16/2/2006
legal struggles feature prominently among the latest autism connect
Hello,
Contents:
1. Latest news
Key addresses:
1. www.autismconnect.org
2. www.autismjobs.org
3. www.awares.org
1. Legal struggles feature prominently among the latest AutismConnect news
items.
In Spokane, Washington State, a jury rejected a $4.1 million lawsuit by a woman
who said she was severely injured by her autistic adopted son after the state
ordered her to stop locking him in a steel cage.
After a four-week trial, the Spokane County Superior Court panel deliberated for
two hours on February 2 before ruling against Rhoda Behrens-Hoisington, a
resident of Nine Mile Falls, Spokane County, in her mid-50s, who has cared for
22 developmentally disabled children and holds a master's degree in
developmental psychology.
Behrens-Hoisington cited spinal and brain damage from an attack by Richie "Bud"
Hoisington, an autistic boy she adopted when he was four, and blamed a Child
Protective Services order that she stop controlling his outbursts by confining
him in a six-foot-tall cage with a bucket for use as a toilet.
She told investigators that a state-paid caregiver had given her the cage as a
wedding present in 1998.
Her lawyer, Paul J. Burns, called the device a "safe room" and argued that the
agency had failed to provide alternatives for controlling the boy, 12 at the
time of the attack and diagnosed with autism, fetal alcohol syndrome and crack
cocaine exposure, attention-deficit disorder, Tourette's syndrome and a
condition that sometimes leads him to eat glass and nails.
Also in the United States, a lawyer for the family of an autistic man who
died last November after being shot by a Taser stun gun, said on February 7 that
police in Des Plaines, Illinois, had gone too far in attempting to subdue him.
Hansel Cunningham, 30, who had lived in a group home in Des Plaines, died
on November 20 during a struggle with three officers who used the Taser gun and
pepper spray before wrestling him to the ground and handcuffing him.
A spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office said Cunningham had suffocated
while being held face down on the ground. His death was ruled a homicide,
according to the spokeswoman, though it will be up to the state attorney's
office to decide whether charges would be filed against the officers.
The stun gun was not the cause of death, said the examiner's spokeswoman. "He
was face down with handcuffs on behind his back when he was being held down by
police," she said. "I don't know if he was being held down for all that time,
but there is a four-minute window where he was being restrained."
Still in the US, the parents of an autistic child have claimed in a
lawsuit that their autistic son was repeatedly beaten with a belt and broomstick
by a teacher’s aide during class at Capitol Middle School last November.
Carlos and Alicia Bailey claim they did not learn about their son being hit
until 10 days after the November 28 incident. They said one of their child’s
weaknesses was that he was unable to communicate verbally.
“Nobody found it necessary to call a parent?” Carlos Bailey said on February 7.
“Now it makes me wonder what went on before and that’s what bothers me the most.
“An autistic child can’t state his case,” Bailey said. “My son is defenceless,
he’s non-violent and he doesn’t know why this happened to him.”
The lawsuit names the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, Capitol Middle
School Principal Katie Blunschi and former teacher’s aide Anthony Ivey as
defendants.
Alicia Bailey said a female aide had taken Ivey’s place and was working out
fine.
Carlos Bailey said they had filed the lawsuit partly to get more information
about what had happened. He said that in the past, his son had been put on the
wrong school bus, been taught in a classroom the size of a broom closet and even
come home covered with scratches.
“It’s been a long-running battle,” Carlos Bailey said. “I’ve excused the other
problems, but this one is inexcusable because he does not deserve this.”
Alicia Bailey said her son did not want to go back to school for two days after
the incident.
The Bailey’s attorney, Aidan Reynolds, who is also the father of an autistic
child, said children with autism were “perfect victims” because they could not
communicate a problem to their parents.
“Not only are we going to make sure that Christopher is compensated for being
brutalised, but we also want to make parents of autistic children aware that
they are vulnerable in the system,” Reynolds said. “Parents need to remain
vigilant and make sure their children are being handled the way they should be.”
Across the Atlantic, a former British government medical officer
responsible for deciding whether medicines are safe has accused the government
of "utterly inexplicable complacency" over the MMR triple vaccine for children.
Dr Peter Fletcher, who was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health,
said if it were proven that the jab caused autism, "the refusal by government to
*******uate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in
medical history."
