Trial starts to examine vaccine-autism link
DECISION COULD AFFECT HEALTH CARE FOR CHILDREN
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post
Article Launched: 06/11/2007 01:30:34 AM PDT
For more than a decade, families across the country have been warring with the medical establishment about their claims that routine childhood vaccines are responsible for the nation's apparent epidemic of autism. In an extraordinary proceeding that begins today, the battle will move from the ivory tower to the courts.
Nearly 5,000 families will seek to convince a special "vaccine court" in Washington that the vaccines can cause healthy and outgoing children to withdraw into uncommunicative, autistic shells - although a large body of evidence and expert opinion has found no link. The court never has heard a case of such magnitude....