The first is the news that the government has conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims. An 18 month old girl went in for her shots and quickly came down with diseases and setbacks that resulted in symptoms of autism. Turns out, though, it wasn't autism but a mitochondrial disorder that acts exactly like autism. It also seems to be around 10% to 20% of the 4,900 vaccine-autism cases currently in court. Now that precedence has been set, most of those will probably be winners and that's going to mean big bucks doled out in compensation. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has already paid out $1.5 billion to those who agreed not to sue the government for saving their children from the ravages of disease at the cost of... injury or death, I wonder if these new cases will be paid out of the $2.1 billion they've still got in their piggy bank.
In a way this might be good news, though. If it's possible, either now or in the future, to detect this latent mitochondrial disorder before vaccinations then that could save a lot of families quite a bit of heartache.
The second interesting tidbit is an independent study showing a significantly higher percentage of autism in vaccinated kids. What amazes me most, though, is the fact that this is the first study relating to this question that's ever been done. How is this possible? I mean, when I first heard of the possibility that vaccinations can cause autism my first question was, "Can you back it up with numbers? What are the percentages?" And these people spent a mere $200,000 to get those numbers, using a phone survey very similar to the one used by their arch nemesis, the Centers for Disease Control itself.
This survey isn't perfect, though, and doesn't really point a finger at vaccinations specifically. Rather, it indicates families who vaccinate are more likely to have autistic children. There are plenty of other environment factors that could contribute. Does the child eat more preservatives? Does he watch more television? Does he live in a high pollution neighborhood? Was he bottle fed as an infant?
A fully comprehensive survey could help point scientists in the right direction in determining the cause of autism, whatever it might be.
In a way this might be good news, though. If it's possible, either now or in the future, to detect this latent mitochondrial disorder before vaccinations then that could save a lot of families quite a bit of heartache.
The second interesting tidbit is an independent study showing a significantly higher percentage of autism in vaccinated kids. What amazes me most, though, is the fact that this is the first study relating to this question that's ever been done. How is this possible? I mean, when I first heard of the possibility that vaccinations can cause autism my first question was, "Can you back it up with numbers? What are the percentages?" And these people spent a mere $200,000 to get those numbers, using a phone survey very similar to the one used by their arch nemesis, the Centers for Disease Control itself.
This survey isn't perfect, though, and doesn't really point a finger at vaccinations specifically. Rather, it indicates families who vaccinate are more likely to have autistic children. There are plenty of other environment factors that could contribute. Does the child eat more preservatives? Does he watch more television? Does he live in a high pollution neighborhood? Was he bottle fed as an infant?
A fully comprehensive survey could help point scientists in the right direction in determining the cause of autism, whatever it might be.
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