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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?"
Is it April Fools day already?
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
who knows what shit's in there? read the insert and warnings before you get injected if you must get vaccinated. don't blindly follow the doctors orders, chances are with a few minutes of research you are smarter than your doctor. you are reading slashdot right?
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.
Say it again...
more than $1.5 million dollars 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.
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
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.
Does this mean the mystery about the cause of autism is solved?
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?
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.
Cue 100 bitter /. readers complaining because someone who is severely mentally disabled for life might have the benefit of some money to help support her. I deserve $20 million too - I'm healthy and wise but you all owe me because I'm a socially maladjusted geek and I want another iPod!!!
If you don't like it, get yourself a nationalised health service. I've had family members in the UK receive adverse neurological reactions to vaccines (nothing to do with autism) and a comparatively very small amount is paid directly because it's the health service's duty to look after sick people anyway.
> 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.
You are versed in all Scientific studies on the subject of Vaccination and Autisim?
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.
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.
The initial payment covers life care, and then there's a yearly sum on top?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've seen duped articles summaries, but usually in different posts. I guess Slashdot is streamlining the process.
Five years later, the government settled the case before trial and had it sealed.
In just about every way imaginable, this is the wrong thing to do. We're now going to have more fear-mongering about vaccines with everyone pointing at this case, and because it's sealed, no-one will know why.
It sounds terrible that vaccine + undiagnosed mitochondrial disorder can result in autism, but what happened should be open so that we can learn from it.
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.
I'd love to live in a Star Trek reality, where you can trust government and where everybody is truly striving through the application of honest science toward the very best we can be as a species. 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.
Our world is not a sane and sensible Star Trek world, and to pretend otherwise, as much as our geek hearts may desire it, is suicidally naive.
-FL
This maybe explains how those Jedi can afford to be flying all over the galaxy in their personal space crafts.
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
more than $1.5 million dollars 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.
more than $1.5 million dollars 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 lifetimee
Do the affects of this vaccine also include repeating the same text on Slashdot, or is that the 'result'?
Sorry for asking dumb questions, but who will pay?
And let me add, whatever weasel words you may want to use, that the decision can only be considered reasonable if you believe that without the vaccine the girl would be better. So they are effectively saying that the vaccene is the cause or probable cause of the current situation. When whoever has to pay fights this decision back it should be easy to have it overturned.
Moreover this just makes everyone angry. It would be undestandable if they made the guilty party pay whatever future expenses may occur. Fixing a price, any price, on the condition is crazy. What if expenses become higher? lower? What if she is cured?
And, of course, it is open to abuse.
(which I hope does not come true). This will lead to further scaremongering and the vaccination rate will drop to a new low, leading to a another surge in some of the awful childhood diseases that have until recently been all but eradicated in western societies.
If causing autism for some children were a side effect of vaccination (for which no evidence exists), the benefits of vaccination still outweigh the damage by a lot. Let my friends Penn and Teller explain it in a bit more graphic way ...
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Is it normal for the-government-as-defendant to seal a case after settling? If this action is not standard procedure, then it suggests the presence of findings the government didn't want revealed publicly.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I wonder if whatever causes people to irrationally fear vaccines can be inherited? If so, that seems like exactly the sort of thing that will get selected against...
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.
There are currently studies being conducted regarding connection between swine flu vaccination (Pandermix) containing specific adjuvant and increase in cases of narcolepsy on children. Increase has been from 3-7 diagnosis on typical year to ~20 this year.
I'm not anti vaccination at all, and got that vaccination myself, but that kind of increase in rare neurological condition certainly warrants an study.
And slashdot hits another all time low, the summary have the exact same text several times, great "job" editors.
more than $1.5 million dollars 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.
more than $1.5 million dollars 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.
Telling you didn't point to any references.
I have seen what polio can do to people for example, to know that it has been almost erradicated tells me all what I need to know about trusting or not trusting health experts and the govenrments they work for.
It is baffling how some folks play the sceptic card by ignoring all the evidence, there for all to see, of what they purport top be sceptical about.
And implying that people trusting health authorities are fantasists, akin to mentally ill trekkies, is all what one needs to know about the credibility of your statement.
Truly pathetic.
