Did you know that if you or a loved one is injured or killed by a pharmaceutical drug, you may have no legal recourse, if the pharmaceutical company responsible is covered by a Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) declaration?
The liability waivers are supposed to be for medical countermeasures used in public health emergencies, but the COVID PREP Act declaration was amended in 2021 to cover seasonal flu vaccines, as well–even when they’re given without consent. Read the fine print and you’ll see that these PREP Act declarations could also be construed to protect the pharmaceutical companies for drugs like Neupogen that can be used in emergencies, but are also prescribed routinely. Neupogen is covered for use in nuclear disasters, but is also given to cancer patients–and also to women to prevent miscarriages! Neupogen is a risky drug that can even be deadly, but if anything goes wrong, people injured by Neupogen could have their cases thrown out of court.
Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has the power to revoke the current PREP Act declarations. The one for COVID and seasonal flu is in effect until 2029. There are also PREP Act declarations for monkeypox until 2032, for hemorrhagic fevers until 2028, and for pandemic flu, nerve agents, Zika, anthrax, radiation, and botulism until 2027.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Sec. Kennedy to Restore Our Right to Sue Big Pharma!
The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act was unpopular when it was introduced and remains just as disliked today. It contradicts our sense of justice and is unconstitutional, yet we are bound by it until ongoing lawsuits challenging it progress through the courts. However, there is a solution—Secretary Kennedy could use his authority to revoke the current PREP Act declarations that limit our ability to hold corporations accountable.
The sole exception is “willful misconduct,” which is defined as acting “deliberately to achieve an unlawful purpose, knowingly without legal or factual justification, and with disregard for a known or obvious risk so severe that harm is almost certain to outweigh any potential benefit.” The law established such an extremely high threshold that no circumstances could ever satisfy this burden of proof. Additionally, it prohibited any court from reviewing the Secretary’s decisions granting pharmaceutical companies these liability waivers.
Urge Sec. Kennedy to revoke the PREP Act declarations that grant pharmaceutical companies immunity from lawsuits, restoring our right to hold them accountable for deaths and injuries caused by their products.
Sign the Petition
PETITION
I urge Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to revoke all the current PREP Act declarations.
The right to seek legal recourse in the event of a death or injury caused by the fault of another is fundamental to the American justice system.
This right was severely abridged by the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act), which gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to grant blanket liability waivers to the pharmaceutical industry. The only exception is when companies engage in “willful misconduct,” which the PREP Act defines as acting “intentionally to achieve a wrongful purpose; knowingly without legal or factual justification; and in disregard of a known or obvious risk that is so great as to make it highly probable that the harm will outweigh the benefit.”
HHS Secretary actions under the PREP Act are not reviewable by the courts. Unsurprisingly, this authority, which was meant to provide liability protections during public health emergencies, has been badly abused. The most obvious abuse is the repeated extension of prior PREP Act declarations from past emergencies–and emergencies that never materialized. The PREP Act liability waivers for smallpox and monkeypox are in effect until 2032, for COVID until 2029, for hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola, until 2028, and for pandemic flu, nerve agents, Zika, anthrax, radiation, and botulism until 2027.
The other common abuse of the Secretary’s PREP Act power is to extend the liability waivers for medical countermeasures from public health emergencies to routine medical care. The COVID PREP Act declaration was amended in 2021 to cover seasonal flu vaccines. The courts have recently held that the PREP Act liability protection applies, even when vaccines are given without consent. Another example is Neupogen, which is covered under a PREP Act declaration for nuclear disasters, but is also given to cancer patients–and to women to prevent miscarriages. Neupogen is a risky drug that is sometimes deadly, but loved ones of people killed by Neupogen could be deprived of their opportunity to seek justice due to the PREP Act declaration, which contains language that could be construed to protect pharmaceutical companies outside of public health emergencies.
The PREP Act should be repealed or declared unconstitutional, but until that happens, Secretary Kennedy should revoke all the current PREP Act declarations–and do so retroactively. This would give victims of the pharmaceutical companies their day in court, while setting up constitutional challenges to the PREP Act provision blocking judicial review of HHS Secretary actions.