One of the most common arguments in the “vaccines-cause-autism” discussion involves the case of Hannah Poling. Miss Poling is autistic and was compensated by the government through the vaccine-court system. Online discussions usually end up going around in circles with people explaining why the concession doesn’t mean the government has stated that vaccines cause autism, and the other side saying “but it does”.
Well, the Court has clarified the situation. Here is a footnote from the decision in Brian Hooker’s case.
I am well aware, of course, that during the years since the “test cases” were decided, in two cases involving vaccinees suffering from ASDs, Vaccine Act compensation was granted.
But in neither of those cases did the Respondent concede, nor did a special master find, that there was any “causation-in-fact” connection between a vaccination and the vaccinee’s ASD. Instead, in both cases it was conceded or found that the vaccinee displayed the symptoms of a Table Injury within the Table time frame after vaccination. (See Section I above).In Poling v. HHS, the presiding special master clarified that the family was compensated because the Respondent conceded that the Poling child had suffered a Table Injury–not because the Respondent or the special master had concluded that any vaccination had contributed to causing or aggravating the child’s ASD. See Poling v. HHS, No. 02-1466V, 2011 WL 678559, at *1 (Fed. Cir Spec. Mstr. Jan. 28, 2011) (a fees decision, but noting specifically that the case was compensated as a Table Injury).
Second, in Wright v. HHS, No. 12-423, 2015 WL 6665600 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Sept. 21, 2015), Special Master Vowell concluded that a child, later diagnosed with ASD, suffered a
“Table Injury” after a vaccination. However, she stressed that she was not finding that the vaccinee’s ASD in that case was “caused-in-fact” by the vaccination–to the contrary, she
specifically found that the evidence in that case did not support a “causation-in-fact” claim, going so far as to remark that the petitioners’ “causation-in-fact” theory in that case was “absurd.” Wright v. HHS, No. 12-423, 2015 WL 6665600, at *2 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Sept. 21, 2015).The compensation of these two cases, thus does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism. In setting up the Vaccine Act
compensation system, Congress forthrightly acknowledged that the Table Injury presumptions would result in compensation for some injuries that were not, in fact, truly vaccine-caused. H.R. Rept. No. 99-908, 18, 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6344, 6359. (“The Committee recognizes that there is public debate over the incidence of illnesses that coincidentally occur within a short time of
vaccination. The Committee further recognizes that the deeming of a vaccine-relatedness adopted here may provide compensation to some children whose illness is not, in fact, vaccine related.”
While the arguments may still not convince those who wish to believe, the conclusion is clear: The compensation of these two cases, thus does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism.
The Special Masters (basically the judges in this special court) are not only the experts in the decisions (they work every day in the court and write the decisions), they are legally bound by the decisions. If a case sets a precedent, they must follow it. Or they will be overturned by higher courts.
I agree that following the logic takes time and effort, but, again, if you don’t have the time to go through that, the conclusion is very clear. And repeated again for emphasis
The compensation of these two cases, thus does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism.
—
By Matt Carey
Left Brain Right Brain 
Re-writing the history of Hannah Poling’s case will not do your argument any good. Her case was conceded by Health and Human Services before it could go to the ‘Vaccine Court’. Her case was never heard by the “Vaccine Court” in front of a special master. And it’s a good thing they did concede before her case was hear because she had an iron-tight case of vaccine injury and both her parents were medical professionals who could provide expert testimony and kept records apparently. Beyond the autism she suffered as a result of getting nine vaccines at one time, the record shows she also immediately started suffering seizures which continued, and she was compensated for that too. HHS did not want this case to cause a precedent and rewrote the record. They then had a new concession theory written and had that signed off by a special master of the ‘vaccine court’. That rewriting of the concession and theory of causation relabeled it as a table injury to avoid causing a precedent, but the salient facts of her almost immediately suffering pain and seizures, and then soon thereafter, ASD are known.
Since it was never tested and further, was conceded as a table injury, where causation doesn’t have to be shown, your view on this is your own, of course, but doesn’t have support in the history of the case.
If you read the quotes above from the NVICP, the Special Master disagrees.
