For the past two decades, according to [members of the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy], “the federal government has publicly denied a vaccine-autism link, while at the same time its Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has been awarding damages for vaccine injury to children with brain damage, seizures and autism.”
[A] substantial number of children compensated for vaccine injury also have autism – the evidence suggests that autism is at least three times more prevalent among vaccine-injured children than among children in the general population.
The investigation found 83 cases of autism associated with compensated cases of vaccine-induced brain injury.
We began collecting data over two years ago. We asked the federal government to provide us with this data through a Freedom Of Information Act request. We were told that our request would take four to five years, would cost $750,000, and would afford us incomplete information.
We then assembled data about VICP decisions from legal databases and settlement information from publicly available docket reports. We found 21 published cases detailing autism spectrum disorders by name or description, which the study includes. We then interviewed families that we located through the docket reports. In these interviews, 62 families reported autism associated with vaccine injury.
The parents interviewed in this study report that vaccines caused their children’s autism as well as brain damage and seizures. The study notes a clear association between vaccine injury and autism in 83 compensated cases. The government has not previously brought this association to public attention.
Many critics say that it is easy to win a case in the VICP… [yet] less than one in five claims in the VICP have received compensation.
[D]espite having received compensation, most of the families we interviewed were highly critical of the VICP, finding it to be exceptionally slow, parsimonious and hostile to petitioners.
Because we were only able to reach a fraction of the more than 2,500 individuals compensated for vaccine injury, we believe that we have identified the tip of the iceberg of this association.