Sunday Times: Question a doctor and lose your child

Accusations of MSbP (FII) against parents of children and young people with ME, the placing of children and young people on the “at risk” register, threats of child protection proceedings and in some cases, forcible removal of a child or young person from the home via court orders into hospital wards (sometimes on locked psychiatric wards or where parents are denied visiting rights) by social services, community paediatricians or paediatric consultants, in cases where a child’s diagnosis has been challenged by the family or where the family has rejected treatments such as CBT/GET or psychosocial management of their child’s illness have, equally disturbingly, been taking place for years within the ME patient community.

Sunday Times  |  06 September 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6823345.ece

Question a doctor and lose your child

Ashleigh Cave lost the use of her legs after a vaccination

“PARENTS are being threatened with having their children taken into care after questioning doctors’ diagnoses or objecting to their medical care.

“John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP, who campaigns to stop injustices in the family court, said: “Very often care proceedings are used as retaliation by local authorities against ‘uppity’ people who question the system.”

Cases are emerging across the UK.

“The mother of a 13-year-old girl who became partly paralysed after being given a cervical cancer vaccination says social workers have told her the child may be removed if she (the mother) continues to link her condition with the vaccination. “

Read full story here

John Hemming’s blog: http://johnhemming.blogspot.com/

Related information:

Panorama report  |  Sick and Tired  |  Mathew Hill  | 1999

Report and video clips: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/panorama/506549.stm

Click here for  BBC Transcript of Panorama “Sick and Tired” broadcast

—————–

From Page 22 of the “Gibson Report”, 2006

http://www.erythos.com/gibsonenquiry/Report.html

“3.3.4 Vaccination

“Vaccination is often blamed for unexplained outbreaks of illness and regularly appears in the media being accused of such. The Group found that there is no strong evidence to link CFS/ME to vaccination and it is unlikely to be a cause…”

Extract from unofficial transcript prepared from audio recording of the public meeting held by the “Gibson Inquiry” panel in London, 6 February 2007. Dr Ian Gibson has been a champion of the mass vaccination of young girls through the cervical cancer vaccine programme:

Extract picks up towards the end of the first half of the meeting:

Dr Charles Shepherd (Medical Advisor, ME Association) (CS): The second quibble is in 3.34 and what you said about vaccinations. I think your wording there is really going to cause people problems by saying that the Group found there is no strong evidence to link CFS/ME to vaccination and it is unlikely to be the cause. It is, I believe a cause or trigger factor in a significant minority of people with this – I’ve probably got more patients in the UK that anyone else with vaccine induced ME – these are anecdotal cases, OK – I think I’ve probably got about 200.

Dr Ian Gibson, (former MP for Norwich North) (IG): Well, we didn’t want to get into anecdotal things…

CS: I know…

[Gibson talks over CS: ??????????]

CS: …but if you looked at your experts who gave evidence – besides myself, Weir, Pinching, Byron Hyde – all who reported anecdotal cases of vaccinations…

IG: Of association with vaccination…

CS: Of association, and the CMO’s Report acknowledged…we actually managed to get in into the CMO’s Report…

IG: We have to be very careful we don’t say it’s the cause of something.

CS: Yeah, but I think you are over cautious, there, and you know, we’ve struggled to get these people industrial injury benefits and it really is a struggle and that statement is not going to be helpful…

Hansard: Vaccine Damage Compensation Debate 8 July 2009

Hansard: Vaccine Damage Compensation Debate: Westminster Hall, 8 July 2009

Dr Ian Gibson, who has recently stood down as MP for Norwich North, is a champion of the mass vaccination of young girls with Cervarix, the cervical cancer vaccine.  Below, I am posting the full text of two important Parliamentary Debates both relating to vaccine damage.

In November 2006, the Group on Scientific Research into ME (the “Gibson Inquiry”) published a 32 page report resulting out of an unofficial inquiry that had been chaired by Dr Ian Gibson. Dr Gibson launched his inquiry, in the summer of 2005, “to assess the progress of scientific research on ME since the publication of the Chief Medical Officer’s Working Group Report into CFS/ME in 2002” with the objective that its findings would “stimulate public debate on the subject of ME and act as a catalyst for increased funding of research”.

