March 4th 09, 12:26 AM
posted to alt.support.autism,misc.health.alternative,misc.kids,misc.kids.health
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Another ruling in the US vaccine court
Original groups restored.
"D. C. Sessions" wrote:
JOHN wrote:
"JOHN" wrote in message
...
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melanieph...ne-court.thtml
Another ruling in the US vaccine court
Friday, 27th February 2009
Melanie Phillips
Seven days ago, the US vaccine court awarded damages to a ten year-old
child, Bailey Banks, who it said had developed acute brain damage
involving
autistic spectrum disorder as a result of his MMR vaccination.
This followed a judgment by the same court a few days previously in the
'Cedillo' case which threw out three test claims involving MMR on the
grounds that that there was no proven link between the MMR vaccine and
autism. The judges in that case said parents had been misled by doctors
who
were guilty of 'gross medical misjudgment' and had peddled 'speculative
and
unpersuasive' theories.
That judgment in turn followed another case in which the vaccine court
said
nine year-old Hanna Poling had developed autism as a result of a cocktail
of
nine vaccines administered simultaneously, including MMR, which had
significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which
predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested
as
a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder.
In the Bailey Banks case, the ruling was unequivocal. It concluded from
the
evidence provided by a full neurological examination of the child 16 days
after his MMR vaccination that the jab had caused Acute Disseminated
Encephalomyelitis (ADEM) which in turn had led to Pervasive Developmental
Delay, a disorder on the autistic spectrum.
Special Master Richard Abell wrote:
The Court found, supra, that Bailey's ADEM was both caused-in-fact and
proximately caused by his vaccination. It is well-understood that the
vaccination at issue can cause ADEM, and the Court found, based upon a
full
reading and hearing of the pertinent facts in this case, that it did
actually cause the ADEM. Furthermore, Bailey's ADEM was severe enough to
cause lasting, residual damage, and retarded his developmental progress,
which fits under the generalized heading of Pervasive Developmental Delay,
or PDD. The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered this delay but
for the administration of the MMR vaccine, and that this chain of
causation
was not too remote, but was rather a proximate sequence of cause and
effect
leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.
Therefore it had been successfully demonstrated that
the MMR vaccine at issue actually caused the condition(s) from which
Bailey suffered and continues to suffer.
It also turns out from this ruling that the vaccine court had heard two
previous cases where the Special Master had found that the MMR vaccine had
caused Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis.
In response to the Bailey Banks case, Dr. Bryan Jepson, an autism
specialist
at Thoughtful House where Andrew Wakefield now conducts research, said:
The contradictory rulings from the Vaccine Court regarding vaccines and
autism demonstrate that we still don't have a definitive answer. We need
to
realize that the question of MMR's potential contribution to autism
remains
under scientific debate. Ultimately, the correct answer will come through
honest, transparent and rigorous scientific study, not from a court bench.
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