The following article from the New England Journal of Medicine has a good summary of why the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program exists, and why some of its recent decisions, including the award in the Poling case, have been problematic. Basically, since 2005 the policy has been to concede cases where petitioners establish a plausible theory by which their injury could have been caused by the vaccine, rather than requiring proof or even scientific evidence that the vaccine caused said injury.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0802904
See also the Wikipedia article on the program, which also discusses the Poling case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court
I myself had serious side-effects of vaccinations traced to my school performance throughout grade-school. Other friends and family of mine immediately noticed their slightly "detached" or whimsical inability to concentrate without linking it to the vaccines. In the case of myself and some relatives, when the nurse or doctor says you are "behind" in your vaccinations then they just start injecting you with it all at once expecting your body's immune system to just adapt all at once with little close-contact study. All the vaccination complications and death have been linked to the host having a low Vitamin D3 content in their body. The main complication is auto-immune response to your own bodyily organs and nerve channels that it causes your brain to simply disable, immune system to degrade the myolin sheaths insulating nerves, unusual food allergies, random organ failure, metabolic changes, mutations, and a number of combinations of these complications in the right order is just like that final bricke a game of tetris that can knock-off all your blocks. In my case, I have amnesia in certain circumstances, over the course of a 2-year period my heart detectable stopped 3 times to my immediate knowledge and I thank the Unknown for it starting again in each instance, and an entire slew of others just from doctors thinking our body is like a Windows Operating System that can accept any patch they give without reading the lengthy disclaimer and anomalies. My nearest of kin was always having seizures and such throughout his childhood and nothing scared the shit out of us as witnessing it after concluding until 3am on a halloween night drive to another state for festivities.
Some friends and family allowed tests to be performed similar to an MRI, while induced into the sleep-levels where these seizures arrived from, and the scans show all kind of unsual nervous system activity that should otherwise be the "rest" and "re-calibrating" cycles associated with the sleeping cycles. In terms of remedy against vaccines, we make the mistake in calling them just that when they are in-fact nothing more than Innoculations regardless of what someone's propoganda asserts as being a "weakened strain" of a deadly parasitic organism. It boils down to this: is your diet so poor that your bodily PH-level is at a low number that makes every cell on your body receptive to a virus penetrating it's wall, are you not wearing a static-charge device to electrify your blood, are you not giving your body immediate immunte system feedback and anti-gen reclaimation in avoiding small amounts of your urine with your daily water ration? If you want to catch the diseases in a controlled environment, then get Innoculated, otherwise don't eat the junk food and keep your PH level of your body high with plenty of propery oxygen therapies and urine therapies and lymph-channel massage therapies.
The Innoculations are just to divert the complication of an immediate unregulated infection from diverting your time from crucial work, and as the case with children we see that it's the compelled association to fellow classmates of otherwise "squallid" origin that are a vector, and that itself to disuade from compelled association and coerced contract is a divine providence that Home Schooling resolves to keep the many micro-cultures of neighboring populations from just being a relay of Medical Service workers becoming carriers.
"How did this happen when all the scientific data points otherwise?" The "scientific" data provided by the pharmaceutical industry? Is that like the "scientific" data the tobacco industry used to provide showing cigarettes are harmless?
I think what this is really about is the greed of big pharma using a "patented" preservative in vaccines that they know is dangerous, but cheaper than one that is safe. It is about the arrogance of being protected from litigation like this from laws bought and paid for, because again it is cheaper than using a safe more expensive alternative for a preservative.
It is about cold blooded statistics that show it is still more profitable to do all these things than spend another penny per shot to avoid them.
Don't blame the lawyers, blame the greed of big pharma CEO's.
Greed!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
is why we will never get a cure for cancer or anything else. 10 people out of 1000 died because they had an allergic reaction to the 'the cure'. But millions of lives are saved. BUT GOD FORBID THOSE 10 PEOPLE DIED. I hate being a part of the human race sometimes. The things that prevent thousands of dying from polio, or mumps, or measles. Those 3 idiots sue everyone and make medical costs go through the roof. Their snowflake died. OH NOES. Let's dial back time to the cave man days. Squirt out your puppy without anything. In this day and age, without all these shots they'll sue. Give them the shots that prevent premature death, they'll sue. Squirt out your snowflake and it dies in a car accident because you didn't properly secure it in a car seat in a car accident. It's not YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT. It's the car, or car seat manufacturer, or McDonald's or AT&T because the coffee was too hot, or you HAD to txt back your BFF. Welcome to Idiocracy. The future is now. Nothing is your fault. The gene pool needs a lot more bleach. I'm personally going to recommend Napalm. Hell I'd even godwin this one. It's time.
Recently on Penn & Teller's Bullshit, how the anti-vaccination movement is bullshit.
Part 1/2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aky-sRri-NQ
Part 2/2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnxci5tezZY
I strongly suggest you have a look at it.
You obviously have no remorse for the complications, seeing how it's been in your favor to free-up jobs from the people incapacited to the expected vaccinations.
Moderation from the Moderators would prove the utility of Slashdot as an argument platform to bias in either of our favor for such. Who will they mod-up? You for insulting someone's ill health finally be compensated by lawsuit against the unwarrant speculations made on the Vaccine benefits, or me for pointing out that you aren't trolling?
...in the hope that they, too, have this disorder.
