Family To Receive $1.5M+ In Vaccine-Autism Award 594
An anonymous reader, quoting from CBS News, writes "'The first court award in a vaccine-autism claim is a big one. CBS News has learned the family of Hannah Poling will receive more than $1.5 million for her life care, lost earnings, and pain and suffering for the first year alone. In addition to the first year, the family will receive more than $500,000 per year to pay for Hannah's care. Those familiar with the case believe the compensation could easily amount to $20 million over the child's lifetime. ... In acknowledging Hannah's injuries, the government said vaccines aggravated an unknown mitochondrial disorder Hannah had which didn't 'cause' her autism, but 'resulted' in it. It's unknown how many other children have similar undiagnosed mitochondrial disorders. All other autism 'test cases' have been defeated at trial. Approximately 4,800 are awaiting disposition in federal vaccine court.' How did this happen when all the scientific data points otherwise?"
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Federal Government, (Score:5, Insightful)
My doctorb has proof that I have a previously unknown mitochondrial disorder that does not cause, but results in, a deep-seated need to receive large quantities of money.
$2.2 billion dollars would be appreciated as compensation.
Previous condition (Score:5, Insightful)
As was noted in the article, the girl had an underlying condition which the vaccine aggravated. It was a very specific case.
This does not validate the views of the anti-vaccination brigade.
Legal outcomes include luck (Score:5, Insightful)
> How did this happen .... ?
Every time you go to court, there will be a certain amount of randomness in the outcome, because the legal system isn't run by mathematical logic, it is run by humans (lawyers, judges, juries) and they are notoriously unpredictable.
Re:Previous condition (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be so sure. Think about it. Without a test your child too may have a rare mitochondrial disorder. Without a study no one knows how prevalent the disorder might be. When it comes to parents even vaccines that have a higher chance of saving a life than causing autism become something to worry about.
Re:All scientific data?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Another great step backwards... (Score:5, Insightful)
I truly feel for people who have complications as the result of taking any medicine, but if you consider the vast numbers of people who receive vaccinations with no issues at all, the side-effect cases are extremely minute. Like everything else the American health care system ails from these days, all these successful lawsuits will do is push researchers and pharmaceutical companies to cease development and production of vaccinations as their insurance rates etc go up. Only when people have to see their child die from what would have been an easily prevented disease, or watch his/her body broken by something like polio, will they realize how much vaccines are needed and how f'ed up our lawsuit happy country has gotten.
Re:Legal outcomes include luck (Score:1, Insightful)
It's run by money, the lawyers aren't doing this out of a sense of justice, or some other misguided reason, they're doing it for money. If 500K USD is what it takes to take care of a child with that disease, any disease, then the government would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. They're in it for the money! Money! Money!
does not contradict previous studies (Score:4, Insightful)
All other autism 'test cases' have been defeated at trial. Approximately 4,800 are awaiting disposition in federal vaccine court.' How did this happen when all the scientific data points otherwise?"
I'm certainly not a doctor and may be misunderstanding this, but the way i think of it is this: when you execute someone, you provide with them a "lethal dose" of poison. In reality, there is no such thing as a "lethal dose", but rather it's defined as something that is 99.9999% (or whatever) percent likely that you'll kill someone given his/her physical conditions. Yet naturally, some survive - but that doesn't make it any good for you. Same with vaccination: yes, some rare people may have developed some condition that counteracts the benefits of the vaccines, but that doesn't mean it's bad for you.
So, ultimately, this in itself doesnt contradict previous studies - in this case we're dealing with an isolated case (the so-called statistical "outlier"), whereas before you were (presumably) dealing with a random selection of individuals, representative of the general population
what really concerns me more, however, are the possible repercussions of this asinine decision. They get so obsessed over isolated cases that they completely neglect the larger picture. To quote another poster:
If you ever wondered why drug companies would rather work on yet another allergy medication instead of vaccines with a much bigger potential to help people, well, look no further.
Re:All scientific data?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how you properly challenge that claim. This is a subject that a lot of people care about, and have spent a lot of time (failing) trying to find studies that support a connection between Autism and Vaccination. If you want to do it correctly, you find a peer reviewed study that 1) shows a connection, and 2) hasn't been already shown to be a crock of shit. The ball is in your court.
