Foreign Policy: Science Won’t Save Vaccines From Lawsuits Anymore
Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations

“This week, the highest court of the European Union handed opponents of basic public health their greatest legal victory in recent memory. At a time [with] widening measles outbreaks across Europe and a growing pattern of parents refusing to immunize children, the Court of Justice of the European Union — the rough equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court — decided that courts across the continent may weigh whether a vaccine caused an illness regardless of whether or not there is any scientific evidence linking the two. … Today, in the absence of proof or rational evidence, well-educated people living in the richest countries of the world believe that hepatitis vaccines cause demyelination of their musculature, leading to MS; that measles/mumps/rubella combination vaccines reshape babies’ brains, rendering them autistic; that human papillomavirus vaccines cause mental retardation rather than protecting girls from death by cervical cancer; that ‘too many’ vaccines are given to babies, making them weak or stunted. And now, thanks to the Court of Justice of the European Union, every one of those crackpot theories can be presented in a European court of law, absent the merest modicum of evidence” (6/26).