The Beginning of the End?

By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

A decision in the first three cases of the Autism Omnibus Proceedings, Cedillo, Hazlehurst, and Snyder will be released in either December of this year, or shortly after in January of 2009.

I recently spoke with Gary Golkiewicz, the chief Special Master for the proceedings, who gave me permission to talk with Thomas Powers, the lead attorney for the families who allege a link between vaccines and the development of autism in their children.

According to both Golkiewicz and Powers, the Special Masters are now hard at work preparing their decisions.  The decisions will be much longer than the typical vaccine court decision as the court is wrestling with an enormous amount of evidence, including more than 900 scientific articles submitted by both sides.  They are hoping to release all three cases at the same time, but if not, then the decisions will closely follow one another.

I understand the inevitable question to your beloved legal editor will be what I think the decision will be.

The answer is, I'm in the dark as much as all of you.

However, having said that, I want to reveal some of my biases and prejudices.  Having grown up in a family with a father who's a lawyer, a brother in the trade, me, and a mother who worshiped lawyers I have a tremendous amount of respect for the profession.  The ideal of the law, and the work of lawyers, is a dispassionate review of relevant information leading to a just outcome.  It is how we in a civilized society settle our differences.

Many of my best friends are lawyers.  They are people of high ideals and good character.  If you will allow me to express a prejudice, the practice of law is rarely as good and honorable as the people who choose to enter the profession.  But there are times when the justice of a cause and the goodness of the people in the profession can come together and change the lives of millions.  I believe this is one of those instances.

I have also been witness to terrible injustice at the hands of lawyers and judges.  (As an aside, if you ever get injured at Disneyland, don't have the trial in Orange County.  The Mouse doesn't like to be sued in his own house.  And the judges must be f***ing Goofy!)

But in my brief discussions with Gary Golkiewicz and Thomas Powers I get the impression they are the type of honorable lawyers who have always had my respect.  Mr. Golkiewicz seems to have read some of the more esoteric blogs about autism than I do.  He wanted me to know that the delay in rendering a decision in these cases had nothing to do with the timing of the elections, or the end of one administration and the start of a new one as some blogs have claimed, but was simply due to the massive amount of work to be done.  "We're killing a lot of trees with this work," he told me.

Aside from a single interview I had with him early in the proceedings, Thomas Powers has been ducking my calls because he hasn't wanted to compromise the proceedings with any unwanted press attention.  Despite what you often see in movies and television, lawyers are supposed to try their cases in the courtroom, not the press.  I understand the cold shoulder I have received.  Mr. Powers has conducted himself in an appropriate manner by working on the case rather than talking to me.

But the long wait will soon be over. 

I've spent a great deal of time on these proceedings.  I believe the Special Masters have done an excellent job of conducting their inquiry and asking relevant questions. 

May God grant them the wisdom to make the correct decision.

Kent Heckenlively is Legal Editor for Age of Autism.

Comments

[cj]

Any idea as to when this will be coming out? I read in one source it was supposed to be last week. My daughter's attorney said December/January like Kent in this write-up. Any update will be appreciated.

[Maggie]

I have a feeling the decision will be in favor of the families. No way does pharma want to end up in civil court. Much cheaper to have the tax payers foot the bill.
Maybe it's my own personal bias but the government put on a crappy case and if that wasn't on purpose than they are more pathetic than imaginable.

Has anyone checked out Autism Speaks 2008 Society of Nuerosicence Meeting notes - interesting stuff about glutamate. I wish I knew how to link it, but it's on their main page.

[Jack]

This is from the CDCs most recent MMWR. I wonder if they is a reason that would expect people giving immunizations would suddenly be having to deal with a lot inquires about the VICP. I just thought it was a strange topic to be included unless that thought some info was coming out.

Notice to Readers: The Immunization Encounter: Critical Issues

CDC will present a webcast, The Immunization Encounter: Critical Issues, on December 18, 2008. The broadcast will occur during 12:00 noon--2:00 p.m. EST. The program will address issues related to the routine encounter at an immunization clinic. Topics include patient and parent communication and education, vaccine storage and handling, preparing for medical emergencies, screening for contraindications and precautions to vaccination, vaccine administration, records and documentation, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Continuing education credits will be offered.

[Lin]

Outstanding piece! Thanks so much!!

[Deborah]

We too have a claim within NVICP for the past 7 years now. We don't have anything to liquidate and never have. We don't own our own home (and in these economic times I am glad for it), we don't have credit cards and again, am very glad for it with the financial times that are coming. The pittance of SSI that my son draws goes to help offset the cost of his supplements and keep a roof over our heads. Nothing more.

We want to do HBOT for our son but can't afford it. Maybe if there really is any kind of justice we will be able to afford to heal our son.

Frankly, it doesn't matter one wit if the drug cartels all of sudden wake up and clean up their products (not just vaccines) never again will I trust their wares or most allopathic doctors.

[Willie]

Vaccines cause autism period. The courts always wrestle with information beyond the scope of what they were trained to do. Look at the roe v wade decision. Anyone that read that today would realize that the opinions expressed by the court at that time amounted to nothing but pure hokum and medical quackery of the highest order expressed by nonmedical people placed in a position of authority and decision making which they have not gained by any academic or intellectual prowess or achievemnt but political appointment and therefore have no right to enjoy. These decisoins are political with the cards stacked against us and our families and children we have to turn the tide by digging deeper being more vocal passing more laws filing more legal actions voting paople into and out of office based on this criterion alone. This has to be our mission and we can take no prisoners none

[Debi]

All I know is I'm one of the 5,000 families who is awaiting the outcome not to get rich or blame vaccines, but to simply get my child the treatments that we have been unable to do. We have been accused as being money-hungry, greedy, crazy, and every other negative imaginable. My bill collectors wonder why we can't pay more than a few dollars each month for the last metabolic crisis & subsequent hospital stay while chasing copayments for medications our daughter needs just to be able to go to school without being physically sick all the time.

