The case of a tragically ill Arizona girl seemed to hinge on the legitimacy of an Irish laboratory's findings of measles virus fragments in the girl's GI tract. The complaint was framed, at the start, as a test case for the theory that two kinds of vaccines, one containing a weakened measles virus and the other the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, combined to cause autism in a subset of the thousands of children whose cases have been brought before the court.The defense did not present a single expert on autism. An experienced heavy metals toxicologist presented a theory of how thimerosal could have damaged the girl's immune system in a way that set her up for autism.
But none of the other witnesses had much specialized knowledge in mercury or other metals, and the focus quickly shifted to the theory that the attenuated measles virus had created a persistent infection in her gut, causing a severe inflammation that resulted in brain damage and other injuries.
In order to win their case, three special masters -- the judges, in effect, in the special vaccine court at the U.S. Court of Claims -- will have to be convinced of the reliability of the witnesses' account that measles RNA was detected in her bowel and cerebrospinal fluid.
In 2003, a biopsy from the girl's GI tract was sent to Unigenetics, an Irish laboratory which reported finding the RNA. The head of the laboratory had published a paper a year earlier that disclosed the discovery of measles RNA in the guts of several autistic children.
The lab also was said to have found evidence of measles in spinal taps of autistic children, but those results were never published. In testimony that followed, five additional witnesses expressed full support for the Unigenetics findings. Those witnesses were gastroenterologist, molecular biologist, immunologist, virus immunologist, and a pediatric neurologist who has testified in vaccine court hundreds of times.
The argument for how vaccines hurt their child was presented most efficiently by a virus immunologist at Texas Tech University. He said that the 112.5 millionths of a gram of thimerosal contained in six vaccines administered to the victim during her first seven months of life had damaged her immune system. When she received an MMR vaccine at 16 months, shortly before Christmas 1995, the weakened vaccine virus lodged in her gut, causing an inflamed bowel and eventually damaging her brain.
The victim is very ill. In addition to her autism she suffers from inflammatory bowel disease, a seizure disorder, and chronic eye inflammations that have left her 90 percent blind. She was pushed into the courtroom in a wheelchair because arthritis has left her unsteady on her feet.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-allen/in-autismvaccine-case-r_b_52408.html
