Did Flu Shot Cause Cheerleader's Rare Nerve Damage?
A sad story out of Virginia, where a 25-year-old woman, who was training to be a Washington Redskins cheerleader, has come down with a rare neurological disorder days after receiving a seasonal flu vaccination. Now she can hardly walk forward without severe contortions or speak normally. But amazingly, she can walk backwards, run forward and speak just fine as long as she's running.The question is, did the flu shot cause this? Watch the story from Inside Edition:













Did Flu Shot Cause Cheerleader's Rare Nerve Damage?
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cause & effect vs. correlation
If you listen carefully, you will hear that the newscasters never say that the flu shot CAUSED the dystonia in this woman. They say she acquired it ten days after receiving the flu shot. I am not a specialist in this field so I will not comment on whether or not I think that the flu shot could have caused this problem. I just want to point out that people confuse cause & effect with correlation. If X occurs and Y frequently occurs at the same time, there is a correlation in their occurence. You can only prove that X causes Y to happen with a randomized controlled study with placebo. This is not possible in a situation like this young woman's, of course. I work in flu clinics and I have heard a few people say "last year I got the flu shot and the next day I came down with the flu." They are assuming that the flu shot CAUSED the flu. In reality, even if the flu shot was known to sometimes cause the flu, the incubation period is longer than one day. So in all likelihood, the flu shot in this cause was just correlated with the flu shot, and the person would have come down with the flu on that day whether or not they got the shot.
- dancetoday
October 28, 2009 12:21PM
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Possible Either Way
I have very little information in this article to go on, but her condition is consistent with documented vaccine injury. Consider the government 's compensation program and specific vaccines and injuries:
http://www.hrsa.gov/Vaccinecompensation/table.htm
Encephalitis would be a possible cause of a condition like this that at least once vaccine is known to cause in some cases and takes 5-15 days for onset. So it not an unfounded claim that this vaccine **COULD** have caused the problem. Its also possible something else caused the problem. Vaccines are like any other medication - there are side effects and some of them are dangerous. They must be weighed against the benefit.
Proof could come from tissue studies - sometimes it is possible to discern cause from a single case. Also, I take minor exception to the notion that blind studies prove cause. Cause is established through an actual mechanism and supported by observation whether under controlled experimentation or controllable observable phenomena. However, simply because cause cannot be discerned scientifically does not mean its not true, we work with limited, imperfect information in science .
- tweldy
October 28, 2009 1:28PM
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this is nothing new...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrIM2hwrLoc
- Xer0daze
October 29, 2009 1:12AM
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60 minutes uncovers the Swine Flu Hoax
The following link should shed some light upon this subject:
http://matrixmasters.com/blog/hagerty01.html
- chsnyder
October 29, 2009 8:04AM
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Not vaccine related
It was not vaccine related, it was psychogenic...
http://www.examiner.com/x-13791-Baltimore-Disease-Prevention-Examiner ~y2009m11d4-Records-show-case-of-dystonia-is-psychogenic-and-not-related-to-flu-vaccine
- MrBook
November 6, 2009 6:20AM
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