The Highwire with Del Bigtree - UTAH MOM SUES ASTRAZENECA IN MAJOR COVID VACCINE INJURY LAWSUIT

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

This week, ICAN lead counsel, Aaron Siri, Esq. filed a historic lawsuit on behalf of Utah mother, Brianne Dressen, a patient who participated in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial. The lawsuit states she was severely injured and is now suing the drug manufacturer in a lawsuit that is the first of its kind in the U.S.. Hear how the progressive neuropathy she developed from the drug trial has shattered her life, and the organization she launched to advocate for those like her.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Last week, we sort of did a victory dance on the fact that the conversation around vaccines and safety and the COVID vaccines obviously changed in New York Times article, Chris Cuomo, all of that. Well, just shortly after that show, one of our own, Aaron Sidre, the attorney for the informed consent action network that's done all the brilliant work for us, went on to Chris Cuomo with Brian Dresson, the head of React 19. She's bringing a brand new lawsuit against AstraZeneca. And this is how that went on Cuomo. 42-year-old teacher and mom from Utah, Brianne Dresson, said she wanted to do her part for science when COVID broke out. That was the messaging. I often echoed it. It will help you not get sick.

It will help you not get other people sick. So she volunteered in 2020 to take part in British-based AstraZeneca's clinical trial. for their vaccine. Remember, she's not just like the rest of us who just did what she was told to do. She did it voluntarily to make sure others could. Now she's suing the drug manufacturer. First lawsuit of its kind in the United States claiming she became permanently disabled after one shot of the vaccine.

Dresson's lawsuit says she developed a severe neurological condition called post-vaccine neuropathy. Her life went from being the picture of health to a shadow of her former self. I want to bring in Brienne right now. right now and her lawyer, Aaron Siri, because I have a question for him. Is Brienne at all compromised in her ability to go after AstraZeneca because she volunteered for a clinical trial as opposed to just being someone

like me or you who got it when it was made available to the public and we were told to take it? Now, I don't think that compromises her at all. I think she's subject to the same restrictions on bringing lawsuits for the most part that you, Chris, or anybody else, else that was injured from a COVID vaccine. And that's the PEP Act.

That's the federal government explicitly giving the vaccine manufacturers immunity for any injury that occurred from the COVID vaccine. And they didn't just do it, by the way, after the vaccine came out. They free gave the immunity. They gave that immunity to them before they even developed the vaccine and did so contractually as well as doing so by law. Brianne, you look great. So explain to the audience.

you actually dealing with and how has life changed for you so much that you feel you need to litigate this? Well, you know, the easiest way to explain this is that it's an invisible illness. I mean, we all look fine, right? We're not in a wheelchair. You still have hair. You know, we can still smile and communicate sometimes clearly. But the reality is, is I am in pain every second of every day. Unfortunately, I have a severe progressive neuropathy that will continue to progress until my life is done. It's something that is a very sharp, tingling, electrical sensation, and it courses through my body 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But in addition to that, I have the tenetist like Sean does. I have the food sensitivities.

I'm completely dependent on other people. In my home, at the time, I had a six- and an eight-year-old kid, and their lives, you know, our lives revolved around them. Mom took care of everything for them. But now, unfortunately, everything revolves around mom. They have to figure out if mom can help them that day with their homework. If mom can make them breakfast, if mom's going to be able to get out of bed, Is mom going to be able to take them to school?

These are all very simple tasks that people take for granted. But when your health is robbed from you, you know, those things are now things that you have to prioritize from one day to the next depending on how your body is doing. When you reported this set of events to the company, what was the response? Silence. It's that simple. It was silence.

I thought that they were going to be there to help me in my contract. They stated it explicitly that they will be there to help me financially as well as medically. And they did neither. It's as if they couldn't get away from me fast enough after I reported my injury. I'm nothing more than a number to them, to be totally honest. Brian, we are here for the duration, and I wish you the best with your family. Counsel, we're always a call away for any developments that you believe are instructive of the process, okay? Thank you for that, and I can assure you, we've got 40 folks here at the firm who pretty much only do vaccine work.

We've got, I think, the largest vaccine practice that in the world that doesn't represent pharmaceutical companies and we're not letting this go. Well, look, Brian, you went to the right place. There's no question about that. Well, it's my honor to be joined now by Aaron Ciroxie. who's also an attorney for our nonprofit, full disclosure, and Breanne Dresson. Thank you both for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Yeah. You know, Breanne, let me just start with you to begin with because we've been following your story really from the beginning.

