All for one and one for all
For those who haven’t already heard via other blogs about the subpoena that’s been sent to autism blogger Kathleen Seidel, please, do yourself a favor and read her post on it.
Seriously, this has practically left me speechless at the moment. I’ll definitely be posting more on this later.
But for right now, I just want to touch on some of the aspects of this subpoena that I found most ridiculous:
- A lawyer can’t bother to check the spelling of “LexisNexis”, the famous legal search engine. No, really, it’s spelled “Lexus Nexus” in item 8.
- Item 9 requests records of communication with—I am seriously not making this up—“any religious groups (Muslim or otherwise)”. And yes, that parenthetical note is really there in the original.
- Item 5 contains a half-a-page-long laundry list of every blog in Seidel’s blogroll, with whom she’s expected to have kept a record of every single bit of communication. Oh, and did I mention the little remnant of HTML code in the paragraph, another sign that nobody likely bothered to proofread the thing?
- “2. All documents pertaining to the setup, financing, running, research, maintaining the website http://www.neurodiversity.com/.” Isn’t that just a bit overreaching? Particularly that “research” bit?
- Seidel is not even a party to this lawsuit, not even named in any of the material involved in the suit; merely a random blogger who happened to write about some of the individuals involved. Yet she’s expected to collect this ridiculous amount of information and even show up in court, with barely any reason to have even expected a subpoena in the first place.
- And last, but not least, none of this information seems to have any bearing whatsoever on whether the defendant’s product in fact caused the developmental disabilities on which the complaint hinges.
I seriously hope this subpoena gets quashed.
Because it’s quite scary.
So I, too, stand in allegiance with Kathleen Seidel, even though I’m not even one of the individuals who was named in the subpoena. To not do so would be to put all my fellow autistics in danger, as such a subpoena could strike any of us who dare to speak out in the name of good science and in the name of autism advocacy.
Or, to paraphrase the words of a certain other protest against outrageous legal tactics that’s been in the news lately… we are Kathleen, and we are legion.
Spot-on.
BTW, has anyone posted about this over at the “asperger” comm on LiveJournal? Last time I checked, no-one had. I’d’ve been tickled to do it myself, but, well, you already know that story. “Asperger” has what, 1400 members? 1700? Or something?
(hint, hint)
😉
Which reminds me, I need to copy my latest post over to InsaneJournal …
Comment by dkmnow — April 5, 2008 @ 1:11 am
dkmnow: I just posted about it over at the LJ Asperger comm.
Comment by codeman38 — April 5, 2008 @ 1:21 am
Awrsum! Now that I’ve finished my homework over at InsaneJournal, I’ll go check it out. 🙂
BTW, this site is blazingly fast about posting comments. ZIP! ZING! ZAPPP!
Me likes!
Comment by dkmnow — April 5, 2008 @ 2:02 am
[…] Again and again on Live Journal Rallying the Blogosphere Again codeman38 of Normal Is Overrated All for one and one for all Club 166 Kathleen Slapped-Blogs Slap Back Moon Cat of Left In Alabama Blogger Troubles – SLAPP […]
Pingback by Kathleen Seidel Has Received a Sub-Poena: Streisand, Spartacus, Shoemaker, They Start with S and End the Same Way « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science — April 5, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
Thanks for commenting on this.
I am one of the 100+ bloggers mentioned in item 5 of the subpoena.
I am keeping a running list of responses to the Seidel subpoena at I Speak of Dreams. I’ve added your blog.
Comment by Liz Ditz — April 11, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
Closing the loop: here’s what Shoemaker was trying to prevent Seidel from publishing:
Billing the Adversary
Numerous decisions issued over the twenty year history of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) document the extent to which the limits on attorney compensation have been tested by practitioners seeking remuneration from its taxpayer-financed coffers. The following review summarizes decisions involving the recently-sanctioned VICP specialist Clifford Shoemaker, Esq. — a central instigator of the campaign to convince the public of the speculative, scientifically unsupported hypothesis that a significant number of cases of autism result from vaccine injury, co-founder of the Institute for Chronic Illnesses, and a founding member its Institutional Review Board, which sponsors and provides ethical oversight of medical research and experimentation on autistic children and adolescents conducted by his long-time colleague Dr. Mark Geier.
Inspecting the Outstretched Palm
The potential for procedural and billing improprieties by Vaccine Injury Compensation Program petitioners’ attorneys — especially those representing numerous clients with similar, speculative claims — is made painfully evident in Special Master Denise Vowell’s recent fee and cost decision in Carrington v. HHS, Case 99-495V (Fed.Cl.Spec.Mstr., June 18, 2008) (unpublished), posted to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims website three days ago.
Numerous decisions issued over the twenty year history of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) document the extent to which the limits on attorney compensation have been tested by practitioners seeking remuneration from its taxpayer-financed coffers. The following review summarizes decisions involving the recently-sanctioned VICP specialist Clifford Shoemaker, Esq. — a central instigator of the campaign to convince the public of the speculative, scientifically unsupported hypothesis that a significant number of cases of autism result from vaccine injury, co-founder of the Institute for Chronic Illnesses, and a founding member its Institutional Review Board, which sponsors and provides ethical oversight of medical research and experimentation on autistic children and adolescents conducted by his long-time colleague Dr. Mark Geier.
Comment by Liz Ditz — July 13, 2008 @ 1:31 am