By Calvin Freiburger – Life Site
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona introduced a bill Thursday that would end pharmaceutical companies’ shield against liability for any potential harmful effects of the vaccines they manufacture.
H.R. 9828, the End the Vaccine Carveout Act, would allow individuals to “bring a civil action against a vaccine administrator or manufacturer in a State or Federal court for damages arising from such injury or death,” according to an advance copy of the text provided to LifeSiteNews.
This would eliminate the general immunity vaccine manufacturers enjoy under the federal National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which instead establishes a compensation program for victims. Gosar’s bill allows for civil actions to be pursued regardless of whether a victim has filed a petition with the program, although ultimately receiving an award from one would invalidate a petition to the other.
“Government bureaucrats and scientists responsible for approving vaccines are in bed with Big Pharma, often owning pharmaceutical stocks, serving as consultants and receiving lucrative contracts from pharmaceutical companies that pressure them to produce favorable results which is in direct violation of federal law,” Gosar said in a press release. “Big Pharma doesn’t deserve a get-out-of-jail-free card for injuries caused by their harmful vaccines.”
The question of vaccine safety has become more mainstream in recent years due to the controversy surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.
A large body of evidence identifies significant risks to the COVID vaccines. Among it, the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 37,910 deaths, 217,931 hospitalizations, 21,917 heart attacks, and 28,602 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of September 6, among other ailments. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published February in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, and offered several theories for a causal link.
In Florida, an ongoing grand jury investigation into the vaccines’ manufacturers is slated to release a highly anticipated report on the shots, and a lawsuit by the state of Kansas has been filed accusing Pfizer of misrepresentation for calling the shots “safe and effective.”
Yet so far, Big Pharma has largely escaped accountability thanks to both the aforementioned 1986 law and the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act of 2005.
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the PREP Act empowers the federal government to “limit legal liability for losses relating to the administration of medical countermeasures such as diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines.” Near the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, the Trump administration invoked the Act in declaring the virus a “public health emergency.”
Under this “sweeping” immunity, CRS explained, the federal government, state governments, “manufacturers and distributors of covered countermeasures,” and licensed or otherwise-authorized health professionals distributing those countermeasures are shielded from “all claims of loss” stemming from those countermeasures, with the exception of “death or serious physical injury” brought about through “willful misconduct,” a standard that, among other hurdles, requires the offender to have acted “intentionally to achieve a wrongful purpose.”
Many hope that by going after Big Pharma for misrepresentations surrounding their products rather than the products themselves, efforts like the Kansas suit can circumvent that hurdle to impose consequences on those responsible for the shots.