First of all, I’ve clearly struck a nerve with at least one person in the medical profession because I’m “ignorant” and don’t have all the “medical facts.” I don’t think what I said is all that different from what Hannah Poling’s father had to say to WebMD, but perhaps he will be more respected since he’s a neurologist:

The experience with Hannah, [Jon] Poling [MD, PhD] says, has not turned him against vaccines. “I want to make it clear I am not anti-vaccine,” he says. “Vaccines are one of the most important, if not the most important advance, in medicine in at least the past 100 years. But I don’t think that vaccines should enjoy a sacred cow status, where if you attack them you are out of mainline medicine.”

“Every treatment has a risk and a benefit. To say there are no risks to any treatment is not true.”

“Sometimes people are injured by a vaccine, but they are safe for the majority of people. I could say that with a clean conscience. But I couldn’t say that vaccines are absolutely safe, that they are not linked to brain injury and they are not linked to autism.”

Poling is hopeful that the decision will trigger government action. “I hope it will force government agencies to look further into what susceptibility factors are out there for children to develop brain injury after vaccination, to look into the susceptibility factors of people at risk.”

Hannah Poling is the autistic girl who was at the center of the case I reported in this post. What her father said, as quoted by WebMD, is all I was trying to say in my previous post. He just said it more eloquently, and hopefully in way that those in the medical profession will find acceptable.

Secondly, here’s coverage of the story from CBS News — note the end of the story where they say their investigation has turned up nine more cases like Hannah’s going all the way back to 1990:

I understand why there has been such a concerted effort to convince people that autism is not connected to vaccinations. Vaccinations save lives. Just Google “polio” sometime and consider how much life has been improved through vaccines. And if parents think that getting their children vaccinated is going to give them autism, they might forego vaccines because they fear they’re too risky. Yet not getting vaccinated would actually open them up to greater risk.

So I get it. But there’s just one problem. There is a link between autism and vaccines. And the sooner the medical community comes clean about it and reduces that risk, the better off everyone will be. The Department of Health and Human Services has conceded the link in a document filed in a Federal Claims Court. You can read a verbatim copy here. The concession comes under the “Analysis” section and states:

In sum, DVIC [Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation, Department of Health and Human Services] has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD [name redacted for privacy] received on July 19, 2000, 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. Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11(c)(1)(C)(ii).

There must be a way to be honest about these findings without scaring everyone into eschewing vaccinations. And there must be a way to reduce the risks — for example, maybe there’s a test that can be done to check for conditions that could be aggravated by the vaccination before the shot is administered. One thing that’s definitely not going help is pretending there is no link and stonewalling the public.

Hat tip: “The Mouse”