The Human Rights Act was hailed as a new beginning for those seeking Justice and the basic rights to life but is that also a mirage?

If we examine the workings of the law in all its aspects we begin to see that it is in fact the criminal and those who work against the people who are protected most by the law. The Human Rights Act concerns itself more with the rights to fair trial and freedom of expression than Justice for the victims of criminal acts.

The laws of the land are intended to protect the individual from wrong-doers and society from its enemies but in practice the exact opposite is true. This is perfectly illustrated in the case of the victims of pesticide poisoning and vaccine damage. To see how this is true let us examine the case of an occupationally exposed worker poisoned by pesticides.

Consider the regulations in this area of law.
Regulations demand that pesticides are proven "safe" before release into the environment but this is obviously not the case in reality for many are to be withdrawn on safety grounds within two years. Some of these have been used throughout the world and assumed to be "safe" when in reality they are not.
Regulations demand that users are trained and that they follow set procedures which control purchase, mixing, methods of use, protective clothing requirements, methods of disposal, time of harvest after use, washing of machinery, record keeping, reporting of accidents and freedom of information. The problem is that we know that trained people make serious errors and may even deliberately use the chemicals illegally but there are ways to control this and these too are controlled by the regulatory bodies.
Should an individual be poisoned by a pesticide either accidentally or by a deliberate act there are rights afforded under the various acts which should ensure prompt diagnosis and treatment but unfortunately those rights too are simply a vision of a utopia which does not exist.
Having been diagnosed and treated the patient has the "right" to access all his medical records but once again this is not always the case. Not only do the medical personnel have the right to alter notes but if they can face criminal charges as the result of releasing those notes then they have the right to withhold them from the patient, even, it seems, if that patient will be harmed by so doing. (see GMC rules.)
So we come back to those who regulate the use of pesticides and it would be thought that being subjected to the same poisons in food and the environment as the rest of us they would be determined to enforce the regulations.
Sadly this too is far from the reality on the ground as it is left to the discretion of those involved as to whether they take action or not and it is usually not, either because of the paperwork or the expense or simply because they can't be bothered and do not want to make waves and risk their pensions or promotion prospects.
The problem with this is that there is then no post-marketing monitoring and the early warning signs that something is wrong will be lost. Worse still the manufacturers are duped into thinking that every change they make has no ill-effects when the products are marketed and each product could potentially be causing ever greater effects. With no proper feedback it is impossible for them to know otherwise.
So with all the safety nets removed the victim could become permanently disabled and with governments around the world cutting back on welfare so as to ensure that the wealthy amongst us remain wealthy there is a genuine need for compensation not only for the need to live but also so that the true dangers of the chemicals can be exposed so that there will be no more victims. This has been seen with lead, asbestos and many other toxins.
The problem is that both the science and the law are owned by the companies and their allies in Government and the victim has no chance there either.

It should be noted that members of Parliament have stood in both Houses and proclaimed that there is no evidence that repeated low-dose exposures to organophosphorus pesticides, for example, can cause long-term adverse health effects in man and yet the Act recognising just those effects has been on the Statute books since 1958.
Giving false information to Parliament shows contempt for us all.

So let us take an example case, who for now will be nameless, and we invite you to offer your opinion as to whether you believe that justice has been done.
A similar story could be told by thousands of other poisoned people.

A loyal farm worker aged 42 having worked all his life, and much of it on the same farm, is exposed to a chemical which had been illegally stored and disposed of also in a manner contrary to regulations.
He became too ill to work after exposures to the chemical and its vapours but the doctors did not recognise the symptoms and he was treated with contraindicated drugs which obviously served to make matters worse.
The cause was lost as the doctors treated the symptoms, many of which were induced by the drugs they gave him in their efforts to help.
He became unemployed when he was referred to a poisoning specialist and was instructed to report his poisoning to the Health and Safety Executive.
The HSE inspector found that there were no records as required in law and the employer had also failed to report the incident as required in law but there was no prosecution of the employer.
What occurred instead was a systematic persecution of the labourer by the staff of the Health and Safety Executive who had never even bothered to see him or to ask him for the evidence to support his story.
The employer was asked to name the chemical but failed to do so which again was in breach of specific pesticide regulations. Still no action was taken.
The labourer was informed that he had all the symptoms of poisoning and that he would need the toxicologist's evidence to support him in court even though at this time no such action had been envisaged. He simply wanted to recover but time was to prove that this was impossible and he had to wait a full 18 months for the tests for poisoning.
By this time the Health and Safety staff were hard at work and they managed to persuade the toxicologist that the labourer could not have been poisoned because the farmer had assured them that there had been no chemical and no incident and the fear of losing their jobs and homes had his staff agreeing with him and making statements to that effect.
The labourer was by now recognised as permanently disabled.
The chemical company became involved and they also claimed that the chemical was safe even though they had no idea what that chemical had been, their opinion being based on the false information provided to them.
The labourer had to devise experiments which were to prove that the claims about the safety of the chemical were false but no matter how hard he tried the authorities refused to acknowledge the facts which he had discovered.