Go ahead, we're waiting...
Re:bitter batter (Score:4, Insightful)
Way to find a way to stretch this into an attempt to start yet another healthcare flamewar on slashdot.
Personally, I think I'll abstain, and not take your very obvious bate. I'll continue finding this settlement flat out absurd, but for none of the strawman reasons you suggest. I do not deserve that kind of money for a bullshit 'medical accident', and neither do they.
Re:Previous condition (Score:5, Insightful)
This does not validate the views of the anti-vaccination brigade.
I wonder how often and loudly you'll need to repeat that in order for it to maintain its buffering effect against reality...
-FL
I have no idea what your comment means, but it's modded insightful so I have to respond. The reality is that the diseases that vaccinations prevent are far more horrible than you can imagine, probably because you've grown up in a world without them. Parents who do not vaccinate their children are irresponsible. They are blind to what these diseases do because when they grew up the diseases barely existed in countries with vaccination (if at all). By not vaccinating your children you not only risk their lives but you risk the lives of countless others. The reasoning behind the choices of not to vaccinate are largely based on pseudoscience and absurd.
Re:Vaccines are a great idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. All that documented history of vaccines wiping out smallpox, and nearly wiping out polio, and all those mountains of empirical evidence showing no correlation between vaccines and autism really suggests that we can't trust vaccines. Gotcha.
Re:Now you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. It's because you need allergy medication every day of your life. Vaccines are (mostly) single-use.
Re:vaccines (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who can be irked to actually research it. These things are highly scrutinized by countless people during their development process. You might not understand it, but that doesn't mean you should try to burn it for being a witch.
Re:Vaccines are a great idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
But there is no greed in Star Trek, and no psychopaths in power and no survival of the sneakiest doctrine in effect at all times.
-FL
I beg to differ. Q was definitely a psychopath if I ever saw one
Re:Previous condition (Score:4, Insightful)
If that is the case, then I apologise to the OP. I still maintain that those against immunisation/vaccination are irresponsible, though.
Re:vaccines (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, there are stuff in there with many letters and more than 3 syllables. Many of them contain Duhydrogen monooxide [wikipedia.org], which is a known "bad stuff". Anything with that many letters must be bad.
Oh, and on a more serious note:
chances are with a few minutes of research you are smarter than your doctor...
You might be smarter than your doctor, but I assure you that even after an hour of intensive googling, he is better informed than you are in medicine. Yes, you should not blindly do whatever the doctor says - you should ask questions, ask for a second/third/... opinion, research for yourself, etc. But to think that after a few minutes' research you would be more knowledgeable than him is a bit insulting.
Every parent wants some explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
When someone, anyone, comes along and offers a cut-and-dried explanation to a common problem ("Tour child is autistic? It was vaccines!"), they cling to the idea. The author/commentator/researcher has given them a target for their fears and misunderstandings. Like and angry lynch mob, they will accept the first target they can, regardless of the facts. They are blinded by their desperation to know what went wrong with their child's health, and their threshold for truth is set very, very low.
Re:Previous condition (Score:4, Insightful)
"The vaccine didn't cause the disorder, it resulted in it. "
I want to ask these parents, this judge, how many horrible deaths of young children from preventable deseases they are then liable for? The parents, lawyers and judge will not cause the deaths of these children, but thier actions certainly will result in the horrible deaths of children from preventable deseases.
Re:Previous condition (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Previous condition (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, your statement is couched in terms of the absolute, so I'll reply in the same way. [...] My children aren't vaccinated (12 and 8 respectively), and they're slender, highly active kids - the older was swim club champion last year. Actually, I can't fatten them up - I cook nearly all their food, and they don't often leave much on the plate.
It's got more to do with healthy lives and healthy immune systems than vaccines.
Well, I'll reply in the same way also. You're wrong. You're irresponsible. And it's parents like you who endanger the lives of others. Healthy lifestyle and healthy immune systems are more important than vaccines? Yes, they're important but they don't stop the disease, although they might help you recover from the disease (if the disease is actually recoverable from). You talk about healthy immune systems -- what do you actually think that immunisation does?
