Italian court rules MMR vaccine did trigger autism

NYR Natural News

An Italian court has ruled there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In what may be a ground-breaking decision, the Italian Court of Rimini has ruled that causation between an MMR vaccine and the resulting autism in a young child “has been established.”

The unnamed child received the vaccine in March of 2004 and on returning home immediately developed adverse symptoms. During the next year the child regressed, receiving the autism diagnosis one year later and is now 100% disabled by the disease.

The Italian court ruled that the child “has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)” and ordered the Ministry of Health to compensate the child with a 15 year annuity and to reimburse the parents of their court cost.

The judgement can be found in full here and the original news report in Italian appears here. A rough Google translation appears here.

The case is expected to go to appeal as authorities are concerned it may set a legal precedent.

Not the first judgement against the vaccine

This, however, is the second recent judgement to come to this conclusion. Earlier this year a US court also ruled that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine can cause autism.

In a ruling that kept very quiet in the press, the US Court of Federal Claims has conceded that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, which was in vaccines until 2002, caused autism in the case of one child.

The ruling was just one of 4,900 cases currently being considered for compensation payments. Health officials are concerned that it could open the floodgates for even more claims.

The ruling, made by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, was made last November, and was one of three test cases into the MMR-autism link that was being considered by a three-member panel, which Keisler chaired.

The case involved a child who received nine vaccinations in July 2000, when she was 18 months old. Two of these contained thimerosal. Within days, the girl, who had previously been healthy, began to exhibit loss of language skills, no eye contact, loss of response to verbal direction, insomnia, incessant screaming, and arching.

A diagnosis of autism was confirmed seven months later.

In its defence, the US government claimed the girl had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was aggravated by the vaccine. However in his conclusion, Keisler said that “compensation is appropriate”.

Too much heat, not enough light

Both findings would appear to support the controversial findings of Dr Andrew Wakefield who, in 1998 published an article in the Lancet suggesting a link between the vaccine and autism. Official reaction to the paper was of such force and such outrage that the Lancet withdrew the paper on the grounds that it was scientifically unsound.

Wakefield has been in a battle for his professional reputation ever since and the question of the proposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been largely sidelined (though not solved) by bitter and very public professional rows that have done little to bring clarity to concerned parents.

Read more here.

Doctors demand schoolgirls be vaccinated against genital warts

A second vaccine to be added to the HPV vaccine program for British teenagers. Another sick triumph for rapacious Big Pharma. -Ed.

The Observer, Feb. 13, 2011

Sexual health specialists want all 12- and 13-year-old girls to be immunised against genital warts at the same time as they get a jab protecting them against cervical cancer.

The call has come from the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV, which represents clinicians who staff genito-urinary clinics dealing with people who develop sexually transmitted infections such as herpes and chlamydia. They say the pain and misery involved in getting genital warts is so great that the routine vaccination of girls is needed to tackle the condition, which affects about 200,000, mainly young, people every year.

Since 2008, 12- and 13-year-olds have been offered a series of three jabs to vaccinate them against cervical cancer. About 80% receive the injections, which offer 95% to 100% protection against the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes the disease. HPV also causes genital warts, as well as conditions such as skin warts, verrucas and several other rarer cancers.

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Homeopathy Attacked by Big Pharma Supporters

The Daily Bell, Feb. 7, 2011

Big Pharma has apparently found another target: homeopathy. After relentlessly destroying Britain's Dr. Andrew Wakefield for his temerity to suggest that there might be a link between vaccines and autism or other childhood injuries, homeopathy has now come under attack. It is part of larger power-elite dominant social theme having to do with the scientific correctness of Western, surgical medicine and the fuzziness and non-utility of other approaches.

Of course from our point of view (as an alternative "reality-based"news site) this is in itself questionable. Many pharmaceutical companies derive many of their drugs from natural plants, often found in the Amazon. Aspirin is a good example of this. But unlike aspirin, most pharmaceutical solutions seem to have critical and even deadly side effects. This may be the result of simulating nature with chemistry or is simply inherent in the process of concentrating the antidote. What does seem apparent is that many of so-called safe drugs that are said to be both effective and non-detrimental to one's health, turn out to be most toxic over a long time period.
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Singh, like Randi and other mainstream debunkers of "alternative" science and health, spend a good deal of time attacking what seems to be effective for some (though not all). They are, of course, entitled to their views; but when one looks judiciously at the way the world works, one is struck by the constant "scientific" attacks on people's free-market choices and little in the way of analysis of the West's increasing governmental mandates when it comes to regulating people's preferences by law (and force).