No sig today...
I don't see any peer-related journals of people enduring the matter without tracing the cause to vaccines. They just start noticing these strange symptoms of disease, go to a hospital and are said they have no illness. What could possibly cause disease without having a traceable illness, and it's not a placebo? I hear stress is the same way, but obviously you don't have the stress of someone refuting your strawman arguments while balancing the verry symptoms that devoid one of most capacity to do so. You know, in that regard, I don't hear anyone renting parcels in cemetaries to be filing complaints against the grounds-keepers for failing upkeep of their land on the pre-scheduled times payed-for.
You are working for someone, and that's great that your health allows you to, but don't say everyone's motivation
is money if not remedy from the courts for unnecessary EXPENSES endured and incurred from some savages buzzily compelling everyone to accept the hypodermic needle.
without prejudice
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.
So quick, does anybody know the secret recipe to having an autistic kid? Cause I could use a few extra bucks courtesy of the american taxpayer right about now.
is slashdot getting so bad that we're skipping duping an article in another article and just duping them within the same article?
I had a hard time reading that article because of the I had a hard time reading that article because of the repetition.
"We had the opportunity to interview Dr. Andrew Wakefield fairly recently, who is at the epicenter of the vaccine storm. Wakefield has indicated that vaccines, especially if taken in multiple quantities, may affect certain children who are predisposed to be injured by them. One of the results, he has suggested, that needs further study is a potential linkage between autism and vaccines" link
that they know is dangerous
BZZZT Wrong. Please keep your fiction off /.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
It's kinda like this... Think of your genetic structure as a series of ropes. Every time you are exposed to an environmental stressor (illness, mental stress, toxin), these ropes become a bit more frayed. Every person has as different set of ropes with varying thickness. Those who are exposed to vaccines may fray the autism rope until it snaps, and autism sets in. To those who think that vaccines are innocuous, I really have to LOL at you...
Seriously, leave the circus outside in the barn and the porta-potties.
Penn & Teller sell tickets like COPS, and they sure don't have any hand in dispensing remedy so they have no right to criticize until they theirselves have children with women rather than ass-delivered poo babies (they are both practicing homosexuals, if you haven't noticed).
I wouldn't doubt the troll I'm responding to might have the same IP address as the Moderator.
You Sound like 4chan. Laugh at Gore threads too?
I find it odd that the decision was based on the fact that Hannah had an "unknown mitochondrial disorder". Is it known that she has *some* mitochondrial disorder, but not specifically what? TFA doesn't say.
But anyway. There is another dynamic at play here. And that is that parents of disabled children have such a hard time getting help. Autism is horrible that way. So, while it's easy to vilify the parents for appearing to abuse the system, they probably feel, with justification, that the system has abused them. Most people in their position just roll over and don't fight; they cope as best they can.
If a society places any particular value on people that chose to have children (and there are reasons to do so), then there has to be some assurance that society, which benefits from children, will commit to meaningful help when things take a turn for the bad. As things stand now, parents can see their entire future slip away if something goes wrong with their kids. If we collectively decide that the risk is completely on parents who chose to have kids then I have to recommend that nobody have kids. You can lose everything.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
I hope Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette kicks your stupid ass one day.
Get them vaccinated! Duh!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
What exactly is Penn & Tellers expertise in this field?
According to the fine article the case was settled. There was no trial. There was no jury. This is what the government agreed to in order to avoid a trial.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Which basically shows that a trial probably would have been even more expensive.
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)
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Assuming companies properly follow all safety procedures when developing and testing drugs, and assuming they disclose known problems within an appropriate window, companies should not be held liable for their products. While I hate arguments by analogy, this is truly akin to holding a construction company liable for a bridge collapsing after it was struck by a missile, or an earthquake rated 9.9 on the Richter scale. The company had no control over these unforeseeable events, and to make them liable makes all new product development a much riskier and costlier endeavor, to the detriment of society as a whole.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Yes, that's it! Everyone wants the big payout, so they'll get their kids vaccinated. Ha! That'll show the medical industry! Soon our kids will be immune to all kinds of diseases and live longer and healthier lives! Oh, wait...
source wikipedia: In 1988, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) went into effect ... [victims] were compensated with awards totaling $903 million.
Everyone is told they are safe, but like it or not, millions and millions are paid out to children that were injured by vaccines. I've actually done some research into this and it is pretty hard to win a vaccine injury claim, contrary to what some say in some later posts. Everyone in the vaccine chain is pretty defense and tend to blame a problem on everything but the vaccine.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
"nobody involved had any benefit to fight paying this people"
I would expect the "government run" vaccine court to have provided a much smaller amount of compensation than $500,000 per year because
the care for an autistic child is much less than that.
the vaccine may have tripped the genetic condition that lead to Hannah's having autism, but this genetic condition would have been tripped by any illness resulting in a slightly high fever.
the government is spending tax dollars on this nonsense.
