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Blogger Subpoenaed for Criticizing Trial Lawyers
Cutie Pi writes "Katherine Seidel, mother of an autistic child and an avid blogger has been subpoenaed for her "family's bank records, tax returns, autism-related medical and educational records, and every communication concerning all of the issues to which [she] has devoted [her] attention and energy in recent years." The lawyer in question is representing a mother who is suing Bayer for $20M with the claim that mercury in their vaccines caused her child's autism. In her blog Seidel has spoken out against lawyers trying to cash in on thimerosal lawsuits, noting that the thimerosal-autism link has been debunked in several studies. But Seidel herself has had no direct involvement in the lawsuit."
Subpoenas can be issued without any judge looking at them; they're filed with the court by the attorney and then served. It's up to the poor slob served to file a motion to quash (which she has). Punishment through subpoenas and the discovery process in general is nothing new, alas.
Except that all the information Kathleen posts is supported by publicly available information, and Mr. Shoemaker no doubt knows this. The subpoena was issued 4 hours after Kathleen posted information about the money Shoemaker makes by losing vaccine injury cases. See her motion to quash. Make no mistake, some people would like to silence Kathleen and at the same time indulge their delusions that she's part of an government/pharma/illuminati conspiracy. What has happened is clearly a threat to freedom of speech. Imagine if lawyers could just issue subpoenas if they see an opinion on the web they don't like.
It's not legal to use it how we WERE using it -- to get a slightly higher yield from wholly un-diseased agriculture.
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/correlation_causation_vaccinat.php The anti-vaccination websites sustain their belief by systematically excluding anyone offering counterevidence from the domain of acceptable sources. Pharma studies can't be trusted because they have a profit motive. The CDC is in hock to big business. The "medical establishment" wants to make money giving your children unnecessary shots. In fact, the only person you can trust is the guy writing the website.
This is the sure sign of a crank. It is possible that all these people are wrong--science has had much more spectacular failures in the face of clear evidence. But there is no such thing as a multi-million person conspiracy.
Looking for those links is entirely natural. But fingering vaccines has real and terrible consequences. Millions of children die worldwide every year from childhood diseases that we've eliminated here through vaccination. Now, because these websites are frightening people about vaccination, we're seeing a resurgence of those diseases. People are dying from them again, and others are being left with permanent health impairment. Leaving children unvaccinated means going back to
* Leg braces and iron lungs for people with polio (57,628 cases in 1952)
* Encephalitis and sterility for people with mumps (200,000 cases a year in the 1960s)
* Congenital rubella syndrome for children whose mothers contracted the illness during pregnancy.
* Blindness, pneumonia, encephalitis, and death--one per thousand--for people with measles (nearly 1 million cases a year in the US before vaccines).
* Encephalitis and pulmonary hypertension for people with whooping cough--thanks to people who don't vaccinate their kids, in 2001, 17 people, mostly infants, died of pertussis (200,000 cases in 1940).
* Cardiac arrest and paralysis for people with diptheria (207,000 cases and about 15,000 deaths in 1920).
The vaccines scare us because the diseases don't. And they don't because of the vaccines.
I'm a father of a 2 year old (who has had all the vaccinations), I also spent 7 years working in the area of mercury control, including thimerisol. Hg is nasty in most forms, but typically it takes a period of long exposure and bioaccumulation for someone to be affected. There are the cases where Hg containing substances have a lethal effect, but in these cases the effect is so potent that they would impact every person that came into contact with it, and we know from the statistics that this is not the case with thimerisol.
Think about this statement, my grandmother was perfectly fine and then one day I bought her new alumnium pots, within a week (more than 24 hours) she was diagnosed with Altzhiemers...it must have been my fault!!
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
It was not because of the thiomersal that the mother of with the autist daughter was awarded, but because the daughter had a rare form of mytochondrial disease, and the subsequent treatment and vaccine given to her worsened her condition. NOTHING to do with thiomersal per see. It pays to read the judgment before accusing other of not being informative.
Furthermore after 2001 , NO REDUCTION in autism was observed despite lessened to null use of thiomersal. And study were made it has no autism impact. How many more evidence you need ? Finally you are omitting a very important fact from your "ethyl mercury is toxic" meme. 1) how long does it take to metabolise from thiomersal to ethyl mercury 2) how does it relate to ethyl mercury half life in the body 3) how does it relate to the minimal quantity of thiomersal in vaccine ? 4) how is the quantity of ethyl mercury due to vaccine at ANY time in comparison to the dosis at which it starts affecting the body (and yes there are quantity which are perfectly tolerable, and even quantity of Eth-Hg which can be totally ignored). and more importantly 5) how does it relate to parents saying that within 24 hours their kids got autism !!!!
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