Reply #86: In a comment made June 10th of this year, you said of Hannah Poling, and I quote,

[laconicsax]

"Apparently there is only one [case of vaccine induced autism] and her name is Hannah Poling. No other like person in existence."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4420311&mesg_id=4421380

Of course, you denied ever making the claim to me in that thread too. Other people explained to you why you are wrong, but that never seems to stop you. Dogma is unassailable to reason.

(Considering how you defined "like" in this thread, did you accidentally define Hannah Poling out of the species?)

Thanks for the link RE: Bailey Banks. I was fairly unfamiliar with the case, and now I understand it as a case of vaccine injury causing ADEM, which led to ASD. You could have provided the link earlier and spared yourself the trouble of accusing me of posting under multiple usernames (I don't by the way.) in an ad hominem attack that further undermines your credibility.

I am curious though, why you didn't mention Bailey Banks in the above-referenced thread. The decision is three years old, so it isn't like the Banks case is a new development of the last two months. Could it be that your favorite anti-vax sites didn't include it until recently? Is it possible that you hadn't even been aware of the case until I pressed you for proof of similar cases, implying that you realized that you had none and had to act fast?

If not, why is it that you held off on citing it until now? Surely two references are better than one, especially when trying to show a frequent occurrence. Why did you refer to Hannah Poling as an only example in that thread but added Banks as a second example under duress in this thread?

One fact that seems to have been forgotten in all of this is that two isolated cases of vaccine injury resulting in brain disease that eventually was diagnosed/noted as similar to autism hardly proves a causal link between vaccination and autism. One case was a mitochondrial disorder causing encephalopathy similar to autism, the other was encephalomyelitis leading to an autism spectrum disorder. If these cases were anything resembling a normal occurrence, then any one of the numerous studies that set out to establish the causal link between vaccination and autism wouldn't have completely failed to show such a link. Maybe you'd care to explain? (I sure hope the explanation involves a large-scale conspiracy. Those are always fun.)

We can dance around the issue of what diagnosis was made and what it means for a long while if you like. I'd prefer if you simply backed up your claim that vaccination causes autism on a large scale (ie in more than a couple disparate cases). I'm completely willing to accept that vaccination (specifically the MMR vaccine, as it's a favorite of yours) is a direct cause of autism. You just need to prove it.