Re:vaccines (Score:3, Insightful)
chances are with a few minutes of research you are smarter than your doctor...
A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing...
Re:Previous condition (Score:2, Insightful)
I would say you are enjoying the benefits of herd-immunity. You might not find life to be so rosy if everyone were to act in the same way.
Re:Previous condition (Score:5, Insightful)
Second of all, you are completely ignoring the social side of this. If nobody gets vaccinated, some people will get sick. Without vaccines the disease spreads quickly and eventually (it doesn't take long) a large majority of the population starts getting sick. With vaccines however, the disease is not able to survive further than a few victims and eventually (5 years or so) if nearly everyone is vaccinated, the disease DIES.
This is exactly what they did to smallpox in North America. They vaccinated so many people (pretty much everyone over 30-40 has the scar from it) that the disease is almost unheard of in North America. In fact, if it's so much as suspected at a hospital, the entire place is put into lockdown.
1 person out of 5000 getting sick from a vaccine (generously bad number) is nothing compared to what happens when people don't get vaccinated and the disease hits everyone. Remember, if you don't get vaccinated for something, the main reason is probably that most people around you DID. So stop being selfish and help SOLVE the problem!
Re:Previous condition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyers have to be paid...it's all part of "medical expenses".
Oh for crying out loud (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm taking estradiol valerate for hormone replacement therapy. Now it's quite possible that I might have some undiagnosed predisposition to breast cancer or some other disease that is dependent on estrogen or even just the compounds used in its delivery, but if this turns out to be the case I'd be a bloody fool to start suing people for it, because it's not as if I would have gone without the medication if I knew there was a 1 in 10.000 chance it could kill me. No, seriously, between people smoking, driving without a seatbelt and eating garbage, I just don't believe that any rational person would abstain from important medical treatment due to a very minor chance of complications, unless of course they've been pressured to do so by the kind of fear mongering nonsense you've seen against the MMR vaccine.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Death is far cheaper than ongoing survival, and illness is horribly expensive.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
The current "jackpot jury" system is sot irrevocably broken it's not even remotely funny. As a "health care provider" constantly staring at the business end of lawsuits it's clear to me that serious reform is necessary. Monetary awards merely increase costs without addressing quality of care issues.
As it stands, medical experts duel in front of a layman's jury. The jury isn't qualified to evaluate the data presented and inevitably comes to ridiculous conclusions. All malpractice/medical injury claims should be decided by a committee of practicing doctors to decide if there was actually malpractice. Decision could include requirements for additional training, suspension or revocation of license. After all, the goal ought to be to improve the quality of care given to the public.
The only ones winning now are the lawyers who make a business of malpractice cases.
Re:How did this happen when all the scientific dat (Score:3, Insightful)
that they know is dangerous
BZZZT Wrong. Please keep your fiction off /.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
But then the conservatives aren't in favor of government research and would prefer less government and to let the "private sector" solve this problem.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment of the problem, I don't think your solution - to have doctors police themselves in malpractice claims - is a very just one. Doctors on a committee have a lot of self-interest in seeing that fewer malpractice awards get handed out, whether deserved or not. Besides, don't the professional colleges already regulate doctors, and mete out penalties including training, suspension or revocation of licenses? None of these things provide any remedy to the person who's been injured by a doctor's negligence.
Re:Vaccines are a great idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not fecking stocks, ruled by brownian motion and the machinations of a shadowy, powerful group of elite monkeys.
The diseases they prevent aren't gone, merely suppressed. If you stop suppressing them, they'll come right back to the levels they had before.
And the only way in which the vaccines are different is that about 30 years ago, they removed the junk in them that the hysterical antivaccinites were claiming causes autism, with no effect on the actual autism rates...
That girl needs a financial guardian (Score:2, Insightful)
Minors and mentally incapacitated adults who are awarded large damage awards for health care should be assigned a neutral financial guardian to make sure the award goes to its intended purpose and that no third party benefits unless that benefit is an inherent side effect of the treatment for the beneficiary. For example, if the beneficiary gets a wheelchair-accessible van, it's okay for the rest of the family and other third parties to benefit from having a van.
