Kathleen Seidel’s Neurodiversity blog is an example to us all. She combines meticulous research with lucid prose. Her writing is as good as or better than much that passes for investigative journalism today. Now she has had to add the skills of a lawyer to those of a journalist in response to a subpoena from Clifford Shoemaker. This subpoena is so onerous and burdensome in its demands that it beggars belief, even in an overlawyered society like America.
Kathleen is being subpoenaed to testify at the taking of a deposition in the case of Lisa Sykes et al versus the Bayer Corporation and to provide
All documentation pertaining to the set up, financing, running, research, maintaining the website: http://www.neurodiversity.com that specifically relates to Lisa Sykes, her son, her lawsuits (NVICP and civil litigation, her church position, her family in general, her associates, her attorneys, her Citizen’s petition (FDA Filings and Court Filings) and her physicians. This shall include, but not be limited to bank statements, cancelled checks, online or offline donation documents, and tax returns. This to include the names of persons helping, paying or facilitating in any fashion these endeavours.
Whoa there!
- Kathleen is not a party to the dispute between Sykes and Bayer.
- She has had no contact with any of the parties to the dispute.
- The content of her website will have no bearing on the outcome of the case which will be determined by the quality of the expert testimony brought to the case by both sides, not the sleuthing of a citizen blogger.
- Nobody pays her to maintain Neurodiversity. She puts her own time and money into it.
It is obvious what Shoemaker is after. He is on a fishing trip to see what he can learn about Neurodiversity.com. Perhaps he thinks it is a front for Big Pharma and he can turn up something that will embarrass Bayer in court. He is only in it for the money and so cannot conceive how a private citizen could put so much effort into a resource like Neurodiversity.com and have the moral rectitude to blog about the abuse of autistics by quack practitioners and their attempts to use the courts to justify their behaviour and all with no thought of personal gain for herself.
But Shoemaker is not just fishing. It seems his intention to bully and intimidate Kathleen into silence. Because the subpoena asks for more, a lot more. Kathleen describes it thus in her motion to quash,
The subpoena commands production of “all documents pertaining to the setup, financing, running, research, maintaining the website http://www.neurodiversity.com“ – including but not limited to material mentioning the plaintiffs – and the names of all persons “helping, paying or facilitating in any fashion” my endeavors. The subpoena demands bank statements, cancelled checks, donation records, tax returns, Freedom of Information Act requests, LexisNexis® and PACER usage records. The subpoena demands copies of all of my communications concerning any issue which is included on my website, including communications with representatives of the federal government, the pharmaceutical industry, advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations, political action groups, profit or non-profit entities, journals, editorial boards, scientific boards, academic boards, medical licensing boards, any “religious groups (Muslim or otherwise), or individuals with religious affiliations,” and any other “concerned individuals.”
Could any of this be connected to the fact that 4 hours before being served with this subpoena Kathleen published a blog post The Commerce in Causation which enumerated legal costs paid to Mr Shoemaker by the National vaccine injury compensation Programe to the sum of $584,449.28.
Kathleen ends that post thus:
These nonprecedential decisions reveal only a portion of Mr. Shoemaker’s VICP income since June 2006; they pertain to fee requests to which HHS and the presiding Special Master raised few objections. In contrast, published decisions on fees and costs offer a more detailed view of controversies calling for a comprehensive judicial analysis, and of the billing practices of petitioners’ attorneys.
to be continued
Could the real purpose of this subpoena be less to do with what Shoemaker thinks Kathleen might know about Sykes versus Bayer and more to do with what he thinks she might know about him? Whatever his motives, he has managed to spread his name accross the Internet to almost universal opprobrium. Anti quackery blogs like Holford Watch, Science Bloggers, Autism Hubbers and legal blogs like the aptly named Overlawyered are all chiming in on Kathleen’s behalf. I Speak of Dreams is trying to keep a comprehensive list of them all. The total currently stands at 52.
Some voices have remained silent. Can you imagine the reaction in some quarters if the Department of Justice decided to subpoena David Kirby to discover who was leaking court documents to him in the Poling case. By his own admission
The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff’s identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.
As a fellow blogger it ought to be in his interest to support Kathleen against this abuse of the legal process. How about it, David?
April 5th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Autism, Neurodiversity, journalism |
13 comments
David T Tayloe is a pediatrician from Goldsboro, North Carolina (NC) and president elect of the American Acadamy of Pediatrics (AAP) He seemed a decent fellow when I watched him on on the recent Larry King Show about autism. This is what he had to say, taken from the transcript of the show (with numerous interruptions [...] from Jenny McCarthy edited out.)
On Vaccines
“Well, first of all, the childhood vaccine program is the most beneficial public health program in the history of mankind. [...]
And you must have immunization rates that approach 90 percent to keep diseases such as polio, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria from coming in here from countries. They’re one plane ride away and we’re that close to an epidemic.
So, for the American Academy of Pediatrics to want to change the immunization program, there would have to be medical evidence — indisputable medical evidence that we ought to change it. Now [...] we’ve changed it about six times just in the last 10 years. We changed the whooping cough vaccine, we changed the polio vaccine, we changed the rotavirus vaccine.
KING: Why are there so many? TAYLOE: Because we’ve been able to develop ways to vaccinate children to prevent pain and suffering. Just in my practice, I’ve watched three children die of each of the different kinds of bacterial meningitis that we immunize for today. And it’s tragic when that happens. I, in my practice, have not referred a child to the compensation program for a vaccine-related injury [...] and our practice has seen over [...] over a hundred thousand kids a year. [...] They’re recommended.
