On March 12, 2010, a panel of three special masters sitting in the US Court of Federal Claims rejected three compensation actions brought by families of autistic children claiming that their disease was induced by vaccines containing mercury-laden thiomersal. This was the second of two cases, including Cedeillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, when the same court rejected the alleged connection between the vaccinations and onset of autism as "biologically implausible." The issue of a link between thimerosal vaccinations and autism in children was at the center of the health debate and some states went so far as to ban its use.

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