[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12118]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 AUTISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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 now I have been 
coming to the floor on a regular basis talking about children who are 
autistic. A few short years ago, one in 10,000 children in this country 
was autistic. Now it is more like one in 200. This is a 50-fold 
increase. We have an absolute epidemic.
  The major culprit in most people's minds is the mercury, mercury that 
has been in vaccines as a preservative. Since the 1930s and 1940s, they 
have been putting mercury in vaccines as part of a preservative called 
thimerosal. As children started getting more and more vaccinations, the 
amount of mercury in their systems grew and grew and grew. And now 
children get between 25 and 30 shots before they go to kindergarten. 
The cumulative effect of all that mercury in their brains is causing 
severe neurological problems for these children, their families, and 
the entire country.
  We did a report, a report that took 4 years in studying the problems 
with these vaccinations, and most people in the country are not even 
aware of the problem. A lot of people do not even know what autism is. 
But the fact of the matter is an awfully large number of these children 
who have been damaged and who are autistic, we believe and our report 
believes and shows, that they were damaged by the mercury that was 
injected into their bodies along with the vaccinations they were 
getting.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been coming to the floor for some time, and every 
time I come to the floor I talk about letters I have been receiving 
from families of children and pictures of children who are autistic and 
their stories about how their child became autistic. We have found from 
all these letters that the children get their vaccinations, four, five, 
six, and seven shots in 1 day, in many cases; and within a very short 
time after that these children who are normal, who make eye-to-eye 
contact, who laugh and walk and do all the things that normal children 
do, they change. They no longer communicate, they no longer look you in 
the eye, they bang their heads against the wall, they have chronic 
diarrhea and constipation alternatively. And the problems go on and on.
  I have a letter here from a fellow who says it has cost him his 
house. He had to sell his house, $45,000. He had to borrow money. He is 
in debt up to here, and he has nowhere to turn. The Vaccine Injury 
Compensation Fund, which was supposed to help these people, it was 
created to help these people whose children were damaged by vaccines, 
shows no hope.
  Many of these people did not get in within the 3-year time limit 
because they did not know what caused their child to be autistic. They 
did not even know their child was autistic because the doctors 
misdiagnosed them. So they missed the 3-year statute of limitations, 
and they have nowhere to go.
  So we are trying to get the Senate and the House together to work out 
a program where children can get into the program, can have their case 
reviewed. And if it is proven that they were damaged by the mercury in 
the vaccines, or the MMR vaccine, then they can get restitution from 
this fund. But we are having a terrible time because the pharmaceutical 
companies are fighting us because they are afraid of the liability they 
might incur.
  So we come down here every day, and we beat on this issue and beat on 
this issue and will continue to do that until we get some positive 
results, because these parents, and we have thousands of these letters, 
thousands, and it is growing every day, these parents have no place to 
turn. These children are going to grow up living to be 65, 70 years old 
and the taxpayers of this country are going to be taking care of them. 
That is the only place they can turn because the Vaccine Injury 
Compensation Fund is not doing what it is supposed to do to help these 
children.
  I wish everyone would look at these pictures, my colleagues back in 
their offices and those on the floor. These are normal children who 
were damaged by vaccines. Their parents have no place to turn, and the 
pharmaceutical companies have turned their backs on them. That is 
criminal and something has to be changed.

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