[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 137 (Thursday, October 17, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1887-E1888]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        SANDY MINTZ' TESTIMONY ON AUTISM AND CHILD VACCINATIONS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 16, 2002

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I call the attention of my colleagues to an 
excellent statement recently made before a hearing of the Committee on 
Government Reform dealing with the issue of child vaccinations. The 
statement was made by Ms. Sandy Mintz of Anchorage, Alaska. For over a 
decade, Ms. Mintz has been a prominent and forceful advocate for an 
informed vaccination process and for permitting parents everywhere to 
have the right, as they do in my home state of California, to decide 
whether or not vaccination is the best option for their child.
  Although Ms. Mintz' statement will be published in the hearing 
record, it will be some time before it is available to my colleagues, 
and her testimony is of such interest that I ask that it be put in the 
Record so that it will be more broadly and more quickly available for 
those who have an interest in the health and well-being of our 
children.
  Mr. Speaker, in her testimony, Ms. Mintz posed a vital, if 
uncomfortable, question: in some cases, could vaccinating our children 
actually be doing them more harm than good? Specifically, she was 
asking whether the National Institutes of Health had investigated the 
link between child vaccinations and autism. She has found evidence that 
there may, in fact, be a causal link between childhood vaccinations and 
autism. The witness from the NIH was not aware of any study exploring 
any link between those two phenomena. Given the vital relevance of this 
matter to the health of our nation's children, it would be prudent for 
the NIH to conduct such a study.
  At the crux of this debate lie two competing values, which must 
always be kept in balance: on the one hand, the right of parents to 
determine what is best for their children, and on the other the need of 
society at large to protect itself from a common threat, in this 
instance the threat of deadly communicable diseases. But it is more 
than an example of the classic tension between the rights of the 
individual and those of society, because the issue at hand is one we 
all care so deeply about--the issue of our children's safety. We would 
all like to inoculate our children against every disease possible, and 
mandatory childhood inoculations may indeed be the soundest policy 
choice for our state governments.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe the question raised in Ms. Mintz' testimony 
needs to be dealt with, because our government should not administer a 
cure that is worse than the disease. We must first investigate whether 
vaccinations cause autism in children before we can continue to require 
them of our children. In the meantime, I believe it would be prudent to 
allow parents to choose not to vaccinate their children, as is 
permitted in my home state of California. Again, I thank Ms. Mintz for 
her bold and illuminating testimony before the Committee on Government 
Reform.

       The Autism Epidemic--Is the NIH and CDC Response Adequate?

       Mr. Shays. Dr. Foote and Dr. Boyle, let me just say it is 
     our intention to let you get out pretty soon. You haven't had 
     a break or anything. Do you have 20 more minutes in you? Are 
     you OK?
       I am going to do something that may seem a little unusual, 
     and I may have to just cut it off if it is not a good idea. 
     But, Dr. Foote and Dr. Boyle, if you can trust me in terms of 
     my ability to control a meeting, it is not lost on me that we 
     have a lot of people in the audience who have a keen direct 
     interest. There my be a question or two that none of us on 
     the panel here have asked that we should have. I am going to 
     ask if there is someone in the audience who may have a 
     question that says we should have addressed this. I will 
     allow you to stand up and tell the committee, and then we may 
     choose, our committee may choose to ask that question.
       My motivation is that it would be a shame to have people 
     leave without you having the opportunity to respond and maybe 
     clear something up. Both of you have such a nice, friendly 
     smile. I figured I could get away with it. So we are going to 
     try it out, but I have the counsel--excuse me, the minority 
     counsel would like to ask you a few questions, the majority 
     professional staff would just like to ask a few more, and 
     then I am going to just throw it out to the audience, pick 
     two or three of you and ask you to stand and tell me if there 
     is a question you think we should have asked, loud enough so 
     I can repeat it to our witnesses. . . .
       Mr. Shays. Now let me state what I would like to do. I 
     would like let our witnesses leave soon. I would like to just 
     say that this is a hearing of the House of Representatives, 
     of Congress, so the decorum needs to be done well.
       I am going to first ask how many people would like to ask 
     the question. I am going to invite five people to take each 
     of those five seats. I am going to invite you, Ma'am, in the 
     front row to come up to that seat up there, yes. I am going 
     to invite you in the very back to come up, the very back 
     there. I am going to invite you, sir, to come up. I am going 
     to invite you, Ma'am, in the middle, and I am going to invite 
     you in the very back there.
       I am going to have you each take a seat. What I am going to 
     invite each of you to do, the committee is going to invite 
     each of you, you are just going to go down and you are going 
     to identify your name, as you ask the question, where you 
     live. If you have a loved one who is impacted, we are happy 
     to have you share the name of your child, but this is 
     primarily for an opportunity to ask a question. We will just 
     see how it goes.
       OK?
       You all are nice--thank you--to let us do this.
       Just turn the mic on, start at the very end, and ask your 
     question.
       Ms. Mintz. Hi. My name is Sandy Mintz. I am from Anchorage, 
     AK. I am lucky enough not to have a child who has been 
     injured by a vaccine.

[[Page E1888]]

       My question is, is NIH ever planning on doing a study using 
     the only proper control group, that is, never vaccinated 
     children?
       Dr. Foote. I am not aware of--but note carefully what I 
     said, that I am not aware of--proposed study to use a 
     suitably constructed group of never vaccinated children. Now 
     CDC would be more likely perhaps to be aware of such an 
     opportunity.
       Dr. Boyle. The study that I mentioned earlier that we are 
     doing in collaboration with Denmark compares children who 
     received the MMR vaccine versus children who did not receive 
     MMR.
       Ms. Mintz. But I am saying never vaccinated with any 
     vaccine. That assumes that vaccines don't cause autism, which 
     is what needs to be studied, not assumed.
       Mr. Shays. Let me just say that if you would turn off your 
     mic, I am happy to have you do the followup, if you would 
     respond to it.
       Ms. Mintz. I'm sorry.
       Mr. Shays. No, you don't need to apologize. And we will go 
     to the next. Do you have any other comment based on that? The 
     point that is being made, any vaccination. Could we just 
     suggest that you take this under advisement?
       Ms. Wharton. The difficulty with doing such a study in the 
     United States, of course, is that a very small portion of 
     children have never received any vaccines, and these children 
     probably differ in other ways from vaccinated children. So 
     performing such a study would, in fact, be quite difficult.
       The Denmark study was a study that, in fact, could not have 
     been done in the United States, although, of course, these 
     children did potentially receive some other vaccines, but 
     simply hadn't received MMR.
       Mr. Shays. I will invite anyone who is here to speak to 
     staff or me afterwards if they want to augment a comment.

     

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