The "Vaccine Court"

The United States federal court has presided over landmark cases for the autism community, filing official court decisions that have linked vaccinations as an environmental trigger of autism.  The court in which all of these decisions are rendered is the Office of Special Masters of the United States Courts of Federal Claims, otherwise known as “Vaccine Court.” 

The U.S. government created this specific court in 1986 to protect pharmaceutical companies from the direct lawsuits that were arising due to the preponderance of illnesses and injuries that were stemming from the company’s vaccination products.  By establishing the Vaccine Court, the government now protects the pharmaceutical industry by trying the cases and awarding damages from a federal excise tax added to the cost of each dosage of a vaccine. 

In the "Vaccine Court," the burden of proof lays squarely on the claimant.  In other words, a family must show a clear causal connection between a vaccination and its adverse effects.  For the autism community, this standard is made more challenging because the "Vaccine Court" does not accept “autism” as a legal determination.  This is because autism is a clinical diagnosis, labeled on the basis of a collection of clinical features and created by causes that are still unknown.  But the autism community has still persevered, and compelled the court to acknowledge the link between their children’s autism diagnoses and vaccinations’ environmental triggers.