There’s a saying in Spanish that roughly translated says “Calamities never arrive alone”. Following John McCain’s statement on the “strong” evidence for a link between vaccines and autism, which Charlotte Schubert blogged about, the ruling in the case of Hannah Poling is a second calamity that is bound to add more fuel to a debate that hasn’t been particularly productive.

The US government’s decision to settle and agree to pay Hannah, who has autistic symptoms, for her care has been immediately heralded as a victory for supporters of the vaccine-autism link, even though officials have been careful to clarify that they didn’t concede that vaccines cause autism.

The government can continue to clarify their position until they go blue in the face but, unfortunately, this ruling is bad news for the science that has debunked the autism-vaccines link, for the cost of health care in the US (which is bound to feel the effect of more settlements of this sort, if this case is accepted as precedent), and for herd immunity (the effectiveness of which may decrease if too many kids in a given pupulation stop being vaccinated).