Court masters deny vaccine-autism tie
Families ruled not eligible for compensation
WASHINGTON - Thousands of parents who alleged that childhood vaccines had caused their children to develop autism are wrong and not entitled to federal compensation, a special court ruled yesterday in three decisions with far-reaching implications in a bitterly fought medical controversy.
The long-awaited decision on three test cases is a severe blow to a grass-roots movement that has argued - predominantly through books, magazines, and the Internet - that children's shots have been responsible for the surge in autism diagnoses in the United States in recent decades. The vast majority of the scientific establishment, backed by federal health agencies, has strenuously argued that there is no link between vaccines and autism, and warned that scaring parents away from vaccinating their youngsters places children at risk for a host of serious childhood diseases.
The decision by three independent special masters is especially telling because the special court's rules did not require plaintiffs to prove their cases with scientific certainty - all the parents needed to show was that a preponderance of the evidence, or "50 percent and a hair," supported their claims. The vaccine court effectively said that the thousands of claims represented by the three test cases were on extremely shaky ground.
In his ruling on one case, special master George Hastings said the parents of Michelle Cedillo - who had alleged that a measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused their child to develop autism - had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment."
Hastings said that he was deeply moved by the suffering autism imposed on families such as the Cedillos, but that "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating . . . a link."
The ruling yesterday does not preclude appeals, and the lead lawyer in the Cedillo case has indicated that the family would appeal if it lost.
Two other special masters reached similar conclusions in their cases.
The vaccine court was set up by Congress as part of what is known as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. 