You've been on the high wire several times. You started React 19, which is one of the most powerful organizations, you know, strictly focused on COVID vaccine injury, which is just doing incredible work. But why this step? Why have you decided now to seek a lawsuit against AstraZeneca? Look, the reality is I didn't want to do this. We gave these guys every possible chance

to make this right. From the beginning, I was literally calling them with tears running down my face, begging them for help, and I got nothing. It's been an incredibly frustrating three and a half years and my condition is not getting better. And the drug company is going to do everything they can to not be held accountable in any way, shape, or form. And that's really why I've been incredibly blessed that I can and Aaron Siri have taken this case on and found the loopholes necessary, the pathway forward necessary,

to be able to see this through to get these guys essentially to force them to do the right thing. It's unfortunate that they have to be forced to do what all of us see as common sense, you know. Yeah. Aaron, you know, we've discussed this many times the vaccine court system, the 1986 vaccine injury compensation program is a disaster. People spend, you know, sometimes over a decade in that court system only to come up short. Lawyers don't want to go near it. It doesn't pay out.

In this case, we're talking about a little bit of a different protection. This is the PEP Act. Is there, you know, for you as an attorney that deals with vaccine injury, and as Bree said, is there a loophole? Is there something that sets either the PEP Act or Baxter? Bree's particular story being that she was in the clinical trials and not just a regular person taking it after it had an emergency use authorization. What is it that has you inspired to even think you have a chance on this case? Yeah, absolutely. This case is different. You're right. Normally,

the vaccine manufacturers have immunity to various degrees under the 86 Act or the Prep Act. But here, when Brie participated in this file, she signed an agreement. And in that agreement, it had all kinds of promises that they were made to her with how they would pay for things, what they would do, how they would treat her. And so it's on that basis that makes this case unique. It really should be that anybody injured by a vaccine should be able to see the manufacturer, you know, that we've talked about that a million times. huge part of the work I do for, and our firm does for I can every single day, is if the pharmacy would come as could be held accountable, they wouldn't engage in this conduct. It's precisely, precisely because they believe they, and they know for the most part, they can get

away with misconduct in this arena, with vaccines, not with drugs, not with medical devices in large part, not with other products, but with vaccines that they engage in this type of unbelievable behavioral and Brie is bearing the brunt of that. I think they're treating her in many ways the way they treat most folks who claim an injury from vaccines. They just feel they can ignore it. But in this case, they can't. I mean, as you're pointing out, you know, most people go in to get their vaccines. They might sign some little dot, but they're not looking through pages and pages of a release and an agreement between the company. There's risks. We're going to be watching you, monitoring you. I'm assuming is a point.

part of this entire process. And, you know, I think the world assumes that when you're in that process that you are being taken care of, that every complaint, concern, any rash, a headache, all of it is what they're supposed to be studying. And you're saying, Bree, that they absolutely ignore, ignored your, you know, complaints. How soon after the vaccine did you start having symptoms? Within an hour. Within an hour. And the same alien sensations that started within an hour still plague me every minute of every day. To this day. It's the first thing that greets me in the morning, and it's the last thing I feel before I'm not off to sleep with a whole bunch of meds to turn it off.

Can I, I want to ask a little bit more of, I suppose, a personal question, Brian, because you have been in this fight. You've stood with so many. You have held people as they've cried on your shoulder that aren't being listened to. And at the heart of this, it's mainstream media that could have changed this immediately. We're going to talk about it all day on the show today. At any point a journalist could have done what we were doing here at the Highwire, which is saying, look, we're seeing stories of injury. We see them admitting that they can't say whether it stops infection or not, all of these things.

And it was people like Chris Cuomo literally shaming anybody. that pointed out they thought that this vaccine was rushed under the market, that they didn't feel comfortable with the science around it. Some of them meet with a science background. So to watch someone that, you know, in Chris Cuomo that actually I think is partially responsible for propagandizing this process and not giving people like you a voice while it was happening, what was it like to sort of return into perhaps like a lion's den, if you will, to speak to Chris Cuomo. And by the way, I want to thank him for finally changing course. But was that

difficult for you? Yeah, I definitely, you know, it's a natural feeling to feel conflicted about that, right? You know, there's a long, pretty supercharged radioactive history there with his commentary in the past. Yeah. But like you just said, I mean, it's it's one of those things where he is now making very direct and strong commitments to address this issue now. And because of that, we, you know, we're going to take the gamble. We're going to take him for his word and we're going to see what he's made of. You know, he covered Sean Barkavage, who was in the New York Times article for his injury. And now he's covered this case.