The “Gibson Report” can be read here: http://www.erythos.com/gibsonenquiry/Report.html 

Whilst this unofficial document generated much debate amongst its constituency of interest, the ME community, it received little political or media attention.

Despite Dr Gibson’s assurances at the May 2006 Invest in ME conference that his panel intended to consult before launching its final report, copies were emailed out to all MPs and sent to selected ministers and government departments with no consultation process having first taken place. The published document was littered with errors, misconceptions, ambiguities and contradictory statements.  All five national ME patient organisations – Action for M.E., The ME Association, AYME, The Young ME Sufferers Trust, the 25% ME Group, advocates and individuals had called on the inquiry panel to amend and review specific sections within the report –  for as it stood, the document could not be considered fit for purpose. 

On 6 February 2007, Dr Gibson chaired a public meeting, in London, to discuss the content of the report and how it might be used as a campaigning document. At this meeting, Dr Charles Shepherd raised a number of concerns in relation to the report’s content, on behalf of the ME Association and the wider ME community, including a request for factual errors in the section on benefits to be addressed (errors since reiterated by journalists) and around the panel’s views and opinions on the issue of the potential link between vaccinations and the onset of ME.

The GSRME panel disbanded shortly after the public meeting in early 2007.  No amendments to the document were made because the panel “owned” the report and Dr Gibson considered that he had no mandate to amend a document authored by a now disbanded panel. With no consideration of a process for draft consultation and amendments written into the panel’s Terms of Reference and as an unofficial committee, with no accountability to any agency, government department, commissioning body or organisation, the errors, misconceptions and ambiguities within the document remain. 

Page 22 of the “Gibson Report”, states:

“3.3.4 Vaccination

“Vaccination is often blamed for unexplained outbreaks of illness and regularly appears in the media being accused of such. The Group found that there is no strong evidence to link CFS/ME to vaccination and it is unlikely to be a cause…”

Extract from unofficial transcript prepared from audio recording of the public meeting held by the “Gibson Inquiry” panel in London, 6 February 2007:

[Extract picks up towards the end of the first half of the meeting]

Dr Charles Shepherd (Medical Advisor, ME Association) (CS): The second quibble is in 3.34 and what you said about vaccinations. I think your wording there is really going to cause people problems by saying that the Group found there is no strong evidence to link CFS/ME to vaccination and it is unlikely to be the cause. It is, I believe a cause or trigger factor in a significant minority of people with this – I’ve probably got more patients in the UK that anyone else with vaccine induced ME – these are anecdotal cases, OK – I think I’ve probably got about 200.

Dr Ian Gibson, (former MP for Norwich North) (IG): Well, we didn’t want to get into anecdotal things…

CS: I know…

[Ian Gibson talks over Charles Shepherd: ??????????]

CS: …but if you looked at your experts who gave evidence – besides myself, Weir, Pinching, Byron Hyde – all who reported anecdotal cases of vaccinations…

IG: Of association with vaccination…

CS: Of association, and the CMO’s Report acknowledged…we actually managed to get in into the CMO’s Report…

IG: We have to be very careful we don’t say it’s the cause of something.

CS: Yes, but I think you are over cautious, there, and you know, we’ve struggled to get these people industrial injury benefits and it really is a struggle and that statement is not going to be helpful…

———————————————–

Vaccine Damage Compensation Debate: Westminster Hall, 8 July 2009

Hansard

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090708/halltext/90708h0010.htm

8 July 2009 : Column 307WH

Vaccine Damage Compensation
4 pm

Ian Stewart (Eccles) (Lab): I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this issue today as chair of the all-party group on vaccine damaged children. I preface my remarks, as I always do, by saying that the all-party group supports a public vaccination programme and the protection of workers in the work place. We recognise the role that vaccination plays, and has played, in the reduction and eradication of disease, and like everyone, I want protection against disease for my nearest and dearest, and for everybody else’s too.