# Special Order: Autism

6/16/03

Congressman Burton addresses the House floor about how the mercury in
childhood vaccinations causes autism. He also notes the shortcomings of
the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund.

# Full Text

Mr. Burton: Thank you, Mr. speaker. Normally when I come down here, I
bring a litany of pictures, a poster up here to show the children who
have been damaged, their parents believe, by the mercury that\'s been in
children\'s vaccines. Since the 1930\'s, most Americans don\'t know
this, since the 1930\'s many if not most of our vaccinations for
children have contained a product called Thimerosal which is a partially
mercury. Everybody knows that\'s toxic to the human brain. And as
children started getting more and more vaccinations, which was required
by school boards across the country, the children were getting more and
more mercury injected into their bodies. My grandson received nine shots
in one day as an infant, and seven contained mercury. Within a matter of
a couple days he became autistic. People don\'t know what autism is
unless they have experienced it. He ran around flapping his arms. He was
a normal child, walked, and talked, and smiled, and laughed like other
children. But he flapped his arms, ran around banging his head against
the wall. Lost his ability to communicate and he wouldn\'t look you in
the eye and had constant diarrhea and constipation. I have received
thousands of letters from parents who have autistic children who are
convinced, as I'm convinced that the mercury in these vaccines, which
has a cumulative effect on the brain, was the contributing factor to
their autism. You know, about 10 years ago one in 10,000 children were
adjudged to be autistic. Now it\'s one in 200. We have a 50-fold
increase. It\'s the biggest epidemic we can remember, as far as children
are concerned. Yet the American public\'s not aware of it. Mr. Speaker,
we really have to do something about it. Now, back in the 1980\'s, in
order to protect the pharmaceutical companies we passed what was called
the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund Program and it protected the
pharmaceutical companies against lawsuits, but in exchange there was
money being put into a fund from each vaccination to take care of those
children or those adults that were damaged by a vaccination and it now
has \$1.8 billion. It was supposed to be a nonadversarial program. But
it\'s become very adversarial. And the parents of these children who
have had to mortgage their homes and sell their properties and do
everything to help their children who are going bankrupt. Many of them
to take care of their children, have not been able to get a dime out of
the fund. Many of those parents didn\'t get in within the three-year
time limit the law required because they weren\'t even aware we had a
vaccine injury compensation program, and many weren\'t even aware their
children were adjudged autistic. We have to do something about that. We
have to open that program up so every parent has access to the fund. If
we can prove that the mercury was the culprit in their children\'s
autism, they ought to be able to get funds from that fund to take care
of their family and take care of all the expenses that they are
incurring. We need to get more money for the idea program to help with
remedial education for these children that can be helped. If we don\'t
deal with it right now, Mr. speaker, in 10 years when these children
become adults n. 15 years when they become adults, we are going to have
a terrible problem, because they won\'t be productive citizens. Many of
them will have to be institutionalized and they will go on and on and on
becoming a burden on the taxpayers and will cost us trillions of
dollars. The parents of these children don\'t want to face that. So, Mr.
speaker, we really need to address in both the house and the other body
this problem to make sure every parent has access to the vaccine injury
compensation fund and has a fair hearing, their fair day in court. I
yield back the balance of my time.