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BREAKING NEWS: Statement From Dr. Andrew Wakefield: No Fraud. No Hoax. No Profit Motive.

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/— Dr. Andrew Wakefield issued the following statement on the recent British Medical Journal articles:

“The British Medical Journal and reporter Brian Deer recently alleged that my 1998 research paper was ‘a hoax’ and ‘an elaborate fraud’ and that my motivation was profit.

“I want to make one thing crystal clear for the record – my research and the serious medical problems found in those children were not a hoax and there was no fraud whatsoever. Nor did I seek to profit from our findings.

“I stand by the Lancet paper’s methodology and the results which call for more research into whether environmental triggers cause gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in children. In fact, despite media reports to the contrary, the results of my research have been duplicated in five other countries (to see citations to studies, visit http://tinyurl.com/4hrdt5y.)

“It is not unexpected to see poor reporting and misinformation coming from Brian Deer, the lead reporter of the recent BMJ coverage. But to see coverage in other media that cites Deer’s shoddy journalism in the BMJ as a final justification to claim there is no link between vaccines and autism is ludicrous. The MMR is only one vaccine of the eleven vaccinations on the pediatric schedule that has been studied for causing developmental problems such as autism. That is fact, not opinion. Any medical professional, government official or journalist who states that the case is closed on whether vaccines cause autism is jumping to conclusions without the research to back it up.

“I continue to fully support more independent research to determine if environmental triggers, including vaccines, are causing autism and other developmental problems. The current rate of autism is 1 in 110 children in the United States and 1 in 64 children in the U.K. My goal has always been and will remain the health and safety of children. Since the Lancet paper, I have lost my job, my career and my country. To claim that my motivation was profit is patently untrue. I will not be deterred – this issue is far too important.”

Related stories:
Amy Wallace & Yellow Journalism, Sept. 10, 2010..."I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach as I read the unsubstantiated, unchallenged slur made by Offit against me. And in those two words “SHE LIES,” I knew that the propaganda tactic of character assassination was being used to attack the credibility of my nearly 30 years of work as a vaccine safety consumer advocate."
Bill Gates: Vaccine-autism link 'an absolute lie', CNNHealth, Feb. 4, 2011..More propaganda from vaccine shill Bill Gates. -Ed.

The Beetlejuice World of Brian Deer

A question more media outlets reporting on autism and vaccines should be asking: Who is this Brian Deer character, anyway?

Age of Autism, Jan. 28, 2011

When asked about why autism is rising or what is causing autism. Deer responds, “I don’t know, I am not a doctor.” Fair enough. Yet why did the British medical authorities hire this squirrelly “free-lance” journalist to “investigate” and evaluate the complex medical records of sick children with autism? Insane. Why doesn’t our government hire Jane Brody, who writes a health column for the NYT, to investigate brain surgery frauds and report back to the NIH? Why hasn’t the Surgeon General hired Emily Smith (a good detective!) of “Page Six” to investigate hoax heart valve surgeries? Anyone is free to “investigate” and report anything they want but our government doesn’t commission wacky reporters off the streets to evaluate children’s confidential and complex medical histories. Can you even imagine how many personal injury lawyers would retire for life if they worked on this case here in the U.S.?

The saddest part in all this is seeing how Deer’s warped medical “evaluations” of these childrens’ records were taken seriously by any authority at all...

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Scientists fear MMR link to autism

Daily Mail, Jan.24, 2011

New American research shows that there could be a link between the controversial MMR triple vaccine and autism and bowel disease in children.

The study appears to confirm the findings of British doctor Andrew Wakefield, who caused a storm in 1998 by suggesting a possible link.

Now a team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina are examining 275 children with regressive autism and bowel disease - and of the 82 tested so far, 70 prove positive for the measles virus.

Full story