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

Posted by timothy on from the welcome-to-a-jury-of-your-peers dept.

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?"

15 of 594 comments (clear)

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

    Is it April Fools day already?

    --
    You keep using that word.
    I do not think it means what you think it means.
    1. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    2. 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.

      --
      Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
  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.

  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 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. 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. 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.

    --
    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
  9. 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.

    --
    Whenever in an argument, remember this.
  10. 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.