The Heart vs. the Brain in Vaccine Court

Orac at Respectful Insolence reports on the Autism Omnibus, the vaccine court hearings that began yesterday in Washington, D.C., with the parents of 12-year-old Michelle Cedillo wheeling in their non-verbal, self-injurious daughter. This “tug on the heartstrings” suggests the strategy the plaintiffs’ attorney will use; Orac comments:

Only the most cold-hearted would fail to agree with Special Master George Hastings, Jr., one of the three Special Masters who will preside over the hearings, when he characterized Michelle’s case as “tragic.” Certainly, the Cedillos have a challenge far greater than that of the vast majority of parents face when raising a child. However, just because they have come to believe that vaccines are somehow responsible for their child’s plight and just because we feel sorry for them do not constitute a reason to conclude that vaccines did, in fact, cause Michelle’s plight. We can feel sympathy for Michelle and admiration for their determination to take care of her, but that does not mean that we have to accept their pseudoscientific explanation for how their daughter got the way she is. In my mind, perhaps the most sadly ironic thing about the whole vaccine/autism hysteria is that it’s a huge distraction away from real research elucidating the pathophysiology of autism that might be of value in helping children like Michelle. It’s also an enormous distraction away from putting effort and resources into services that might assist families like the Cedillos deal with the day-to-day struggles of taking care of their daughter. [my emphasis]

Journalist Arthur Allen, author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver provides another observation about the lawyers’ tactics in his report on Day 1 of Autism in Court:

With their body language, the lawyers for the claimants and the defense in the case reflected what has always been true about the vaccine-cause-autism theory: one side appeals to the heart, the other to the brain. The claimants’ lawyers, Tom Powers of Portland and Sylvia Chin-Caplan of Boston, spoke with inflection and warmth and turned to face the audience on the courtroom. The government’s lawyer, the colorless-seeming Vince Matanoski, spoke to the special masters—the judges who will decide the case.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers recognize the difference that the presence of one autistic child, of a disabled child in a public place can make. I know this too well: People talk about autism as an “invisible disability” but now, when we talk into the grocery store, the library, a subway with Charlie, I can sense the signals in the crowd: There’s something about this boy. Charlie can walk, talk some, and is no longer self-injurious (which does not mean he might not do those behaviors again; every day we try to teach him other strategies to use instead). People notice that there is a disabled—cognitively? intellectually? neurologically?—-person among them (which is not to say there are not others)—after that, their usual response is to shrug at most, and then to go back to whatever they are doing. I do think that, the more people get used to seeing autistic children who don’t “pass for normal” in public, the better, for them and for Charlie.

Others who know the power that the presence, or the photographed presence, that an autistic child can make are any of your national or local autism organizations whose websites and brochures always feature a smiling, and certainly a cute, child. (My own blog about my son that I used to write is itself stocked full of such photos.) One also sees photographs of children who are not smiling—who may be crying and even in “full tantrum mode”; such photos might be more likely found illustrating a newspaper article about the difficulties of life with autism. All of these photos, and the accounts—brief or not—-of the child in the photo are, too, meant to tug at the heartstrings; to appeal to the heart and gut more than the brain.

And maybe this is why, despite numerous and repeated statements by scientists that there is no valid evidence to support a link between vaccines or anything in vaccines to autism, the vaccine theory could prevail. When it comes to autism, the heart has a way of leading rather than the head, whatever the truth, whatever the real verdict of science.