And so hopefully this is just the beginning. But I will say with a word of caution, I can't. tell you how many times I have heard these types of lofty promises from mainstream reporters right I'm not going to back away from this you have an ally here and all it takes is a little bit of a little push from somewhere you know and then poof they're gone yeah I'm just waiting that Cuomo has that resolved to to power through that well I'm just waiting for the moment where mainstream media decides to call him an anti-vaccine conspiracy

theorist Nutter for covering this story at all. You know, Breanne, one of the things that we were doing this work, you know, before COVID came along. And, you know, people can sort of become numbers you're looking. We were talking to parents and their children that were just being brushed aside. These injuries aren't happening, you know, all of these things. And I remember Aaron and I, we were sitting and when they started rushing this vaccine warped speed and we saw this whole thing coming, I said this is going to be a different story because now we are going to have adults. It won't be kids. It won't be a parent trying to monitor and say, look, I just saw some visible changes that you can't see, but I can see as a parent. They just got written off in court. I said for the first

time, we're going to have healthy adults that are now going to be taking these products. And when they have an injury, they will be able to say, I was fine yesterday. I am not fine today. I have that evidence. Watching your piece, I mean, you are clearly incredibly athletic rock climbing, you know, skiing, mountain biking. It's just such a dramatic shift. I'm going to ask you a weird question. I mean, you're changing the world as we know it. Do you feel that you're part of something much bigger, even though it's got to be so incredibly difficult? I would like to think that we're making a difference. That's the whole reason why I'm doing what I'm doing, right?

I mean, there is nothing more that I want than to just be able to be healthy and be able to be a mom to my kids. But in lieu of that, I want to make sure that I am part of the solution, and I will do that with every moment I can with my help in the condition that it is to make sure that this doesn't happen to people again.

And I remember when I was very first sick, I was astonished at just how bad the corruption was and it took me months to finally accept that and grapple with how deep the corruption goes. And then what finally clicked with me was the realization that they had been doing this to kids for decades and just not even flinching about it. And when that reality set in, that's when I really understood just how corrupt the system is and how much of a fight and how much of an effort it's going to take to go against essentially Goliath to beat these guys.

Well, you are really courageous, Brian. And I've said it before, you know, people that are suffering the types of, you know, injuries that you're going through to also. spend your days and I know they're long days. I see you in meetings behind the scenes, you know, working out, trying to figure out how to get medical systems for people being injured, speaking to people all around the country and around the world. Your efforts are tireless in a body that I'm sure is very tired and I just, it's really commendable and I want you to know you really are making a difference here. And Aaron, I mean, we're in this moment now. This is something that we predicted we'd be here now as an attorney representing Brianne. But last week,

you know, I in many ways sort of danced around this stage with a victory lap that the conversation has finally changed. It was very simple. All we have ever been saying is vaccines injure some people. Vaccine injury is real. We need to recognize these people. We need to take care of these people. And we need to study these people to figure out a way to have a program that doesn't, you know, consider that it's okay to have this accepted casualty of innocent people and never fix the product, never investigate it. Now you have Chris Cuomo to his credit, say, you know, demanding a 9-11 type commission to investigate. Deborah Burks mirrored that on his show. I mean, one of the heads of the task force during the COVID pandemic. You have the New York Times, one of the biggest shills

there ever was for the pharmaceutical industry putting out an article, basically stating vaccine injury is real. A lot of people say, well, they're just cracking the door. Aaron, all we ever need was that door to crack this much. I mean, do you feel like this is that sort of sea change moment where this conversation will never be the same again? I think where I'm sitting today might help give an example of the sea change moment. I'm right now in the capital of New Hampshire in the middle of a five-hour. testimony that I've been asked here to give about COVID-19 vaccines and broadens into vaccines in general before a committee that is composed from members of the legislative house here from both

sides of the aisle. Wow. We're sitting and listening to the clinical trials, not just for COVID vaccines, but what they are for childhood vaccines, post-licensure state for COVID and all childhood vaccines, and so forth. So absolutely. I mean, five years ago, you would have said, yeah, you'll be sitting and asked to testify as an expert with regards to vaccines before members of the legislative body here in New Hampshire.

