Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Review: What It Really Means

Article first published as Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Review: What It Really Means on Technorati..

There has been a recent preliminary review that has gotten a lot of press lately, as a claim to proof that vaccines do cause Autism. The claim is shocking, as just about every clinical, double-blind study (not falsified with fraudulent data) has conclusively shown that there is no link between Autism and vaccines. Yet still this persists, and now a "Study" can be pulled from the court cases of the Vaccine Courts to prove it. At least that is the claim of many websites, so many in fact that it's becoming a popular link to share.

So, what can one do but review the data? 

The article is very telling. It mentions the past compensation offered by the Vaccine Courts to children with symptoms that can accompany Autism, and then the immediate denial of Autism directly as a cause. They then continue to question the fairness of the vaccine courts in an attempt to identify inconsistencies in the rulings. Nowhere does it claim that vaccines cause Autism, or have any relation to the condition. In fact, on page 482, fourth paragraph down, they say, "This assessment of compensated cases showing an association between vaccines and autism is not, and does not purport to be, science." All the authors point out is that the "finding raises fundamental questions about the integrity, transparency, and fairness of this forum."

So what is the article all about? 83 cases of damage related to Autism had been ruled in favor of the plaintiff, and now the Vaccine Courts no longer rule in that favor. They are just drawing attention to this fact in order to call for a review of the courts themselves.

So what does it mean to the rest of us? Vaccines are still not the cause of Autism, and we need to let that argument go. Worry about what to do for your children instead of who you can sue. The review is there to call into question the legal grounds of each dismissed case, not the scientific causes of Autism.