Oppose 21st Century Cures

For many months now, we’ve been monitoring the progress of the 21st Century Cures bill. This legislation is intended to bring medicine into the 21st century, but as we’ve noted before, it does the opposite. Rather than looking forward, this bill simply doubles down on conventional approaches that have been in place for decades.

21st Century Cures passed the House last year. The Senate has broken up the bill into over a dozen separate pieces, which could be considered any day now.

One extremely worrisome provision seems to put structures in place for amending the current vaccine schedule and including more vaccinations for pregnant mothers. Senate bill S. 2742 (the “Promoting Biomedical Research and Public Health for Patients Act”) contains the following language:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, for purposes of this subtitle, both a woman who received a covered vaccine while pregnant and any child who was in utero at the time such woman received the vaccine shall be considered persons to whom the covered vaccine was administered and persons who received the covered vaccine."
 
This may have been written for liability reasons. Perhaps Big Pharma is concerned that the child would be eligible to sue for damages, unlike anyone vaccinated after birth. Perhaps the thinking is that doctors tend to have more control over mothers before birth, so why not force vaccines on them then, rather than after birth?

Then again, this provision may be intended simply to increase vaccinations given to pregnant mothers. If a developing child is considered a “person” eligible to receive vaccinations, the vaccine industry could begin to develop more vaccines intended specifically for children in utero.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already recommend that pregnant mothers get whooping cough, flu, and hepatitis B vaccines. Good questions remain about whether this is necessary or useful. Some scientific studies have shown virtually no benefit to the maternal flu vaccine, and of course flu vaccines contain mercury. Injecting a mother with mercury, much less a baby in utero, seems totally reckless to us.

Write to your representatives and senators and ask them to oppose 21st Century Cures legislation.