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Hannah Poling is the name of the 9-year-old autistic child whose “pre-existing mitochondrial disorder…. was ‘aggravated’ by her shots,” as was conceded last week by the government in the Court of Federal Claims. Today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiles her and her parents, neurologist Jon Poling and Terry Poling, a lawyer and nurse, note that the court decision “will help pay for the numerous therapists and other medical experts their autistic child needs — now and for the rest of her life.” More about Hannah’s story:
The Georgia girl’s case – and its implications in the vaccine-autism debate – raise more questions than it answers, experts say.
Some medical experts say it’s difficult to fully assess the case because the federal vaccine-court documents are sealed from public view.
“It raised a lot of questions for us,” said Dr. David Tayloe Jr., president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP]. The national medical group’s leadership has been seeking more information about Hannah’s vaccine-court case since last week when a sealed vaccine-court document detailing the government’s settlement was posted on the Internet by an autism book author, then circulated widely among autism groups.
(This would be the court case records that David Kirby wrote about in the Huffington Post last week.)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that the AAP has been “trying to get access to official documents in the case so medical experts can delve into the science, assess whether there are implications for other children and answer questions from doctors and families” and continues:
“Our responsibility is to make sure the public is given good information and make sure the hype doesn’t distract from public health,” Tayloe said. “I still would not think that we’re going to have evidence showing a role of vaccines actually causing autism.”
According to the leaked document posted online, the government’s Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation concluded that five shots Hannah received in July 2000, when she was 19 months old, “significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder” and resulted in a brain disorder “with features of autism spectrum disorder.”
Sallie Bernard, executive director of the national autism advocacy group SafeMinds, called the case “unprecedented” in that a link between vaccines and autism is being made public. Federal health officials “have insisted there is no link at all between vaccines and vaccine components and autism. And apparently that is not true,” she said.
Hannah is said to have started showing signs of autism at “3 months” after receiving her vaccines, though the Atlanta Journal-Constitution states that symptoms of autism appear in Hannah when she was 19 months old.
Hannah requires one-on-one care at all times, said her mother, Terry Poling, a nurse and lawyer. The Polings described how Hannah was a normal, verbal toddler until she received several vaccines during a well-baby visit. Within 48 hours of the shots, she developed a high fever and inconsolable crying and refused to walk. She stopped sleeping through the night. At 3 months of age, she began showing signs of autism, including spinning and staring at lights and fans. For a while, she lost her ability to speak.
When Hannah was 6 months old, as the family came to grips with the likelihood that she was autistic, they turned to leading experts in neurology. “I had to know. My daughter didn’t just suddenly develop autism for no reason,” Terry Poling said.
Hannah’s father co-authored an article about her case, which was published in the Journal of Child Neurology in 2006.
Hannah, who has two older brothers, continues to have mild to moderate symptoms of autism. The family says early and ongoing intensive therapy has been critical for her.
“The biggest question right now for the public is: How unique is Hannah’s case?” said Jon Poling. Poling said he suspects there are other children like Hannah.
Cliff Shoemaker, the Polings’ attorney, said the family has filed a petition with the vaccine court to unseal all of Hannah’s records and allow both the family and the government to fully discuss the case.
Despite this, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which reprersents [sic] the government in court cases, would not grant interviews or explain to the AJC why it isn’t releasing the records. HHS officials, who administer the vaccine compensation fund, also declined to be interviewed, citing the court’s confidentiality requirements.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution emphasizes that:
The language in the document does not establish a clear-cut vaccine-autism link. But it does say the government concluded that vaccines aggravated a rare underlying metabolic condition that resulted in a brain disorder “with features of autism spectrum disorder.”
It seems that there are more than a few issues here: (1) Did vaccines injure Hannah Poling; (2) did vaccines cause her to become autistic; (3) how “rare” is Hannah’s “underlying metabolic condition”?
56 days ago
[...] Aluminum may not be cleared efficiently from the body of premature babies or those with fragile or underdeveloped immune systems and have been implicated in contributing to and possibly causing neurological disorders. The aluminum load of the recommended shot series is between 295 and 1225 mcg at once. The CDC currently recommends that fragile individuals not receive more than 25 mcg of injected aluminum at once. Injected aluminum is not the same as that which is consumed from food; about 1% of consumed aluminum will make it to the bloodstream, vs. all of the injected aluminum. Aluminum is not needed by the body, and some research shows that exposure may result in learning disabilities and other cognitive effects. It may also impact mitochondrial functions (remember the Hannah Poling case?). [...]