The evidence does support fever after the vaccines. But the rest of your claim isn’t as well supported. To remind you, in other cases the Special Masters did not find a link between mitochondrial disorders and vaccine injury.
Perhaps you didn’t notice-I didn’t rewrite the Hannah Poling story.
You all were fed misinformation by David Kirby and others. The correction quoted above is from the Court. The final source for an explanation of what happened in the court.
If you wish to deny what is above it will be just that: a denial.
You can find a comment on the Age of Autism blog by Hannah’s mother stating clearly that it was a table injury. But I guess she’s lying too?
I deny it. Re-read my last sentence. The case was rewritten. It was compensated, in part, as a the table injury, but well after HHS had conceded. And there was that seizure disorder that complicated HHS trying to pound the square peg of this case into the round hole- (compensating this trajedy as simple a simple case of encepalapathy from the table).
Again, HHS had to compensate this case via the Vaccine Court’ to have a new record that would avoid setting a precedent. The facts of the case were never argued in front of the special master. There was no hearing or give and take about the facts; there was simply a ratification of an agreement made beforehand between the attorney’s for HHS and the Poling’s. At all costs, HHS had to avoid this case becoming a precedent and spent months of spinning the case in the news as a ‘one-off’ special situation because she had some sort of mitochodrial dysfunction. Except the theory is flimsy in that there was no evidence she had a mito. dysfunction before the over-vaccination. Just the opposite, she was meeting all her growth goals.
Thinking back, you may recall that the parents and the child appeared at a news conference on the steps of the federal court building in Atlanta– with the concession by the HHS in hand! This very public announcement came well before the much later actions taken by the ‘Vaccine Court’. You may also recall the girl completely oblivious to all the people and cameras and noise, as though she could not hear or understand anything that was going on, classic signals of a child with possible ASD (but in fact that diagnosis had been confirmed well before the news conference)
You don’t understand basic law.
It was compensated in whole as a table injury.
It was conceded because that was what the law required. Just because Hannah Poling was going to be a test case does not mean that she waived her rights to be considered for concession. It would have been unethical for HHS to deny her concession in order to hold her back for a hearing–which she may have lost. You have it exactly backwards.
People with mitochondrial disease do meet developmental goals before their first crisis. So you also don’t understand the science.
If you want to spread misinformation keep repeating your story. If you want to stick to the facts read them above.
Let’s go back to this comment by you
“It was compensated, in part, as a It was compensated, in part, as a the table injury, but well after HHS had conceded table injury, but well after HHS had conceded”
The case was compensated *in its entirety* as a table injury.
To suggest anything else is a misrepresentation.
Possibly that “spin” you keep mentioning.
Since you keep avoiding answering the points where you fail, I bring it up again
“Again, HHS had to compensate this case via the Vaccine Court’ to have a new record that would avoid setting a precedent. ”
You are spinning. Wildly.
As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, HHS conceded because they had to. By law. A case that fits a table injury has to be conceded. As the special master notes: this will happen even for cases where no vaccine injury happened.
You keep stating that here was a hidden agenda involved. There wasn’t.
Let’s continue to correct your claims.
“There was no hearing or give and take about the facts; there was simply a ratification of an agreement made beforehand between the attorney’s for HHS and the Poling’s. ”
Incorrect.
The poling family submitted their expert reports. Based on these, HHS determined that the case fit the definition of a table injury.
That’s a give (expert reports given to HHS) and take (HHS considered the report, took the information).
You appear to disagree with HHS and DoJ doing their jobs under the vaccine act.
“Iron-tight case” huh? That’s an indication of Your confusion, pal, Your mind is unable to distinguish between “air-tight” and “iron-clad”, C’mon, “iron-tight” doesn’t make any sense, and neither do you. What else have you conflated?
Was Hannah formally diagnosed as autistic? I remember reading that her mother denies it.
Hannah Poling is diagnosed autistic.
Re: “does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism”
……nor does it afford any support to the notion that vaccinations CANNOT contribute to the causation of autism. The resolution of the case sidesteps the need to confront the question head on, for obvious political reasons.
Except that studies have been done on now millions of children – vaccines do not contribute to autism.
You don’t understand basic law.
