U.S. Attorneys Withheld Evidence in Autism Omnibus Proceeding…

YOU Can Take Action…

By Kent Heckenlively, JD

For those who are unaware of the history of this issue…

…in the late to mid 2000s more than 5,000 Autism cases went through a bizarre procedure called the Autism Omnibus Proceeding (AOP) as part of the so-called “Vaccine Court” in which several test cases were reviewed for the proposition that vaccines can cause autism.

The most famous case to emerge was that of Hannah Poling, which was removed from the hearing and government attorneys settled with her parents for a sum of more than twenty million dollars.

Many have complained that the court intentionally conceals awards of vaccine injury leading to autism.  In my book, INOCULATED, I interviewed the former Chief Special Master of the Vaccine Court, who told me explicitly that the court has held from its earliest days that vaccines can lead to encephalopathy (brain swelling) and that one of the damages from this brain swelling is autism.

But I doubt any of you ever heard THAT in a pediatrician’s office!

Now comes an allegation from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr…

…and our friends at the Autism Action Network that the lawyers for the government in this proceeding committed serious ethical violations which resulted in the failure of those 5,000 cases.

I encourage you to read their full account, and to take the action they request:

“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and attorney Rolf Hazlehurst have petitioned the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate possible legal misconduct by two federal government lawyers who they allege withheld and misrepresented evidence in the Autism Omnibus Proceeding (AOP), provided by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a key government witness, that showed that vaccines can cause autism.

The Autism Omnibus Proceeding (AOP) was an action by the vaccine court that lumped together more than 5000 claims that autism was caused by vaccine injury. All 5000 cases were to be decided by 6 selected test cases. Nearly all the cases in the AOP were dismissed in 2009. Zimmerman, who is regarded as perhaps the world’s leading pediatric neurologist in autism research, had provided a report on Child Doe 77, one of the test cases in the Omnibus Proceeding, stating that in his professional opinion, vaccines caused Child Doe 77’s autism, (author’s note -Hannah Poling) and could cause autism in other children who had a pre-existing mitochondrial condition. Subsequently, the Child Doe 77 case was settled by the government, and it did not serve as a precedent for any other cases, even though it had been specifically selected as a test case.

Attorneys Vincent Matanoski and Lyn Ricciardella represented the DOJ in the AOP and never disclosed the analysis prepared by Zimmerman of Child Doe 77 to the attorneys for the 5000+ petitioners as required by the rules of the vaccine court. Matanoski and Ricciardella are alleged to have engaged in additional actions to keep the Zimmerman report and settlement of the Child Doe 77 case hidden from the petitioners and the public. 

The alleged cover-up was revealed by Dr. Zimmerman in a deposition taken for a medical malpractice case against the doctor who administered vaccines to Yates Hazlehurst, the child of Rolf Hazlehurst. Yates Hazlehurst was one of the test cases in the AOP.  In the Hazlehurst malpractice suit deposition Zimmerman revealed that Yates Hazlehurst’s regression into autism mirrored that of Child Doe 77 and would have been germane to deciding the Hazlehurst case in the AOP.  If the allegations are founded there would be grounds to reopen the cases dismissed in the AOP, and other cases dismissed in the vaccine court. 

Serious investigation into the DOJ attorney’s alleged misconduct is necessary. Please paste the below link to send messages to Michael Horowitz, Inspector General of the DOJ, your representatives in Congresss, and the White House, calling for an investigation. And please call Horowitz’s office and politely ask for an investigation of Matanoski and Ricciardella.  

Michael Horowitz, Office of the Inspector General,  (202) 514-3435

And by pasting this link to your browser you can send an email to President Trump, your United States Senator, your Congressman, and the Inspector General.  http://capwiz.com/a-champ/issues/alert/?alertid=80555896&queueid=[capwiz:queue_id]

Please share this message with friends and family, and please post to social networks. 

I have been very impressed…

…with the victories Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been wracking up lately, from the glyphosate victory to the revelation that in the thirty-two years since the passage of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act there have been NO SAFETY STUDIES performed AS REQUIRED BY THE LAW.

We know that this is JUST THE BEGINNING for Kennedy and his brave band of Untouchables and look forward to their next steps . . We’ll keep quiet.  (Shh!)

STAY TUNED . . .

By Kent Heckenlivey, J.D.

Kent’s book PLAGUE was released by Skyhorse Publishing in 2014 and is now available in paperback. Skyhorse also publishes the work of Mo Yan, the 2012 recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature.

The book is co-authored with Judy Mikovits PhD. It is an indictment of the “Fake Science” we find so prevalent in the US.

 

Kent Heckenlively is also the author of INOCULATED: How Science Lost its Soul in Autism, available on Amazon and at Barnes&Noble.com

 

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