1257 days ago
[...] Claims had conceded that vaccines had contributed to the onset of autistic symptoms in the case of Hannah Poling led to much speculation and debate about (1) if mitochondrial disorders could be linked to autism [...]
@Mary, please note that I don’t think that’s a necessary way to address someone in a forum, online or otherwise.
It also seems that Cookie Monster has had to change his ways due to the general concern for nutrition and healthy eating—these being hardly a bad thing in themselves but things get interesting when carried to extremes.
Emily – and I mean this in all honesty – you are a bi*ch. And I mean like a real one, not a made up one that just is happy to hurt relatives feelings, but someone who can truly reach out and hurt others with no regard to their state of mind. I guess that makes me one too, since I could care less how you take this.
Denise – you need thicker skin and you need to not let the idiots like Emily and Kassianne get to you. THey are negative little bumps of life in your way of showing others how to help their kids. If you are ready to give up your site over this then you need some more motiviation or something.
I wouldn’t cross a street to put either of them out if they were on fire, let alone cancel a site I’d had for two years!
I’d love to hear more about how they got the dyes removed from the schools! And I go out of my way for organic foods and milk that isn’t full of hormones or stored in plastic. It’s hard over here, money does trump all, but slowly we are fighting for our health freedoms and rights. GMOs are trying to take over, we’ll see. I’m sure Emily sees nothing wrong with them either, after all, humans are super beings who aren’t affected by chemicals and toxins………..
Denise…and I mean this in all honesty…it’s pretty easy to see where your son got it.
“Following on Cliff’s suggestions about the cookie, if you don’t mind me going completely OT—–I have been very dismayed to learn that Cookie Monster now eats vegetables. (Am of course thinking of all the times Charlie and I entertained each other singing ‘C is for Cookie AND for Charlie.’) Come to think of it, not only am I going OT here, I am getting the idea for another post………..”
Oh, no *way*. He eats vegetables? That’s awful! Defamation of a character!
Cliff
I have exercise asthma. Does that count?
It was not present when I was a child. It only occurred when I became an adult and tried to dance at the disco, do aerobics and other gym related things.
I work on preventing family history of strokes by walking and swimming in the slow lane (I have high cholesterol, regular exercise keeps my HDL high). It takes me over an hour to swim 2000 yards. I am slow but consistent!
Does this mean I have some fatal defect?
But you have proven one thing to me. How I am totally wasting my time and money on close-minded people. I have cancelled my website of two years. Now mothers searching for cures will be missing out on the information needed to cure their children like I cured mine. Two years and counting without a single violent episode, two years without any autistic behaviors.
But I guess you’ll say next that children also outgrow being “emotionally disturbed” and having ADD/ADHD.
Since Emily says I know nothing and am mouthing nonsense.
And when the people I have helped ask what happened to the site, I will refer them to this group of people. Maybe they will turn the table and come laugh at all of you for your ignorance and self importance.
There you go Emily, you probably just destroyed a lot of children’s lives all because the thing that cured my child didn’t cure yours. My heart aches at your selfishness.
No, my son and I went thru 9 years of hell. He was violent and I feared for his life, both as a child and an adult. The schools wanted him gone, his relatives couldnt handle him and while they tried to love him, well it just didn’t happen properly.
I was scared of my own child. I do not exaggerate when I say he was much like the child in The Omen in some of his acts and the way he looked at you.
He was labeled emotionally disturbed, ADD, ADHD and on and on. I didn’t believe because THERE WERE MOMENTS when he was completely normal. Days of normalacy. It didn’t make sense.
But doctors didnt want to bother with finding out WHY. They just wanted to drug him. I spent a year researching on the internet and tried many things. I would not drug my son.
While some suggestions and theories seemed inplausible to me, I never once made fun of them or the people who believed them. I just simply kept searching.
I finally found the answer. And I was willing to TRY it. Within two weeks or removing artificial, synthetic chemicals from our diets, he became a different person. A normal person. We added supplements into his diet also and these helped with his “spacing out”. He was malnurished from a chemical laden diet!
I am not the only mother who knows of this cure, there are thousands of us and the number is growing everyday. Havent you noticed the “natural” and “organic” foods that are slowly taking over the grocery stores?
In Australia, based on SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, they have removed all food dyes from the schools foods and they have written of the dramatic positive differences in the childrens behavior and general being.
America is slow though because they care more about money than anything. They won’t pay more for healthy food. They are brainwashed believing their own government would not allow them to be hurt. They are brainwashed by doctors getting kickbacks from the drug companies to drug the people of the US instead of trying to cure them with natural means!
