Autism in the Vaccine Court

New York Times (Editorial):

A federal vaccine court in Washington is confronting the contentious and highly emotional issue of whether early childhood vaccinations might have caused autism in thousands of children. Virtually every major scientific study and organization that has weighed in on the issue has seen no link. But many parents of afflicted children remain unconvinced. Their lawyers will try to prove that some 4,800 children were harmed by the mass vaccination campaigns that protect the nation’s youngsters from potentially devastating childhood illnesses. ...

In 2004, the prestigious Institute of Medicine concluded that neither the preservative, known as thimerosal, nor the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine was associated with autism and that various hypotheses about how they could trigger autism lacked supporting evidence. Even after thimerosal was phased out of pediatric vaccines, autism rates did not fall.

The vaccine court will be addressing the narrow issue of whether these families deserve compensation from a national vaccine injury fund. But the proceedings will inevitably affect all parents’ attitudes toward the measles vaccine and toward pediatric vaccinations in general.

We can only hope that, however the verdicts go, parents will remain eager to get their children vaccinated. Even the plaintiffs’ lead attorney acknowledged that mass immunization programs are “a great public benefit” that have prevented tens of thousands of deaths and serious injuries. Those who shun a vaccine are at far greater risk than those who take it.