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A New York appeals court has ruled that if the US Federal government declares a “public health emergency” per the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREPA) then it does not have to obey state laws. Additionally, the parties who helped it forcibly provide “medical care” to those in the declared emergency area are also not liable for their actions and consequent adverse outcomes.

Quoted from Mom Loses Suit Over Daughter’s H1N1 Vaccine:

The Appellate Division concluded on Nov. 21 that PREP pre-empts state law claims. PREP contains an express pre-emption clause stating that, during a declared public health emergency, “no state … may establish, enforce or continue in effect with respect to a covered countermeasure any provision of law or legal requirement that (A) is different from, or is in conflict with, any requirement applicable under this section; and (B) related to the … use, … dispensing or administration by qualified persons of the covered countermeasure,” Peters wrote.

PREPA: Bad Law Inspired by 9/11

PREPA was passed in December 2005 during the second Bush Administration when it was signed by President George W. Bush. Like so many broken laws passed in the wake of 9/11, it does not appear there is any legal criteria that might counterbalance the potential for harm. In particular, there is no description in the law for what is required to authorize declaring a public health emergency. There is no provision for considering or evaluating dissenting views by those outside the government, either.

Quoted from Pandemic funding, liability shield clear Congress:

But Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and some other Democrats, along with consumer groups such as Public Citizen, derided the liability provision as a giveaway to the drug industry. Kennedy said the bill makes it “essentially impossible” for injured parties to sue for damages. He also argued that the measure allows the HHS secretary to use many common diseases as a reason to activate the liability shield.

“Without a real compensation program, the liability protection in the defense bill provides a Christmas present to the drug industry and bag of coal to everyday Americans,” stated a Dec 21 news release issued by Kennedy and Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

The liability protection language, called the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, was tacked onto the end of the huge defense-spending bill (H.R. 2863).

It gives the HHS secretary authority to trigger the liability protection by declaring an emergency if he or she determines that a disease or other health threat represents an emergency or may constitute an emergency in the future. The act does not list any criteria for determining the existence of an emergency. The declaration would have to list the diseases, populations, and geographic areas covered and when the emergency would end.

Such an emergency declaration is not subject to court review, and it preempts any conflicting laws or regulations of states or local communities, the act says.

Senator Edward Kennedy warned that the law would allow the government to protect pharmaceutical companies from liability from faulty or misused products that are used for even epidemics that most people would not consider worth risking their lives to treat.

Quoted from Pandemic funding, liability shield clear Congress:

In arguing that the liability shield is too broad, Kennedy said in his news release, “The Bush administration could identify Vioxx as a needed countermeasure to treat the arthritis epidemic or to treat pain associated with flu, and completely immunize Merck [the manufacturer] from lawsuits currently pending against it.”

Vioxx is a painkiller drug that was approved by the FDA that killed an estimated 60,000 people out of the 80 million prescribed the drug in just five years. That is a mortality rate approaching 0.1% on a drug that was run through the FDA’s supposedly “strict” approval processes and administered mostly to people whose lives were not in any immediate jeopardy. Merck, the company that profited from it, hid the dangers of the drug from doctors and patients for that whole time.

Kennedy isn’t the only skeptic. A 2007 article in the Journal of Health Law points out that the government has made it even more unlikely anybody will get compensation for wrongful death or injury because they failed to fund the PREPA compensation fund:

Quoted from Notes and comments “High and dry?” The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act and liability protection for pharmaceutical manufacturers.:

As part of PREPA, the government established a compensatory system intended to provide compensation to persons injured by countermeasures used during a public health emergency. Although the Act provides for a compensation fund, it fails to allocate monies for that fund. Thus, in the absence of further congressional action, PREPA will not provide compensation to those injured by countermeasures. Failing to assure the American public of a compensation program constitutes bad public policy and risks inspiring potential vaccinees to refuse necessary drugs.

