Special court rules that vaccines are not linked to autism

This story is all over the news - it's on the front page of today's Washington Post, in fact, which I was delighted to see - so I won't say much, but I just wanted to make note of it. It's particularly telling in light of last weekend's news - discussed in my previous blog entry - that Andrew Wakefield falsified some of the data in his 1998 paper claiming that MMR vaccines were linked to autism.

The special "vaccine court" ruled yesterday, in three separate cases, each of which was testing a different strategy for claiming that vaccines cause autism, that there was no evidence that vaccines caused autism in any of the cases. The judges rule against the notion that MMR vaccine causes autism, and against the notion that thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines causes autism, and against the notion that some combination of vaccines and thimerosal causes autism.

I just wanted to quote one of the judges, George Hastings. Not only did he rule that the vaccine-autism hypothesis was "very wrong," but he also wrote:
"Unfortunately, the Cedillos have been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment."
I'd like to think that any doctor who is telling parents that vaccines might cause autism would read this and then look again at the scientific evidence. One more quote from Judge Hastings:
"...the evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners’ contentions. The expert witnesses presented by the respondent were far better qualified, far more experienced, and far more persuasive than the petitioners’ experts, concerning most of the key points. The numerous medical studies concerning these issues, performed by medical scientists worldwide, have come down strongly against the petitioners’ contentions. Considering all of the evidence, I found that the petitioners have failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to causing immune dysfunction, or that the MMR vaccine can contribute to causing either autism or gastrointestinal dysfunction."
I hope that these cases, and the publicity today, will reassure many parents that they needn't worry when giving vaccines to their children. The far greater worry is that previously-controlled diseases such as measles will make a comeback, as is already happening.

For more details on the recent ruling and other analysis, I recommend the Holford Watch blog here, and Steven Novella's Neurologica blog entry, here. A good explanation of the vaccine court is here.

1 comment:

  1. It would seem that vaccines are part of the problem, due to all the circumstantial evidence and obvious smoke to the fire. There are countless frighteningly similar stories of children regressing into autism right after taking vaccines.

    This happened to my own son, to both batches of vaccines, after going over the video evidence (I took a lot of family videos) and checking against the dates of the vaccinations, to my horror the regressions happened immediately after both. After the 2nd batch he went silent and stopped talking completely for 4 months.

    Autism seems to be either caused or partially caused by environmental factors, and the preservatives and heavy metals contained in vaccines are what is suspect. No one is saying vacines should be abolished (or should not be saying so). They should be investigated and made safer. Perhaps the large Pharma companies will have to spend a little more and rely less on preservatives.

    The problem is no one is really looking into this. Instead they continue to focus on calling this an 'anti vaccine movement' which it is not, and declare vacines completely safe, when the facts are that no one knows the causes of autism yet, and fully understands the role of these environmental factors.

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