Italian Court Links MMR Vaccine to Autism

An interesting (and largely unreported) story out of Italy has been making the rounds this past week, once again giving new life to the contentious autism-vaccine debate. In the Italian Court of Rimini, a child has been compensated with a fifteen-year annuity due to an “established” link between an MMR vaccine and autism-like symptoms.

According the report, the unnamed youngster received a prophylaxis trivalent MMR vaccine back in 2004 and developed adverse symptoms shortly thereafter. The child continued to regress the following year, and is now said to be “100% disabled.” The parents of the child were also awarded reimbursement for their court costs.

The case is now expected to be put before an appeals court as authorities are said to be concerned about the legal precedent this may set.

So far, reports of this story have been primarily confined to Italian and French news outlets, so it’s impossible to say just how accurate they are due to potential translation issues. However, if everything being reported is in fact true, this will no doubt create a new PR battle between vaccine safety advocates and the pro-vaccine lobby.

For those fluent in Italian, the full court judgment can be read here and the original news report published last month can be read here.

To be continued…