Because of MY LOVE FOR ALL CHILDREN, I spend my time and my limited resources to try and spread the word. To get people to stop poisoning their children.
AND WHAT DO I GET FOR MY EFFORTS. CRITICISM, VERBAL ATTACKS. This is why America will ALWAYS be BEHIND other countries….because Americans dont care!
They are lazy and willing to believe anything the goverment says. But even if I have to face 500 Emilys with her close minded superior attitudes, if I still save one child, even one (which I have) I will have done 10,000 times more than the Emilys of the world.
@Denise,
Emily is a long-time commenter with more than many reasons to be writing in here.
I was able to grow out of asthma and am very active now, in ways quite unimaginable while a child.
Very best to you and yours!
Emily,
You don’t know anything about my children or what they have gone through or what we have gone through or the $8,000 we have spent trying to help our son. Why are you even in this forum? Just to make people more miserable than they already are? To make fun of them while they are down? You are a mean, spiteful person and got everything you deserve in life.
Following on Cliff’s suggestions about the cookie, if you don’t mind me going completely OT—–I have been very dismayed to learn that Cookie Monster now eats vegetables. (Am of course thinking of all the times Charlie and I entertained each other singing “C is for Cookie AND for Charlie.”) Come to think of it, not only am I going OT here, I am getting the idea for another post………..
I guess you must be right, Denise. Sigh. Bad genes. I’ll be up all night worrying about it.
Criticism and “negative vibes.” Sorry. I know what criticism is, and yep…when I see someone rant stridently about something stupid, I’ll dole that out in tubs, but “negative vibes”? What are those, and do you know of way to channel them more efficiently? They don’t seem to be working.
Here’s more criticism: Denise, you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s really all there is to it. You just bumble out a bunch of terms that sound scary to you without knowing much at all about what they mean.
Your daughter’s response to yellow dye sounds like an allergic rxn, not asthma. Fairly common with specific yellow dye.
Oh, there I go again, being all negative. I just can’t think of a positive way to tell people that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Hmmm…can someone out there with “good genes” help me out? Wait, I know.
“You’d know what you were talking about if you read accurate information and learned something from it.”
Not a single negative in that entire sentence. Phew.
Wow, Professora, this has gotten right silly, huh?
Could you declare this topic closed (it’s your blog) so that we could discuss other things?
I don’t think it’s accurate to speak of “bad genes.”
I had severe asthma as a child and outgrew it; running cross country helped a great deal.
I’d like to contribute cookies to this thread. No, not as a causation theory; we have enough of those already. Just… cookies. Since we apparently shouldn’t be granting critical commentary…
Cliff
Emily,
Many pardons that I forgot the word “synthetic” when referring to the chemicals in food. Synthetic food dyes are made from petroleum. People were not made to consume petroleum.
My daughter has not “outgrown” her asthma. Everytime she eats or drinks anything with yellow dye in it, she has an asthma attack. Unfortunately since she is a teenager, I cannot control everything she consumes every minute of every day.
So far I have not seen you contribute anything to the conversation except criticism and negative vibes.
I guess you just have bad genes in general, mommy or not.
Calcium is a metal. Selenium is a metal.
Um…if one removes all “chemicals” from one’s food, one will have no food to eat.
FWIW, which ain’t much…my children don’t eat food coloring, preservatives, processed foods in general, and certainly didn’t for their first several years of existence. My autistic son had nothing but organic food for years. Of course, we couldn’t get rid of the chemicals in those foods or the metals…given that that’s what they’re made of.
People tend to outgrow asthma. Not everyone, but it is a tendency.
Some folks on here should go read the Baron-Cohen thread. Looks like the sperm lost out bigtime to the overemotional mommy genes in some cases.
No.
Just that you should not freak out at the word “metal.”
(By the way, most aluminum containers have a small layer of oxidized aluminum as a coating. In larger quantities it can be called corundum. If it is contaminated with certain minerals it can be called either “ruby” or “sapphire”.)
Be advised that the MMR, a vaccine that has been demonized for the past ten years even though it has been safely used since 1971, has never contained thimerosal nor aluminum salts.
Allison Jones, yes the toxins from diphtheria and tetanus are very bad. That is why it is better to vaccinate against them! It is obvious we want to prevent those diseases, especially on what happened when the vaccine program broke down in several former Soviet satellite countries. Thousands of children died:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol4no4/vitek.htm
Already a dozen American babies die from pertussis each year. So it is very important to prevent those diseases.
“The main cause of autism is margarine”. “I’ve become the Joan of Arc for vaccine education”.
That is going down in my book as a classic!
I’m rolling on floor!