Settlement awards like this! You want to know why when you go to the doctor for "chest pains", and it ends up being nothing more than a bad case of heart burn, that they wanted to do MRI, Cat scans, dye marker tests, stress tests etc etc, THIS is why. Doctors are scared to death of being sued for something they might miss. Too many ambulance chasing slip & fall lawyers will sue on the drop of a hat. Drug makers have to charge a hefty fee for their drugs, because they have to have a built in profit margin, to cover themselves in the event of a lawsuit, if their drug causes a severe reaction or death. Even if it is 1 in a million, you've seen the ads on TV. "If you or a loved one took drug x, you may be "entitled" to compensation". Crap like that drives the costs of everything up. Slip & fall on a wet spot in a business, and the ambulance chasers come out of the woodwork. I think it was Shakespeare who once said "kill all the lawyers". THAT would be a good start!
(while I actually do agree with you)
perhaps SOME of it is necessary for the doctors to cover their lawsuit asses just in case it actually turns out to be a zebra
Honest self assessment, if the 'cold' turned out to be 'lung cancer' and the doctor treated a cold only.. what's your take on it then....
why didn't he run tests?
can't win with the current system.. it is what we have...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
An interesting blog on this topic - http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/09/cbs_news_resident_anti-vaccine_propagand.php
Unfortunately, a Slashdot reader believes that a personal attack will pass muster with this community. We are too smart for that. When 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). The thing that bothers me is that people become polarized over the issue.
The parents of Autistic children (I am one) tend to focus too much on one environmental factor (Vaccines) when there are plenty of other factors. They also discount the benefits that vaccines have provided to our society in general. The "informed" community ignores research that does not concur with their point of view while making character attacks by associating those parents with Playboy.
Both groups have some valid points, but will never make progress while pointing the finger at each other. My hope is that a group will come together with open minds to research Autism no matter where the evidence leads them. For instance:
The industry that I work in (computers & electronics) seems to be the worst at contaminating the environment. According to National Geographic, electronics account for less than 2% of landfill waste while contributing 70% of landfill toxicity.
http://s.ngm.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/computer-interactive
Funny how the rise in Autism closely matches the rise of this industry. Are there any statisticians interested in looking into this?
There is also a factor of chemical contamination, which is largely undocumented in public records. Companies can register various chemicals as perfumes, apply for trademark protection, and withhold the chemical composition based on trade secrets.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/01/by_scott_hensley_debates_rage.html
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). Although I am not a health professional, I understand that many diseases have been mitigated through vaccination, and that vaccines have been very effective. Personally, I would hope that vaccine sterilization is best achieved through gamma radiation of single dose vials. Then again, some people go crazy with the word "radiation".
I have followed Dr. Wakefield's ethical case, and understand that his methods were at question, and his results have not been duplicated in humans. Although there is a new study which calls the vaccine regimen of the 1990s into question.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20628439
I also understand that it is not in the interest of vaccine manufacturers to find a link with Autism.
http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/labels/Vaccines%20and%20Autism.asp
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. For my son, treatment for Candida and the use of probiotics has helped enormously.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/33/14691
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-1862v1
When he stops taking probiotics, however, his symptoms reappear. Stool samples have been used to verify the issues. A gluten free / casein free diet helps both Stephen, and the family member with MS.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/07/21/toxic.trio.identified.basis.celiac.disease
http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/full/182/7/4158#TI
I seem to recall a recent Slashdot article about Gluten, but cant find it anymore.
So what this really comes down to for me is, "You are what you eat, drink, breathe, etc." 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?
I am NOT one of the anti vaccine people. I think all kids need to be vaccinated. Those that trust to herd immunity are leaches, and taking a great risk.
I also think it is pure cold blooded greed to use the preservatives could very well cause this because the safer ones are more expensive.
So there!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Our society is so litigious that we can't get a vaccine for one set the VERY common MMR because there is might be a link to an unknown mitochondrial disorder?
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
20 million dollars divided by 310 million people equals 6 cents. You'd kill a child to save yourself 6 cents? Here you can have all the change in my wallet, you promise not to kill any kids now okay?
If you want to be a libertarian outlaw vigilante, destroy F35 (or ideally, B2 Spirit, if they're still in production) production lines. Those will save you 32c and $6.45 for unit not produced respectively.
(All figures calculated with rough estimates and assuming a flat tax)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Approximately 4,800 are awaiting disposition in federal vaccine court.
What is "federal vaccine court"?
Advice: on VPS providers
Every vaccine we use could be manufactured to the same level of quality without mercury. The real dynamic is money.
