Has the Vaccine Court ever compensated the family of an autistic child?
Kind of.
Hannah Poling is autistic and her family was compensated by the Vaccine Court. But she wasn’t compensated for autism.
“Because she had an existing encephalopathy (presumably on the basis of a mitochondrial enzyme defect) and because worsening of an existing encephalopathy following measles-containing vaccine is a compensible injury, Hannah Poling was compensated.”
Why was Hannah Poling compensated?
Hannah Poling was compensated because she had a table injury.
Has the Vaccine Court Compensated over 70 Families for Autism?
Remember the Autism Omnibus Proceedings?
Those were the test cases that represented three different theories of how vaccines could possibly be associated with autism. None of them were upheld by the Vaccine Court and none of the families were compensated.
“The devil is in the details. You can call autism many different things and it looks very much differently to different folks. But at the end of the day, the Vaccine Court has awarded over 70 families that their children now have autism and these children developed encephalitis, which is brain inflammation, that turned into autism. 70 families. And your viewers can google Hannah Poling and Baxter Bailey. Those are two of the most popular cases. And the U.S. government said to them, your child received autism because of this. I mean, they were awarded. So, it’s in the books.”
Liza Longoria Greve on KOCO News 5
So how could anyone be saying that over 70 families of autistic children have been compensated by the Vaccine Court?
I guess folks can say whatever they want, especially when the media doesn’t understand the idea of false balance and gives them a platform, after all, that’s how you explain much of propaganda of the anti-vaccine movement.
How can they say that encephalitis turns into autism?
Again, folks can say whatever they want, but this is actually a little different from what they usually claim, that autism is encephalitis.
Of course, it isn’t.
70 Families? Google It
So what happens if you ‘google it‘ and actually research Liza Longoria Greve’s claim?
We already know about Hannah Poling… Again, she has a mitochondrial disorder and autism and she was compensated because it was thought that she had an adverse event to getting vaccinated because of her mitochondrial disorder.
And Baxter Bailey? You don’t find anything if you look for Baxter Bailey, but you will eventually find information about Bailey Banks, who was compensated for (acute disseminated encephalomyelitis) ADEM, which led to Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD). He wasn’t compensated for autism though.
What about the other families she is talking about?
A little more googling and you find that she is likely talking about an article, Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury, that was published in the Pace Environmental Law Review in 2011 by Mary Holland, in which she reports finding “eighty-three cases of autism among those compensated for vaccine-induced brain damage.”
Instead of proof that vaccines cause autism though, Holland’s paper was little more than a “misleading recasting of VICP decisions.”
And vaccines are still not associated with autism.
What to Know About Vaccine Court and Autism
The vaccine court has never compensated anyone for so-called vaccine-induced autism.
More on Vaccine Court and Autism
- Using and Misusing Legal Decisions: Why Antivaccine Claims About NVICP Cases Are Wrong
- Critiques of Holland et al., Unanswered Questions From The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program
- 2 ½ Studies: Autism Prevalence and the “Hidden Horde”
- Decisions in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding
- Rulings in cases testing MMR/thimerosal-autism link
- Court Clarifies: Hannah Poling case “does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism”
- Vaccines and Autism Revisited — The Hannah Poling Case
- Court Rulings Don’t Confirm Autism-Vaccine Link
- Why Was Hannah Poling Compensated?
- Vaccine Critics Claim Court Paid for Autism Cases
- MMR and Autism Rises from the Dead
- Is The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Covering-Up An Autism-Vaccine Link?
- The “Groundbreaking” Vaccine-Autism Investigation Release of May 10th 2011
- Vaccine Critics Claim Court Paid for Autism Cases
- Vaccine induced autism – how Meryl Dorey misled her Woodford audience
- Another swing for the fences and a miss by the anti-vaccine movement
- The latest claims of “proof” that vaccines cause autism: Will the media take the bait?
- When the science fails you, turn to the legal option
- Unanswered questions from Pace law journal study: Ethical standards for research on human subjects
- Mary Holland