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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?"

27 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. What? by Ssherby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it April Fools day already?

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    You keep using that word.
    I do not think it means what you think it means.
    1. Re:What? by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Lawyers have to be paid...it's all part of "medical expenses".

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      No sig today...
    2. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Death is far cheaper than ongoing survival, and illness is horribly expensive.

    3. Re:What? by Atryn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My nephew is autistic and I can assure you the award here is FAR more than care will/would cost. Providing the family with 20% or less of that award and forcing $16M into additional research would be much more beneficial to the public good, would it not?

      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.

      --
      Come play Moral Decay!
    4. Re:What? by m.ducharme · · 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.

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      Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
    5. Re:What? by c6gunner · · Score: 4, 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.

    6. Re:What? by d3matt · · Score: 4, 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.

      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!

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      I am d3matt
    7. Re:What? by MachDelta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can't buy your life back after a low-grade "doctor" with poor judgment fucks up and you bleed to death.

      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.

  2. Now you know by tsotha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Now you know by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nope. It's because you need allergy medication every day of your life. Vaccines are (mostly) single-use.

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      No sig today...
  3. Dear Federal Government, by mdenham · · 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.

  4. Previous condition by Epeeist · · 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.

    1. Re:Previous condition by WarJolt · · 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.

    2. Re:Previous condition by Psychotria · · 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.

    3. Re:Previous condition by Psychotria · · Score: 4, 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?

    4. Re:Previous condition by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      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!

    5. Re:Previous condition by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Anecdotes are useless. The diseases you mention are all killers, over half a million kids die every year from measles alone. Your infectious spawn should be kept out of public schools.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  5. Legal outcomes include luck by Mathinker · · 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.

  6. Re:All scientific data?!? by Dahan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes--all of the ones that are published in peer-reviewed journals, at least.

  7. Another great step backwards... by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  8. does not contradict previous studies by mayberry42 · · 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.

  9. Re:All scientific data?!? by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 4, 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...

    --
    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
  10. Re:Vaccines are a great idea. by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But a rational examination and sifting through all the mountains of history and empirical evidence tells us that we simply cannot trust the people who make, promote, sell and administer these drugs.

    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.

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    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
  11. Re:vaccines by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    who knows what shit's in there?

    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.

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    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
  12. Re:vaccines by Kilrah_il · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hey, there are stuff in there with many letters and more than 3 syllables. Many of them contain Duhydrogen monooxide, 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.

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    Whenever in an argument, remember this.
  13. Every parent wants some explanation by mykos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are book authors, researchers, and television commentators who build their entire careers on the fears of parents.

    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.

  14. Re:Personal attacks have no bearing by Dragonslicer · · 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.