Vaccine manufacturers would have to waive indemnity from lawsuits for injuries stemming from vaccines under a bill advancing in the Iowa Senate.
Sen. Doug Campbell, R-Mason City, at a subcommittee hearing Monday moved to heavily amend Senate File 360, under which healthcare professionals would have faced a simple misdemeanor and $500 fine for administering gene-based vaccines.
Campbell’s amendment eliminates much of the original language and reflects a similar House bill focused on removing indemnity for manufacturers. The text of the amendment wasn’t yet available, but the bill was advanced with the planned amendment to the full Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
In its original form, the bill targeted the administration of any gene-based vaccine developed using “messenger ribonucleic acid technology, modified messenger ribonucleic acid technology, self-amplifying messenger ribonucleic acid technology, or deoxyribonucleic acid technology.”
COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna are both mRNA vaccines, which teach the body to recognize and fight off the virus but do not contain the virus itself. They are based on RNA technology that dates back to the 1960s.
Not all COVID-19 vaccines are mRNA vaccines. Novavax has a protein-based vaccine to protect against the virus and is the only non-mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 available in the U.S.
Removing indemnity for manufacturers would bring ‘due process,’ senator says
The House’s proposal, House File 712, bars a vaccine from being distributed, sold or administered in Iowa unless the vaccine manufacturer waives “immunity from suit for an injury arising from a design defect of the vaccine, including the immunity granted by the federal National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.”
Campbell told reporters that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a U.S. government program that gathers reports of side effects potentially caused by vaccines, “gets in the way of due process” for people who report possible vaccine-related injuries.
There is a process — separate from VAERS — to be compensated for potential vaccine-related injuries. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program allows anyone who believes they were injured from a vaccine to file a petition with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
This program was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits faced by vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Debate on vaccine restrictions comes amid federal push to review vaccines
Some states are pushing restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines as President Donald Trump’s new “Make America Healthy Again” commission reviews certain vaccines for ties to chronic illnesses, including those using mRNA technology.
USA Today has fact checked claims about health risks of COVID-19 vaccines and found that there is no evidence DNA fragments in COVID-19 vaccines pose any risk, according to the Food and Drug Administration and multiple medical experts.
Experts say the leftover material does not cause cancer, lacks a way to get into a cell’s nucleus to change it and is found in too small of a quantity to alter a cell’s DNA. Rather, it’s a byproduct of the manufacturing process.
But several speakers in favor of the original bill argued the vaccine warranted further study and should be pulled off the market in Iowa while researchers understand its potential health effects, particularly Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle linked in rare cases to COVID-19 vaccines.
Sen. Dennis Guth, R-Klemme, read an email from an Algona resident who he said reported having a vaccine injury.
“The one thing that disappoints me the most today has been the medical field’s denial of the facts that are out there and not being able to say we need to work with this, we need to compromise, we need to make some accommodations for some of this,” Guth said. “But instead, I see them circling the wagons, and it just hurts your credibility even further.”
Sen. Molly Donahue, D-Cedar Rapids, said the bill in its original form was “trampling on the rights of people.” She recalled that in the early days of the pandemic, national news stories showed refrigerated trucks were used as makeshift morgues because so many people were dying of the virus.
“We have to make sure we are giving everything possible to whoever wants it,” Donahue said, as more than 1.2 million people have died from COVID-19. “This is a choice. You don’t want this vaccine, then don’t take it.”
Marissa Payne covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. Reach her by email at mjpayne@registermedia.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @marissajpayne.