"How did this happen when all the scientific data points otherwise?" Because all the scientific data does not point otherwise. You have to understand that you are under a huge misconception that there is no research that supports the vaccine autism connection, because you are listening to industry mouthpieces that say, "No evidence of any link" and then you guys spend all day parroting that line back and forth to one another, and you really believe that it is true. So of course this ruling sounds absurd to you. Paul Offit has admitted in the press that he is a "vaccine salesman". He flat out lies in the press, and you guys are just swallowing it with out asking any critical questions. That is not science. I have put together a page where I just started listing the research that supports the vaccine, autism theory. There are more than forty listed, and it is by no means a complete list. You can find it here: http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-evidence-of-any-link.html And you need to pay attention to the completely absurd statements the government is making in regards to this case. An elementary school teacher would not accept such bad excuses from her students as they are offering to the public. Get this email from HRSA's communication office: "From: Bowman, David (HRSA) [mailto:DBowman@hrsa.gov] Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 5:22 PM To: 'dkirby@nyc.rr.com' Subject: HRSA Statement David, In response to your most recent inquiry, HRSA has the following statement: The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually caused by vaccines. We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures. Some children who have been compensated for vaccine injuries may have shown signs of autism before the decision to compensate, or may ultimately end up with autism or autistic symptoms, but we do not track cases on this basis. Regards, David Bowman Office of Communications Health Resources and Services Administration 301-443-3376" Read that again. Then let me translate this for you: The Office of Communications is saying that, 'We don't compensate for vaccine induced autism, we compensate for vaccine induced encephalopathy (which is just a term that means a change in brain functioning) that turns into autism. And also we don't track if encephalopathy turns into autism, even though most of the symptoms are seen in autism'. So according to this reasoning, guns cannot kill people, they just cause a perforation that "may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including , sepsis, serious blood loss, organ damage, symptoms of extreme pain or death. Also we just track gun related perforations, not whether or not they bleed or get infected or result in death". And if you have not seen the Head of CDC embarassing appearance on CNN, please take a few moments to watch this woman behave like an idiot trying to explain this case away: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-nkD5LSIg&feature=player_embedded You all are very bright people who have been fed a line of garbage, and you are swallowing it. Please, start thinking critically about the messages that you are being fed by people with very vested interests in there NOT being an association between vaccines and autism. Hannah Poling, who had a Johns Hopkins neurologist for a father and a nurse/lawyer for a mother proved their case. HRSA conceded this case because her parents had closed every single way for them to wiggle out of it. Now there are more than 5,600 cases in that court. If HRSA admits that vaccines cause autism, that is more than 100 BILLION DOLLARS in pay outs. And there are 300,00
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/09/cbs_news_resident_anti-vaccine_propagand.php#comments
This sums it up
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
"How did this happen when all the scientific data points otherwise?"
Because all the scientific data does not point otherwise.
You have to understand that you are under a huge misconception that there is no research that supports the vaccine autism connection, because you are listening to industry mouthpieces that say, "No evidence of any link" and then you guys spend all day parroting that line back and forth to one another, and you really believe that it is true. So of course this ruling sounds absurd to you. Paul Offit has admitted in the press that he is a "vaccine salesman". He flat out lies in the press, and you guys are just swallowing it with out asking any critical questions.
That is not science.
I have put together a page where I just started listing the research that supports the vaccine, autism theory. There are more than forty listed, and it is by no means a complete list. You can find it here:
http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-evidence-of-any-link.html
And you need to pay attention to the completely absurd statements the government is making in regards to this case. An elementary school teacher would not accept such bad excuses from her students as they are offering to the public. Get this email from HRSA's communication office:
"From: Bowman, David (HRSA) [mailto:DBowman@hrsa.gov]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 5:22 PM
To: 'dkirby@nyc.rr.com'
Subject: HRSA Statement
David,
In response to your most recent inquiry, HRSA has the following
statement:
The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to
compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually
caused by vaccines. We have compensated cases in which children
exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy
may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms
including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures.
Some children who have been compensated for vaccine injuries may have
shown signs of autism before the decision to compensate, or may
ultimately end up with autism or autistic symptoms, but we do not track
cases on this basis.
Regards,
David Bowman
Office of Communications
Health Resources and Services Administration
301-443-3376"
Read that again. Then let me translate this for you:
The Office of Communications is saying that, 'We don't compensate for vaccine induced autism, we compensate for vaccine induced encephalopathy (which is just a term that means a change in brain functioning) that turns into autism. And also we don't track if encephalopathy turns into autism, even though most of the symptoms are seen in autism'.
So according to this reasoning, guns cannot kill people, they just cause a perforation that "may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including , sepsis, serious blood loss, organ damage, symptoms of extreme pain or death. Also we just track gun related perforations, not whether or not they bleed or get infected or result in death".