Anyone family member, anyone who would have been financially impacted by person's care absent the award, and anyone living in the same household should not be eligible due to an obvious conflict of interest.
Re:Case settled before trial - no crazy jury invol (Score:4, Insightful)
Our tax dollars at work, paying off nutcases $20,000,000 to avoid a $10,000 trial. Brilliant.
(Yes I pulled that trial cost right out of my ass, but I doubt it would be anywhere near the 20 mil they settled for)
Re:Penn & Teller on autism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's those fucking unconstitutional required vaccinations the morons have been experimenting with us for years
*facepalm*
I am sorry that you've managed to breed.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
But then the conservatives aren't in favor of government research and would prefer less government and to let the "private sector" solve this problem.
I completely agree with you that the award exceeds what the care would cost. My wife is a college prof, researcher, and works with autistic children. I have family and close friends with autistic children, and you are spot on, that's way more than it would really cost. I also agree that the excess should go to research too. I'm a conservative, yet despite your perception I know that plenty of excellent research comes from state universities like the one my wife is employed by. This is putting the research in the hands of the gov't, and I'm fine with that. However, I would not trust congress with spending that money on research. Ideally I'd like to see it go directly to a good medical research school somewhere. So don't categorize all conservatives under one issue, it's foolish. You can believe in smaller government yet believe in the importance of the government's role in education (and thus research). Not all conservatives are the same, just like not all liberals are the same.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's those fucking unconstitutional required vaccinations the morons have been experimenting with us for years
*facepalm*
I am sorry that you've managed to breed.
Clearly he was affected badly as a child by one those vaccinations. People just don't get it: yes, sometimes people have bad reactions to specific vaccines (can't help it, in any large population somebody will have an issue.) The problem comes down to what the term public health means: these people are trying to prevent epidemics, which invariably result in far more deaths than those lost to the vaccines themselves. Anyone who doesn't think that the flu can kill ought to research that subject a little more thoroughly before condemning vaccines: the last flu pandemic killed a lot of people. We're actually overdue for another big one.
That's why I get pissed when I hear about parents who refuse vaccinations for their children: those walking disease factories then proceed to infect other people's kids.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because we are talking about a large population, does not mean that anythingcan happen. This is not the improbability drive.
Yes, many children get vaccines, and as such, rare reactions may occur. But Autism is not a rare reaction to vaccines that with a big enough sample size you might find some that are affected. Autism is not caused by vaccines. Your line of thinking in the first two sentences is what caused this stupid decision: "Oh, well, there's always the chance that this poor little girl is the 1 in gazillion to have autism due to vaccines".
Well, then, I'm sorry but there is not one shred of (credible) evidence linking vaccines to autism. And until there is, I will continue saying that the chance that a vaccine will cause autism is like the chance that a vaccine will make the child grow a third arm (almost said "third leg", but it would have proved fertile ground for many a pun).
Re:Previous condition (Score:3, Insightful)
The parents in the US are actually just being selfish. They rightfully understand that in order to keep a disease at bay, you really only need to have a certain percentage of the population immune. They are therefore able to reap the rewards of herd immunity (their child does not get the disease) while avoiding the small risk posed by the vaccine. If there are enough free riders, the system falls apart.
Yes, I agree, and that's an excellent way to describe the situation. When I was a kid back in the sixties, I was vaccinated for everything. My father was physicist, and understood the probabilities here more clearly than most, and still had me vaccinated because it was the right thing to do. I think America has lost something in the past few decades. Call it social consciousness, whatever ... we're far more of a "me first" culture than we used to be.
And when the system falls apart, as you say, and those parents are either dying themselves from a flu pandemic, or lose their kids anyway to a real bona-fide infection, I hope they realize what they've done. Probably they won't: selfish people usually have a good reason to justify their selfishness.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
And how would you decide which "good medical research school somewhere" or, more specifically, which researcher/project? You need some entity to evaluate what research is being done and to decide where the money can have the most impact. Hello HHS/NIH!
From an article [northwestern.edu] on the difference in administrations:
Re:Previous condition (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, and why are you telling me this, considering I said the same thing with (almost) less emotion?
