Compensation Awarded For Disablity Caused By MMR Vaccine

This article discusses the recent award made to a young man whose severe disabilities were found to have been caused by the MMR vaccine he was given as a baby. The implications of the decision and whether it could open the floodgates to numerous similar claims are considered.

For the first time since the controversial combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine came under scrutiny in 1998, when a now discredited doctor, Andrew Wakefield, linked it to autism, an 18-year-old man has been awarded financial compensation on the basis that the MMR vaccine directly caused his disabilities.

Mr Foster's case

Mr Foster received £90,000 after a medical appeal tribunal, chaired by a barrister sitting with Professor Sundara Lingam - a former consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital - and Dr Adrian Allaway, ruled in August 2010 that he became severely disabled as a direct result of receiving the vaccine as a baby. He was perfectly healthy until he was given the vaccine at the age of 13 months, whereas he now suffers from frequent epileptic fits, is doubly incontinent and unable to stand, talk or feed himself and requires round-the-clock care.

Despite the Department of Health's continued insistence that there is no link between Mr Foster's disabilities and the MMR jab, two members of the tribunal ruled that his disabilities were a direct result of the vaccine. Professor Lingam dissented on the basis that Mr Fletcher was "genetically predisposed" to epilepsy, but was overruled by the other members.

Floodgates?

Many medical experts believe that this will open the floodgates for thousands of other MMR-related claims. Dr Malcolm Vandenburg, a medico legal expert, suggests that "one case like this makes other people think that they will be able to get a similar ruling. In the past, when there has been a first ruling of this kind, it has opened the door to others." Nadine Dorries, an MP sitting on the Commons Health Committee, suggests that, as the decision was reached by an independent panel "it is fair to assume that there could be as many as thousands of children and parents in the same position."

The first application made by Mr Foster's mother for compensation under the Government's Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme was refused in 1997 on the basis that the cause of her son's illness could not be proved. However, her appeal against that decision was upheld by the appeal tribunal on the basis that it could not be attributed solely to a coincidence that...