A federal court ruled recently that routine childhood immunizations aren’t linked to autism, handing down a landmark decision in the controversy over whether vaccines can cause the neuro-developmental disorder.

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington denied damages to three families who alleged that vaccinations led to their children’s diseases. Some 5,000 families are seeking damages from a federal program to compensate patients harmed by vaccines, and the three cases the court ruled on Thursday were considered tests for how the others will be handled.

The test cases represented different theories for how vaccines could cause autism. The decisions handed down Thursday focused on the theory that autism was caused by an interaction of a mercury-containing preservative found in some inoculations and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine made in the U.S. by Merck & Co.

Government studies have discredited the connection between vaccines and autism, but impassioned parents have continued to argue for a link, with some accusing the government and medical communities of a cover-up. In 1999, federal health officials recommended that thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative, be removed from vaccines. Since 2001, thimerosal hasn’t been used in routinely recommended childhood vaccines, with the exception of some flu shots.

In a strongly worded decision in one of the three cases, brought by the parents of autism-sufferer Michelle Cedillo, Special Master George Hastings found that the evidence didn’t support a connection between vaccines and Ms. Cedillo’s autism and gastrointestinal disorders.

“The numerous medical studies concerning these issues, performed by medical scientists worldwide, have come down strongly against the petitioners’ contentions,” he says in the decision. “Considering all of the evidence, I found that the petitioners have failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to causing immune dysfunction, or that the MMR vaccine can contribute to causing either autism or gastrointestinal dysfunction,” he wrote, putting “failed” in italics.

Kevin Conway, a lawyer for the Boston firm Conway, Homer & Chin-Caplan, which represented Ms. Cedillo’s family, says he was “very disappointed” by the ruling. Thomas Powers, an attorney with Portland, Ore., firm Williams, Love, O’Leary & Powers, who represented the family of autism sufferer Colten Snyder, says his clients are considering their options, which include asking for a review, appealing the case, or taking the case to civil court. Attorneys for the family of the third autistic child, Yates Hazlehurst, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Rebecca Estepp, the mother of an 11-year-old boy with autism who is one of the claimants seeking compensation from the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, says she is “devastated” by the decisions. “I listened to the test case and I honestly felt it was a strong case,” says Ms. Estepp, who is the national manager of a family-support group called Talk About Curing Autism.

“It puts us at an enormous disadvantage when the first three test cases are found for the Department of Health and Human Services,” says Ms. Estepp. “It’s tough when you’re taking parent support calls and you hear the same story day after day. When does anecdotal evidence become enough?”

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is the defendant in the cases, hailed the rulings. “Hopefully, the determination by the Special Masters will help reassure parents that vaccines do not cause autism,” the department says in a statement.

Had the government lost the cases, Merck wouldn’t have been liable. Merck spokesman Amy Rose says in a statement, “Merck believes the Vaccine Court rightly ruled in these cases. The rulings are also consistent with the body of scientific evidence, which has demonstrated no causal association between vaccines and autism.”

Michael Brady, the chairman of the pediatrics department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, says, “This will make it easier for pediatricians when they talk to parents, it’s one more piece of information we can give them.” He added that it is important for parents who believe that there is a medical conspiracy to hear that the scientific findings have been endorsed by independent attorneys.

The debate over whether childhood vaccines cause autism ignited in 1998, when the British journal the Lancet published a study positing a connection. Around the same time, the incidence of autism has been increasing, with some figures estimating that roughly 1 in 150 children suffer from the disease, which is characterized by abnormal social interactions and behaviors.

While many parents of children with autism link the rising prevalence to a stepped-up schedule of mercury-laden vaccines, many pediatricians say that the disease is simply better diagnosed and the social services for sufferers better funded.

Source: Avery Johnson/ Wall Street Journal