And I've done it, as you know, in Arizona. And I've been invited to do it. And I've done to South Carolina and I've across the country. You know, you and I might have had a good chuckle. But here we are. And it's incredible to watch these representatives to see their eyes broaden as they get the evidence put right in front of them. The evidence that nobody will tell them, nobody will put in front of them. nobody will put in front of them. And, you know, I'm not, I'm certainly not Chris Cuomo's lawyer. And I won't defend anybody who, you know, who support, supported mandates. But he was part of that, you know, majority of folks who had no clue.

He just thought safe and effective. Anybody who says anything about a vaccine is crazy. And, you know, I don't, you know, the folks who I take issue with in that regard are folks who really should know better, the scientists, the folks see the medical professionals, the technologists, they know better. They knew. They should have. if they didn't.

And, you know, and look, Bree went out and did the right thing as far as she knew. She thought, and she had no reason to think otherwise, you know, she went out and she did the right thing. She wanted to help society. And after she went and she did that, she turned back to the very same people who told her, please come, help, you know, these things are safe and effective, looking for help. I did the right thing. And there were nowhere to be found.

They all scattered, as Bree said, all around. and Brewer would be giving. I give her incredible credit. If I had the sensation of being electrocuted every moment of every single day, I don't know if I would have the fortitude to not only go out and fight, but put together an organization as she has React 19 with over 36,000 individuals who I understand are seriously injured just from COVID vaccine in the United States. That's just one group in the U.S. with over 36,000 seriously injured individuals of co-vaccine because And Brie, I understand, runs that organization, I think, with Joe Wascott. I don't know if you guys are co-leads, who was a orthopedic surgeon who was injured by a

Moderna vaccine. So, you know, she's a model to all of us that no matter what challenge your face, rise up, don't let it get you down. She's an inspiration to me in that regard, for sure. The irony, you know, Brie, is that you set out to do something for society. in that case you thought it was to help the vaccine move along. And instead, I think it may even be more important than that. You're drawing the eyes of the world onto a program that has been full of assumptions,

you know, and lies and deception. And so for that, you know, your prayers are, I think, being answered in some ways. And I want you to know that we are all praying that that journey that your health also can see resolution. I believe all things are possible. The human body is amazing. I know you have amazing doctors working to try and find answers, and once they find them for you, they will find them for millions and millions of people

that are suffering like you. But thank you for all the work you've done, for being the type of person that does things for others, that tries to make the world a better place. And sometimes that journey definitely doesn't take us where we're expecting to. How do we, can we, is there a way to support your case right now? or anything we can do.

I guess we got it right. Obviously, yeah, you can donate, react, and that supports the injured. You know, that supports people that need help with medical expenses, out-of-pocket medical expenses. It's all 100% volunteer, so every single dollar people donate goes into the medical fund.

But then also, you guys, I mean, if you want to support these lawsuits, there's nobody doing what ICANN is doing. We've worked with you guys for years, And I can tell you, Aaron Siri is the one that is making history right now. And he is the one who is pushing with all he can and his entire army of lawyers who are the best in the best in the world, to be honest, to provide some kind of pathway forward for consumer protections to be restored.

And that's something that is far more powerful than what any one of us are doing. And so for that, you know, I can't tell you guys enough. Thank you for taking this case and thank you for always having the vaccine injured back. I have seen it for years behind the scenes, what you guys do for people. You never give people lofty promises. You tell it how it is. And unfortunately, that's exactly what we need. So, yeah, if people can donate to ICAN, they're going to be able to help everyone in this country make history.

Well, and back at you, everybody donate to React 19. It takes a team. There's not one group that can do everything and really taking care of those that are injured and the work that Bree and her group is doing is just so important. Erin, of course, as always, you know, I know you're going to go down in history as one of the great constitutional attorneys of all times in the moment where we needed our Constitution to thrive when it was under attack. a spectacular moment. It's incredible to know both of you and know that you're playing such

an brilliant and important role right now in America for this country and for this beacon of light of liberty and freedom that we need to represent to the world right now. So keep up the good work. Get back to the hearing. My understanding is it's all being taped, so I'm sure we are going to do an episode of everything that was laid down in New Hampshire at this incredible symposium. Poise him an event, but keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing the progress on this very important case. Thank you, Doctor. All right, see you soon.