And if you have not seen the Head of CDC embarassing appearance on CNN, please take a few moments to watch this woman behave like an idiot trying to explain this case away:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-nkD5LSIg&feature=player_embedded
You all are very bright people who have been fed a line of garbage, and you are swallowing it. Please, start thinking critically about the messages that you are being fed by people with very vested interests in there NOT being an association between vaccines and autism.
Hannah Poling, who had a Johns Hopkins neurologist for a father and a nurse/lawyer for a mother proved their case. HRSA conceded this case because her parents had closed every single way for them to wiggle out of it. Now there are more
I have nothing to add regarding the vaccination debate as I am not qualified, however our daughters case was also settled out of court, a few days prior to trial. It took almost 5 years. It was the largest settlement in Canadian history at the time. Let me explain a few things to people who may not understand.
Therapy is very, very expensive. Good therapists are close to $100.00 per hour and have a multitude of letters behind thier name on the business card. They deserve it. Now, I would venture a guess that there would be speech therapists, motor skills therapists, education therapists, PT, and probably Autism specialists in this case. Our expenses exceeded 250k one year, and have stabilized at around 100k.
A full time minder will be required. People who do this for a living are usually in great demand, and are expensive. The good ones anyway. Another 60k per year. Mom or Dad be the full time minder? Forget it. You couldnt handle it. Unless you have no other kids, no job, etc, even then you wouldnt have the qualifications.
Money....The money is not the parents money...it is HER money. Yes, the parents may disburse it, but if the child is a minor (as our daughter is), or unable to make rational decisions, then the goverment appoints an advocate to perform an annual review on expenditures, in Canada anyway. YMMV. We were advised to purchase an annuity tied to the cost of living index in our country, less 1 million for initial expenses such as a purpose designed house and lawyers fee's of 550k.
The parents will die. Who takes care of the child then? The money must be used to care for the child as long as she lives, which will be shorter than average by the way. Look up disabled people in the actuarial tables. We have made arrangements for this. We have no itention of fobbing the this off on her older brother. That would mean another life destroyed. Naturally he will oversee things though.
Lifestyle....If a speially designed Hummer is what they need, so what? A specially designed home? Again, so what? Its about the child, not the parents, but keep in mind that the parents lives are effectively over, or at least a "normal" lifestyle that is. Whats your one shot at life worth to you if I may ask?
I drive a 2005 Escape and live in a 1 bedroom condo after the divorce (80% of marriages dont survive shit like this). I work 60-70 hours a week. My portion of the award was less than 200k, as was my ex wifes. My other children received 50k each.
My ex lives in the custom house which was less than 500k. She works full time and drives a 2008 Santa Fe....pretty extravagant eh? yes, there is a special van. Quite expensive but she got it used.
Im sure I've left out quite a bit, but the point was dont just look at the big numbers and after all its only money. Sure, we need it it, but its just pieces of paper. Who gives a fuck about it. Awards like these are rarely given out except in catastrophic circumstances (Canada anyway) and I for one would give eveything I had, including my life, to be able to turn back time, but I cant. So you just soldier on.
Our goverment got in on the lawsuit as well. OHIP extrapoloated the extra costs that will be incurred over her expected lifetime (low 50's) such as tests, scans, etc, and sued for them. That came off the top as well, but was only a few hundred thousand.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Fully. Informed. Jury.
Many parents who believe there is a connection between the Vaccines and Autism claim there is way far less autism in children that don't get all of these shots at one time. My daughters pediatrician will not give them to his patient's all at once. They are given one at a time. Yes this means more trips to the doctors office. It would be interesting to note how many here on /. have a family member that is autistic? In my family we have one. This disease is everywhere and has affected many family's. I had visited a few years back many forums on this subject. I could not find any families at the time, that their child did not get the vaccine cocktail.
I also think it is pure cold blooded greed to use the preservatives could very well cause this because the safer ones are more expensive.
I don't. It's part of the reason why we were able to eradicate smallpox(except outside of the lab). It became cheap enough to give it to everyone, the same has more or less been happening with polio. Except where large numbers of religious nutjobs in the middle east think it's a jewish plot to kill them, or make them infertile.
Om, nomnomnom...
Read the second link in TFA (or here).
This case is about a direct causal relationship. Child gets immunization, child develops high fever, child shows signs of brain injury. It just happens to have an autism-LIKE appearance but is not believed to actually be autism. Unlike autism, this is a recognized (but certainly not publicized) rare adverse reaction.
This is in sharp contrast to the typical autism claim of child gets immunized, child cries (as young children do for any shot), child seems fine, months later child shows signs of autism.
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
What can I say? Al's a funny-looking guy.
