1300 cases of vaccine-related brain damage compensated in US courts/ CBS News

From CBS News in September:

... occasionally, vaccines cause injury or death. Very rarely, patients are left with what's known as "encephalopathy", the medical term for brain damage.  In fact, CBS News has found nearly 1,300 cases in which vaccine-related brain damage has been compensated in court over the past 20 years.

The debate over any links between vaccines and autism - a behavior problem triggered by brain damage - couldn't be more contentious. The great majority of medical opinion holds that vaccines don't cause autism. However, many of the same experts don't dispute that vaccines can, in rare instances, cause brain damage.

Our examination of federal vaccine court decisions over the years reflects this. Children who end up with autistic symptoms or autism have won vaccine injury claims over the years-as long as they highlighted general, widely-accepted brain damage; not autism specifically. But when autism or autistic symptoms are alleged as the primary brain damage, the cases are lost...

From today's CBS News:

... government officials have said they have no plans to study ... cases that victims are winning against the government in the little-known federal vaccine court...

... The former head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Bernardine Healy, has said such study [identifying children who are more susceptible to brain injury from vaccinations ahead of time] would actually protect the integrity of the vaccine program, rather than threaten it (as she says many government officials fear). So far, though, no takers... 

What made these children get sick? Why couldn't they tolerate their vaccines when most kids can? Unanswered questions.