Family To Receive $1.5M+ In Vaccine-Autism Award

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?"

Comments

who decided to make the award?

[dltaylor]

I don't see any identification of the fecal encephalitis case(s) that made the award.

Did the plaintiff's lawyers search for the dimwittedest court in the USofA?

Re:Vaccines are a great idea.

[marcello_dl]

> All that documented history of vaccines wiping out smallpox, and nearly wiping out polio... ... tells us those vaccines were effective (some deniers might say effective as a rock that keeps tigers away but the burden of proof is theirs).

The point is that todays vaccines are different, past performance is irrelevant.
People are not different, past performance is relevant.

Re:Previous condition

[TheLink]

First of all, the number of people who get sick from a vaccine even closely to the degree they would have with the disease it is so unbelievably small it's not even worth considering.

Citation please? What's your level of "unbelievably small" and "not worth even considering"?

Second of all, you are completely ignoring the social side of this.

Yes I am, because I was talking about a different issue. Maybe your reply should be to a different post?

I was assuming most readers on slashdot (nerd land) already know the social benefits of vaccines.

I'm talking about the costs. To me it seems a lot of people still don't understand the costs and safety issues. They aren't like normal medication/treatment.

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.

Bullshit.

1/5000 getting sick from normal medication is a pretty good statistic. Because as I said in my post, not everyone will be getting it, and only the few who are sick.
1/5000 getting sick from a mass vaccine is pretty bad when you're dealing with millions or even billions of people.

The 2009 flu pandemic only killed 18000 people, and the WHO made a big fuss about it. Whereas if you gave a flu vaccine to 6 billion people that killed 1 in 5000, there would be 1.2 million dead because of the crappy vaccine.

A mass administered flu vaccine must not kill more than 1 in 333333 people to be not as bad as this flu.

And the low H1N1 fatalities weren't mainly because of the vaccine (since most people didn't take it). I didn't get the H1N1 flu (or if I did, it wasn't really bad to me), I didn't get the vaccine either, but my colleague sitting next to me got the flu (I suspect her hamsters died of it too :( ). So a mass flu vaccine better be really safe, or the flu strain better be really dangerous. Otherwise we'd just resort to quarantines.

These mass vaccines are basically self inflicted pandemics, so the fatalities and adverse effects must be MUCH lower than the expected real world fatalities in their absence. Not just slightly lower, MUCH lower. Because they cost resources.

Also, typically in order to get the vaccine, people need to go to places with lots of infectious people, or be in contact with someone who has recently been in contact with thousands of potentially infectious people. Slashdot dweller in basement is pretty safe till he goes out to get the vaccine.

Despite your claims, a lot of these diseases won't hit everyone just because some people don't get vaccinated.

So to me this "vaccines are really safe" thinking that you share is just as dangerous as the hysterical cries that "vaccines made my kid a retard".

For example the HPV vaccine. Requiring mass HPV vaccination would just benefit the corporations making the vaccines (and yes there are calls for it to be mass administered). But not everyone will get HPV, and not everyone will have problems resulting from it.

So stop being selfish and help SOLVE the problem!

Yes I am selfish. But from what I see, I think I even have a better idea of what the problems are than you, and am doing a better job of helping.

Re:What?

[Dan541]

That Girls family are despicable human beings. Not only do they exploit their daughter to obtain a fraudulent income but that money is no longer available for research.