Vaccine Injured Children's Compensation Reform - Action Alert!/ More Abstracts

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April 3, 2001 Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp

Also: * Petition to NBC Over ER Episode Still Circulating

* Assessing Autism Severity

* Face Recognition Processes In Children And Adults With Autism

* Children With Autism Show Subtle Difficulties Detecting

Eye Direction

Vaccine Injured Children's Compensation Reform - Action Alert!

[From The National Vaccine Information Center, http://www.909shot.com.]

The Vaccine Injured Children's Compensation act of 2001, was

introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Dave Weldon (R-FL)

and Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) on March 28, 2001, HR 1287.

The original intent of the current compensation program was to provide

a quick and easy way for parents to get financial help for their vaccine

injured children. The program is anything but quick or easy. This

legislation is the beginning of an effort to restore the bill back to the

original intent of Congress as to how this program was supposed to work.

You can help make this important legislation happen with a phone call to

your Washington DC legislators at and ask for your member of

Congress. If you do not know who that is, ask the operator to help you

identify that person.

When you reach the member's office, ask to speak to the staff person

handling health-related legislation. Give them the bill number and a short

explanation and ask them to become a co-sponsor of the bill. Have them call

Cong. Weldon or Cong. Nadler and offer their support. If any of the

provisions in this bill have a direct bearing on your ability to receive

compensation for your child, relate your story to the staff member. It is

more likely that they will be interested in helping. Ask to meet with your

representative when he/she is in the home district.

Please call us at and let us know the response you

receive or if you need more information.

HR 1287

This bill provides for changes in four very important areas:

1. The Statute of Limitations

In order to file a claim under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

(VICP), it has to be brought within 3 years of the onset of the injury

claimed to have been caused by the vaccine(s). It does not matter that the

claimants may not have even known that the vaccine caused their injuries. HR

1287 will amend the statute to allow for what is called a discovery rule.

This means that the statute of limitations (SOL) would not begin to run

until someone knew or should have known that their injuries were caused by

the vaccine(s) and that they had a possible claim under the Vaccine Injury

Compensation Program. The time period for filing would be extended from 3

years to 6 years. The bill also has provisions which toll (stop the running

of) the statute of limitations during minority (until a child reaches age

18).

This provision will help the families who never got a correct

diagnosis of a vaccine injury and who did not find out about the program

until too late.

2. The Burden of Proof

In law, there are different burdens of proof that are required for

different things. For instance, to convict someone of a crime requires

proof " beyond a reasonable doubt. " Below that is a level of proof where

something has to be proven by " clear and convincing " evidence. Next down

the ladder is the burden used in traditional civil tort litigation, where

the plaintiff has to prove something is more likely than not, " by a

preponderance of the evidence. " For Veterans' Claims and Workers'

Compensation Claims, a lower burden is used, where the benefit of the doubt

goes to the claimant.

In HR 1287, the Petitioner's burden of proof is reduced from the

" preponderance " standard to the same language used in Veterans' claims. This

bill states clearly that the purpose of the program is (as Congress

originally intended) to generously compensate the children and other victims

of vaccinations. It was Congress' intent to err on the side of

over-compensating, rather than under-compensating, these people. This bill

also makes it clear that this is a remedial program and the government

should not raise a claim that this is a " waiver of sovereign immunity "

(where the bill would be strictly construed against the Petitioners.)

Finally, the bill makes it clear that the government can still raise

the possibility of an alternate cause (something other than the

vaccination), but they must prove this alternate cause by " clear and

convincing " evidence.

3. Interim Fees and Costs

One of the reasons so few lawyers are willing to get involved and stay

involved in these cases is because the payment for attorneys is extremely

low compared to the rewards of traditional civil litigation. Claimants and

their lawyers must often wait years to receive reimbursement of their costs

and payment of the attorneys' fees. Lawyers are expected to compete in a

highly litigious environment, where the burden of proof is relatively high,

without the benefits of traditional civil discovery, and with small and

delayed compensation for their effort.

This bill would make it possible for claimants to petition, no more

than once every 90 days, for payment of interim fees and costs. This will

allow experts to be paid in a timely manner, and Petitioners will finally be

able to conduct the testing and studies necessary to prove their claims.

Remember that the attorneys for the government are paid every thirty

days and the attorneys for the children have to wait until everything is

finalized, in many cases, waiting for years. In the meantime, the burden of

financing the case falls on the shoulders of the family and the attorney.

This provision will help level the playing field for the attorneys who are

trying to help the families.

4. The Right to Refile

This bill allows for a petitioner to refile a claim if the original

claim did not meet the $1,000 unreimbursed expense requirement (now no

longer a requirement) or if the petitioner missed the deadline that is being

corrected by HR 1287. If passed, the petitioner would have the right to

refile within 72 months after turning 18 or within 24 months after the bill

becomes law, whichever is a longer period of time.

