[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It would appear in the case of Hannah Poling that the government has "admitted" (by settling out of court) that thimerosal was responsible. That's not your position.

There is no such thing as "settling out of court" in this case. It is not a civil suit, it is a specially-commissioned body that rules for or against compensation to the victim. They ruled in favor of compensation to cover her medical expenses.

And in the Bailey Banks case, his vaccines did not contain thimerosal.

In sum, the Court’s factual findings are fourfold:

1. Bailey did show evidence of ataxia in the period surrounding his seizure, following his vaccination;

2. Such ataxia, when considered in conjunction with the radiological results and some other “soft indicia”, together support the Court’s finding that Bailey did, in fact, suffer from ADEM.

3. Bailey’s ADEM was caused-in-fact and proximately caused by his vaccination. It is wellunderstood that the vaccination at issue can cause ADEM, and the Court finds, on the record filed herein, that it did actually cause the ADEM.

4. Bailey’s ADEM was severe enough to cause lasting, residual damage, and retarded his developmental progress, which fits under the generalized heading of Pervasive Developmental Delay, or PDD. Additionally, this chain of causation was not too remote, but was rather a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.

What's more, the Bailey Banks legal proceedings also reference two previous rulings that I had never even heard of:

Petitioner cites to two previous cases heard by this Court where the Special Master found that the MMR vaccine had caused ADEM: Tufo v. Secretary of HHS, No. 98-0108V, 2001 WL 286911, 2001 US Claims LEXIS 46 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Mar. 2, 2001) and Lodge v. Secretary of HHS, No. 92-0697V, 1994 WL 34609, 1994 US Claims LEXIS 19 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Jan 25, 1994). Petitioner also cites to the 1994 report of the IOM, which found the theory that a vaccine can “induce...an autoimmune response...by nonspecific activation of the T cells directed against myelin proteins” to be “biologically plausible.”