98% of his colleagues. In return, his legislative work in the Senate consists of almost nothing but trying to push through laws to increase profits for his number one backer.
Its worth noting that while Frist was its chairman, the pharmaceutical industry was also the largest single contributor to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, doling out about $4 million, with Eli Lilly, the company that invented thimerosal, being the single biggest contributor, giving $1.6 million.
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a watchdog advocacy group, is highly critical of the pending protection legislation. According to the group's President, Barbara Loe Fisher, "It is a big lie that drug companies have been driven out of business by lawsuits in the past two decades. The NVIC calls the Act "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's worst nightmare."
According to NVIC, currently there are at least ten different bills pending in Congress that will contain provisions to shield drug companies from lawsuits including S3, S975, S1437, S1828, S1873, S1880, HR650, HR3154, HR3970, and HR4245.
"This proposed legislation," Fisher told UPI, "is an unconstitutional attempt by some in Congress to give a taxpayer-funded handout to pharmaceutical companies for drugs and vaccines the government can force all citizens to use while absolving everyone connected from any responsibility for injuries and deaths which occur."
The bill establishes the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA), as the single authority for the advanced research and development of drugs and vaccines and grants the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the sole authority to determine whether a drug maker violated drug safety laws. In addition, the Act specifically bars citizens from challenging the Secretary's rulings in court.
BARDA will be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Advisory Committee Act, to ensure that no evidence related to injuries caused by vaccines classified as "countermeasures" will become public.
"It means that, if an American is injured by an experimental flu or anthrax vaccine he or she is mandated to take," Fisher told UPI, "that citizen will be banned from exercising the Constitutional right to a jury trial even if it is revealed that the vaccine maker engaged in criminal fraud and negligence in the manufacture of the vaccine."
In a November 15, 2005, letter to Senator Burr's staff director, Fisher describes S 1873 as "arguably unconstitutional" because it (1) lacks transparency into the research, development, licensure and post-licensure surveillance of vaccines and drugs used in public health emergencies; (2) lacks accountability for either manufacturers of these products or government health officials who mandate their use without informed consent; and (3) lacks justice for those who will inevitably die or suffer chronic illnesses after being compelled to take these products.
It is exactly this type of legislation that leads to civil disobedience and many times in the extreme form, Dr Boyd Haley, a well-known expert on heavy metal toxicity, told this author, I am very fearful of how certain segments of our society will respond to any mass vaccination program---especially if it does cause a problem like the thimerosal/autism situation, he said.
As it stands today, if the Bush administration and its puppets in Congress achieve their common goal of protecting pharma profits by shielding vaccine makers from lawsuits, tax payers will have to foot the bill for the life-long costs of caring for millions of injured children.
Tax payers are already funding their special education needs. In a January 14, 2005, letter to a Congressional Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), informed committee members that the number of children diagnosed with autism served under the IDEA has increased by more than 500% in the last decade and that "about 1.5 million Americans are currently living with some form of autism."
In a recent interview with Teri Small published in the journal, Medical Veritas 2 (2005), Dr Geier said that he believes that this may be the greatest iatrogenic epidemic in history. "The damage already done to our society is already in the trillions of dollars," he warns. "The damage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and that of the AIDS epidemic pale when compared to the current epidemic of autism," he told Veritas.
"All of us alive," Dr Geier says, "will have to bear its effects both in the lifetime care of the damaged children and the loss of what they otherwise might have contributed to our society."
