Having an autistic child is not the end of the world--far from it. It is my hope that through this blog, at least a handful of people will get to understand that. My child is amazing, she brings us tremendous joy. We have good days & bad days, but we CHOOSE to focus on the good. Our belief is that by loving our daughter, giving her the most comfortable environment we can, and by most of all accepting her differences, she will continue to blossom--in her OWN way.

4/28/08

Questions for David Kirby

PhotobucketI read this quote on Left Brain Right Brain, it is from David Kirby's blog on the Huffington Post. I have a few questions for Mr. Kirby. Here is the quote:

"But I have personally identified at least a dozen (and there are reports of many more) children with cases in the court who meet the exact same medical criteria as Hannah, and whose cases will almost surely be compensated as well—each time with the attendant media fanfare."

I'm curious, how did he go about "personally identifying" these "dozen" children? Can Mr. Kirby offer any documentation of these children? Are parents whose court cases are pending in vaccine court consulting with him? Exactly what criteria is Mr. Kirby using, and what records does he have access to in order to "identify" these children?

Lastly, and most interesting to me, are the children that "meet the exact same medical criteria as Hannah." I am assuming these children have had muscle biopsies and diagnoses of mitochondrial disease, exactly like Hannah. Otherwise, they could not be categorized as having the "exact same medical criteria" as Hannah. So, I would be curious to know--have these children undergone mitochondrial and genetic testing? What were those results? How did Mr. Kirby gain access to those medical records?

5 comments:

Club 166 said...

Looks like old DK is tipping his hand a bit.

The possibilities for obtaining such information that come to mind are that

a) someone in the federal court system leaked the information (extremely unliikely)

b) he is personally acquainted with all of these families (highly unlikely, and a conflict of interest that should have been divulged), or

c) he is working for lawyers in the omnibus cases (huge conflict of interest that would explain how he supports himself).

And yes, he has a lot of explaining to do to show how those cases are exactly like the Poling case.

Joe

Anonymous said...

To follow-up on Joe's insightful comments and questions, I have wondered where Kirby gets his income from. He seems to be absent from any of his old, pre-EoH haunts, and he has not had anything published for quite a while.

Just who is paying David Kirby?

S.L. said...

Joe:
You outline exactly what I was thinking. Really makes ya wonder... I won't hold my breath for Kirby to actually step forward and answer any questions, but it would be helpful to this "controversy" if he could be honest with the public. I do expect a lot more spin from him, along with more fuzzy math and shaky claims.

the probe:
Just who is paying David Kirby?

Now that is the million dollar (literally) question!!!!

Anonymous said...

I think Kirby means that he's heard of many cases where the child allegedly had a fever following a vaccine and then had a regression. Those are stories everyone of us have heard before, however we don't know how accurate they are. Babies and toddlers get fevers very often, and many times those parents are describing a fever that happened a week or a few weeks after the vaccine, so it's ridiculous to blame the shots in those cases. However I do believe some high fevers can trigger regression, but in that case it was still something in the child's genes - most kids recover from fevers just fine.

S.L. said...

Leila,

I think the issue, as always, with Kirby is his creative use of language and figures. What he implies, or at least how he states it, is that these children are exactly like Hannah. How is he gaining access to these records?

I agree with what you say about the fevers. Hopefully more evidence and studies can be done on the fevers alone. Would that convince anyone though that it wasn't the shots? Doubtful.

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