Anti-Vaccine Proponents Claim Court Paid for Autism Cases
A new law journal article challenges the assertion by the federal government that although it has compensated families for vaccine-induced injuries, it has “never concluded in any case that autism was caused by vaccination.”
According to the article, published online today in Pace Environment Law Review (PELR), roughly 3% of vaccine injuries compensated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) involve acknowledged brain damage that included autism. This rate of association is roughly triple that of the prevalence of autism among children, the authors write. Although this assessment does not purport to be science, they state, it does justify a congressional investigation along with medical studies into an association between autism and vaccine-injury awards that federal officials may have known but failed to disclose.
“Congress needs to find out whether there was a cover-up,” lead author and attorney Mary Holland told Medscape Medical News. “It doesn’t look good.” Holland is managing director of the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy, a research scholar at New York University School of Law, and coeditor of the 2011 book Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children.
Harold
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