Autism cases won

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PUBLIC HEALTH

MMR/Autism Cases Win In US Vaccine Court

Vaccine Court: Autism Debate Continues

By F. Kennedy, Jr. on huffingtonpost.com. is.gd/kQkp

On February 12, the federal " Vaccine Court " in Washington

issued a sweeping ruling in three highly touted " test cases " against

families who claimed that their childrens' autism had been caused by

vaccines. The Special Masters in those three cases found that

Petitioners failed to establish causation between MMR vaccines, the

mercury-laced vaccine preservative thimerosal, and autism (the court

decision, which is under appeal, deferred any finding on a thimerosal-

only theory of causation). The rulings could have a significant

precedential impact on some 5,000 families who opted to bring their

cases in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings (OAP) hoping that the vaccine

court would officially hold that the MMR vaccine or thimerosal had

caused autism in their children.

The New York Times joined the government Health Agency (HRSA)

and its big pharma allies hailing the decisions as proof that the

scientific doubts about vaccine safety had finally been " demolished. "

The US Department of Health and Human services said the rulings

should " help reassure parents that vaccines do not cause autism. " The

Times, which has made itself a blind mouthpiece for HRSA and a

leading defender of vaccine safety, joined crowing government and

vaccine industry flacks applauding the decisions like giddy

cheerleaders, rooting for the same court that many of these same

voices viscously derided just one year ago, after Hannah Poling won

compensation for her vaccine induced autism.

But last week, the parents of yet another child with autism

spectrum disorder (ASD) were awarded a lump sum of more than $810,000

(plus an estimated $30-40,000 per year for autism services and care)

in compensation by the Court, which ruled that the measels-mumps-

rubella (MMR) vaccine had caused acute brain damage that led to his

autism spectrum disorder.

The family of 10-year-old Banks won their case quietly

and without fanfare in June of 2007, but the ruling has only now come

to public attention. In the remarkably clear and eloquent decision,

Special Master Abell ruled that the Banks had successfully

demonstrated that " the MMR vaccine at issue actually caused the

conditions from which suffered and continues to suffer. "

's diagnosis is Pervasive Developmental Disorder -- Not

Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) which has been recognized as an autism

spectrum disorder by CDC, HRSA and the other federal health agencies

since at least the 1990s.

In his conclusion, Special Master Abell ruled that Petitioners

had proven that the MMR had directly caused a brain inflammation

illness called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) which, in

turn, had caused the autism spectrum disorder PDD-NOS in the child:

The Court found that 's ADEM was both caused-in-fact and

proximately caused by his vaccination. It is well-understood that the

vaccination at issue can cause ADEM, and the Court found, based upon

a full reading and hearing of the pertinent facts in this case, that

it did actually cause the ADEM. Furthermore, 's ADEM was severe

enough to cause lasting, residual damage, and retarded his

developmental progress, which fits under the generalized heading of

Pervasive Developmental Delay, or PDD [an autism spectrum disorder].

The Court found that would not have suffered this delay but

for the administration of the MMR vaccine, and that this chain of

causation was... a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading

inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.

The decision is not an isolated ruling. We now know of

at least two other successful ADEM cases argued in Vaccine Court.

More significantly, an explosive investigation by CBS News has found

that since 1988, the vaccine court has awarded money judgments, often

in the millions of dollars, to thirteen hundred and twenty two

families whose children suffered brain damage from vaccines. In many

of these cases, the government paid out awards following a judicial

finding that vaccine injury lead to the child's autism spectrum

disorder. In each of these cases, the plaintiffs' attorneys made the

same tactical decision made by Bank's lawyer, electing to opt

out of the highly charged Omnibus Autism Proceedings and argue their

autism cases in the regular vaccine court. In many other successful

cases, attorneys elected to steer clear of the hot button autism

issue altogether and seek recovery instead for the underlying brain

damage that caused their client's autism.

Medical records associated with these proceedings clearly tell

the tale. In perhaps hundreds of these cases, the children have all

the classic symptoms of regressive autism; following vaccination a

perfectly healthy child experiences high fever, seizures, and other

illnesses, then gradually, over about three months, loses language,

the ability to make eye contact, becomes " over-focused " and engages

in stereotypical head banging and screaming and then suffers

developmental delays characteristic of autism. Many of these children

had received the autism diagnosis. Yet the radioactive word " autism "

appears nowhere in the decision.

Instead the vaccine court Special Masters rest their judgments

on their finding that the vaccines caused some generalized brain

injury, mainly Encephalopathy/encephalitis (brain inflammation)

or " seizure disorders " -- conditions known to cause autism-like

symptoms. A large number of the children who have won these judgments

have been separately diagnosed with autism. HRSA acknowledged this

fact in a recent letter, but told us it does not keep data on how

many of these children were autistic.

The Vaccine Court, in other words, seems quite willing to award

millions of dollars in taxpayer funded compensation to vaccine-

injured autistic children, so long as they don't have to call the

injury by the loaded term " autism. " That hazard is particularly acute

for vaccine victims who appear before the Omnibus Autism Proceedings

(OAP). Since that body's decisions are closely watched, published and

accorded the weight of precedent, many lawyers consider the burden of

proof for petitioners to be impossibly high before the OAP Panel. It

was for this reason that 's attorney, Mark McLaren, elected to

opt out of the OAP and try his case separately, even though

has been receiving autism-related services in his home state