Vaccine Injury: The Fletchers and Cedillos – a Tale of Two Families
By John Stone
This weekend the British government conceded as little as possible as late as possible in the case of Robert Fletcher (HERE), the son of Jackie Fletcher, the UK’s leading vaccine safety campaigner, and director of JABS (HERE). On a bitter-sweet note the news came in just as the US health department was repulsively trumpeting its vaccine court defeat of Michelle Cedillo in the US media.
In the Fletcher case it seems likely that the tribunal conceded aware that more might come out about the case if it went to judicial review. In the Cedillo case the Federal court failed to act in its adjudication on the irregularities which Dan Olmsted reported in these columns back in June (HERE).
The UK tribunal awarded the sum of £90,000, which is neither here nor there in terms of Robert’s long term care –reduced from the standard UK vaccine damage unit award of £120,000 (because it was an old case!), and the Fletcher’s will have to return approx £10,000 to the Legal Services Commission for supporting the action.
The suffering of these two great-hearted young people and their families knows no bounds. Both are beset by seizures day and night, have extreme mobility problems, incontinence and cannot speak. There is little doubt by now that the Cedillo case has foundered in part on the difficulty of showing that the psychiatrically defined condition of autism can be caused by vaccine, although as we know there have been autism related vaccine damage awards in the US such as Hannah Poling and Bailey Banks the courts prefer to play semantic games rather than accord justice. Both families have also – like Andrew Wakefield - suffered the attentions of journalist Brian Deer. Jackie Fletcher has been on the end of endless vituperative attacks by Deer in such article as ‘Did she know about the Dough?’ and ‘The Cruelty of JABS’ while Deer himself explained how he intervened in the Cedillo case (HERE):
“That said, I am also very proud that, like the GMC, the US government sought my help in mounting its case in Cedillo (sic), copiously borrowing pages of evidence from my website and displaying some in court. I was surprised by this. I assumed that they would have sophisticated contacts with other governments and with industry, and could pretty much get what they wanted. However, on a number of occasions I would come home, find an email from the department of justice asking me for a document , and see the next day it was being run in court. Bit of a seat of the pants job by the DoJ (brought about by the plaintiffs changing their case at the last minute). Indeed, I recall supplying a key document on the O’Leary lab business, which the DoJ didn’t seem to know about just weeks before the hearing.Hence the late surfacing of Bustin and Chadwick. It was me wot done that, and I’m glad. I don’t say these things to boast, only perhaps to wonder why-if there all these grand conspiracies behind the defence of vaccine safety- governments and regulators are so untogether that a mere journalist can get ahead of them in the game.”
Or perhaps they could not do it any other way? These are two magnificent families who have always put the interests of the autism and vaccine damage communities ahead of their own, and their courage stands as a constant rebuke to the governments of their respective countries.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism.
Deborah Nash you asked, " What are they denying?"
They are denying their own guilt.
Posted by: michael framson | August 30, 2010 at 10:59 PM
The bravery and selflessness of the Cedillo family is beyond expressing. I believe they could have used some word other than "autism" in their vaccine injury claim, and received some compensation, but they have insisted on telling the truth, and have suffered all the indignities (like being Brian Deer's target) that go with being the public face of so many thousands of suffering families. God bless you, Cedillos, and I hope you do get justice, however slow it be in coming.
Posted by: Theresa O | August 30, 2010 at 09:30 PM
I think the government paying out for anything EXCEPT autism is going to come back to bite them... As Anne says, the government is conceeding that "the MMR can cause brain damage, epilepsy, and mental retardation..." well, more and more cases worded THAT WAY will come out and even the families who believe that vaccines have nothing to do with autism may start to be frightened that the vaccine may cause the other things mentioned above. It's going to tough to prove the safety of the vaccine program - it's going very slowly, but they know it's happening....
Posted by: Joanna | August 30, 2010 at 03:55 PM
To The Cedillo Family: Your courage for justice makes me ashamed at my own cowardness.
But may you stand strong for the other children that follow us.
And Thank You
Posted by: Benedetta | August 30, 2010 at 02:17 PM
On one side of the pond, a court concedes, sort of. On the other side, a court continues semantic games, as Mr Stone has said. On both sides, the fear factory continues - in terrorizing parents about childhood infections that are less harmful than the vaccines given for them, and in harassing them for speaking out. As we move into our second generation of maimed/disabled/broken children, can we count on the wealthy patrons, the ones who profited from all this Pharma, the Brian Deers of the world, to pony up and pay for their care once we all are gone? Oh right, he doesn't have any kids.
Posted by: Judy Converse MPH RD LD | August 30, 2010 at 01:40 PM
The vaccine damage payment unit in the UK and the equivalent in the US admit that vaccines can do very serious harm. However, when thousands and thousands of families tell them that damage has been done to millions of healthy children world-wide, they deny it!
What are they denying? The cases, like that of the Fletchers and the Cedillo's are clear cut and always have been but the Governments of both our countries cannot afford to admit what they know to be true. It is nothing less than wicked.
