Family to Receive $1.5M+ in First-Ever Vaccine-Autism Court Award | Hacker News Reader

Family to Receive $1.5M+ in First-Ever Vaccine-Autism Court Award

cbsnews.com

17 pointsedw51936 comments

I've always been skeptical, and at times downright angry, of the vaccine-causes-autism group as frankly it's been nothing but conjecture and sky-is-falling. This case, though, seems to have been able to actually make a connection between the two (though the article makes it very clear, the vaccines did not cause autism, they aggravated an existing condition that brought about the autism).

I know people will use this case as a "I'll never vaccinate my child!" issue, but that won't last once a kid dies of mumps or is paralyzed from polio for the first time in decades. Overall I think this is a good decision. We really don't know that vaccines are 100% safe, and especially in infants, and especially all of that at once. We do want vaccinations, but we need to be more careful about to whom and how we administer them, and this case will hopefully bring about a new realm of research into this and it's relationship with autism.

Another problem with not vaccinating your kids is that it can kill other kids. For example if your 10 year old gets the measles it's not a huge deal, but if because of that the neighbor baby gets the measles, that is a big deal.

Wouldn't that be the neighbor's fault, having not vaccinated their child? If child X not being vaccinated and getting sick as a result is "not a huge deal", then it should apply that if child Y not being vaccinated and getting sick as a result is also "not a huge deal".

Most vaccines are given several months after birth in order to allow the immune system to develop first. (Neonates have impaired adaptive immune systems. Although people are now experimenting with the concept of giving vaccinations at birth, this is still largely done only in the research context.) Thus, our youngest rely to a certain degree on herd immunity, which is the phenomenon being described by the parent post.

In other words, it is a huge deal.

OK. So the risk is increased from existing (a pre-vaccine baby can catch a disease from another pre-vaccine baby) to existing slightly more (pre-vaccine baby catching disease from unvaccinated child).

Before I can agree that is a "huge deal", I'd like to see some numbers on the degree this actually happens vs. the existing non-huge deal of pre-vaccinated baby transmission to pre-vaccinated baby.

Great! I'd encourage you to make use of resources such as http://www.pubmed.gov/ to find reliable sources to help you answer your questions.

It's happening in California right now with whooping cough - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19363-whooping-cough-o...

Thanks for the link! Definitely is an issue.

That would probably be the case of only one child became infected, and that child in infected no one else. However, if there are a sufficiently high number of susceptible people, an epidemic can occur (i.e. an event where an exponentially growing number of people become infected.) That's really what we worry about.

Keep in mind the existence of immune-compromised people, who are more susceptible due to illness, or as a result of treatment (anti-rejection drugs, chemo, etc).

More people died from the 1976 flu vaccine than died from the 1976 flu. You seem to imply that the government should be able to dictate what people put in their bodies for the good of all of society, which is the antithesis of freedom as I see it.

(though the article makes it very clear, the vaccines did not cause autism, they aggravated an existing condition that brought about the autism)

Did they really show that? It doesn't sound like it. From:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1721109,00.ht...

'That decision, however, comes as a surprise to experts on mitochondrial disorders. In response to the Poling case, the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation has released a statement saying, "There are no scientific studies documenting that childhood vaccinations cause mitochondrial diseases or worsen mitochondrial disease symptoms."'

> that won't last once a kid dies of mumps or is paralyzed from polio for the first time in decades.

I wonder how awful it's going to be that kid's parent.

From the medical perspective, legal opinions have absolutely no bearing on the question of what does or does not cause any particular malady. These are empirical questions that must be answered scientifically, not socially.

I've always found it to be silly that one of the defenses of vaccines is that the courts had never awarded a payout such as the one in this article. That proved (or disproved) nothing scientifically then, and it proves nothing now.

This sets a dangerous precedent.

Not, actually. Apparently the journalist is a bit woo-y and got the facts wrong.

The blogger Orac, a doctor, has a response at http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/09/cbs_news_resident_...

More at http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2010/09/sharyl-attkisson-bl...

"Then-director of the Centers for Disease Control Julie Gerberding (who is now President of Merck Vaccines)..."

Ah. An expert source...?

I'm marginally surprised that this was down voted.

The director of the CDC is now the President of Merck Vaccines. That's hardly a trivial issue.

The problem with the topic of vaccination is that both sides are unreliable. On the one hand you have a severe lack of qualified study and a fairly disreputable unofficial spokes person (Jenny McCarthy) and on the other you have such an abundance of studies that it becomes extraordinarily difficult to determine whether or which of those studies have been compromised by corruption and industry (the director of the CDC becomes the President of one of a handful of major vaccine developers).

