THE HAZELHURST CASE: AUTISM OMNIBUS PROCEEDING TEST CASE 2

By Kent Heckenlively, Esq. and Legal Editor

Mom worked as a representative for a pharmaceutical company for more than ten years.  Dad is an attorney.  Grandpa was a gastro-enterologist, who when his grandson Yates began to exhibit signs of digestive problems was able to get him seen by one of the top gastro-enterologists in the country, Dr. Tim Buie of Harvard University.

These are the people who, according to lead government attorney Vincent Matanoski, were taken in by Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s malevolent scientific fraud in which he intended to panic the world in order to create a market for the measles-only virus in which he had a patent.

Which group made a better argument?

As far as presenting a compelling account of their child’s, the Hazlehursts did an outstanding job.  Over the years of their son’s affliction, Rolf was relentless in documenting his condition.  In a story related to me by Angela Hazlehurst, she said that one night when Yates was up in the middle of the night screaming, Rolf was calmly video-taping.  When she asked her husband why he was filming such a horrible scene he relied, “Because someday we’ll need it.” 

The evidence of the severity of Yates’ autism, as well as the timing of the onset of symptoms was overwhelming.  The testimony of other family members who lived no more than five minutes away on this point was also immensely helpful.

In my article on the testimony of Dr. Jean-Ronel Corbier I referred to him as “Young Dr. Wonderful.”  Apparently, he also had a similar impression on the court.  Dr. Corbier was initially reluctant to testify as he’d recently moved his practice and was busy settling in.  His report, however, made the court extremely interested in hearing from him, and as a result the entire four-day proceeding was moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to have the benefit of his testimony.  According to Rolf Hazlehurst who was in the courtroom, he’d always known Dr. Corbier was smart, but to hear him testify for four hours, with everybody in the court hanging on his every word was remarkable.

In contrast, I don’t think Dr. Rust made as favorable impression for the government.  He didn’t think that there could be any possible clinical significance if a child developed an acute encephalopathy nine days after an MMR shot, which was later followed by regressive autism. 

He conceded that many of his patients were on pancreatic enzymes, but claimed too much was made of the gastro-intestinal complaints of autistic children.  Given the abundant testimony in both the Cedillo case and Hazlehurst I thought it painted Dr. Rust as at best uninterested in parent observations, and at worst, willfully blind.

Although in his direct testimony Dr. Rust claimed to be open to environmental factors, in re-cross examination he stated he was 99% certain that environmental factors played no part in autism.  However, he couldn’t pinpoint any gene or set of genes as causing autism.
In what I thought was his most blatant example of lack of curiosity, Dr. Rust declined an offer from the Special Master to detail his disagreement with any of the numerous articles submitted by Dr. Corbier.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the case, Dr. McCusker actually presented a better picture for the defense of a concerned physician.  She admitted that Yates’ five thrush infections warranted raising the question of immune system abnormalities.  In addition, she conceded that there might be a subset of children who don’t deal as well with viral infections, and that these abnormalities could go undetected on standard immunological work-ups.

Although Dr. MacDonald boasts a formidable academic background, he came across as amazingly uninterested in what might be causing autism.  Like Dr. Rust he didn’t attach any significance to the gastro-intestinal complaints of autistic children and actually had to retract his claim that practitioners found lymphoid nodular hyperplasia to be of no significance.  Even doctors cited by Dr. MacDonald in his own report pointed to a finding of lymphoid nodular hyperplasia in the gut to be a significant indicator of gastro-intestinal problems and a target of treatment.

In trying to understand this case I think it’s important to highlight those areas of interest where further investigation is warranted and how each side responds to these issues.

First, Dr. MacDonald doesn’t believe it’s ethical to do a colonoscopy on autistic children, given their complaints.  He doesn’t believe it’s ethical to do the same procedure on healthy children to discover what the gut of a typically developing child looks like.  As a result he says, we’ll never be able to know whether Dr. Wakefield’s claims are right or wrong.

Second, in my discussion with Rolf Hazlehurst he told me something truly disturbing.  According to Rolf Hazlehurst, Yates’ gut tissue samples are sitting at Harvard University.  They’d wanted to perform in-cell PCR testing on the samples to determine if the measles virus was present, but governments and pharmaceutical companies have so pressured labs that no lab in the world will perform this test and give a public result.

Third, the government has maintained a database called the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System which has not been made available to either the attorneys in this case, or outside researchers.  The inevitable question is, what do they have to hide?

Any of these three areas might yield valuable information to help children with autism.

I think it’s becoming clear to the Special Masters that one side is interested in getting answers to these questions and the other is not. 

Kent Heckenlively is Legal Editor for Age of Autism.

Comments

[Theresa Cedillo]

Excellent commentary Kent. I always look forward to reading your insightful views of the Omnibus Proceedings. Thank you for taking the time to write them.

[Mark]

Kent this is really an interesting account, thanks for writing. I was particularly struck by your note at the end on the problem of getting the gut biopsy tissue out of a Harvard hospital. We had a colonoscopy performed on our daughter many years ago and it took me an entire year, with weekly phone calls and frequent personal visits, to get them to send the tissue sample to O'Leary's lab. The result ended up negative, but who knows what happened to the sample as it sat there (and was "lost" quite a few times) all that time. I came out of the whole experience disillusioned with Harvard and quite convinced that the politics of the testing were far more important than my right to take action on my daughter's health.