Georgia family challenges federal vaccine law

Stefan Ferrari got his required vaccines before he was 18 months old. At the time, his parents said, he was a healthy, verbal boy.

But after his last round of booster shots, Stefan stopped speaking and, now 10 years old, he has not spoken since.

Stefan's parents, Marcelo and Carolyn Ferrari of Atlanta, filed suit, alleging the vaccines caused neurological damage to their young son. On Tuesday, the family's lawyer asked the Georgia Supreme Court to let the case against two vaccine manufacturers, Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline, go forward.

Lawyer Lanny Bridgers told the court it was bad timing when Stefan received his last shots. A year later, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that thimerosal, a preservative used for multi-dose vaccine vials, be removed from childhood vaccines. The Ferraris contend that manufacturers should have made vaccines without thimerosal before Stefan was vaccinated.

But a lawyer arguing on behalf of the manufacturers told the state high court that the suit is barred by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act.

The law says no vaccine maker shall be held liable in a civil action for damages arising from an injury or death caused by vaccines given after Oct. 1, 1988.

The exceptions are if the vaccine was improperly prepared or contained improper directions or warnings. Neither of these were involved in Stefan's case, Daniel Thomasch, a lawyer for the manufacturers, told the court.

"It was the clear intent of Congress to pre-empt precisely the claims that are at issue here," he argued.

Congress passed the law after hundreds of lawsuits were filed against vaccine manufacturers. The litigation increased insurance costs, drove out some manufacturers and threatened the continued production of some vaccines, even though the lawsuits were largely unsuccessful, Thomasch said.

"It has been a remarkably successful program," he said of the 1986 law. "This wasn't a rescue of the industry. It was an important step to make sure vaccines remained available in the United States."

Seven of eight courts to consider challenges to the 1986 act have ruled in favor of the manufacturers. Last year, the Georgia Court of Appeals became the first court in the nation to rule the act did not pre-empt state law allowing such lawsuits. The manufacturers are appealing that decision to the state Supreme Court.

Bridgers, the Ferraris' lawyer, told the justices that courts should review vaccine challenges on a case-by-case basis, not bar them completely. Otherwise, complaints must be brought in Washington before the U.S. Court of Claims where there are restrictions on the amount of awards, he said.

"Did Congress really intend to create an opt-out provision that allows the child to be thrown out of court?" Bridgers asked the justices. "I think not."

There are people who would take the word of their preacher, their chiropractor or the likes of bimbo B-movie queen Jenny McCarthy on this topic, and disregard the reasoned scientific judgment of practically every epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist in the world. Those people are beyond reason, and all we can do is quarantine them away from civilized society when the inevitable epidemics come upon us which they have caused by their own sociopathic selfishness.

I would rather address those for whom Oprah does not trump the scientific method, and explain this issue to them if they are not familiar with it.

Measles is a potentially deadly illness that kills some 250,000 children per year worldwide. In this country, before the measles vaccine was invented, it routinely killed about 500-1000 children per year. For each child killed, several more were left blind, deaf, mentally retarded, or suffered birth defects from in utero exposure.

The vaccine for measles has almost entirely eradicated the disease in civilized countries. Sporadic cases are occasionally brought back from Turd World hellholes by travelers and immigrants. However, these outbreaks soon die out, because the vast majority of children are vaccinated and the infection cannot spread.

Unfortunately, the vaccination is only 95% effective, as there are some children whose immune systems are not strong enough to mount a response to the challenge. This 5% remains vulnerable to infection, and depend on the so-called "herd immunity" of the vaccinated children around them to prevent measles outbreaks from spreading to them.

Another childhood neurological disorder called autism has become more and more commonly diagnosed over the same period of time as measles has been eradicated. Whether this is because of improvements in diagnostic skills and capabilities, changes in the way the disease is defined, or a true increase in the incidence of the disorder remains controversial, but nobody disputes that the number of diagnoses has increased significantly.

In 1998, a British researcher named Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet that raised a tenuous connection between the measles vaccination and childhood autism. This was immediately seized upon as gospel truth by grieving and angry parents of autistic children. However, the study consisted of only 12 children, and Wakefield's conclusions were so unsupported by the evidence that eventually ten of his twelve co-authors repudiated the paper's findings, and published a retraction in the pages of The Lancet.

Since then, approximately twenty large studies involving tens of thousands of children around the world have failed to provide the slightest support for Wakefield's flimsy paper. The mercury preservative thimerosal, which was blamed by many ill-informed anti-vaccination activists, has been removed from the vaccine for many years now, with no corresponding decrease in the number of autism cases. The supposed connection between measles vaccination and autism has been as thoroughly disproven as any mistaken idea in the history of medical science.

It is true that the diagnosis of autism often occurs shortly after the vaccine is given, but that is because autism is commonly diagnosed in children around the age when they would ordinarily receive the inoculation, whether or not they do in fact get vaccinated. It would make as much sense to say that autism is caused by toilet-training.

Despite the best assurances that medical science can provide, the number of vaccinated children fell off dramatically in the last ten years, especially in England but also in the US and other developed nations. England's rates of vaccination fell so low that the "herd immunity" effect was almost entirely lost, and measles epidemics recurred at ten times their previous rates. Similar epidemics occurred in other European countries including Holland and Ireland. A number of children suffered permanent damage, and at least seven children died from the disease, for the first time in a decade.

By itself, it is a sordid story of junk science embraced by desperate parents of ill children, flashed around the world at the speed of e-mail, amplified by the news media/celebrity megaphone, egged on by "alternative" practitioners who stand to profit financially if trust in mainstream medicine is undermined, and hailed as manna from heaven by the despicable greedy filthy pond scum of the trial bar.

However, the truth is even worse, and seems to point to an actual conspiracy by greedy trial lawyers and a crooked medical researcher to loot money from blameless vaccine makers. Recently, it has come to light that two years before the Lancet paper, Anthony Wakefield received under-the-table payments totaling more than 450,000 pounds (close to a million dollars) from plaintiff's lawyers hired by autistic parents looking for deep pockets to sue. He did not disclose this conflict of interest, and as a result, he is now being investigated by the British medical licensing board, which is likely to revoke his license to practice.

I have heard nothing that would suggest that the filthy greedy plaintiff's lawyer scum who paid Wakefield off are being investigated for their reprehensible role in causing the death and permanent disablity of little children; but in a just world, they would lose their license to practice piracy, be disgorged of all their stolen money, and spend time in prison.

Of course, they are just following in the footsteps of the despicable greed-crazed plaintiff's lawyer filth in the cerebral palsy racket. Their war on the obstetric profession has resulted in a doubling or tripling of C-section rates, with no effect on the number of children born with cerebral palsy. If dung heaps like John Edwards and the lawyer scum who paid off Andrew Wakefield were subject to the same standards of liability they are forcing on the rest of society, they would long since have been sued out of all they own for their contribution to the deaths and injuries of children and their mothers.

As I said, there is no reasoning with the quacks, religious zealots, despicable money-hungry plaintiff's lawyer s#!t-heels, and foolish housewives who make up the anti-vaccination cult. I do not advocate forcing vaccination on their brats. I do think there is a case to be made for quarantining them away from any public place, and forcing them to be individually tutored or home schooled, in the event of any outbreak of measles.

For every other sensible person, please do not listen to the quacks and mountebanks and trial-lawyer scum. They do not have the best interests of your child at heart. They are a pack of liars and fools and swindlers. Get your children vaccinated, and save their lives from dread diseases that should have been eradicated decades ago.

-ccm

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