It would have been a reasonably informative and less offensive comment if he hadn't preceeded it with "Huh? Are you stupid?".
Still, he's right. Parents who believe the human immune system (especially that of a child, which is still being "trained") can withstand the onslaught of every single infectious disease in existence simply because they feed their kids well are dangerously complacent. Well, you know what they say about those who forget history. The problem is, when they repeat that history they're likely to take the rest of us with them. Pandemics are no joke, and any parent considering withholding vaccination for their children should thoroughly research the subject first. Frankly, if I found out that my neighbors weren't vaccinating their kids I'd have a few words with them.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't have to be a practicing physician. In the same way that we have judges who are not practicing lawyers, perhaps there's room for medically trained jurors who are not physicians.
Bankruptcy court is an excellent example. We don't have average joes deciding on the extremely arcane law governing seniority of debt.
I wish I could point to a link, but I've read articles here and there that examined the results of jury-tried cases versus a blind analysis by panels of physicians. There's almost no correlation between who gets awards and who does not. It indicates that the legal system case is providing no service other than providing lottery tickets to people who got sick. Some win, some lose, and there's no real "fairness" in distribution.
Re:Previous condition (Score:3, Insightful)
Another factor is that diseases evolve.
Every infected person -- even if they're a healthy child who will probably be fine after a bit of misery -- is a little disease factory and laboratory. Some of the virus they produce will be the same as what they caught. Some of it will be slightly different. Some of the different strains will be the same, or less potent/communicable/etc.. Some of them will be worse, or even much much worse.
And another hint for the grandparent poster: not every child is in good health when they get a given disease. Did you have any classmates who were out all the time due to health problems? Did you pass on your measles or rubella to any of them? Or hell, just pass on your germs to a newborn infant, or a pregnant woman, etc..
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
To me it just doesn't make logical sense to have a $50/hour doctor doing appendectomies when a $25/hour tech could do the job just as well.
If it was your appendix, and you had a choice, which one would you choose?
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
what are you smoking? there's a damn good reason you don't have people with a bachelor's degree doing surgery! (nurses make $25-$30/hour) there are so many things that can go wrong, so many complications, so many drug interactions and allergies...
your example only holds if the technician is working on a live circuit where people DIE if he messes up!
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
No surgery is trivial. If you're opening someone up, that requires a great deal of skill and traiing. Do you really want someone that hasn't had years of anatomy training digging around in your organs? "Hey, that looks like it might be it, let's cut it out and see!"
Even something as routine as prescribing medication can have a huge backlash if the person isn't up to date on all the latest research (that's not tto say that all doctors do keep up to date, but that's supposed to be part of their job, and what we pay them for). You often need a LOT of education for that, and is why pharmacists are nearly as well educated as doctors.
That's not to say that I don't agree with you at some level. I see no reason why a doctor should be prescribing medication. I think they should diagnose the problem, then the doctor should work with a pharmacist to develop a treatment plan. That way the specialist (the pharmacist) can be the one that specializes in medication and the doctor can specialize in the diagnosis.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's comparable at all. You're talking about financial professionals reviewing cases of normal people. We're talkinga bout medical professionals reviewing the actions of other medical people. There will always be a conflict of interest there because the medical professionals, even if not practicing, may remember a time when they did something like that and be biased because of it.
This is why even appeals courts concentrate on re-reviewing the details of the case, rather than (in most cases) analyzing the behavior or actions of the previous court. Unless there was gross misconduct, the appeals process will typically say something like "The previous court erred in determining this or that" and that's about it.
I think a better system would one in which the "jury" was made up of equal parts professional and non-professional "peers".
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't buy your life back after a low-paid "surgery-tech" with a little formal training and with poor judgment fucks up and you bleed to death.
If it's a choice between a $100/hr doctor and a $200/hr doctor, I'll choose the cheaper one. If it's a choice between a $100/hr doctor and a $25/hr tech, I'm going with the doctor who's been through years of medical school, residency, has done the rounds and chosen his specialty, thank you.
Re:vaccines (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't worry, I suspect he'll also say this:
chances are with a few minutes of research you are smarter than the guy who wrote the piece of software you're using...