It was compensated in whole as a table injury.
It was conceded because that was what the law required. Just because Hannah Poling was going to be a test case does not mean that she waived her rights to be considered for concession. It would have been unethical for HHS to deny her concession in order to hold her back for a hearing–which she may have lost.
The resolution of the case followed the law. Forcing her to “confront the question head on” may be something *you* want but what you want is for justice to be abandoned for your own possible political gain.
How could she lose the case in Vaccine Court when HHS had already conceded it?
Since you truly are ignorant of the basics, I will explain.
The only way for her case to go to hearing would be to put aside the concession.
Since the case was conceded, there was no hearing. There was no need for a hearing.
The case was conceded. There was no decision on causation. Anything you have read or stated to the opposite is false.
Read the statement from the Special Master above. Since you don’t understand it, just accept the conclusion. Even though you don’t wish to.
Add to this–evidence may have come forth that would have lost the case. Wasn’t that obvious?
Not all evidence was presented before the concession.
You are just going to have to let this go. Hannah Poling was not compensated for autism as a vaccine injury.
Now add this, from Hannah Poling’s mother (who is also an attorney):
also,
Sorry, but Hannah Poling’s case does not mean that the Court or the government has accepted that vaccines cause autism. To say otherwise is just flat out wrong.
It’s very convenient to think that the concession was done for some ulterior purpose. Sadly it was just mundane. The child met the conditions for a table injury. The government, quite appropriately, conceded the case based on this. It’s more than appropriate, it’s required by law.
“……nor does it afford any support to the notion that vaccinations CANNOT contribute to the causation of autism.”
Nope. But arguing “we have no evidence to support our case, but you can’t prove a negative so we will cling to our beliefs” is hardly a convincing argument.
Studies in millions of children show vaccines don’t cause autism.
Some believers in the vaccines-cause-autism myth tried to use the Poling Concession to counter those studies.
The quotes in this post show that’s incorrect. So we are back to strong scientific data on one side, and bad evidence on the other.
Bad evidence *and* misrepresenting court cases.
You are still rewriting what happened in this case. In late 2007 the government conceded that Hannah Poling got encephalopathty with features of autism disorder as the result of the nine vaccinations she got at one time. That was a victory for her family but was not all that happened to her, especially the follow-on seizure disorder. The parents got a new concession from the government, not the Vaccine Court, at the beginning of 2008 that added in the later onset of seizure disorders (epilepsy). Then the parents agreed to that expanded government concession. For the next year and a half, after the concession was agreed, the family had to jump through all kinds of hoops HHS required before the government would agree on the amount of compensation, for what purposes and for what duration. (That agreement, redacted, was later published). What that resulted was, in effect, a “plea deal on the part of the government” conceding the above and the amounts jointly agreed for compensation. At that point and only after all that was agreed by both parties, did the case get moved over to the “Vaccine Court”, which ratified it unconditionally and without change.
The Special Master in this case made statements that the case was being compensated as an MMR table injury, not because the Vaccine Court found that the vaccines caused her autism. This statement is quite bogus because the theory of causation was never argued in front of the Vaccine Court and the government had two or three theories they threw out there at various stages, nor does a simple table injury result in the huge amounts of compensation given allegedly for damage from a single MMR shot. It was just a theory the Special Master threw out there to make sure this case provided no legal precedents for other vaccine injured children to follow in their cases. The government in their initial 2008 concession never picked out a particular vaccine that caused the injuries but attributed them to the nine at one time to a child who had been ill with ear infections and who may have had a pre-existing mito. disorder, no one will ever know the answer to that issue.
After the prior agreement was ratified by the Special Master, more hoops and hurdles had to be jumped before any money could be released and, finally, after a full ten years of tribulation and fighting with the government, the family began to receive the first parts of the awarded compensation.
So, spin that. It was a plea deal, which is how most legal cases are decided these days.
I am quite aware that the financial settlement was published. I was the one who made it public
You are demonstrating ignorance again
You clearly don’t understand the term “plea deal”. It’s completely the wrong term here.
Stop getting your legal terms from tv cop shows.
And now you are quibbling over the proper legal term to use. That’s hardly a response to all that I wrote of this case history which you tried to rewrite.