False in two respects. First, it is not true that the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine only immunizes against the toxin. Second it is not true that immunizing only against the toxin does not reduce the spread of the disease. (hardly surprising that preventing a symptom--coughing--that spreads disease would reduce the spread of that disease)
That also holds your prescriptions etc.
It is very easy for the computer to check all the interaction possibilities. Not so much for a human, no matter how well trained.
That one case, sure. But what if all the other pending trials used that one case as their anchor and weathered the full storm in court? At $10k per case that could easily rise above $20m.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
It's not tax dollars that fund the damage awards. A useful link in the slashdot article post would have been Wikipedia's entry on the Vaccine Court which would show that it's not tax dollars, it's the feds on the other side instead of vaccine manufacturers, it's a no-fault system, and the burdens of proof are nothing like usual civil suits.
In fact, to the extent that tax dollars are implicated, your post should read "paying off nutcases $0 to avoid a $500K trial." Sounds like a good deal to me.
I was vaccinated about 70 years ago and suffer from a mitochondrial disease (threonine mutation in UCP1) that makes the world 10C (18F) warmer for me than for others. I'm writing this wearing only shorts and singlet in a room at 15C (59F). Whom do I sue for a lifetime of sweating misery when conforming to dress codes? I could use $1.5M.
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. For my son, treatment for Candida and the use of probiotics has helped enormously.
I have a friend from high school whose kid has seizures/autism/etc. They've found that a low-carb ("ketogenic") diet helps significantly.
Cayce gave a few readings about people with autism-like symptoms... One factor in the case were "adhesions" and scar tissue in the lacteals, the lymphatic channels which are attached to the small intestines. The scar tissue serves to short-circuit parts of the abdominal nervous system.
The treatment advised included castor oil packs and other therapies, which slowly dissolve the scar tissue and help stimulate normal lymph flow.
See my website, or send me an email for more information (james @ teslabox.com - I don't check ye olde yahoo acct too frequently).
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
That list is my regiment, yet I do more additional things in the day without a certain pro-fessing Chiropractor.
For one, the Lymph channels flow just their immune-system material just like parallely to the veins. Then there is Urine Therapy, of which I diffuse a teaspoon of Urine (start with 1/4 over a the first week) into a 8oz bottle of water to reclaim anti-gens of prior infections so that I stay immune in the 4-Month cycle that might lose immunity.
All you wrote is what I've responded in like to a bunch of entertainers that obviously have the Camera pointed at them rather than experienced individuals who make a living without the jokes of those injurred by vaccines. If vaccines don't causes damages in certain circumstances, then that could explain why those companies making the vaccines have sucessfully lobied all legislatures and courts to GIVE THEM EXEMPTION FROM DAMAGES.
All that you see on Slashdot today is the wave of the next generation after the AOL'ers grew-up and left, and Slashdot ended around 2003 because most of everyone went to KURO5HIN due the same abusive moderation. Just look at the moderation system: it's a ADD/ADHD World-of-Warcraft addicts dream to achieve POINTS that let them talk more. Look at what all these people put on their profiles: they consider theirselves NERDS for watching certain fictional Television programs, while others consider theirselves GEEKS because they buy Chinese-made computers that they modify in trivial ways.
There is verry little Homebrew scene here anymore, and it is dead just like the the Warmth of an Incandescent Lightbulb killed by the Cold of a mercury-rich Fluorescent Lightbulb. None here have any useful technology jobs other than Information Technology and working in Foreign companies making and designing the next generation of foreign-manufactured electronics that will be fabricated in Slave countries that will continually undermine the United States of America from ever competing yet increase the standard of living and the technical ability of the governments to supress the people here until it becomes worse than the outright Slave countries. Where is the Homebrew scene that I knew about when I was 15'years old back in 1995, a group of 60YO unemployed DEC and IBM'ers that teach how to tool-up to make semiconductors and logic gates with available materials and equipment you can build yourself? Are College accredited-Degrees in various sciences used as moderation points in society so people listen when you talk rather than watch as you do nothing that warrant those Degrees?
It's as though most days 4Chan users are of higher quality that Slashdotters. Just look at this place swarm around certain "celebrities" posting comments here under the ID John Carmack or Eric Raymond and Alan Cox, and you'll figure out that those WERE regular people posting daily here but now don't because of the influx of the absent-minded crowd taking-up all their time with unnecessary discussion and trolling.
There was a time when things were better, now it looks bleak and irrelevant for /. to stay around. The only reason it didn't die alltogether is because Slashdot didn't remove the Stops that would've made this place like MySpace, yet the moderation system proves it's more of a game anyway.
This is why the 1st and 2nd generation of Slashdot left to KURO5HIN back in 2001 to 2005.