Other co-sponsors of the bill include Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), Rep.

Barney (D-MA), Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA),

Rep. Steve Horn (R-CA), Rep. McCarthy (D-MO), and Rep. Jim

(D-TX.

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* * *

Petition to NBC Over ER Episode Still Circulating

[From Sandy Mintz sandym@....]

I have written an open, ongoing letter to the producers and sponsors

of NBC's " ER " concerning the recent inflammatory episode, which I continue

to gather signatures and email periodically to NBC producers and a growing

list of sponsors. There are now over 400 names on the letter.

You can find the letter at

http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/vaccinations/Dear_Producers_and_Sponsors_of

_NBC_-_no_names.txt.doc

* * *

Assessing Autism Severity

[These abstract thanks to the CAN newsletter.]

Relationship Of Caudate And Thalamus Volumes To Autism Severity.

SM Hodge, S Steele, GJ , JAL Gavin, MR Herbert**, DN Kennedy, N

Makris, CH Schmid, H Tager-Flusberg, VS Caviness Jr, Shriver Center,

Waltham, MA; Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA; and Tufts / New

England Medical Center, Boston, MA

Goals: Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting cognitive,

linguistic, social, and emotional functioning. The current study examined

the relationship between subcortical brain structures and autism severity.

Methods: Sixteen autistic children aged 7 - 13 (IQ ranger: 50 - 132)

underwent brain MRI with quantitative image segmentation. Volumes of

subcortical structures were measured and normalized as a ratio of total

brain size to account for varying head size and age. Autism severity was

assessed by the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), and subjects

received neuropsychological and neurological exams.

Results: There was a negative correlation between caudate volume and

ADOS communication score (r=-0.55, p<0.03) and a positive correlation

between thalamus volume and ADOS social score (r=0.50, p<0.05). Caudate and

thalamus volumes were also inversely correlated with each other (r=-0.50,

p<0.05).

Conclusion: Autism severity as measured by ADOS communication and

social scores demonstrated an inverse relationship with caudate volume and a

positive relationship with thalamus volume, and these structures were

negatively correlated with each other. This may indicate an abnormality in

cortico-striato as well as cortico-thalamic connections. It could also

indicate that the striato-thalamic interaction is imbalanced. While the

etiology and brain pathology of autism remain under investigation, these

observations may point toward one component of this complex debilitating

disorder.

* * *

Face Recognition Processes In Children And Adults With Autism.

RM ph, S Steele, Shriver Center, Waltham, MA; J Tanaka, Oberlin College,

Oberlin, OH

The present studies examined the presence of holistic face recognition

processes in typical children and adults and children and adults with autism

using the part-whole method of Tanaka and Farah (1993). The premise of this

approach is that if the individual features of a face are processed

holistically, they will be recognized more readily in the context of the

whole face than in isolation.

Participants received 72 computerized, immediate recognition test

trials forcing a choice between the original face and a foil face differing

by one feature (eyes, nose, or mouth) and alternately presented in whole vs.

part and upright vs. inverted conditions. As expected, typical 9- and

11-year-old children and adults exhibited a whole advantage for upright but

not inverted faces and were most accurate when face recognition depended on

the eyes.

In contrast, neither children nor adults with autism demonstrated the

typical advantage for eye recognition, performing as well on mouths as eyes

overall. Whereas adults with autism did not show a whole advantage for

recognition of any face feature in the upright condition, children with

autism exhibited a selective whole advantage for mouths.

These findings converge with prior observations of autistic children's

unusual reliance on the mouth in face identification and suggest that

aberrant face processing strategies are implicated in the profound social

deficits that characterize autism.

* * *

Children With Autism Show Subtle Difficulties Detecting Eye Direction.

J Swettenham, E Milne and D Rosenfelder, University College London, UK

Twelve children with autism (mean age 7 years, 8 months) and 12

typically developing children (mean age 8 years, 4 months), matched for

mental age took part in an eye direction detection task. This task involved

presentations of eyes on a computer screen looking either straight ahead,

10, 15 or 20 degrees to either the left or the right.

Participants were asked to judge as quickly as possible whether the

eyes were looking straight ahead or not by pressing one of two computer

keys. This task involved 120 trials (60 straight ahead, 60 looking away).

Participants also performed a similar (non-social stimuli) task in which

they judged the position of smaller squares within larger squares either

centrally placed, 10, 15 or 20 degrees to the left or right.

For eye stimuli looking straight ahead and eye stimuli at 20 degrees

(left or right), both groups of children were equally accurate at

categorising eyes as either `looking at you' or not. However when eyes were

looking slightly away (10, 15 degrees) children with autism were

significantly worse at eye direction judgment.

Children with autism were also significantly slower at making

judgments when eyes were looking away compared to when eyes were looking

straight ahead. Analysis of the non-social stimuli revealed a similar

pattern of results suggesting that these effects may be due to a general

perceptual impairment.

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