Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards responsible for the flu vaccine shortage?-Fiction!

Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards is the Attorney Responsible For Events that Lead Up to the 2004 Flu Vaccine ShortageFiction!

Summary of eRumor:

The story says that flu vaccine used to be made here in the United States, but the companies that made it were driven out because of lawsuits and high liability costs.
It says that the 2004 flu vaccine shortage was the result of sanitation problems at Chiron, the British Company making the vaccine. 
It further says that the whole liability mess that forced the American companies out of the flu vaccine business was from a lawsuit filed by a man over a flu shot…and that the attorney representing him was Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards.
 
 

The Truth:

The story about John Edwards is not true and was apparently fabricated.
There is no lawsuit that we can find from North Carolina involving a man who took action because of a flu shot and had John Edwards as his lawyer.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign office says the story is not true.

Chiron is not a British Company.
It is a U.S. company based in California.
It’s British factory (which it purchased a year earlier) was to have made almost half of the flu vaccine for the 2004 flu season, but lost its license to produce the vaccine when some batches were found to be contaminated with bacteria.

A later, and shorter, version of the story claims to be from a Paul Harvey “Rest of the Story” feature.
That is also false.



Updated 10/21/04