A trio of Federal judges have ruled against three separate plaintiffs who alleged that vaccines caused their child's autism:
These three decisions, each looking into a different theory as to how vaccines might have injured the children, are expected to guide the outcomes of all those claims.
The judges ruled that the families seeking compensation had not shown that their children's autism was brought on by the presence of thimerosal, a mercury vaccine preservative, by the weakened measles virus used in the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine, or by a combination of the two.
For example, in a case pitting the family of Michelle Cedillo, a severely autistic child, against the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, the special master for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that the Cedillos had "failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to causing immune dysfunction, or that the MMR vaccine can contributed to causing either autism or gastrointestinal dysfunction."
In his strongly worded decision, the special master, George L. Hastings Jr. ruled that the government's expert witnesses were "far better qualified, far more experienced and far more persuasive" than the Cedillos. Although the Cedillos only had to show that the preponderance of the evidence was on their side, the judge ruled that it was "not a close case" because the evidence was "overwhelmingly contrary" to their argument.
While expressing "deep sympathy and admiration" for the Cedillo family, he ruled that they were "misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." (Emphasis mine.)
Head ups to the plaintiffs in these cases: the doctors your legal team paid for are lying to you.
I doubt with sincerity that this will be the end of it. The plaintiffs have indicated that they will appeal, and the anti-vax crowd has shown a nearly limitless ability to create new explanation for why vaccines are the problem.
But it is nice to see the Federal courts stating so clearly that their claims are utterly baseless.
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Saw this early this morning, well 10:45am actually, but it was as welcome a headline as I've seen on CNN in quite a while. Yeah science. Down with stupid.
The results from the lab created by Dr. Wakefield to find the measles virus in the guts of his 12 subjects (all chosen because they were plaintiffs), was the strongest scientific piece of evidence the Petitioners had. Dr Burstin demonstrated that the PCR techniques used were defective.
And this very week, it has been revealed that the other Wakefield data was "faulty".
He wrote that each of the 12 kids developped autism symptoms within days or weeks of the MMR "jab". That wasn't true. He wrote that the kids had serious gut troubles. Their own pediatricians disagree.
Unfortunately, the sad fact is that no amount of evidence will convince the anti-vaxers of the vacuousness of their claim, any more then any amount of evidence will convince the evolution deniers or the HIV/AIDS deniers of the vacuousness of their claims. Their minds are made up, the facts are irrelevant.
I think it's really worth downloading the PDFs of the judgements and skim-reading one. They're about 200 pages each, so reading the whole thing is a bit much to expect. Read any one of the three, because they say pretty much the same thing, but personally I think the Cedillo case is the most interesting.
In all cases, it's really striking how the judges (the "Special Masters" - what a wonderful job title!) clearly and unequivocally state how all the claimants' anti-vax arguments fall. The judges comment on the professional weakness of the anti-vax witnesses, noting with distaste that one witness hadn't seen a patient for many years and that it was not appropriate for an expert witness to be someone who earned his living from working in the legal system trolling from case to case rather than in the laboratory or clinic. They were unimpressed by the misrepresentation of affiliations and other, um, er, mistakes of fact in their reports. And they were not impressed by these witnesses' poor presentation in court, especially under cross-examination. On the other hand, they liked the coherent testimony of the respondents' (pro-vax) witnesses, many of them leading experts in their fields. (Of course, the anti-vaxers can explain how this shows Big Legal is in the pay of Big Pharma and out to crush Little Loony and Small Stupid.)
On any reading, the judges rejected all of the claimants' arguments in all of the cases. But the cases were so weak: how on earth could the claimants' panel choose test cases where videos and medical records of the kids growing up clearly and unequivocally show signs of developmental problems prior to the MMR injection? (Omigod, perhaps that shows how dangerous MMR is, it even affects the poor kids before they receive the injection, wow, has nobody noticed this terrible danger?)
The anti-vax response so far seems to be as rational people might expect - fingers in their ears shouting "la la! fix fix! la la!".
If the loonies get around to reading the transcripts, I'm confident they'll tell us that the judges' low opinion of the anti-vax witnesses just shows how biased the judges were. In truth, there's not a crumb of comfort in any of the cases for them, every part of each case failed.
I think the reason so many people glom onto vaccinations being responsible for their children's autism is because there is too little support in society for people with autism. It isn't done for rational reasons, on consideration of the evidence.
Shining the light of reason is only one half of what needs to be done. Better support for the autistic would greatly lessen the popularity of quack theories of autism.
There are analogous denialist situations all around, whose prevalence is probably best explained by economics, rather than philosophy, education, logic or religion.
Curious exactly what the audience is here, because mostly what I see when I read the comments is a preponderance of ignorance. Claims that Wakefield's techniques were "faulty"? They were not Wakefield's techniques, the PCR technique was developed and used by Dr. O'Leary, and has stood up to scrutiny very well, thank-you very much. The findings from Wakefield's initial study in 1998 have been replicated repeatedly in much larger samples, in multiple labs. And other regurgitations of Wakefield's faulty or altered data? The person making these allegations is Dr. Brian Deer, Google his name and learn something in the process. His allegations are completely baseless. Learn about the inadequacies of the vaccine safety testing for MMR, and read Wakefield's writings on this topic. And while you are all at it, spend some time reading not just the case itself, but the actual research on both sides of the arguments of the case. You will see a very large difference between the two, both in study design and basic scientific competence. Then go back over the last 10 years or so, and learn how time and time again the AAP, CDC and other agencies have claimed that this issue can "finally" be put to rest following the latest negative study (or case, in this latest example). This issue is not over, and the science is rapidly catching up.
Amazing how people who could probably not even tell you what "M M R" actually stands for can make such official pronouncements about vaccine safety. Stop paroting what you are spoon-fed and look into this issue further before opening your mouth. Please.