Panic Watch! Court Crushes Vaccine-Autism Link

Posted February 13, 2009 by Shakti Sombrero

...three special courts all ruled that in these cases there is no scientific claim that vaccines cause autism.

In fact, in one ruling, a special master (the judge, essentially) said the parents of one troubled child had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." The claims of links between autism and vaccines were also cited as "speculative and unpersuasive."

Damn straight.

My heart goes out to these parents, looking for some sort of reason why their children are autistic. I can hardly imagine what that must be like. But it is absolutely 100% critical that in our emotional and utterly human outreach for an explanation that we do not grasp at the wrong ones.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. The science is extremely persuasive, and I would even say conclusive.

This is good news, but as Phil points out this will in NO WAY dissuade vaccine quacks from their fearmongering mission. They've had plenty of reasons to stop up to this point (the evidence against the so-called link is not new) but whatever neurosis these people have prevents them from doing so.

Safeminds.org, a hive of vaccine paranoia, has already released a statement (as usual):

One more reason to distrust the government’s vaccine program.

For previous coverage of this issue see: