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.