I don't get it - the specialists in the fields in question here have no reason to believe there is a link, but a group on non-specialists (lawyers and the lot) get to decide whether there is or not?

Furthermore, autism rates are not elevated in regions where vaccines are routine - take Canada or Scandinavia, for example. I think this might further support evidence of NO link between the two.

I'd hate to call this a money-grab on the parents behalf, but it seems like it - there's millions of dollars at stake here. Perhaps the American government should consider alotting a certain sum of money to help individuals and families dealing with autism (I love the health-care system here, I'm so glad we have one!) instead.

even when they're non-specialists, they should still prove their point, and my guess is that would be a bit hard in this case
there you go ;)
I can't guess about the motives of these parents, but truth is many people are very concerned about the health effects of vaccines...browse the internet a little, and it looks like you're practically killing your kid when you have it vaccinated.
Somehow these people seem to forget how many lives are saved because of vaccines.

My son has Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism. It's one of the fastest growing medical afflictions affecting kids today. The numbers grow every year with the significant leaps starting within the last 20 years (my son is 15). Given the stats, one has to assume SOMETHING is making the numbers spike.

One of the first things we were told, by doctors nonetheless, was that there were vaccines being looked at as causes. It's only in the last couple years that talk like that stopped from doctors and became a lawyer staple...why? I don't think it's about money at all, but accountability. Just because families are filing suit doesn't make it about the money and doesn't mean the medical community isn't responsible.

I'm not in on those suits and don't intend to be, but I can tell you from experience that the frustration in getting schools and doctors to do the things their supposed to is high, and wanting accountability for that is not wrong.

It could be worse, kxmk. I have Asperger's, but it didn't get on the books until I was 20, so I never had any help for it. I seriously doubt I'd get any cash retroactively. That would be nice . . . I have had to fight for a year now to just to get health coverage from the state.

I think the reason these people are so set on Vaccine = Autism is that it is an explination, and they are desperate for any kind of explination, and it's somewhere to put the blame. They're grasping at straws, the same way people grasped at facilitated communication, which turned out to be false.

The science doesn't support it at all, but for some weird reason that makes people think their cause is more right (as if science hates them personally). I hate to say it, but it's almost like a religion, believers vs nonbelivers.

I'm sorry they won't be getting money - not even in the 'money-grubbing' sense of it, but some services are horribly expensive so I can understand that - but that doesn't mean the science can change just to make people happy.

come on, this is 100% to do with parents trying to turn a tragedy into a lottery win.

I understand and sympathise that the procedures are terribly expensive (the profit margins in medicine is obscene) but that doesn't justify the parents trying to make someone pay that has no connection to the disease

Such cases and there are far too many, have no business being in court. Judges and juries do not have the ability to make a decision about such things one way or the other.