The tables have turned on lawyers.
The Times reported that three families are taking legal action against their former lawyers, claiming that the Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccination withdrawn in 1992, caused their children to develop encephalitis and not autism. They are saying that they are suing because they believe that their former lawyers were negligent when they lumped their cases in with more than 1000 other discredited autism and bowel disease claims. The three cases were dropped as part of the class action in 2003 along with all the other cases.
Hannah Devlin Science Correspondent for The Times wrote:
Ann Coote, from Bolton, believes that the learning difficulties and epilepsy suffered by her daughter Rachael, 23, are a result of the encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, that she appeared to have had shortly after being vaccinated with MMR.
The claims relate to a strain of mumps, Urabe, that was used in the MMR vaccine between 1988 and 1992.
The second case is that of Katie Stephen, 20, who suffered symptoms of encephalitis and is now partially deaf.
The third family wishes to remain anonymous.
The families are suing the law firm Irwin Mitchell, which merged in 2006 with Alexander Harris. To read the full story go to http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/law/ original link but you will need to join to read it. Sadly this story does not appear to be in other newspapers.
Urabe is a strain of mumps used as an ingredient in the early MMR vaccines. This was said to cause many children to suffer from encephalitis as a side effect from the vaccine. Urabe was used in the Pluserix and Immravax MMR vaccines which were both withdrawn from use in the UK in 1992.
Professional Opinions On The Pluserix and Immravax Vaccines
Dr Wakefield had this to say about the two vaccines withdrawn in Part 6 Government liability’ Question 1: In 6 parts on YouTube:.
http://www.whale.to/a/dr_andrew_wakefield.html
“The two of the three vaccine brands that were introduced in 1988 had to be withdrawn for safety reasons and yet Dr Salisbury in his statement to the GMC (General Medical Council) sums up by saying this is a vaccine (MMR) with an exemplary safety record. Well, if that is his idea of an excellent safety record then we have a very different perception he and I of vaccine safety.”
Others agree, saying that these vaccines were very far from safe. Dr Viera Scheibner said that in 1995 The ‘Bulletin of Medical Ethics’ published an article about the MMR vaccine and the measles epidemic that never was. She wrote:
“The nine-page article in the August 1995 issue of BME stated among other things that on 14 September 1992 the Department of Health (DOH) hastily withdrew two brands of MMR vaccines following a leak to the national press about the risk of children developing mumps meningitis after administration of these vaccines. Both brands contained the Urabe mumps vaccine strain which had been shown to cause mumps meningitis in one in 1,044 vaccinees (Yawata,1994″)
See ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome The Vaccination Link’ Dr Viera Scheibner Taken from Nexus August-September 1998 http://www.whale.to/vaccines/sbs.htm l
So had that leak not occurred, then we have to wonder if these vaccines would still be used today. Most probably, as the UK government like nothing more than cutting corners and making as many financial cuts as they possibly can, even if those cuts could potentially put children’s lives at risk.
I say this because it has reported that the Urabe containing vaccines were a quarter of the price of the Merck MMR11.
Merck even admit themselves that vaccines can and do cause encephalitis in some children.
Merck states in their manual – Encephalitis: An acute inflammatory disease of the brain due to direct viral invasion or to hypersensitivity initiated by a virus or other foreign protein……Secondary encephalitis, usually a complication of viral infection, is considered to have an immunologic mechanism. Examples are encephalitides secondary to measles, chickenpox, rubella, smallpox vaccination, vaccinia, and many other less well defined viral infections. (Merck manual) http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section14/chapter176/176c.htm
Dr Buttram Has Written That MMR Vaccines Can Cause Encephalitis
Dr Harold Buttram wrote this in the opening lines of his article ‘Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) Vaccine as a Potential Cause of Encephalitis (Brain Inflammation) in Children’ http://www.whale.to/v/buttram.html
Childhood autism is the result of encephalitis affecting primarily the limbic system of the brain, located below the cerebral cortex. A relatively few number of cases are due to genetic causes, but officially the great majority are of unknown causes
If this is the case then were the lawyers right to lump all the cases together? We shall see but it is in my opinion that if the parents were only stating that their children developed encephalitis leading to epilepsy/deafness and not autism, then yes they are right to sue. Lawyers should not lump cases together in this way simply out of convenience and cost cutting. It is clear from the Times article that these cases did not involve autism and therefore should have been separated from the class action. After all there is plenty of evidence to suggest that that their children’s encephalitis could have been caused as a result of being given the now banned vaccine.
For further reading on MMR and encephalitis read
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-emlancetem-retraction_b_446749.html
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/anna.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/03/so-there-are-mo.html
These links and others can be found http://www.whale.to/vaccines/encephalitis.html