The labourer was advised to go to a lawyer well known in the field and the lawyer was asked to discover what that chemical really was and to obtain the medical records. He failed on both counts and arranged for the labourer to see another specialist at great cost to the labourer and his friends who helped.
A meeting was arranged with the HSE and the lawyer attended. The labourer was able to help the lawyer in arguments over another case involving the same chemical which was later successfully fought in court but he turned on the labourer when it came to his own case and sided with the HSE.
The specialist eventually declared that the labourer had been poisoned but that it would be difficult to prove in court because the proper tests were not performed by the doctors in the early stages. The lawyer decided to destroy the case by making false accusations that the labourer had refused a reasonable settlement offer of just two thousand and five hundred pounds. He gave the labourer two weeks to reply but within that time had his funding removed by the Government's Legal Aid Board.
That "lawyer" was discovered to be entirely unqualified and had professional links with the HSE.
A new lawyer referred to the first as "shysters" and stated that there had never been an offer to settle and in any event the case was worth far more.
Within months with no change in evidence this firm also sent false evidence to the board and the labourer had to fight for a year to regain the funding.

The case then entered a new phase and became part of the major group action.
However the labourer was not permitted to join the others for tests because he was not a victim of the OP sheep dips like the others. This was lucky really as it turned out that the often painful procedures were to lead nowhere as the results were never released and the costs were held against the victims. The controversial nature of the cases resulted in a falling out amongst the lawyers and the case was transferred to another firm.
This firm had close connections with the new Prime Minister and it was strange to see that the lawyers chose experts with links to the industry to examine their clients. By now our labourer was too ill to travel and his wife was undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy for breast cancer.
By this time the lawyers had calculated that the compensation due to him should be in the region of a million pounds.
Luckily again for him he avoided these experts because it was later to transpire that they would not support the victims and often misrepresented the facts.
He did not escape the attentions of dishonest medical examiners though for he faced them as the result of his claim for the benefit which would be his right in law because he was poisoned at work and had medical backing for the diagnosis. Sadly by now the influence of the Health and Safety over his case had reached the highest levels in the land and their efforts to have him seen as a deluded trouble maker were succeeding. The DSS examiner denied that he was eligible and so did the appeal medical but the appeal was a sham and the reasons for denial were taken directly from the first examiner's report. The labourer appealed again and appeared before a tribunal but he was in a very bad state and had to be assisted from the building after the DSS called off the hearing because their own papers were not in order.
The tribunal members decided unanimously that it was obvious that the labourer was suffering from neurological problems and demanded that next time the tribunal should be held at his home but not before he saw a neurologist who they said would support him.
Sadly that neurologist was not well versed in chemical poisoning and did not understand the difference between chronic and acute poisoning. He had to refer to a book for the symptoms and decided to diagnose somatisation syndrome even though by now the labourer had managed to obtain hard evidence of damage to various systems in his body including the heart, lungs, brain and vision.
The next tribunal was a complete farce and although it was agreed that the DSS papers were still not complete and that the labourer could introduce any evidence he wanted which supported his case this was in fact denied. Although at his home they appeared supportive, and suggested that he was 80% disabled, when the report came they too suggested somatisation syndrome.
At least one of the members was linked to the hospital which employed the toxicologist and which had denied access to the full medical records.
None of the DSS hearings or mdical examiners took into account the fact that the labourer's exposures had been unusually high for many years or that he had been exposed to the toxins on a daily basis and that this had left him vulnerable to even a small further exposure to approved chemicals.

By now the lawyers had decided that they did not have evidence that any OPs could cause long-term harm to human health, despite the Industrial Disease which recognises just that having been on the statute books for decades.
The lawyers decided to "blackmail" all the members of the group action into signing away their rights to justice or face the full costs of the defendants which would run into millions. Very few signed.
The lawyers dropped the cases having first failed to put the medical evidence before the court at the agreed times.
A new firm rescued the cases and the labourer went with them.

He appeared before a court for his benefit appeal and was so poorly that the judge offered to read his statement for him. The labourer faced the judge and a barrister with little support and was able to show that many of the reports before the court were grossly inaccurate. The judge criticised the toxicologist who had written two reports of opposite opinion on the case on the same day suggesting that this was "totally unacceptable"
He refused to address several of the points of law raised, including the failure of the tribunal members to declare potential conflicts of interest. He ignored the evidence which showed that the neurologist had provided a false report and his own report "reluctantly" upheld the tribunal's decision.

The labourer was to appeal this decision but events overtook him.
He was criticised for failing to challenge a chemist's report provided by the defence but he had never seen it. When he did he realised that he had been totally misled about the dangers of the chemical. It had not been a simple dilution of a grain store chemical but an illegal mixture, as confirmed by government officials and both chemical companies.
It was therefore a criminal act and would strengthen his case.
Another report came to him from a doctor, again for the defence, who had never even spoken to him and who based his entire case on inaccurate information and upon records from the hospital's toxicology department.
Both reports were destroyed with scientific facts by the labourer in time for the court hearing.
The case now had evidence of a criminal act, of perjury and inaccurate statements given by "expert" witnesses. The labourer had the foresight to send supporting medical evidence to the court before the deadline missed by the previous solicitors and so he firmly believed that his case was solid. This view was strengthened by the firm opinion of the court that cases of negligence against employers should be allowed to go ahead.

The court hearing was unbalanced with the defence team fielding more than half a dozen top barristers for a week. Employer defendants, backed by the Farmer's Union Insurance, were supported by the chemical companies and their top teams.
Unbelievably the labourer's case was thrown out by the judge on the grounds that it would be "an abuse of process" to allow it to continue to trial.

Disabled "for life" as the result of a series of negligent actions and living in a "tied" cottage with no prospects of employment, failing health and a wife in remission from serious cancer the labourer now faces the costs of the case, possible eviction from his home of 30 years, further appeals for his rightful benefits and deteriorating health.

Dated 2/8/2001.

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