Federal test case points to vaccine link to autism

Federal test case points to vaccine link to autism

EDITOR:

As the autism epidemic rages on in this country, I feel compelled to share some riveting new information. What’s not new is that many parents believe, and with very good reason, that vaccines have caused or contributed to their child’s autism. Time and time again, we have been assured by our public health officials that vaccines have nothing whatsoever to do with a child developing autism. Though they can’t say what does cause autism, they are certain it is not vaccines. What is new is apparently those public health people are wrong about vaccines causing a case of autism.

Five thousand claims have been made in a special federal vaccine court in Washington, D.C., by parents claiming their children developed autism after vaccines they received as infants and toddlers. Out of these thousands of cases a few were selected to be heard as “test” cases in the vaccine court. One such case was recently conceded by the government and will not be heard. The family will be awarded compensation for their child. It was determined that a little girl, Hannah Poling, has an underlying medical condition, a mitochondrial dysfunction. And the vaccines she received aggravated this condition causing her to develop autism. Let me be clear: Vaccines caused autism in this girl. Furthermore, information is coming out that other families have been compensated for vaccines causing autism in their children back to 1990.

For several years we have been told that vaccines have nothing to do with autism, and now we are told they do. That is monumental news. Of course the spin doctors at the Centers for Disease Control, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, and any other alphabet soup organization that has anything and everything to do with protecting the vaccine industry have carefully worded their statements regarding this very monumental decision. Most are saying this is a “very rare” situation. Truth be told, we have no idea how rare this case is. After reading numerous reports about this child, I can honestly say my son has suffered many of the same medical problems little Hannah has. Unfortunately, we didn’t know what to attribute these problems to nor did our doctors. Recently I read a very interesting article written by Hannah’s father, who happens to be a neurologist. How prevalent is mitochondrial dysfunction in autism? From Dr. Poling’s article:

“The best estimate to date of the prevalence of mitochondrial dysfunction in autistic patients comes from Oliviera et al. in a population of 120, 5 of 69 (or 7.2%) showed mitochondrial dysfunction. If this is generalized to the U.S. estimate of 1 million patients with ASDs, then the number of kids like Hannah could be 72,000! Isn’t this worth further study?”

Yes it certainly is. And I hope the spin doctors think so too and finally get back to their jobs of protecting the health of American children and not the pharmaceutical industry.

ANDREA KELLER

Canfield

Correction

A letter in Sunday’s paper written by Olla L. Tate contained a misspelling in the signature.