It was not classical autism, just some overlapping symptoms. Her condition could have been triggered by any fever. The link to vaccines is tenuous. The vaccine court is being widely lambasted for paying them off.
It was not classical autism, just some overlapping symptoms.
This sounds like a dodge, frankly. I am not encouraged.
EDIT: I am further discouraged by the voting here. I see an instance of potentially non-conformed data. What do you do with non-conformed data?
As best I can tell, nothing can be done with this data right now, since details of the court's decision have not been released. The most you can do is reserve a measure of judgement till further information is available.
Instead, I see a strong desire to dismiss the data. This is poor epistemological form. This is not encouraging.
Two questions, for now:
* What symptoms of classical autism were not present?
* More to the point, why would classical autism be the standard, rather than autism spectrum disorders?
You do sort of get to the fundamental problem of autism not being an actual disease, just a group of symptoms. The mitochondrial enzyme deficiencies suffered by Poling have a distinct, but overlapping set of symptoms. So, the reason I mentioned classical autism is that the symptoms of mitochondrial encephalopathy[1] go well beyond those, never mind the milder symptoms of ASD.
Apparently, the court's justification for giving the award is that the fever from the vaccine might have been one of the many fevers she suffered that led to the particular expression of this condition. Sadly, her parents had already given her the "autism" label, which only confuses the issue.
