A Melbourne lawyer working with some 350 Florida families, including several dozen from Brevard County, described Wednesday the evidence linking the vaccines and autism as still "quite compelling."

"Ninety percent of these kids are normal at age 1, then by age 2, they have autism," Attorney Jack Hamilton said. The first mumps, measles and rubella vaccines normally are given soon after the child reaches age 1.

The study review was commissioned by the British Medical Association after the number of British toddlers getting the shots began to drop, sparking fears that measles might make a comeback.

Experts say the new review and other recent authoritative reviews show definitively that parents should be reassured the shots are safe.

Hamilton did not comment specifically on the British study, which was published Tuesday in the Internet version of the journal Clinical Evidence.

But he said his firm is proceeding with plans to file its first lawsuit against makers of the vaccine in the next few weeks.

Stuart Burns, legislative director for U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Palm Bay, was critical of the British review.

"It seems to have taken a selective look at the science on this issue," Burns said. "This study does nothing to dismiss the concerns of those who have concerns about these vaccines."

Burns said Weldon, a physician, has been pushing hard the past few years to get federal health agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, to duplicate the clinical conditions of a small British study done in 1998.

That study first raised the possibility of a connection between the vaccine and developmental problems in 12 children with bowel ailments.

Since then, another larger study not included in the British review found a possible link between the inoculations and autism.

Previously, several groups including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Institute of Medicine, and Britain's Medical Research Council, have reviewed evidence investigating that possible link.

However, the project reported this week is the most comprehensive.

"We looked through over 2,000 studies on millions of children, covering 50 years of research," said lead investigator Dr. Anna Donald, whose company, Bazian Ltd., analyzes the quality of medical research. The company was contracted by the publishing arm of the British Medical Association to conduct the review.

"The science is very rigorous and this really does give a green light to MMR," she said, using the shortened term for mumps, measles and rubella vaccine. "The science on this issue is over; the scientific debate is dead."

However, Ann Coote from Jabs, a British-based support group for parents who believe their children have been damaged by the MMR vaccine, said she believes the issue has not been settled.

"It's not new evidence. It's only old evidence rehashed," she said. "That's what's annoying parents -- if we've got all this money to throw away on keeping on reviewing things, haven't we got the money to start new research and look into it once and for all?"

Fears about the MMR vaccine intensified in 1998 after the initial British study. The study was conducted about eight years after the children had been vaccinated.

By February of this year, MMR immunization in British 2-year-olds had dropped to 84 percent, well below the 95 percent specialists say is needed to prevent measles from returning. The decline prompted the British health authorities to launch a campaign to persuade parents the vaccine is safe.

Donald said there is no doubt more research on autism is needed, but she would not endorse any more research into the link between autism and MMR.

"This is a terrible distraction from limited funds that need to be looking at autism itself and not at something that has been answered more convincingly than most things we have ever tried to look at,"she said.

Dr. John Clemens, a medical officer in the immunization program at the World Health Organization, said WHO will continue to monitor future vaccine safety studies but the U.N. health agency sees no need to spend more money to further investigate a link to autism.

Dr. Neal Halsey, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, said scientists should try to determine whether measles viruses linger in the intestines or other tissues, but the outcome of such studies would not alter his opinion that MMR is safe and effective.