https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/the-plot-against-vaccines/
"The seeds of a court case that has lasted for more than 20 years were planted
in February 2001, when the parents of 11-month-old Yates Hazlehurst took him to
the doctor for a routine measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Soon after,
his family would allege in a court hearing, Yates became “wild,” “very
hyperactive,” and “out of control.”
“By the summer of 2001,” a US federal appeals court judge would later write,
“Yates had lost all meaningful speech, even though he had previously used words
such as ‘mama,’ ‘please,’ and ‘thank you.’ At about the same time, he developed
chronic diarrhea and abdominal pain. Following a series of evaluations in July
2002, Yates was diagnosed as exhibiting a pattern of behavior consistent with
autism.”
In 2003, the Hazlehurst family filed a claim with the Office of Special Masters
of the US Court of Federal Claims. The office is part of the National Vaccine
Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which was established in the 1980s by
Congress to compensate people who are able to prove a likely vaccine injury.
The money comes from a fund of billions of dollars accumulated from a small
excise tax applied to most childhood vaccines.
From 2006 to 2023, about 70 percent of those who brought cases were awarded
money without going to trial. Given the safety of vaccines, in the majority of
those cases, the government did not conclude that a vaccine was responsible
for the alleged injury. Instead, as the federal Health Resources and Services
Administration, which keeps data about vaccine injury claims, explains, the
government might settle based on precedent or “to minimize the time and
expense of litigating a case.”
More challenging cases are evaluated not by a jury or a trial judge, but in a
separate courtroom presided over by special masters, judicial appointees who
have extensive knowledge in vaccine injury cases.
In Yates’ case, one of his attorneys was his father. Rolf Hazlehurst, currently
an assistant district attorney in Tennessee, became focused on vaccine injuries
after his son’s diagnosis. Beginning in 2019, he worked for six years as a
senior staff attorney at Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine
organization Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chaired before going on leave to launch his
presidential bid in 2023. Like many other parents of autistic children, Rolf
and his wife, Angela, had become convinced that the MMR vaccine had caused
Yates’ condition, a theory that, despite having been repeatedly and
conclusively disproved, remains a perennial claim in the anti-vaccine world.
Eventually, the Hazlehursts’ case would become part of the Omnibus Autism
Proceedings, where a slate of vaccine court special masters carefully
considered three theories about how vaccines might cause autism, using six test
cases, including the Hazlehursts’. In 2009 and 2010, the special masters handed
down several decisions, concluding the vaccines could not be credibly linked to
any of the children’s autism diagnoses."
Via Janet Logan.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