I’ll wait for your reasoned response to my statement of facts of the Poling case.
No I am not.
I M repeatedly pointing out the substantive errors you make regarding this case.
Pointing out that you are ignorant of legal terms is in addition to that effort.
You dodge and weave and refuse to take on the clear evidence that you are wrong.
Not surprising from someone who supports the idea that vaccines cause autism. In fact, it’s expected.
You are now just going in circles and repeating yourself.
Either admit you were wrong (unlikely), respond directly to the substantive criticisms of your argument, or move on.
That is not a request. Whether you are confused and truly do not understand what you are talking about or are trying to cloud the issue, I do not care.
” It was just a theory the Special Master threw out there to make sure this case provided no legal precedents for other vaccine injured children to follow in their cases.”
Wrong
The details fit a table injury for MMR. Hence she was compensated for that.
The special master made no theory of injury. Just the case fit the requirements for compensation under an MMR table injury so it was compensated.
A case that fits the guidelines for compensation under a table injury is presumed to be a vaccine injury.
And none of this says the court or the government has agreed that vaccines cause autism.
I see you aren’t even trying to claim that. Just a lot of verbiage that mostly repeats what I’ve said while claiming I am trying to spin.
Considering the fact that the Vaccine Injury Table does include as compensable injuries those presenting symptoms inherent in a diagnosis of autism should make it clear that Congress in creating the law had NOT concluded that vaccines cannot play a causative part in causing autism and related disorders, but in fact MUST HAVE CONCLUDED THAT THERE IS A STRONG POSSIBILITY (PROBABILITY) THAT THEY DO.
I agree with Sullivan that my earlier statement re: confronting the case head on was absurd, and that the only question was whether a Table Injury existed regardless of the cause. MY BAD!
” it clear that Congress in creating the law had NOT concluded that vaccines cannot play a causative part in causing autism and related disorders, but in fact MUST HAVE CONCLUDED THAT THERE IS A STRONG POSSIBILITY (PROBABILITY) THAT THEY DO.”
This is goalpost shifting. Since it is now clear that the court and HHS have not stated that vaccines cause autism, we now claim (falsely) that congress has.
Considering the fact that the Vaccine Injury Table does include as compensable injuries those presenting symptoms inherent in a diagnosis of autism should make it clear that Congress in creating the law had NOT concluded that vaccines CANNOT play a part in causing autism and related disorders, but in fact MUST HAVE CONCLUDED THAT THERE IS A STRONG POSSIBILITY (PROBABILITY) THAT THEY DO.
I agree with Sullivan that my earlier statement re: confronting the case head on was absurd, and that the only question was whether a Table Injury existed regardless of the cause. MY BAD!
“Considering the fact that the Vaccine Injury Table does include as compensable injuries those presenting symptoms inherent in a diagnosis of autism”
I presume you refer to encephalitis and encephalopathy.
As pointed out multiple times, encephalitis and encephalopathy are not autism, do not necessarily have similar symptoms to autism – though they might – and vice versa. And they were included in the Table in the 1980s, when one study, since challenged – suggested that the DTP – which is no longer in use – causes encephalopathy, and there was a belief MMR causes encephalitis. Later studies suggest neither is correct.
So you have an out of date administrative document – the table – referring mostly to a vaccine no longer used, addressing an injury that is not autism. No, it’s not evidence the government thought vaccines cause autism even in the 1980s. Even if it was a good counter to the science – and it’s not – it doesn’t support your claim.
I agree that neither Congress in the Act, nor the courts in the Poling case have concluded that vaccines CAN contribute to the causation of autism, NOR have they concluded that they CANNOT.
(I will keep my keyboard shut until I have made my thinking stand in the corner for a while.)
Thank you all.
The court has also not concluded that the Bettleheim “refrigerator mother” theory is wrong. But I think we can all agree that it is, indeed, wrong.
What the court did was take an in depth look at the theories of vaccine causation that the vaccines-cause-autism community felt were the cause. That same community selected the test cases that they felt were the strongest examples of those theories.
