Several hours earlier, during his six-month well-baby visit, Andrew had gotten his third DPT shot - DPT being shorthand for the shot containing antigens that protect against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. Andrew and his older brother, Michael, were sleeping in the next room. On that night - Aug- Michelle Clements was watching television. Young brains seem to go haywire at night, when no one is watching.
An uneventful pregnancy, joyful early months of motherhood that carry a tinge of guilty hindsight. Her story begins with a nostalgic prelude, like most of the stories Millman hears. She wants to get on with it.īehind her dark glasses and long, dark hair, she seems solidly composed. They are toiling in an area of law that tries to reconcile science and public health and compassion.Īs she prepares to delve into what a vaccine called DPT may have done to Andrew Clements, Laura Millman begins by offering his mother a glass of water. In each of the hundreds of cases they examine, the special masters are trying to determine whether a single vaccine shot caused a young life to end or spiral into ruin and, if so, how best to compensate the family. In the windowless world they inhabit, Millman and the six other special masters working on the vaccine program are slowly sorting through evidence that stretches back to World War II. A special master is a kind of judge assigned to sort through a group of related cases. Court of Federal Claims, where Millman is adjudicating case #95-484V of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Which is to say, in the Office of Special Masters, U.S. How he got that way is why Michelle Clements is here. This boy, who suffered catastrophic brain damage three years ago, lies in his bed all day, unaware of the life around him. Andrew cannot eat - unless getting formula through a tube in the stomach can be called eating.
Neither can he walk or talk, or smell the flowers or watch the leaves tremble on the maple tree outside his window. Andrew could no more board an airplane than fly to the moon. Clements, 30, a freckled, honey-complexioned woman wearing a purple blazer and black suede pants, will explain what has happened to her 6-year-old son, Andrew, who is home in Milwaukee with his dad. on a Thursday in a fifth-floor courtroom above Lafayette Square, and Michelle Clements has taken the stand in Clements v. Clements?" asks Special Master Laura Millman. Michelle Clements with her son Andrew, who suffered severe brain damage at age 3½. D id the DPT vaccine make some children catastrophically sick? The question is at the core of the majority of cases before a special federal vaccine court - and the rules for answering it have changed.
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