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where did these quotes come from? (Score:3, Insightful)
In acknowledging Hannah's injuries, the government said vaccines aggravated an unknown mitochondrial disorder Hannah had which didn't 'cause' her autism, but 'resulted' in it
I read the actual decision and I think the "resulting" part is a misinterpretation . What the decision said was:
"Respondent has conceded that petitioners are entitled to compensation due to significant aggravation of Child Doe/77's pre-existing mitochondrial disorder based on MMR vaccine Table presumptive injury of encephalopathy which eventually manifested as a chronic encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder and a complex partial seizure disorder as a sequela
My reading of that is the vaccine aggravated a mithochondrial disorder that the child had and that the child now has chronic encephalopathy with symptoms like autism. The keyword is "like". It is similar to someone I know who was in a motorcycle accident. If a doctor were describe his injuries it would be something along the lines of "brain injury with loss of some motor and speech functions with features of a stroke." He didn't have a stroke but that's the best way to describe it.
Re:Personal attacks have no bearing (Score:5, Insightful)
hen doctors talk of obesity they often state, our genetics didn't change, so environmental factors must be contributing to the rise in obesity. The same must be said for Autism. Our genetics did not change, so there must be an environmental factor (or factors).
You're forgetting a third possibility, that it's being diagnosed more frequently (whether correctly or incorrectly is an issue that I'll leave to biological and medical experts). A hundred years ago, we didn't know that Pluto existed, but that doesn't mean that it didn't exist before then.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it was your appendix, and you had a choice, which one would you choose?
The person who has done more.
Re:Previous condition (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, FTFY.
I guess my point is that people falsely equate wage with skill, particularly when the profession is poorly understood and held in high regard by society. I suppose it's soothing to the ego to think that there's a breed of ubermensch running around tackling the "really difficult" things in life, like medicine. We have so many "voodoo professions" in society where their mystery makes them appear difficult: Doctors, Mechanics, Computer techs, Engineers, etc. I know a guy who, in junior high cooking class, was asked to soften some butter, and subsequently put the tinfoil wrapper in the microwave too. He lit the microwave on fire and panicked because he didn't know what to do. Teacher put it out with a handful of baking soda. You know what this young man does now? He's a high-pressure pneumatics engineer. Builds big devices that run on thousands of psi of air pressure. "Ohmigawd that's dangerous and difficult, surely he is a genius!" Back in high school, this guy impressed everyone by putting his pants on the right way in the morning and not tripping down the stairs. Suddenly he's a valuable asset to society because he has a certificate in 'X'? Likewise, the best mechanic I ever knew (I used to work as one) had only two years of official training. But that didn't stop our 4 year "expert" journeyman (who made twice as much) from frequently deferring to his judgment because, quite frankly, the man knew his shit better than anyone in the shop. So just because wage is supposed to represent skill, I can assure you that in the real world it does not.
As a side note, i'm hopeing to get modded "-1 troll" for this post too. I love how that option is always used as a "I disagree but i'm a mod so fuck you" option. Probably too many words to fit in a drop menu. Ah well.
Why the VICP tilts toward the plaintiff (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, the Vaccine Court tilts toward the plaintiff in multiple ways. The government pays the plaintiff's lawyers, win or lose, so there is a big incentive for lawyers to take such cases, even if the chance of winning is slim. And the standard of evidence is lower in the Vaccine Court--basically, compensation is awarded if it is at all plausible that a person's injury could have been caused by the vaccination. And if the plaintiff loses, they still have the option of suing in regular court.
However, I think that this is reasonable. Vaccination does not just benefit the person being vaccinated, it benefits society, because the main way in which vaccination prevents disease is not by protecting the individual from infection, but rather by making it impossible for an epidemic to get started in the first place. Immunity to disease (whether from vaccination or previous exposure to the disease) is not absolute--the risk of contracting the disease is reduced, but not to zero. The reason most people do not contract diseases like measles, whooping cough, or polio is that an infection is unable to spread through the population, because on the average an infected person ends up infecting less than one other person. When that is the case, the disease cannot spread, and simply peters out.
