Vaccine Court - Previous Rulings

Previous Rulings

A 2005 United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling held that an award should be granted if a petitioner either establishes a "Table Injury" or proves "causation in fact" by proving the following three prongs:

1. a medical theory causally connecting the vaccination and the injury;
2. a logical sequence of cause and effect showing that the vaccination was the reason for the injury; and
3. a showing of a proximate temporal relationship between vaccination and injury.

This ruling held that tetanus vaccine caused a particular case of optic neuritis even though no scientific evidence supported the petitioner's claim. Other rulings have allowed petitioners to gain awards for claims that the MMR vaccine causes fibromyalgia, that the Hib vaccine causes transverse myelitis, and that the hepatitis B vaccine causes Guillain–Barré syndrome, chronic demyelinating polyneuropathy, and multiple sclerosis. In the most extreme of these cases, a 2006 petitioner successfully claimed that a hepatitis B vaccine caused her multiple sclerosis despite several studies showing that the vaccine neither causes nor worsens the disease, and despite a conclusion by the Institute of Medicine that evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship.

In 2008 the federal government agreed to award damages to the family of Hannah Poling, a girl who developed autistic-like symptoms after receiving a series of vaccines in a single day. The vaccines given were DTaP, Hib, MMR, varicella, and inactivated polio. Poling was diagnosed months later with encephalopathy (brain disease) caused by a mitochondrial enzyme deficit, a mitochondrial disorder; it is not unusual for children with such deficits to develop neurologic signs between their first and second years. There is little scientific research in the area: no scientific studies show whether childhood vaccines can cause or contribute to mitochondrial disease, and there is no scientific evidence that vaccinations damage the brains of children with mitochondrial disorders. Although many parents view this ruling as confirming that vaccines cause regressive autism, most children with autism do not seem to have mitochondrial disorders, and the case was conceded without proof of causation.

With the commencement of hearings in the case of Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services (Case #98-916V), the battle over vaccine injuries moved into the courts. A panel of three special masters began hearing the first cases of the historic Omnibus Autism Proceedings in June 2007. The lead petitioners, the parents of Michelle Cedillo, claimed that Michelle's autism was caused by a vaccine. Theresa and Michael Cedillo contended that thiomersal seriously weakened Michelle's immune system and prevented her body from clearing the measles virus after her vaccination at the age of fifteen months. At the outset Special Master George Hastings, Jr. said "Clearly the story of Michelle's life is a tragic one," while pledging to listen carefully to the evidence. On February 12, 2009, the court ruled in three test cases that the combination of the MMR vaccine and thiomersal-containing vaccines were not to blame for autism. Hastings concluded in his decision, "Unfortunately, the Cedillos have been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." The ruling has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

On March 13, 2010, the court ruled in three test cases that thiomersal-containing vaccines do not cause autism. The test cases were among the strongest for this theory. Special Master Hastings concluded, "The overall weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners' causation theories."