Develop a vaccine against official secrecy

An editorial from the Roanoke Times, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005

Develop a vaccine against official secrecy -- Senators should not grant immunity to a biomedical countermeasures agency.

Even as President Bush last week unveiled his plans to protect the nation from deadly disease outbreaks such as an avian flu pandemic, a quintet of senators, including Majority Leader Bill First, were rushing forward with their own plans.

They have introduced some ideas worth discussing, but apparently could not resist the penchant too prevalent among Washington leaders today for secrecy and capitulation to corporate donors at the expense of civil protections.

The creation of a Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency is at the heart of the senators' proposal to prepare the nation for the threat du jour. BARDA would oversee research into countermeasures against menaces such as epidemics and biological attacks by terrorists.

At first blush, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health would seem already able to accomplish that, but a single agency to coordinate specialized research in the public and private sectors is worth considering. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), most well known for creating the Internet, has had tremendous success in a similar role.

The biomedical agency, however, would go beyond its defense cousin, entering new government waters shrouded in fog.

The public can scrutinize DARPA -- and every other federal agency -- through the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The senators backing BARDA would exempt the agency from those important public oversight laws.

Even the CIA is subject to public information requests. Allowing judicial review of classified information ensures national security without completely restricting public access to most government records. A blanket exemption for BARDA would sanction an unacceptable extreme in government secrecy.

The bill goes even further to undermine the public good by handing a blanket exemption from liability lawsuits to pharmaceutical companies engaged in biomedical security research. If a company working under BARDA were to injure or kill people through reckless testing or distribution of a vaccine, the injured parties would have no recourse to seek just compensation through the courts.

Without the threat of litigation, little would stand in the way of drug companies' ramping up production of unproven products to turn a profit at the expense of public safety.

The United States must prepare for biological threats but not by throwing away fundamental rights and protections. The paternalistic approach to governance that asks Americans not to worry about what officials and drug companies are up to only contributes to increasing public frustration and distrust of government.

Mold and slime grow in the shadows where there is no accountability. The Senate should keep biomedical research in the light.