First in some troubling news out of Europe, The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled last Wednesday that vaccines can be blamed for causing illnesses even if there is no scientific proof .

Photo/Nodar Kherkheulidze via wikimedia commons
Photo/Nodar Kherkheulidze via wikimedia commons

Jurist.org reports: The decision comes out of a case that was appealed from France’s Court of Cassation  regarding a man who developed multiple sclerosis shortly after being inoculated against hepatitis B. The court reasoned that the “temporal proximity between the administering of a vaccine” and the man’s onset of multiple sclerosis, the lack of familial history with the disease and the “significant number of reported cases of the disease occurring following such vaccines being administered” was enough to meet the victim’s burden of proof. The court also asserted that “excluding any method of proof” other than science-backed evidence would make it exceedingly difficult to establish liability and undermines the objectives of the court, “which are to protect consumer health and safety and ensure a fair apportionment between the injured person and the producer of the risks inherent in modern technological production.”

Following up on that report, Laurie Garrett writes in Foreign Policy: 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” 

In a follow-up on the measles situation in Europe’s hardest hit countries of Romania and Italy, The total number of confirmed measles cases in Romania through June 23 is 7,282. There were 30 deaths and a 31st possible death due to measles is under investigation.

In Italy, the measles case tally has reached 3,074 in 2017. Euronews reports a six-year-old boy suffering from leukemia has died after complications from a bout of measles, sparking a vaccination debate in the country.

He reportedly caught the measles from an older sibling that the parents had decided not to vaccinate.

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