Can ADEM Cause PDD/ASD?
Special Master Abell had no trouble linking MMR to ADEM in Bailey Banks’ case. But linking his ADEM to PDD/ASD was more difficult. There is no medical literature to support an ADEM-PDD link. The government’s expert witness, Dr. John MacDonald, testified that “all the medical literature is negative in that regard.” Instead, he proposed an alternative hypothesis for Bailey’s PDD (he suggested it was caused by glucose transporter 1 deficiency). But Special Master Abell berated the government’s witness in much the same way that Hastings et al. had criticized witnesses for the families in their three cases. “This (glucose) hypothesis, which (MacDonald) declined to incorporate as a plausible, probable theory of explanation, was used by Respondent to blunt Petitioner’s theory of ADEM,” Abell wrote. “This hypothesis was not given to a reasonable degree of medical probability or certainty, and Respondent’s expert admitted that it was merely ‘a possible, not necessarily a probable diagnosis.'” A