I remember back in 1999 when actual people with a face would visit here and discuss matters, and now it's just pissing contest of inexperienced people MODDING-DOWN someone else just so they can post under another Slashdot ID to MOD-UP their comments in the entire Point scheme that use for moderation. Congratualations Slashdot, you've become like another Blizzard Vivendi videogame that attracts all this Ritalin children point-collectors.
I'm leaving, and come to think of it So has VA Linux Systems.
From the link you provided: "Since 1988, the program has been funded by an excise tax of 75 cents on every purchased dose of covered vaccine."
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
False. Vaccine manufacturers may be sued directly if a plaintiff does not prevail in the vaccine court.
However, there is not much incentive for plaintiffs to do so, as the rules of evidence are more favorable to the plaintiff in vaccine court, and the plaintiff's legal costs are covered, win or lose. So if somebody can't win in the vaccine court, the chances that they will prevail in the civil courts are pretty dismal.
Of course, the costs would come out of the public's pockets even if the Vaccine Court did not exist, because vaccine manufacturers must charge enough to cover their costs, including the costs of litigation and potential awards. In the worst case, fear of liability might become so great that no commercial firm is willing to manufacture the vaccine, in which case the public would also be saddled with the costs of the inevitable disease outbreaks, and probably eventually with the cost of the federal government itself producing the vaccine.
our cigarettes didn't 'cause' your cancer, the smoking of them just 'resulted' in it.
...
My heart goes out to all of the families with children with Autism or Aspergers. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to come to terms with the fact that your child has one of these conditions, and then to fight to ensure that your child gets the education and care needed for them to live a rich, fulfilling life.
Blaming vaccinations is not the answer, however. There have been a wealth of impartial studies performed, and the results overwhelmingly show that autism is NOT caused by vaccinations. For example, there was an extensive review performed in 2004 by the Institute of Medicine, an organization chartered by the National Academy of Sciences in 1970 to serve as an adviser to the federal government on issues affecting the public's health, as well as to act *independently* in identifying important issues of medical care, research, and education. (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20669467)
By falsely linking autism and vaccines, parents have been hesitant to vaccinate their children. The lack of vaccinations has resulted in unnecessary illnesses, complications, and deaths due to diseases that are 100% avoidable. (For over a hundred real-life accounts of people who have suffered or died from vaccine-preventable diseases, you can visit http://www.immunize.org/reports/. The main body of the site is pretty interesting, too.) I cannot imagine how a parent must feel, knowing that their child is disabled or dead because they weren't immunized. I'm betting it's 1,000x worse than the parent of an autistic child who was immunized, since there is absolutely no question that the (in)action of the parent is to blame.
Calling for more studies to prove what has already been established - that vaccines do not cause autism - diverts funds away from research that can try to establish what *does* cause the disease and develop more effective treatment methods. I think that we all would be better served by putting funds towards this kind of research.
At such a high risk, wouldn't it be better not to vaccinate childern? After all, what bit of risk is paralyzation, small pocks, and all the bunch of other sicknesses compared to this?
US courts suck. Big time. At least more often than not ...
All last week an ad was on TV saying that autism has risen 150%. Now 1 in a 100 kids have it. This was an ad for some organization raising money for autism research. If Vaccines aren't the reason for such a rise then what is causing this. I have a nephew who was fine as a baby until he got his shots. After getting vaccinated he got to acting strange and was then diagnosed with autism. That was around 15 years ago. Sad thing is his family didn't get a dime.
autism is defined only by symptoms, so there could always be another way to reach those symptoms... thus "THE cause" of autism CAN NEVER EXIST.
it's basically the same as looking for "the cause" of the sniffles... it's ignorant.
You'll get your answers plainly from Mary Tocco, as she has been on the war-path against Vaccinations for well over 25 years in consulting about the matter. Her MaryTocco.Com domain is offline because of some issue with GoDaddy at the moment.
Preponderance of evidence is all that prevents me from taking any side in a dispute, and that preponderance is from two flawed points of view meeting in courts to fight over money when I just want to keep doctors and their needles away from me as I don't associate with anyone.
I know a pediatrician who had an autistic child. Unfortunately the trauma of the event and the internet conspiracy theorists convinced her to withold that vaccine for her next child. Unfortunately, the next child also became autistic. So now she firmly does not believe in the conspiracy theory. Of course this is merely anecdotal evidence with a very small sample size and many other statistical no-no's.
$10,000 for a trial? Pulled out of your ass indeed. $20 mil is easily in the ballpark for something like this.
Something else I don't see anybody talking about: you settle out of court instead of going to trial when you know you're going to LOSE, and in a case like this, there is the added consideration of what precedent a court decision would set.
Let's also not forget that $20 mil is chump change for big pharma. CHUMP CHANGE. This family should actually consider itself lucky that their house didn't "accidentally" burn down with them inside it (it wouldn't be the first time.)