The Fletcher Decision: The Unacceptable Face of the Medical Profession
By John Stone
The Daily Telegraph interviewed two doctors today on the significance of the Fletcher decision (HERE ):
“Medical legal experts said last night that the ruling could open the floodgates to thousands of similar claims by families who believe their children have been adversely affected by the jab.
“Dr Robin Moffat, president of the Medico-Legal Society, said: “I would have thought there will be a surge of actions as a result of this.“
“Today, everyone is money-conscious, and if a doctor makes a mistake they are all looking for compensation, and many of them get it.” “Dr Malcolm VandenBurg, a medical legal expert, said: "One case like this makes other people think that they will be able to get a similar ruling. In the past, when there has been a first ruling of this kind, it has opened the door to others."
These remarks are utterly sickening and offensive: the paltry sum that the government have offered for wrecking Robert Fletcher’s mind and body, putting him in constant pain, and leaving his parents in perpetuity as his round the clock carers is probably a fraction of what one of these people makes in a year. How can people who talk like this make ethical decisions regarding the lives of other people? The money paid to the Fletchers will be used to make alterations to their house in order to make their lives sustainable.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism
Kind of like when one person comes out about abuse and others do too. Suddenly the whole Catholic Church has some explaining and paying to do. Imagine that for the pharmaceuticals.
Posted by: elaine | September 02, 2010 at 01:46 PM
John, thanks for calling attention to this article.
The Daily Telegraph article exemplifies the entire spectrum of complicity by the medical profession: from passivity or malignant neglect, to active complicity in preaching, enforcing, and perpetuating the conventional “wisdom” where their interests are conflicted and the motive is personal financial gain, to criminal malfeasance with mens rea where the motive is personal financial gain. They are acting in concert. These are crimes against humanity on a scale, heretofore, never seen. We can only pray that one day the joint tortfeasors and criminal co-conspirators have their day of reckoning, if not in the courts of law, then in the courts of public opinion, and before their Maker.
Posted by: patrons99 | August 31, 2010 at 10:03 PM
Kristina - most law firms would not even tackle such a case without a substantial retainer. Then add to that the billable legal hours which often accrue in parallel, not serially. These legal fees accrue whether the cause of action succeeds or fails.
All of a plaintiff's discretionary cash is often consumed before the case even reaches the discovery stage. Then consider the vast economic disparity between the parties to the lawsuit. For pharma, lawsuits are a budgeted-for, line item cost of doing business. For pharma, liability for their toxic cocktails is minimal to nil. Pharma has been effectively, if not actually, indemnified for injury and death caused by their toxic cocktails.
FDA, EPA, ADA, CDC, and USDA, have completely abandoned us. A remedy to this VERY SICK healthcare system, will undoubtedly require substantial progress on both the legislative and judicial fronts.
Back on point of the post, mainstream orthodox medicine practitioners own a substantial share of the blame for vaccine madness. Orthodox medicine is complicit by more than silence, in many instances, actually promoting vaccine madness, e.g., the mythology found in the never-validated theories of vaccine-induced "herd immunity" and "vaccine-preventable diseases".
There is no justification for physicians', medical societies', and governments' disregard of the Precautionary Principle in preventive health. At the very least, physicians have a duty to insist that patients educate themselves fully before they choose vaccination.
Posted by: patrons99 | August 31, 2010 at 12:53 PM
The people who describe the families as money conscious have no idea of how severely damaged the children and adults are by the vaccine. They do not see the pain and suffering that these people suffer throughout the day and night - they cannot understand what it is to see your child in pain and able to do nothing about it. What is even worse is we parents not only are 24 hour carers, so are the siblings whose lives are damaged by witnessing this and knowing that society cares so little for them. What is it about these people that they have to begrudge any compensation for the Fletcher family who have cared with absolute devotion for Robert. I too have a seriously ill brain damaged child who has also got severe gastrointestinal damage and I care for him day and night. Where is the support for the families? Why are these doctors so unkind? What have we done to them? And more importantly what have they done to our children? A life of pain and suffering with no hope of research being done to find a cure. It is time these doctors woke up and looked at the truth and I don't mean their distorted version of the truth. Open your eyes too many children are being brain damaged by the MMR.
Posted by: Ann Hewitt | August 31, 2010 at 12:19 PM
Perfectly said - as always John.
Posted by: Deborah Nash | August 31, 2010 at 11:45 AM
Alteration to their property should be paid for by the council that they live in I should think but as we see here in the UK this is not happening often enough.
Posted by: Joan Campbell | August 31, 2010 at 11:32 AM
Well said Kristina, it really is a joke when the governments have bailed out the banks with taxpayers money.
Pharmaceutical companies should hide their heads in shame. They are literally getting away with murder. First they destroy our children with un-safe vaccines and then destroy our children even more with un-safe drugs. A total disgrace. When is the world going to wake up to these evil non compassionate people.
Posted by: Joan Campbell | August 31, 2010 at 11:30 AM
Let us be clear that there has been a sustained hate campaign against vaccine damaged families. When Ben Goldacre posted on his website ".. personal anecdotes about your MMR tragedy will be deleted for your own safety" it voiced the negligence of a generation of doctors unwilling to look at the consequences of their own actions.
http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7618/480.extract/reply#bmj_el_184472
It should be said that the UK's vaccine damage unit actually fits in closely with the ideology. They admit a small number of cases every year involving relatively insignificant sums of money for the very worst cases (as with the Fletcher case in this instance), exemplifying the intellectual principle that the risk of having the vaccine is less than not having it and the pretence that the system does look after those who pay the price. They only admit cases on the basis that they are statistically insignificant, and then they use dodgy statistics to pretend that the risk is minute.
The difference in this case is that they could not keep the Fletchers silent. On the other hand the putative safety of the product is only maintained by savage bullying and arrogant assertion based on data which Cochrane admitted in 2005 was "largely inadequate". Also, it is the policy itself - I describe only a bit of it here - which ensures that few cases will ever officially come to light. You have a system of state repression for the most supported by an allegedly free media - a cynical sham.
Posted by: John Stone | August 31, 2010 at 05:49 AM
$138,000 U.S. dollars is NOTHING for 3 ruined lives (child and parents).
16 years of litigation, with all the time, stress and heartache associated with it, comes out to about $8,500 per year, before attorney fees. That's not even enough compensation for dealing with the lawsuit itself.
Oh, yes. I can see the mad rush now.
Posted by: Kristina | August 31, 2010 at 05:09 AM