Michelle deserves the best birthday ever but the officials have denied her that too.
Posted by: Deborah Nash | August 30, 2010 at 01:15 PM
To the Cedillo Family:
Keep up the good fight, folks, especially in sharing your story. The truth WILL out.
But it won't without the Autism family keeping up the battle for justice, and the public thus alerted to the full picture. It also won't without the public becoming informed, not just of the major downside to vaccines - in the whole host of illness and disease conditions generated by them, autoimmune and neurological in particular; not just the autism spectrum (as Anne Dachel says: 'I'd like to know what autism is, if not brain damage") - but of the wide range of anti-bacterials and -virals that we have to do the job, without the damnable side effects of vaccines.
That "we have" to do the job - that humanity has. Not, unfortunately, meaning the allopathic profession. They are too addicted to their supply of drugs, from the the pharmaceutical industry, and beholden to that industry for their livelihood, to know of the efficacy of more natural substances to deal with the heavier effects of the childhood diseases. But help is coming, with the growth of the alternative/complementary/'energetic medicine' profession of health carers who have been helping us extend our knowledge of the healing aspects of life - how, when we get back more in harmony with nature, we can heal ourselves more harmoniously. Until then, some have to help pioneer the way. Good luck to them all. They do it for us all.
Posted by: Stan | August 30, 2010 at 11:56 AM
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE!!!
Posted by: John Stone | August 30, 2010 at 10:59 AM
In the UK, hundreds of children had their litigation cases, for MMR damage compensation, abruptly terminated following Dr Wakefield being publicly vilified and discredited, and hounded out of his research post at the Royal Free Hospital. The amount of money involved then was around £10 million. It was said, (by a judge with several conflicts of interest), that their cases 'had no merit'. It got worse. The vaccine manufacturers insisted on the parents signing a declaration that they would never try to sue them in future. Failure to sign meant the vaccine manufacturers coming after the parents for THEIR defence expenses. This was blackmail and I suspect, possibly against the law. Most parents signed.
Our UK government cheerfully spent untold £millions on legal aid and living expenses for Chilean torturer General Pinochet and Islamic rabble rouser Abu Hamza to fight extradition to Chile and the US respectively. These days we are told,(equally cheerfully), by UK government statisticians that £200 million is spent annually on legal aid to failed asylum seekers, who are apparently allowed to mount any number of appeals at public expense to stay in the country!!
Posted by: Jenny Allan | August 30, 2010 at 10:03 AM
The Fletcher and Cedillo families are my heroes.
I agree with Anne Dachel - the pictures are worth thousands of words.
Posted by: Parent | August 30, 2010 at 09:09 AM
Thanks to both sets of parents for all the support over the years this is the start.As for Deer when the goverments are finished with him he will be fried like the stinky rotten fish he is
Posted by: Angus Files | August 30, 2010 at 05:07 AM
This has upset me so much to know that again the Cedillos have lost their appeal. What is the world coming to when children are damaged by un-safe vaccines and then the parents are ignored and made fools of. I pray that this evil stops soon because I am also in the same position trying to let people know how un-safe the MMR and many other vaccines are. Delighted to hear that The Fletchers won their case but the government paid so little when only this year they bailed out the banks with billions of pounds.
Posted by: Joan Campbell | August 30, 2010 at 04:23 AM
Thank you John. The ludicrous farce continues.
Officials can't have it both ways. Either vaccines are causing untold suffering resulting in a generation of sick kids or they're medical miracles with no link to damaging side effects.
They conceded in the Poling case and dismissed everything as unrelated because of a mitochondrial disorder. Hannah only had autism-like symptoms.
The denials continued.
Robert Fletcher has a host of neurological problems linked to the MMR, but they don't include autism.
I can't look at before and after photos of Michelle Cedillo and Robert without asking what went wrong. Both were bright-eyed, darling babies. Now as teenagers, they're totally dependent, not talking, and confined to wheelchairs. The public sees these photos too. They're frightening to parents. The medical community can't explain what happened to these children. Doctors deny that such terrible problems can result from routine vaccines. The slogan, Vaccines are safe, vaccines save lives is not as convincing as it once was.
I wonder if the British press is going to acknowledge that the Fletcher decision flies in the face of everything they've ranted about for years. The media crucified Dr. Wakefield for daring to hypothesize that the MMR caused bowel disorders and autism. They've ridiculed parents who claim that their children were normal until they received certain vaccines. Suddenly we're to believe that the MMR can cause brain damage, epilepsy, and mental retardation---but still not autism. I'd like to know what autism is, if not brain damage.
Anne Dachel
Media
Posted by: Anne McElroy Dachel | August 30, 2010 at 01:49 AM
Thank you John and Age of Autism - you've given Michelle a beautiful gift today on her 16th birthday! I've said it before - this is not yet over...
Posted by: The Cedillo Family | August 30, 2010 at 01:01 AM