Kids, Vaccines and Autism: Will a New Legal Strategy End the Decades-long Battle for Truth and Justice?

The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program denied compensation to 5,000-plus families of children diagnosed with autism…

Children's Health Defense

When the parents of Yates Hazlehurst took their normal, happy 11-month-old to the doctor on Feb. 8, 2001, for an ear infection, the clinic gave Yates his 12-month shots — the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), Prevnar, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and Hepatitis B vaccines — even though Yates had an ear infection and was not yet quite 1 year old.

Twelve days later, Yates developed a high fever, rash and vomiting. In the months that followed, he stopped speaking in meaningful language, became obsessed with numbers and letters and his behavior became erratic and difficult to contain.

He also developed physical health problems, including gastrointestinal issues and different infections.

On June 3, 2002, after many doctor visits, a psychologist diagnosed Yates with autism spectrum disorder.

Dr. Jean-Ronel Corbier, the neurologist who evaluated Yates and diagnosed him with “regressive autism,” theorized Yates’ autism was a response to the MMR vaccine.

Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a pediatric neurologist at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at Johns Hopkins’ Kennedy Krieger Institute, tested Yates for a mitochondrial disorder that he thought might have made Yates vulnerable to vaccine-induced regressive autism, particularly when vaccinated while ill.

After they learned that Yates’ condition was vaccine-related, the Hazlehurst family in 2003 filed a claim with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which adjudicates vaccine injury claims.

Also known as the “vaccine court,” the program was designed by Congress in 1986 to address the risks of “unavoidably unsafe” vaccines by both insulating vaccine manufacturers from liability for vaccine injuries and compensating families whose children are injured by vaccines.

Although they didn’t realize it at the time, the Hazlehursts’ story was nearly identical to that of thousands of families across the country, whose once healthy children quickly descended into silence or erratic behavior and severe physical illnesses that often accompany autism following their childhood vaccines — either thimerosal/mercury-containing vaccines or the MMR vaccine.

Many parents filed claims with the vaccine court, seeking financial resources to pay for their children’s medical bills and lifetime care.

By 2002, the number of families filing claims with the VICP alleging vaccine-induced autism had increased exponentially from the beginning of the program.

To deal with this massive influx of claims, the Office of Special Masters combined what would become 5,000-plus claims into the Omnibus Autism Proceeding. The program selected six “test cases” to determine whether vaccines cause autism and, if so, under what conditions.

Yates’ case was the second test case.

The omnibus dragged on for almost 10 years. During that time, families and autism advocacy organizations fought for access to government information — which was never forthcoming — on vaccine safety and side effects, did their own scientific research, sought experts to inform their cases, combined resources to keep the cases going, and fought a public relations battle with a national media that eventually turned against them.

Simultaneously, the public health agencies and the vaccine court itself covered up data showing that vaccines can cause autism. The chief special master presiding over the proceedings, the media, Big Pharma and the U.S. Supreme Court opined that a win for the families in the omnibus would risk public confidence in vaccines and threaten to bankrupt the compensation fund.

In 2009 and 2010, the proceedings ended when the vaccine court rejected the plaintiffs’ medical theories about how vaccines cause autism and dismissed all six “test case” claims and subsequently, all of the cases pending in the omnibus.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the decisions upon review in the two cases that appealed, including Yates’ case.

Those decisions, and the Supreme Court decision in the Bruesewitz v. Wyeth case that followed in 2011, effectively closed the door to the thousands of families seeking compensation to help with the astronomical costs of raising their children living with vaccine-induced autism.

A simultaneous smear campaign in the media transformed their public perception from “sympathetic families” to “crazy conspiracy theorists” as Rebecca Estepp, the mother of a child with autism and a petitioner in the omnibus told The Defender.

But a new legal action filed by Rolf Hazlehurst, the senior staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and Yates’ father, could reopen the omnibus proceedings, overturn the ruling in Yates’ case and perhaps even find the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 unconstitutional if Hazlehurst’s motion prevails.

After years of investigation — and a key revelation by one of the key expert witnesses for the government who said his opinion was suppressed and misrepresented — Hazlehurst compiled evidence that he alleges shows the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys who represented the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in vaccine injury cases repeatedly defrauded the judicial system — from the VICP to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That fraud led to thousands of families of vaccine-injured children being denied the right to compensation and the right to have their cases heard, according to the motion.

“Watching my child regress into autism due to vaccine injury was horrible for me, my family and our son,” said CHD Executive Vice President Laura Bono.

“Learning that his claim in vaccine court was fraudulently dismissed literally added insult to injury. The injustice to the thousands of children in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding and those who have been injured since — along with their suffering families — cannot be overstated…