He added that, after agreeing to be an expert witness on drug-safety trials for
parents' lawyers, he had received and studied thousands of documents relating to
the case which he believed the public had a right to see.
Dr Fletcher said he had seen a "steady accumulation of evidence" from scientists
worldwide that the measles, mumps and rubella jab was causing brain damage in
certain children.
But he added: "There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in
Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the
safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves."
He first expressed concerns about MMR in 2001, saying safety trials before the
vaccine's introduction in Britain were inadequate. Now he says the theoretical
fears he raised appear to be becoming reality. He said the rising tide of autism
cases and growing scientific understanding of autism-related bowel disease have
convinced him that the MMR vaccine might be to blame.
"Clinical and scientific data is steadily accumulating that the live measles
virus in MMR can cause brain, gut and immune system damage in a sub-set of
vulnerable children," he said.
"There's no one conclusive piece of scientific evidence, no 'smoking gun',
because there very rarely is when adverse drug reactions are first suspected.
When vaccine damage in very young children is involved, it is harder to prove
the links. But it is the steady accumulation of evidence, from a number of
respected universities, teaching hospitals and laboratories around the world,
that matters here. There's far too much to ignore. Yet government health
authorities are, it seems, more than happy to do so. Why isn't the government
taking this massive public health problem more seriously?"
Dr Fletcher said he found "this official complacency utterly inexplicable" in
the light of an explosive worldwide increase in regressive autism and
inflammatory bowel disease in children, which was first linked to the live
measles virus in the MMR jab by a clinical researcher, Dr Andrew Wakefield, in
1998.
"When scientists first raised fears of a possible link between mad cow disease
and an apparently new, variant form of CJD they had detected in just 20 or 30
patients, everybody panicked and millions of cows were slaughtered," said Dr
Fletcher.
"Yet there has been a ten-fold increase in autism and related forms of brain
damage over the past 15 years, roughly coinciding with MMR's introduction, and
an extremely worrying increase in childhood inflammatory bowel diseases and
immune disorders such as diabetes, and no one in authority will even admit it's
happening, let alone try to investigate the causes."
Dr Fletcher said there was "no way" the ten-fold leap in autistic children could
be the result of better recognition and definitional changes, as claimed by
health authorities.
"It is highly likely that at least part of this increase is a vaccine-related
problem." he said. "But whatever it is, why isn't the government taking this
massive public health problem more seriously?"
He added: "It is entirely possible that the immune systems of a small minority
simply cannot cope with the challenge of the three live viruses in the MMR jab,
and the ever-increasing vaccine load in general."
Nevertheless, Britain’s Department of Health insisted: "MMR remains the best
protection against measles, mumps and rubella. It is recognised by the World
Health Organisation as having an outstanding safety record and there is a wealth
of evidence showing children who receive the MMR vaccine are no more at risk of
autism than those who don't."
Finally, and on an entirely different note, a movie starring Sigourney
Weaver as an autistic woman opened the 56th annual Berlin International Film
Festival.
The actress spent months preparing for her role in Snow Cake, a British-Canadian
co-production.
"It took me a long time to even understand how to prepare for this part because
every person with autism is so unique, and to find someone like Linda took a
long time," she told reporters. "I have to say it was one of the most
fascinating years I've ever spent researching for this part - and I learned so
much, I met so many wonderful people."
She added: “I think we have to begin to see it [autism] as a gift. We may not
understand what it’s there for, but if you’re in the presence of someone with
autism, you learn so much. You learn how to play, you learn how to see things,
you learn how to experience things and how jarring the world is.”
Snow Cake tells the story of a middle-aged English expatriate in Canada, played
by Alan Rickman, and the relationship that he develops with Weaver's character,
Linda Freeman.
Directed by Welshman Marc Evans from a script by Angela Pell - a British writer
with an autistic son - Snow Cake explores the intense frustrations and rewards
experienced by those who care for a unique and appealing autistic woman.
Englishman Alex Hughes, played with sad, still reserve by Rickman, reluctantly
agrees to take an insistent young woman to Winnipeg after she accosts him at a
roadside cafe. A truck crashes into the car, killing her. Alex *******s almost
without a mark. Overwhelmed by guilt, he goes to find her mother, the autistic
Linda Weaver.
The film is the first of 19 in the running for a Golden Bear prize at the 56th
Berlinale.
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