The author fails to state there are less expensive ways under post-9/11 law to “reassure” the public that they must obey their government masters. When faced with a government agent wearing a full-body environmental suit who is pointing an automatic weapon in your direction as you are told by similarly clad government health official that there is a lethal viral outbreak and the vaccine is mandated by law, what would you do?

Justifying A “Public Health Emergency”

The court’s interpretation might mean that the Federal government could declare a public health emergency, even on questionable grounds, and then use to forcibly subject many people to risky medical treatment. Because the court has ruled the government does not need to obtain consent, it is easy to believe that this could lead government officials to force anybody they find in the emergency zone to be treated.

For example, they could declare a “health emergency” over a purported outbreak of a pathogen that has high lethality (e.g., weaponized anthrax bacteria or Ebola virus) and then use this to authorize injecting the population without informed consent with a drug or vaccine that is unproven or has high rates of dangerous side effects or mortality itself.

In case they think the public might not buy the PREPA excuse on its own, they may offer the reason that “time is of the essence” for denying the right to informed consent.

In 2012, Canadian scientists reported that Ebola can be transmitted between species by airborne spread over limited distances. Given the roughly 70% or higher mortality rate of the most virulent strains of Ebola, it is enough to scare anybody.

They could also use the limitations of available treatment as a rationale for forcible administration. For example, news reports in 2010 spoke of an Ebola vaccine that only worked if it was administered within 30 minutes of infection. It is easy to imagine other treatments that might have bigger therapeutic windows of a few days or weeks, thus allowing time for the government to forcibly administer treatment to many thousands of people in the declared emergency zone.

When the treatment produces hundreds or thousands of deaths, the government would be sure to assert the deaths from their medicine killing 1% of 100,000 people is better than the 70% lethality from the infection itself.

PREPA’s Potential Use As Weapon Of Mass Destruction

PREPA and the New York appeals court decision have handed the US Federal government a tool that it can use for evil in many ways.

Possible uses of PREPA include rapid mass testing of vaccines and medications for “safety” as well as even more outrageous uses including intentional mass murder.

False and misleading claims of infectious disease outbreaks could become a new way to rapidly safety test drugs of interest to the government or to act against selected localities or populations under the pretense of a medical emergency. Even though PREPA allows suit for malicious actions, it is unlikely anybody but the very government committing such actions could prove they were malicious. Few, if any, organizations outside Federal and possibly some larger state governments have both the expertise in certain rare and highly lethal infectious diseases along with the personnel and equipment to attempt to scope out an outbreak and identify how it got started.

The US Federal government can use PREPA as a weapon to engage in harassment and even mass murder against populations they dislike. For instance, they could “discover” a person infected with Ebola virus in an urban area with a high population of Muslims and poor (think Detroit) and claim they suspect it was accidentally released by terrorists in the area who are preparing to use it. They could then declare a public health emergency and forcibly inoculate the entire community with a new unproven Ebola vaccine they would like to test, claiming they are doing it to protect the population.

Along the way, you’d be almost sure to see door-to-door searches by armed government agents wearing NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) gas masks and other protective gear as they blatantly violate the Fourth Amendment.

If few die, then the government knows the vaccine might be “safe” but still does not know if it was effective.

If they manage to kill 5% of the population of the area with their forcibly administered unproven vaccine, the families of the dead would have no recourse but to appeal to the good will of the very government that murdered their loved ones. But as Senator Kennedy warned, they would have virtually no chance of winning any liability claim.

Either way, government leaders will of course declare the operation a “success”. They will then use the incident to further scare Americans into giving up their rights because of “dangerous Muslim terrorists” lurking in every American city.

With mindless sheep being the majority of an American population that continues to vote for mass murderers as President under their false pretenses of a “war on terror”, the deluded masses would likely view spectacles of thousands of dead Muslims and poor that might result from such a scenario and give up even more of their rights in exchange for “safety.”

Further Reading

Notes and comments “High and dry?” The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act and liability protection for pharmaceutical manufacturers.

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