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Court Rules Against Vaccine-Autism Claims Again
barnyjr writes "According to a story from Reuters, 'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness. The special US Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement. ... While the state court determined the autism was vaccine-related, [Special Master George] Hastings said overwhelming medical evidence showed otherwise. The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf "was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'"
This won't stop the paranoid from preventing their children from being immunized because some of these same people have interesting theories about how the vaccines are deliberately nefarious in other ways (going as far on out there as mind control, etc). These people and their little theory have done more to damage public health in a short amount of time than a lot of other things...
The parents shouldn't be given enough money to become rich but, in the case that the vaccines did cause the child to be autistic, they should be given money to assist with treating their child's autism.
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If the government is going to force people to get vaccinated (and they do; you can't go to school without it), there is at least some burden on them to pay for the negative effects, no matter how well intentioned.
In the US there is a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to handle precisely this sort of thing. Some people genuinely are harmed by those well-intended vaccines. They do help out everybody (herd immunity), and everybody pays into the compensation fund, to the tune of 75 cents per shot.
Clearly, that's a tempting pile of money, and desperate parents of autistic children are willing to ignore the data that says quite clearly that there's no connection in order to get to it.
Dunno if you know this or not, but there have been radical developments in greed and corruption over the last couple of decades,
People are just as corrupt as they ever have been. If you think people are more corrupt now than in years past you are either very naive or very stupid. Go pick up a history book. The methods (sort of) change but people don't.
It can all be solved and summarized in two simple words; loser pays. That would likely flush out 80% of the crap clogging the system today.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Because it sounds vaguely logical? Yes loser pays would solve some problems but it would create others. It would reduce some of the more frivolous lawsuits but it would also make some needed lawsuits too risky to attempt. Loser pays strongly tilts the playing field towards those with the most money - even more so than it already is. I don't necessarily have a problem with the general concept of loser pays but please recognize that it isn't something that is going to cure every ill in our legal system.
Frankly if you want to reduce the load on our legal system, stop the ridiculous "war on drugs" - at least the portion related to user and possession charges. The US incarcerates a percentage of the population on minor drug charges that is way out of proportion with other industrialized nations. The war on drugs has FAR more to do with our clogged legal system than frivolous torts.
That is for everybody's safety. Could you imagine another outbreak of polio, or mumps, or any other disease that has virtually been stamped out (at least in countries that do immunizations) by immunizing? Sorry, but it is not a right for your child to go to a certain school. If you want to go to a specific school, you must adhere by their rules. I am sure there has to be some alternative schools out there that don't have immunization requirements. You can always home school your child if you really don't want to give them immunization shots as well. But acting like your rights have been violated because you have a medically unproven opinion about immunization, and pretending that public schooling is required by law (it isn't), is dishonest. What about the rights of the other hundreds or thousands of children at the school - the ones that have parents that understand the dangers of not immunizing, and who do adhere to the rules? What if you applied the same logic to another scenario? What if I decided that taking the driver license test would give me cancer, and I decided I could just start driving without ever taking the test. It would be ridiculous, and I would be putting others at risk through my behavior.
"But this one goes to 11!"