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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?"
Manufactures of vaccines are granted immunity from lawsuit. The money for this will come out of tax payers pockets. Incidentally it means that nobody involved had any benefit to fight paying these people.
They didn't sue the drug company. They sued in a special court where the payout comes from the tax payers.
They won because nobody had any incentive at all to fight them.
Thanks for the vindication.
But unfortunately a few anti-vaccine Nazi types with mod points burning holes in their pockets came tearing through this comment thread not long after I posted that.
When I first read this and I thought almost immediately about April Fools stories on /. primarily because an estimated 20 million award seems punitive and excessively so. And who is being punished here? You and I and everyone else who had nothing to do with this.
While I feel sorry for this girl and her family, it is not my fault this happened. And I cannot see how providing care for this girl could possibly cost this kind of money. It would have made more sense to have a reasonable pain and suffering award up front, plus some reasonable standard of living allowance annually, plus the government picking up the tab on all related medical costs. Somehow I doubt the total of which would come anywhere near 20 million
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.