Monday, 8 November 2010
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Dozens of families who blame an epilepsy drug for causing birth defects in their children say they are devastated that legal aid to sue its maker has been withdrawn. Women who took sodium valproate in the 1990s claim they were not given adequate warnings of possible harm. The Legal Services Commission, which runs legal aid, has concluded the case is not sufficiently likely to succeed. About 80 families have begun action for damages against the firm, claiming the drug - also known as epilim - caused severe disabilities in children including spina bifida, heart damage and learning difficulties. BBC health correspondent Adam Brimelow said the refusal of legal aid meant this action, which had been seven years in the planning, now appeared close to falling apart just days before it was due to go to the High Court. Karen Buck and John Coyle, whose daughter Bridget is severely disabled, said they were devastated legal aid had been pulled just before the case was due to be heard. Mr Coyle, from Stanmore in north-west London, told the BBC: "As a family we feel devastated because the case has gone on for over six years and the legal aid have funded it all the way along. Everybody has the belief that it [the case] has a better chance of winning than not, and just everybody is devastated that the finances have been pulled." Bridget's mother took an increased dose of epilim during her pregnancy in 1997/8, but said she was not made aware of any potential risks to her child. Her daughter has spina bifida, is unable to walk or talk, has epilepsy herself, and requires 24-hour care.
BBC News
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Claire McNeilly, Belfast Telegraph
Lu Weiwei realised that something was wrong with his 17-month-old daughter Jiarun when she kept crying after getting a routine encephalitis jab last December. He now believes his little girl was one of scores of children harmed by tainted vaccines. “I brought my little girl to the clinic in Shangqiu to get the vaccine. She was crying continuously, she had never cried like this before,” said Mr Lu, from Henan province. Then she stopped crying, and hasn’t cried since. “My little girl is already one year and five months old, but she doesn’t talk, she doesn’t walk. She doesn’t even cry anymore.” He believes his daughter suffered brain damage from substandard medicine. But when he tried to find out from the doctors what kind of vaccine his daughter had been given, he was told to go away and have another child. The reports, linking vaccines to four deaths and 72 illnesses among children, caused a ma jor stir and prompted an inquiry by the ministry which concluded that the allegations were not true. However, it conceded the vaccines, used for illnesses such as encephalitis, rabies and hepatitis B, may have been improperly stored. Few believed the government line. Among the other parents in Beijing are Shi Yufeng from Shandong province, whose daughter Wang Yuxiao, also 17 months, has not been able to move her legs since she was given a vaccination in March.
Clifford Coonan in Beijing, The Irish Times
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Gillian Wong, Associated Press
NDTV Correspondent, NDT
China Digital Times
Li Shuang, Global Times
One India
Mitch Morley, IPS
Welcome back, President Obama. Welcome back to Earth. If the Obama administration is looking to explain the recent embarrassment at the polls, it should reconsider the promises it made when it first assumed office, promises that largely remain unfulfilled: increased transparency, accountability and moral responsibility on behalf of our government. If progress has been made in these areas, it hasn’t been obvious. In fact, classified Iraq War documents and combat logs recently leaked show that, in fact, we’re going backwards. The almost 400,000 documents appeared a little over two weeks ago through the controversial media outlet WikiLeaks and present an incriminating snapshot of conditions in Iraq: private contractors act recklessly, civilian deaths are a daily reality, and our Iraqi allies are among the worst perpetrators of abuse in the region. American troops release prisoners to torture at the hands of brutal Iraqi jailers and on occasion, t hey take torture into their own hands. There are six or seven civilians killed each day; sometimes even those trying to surrender are shot. This has all happened — or rather, continued to happen — under a president who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Some have demanded the “return” of the WikiLeaks documents while others have less than subtly insisted that Julian Assange cease further operations. The Pentagon and the Justice department are considering prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act, a drastic step that this administration has already taken more times than all previous administrations combined. Assange is, in his own words, “on the run.” It looks like transparency isn’t so important after all.
Rory Marsh, Yale News
Film Director, David Lawley-Wakelin
Last Friday, London's Frontline Club held the premiere screening of David Lawley-Wakelin's film 'The Alternative Iraq Enquiry'. On the Panel chaired by Mark Seddon, the former New York Chief for Al-Jazeera English, were Clare Short, former MP and Major General Tim Cross, CBE, key witness at The Chilcot Inquiry. Should Tony Blair be taken to The Hague for crimes against peace? ... This was the motion put forward for debate after the screening of the film. After an hour of strong debating from all sides, former Major General ( Tim Cross CBE ) gave a NO. Clare Short with a true politician's answer avoided the question but did later call Blair a Liar. Therefore I cannot say how pleased I was when, at the end of the evening, the capacity audience was asked by the Chairman Mark Seddon for those who thought Tony Blair should NOT be taken to a criminal court only 17 put their hands up, leaving a massive majority who raised their hands to say YES . The degree to which Blair and JP Morgan Bank conspired becomes steadily clearer and I can assure you that for the 100,000 plus who died, the campaign to ''Take Blair to court '' will continue .. watch this space for further news...