Look, I'm worried about regulatory capture and the iron triangle and all of that too, but people moving between the public and private sectors isn't in-and-of-itself proof of any misdeed.

Look at this specific example - the jobs have basically identical requirements: "distinguished medical doctor specializing in infectious diseases with skills in administration and dealing with paper-pushers".

The indication alone is sufficient to question and doubt. Proof is only necessary for conviction.

I'm quite sure the jobs have basically identical requirements. But the jobs also have dramatically different task masters (corporate profit vs. public good).

Well all I know is now that Jenny McCarthy has been proven smarter than all those PhDs and thereby invalidated post-secondary education.

Sigh.

No matter which side of the debate you're on, I think we can agree giving a child nine vaccines at once is probably not the best idea. We've spread out my sons vaccines so he receives all the recommended ones but a few weeks apart.

Hmm, I don't agree prima fascie, that giving multiple vaccinations at once is a bad idea. Empirical evidence is almost always necessary when dealing with clinical questions such as this.

(Occasionally, overwhelming logic will suffice. E.g., sure, I agree that there is no need for a clinical trial on parachutes for those jumping out of airplanes.)

Isn't there overwhelming logic that bombarding a child's immune system with 10 or so strains of disease at one time is not ideal?

You can't just prepend "Isn't there overwhelming logic that..." to your opinion and expect me to agree.

My exception for "overwhelming logic" was intended to stave off the trivial responses like, "Oh, so you think we should have clinical trials for parachutes."

It's not necessary for you to agree. It's just necessary for me to point out that there is overwhelming logic to the concept that injecting large numbers of diseases into a child at one time is not ideal. That is the logical starting position. Perhaps there will be evidence that it poses zero risk or less risk than progressive vaccination. Or perhaps that evidence will never exist.

Obviously medical experts disagree with you, so I cannot say that it is "overwhelmingly logical," at least not to those best equipped to understand this issue.

Surely, if enough agree with you, however, then we will consider there to be "clinical equipoise" and trials will be done.

So your starting position is that "medical experts", lacking trials, are de-facto correct. That's not logical in and of itself. There are countless examples throughout history of "medical experts" majority opinions being revised down to the level of barbaric - yet at the time they were considered by most people, similar to you, to be de-facto correct.

Well, yes. In a disagreement, it is much more likely that domain experts are correct than that you are correct. Whenever you find this not to be the case, I would highly encourage you to take full advantage of the substantial opportunity.

With regards to "barbaric" medical practice, you seem to be conflating pre-scientific medicine with scientific medicine. "Experts" in ritualistic pre-scientific medicine probably knew no more about disease than did the completely uninformed. They were not "experts" in any meaningful sense. And, indeed, had someone been around practicing evidence-based medicine at that time, they could have completely changed the world.

As much fun as it is to talk philosophically about this, there are actually plenty of people who have wondered about vaccine administration. From my reading of the articles, the evidence does not show meaningful adverse effects from the practice of multiple vaccination. I'd encourage you to do your own reading on the topic.

> With regards to "barbaric" medical practice, you seem to be conflating pre-scientific medicine with scientific medicine.

Firstly, no I'm not. Secondly, you seem to believe scientific medicine is effectively infallible. Nearly every day a new study indicates studies performed just a year or two or ten ago are inaccurate. Indeed, that is the very nature of science.

What we're discussing here is logic. It is not logical to accept the opinion of a medical expert, particularly without trials. This is precisely why most people will undertake the logical next step and seek a second opinion. Ultimately, certainty is impossible but blind acceptance is rarely ever wise and always illogical.

But what is the logical default? Is it to space out vaccinations, or is it to run them all together? There is no "logical" answer to that question, which is why we have to turn to domain specific knowledge.

The fact that there is turnover in medical knowledge does not mean that your personal preference carries the same weight as evidence or even expert consensus.

Isn't there overwhelming logic that heavier objects fall faster? After all, force = mass * acceleration, and if there's more mass, there's more force.

Isn't it LOGICAL that the immune system will react more rigorously when presented with more strains of diseases, increasing immunity to each of them?

You don't answer questions like this based on common sense!

I don't have any empirical evidence about this.

However, I do know that activation of the immune system is costly to an individual organism. It uses energy, and this can lead to sub-optimal functioning of other systems.

I do not know if giving multiple vaccines at once means that activation of the immune system is greater, but it would seem logical that a larger number of foreign particles in the bloodstream would do that.

I don't think we can agree. I'm neither a pediatrician nor a viral pathologist, so I can't lend an opinion to whether spacing out vaccines is good or bad. Unless you're a medical expert, your opinion probably doesn't hold too much value either.

Not without consulting some experts and doing some actual research.

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