The Vaccine Court and the Autism Test Case, Written by...

Vaccines and Autism: Is There A Link? Haertlein, Lauren L. â€Å"Immunizing Against Bad Science: The Vaccine Court and The Autism Test Case.† Law and Contemporary Problems 72 (2012): 211-32. EconLit. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. â€Å"Immunizing Against Bad Science: The Vaccine Court and the Autism Test Case,† written by Lauren L. Haertlein, deals with one of today’s most popular controversies; vaccinations causing autism in children. Haertlein’s article gives insight into the history of vaccine litigation and the policies that accompany it. Furthermore, she talks immensely about the Vaccine Court, whose job is to work with petitioner’s stating that a vaccine, such as measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), has caused some illness to their child. The article uses†¦show more content†¦The fact that she has not published any other works on this topic, nor has she done other research about vaccinations could cause controversy on the validity of her conclusions in the article. However, Haertlein does l ist a multitude of sources that she utilized to write her article. Haertlein’s article begins with an introduction stating the content of the article: Vaccines are beginning to have a bad name due to claims that they are causing illnesses such as autism. Following her opening statement, she discusses the main court case used in her article, the Cedillo case. Finally, her introduction states her side of the argument, that vaccines are not the cause of autism in young children. The body of her article is split into four sections. Part one discusses the history behind the vaccine court cases, the Vaccine Court itself, and how the cases in the Vaccine Court are dealt with. Part two introduces â€Å"the vaccine–autism controversy and the Vaccine Court’s decision to institute an omnibus proceeding (OAB) to manage the autism claims.† This means they selecte three Special Masters who are in charge of reviewing the test cases and deciding if the accusations meet t he scientific data needed to claim that a vaccination did in fact cause the child’s autism (212). Part three focuses solely on the Cedillo case. The Cedillo’s claimed that the MMR vaccine gave their child autism. However, there was not enough