Information Release, David Lawley-Wakelin, The Frontline Club
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Information Release, David Lawley-Wakelin, The Frontline Club
Dishearteningly unsurprising? This somewhat awkward phrase is, to my mind, the best description of the emotional and moral impact of WikiLeaks' release of 400,000 classified US military documents. In the wake of the GOP "landslide" in the US midterm elections, most commentators have moved on from this all-too-troubling and familiar story. But their doing so only reinforces the basic problems that the release of the documents has revealed - an almost brazen disregard for reality and willingness to ignore the lessons of history for political expediency and economic and strategic gain. And Barack Obama's post-election "move to the centre" and unwillingness to face the core systemic issues that helped lead to this electoral debacle will only strengthen the Republicans and diminish further the US' global standing. The individual details are bad enough. First, there are the details of hundreds of civilians killed at checkpoints and over 60,0 00 killed more broadly during the war; a figure the US military had refused to release and denied even having collected. Then there is the continued torture by US troops of prisoners well after Abu Ghraib, and the even larger problem of ignoring, as a matter of official military policy per "frago 242" (Fragmentary Order 242) the even more systematic torture and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by their own jailers. And even more stunning, the cavalier manner in which military lawyers okayed the killing of Iraqis trying to surrender merely because "they could not surrender to an aircraft". One can only wonder how the Nobel Peace Prize Committee now feels about having bestowed their most cherished prize on a president who handed over thousands of Iraqi detainees to that country's government and security forces, even though the US military had irrefutable evidence of massive, systematic torture by Iraqi security personnel. Is it time yet to ask for the medal back?
Mark LeVine, Al Jazeera
The Swedish government has announced that American spies have monitored Swedish citizens and residents in the country. Sweden was not informed the spying was taking place, according to Justice Minister Beatrice Ask. The revelation follows accusations that U.S. defense officials had pressured Sweden to force WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to move his operations outside Sweden. Assange has already threatened to sue Swedish prosecutors for filing what he considers phony rape charges against him under pressure from the Pentagon in the United States, which he has repeatedly embarrassed by publishing scores of previously secret or otherwise unknown Iraq and Afghanistan war documents. The justice minister said the spying had been going on since 2006. “It seems as though we haven’t been fully informed and that’s not good,” she said, according to European publications. The media in Norway and Denmark have reported similar clandest ine activities in their countries. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. intelligence has secretly detained residents of numerous countries who were suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups. In some cases the detainees were released after being cleared, but only after they were allegedly tortured.
Robert Weller, Dscriber
Six Gulf War Veterans 1990-1991 died in the first week of November. Their ages were 44, 48, 54(2), 61, and one age not known. Four were Army Veterans and 2 were Navy veterans. We honor them and their survivors by remembering them. We hope that if they had illnesses since the time of their service in the Gulf War 1990-91, that these illnesses are documented. They definitely have died an early death. The government will honor them more if they fully declassified all records from the Gulf War 1990-91. The Gulf War 1990-91 was a war of environmental hazardous exposure soups. These veterans and their families need to be honored and remembered and action taken so that lessons are learned for our country. Help for their fellow veterans after 20 years is sorely absent. How many more will die before the truth is fully known by their families, loved ones, fellow veterans, and the American public? How many electe d officials will step forward to correct these wrongs and honor the veterans of Desert Shield/Desert Storm/Gulf War 1990-91? We ask for a National Registry for Gulf War Veterans 1990-91 to be established by law to list those that have died by name, age, unit, and cause of death and to list veterans that are still alive but suffering from Gulf War illnesses or any diagnosed illness so that medical care givers and researchers can truly help the veterans of the Gulf War 1990-91. The gulf war veterans are asking for our health, dignity, truth, and transparency!
Denise Nichols, Veterans Today
Control orders – more accurately described by juntas the world over as house arrest – are still causing problems in the coalition [Conservative/Liberal Democrat]. But the more one hears about the row behind the scenes the more one suspects that the fault line exists not just between politicians of different stripe, but between the coalition and an impatient authoritarian rump of civil servants, police and the intelligence officers. An unelected establishment is fighting very hard to retain an arbitrary power that was granted by Labour with its customary lack of care for Britain's traditions of justice and rights. The outcome of the terror review depends the moral authority of the government and the way Britain defines itself to the world. All that easy talk of principle and liberty by the coalition parties in opposition now has to be acted upon; otherwise, they will seem no better than the last government, whose comprehensive attack on liberty left us with so many bad laws and disreputable habits, one of which is confining suspects who have no experience of an open legal process, are not allowed to know the evidence against them and have no information about their release date. If this system is retained, we must ask what meaning the Freedom Bill has when it is published in the first quarter of next year. Will it be possible for the coalition to claim that the UK is reaffirming its commitment to liberty and rights by reducing the surveillance state, while at the same time maintaining house arrest for awkward citizens and residents who can't be charged? I doubt it. A compromise on control orders and 28 days without charge will simply corrode the meaning and potency of the bill and make the Lib Dems look foolish.
Henry Porter, The Observer
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Mark Ballard, Computer Weekly
James Slack, Daily Mail
Alex Deane, New Statesman
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