Friday, January 4, 2008

Score One for the Plaintiff- Dr. Bradstreet

I encourage you to look at the notes for Dr. Bradstreet at the link to the right of this blog- his talk was to be entitled "Biomarkers in Autism" and looked fascinating. Basically it discusses the five broad categories of abnormalities in autism and how to test & treat. I think you will be able to gain a lot of information from the notes alone.

However, instead of giving that talk, Dr. Bradstreet gave us the case history of little Colten Snyder, one of the Autism Omnibus test cases. I encourage you to read the transcript of the case for yourself:
ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/snyder.html
I have only read through Day One, but will continue to read transcripts of all 3 cases as time allows. I am particularly interested because we are one of the almost 5,000 families seeking justice in these proceedings.
Basically Dr. Bradstreet laid out the medical facts of the case (Colten is his patient) and asked us as audience members to render judgement based on the facts. Granted, we may be a biased audience, but the facts were compelling. Dr. Bradstreet shared some of the underhanded tactics used by the opposing lawyers in these cases. It seems that the crux of their case is to attempt to undermine the credibility of those on our side and also label any science supporting our position that our children were vaccine-injured as "junk science". I was glad to see that our lawyers immediately and boldly addressed this smear campaign head on right from the outset of this test case...yet the other side continued to utilize it, because you see, THAT is the majority of their case! Dr. Bradstreet pointed out to us some of the ludicrous attempts to smear him personally. The opposition wants to paint DAN! doctors as exploitative and money-hungry. They attempted to show that Dr. Bradstreet personally monetarily benefitted from the expensive IVIG treatments prescribed for Colten- treatments which incidentally seemed to help him very much, according to testimony. It must have been quite embarassing for the lawyer doing the questioning to find that Dr. Bradstreet himself, through his charitable foundation, paid for many of these treatments. Perhaps the most bizarre accusation left hanging in the air was that Dr. Bradstreet might perform exorcisms to treat autistic children. He said he was jaw-droppingly stunned by that one. I think this was the clearest example of the strange contortions the lawyers are taking in order to use any means necessary to discredit the true good guys in this fight.
Towards the end, Jim Moody gave a bit more detail on the cases. From the SafeMinds web page:
Jim Moody chairs the government affairs committee of SafeMinds. He is the founder of Citizens for a Competitive Economy. Jim is a practicing attorney and is active in cause-related advocacy for children with autism.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Omnibus proceedings (not discussed at the conference)is the case of Hannah Poling vs. Sec HHS. This was a "thimerosal causes autism" test case, and the government conceded the case. Details are sketchy, because the records are sealed, but apparently the thimerosal exacerbated an already existing condidtion. I am confused as to why it's all so secretive and wonder if we will ever be privvy to the details. We deserve to know not only the details of the ruling, but also the evidence presented. And that's just the minimum of what we deserve for the damage done to our children.
Update: Here is an article by David kirby about the conceded case as well as the ruling:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/government-concedes-vacci_b_88323.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/02/full-text-autis.html

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