We vaccine court families are waiting not for our day of wealth, but the day we hope we can stop laying in bed at night wondering how to afford to provide health care to our kids and simply provide it. Blue Cross sure isn't going to.

[Randy]

"Court decisions don't change reality...."

Reading the Wikipedia account of this man's struggles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott
suffice it to say this is a dark chapter in American history - but you (folks) have managed to rise above it. A few generations later (the blink of an eye, in the big picture) and a "person of African descent" who in 1857, according to the US Supreme Court, would have been considered "property", and who could "never" be a citizen, is now at the helm, and showing more promise and integrity than his recent predecessor(s).

Maybe one of the "A"'s in AoA should also stand for Abolitionist. Maybe here (and now) and with that same collective culture and mindset, this is where the tide turns...?

[Anne Dachel]

Thank you for the update and your personal feelings. I've thought about what the reaction would be like should the decision go against the Cedillos. It would make everyone at the CDC breathe a massive sigh of relief. It would be billed as the final nail in the coffin. I'm sure ABC News would be saying their side won. All the parents are wrong. All the scientists and doctors siding with them are wrong. Case closed.

It won't work. The IOM Report of 2004 was supposed to shut us down too. It didn't. There are just too many parents who claim that vaccines did permanent damage to their children. They have the before and after stories and photos. We have Bernadine Healy saying the government has ignored the kids who got sick. They've refused to do the studies that would really show if vaccines cause autism in a susceptible subset of children.

We have the stories about the unvaccinated kids at Homefirst health care in Chicago and among the Amish. They also don't have autism. We have the explosion in autism among the mulit-vaxed Somali community in Minneapolis.

Dr. Peter Fletcher, a champion of the truth in the UK,http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-376203/Former-science-chief-MMR-fears-coming-true.html pointed out the obvious about these groups in a recent email. He wrote, "I have always thought since I first heard about the Somali children that this really proves the causal role of vaccines. The Amish children who have no vaccines have no autistic-like disorders and the Somali children who are newly exposed to aggressive vaccine programmes have exceptionally high levels! What more evidence is needed?"

Health officials expect the public will continue to believe the absurd claim that we've always had kids around like this. Somehow no one was smart enough to call them autistic. I keep waiting for the day some enterprising reporter or editor challenges people like Paul Offit on that claim. Show us the adults with the same autism symptoms we see in our kids. Show us more than one. Find the adults with the same rates of autism we see in children or stop lying to us.

Whichever way the Cedillo case goes, the truth will come out. The upcoming adults with autism will bankrupt us. The children that continue to be damaged by unsafe vaccines mean that there's no end in sight to what U.S. taxpayers will have to pay to care for hundreds of thousand of disabled Americans. Admitting the truth is unthinkable to so many of those in charge. So they just continue on.

Court decisions don't change reality. In 1857, in the Dred Scott Decision, the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent imported into the U.S. and held as slaves and their descendants—whether or not they were slaves—could never be Americans citizens and that the Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. That was supposed to be the final word and end the abolitist movement. It didn't change anyone's thinking. It couldn't make lies into truth.

Anne Dachel
Media editor

[Rachel Ford]

"the court is wrestling with an enormous amount of evidence, including more than 900 scientific articles submitted by both sides."

This statement in an of itself should cause ANY reasonable person in the US to have concern about a link between vaccines and autism. This is no open and shut case.

[Twyla]

I so hope that the special masters can make decisions based on their own open minded review of the information presented, and not shaped by any misguided pressure they are receiving to protect the vaccine program by refusing to acknowledge problems.

[karenatlanta]

This Special Master has the opportunity to serve justice here for a generation of children maimed by unchecked, unsafe toxic vaccines.
I am concerned we may get a verdict, but a table so tight no one qualifies for compensation with out a 10 thousand dollar muscle biopsy or an immediate vaccine reaction.
We too are praying good will prevail over evil.
I was quite surprised to here the "agency reporting" for the FDA at ACIP saying with appeals expect this to drag into 2010.
We have been waiting already for 5 years and have liquidated our 401K and home equity to save our son.

[Gayle]

I pray every day for the just outcome in these Omnibus Proceedings, as the families involved have suffered so much at the hands of a runaway, unchecked, untested Public Health policy. When you are the parent of affected children, and the developmental problems are at first denied, then dismissed, then devalued by the very pediatricians who claim to care, it is a real lesson about what medicine has to offer us as a group and all of us as a society. I pray to God to help all of us touched by autism, and I hope that the legal profession proves more honorable than the medical profession. May God help us all.

[Tanners Dad]

I hope and pray this is the end of the beginning. I hope that the effort, energy, advocacy, blood, sweat, crap, tears, and truth that has been put forth in the last few years will now evolve our culture to some sort of society of caring and treatment for those injured. This is the tip of the iceberg and all those thousands of families who missed out because of statutes of limitations , I pray your day is coming. Hold tight it may be a bumpy ride.

[dan olmsted]

Great piece, Kent. As the saying goes, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Whatever happens, the truth remains truth and it will ultimately come.