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By staff and wire reports March 11, 2008

Last updated: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 10:56 AM EDT

Deborah Delp, a Carlisle resident whose 10-year-old son has autism, says the government’s concession last week that vaccines may have contributed to a Georgia girl’s autism is a breakthrough for families suffering with the affliction.

The government has agreed to pay the Georgia family for injury caused by vaccines. The 9-year-old girl, Hannah Poling, had an underlying mitrochondrial condition that may have been worsened, triggering her autism-like symptoms.

Her parents believe it was the five simultaneous vaccines she got as a toddler in one day eight years ago that did it. Government scientists say something like a fever or infection could have set off the problem — but they didn’t rule out the vaccines either.

Last week, government officials said they have agreed to pay the Polings from a federal fund that compensates people injured by vaccines. The amount is not yet determined.

Delp shares the family’s suspicions of vaccinations.

“Still doesn’t change the fact that the vaccines aren’t safe, in my opinion,” Delp said. She stressed that other factors, including toxins in the environment, might also play a role in the increase of autism diagnoses, but she said she still thinks vaccines are one of the big contributors.

“The one common denominator among all these children who have claims in the vaccine court is that vaccine was administered,” Delp said. “I think they ought to put the blame where it belongs.”

While parents and advocates for autistic children say the case is a landmark legal precedent that signals the government is finally conceding potential autism-related risks from childhood vaccines, government officials are saying it’s nothing of the kind.

“This does not represent anything other than a very special situation,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Smokescreen or not, Delp said she views the decision as a victory.

“Thank God, finally somebody is listening,” Delp said. “I think this decision is going to be a watershed, and it’s going to lead to some justice for the family.”

And, she said, she hopes someday the decision will result in another one that will provide the money to treat her son.

“Right now we have him on a whole host of supplements,” she said, explaining that the insurance provided by her husband’s employer, like many private insurers, covers little in the way of autism treatment.

“That’s all we’re doing because that’s all we can afford to do,” Delp said. “It’s going to be able to afford us the ability to be able to heal our child.”

But Becky Rovito, another Carlisle resident who has a 9-year-old son with autism, said her feelings about the decision were decidedly mixed.

“I truly believe that some of these children are affected by these vaccines,” Rovito said, then added that she was concerned about the rash of lawsuits that might follow. “I think everybody that has autistic children is going to be looking into getting a class-action suit.”

However, Rovito said, she will not be among those seeking out lawyers, because she knows her son’s autism did not come from a vaccine: He was born with it.

“I just think it’s something else that is going to tie up the court system and take resources and funding that could be used for research,” Rovito said. On the other hand, she said, companies might reconsider what they put in vaccines and prevent some children of the future from getting autism.

But, she said, money will not solve the problem of autism, and she doesn’t want a preoccupation with lawsuits to take time or energy away from what needs to be done for people who have autism now.

“I think we need to take some of this money and teach people how to be kinder, gentler people to the autistic world,” Rovito said.

The Polings, from Athens, Ga., held a news conference Thursday to talk about their daughter, who accompanied them. At the briefing, Hannah seemed socially engaged with her caregiver, but later in an appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” she was quiet and seemed to be in her own world.

As a toddler, they said she was a bright, normal-behaving child until she got five shots when she was about 18 months old. She was a little behind on her vaccinations, so the decision was made to give her five shots.

Almost immediately after, she was screaming, feverish and irritable. Then, her behavior gradually changed so she would stare at fans and lights and run in circles.

“It wasn’t like a switch being turned off. It was more like a dimmer switch being turned down,” said Hannah’s father, Jon, a 37-year-old neurologist.

It was heartbreaking, said her 47-year-old mother, Terry, who is trained as both a lawyer and a nurse.

“Suddenly my daughter was no longer there,” she said.

The family filed a claim with the federal vaccine compensation program in 2002, which the government ultimately decided to concede before any evidentiary hearing.

The case may not be a first, said Gary Golkiewicz, chief special master for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. He oversees the special “vaccine court” which rules on requests for payments from the vaccine injury fund.

“Years ago, actually, I had a case, before we understood or knew the implications of autism, that the vaccine injured the child’s brain caused an encephalopathy,” he said. And the symptoms that come with that “fall within the broad rubric of autism.”

And there are other somewhat similar cases, Golkiewicz says, that were decided before autism and its symptoms were more clearly defined.

Mitochondria

Hannah has a disorder involving her mitochondria, the energy factories of cells. The disorder — which can be present at birth or acquired later in life — impairs cells’ ability to use nutrients. It often causes problems in brain functioning and can lead to delays in walking and talking.

The Polings were exploring two theories to explain what happened to Hannah. One is that she was born with the mitochondria disorder and the vaccines caused a stress to her body that worsened the condition. The other is that the vaccine ingredient thimerosal caused the mitochondrial dysfunction, Jon Poling said.

CDC officials decline to talk about the Poling case, but they say it should not be used to draw conclusions about risks for other children.

Scientists believe that in cases in which a mitochondrial disorder causes a child’s brain function to deteriorate, the disorder exists and then is worsened by a fever, infection or other stress on the body.

Scientists don’t know if a vaccination — independent of fever or infection — can cause such a stress, said Dr. Edwin Trevathan, a pediatric neurologist who heads the CDC’s birth defects center.

Others echoed his assessment.

“There are no scientific studies documenting that childhood vaccinations cause or worsen mitochondrial diseases, but there is very little scientific research in this area,” said Chuck Mohan, executive director the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based group that raises money for research.

Mohan said there are more than 100 types of mitochondrial disease, and genetic tests can find only a couple dozen.

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Sentinel Reporter Heather Stauffer contributed to this report