Is a Payout Fair?
You have all heard the news; that a monetary compensation is imminent for the Poling family, a Georgia family who filed, and won, a claim against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services because their daughter, Hannah developed autism after the 9 vaccines she received when she was 19 months old. However, it seems that Hannah Poling actually has a mitochondrial disorder that was exasperated by the vaccines, not autism. Ironically, the courts did not make a clear cut link between the vaccines and autism.
Upon further examination of the actual case, not the media hype that Senator John McCain and David Kirby have given it, it seems that the Poling case is more of an anti-vaccination campaign than an actual court case to prove (or disprove) anything purely scientific about vaccines.
If readers recall, I am a middle of the road vaccinater (if there is such a thing). I chose the vital vaccinations for my son and space them out. But antivaccinationists scare me because I feel they put us and other children at risk.
What the antivaccinationists are trying to tell us is that autism is caused by a mitochondrial disorder which can be aggravated by vaccines. However, mitochondrial disorders that produce autism-like symptoms can be aggravated by fevers…anything that causes a fever…like a virus, or a bacteria, or an ear infection.
Given the type of Mitochondrial disease Hannah has ( Type I and III), it is possible that the high fever just after her vaccines is the cause of the onset of her autistic symptoms.
Autism Vox has a few questions that are really worth answering in order to answer the initial question…Is a payout really fair in this situation? : (1) Did vaccines injure Hannah Poling; (2) did vaccines cause her to become autistic; (3) how “rare” is Hannah’s “underlying metabolic condition”?
March 19th, 2008 at 7:08 am
[...] the American Academy of Pediatrics, has released a statement (finally) on the recent government court case involving autism and [...]
April 27th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
[...] that Mitochondrial Disease contributed to the child’s autistic-like symptoms. Although Hannah Poling, the child in question, does not actually have autism, she has many of the autism symptoms, [...]