But when immunization is successful, the disease is virtually eradicated from the entire population. Vaccines are some of the safest effective medical treatments known to man, but they do have risks, albeit very small. But when a disease is nearly eradicated, the risk of the disease to each individual is less than the risk of the vaccine--so long as all of his neighbors are properly vaccinated. So the situation is tailor-made for a "tragedy of the commons," in which each individual pursues his own selfish self interest, and as a result, everybody suffers far more than would have been the case if everybody had cooperated to share a small risk in order to avert a much greater one.
So it makes sense to provide a public safety net to compensate everybody who suffers a genuine vaccine injury--because people who get vaccinated are performing a public service. Yes, this will means some people will be compensated who would have gotten sick anyway, and Hannah Poling is very likely one of these. Mitochondrial diseases can be triggered by many stressors, including very minor illnesses, so there is a good chance that something or other would have triggered Hannah's illness even if she hadn't been vaccinated. Indeed, children like Hannah may well be at greater risk if they are not vaccinated, but that is obviously of little comfort to anybody after the fact.
So just as our criminal justice system occasionally lets real criminals go free to protect the innocent, the Vaccine Court sometimes rewards unscrupulous lawyers who exploit parents of autistic children, and sometimes provides compensation to people who probably aren't really entitled to it. But that is a small price to pay for providing just compensation for those who actually do suffer genuine harm from vaccination
Re:Personal attacks have no bearing (Score:4, Insightful)
"Autism appears to have both a genetic and environmental component. We have to stop bickering over this crap and start working to resolve the issue. Anybody interested?"
The scientists doing actual science are working to resolve the issue. People who are anti vaccine are not. People who think that Jenny McCarthy or Wakefield have credibility are part of the problem.
"Funny how the rise in Autism closely matches the rise of this industry. Are there any statisticians interested in looking into this?"
This perfectly illustrates the level of critical and logical thinking present in the anti vaccine crowd. As well as research ability. There isn't much. We might as well look at the correlation to population, CO2, girl scouts, HFCS, etc. Correlation does not equal causation (oops). Then there has to be a biologically plausible mechanism for exposure (oops). And there has been research (oops). And what you are suggesting is heavy metal poisoning, not autism (oops).
The rise in autism has everything to do with diagnostics. The definition has expanded, so more people are diagnosed. More services are available for people with autism, so it is beneficial have the diagnosis. There is less stigma for autism, so it is not hidden. Autism was separated from other mental disorders. Etc.
"When it comes to vaccines, however, I am still wary of the methods of sterilization, including the addition of Formaldehyde, Aluminum, and Mercury (still in the multi-dose flu shot)."
This perfectly illustrates the level of critical and logical thinking present in the anti vaccine crowd. As well as research ability. There isn't much.
Formaldehyde is present in the human body at greater levels than present in any vaccine (oops). Aluminum is perfectly safe (oops). The mercury in the shot is not dangerous (oops). Note that a can of tuna has more mercury of a dangerous variety than does any flu shot (oops).
"I also understand that it is not in the interest of vaccine manufacturers to find a link with Autism."
I also understand that you are ignorant and lazy. And creating a strawman.
"I also suspect that there is a link to the bowel. I don't know an Autistic kid who doesn't have bowel problems, but that is a limited view."
And your point is what? That you think the plural of anecdote is data? That fixing a bowel problem will magically fix a brain problem? That you are clueless and ignorant?
Re:National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, this old chestnut ...
The rate of vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) varies by region but is generally about 1 case per 750,000 vaccine recipients.
So to save the 1 person who had a bad reaction to a vaccine, you would put another 750,000 at risk of infection with the WILD version of the virus because they DIDN'T get the vaccination ?
So hey buddy, screw you too. Knee-jerk reactionary morons like you should be sterilized to avoid further contamination of the gene pool.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, unlike gambling, you are forced to play.
This is life; you are forced to gamble either way. You are taking on risks whether you take the vaccine or not. Scientific evidence suggests that the risk is greater if you do not vaccinate. The state is forcing you take take the gamble with the lowest risk. It must do this because vaccines are ineffective if a significant portion of people do not get them.
People have gotten so used to children not regularly dying of these diseases that they have taken it for granted. They have forgotten that this is not natural and that we have created this situation with our vaccination programs.