Vaccines don't cause autism - now can we move on? asks Stanford Medicine special report

By Rosanne Spector

As the spring Stanford Medicine special report on vaccination rolled off the press, the judges working for the U.S. Vaccine Injury Compensation Program ruled on three test cases, deciding against parents’ claims that vaccines had caused their children to develop autism. The Feb. 12 decision virtually eliminates any grounds for granting compensation in the roughly 5,000 remaining claims of vaccine-induced autism. What else is there to say?

Plenty, as you’ll read in the special report, “Hot shots: Vaccines under the gun.” The polarized battle between vaccine opponents and advocates that threatens to destroy hard-won public health gains isn’t ending any time soon. And while vaccine advocates receive hate mail and even death threats, infectious diseases are making a comeback in wealthy nations where many citizens have taken for granted the absence of these scourges.

In Britain, for instance, MMR vaccination is down and measles cases are surging, with 1,348 measles cases in England and Wales last year. In 1998 there were just 56 cases. In the United States, the number of cases is still small, but is rising.

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, a long-time vaccine advocate, leads off the report with a letter to readers underscoring why she believes vaccines save lives. “Widespread measles vaccination has resulted in a drop of measles incidence [in the United States] from 894,134 cases in 1941 to 44 cases in 2002,” she writes. “Yet sadly in 2008, there was a disturbing turnaround: 135 people were infected with measles during one of the largest outbreaks in over a decade. Two-thirds of the infected had purposely not been vaccinated, often due to fears about the vaccine.”

Source: Stanford Medicine