04-20-2005, 01:07 PM
Denmark's Top Court Says No Link Between Childhood Vaccination and Autism
Denmark's highest court on Tuesday ruled that a 15-year-old girl did not develop an autistic disorder because of childhood vaccination.
It was the first time in Denmark that a judicial instance ruled in a case involving the triple measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The Supreme Court upheld a 2003 ruling by a lower court that had rejected claims that Anne Matthiesen had been harmed by the immunizations she received when she was 2 years old.
Her parents went to the courts after Denmark's Medico-Legal Council said the girl was healthy before she got the MMR vaccine.
Following a controversial British study in 1998 that raised the possibility of a connection between the vaccine and developmental problems, immunization rates in Europe began to fall, even though the study was later widely discredited.
Most of the scientists involved in the original 1998 study later renounced their findings after discovering that the main author had been paid separately by lawyers for parents who claimed their children were harmed by the immunizations.
Several authoritative groups, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Institute of Medicine and Britain's Medical Research Council, have reviewed evidence investigating a possible link between the vaccine and autism and all came to the conclusion that the two are not connected.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=683081
Denmark's highest court on Tuesday ruled that a 15-year-old girl did not develop an autistic disorder because of childhood vaccination.
It was the first time in Denmark that a judicial instance ruled in a case involving the triple measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The Supreme Court upheld a 2003 ruling by a lower court that had rejected claims that Anne Matthiesen had been harmed by the immunizations she received when she was 2 years old.
Her parents went to the courts after Denmark's Medico-Legal Council said the girl was healthy before she got the MMR vaccine.
Following a controversial British study in 1998 that raised the possibility of a connection between the vaccine and developmental problems, immunization rates in Europe began to fall, even though the study was later widely discredited.
Most of the scientists involved in the original 1998 study later renounced their findings after discovering that the main author had been paid separately by lawyers for parents who claimed their children were harmed by the immunizations.
Several authoritative groups, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Institute of Medicine and Britain's Medical Research Council, have reviewed evidence investigating a possible link between the vaccine and autism and all came to the conclusion that the two are not connected.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=683081