On drug company donations to the AAP
TAYLOE: I would say it does not influence policy. We have very strict conflict of interest and ethical statements, and abide by the professionalism guidelines of the AMA and are very sensitive issues. Again, we’re not afraid of the truth about vaccines. We’re all for vaccine safety research, efficacy research, all of that.
On profit from vaccines
TAYLOE: I think vaccines are a very difficult way to make a profit in a pediatric practice, because the price of the newest vaccines are like 120 a dose, one dose. And the insurance companies don’t want to pay us much more than that very bare-bones amount for all the costs we have with the vaccines. Then the administration fees are less than what’s recommended by Medicare in most practices.So physicians, as a rule, are taking a loss on vaccines in their practices. But we feel so committed to the public health effort, that we’re going to do it. And just about half the children receive government funded vaccines, which are free vaccines that go to the states. There’s no profit at all there. You just give the vaccine and then charge a government controlled administration fee.So this is not a profit center for pediatrics. This is something that’s for public health that we all do. And it’s the right thing to do.
On listening to parents about autism
TAYLOE: At the American Council of Pediatrics we’re making some progress on that, because we had two policy statements in November, and a tool kit for our members. We’re getting 18 and 24 month screens. I like to screen between six and 12 months, carefully. [...]We are quite willing to work with anyone on this. We would like to be [...]
This all seems quite reasonable to me. Dr Tayloe is expressing the mainstream medical opinion on vaccines, which was why he was invited onto the show. But he is not just a mouthpiece for the AAP. Dr Tayloe heads a pediatric practise in Goldsboro NC and he is obviously motivated by a desire to care for children. I found the part were he talked about the children in his practise who died from diseases that can now be prevented with vaccines particularly moving.
However, not everybody shares my opinion. Those who cling to the notion that vaccines cause autism appear outraged by his comments. A lady who once claimed to bring “graciousness” to the debate about autism wrote on her blog:
Dr. Tayloe said that in his practice that has seen 100,000 patients that he has never referred one person to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. If he has never seen a serious vaccine injury, it is not because he has not come across one, it is because he has his head up his ass.Tayloe is just dangerous.
This man has GOT to be removed from the position that he has been elected to before he takes office. I would take Karp in a second over this guy. Karp was wrong, but he wasn’t crazy person saying insane things with a smile wrong.
Actually, Dr Tayloe’s words show us how rare vaccine injuries are. There are around 60 million children aged 14 and under in the USA and around 60,000 pediatricians. Out of all the millions of kids who have been vaccinated, there have been less than 10,000 petitions (8,224) to the US Court of Federal Claims under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program since its inception nearly twenty years ago in October 1988. Though I hesitate to contradict a gracious lady, it seems to me that, in the light of these figures, the likelihood of a pediatrician encountering a case of vaccine damage is low enough to encourage belief in Dr Tayloe’s statement.
Never mind. Our gracious lady suddenly adds an interpolation:
[UPDATE: OMG! Turns out the Vaccine Injury Compensation Court exists in part due to the 3.5 million dollar malpractice suit that Dr. David Tayloe lost in 1985 when a child he gave the DPT shot to magically got permanent brain injury!! That Asshole just got on TV and implied that he had never SEEN a vaccine injury in his practice!!! ]
Actually this was Dr Tayloe’s father, David T Tayloe Snr. Our David Tayloe, David T Tayloe Jnr. was still at medical school during the fateful immunization in 1974. The settlement was reduced to $1.1 million on appeal and the real culprit, if ‘culprit’ is an appropriate word in this case, was the practise nurse who failed to inform Dr Tayloe Snr. of a reported adverse reaction by the child to his initial DPT shot.
Incidentally, I wrote to the lawyer who prosecuted the case against Dr Tayloe Snr. and he told me that Dr Tayloe, “seemed like a nice guy who just made a mistake which was fatal to a baby.” Our gracious lady is less than gracious when she writes,
I got an email from someone Tayloe went to med school with that says this was his father. In thinking about where to adjust my judgmentalism meter, I think that I will retract my declaration that he is an asshole, and say that he is a dangerous, foolish man.
That is big of you, Ginger. Then you go on to say:
A jury told his own father that he was more than three million dollars worth of wrong for administering a shot that plunged a boy into brain damage, and he learned nothing from it, continuing to claim that ‘all vaccines are safe for every child’, and that there is no such thing as serious vaccine injury. (or maybe, but barely ever, as his statement last week was that there was not “any relationship between vaccines and permanent injury”, and this week he has downgraded his stance to “extremely rare”.) Even though it was not directly his, he should still know better because of his father’s legacy.]
Sins of the fathers? Even so, if that was my legacy I would be very much aware of the possibility of vaccine damage. And I am sure that Dr Tayloe Jnr is aware. But he must be equally aware of his profesional obligation to maintain the health of the nation by encouraging take up of the vaccine program. Considering his family history I can think of no man better equiped to lead the AAP in this task.
There are many people who presume to speak on behalf of the autism community. Very few of them speak for me. So, speaking entirely for myself, I just want to apologize to Dr Tayloe on behalf of all the people like me for the ill-deserved remarks that have come your way as a result of your appearance on the Larry King Show.
April 5th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Autism, vaccines |
7 comments
