WASHINGTON, May 4 (UPI) -- The Senate voted Wednesday to add $289 million to establish a compensation fund for victims of experimental vaccines.
The vaccines and other experimental products are being designed to combat possible pandemics such as avian flu.
The 53-46 vote was another setback for fiscal conservatives on a still-growing $109 billion fiscal 2006 emergency supplemental spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, CongressDaily reported Wednesday. President George W. Bush has threatened to veto the measure if it emerges from a House-Senate conference greater than $94.5 billion, it said.
Both the Bush request and the Senate bill propose $2.3 billion for avian flu countermeasures, on top of $3.8 billion included in the fiscal 2006 Defense spending bill to begin implementing Bush's pandemic flu preparedness plan.
Last year's Defense bill also contained liability protections for pharmaceutical manufacturers developing vaccines to combat the deadly flu virus, at the behest of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., after the conference report had been signed.
Frist and Hastert argued the liability protections were needed to spur development of anti-viral drugs. But critics were rebuffed in their efforts to establish a compensation program for victims of experimental drugs gone awry, CongressDaily said.
Arguing victims have no redress while drug companies are protected from lawsuits, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., swayed 11 Republicans to back his amendment.
The one area where the administration acted quickly, Kennedy said, was in backing Frist's liability protection amendment to the Defense bill.
"This lopsided provision gave drug companies a free pass to ignore even basic safety standards but denied nurses, doctors, firefighters and other first responders compensation if they were injured by faulty vaccines," he said.