And the court decided that these theories were “not even close” to showing that vaccines cause autism. They showed that the test cases were “not even close” to demonstrating that autism can be caused by vaccines, no matter the theory. The histories of the children just did not match up with the hypothesis that vaccines–by whatever cause–resulted in their autism.
So, yeah, the court has not decided that in no circumstances could vaccines cause autism. Just in the circumstances that the vaccines-cause-autism community believe in.
I’m new to the vaccine controversy but this 10year old Hannah Poling case keeps coming up so I did a little review and it does appear that HHS made some “clarification” in 2008 to a Rule 4c concession report published publicly by David Kirby in 2007. Rob Calvert is correct in his assessment as it would appear that HHS officials themselves “shifted the goalposts” as you say.
As a libertarian who firmly believes that each person owns their own body and whatever goes into it, I don’t like that the US government has not pulled out all the stops to research why some children like this get sick after vaccination. Whether Rob calls it a “plea deal” incorrectly or an accepted “proffer” as the correct civil case legal jargon; again, Rob has a valid point.
If the parents of Hannah Poling accept the proffered HHS concession, the government never has to admit blame for any injury. That’s the whole point of a deal and the benefit to the government respondents. There was never any hearing on causation so they never have to admit a link between autistic regression and vaccination. My suspicion was that the Poling evidence was too good to run the risk of an open hearing to pave the way for medical causation for other cases (on this I speculate and may be incorrect).
This link below clearly indicates that the original 2007 concession was based on the medical theory below rather than a strict table injury. It’s obvious the government lawyers moved the goalposts to a narrowly defined table injury in 2008 only AFTER they realized that they potentially opened the floodgates with this mitochondrial issue.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-vaccineautism-court-d_b_88558.html
ANALYSIS
Medical personnel at the Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation, Department of Health and Human Services (DVIC) have reviewed the facts of this case, as presented by the petition, medical records, and affidavits. After a thorough review, DVIC has concluded that compensation is appropriate in this case.
In sum, DVIC has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder. Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11(c)(1)(C)(ii).
DVIC has concluded that CHILD’s complex partial seizure disorder, with an onset of almost six years after her July 19, 2000 vaccinations, is not related to a vaccine-injury.
The now retired Vaccine court chief special Masters who knows the program best seem to indicate that compensating children with autism is business as usual. So I am not reassured by Sullivan’s post that vaccines don’t cause brain damage that has autism symptoms. I’m with Rob on this one.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-03-07-3676631517_x.htm
The case may not be a first, said Gary Golkiewicz, chief special master for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. He oversees the special “vaccine court” which rules on requests for payments from the vaccine injury fund.
“Years ago, actually, I had a case, before we understood or knew the implications of autism, that the vaccine injured the child’s brain caused an encephalopathy,” he said. And the symptoms that come with that “fall within the broad rubric of autism.”
And there are other somewhat similar cases, Golkiewicz says, that were decided before autism and its symptoms were more clearly defined
To remind you, the fact that there was never any hearing on causation goes the other way, too. The parents never had to actually prove the case. In other words, an agreement works that way for both parties. I agree that the government thought the parents had a reasonable chance of winning and meeting the legal standards – but it was never tested.
That’s not all. The legal standards are that if there’s a plausible theory, you compensate, even if there is no good scientific support for the claim. The program is designed to compensate in cases of doubt.
Other cases in NVICP that looked at mitochondrial disorders did not find that they lead to vaccine injury or can exacerbate it. Of course the program found brain damage in other cases: encephalopathy is on the table of injuries, even though current studies don’t support a link to vaccines – so there is a presumption of causation.
Were Hannah’s problems caused by vaccines? Maybe. She certainly had a fever within the right time frame. She certainly regressed after the vaccines. But it’s not clear, since she had other sources of stress, like recurrent each infection before the vaccines. And it’s not a vaccines-cause-autism case: she had a very rare form of mitochondrial disorder, with a strong argument that any fever could make her regress. In other words, there is a real and sad reality that she was likely destined to regress.
The point is that as a legal matter, the case does not show vaccines cause autism. Using it that way is misusing it.
Generally speaking, trying to get around the science that shows no link between vaccines and autism by using NVICP cases doesn’t work. NVICP really never compensated on that theory. In fact, it rejected those claims again, and again, and again, on abundant evidence.
