[jinx]

Vaccines and Autism: The Unending Story (Newsweek)

The first question for the court, then, was whether Bailey had Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis, and its answer was yes, based on medical records. It then addressed the question of whether the MMR vaccine can cause ADEM, and here there was precedent: Two previous vaccine cases, in 1994 and 2001, had led to decisions that ADEM can be caused by natural measles, mumps, and rubella infections, as well as by measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. In Bailey’s case, the court ruled, the MMR had indeed caused his Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis.

For the final step, the court wrestled with whether Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis can cause pervasive developmental delay, and whether it caused Bailey’s. (Just to reiterate, the issue was PDD, not autism. As the court said in its decision, Bailey “more likely than not suffers from PDD, and not from autism.”) Here, the medical literature leaves plaintiffs much more room than does the literature on classical autism. The government argued against the claim that ADEM can cause pervasive developmental delay, of course, acknowledging “that Bailey currently suffers from PDD, and that the MMR vaccine can cause ADEM" but disputing "the biologic plausibility [of] whether ADEM can lead to PDD.”
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The government agreed to a lump sum of $750,000, and an annuity that will provide as much as $70,000 to $100,000 a year for Bailey once his parents are not able to care for him.