Autism case hearing in Federal Court on Monday

The Federal Court will hear the first test case from among the more than 4800 cases registered against the federal government during the last six years, by parents believing that their child contracted autism through routine childhood vaccines, on Monday.

The first hearing, expected to last for 3 weeks, involves a 12 year old Arizona girl, Michelle Cedillo, and will be held in a little-known "People's Court" - the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington DC where the parents’s lawyers are expected to present their testimony during the first week followed by the government’s lawyers. The hearing is open to public.

Nearly 5000 families, whose cases are pending, are seeking payment under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system for resolving vaccine injury claims that provides compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines. The U. S. Court of Federal Claims decides who will be paid.

The proceeding of the cases shall move under three “special masters”, specially appointed by the court. They are Denise Vowell, a former U.S. Army chief trial judge; Patricia Campbell-Smith, a former environmental lawyer and clerk at the Federal Claims Court; and George Hastings a former tax claims expert at the Department of Justice.

"Monday will mark the first time ever that evidence of autistic harm from childhood vaccines is examined and cross-examined in a court of law," said activist David Kirby, who authored the book, Evidence of Harm, in which he postulated the cause of the autism epidemic to be the vaccine preservative thimerosal.

"The profound downward change in Michelle's health began seven days following the MMR," the Legal Times newspaper quoted Michelle's mother Theresa Cedillo as saying.

Scientists from the Institute of Medicine have concluded three years ago on the basis of two reports completed in 2001 and 2004 that there is no such link between the disease and the vaccine for treating measles, mumps and rubella vaccine or MMR, plus a mercury-containing preservative called thimerosal, as claimed by parents. Vaccine experts claim that parents tend to link the symptoms of the disease to the vaccines as children are diagnosed at an age when such like diseases are diagnosed.

Dr. Paul Offitt, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who helped invent a rotavirus vaccine, told reporters that the question whether there’s a nexus between the vaccine and the disease, has already been answered with the help of reports. He also said that such issues can only be solved scientifically and not in court cases as courts are meant for settling disputes and not determining scientific truths.

Dr. Peter Hotez of the Sabin Vaccine Institute was also confident to claim that his daughter's autism was not caused by any vaccines.

"Even if we could turn back the clock and do it all over again, I can honestly say that we would still give Rachel her full complement of pediatric vaccines and our confidence in this is based on what we know about autism," Hotez told reporters.

Offitt and Hotez defended the vaccines saying that even when thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines in the United States, except flu vaccines, by 2002 (after being asked to do so by the U.S. Government in July 1999), rates of autism have continued to rise suggesting that the two do not have any link. They stated that according to studies, vaccinated children have grim or no chances of developing autism as compared to children who have not been vaccinated.

Autism is a behavior disorder, occurring predominantly in males but is studied to have increased in children too, which includes impairment in social communication, social interaction and social imagination. Those suffering from autism have an extremely limited range of activities and interests, and often display repetitive, stereotyped behaviors and mannerisms.

Its symptoms are noted to occur during the first three years of childhood and mainly are absence or impairment of imaginative and social play, impaired ability to make friends with peers and initiate or sustain a conversation with others, stereotyped, repetitive, or unusual use of language, restricted patterns of interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus etc.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about one in every 150 children has autism or a related disorder such as Asperger's syndrome. It has also estimated about 560,000 people up to age 21 in the United States having autism.