I pretty much agree with everything you have said. My concern isn’t that the case proves vaccines cause autism but rather the existance of such cases proves that I’m not being told the whole truth by talking government heads that vaccines absolutely do not trigger the disorder.
“If the parents of Hannah Poling accept the proffered HHS concession, the government never has to admit blame for any injury. That’s the whole point of a deal and the benefit to the government respondents”
Such a statement suggests a bias in the writer or repeating a bias from people who have tried timeframe this deal as something it is not.
When HHS finds that the details of a case meet the criteria for a table injury, they are required to concede. That is the point of the deal. It is, as the law was drafted, to benefit the petitioner, not the government.
My point was simply the clearly documented fact that the table injury concession was entered into the case docket only months after the original document cited above. I speculate that HHS respondent was narrowing the scope from original document to reduce risk for other cases to use the same theory.
Who’s forcing vaccination on you or your children?
This statement is antithetical to your self-proclaimed libertarianism. Why aren’t concerned parties like you ponying up and paying researchers to study this?
“This statement is antithetical to your self-proclaimed libertarianism. Why aren’t concerned parties like you ponying up and paying researchers to study this?”
To be fair, some may have tried. People donated over $600k to Wakefield and his “strategic autism initiative”.
Wakefield used half or more to pay himself.
And spears to have tossed the rest at friends who accomplished nothing.
And this doesn’t even go into how much went into Thoughtful House. The clinic/research group that paid Wakefield $270k a year to, well, accomplish basically nothing.
As the coerced (maybe you guys are correct that forced is too strong a term) public consumer of the vaccine product why would I need to pay for safety research that should be government or industry funded. I think that when there is real risk of harm an informed consent requires risk and benefits clearly delineated based on updated science. Perhaps an additional 50cent tax on each vaccine could fund vaccine safety research. For example, what is the biological mechanism for MMR induced post vaccination encephalopathy and how can this be prevented.
Probably a similar mechanism as what causes encephalopathy following natural measles infection, though that has a much higher rate of occurrence than post-vaccination encephalopathy.
These articles provide good starting points for anyone who doesn’t yet understand that “MMR induced post vaccination encephalopathy isn’t really a thing.
Genetics and the myth of vaccine encephalopathy.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2603512/
Encephalopathy after whole-cell pertussis or measles vaccination: lack of evidence for a causal association in a retrospective case-control study.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16940831
As far as the mechanism that explains this apparently nonexistent condition: The most commonly identified mutation involved in seeming cases of vaccine encephalopathy is increasingly expressed beginning in infancy (relative to the decreasing expression of the fetal form of the gene) and so predisposes to postnatal seizures and encephalopathy. The mutation causes seizures after a period of apparently normal development in humans and in unvaccinated rats in a manner that should make sense to those who have at least a nodding acquaintance with developmental biology and gene regulation.The condition is not caused by vaccination.
BTW, the failed idea that vaccines cause encephalopathy with autistic traits is still flogged on anti-vaccine websites such as Age of Autism by authors who can’t be bothered to peek at the scientific literature that emphatically refutes their position.
I live in California and have teenagers who already received all their usual vaccines without clear problems. If my kids don’t get all the “recommended” vaccines then they cannot go to school sb277. So essentially I feel forced to have them receive vaccines which are not critical for the public health like Gardasil for example.
Where I’m at that is not included for the vaccinations you have to have for school. Neither is the flu shot.
Again, no one is forcing you nor coercing you to accept vaccines for yourself or your children. You should pay for research because you don’t want nor accept government intrusion.
There is already a mountain of safety evidence and is ongoing. What happened to free markets regulating themselves? Isn’t that the glibertarian way? You don’t want government except when you do.
“Libertarians” like Pat should have no problem with that.
“Libertarians” like Pat should also have no problem educating their kids without the use of public schools. He/she should just home school or create a their own Libertarian private school for their special snowflakes that has an emphasis on personal freedom by ignoring all public health policies.
All this hair splitting about the Poling case misses one simple fact. The Vaccine Court administers compensation payouts for victims of vaccination misadventure. If (for whatever reason) it has dispersed such funds for anything other than suspected vaccine induced injury, then it has failed and arguably missused public funds – would that not be both a moral and legal failure?
