Court Rules Vaccination Doesn't Cause Autism

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has ruled that vaccinations -- or, more specifically, thimerosal, an additive in some vaccinations -- does not cause autism. The court considered three separate claims for damages, but ruled Friday in each of them that the vaccinations the children received were unconnected to their eventual diagnoses of autism.

Autism diagnosis rates have risen. This winter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that one in 110 children had autism -- up from their previous estimate of one in 150. But why the rates are rising -- or whether the increase in cases can actually be attributed to better and more widely used diagnostic tools -- is not known.

The decision from the federal claims court comes a little over a year after the same court ruled against the link between autism and vaccinations in a series of three different test cases -- a decision this latest opinion reinforces.

Still, even after last year's ruling, a recent University of Michigan poll found that one in four parents believed vaccines have been linked to autism -- even though scientists have not found a connection. Last month, the medical journal, The Lancet, issued a retraction of the 1998 study by researcher Andrew Wakefield, which had professed to find a link between the MMR vaccine and autism rates. The Wakefield study ran counter to other studies on the same topic, which have been unable to find a link between the two.