By Sandra G. Boodman

| Special to The Washington Post

"Men in Black" was flickering on the screen, and Laura Cossolotto and her husband were enjoying a rare night at the movies in their home town of Centerville, Iowa, when her brother-in-law rushed into the darkened theater.

The couple’s third child, 6-month-old Michaela, had just suffered a serious seizure and was at a nearby hospital. As Cossolotto raced to be with the baby, she immediately remembered that Michaela had been running a fever after receiving a vaccine against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT) three days earlier.

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For more information on Dravet syndrome, also known as severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy — a rare and serious form of the seizure disorder — visit www.dravet.org

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"I thought the shot must have something to do with it," Cossolotto recalled. "I had three kids, and nothing like this had ever happened, so what else could it have been?"

At the hospital, doctors reassured her that Michaela had suffered a febrile seizure, a frightening and usually harmless event they said was unlikely to recur. As a precaution, the baby was admitted for observation. Hours later, after doctors had trouble controlling a second, more severe seizure, the infant was whisked by helicopter to a larger hospital in Des Moines, 100 miles north.

That night in July 1997 marked the beginning of a 101/2- year ordeal, as more than a dozen specialists in four states tried without success to find an underlying cause for Michaela’s frequent, intractable seizures — and a treatment that would control them before they caused irreparable brain damage or death.

For years Cossolotto held the DPT shot responsible for Michaela’s problems, joining legions of parents who have blamed various ingredients in pediatric vaccines for triggering serious medical and developmental ills, most notably autism. Since the early 1980s these allegations, based on discredited theories and more recently on an influential British study that last year was deemed an "elaborate fraud," have flourished, largely because of their enduring popularity on the Internet. As a consequence, fearful parents have refused to immunize their children, resulting in outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles and whooping cough.

Cossolotto, who spent hours online desperately seeking answers, found the vaccine hypothesis persuasive, particularly after doctors failed to offer another explanation. The belated discovery of what was wrong with her daughter would upend Cossolotto’s long-held views and lead to major improvements in Michaela’s life.

It was quickly evident that Michaela’s seizures were not just febrile: They occurred when she had no fever, and doctors suspected she had epilepsy. "She would be in her bouncy seat and both arms would just shoot straight up in the air," Cossolotto recalled. "I knew nothing about epilepsy."

She soon learned. At times Michaela’s seizures were so severe that doctors had to place her in a drug-induced coma to save her life. Eight times before she was 3, she was helicoptered to Des Moines or Iowa City for emergency treatment. "I remember sitting by her bed in the ICU wondering: Would she wake up? And if she did, would she be a vegetable?" Cossolotto recalled.

Despite test after test, no doctor could say what kind of epilepsy she had, and no cocktail of medications proved effective in controlling the seizures. Nor did doctors know the reasons for problems that emerged as she aged: delayed speech, mild mental retardation and serious growth deficiency.

Specialists ruled out fragile X syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that causes mental retardation, gastrointestinal malabsorption, cystic fibrosis and numerous rare metabolic problems as well as heart defects and brain malformations.

Between the ages of 3 and 5, Michaela did not gain an ounce; she entered kindergarten at age 5 weighing 33 pounds, roughly the average weight of a 21/2- year-old girl. At a growth clinic where she was evaluated for failure to thrive, doctors told Cossolotto "the problem was that I allowed her to graze during the day and that I was a bad parent," she recalled.

Around the age of 4, Michaela began regressing, displaying what seemed to be classic signs of autism: She would rock for hours, avoid eye contact and seem to retreat into her own world. By this time Cossolotto was spending hours a day scouring the Internet. She quickly turned up what seemed to be a promising explanation: pediatric vaccines.

Michaela’s doctors were skeptical, but Cossolotto became increasingly convinced she had found a possible answer. She began taking her daughter to see a specialist in environmental medicine in St. Louis, five hours away. He embraced the vaccine theory and ran his own series of tests, diagnosing a mold allergy. At Cossolotto’s request, he signed a waiver allowing Michaela to attend kindergarten without receiving the required immunizations. "I wasn’t taking any chances," her mother recalled.

But after several months autism faded from the picture: Remedial help Michaela received in school caused the autistic behaviors to recede. Cossolotto’s belief in the vaccine theory waned, she said, but remained in the back of her mind.

When Michaela was 5, Cossolotto’s youngest daughter was born with Down syndrome. At times the pressure seemed unbearable as she struggled to care for two special-needs children.

The seizures unabated, Cossolotto called the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. A pediatric neurologist there began treating Michaela with various antiseizure medications while continuing the search for an underlying cause. At one point the little girl was seizure-free for nearly a year, but the convulsions returned, worse than ever.