Libertarians / anti-vaxers do raise legitimate objections regarding discrimmination (both moral and financial) through public policy and usually related discussions end with someone disparaging the dissenting opinion and the person themselves. Is one’s “orthodox” medical opinion so all fired important that it is okay to withhold public money and benefits from conscientious objectors, pressure them to inject dubious substances into their families’ bodies, marginalise and lampoon them?
Such is not the behaviour of people seeking to mature and heal society , but rather the language and actions of bullies and fear mongers and has lead (and is leading) us into a form of medical fascism.
Even if the source medical research behind each and every vaccine was sound (which it is emphatically not) then such moral superiority and belligerence, (whilst big pharma continue to harvest billions and wield immense political power) is repugnant.
We have forgotten that the citizen is supposed to be the highest office within a free society. If you force mass medication onto a population you diminish that principle and erode fundamental freedoms.
Time to wake up and smell the money in my opinion.
Paying out claims that are not true claims but are arguable is not a misuse of public funds.
It is what the vaccine court it told to do. By law.
Time to just think things through rather than accept your own bad logic.
“Time to wake up and smell the money in my opinion.”
Please do that. The following are two economic studies on the economic effects of vaccines, plus bonus one on the effect of the 1990 measles epidemic in California. They are all available free to download from PubMed.
What you need to do is prove that it is cheaper to let kids to get sick, require a working parent to stay home, and the cost of some getting hospitalized… versus getting kids protected by some vaccines. Make sure you provide peer reviewed economic studies of the same PubMed indexed caliber:
J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S131-45.
An economic analysis of the current universal 2-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccination program in the United States.
Pediatrics. 2014 Apr;133(4):577-85.
Economic Evaluation of the Routine Childhood Immunization Program in the United States, 2009.
West J Med. 1996 Jul-Aug;165(1-2):20-5.
Pediatric hospital admissions for measles. Lessons from the 1990 epidemic.
“Time to wake up and smell the money in my opinion.”
How does the $660,000 paid to (disgraced former doctor) Andrew Wakefield to get him to fake antivaccine data smell?
Can you run that by me in english??? Wtf is this.. it really sounds like a lot of beating around the bush with no clear answer…
It says the judgment was given because she became autistic shortly after vaccination but it was because of something that happened on the table…during the vaccination… like what?? most people can put 2 n 2 together, from what I read it’s autism from a vaccine.
You want simplified English?
No court has decided that Hannah Poling was made autistic via vaccines.
Don’t believe me? Read what her own mother wrote.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/11/rolf-hazlehurst-on-vicp-at-congressional-briefing.html?cid=6a00d8357f3f2969e2019b00f6331e970c#comment-6a00d8357f3f2969e2019b00f6331e970c
“When the government denied the seizures as part of her vaccine injury, we asked Dr. Zimmerman to opine on that issue. The vaccine injury had ALREADY been conceded. In addition, and I say this only because it is now public record, the government conceded a table injury. This essentially means that they did not have to determine whether or not the vaccines caused Hannah’s injury but that her case fit into the table.”
You write: “If a case sets a precedent, they must follow it.” LoL! What you misunderstand is that vaccine court recognizes no precedent. And there’s no trial either. It’s a kangaroo court.
T. Matthew–
I’ve seen some of your writing before. Clearly, you have zero understanding of the law. Seriously, what you write is laughably bad.
Goodbye. You are not welcome here. People who abuse the autism community for their own personal gain and to promote failed ideas of vaccines causing autism can take their nonsense elsewhere.
Goo day. I have a question. Can we assure that vaccionation causes autism considering only this case? I mean: Have other Health Authorities (from different countries) determined any possibility that vaccionation and autism are absolutely related? I am not saying whether one or the other is right. I just would like to know if further Statistics and clinical knowledege has been considered or this conversation is just related to this Court Case in particular.
there is a great deal of evidence that vaccination does not cause autism.
And more causes are being found all the time. If you live in the USA you can participate in a huge study on the genetics of autism: https://sparkforautism.org/discover/