THURSDAY
NOVEMBER 29
2001

Political war profiteering

© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

And so it came to pass, in the fall of 2001, that the federal government, having taken unto itself great new powers to fight terrorists, turned its attention to the rest of us.

Specifically, a proposed emergency health powers law that would give state governors, among other things, authority to compel mass vaccination; to ration medical care; to confiscate and operate private medical facilities; and to seize and destroy private property.

Whence cometh this potential new power grab? From the lawyers, the academics and the "experts," naturally. The Center for Law and the Public's Health at Johns Hopkins & Georgetown Universities published this proposed "Model State Emergency Health Powers Act." The law would give the governor of a state the authority to declare an emergency in the face of "health threats" and would endow state officials with blanket powers to control citizens and their property in order to control the threat of disease.

The Center is funded (not so surprisingly) by the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lawrence O. Gostin, an attorney, is director of the Center. The proposed law has been distributed to all 50 state governments.

Under this proposal, a governor could declare a "state of public health emergency" without even consulting public health officials. Once the determination was made, state officials would possess wide latitude to confiscate and destroy property as well as force immunization on everybody.

The fundamental premise of the proposed law, according to the Oct. 23 draft, is that "the government's foremost responsibility is to protect the health, safety and well being of its citizens."

We most emphatically demur. This type of legislation is abhorrent – medically, morally and constitutionally. According to our Declaration of Independence, "Governments are instituted among Men" to secure "certain unalienable Rights" and that "among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Securing a person's rights is the foremost government responsibility – not protecting citizens. Public safety is a precondition for the exercise of rights, not an end in itself.

The proposed law also demonstrates an appalling ignorance (or maybe a shrewd awareness) of how governments actually operate. In Washington state, for example, the threshold for government declaration of "emergency" is very low. Several years ago, in order to avoid the possibility of political accountability in a public vote, the governor declared financing of a sports stadium to be such an "emergency." In CLEAN vs. State of Washington, the Washington State Supreme Court "upheld the Legislature's use of an emergency clause in the law passed to provide public financing for the new Mariners' stadium in Seattle" according to Citizens for Leaders with Ethics and Accountability Now!

Very roughly paraphrased, the court told Washington state citizens something like "So, you think you've got a problem with the governor? Well, you're right; you do have a problem with the governor. His job is to implement the laws written and defined by the legislature. The governor and legislature said there was an emergency. Who are you to say otherwise?"

And "threat" is an even squishier word than "emergency." Some of the provisions in the model law have 30- and 60-day limitations. But governments have been known to play endless "clocking" games with such limitations. There's also nothing to keep the governor from declaring rolling threats, one after another, if he or she so desires.

Under the proposed law (Section 402), state officials would also have the power to do what the federal government has been trying to do for half a century: take over medicine. Compulsory vaccination is, of course, no new thing. Seizure of medical (and other) facilities in the face of "potential" emergencies is. We doubt that most public health or other government officials would run a hospital procured "by condemnation" under this law any better than the previous owners. In fact, we suspect the opposite. Seizure would cause enormous disruption in the routine activities that are also necessary to protect public health. New administrators and outside "experts," probably ignorant of local conditions and needs, would trash the system.

We believe that additional state power is unnecessary. Existing state powers are more than adequate, although we do recommend that all states review their present laws. If faced with unprecedented circumstances, we're confident that state governments will act with unprecedented swiftness. In addition, government officials throughout the ages have bent the law in response to unprecedented circumstances. We're not against a little creative interpretation, should a compelling need arise. What we are against is this "stockpiling" of excessive law and regulation. In government, nothing's quite so permanent as "temporary emergency measures." And once on the books, few governments will wait for the "emergency" to start using their new powers.

In sum, governments, like doctors, should "First, do no harm." And governments, like doctors, should avoid overtreating.

Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., of Newport Beach, Calif., writes extensively on medical, legal, disability and mental health reform. Robert J. Cihak, M.D., of Aberdeen, Wash., is the immediate past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Both doctors are Harvard trained diagnostic radiologists. Collaborating as The Medicine Men, they write a weekly column for WorldNetDaily as well as numerous articles and editorials for newspapers, newsletters, magazines and journals nationally and internationally.

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