FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, May 19, 2011
Contact: Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota
Wayne Rohde 651-705-5030 / 405-973-7049
HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE VACCINE-INDUCED AUTISM?
Abusive “Vaccine Court” Drops 2/3 Of Non-Omnibus Cases
Last week U.S. citizens learned that for decades their government has privately been quietly settling cases of vaccine-induced autism, while publicly stating that vaccines do not cause autism.
A new report of those cases in the Pace Environmental Law Review found 83 cases of autism associated with vaccine injury. Those “83 Canaries” represent the tip of the vaccine/autism iceberg.
What follows is a terrible realization: Countless more “Canaries” are struggling to live without compensation for their health damage. Thousands of cases of vaccine-induced autism have been dismissed, and countless more never filed because people believed their government’s statements.
Out of the more than 2,500 compensated victims in the history of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, approximately 1,300 were known childhood cases compensated for brain damage, either encephalopathy or residual seizure disorder. The authors of this week’s Pace study identified and contacted 150 more families from the 1,300 known settlements and in 62 cases (a rate of over 40%) the children were diagnosed with autism.
If 40% of the full population of compensated childhood cases of brain injury, then it’s likely that over 500 autism cases have received compensation. However the true number of autism cases linked to vaccine injury in the general population must be many times larger.
In the face of this newly revealed evidence, it’s obvious to conclude that the so-called “Vaccine Court” is nothing of the kind. It has become a mockery of justice.
The VICP “Vaccine Court” was designed 25 years ago “to establish a federal no¬fault program under which awards can be made to vaccine-injured persons quickly, easily, and with certainty and generosity.” Instead, it has become highly adversarial and “a bitter disappointment” to families devastated financially. Only about a third of non-Omnibus cases have received compensation. Out of 6,987 vaccine injury cases filed in the NVICP, 2,540 were compensated and 4,447 were dismissed.
The “Vaccine Court” denies petitioners basic legal rights, including discovery and the right to a trial by jury. In the recent Bruesewitz v. Wyeth decision, the U.S. Supreme Court locked victims of vaccine injury out of the legal process, denying them the recourse that Congress had clearly intended.
Government officials have turned “Vaccine Court” into a hostile battleground. Families describe it as perversely managed by “disrespectful and combative” officials who are viewed as “absolutely horrible” and who do “whatever [they] can do to keep [families] from being compensated.” In the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, even the behavior of the “judges” in “Vaccine Court” turned abusive towards the families, issuing “scathing opinions that rejected and demeaned petitioners’ scientific theories, expert witnesses and treating physicians.”
“It’s way past time to remove these abusive officials from their bully pulpits and start truly helping all vaccine-injured children and their families,” said Tim Kasemodel of the VSCM, parent of a child injured by vaccines. “To continue to deny and ignore this human suffering is unconscionable.”
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