[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 13, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3997-H3998]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1930
                        CALIFORNIA AUTISM REPORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, for some time I have been coming 
to the floor on a regular basis talking about the problem of the 
epidemic of autism. Just a few short years ago, 1 in 10,000 children 
were autistic. Today it is closer to 1 in 200. Think about that. We 
have had a 50-fold increase in the number of children who are autistic, 
and yet we have not had any real attention paid to the problem.
  I wrote a letter to President Bush and to his administration, asking 
that there be a national conference called with leading scientists and 
experts from around the country and around the world to get together to 
try to find out why we are having such a terrible problem with this 
epidemic of autism, and this epidemic is one that is going to be with 
us for many, many, many years. These children who become autistic are 
going to grow up, live to be 65, 70 years old, but they are not going 
to be able in many cases to take care of themselves; so they are going 
to be dependent upon the taxpayers, upon society to take care of them, 
and so it is extremely important that we address this situation right 
now.
  I have on this lectern beside me pictures of children from across the 
country who are autistic, and I and the parents of these children 
believe that many of them, maybe most of them, became autistic because 
of mercury that was in vaccines put in by the pharmaceutical companies 
under the title of thimerosal. Thimerosal is a preservative that was 
put in children's vaccines and other vaccines for a long time, since 
the 1940s, and now that we give children 25 to 30 vaccines before they 
start kindergarten, the cumulative effect of all that mercury going 
into their system and into their brain is an epidemic of autism, and 
yet nothing is being done about it.
  We passed a Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund that was supposed to 
provide a nonadversarial approach to helping solve these problems of 
these autistic children and their families because of the huge amount 
of money that they have to lay out to take care of their children, and 
yet it has not worked. We have been trying to correct that, but we have 
not received the kind of cooperation from the other body that we need 
to get that job done.
  Today we have got a new report from California, the Department of 
Developmental Services, and it says that in the past 4 years the amount 
of autistic children that have been found has doubled, in 4 years. That 
is in the State of California alone, and this has been going on all 
across the country. In some parts of the country, the number of 
children that are born and becoming autistic is much greater than 1 in 
200. It is down to 150 in parts of New Jersey and Georgia and elsewhere 
in this country, and we must pay attention to it. We must get to the 
bottom of it, and we must provide a mechanism for these parents and 
these children to be taken care of before it is too late.
  As I said before, it was 1 in 10,000 children were autistic. Now it 
is 1 in about 200. There has been almost a 300 percent increase in 
autism in 11 years, from 1987 to 1998, and in California they said that 
their report has led to numerous subsequent epidemiological studies in 
autism throughout the United States as well as the global health 
community, and yet we have not as a Nation addressed this problem.
  It has been said in this study that in just a short period of time in 
California, autism will be more prevalent than cancer in children, than 
diabetes in children, Down Syndrome in children, and within 3 to 4 
years will surpass in total number of cases both cerebral palsy and 
epilepsy in California. That is just California alone.
  This is a silent epidemic, and most people in America who are not 
conversant with what autism is do not even realize it, and many of my 
colleagues unfortunately do not understand the gravity of this 
situation. So tonight and every night I am going to be coming down 
here. Tonight I am talking about the study that was done in California, 
but I am going to be coming down here reading letters from autistic 
families, from parents of autistic children who have noplace to turn 
and nowhere to go, because when they go to the Vaccine Injury 
Compensation Fund for support and help, they are turned down without 
any review of their situation. We are trying to open that up.
  There is about $2 billion in that fund right now, and we need to make 
it nonadversarial. If children are damaged by vaccines, if they are 
damaged by the mercury in vaccines, then those parents ought to be 
having access to that

[[Page H3998]]

program as quickly as possible. It has been closed to them so far, many 
of them. We need to open it up with a 2-year look-back provision so 
that they can get in and have their case reviewed, because to have 
their child in that situation, to have them not be able to look at 
them, talk to them, running around flapping their arms, having chronic 
diarrhea and constipation is something that parents must not live with, 
and this Government needs to address this problem.
  California has talked about it in this report, and the Congress of 
the United States and the White House need to come to grips with this 
problem right away.

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