Members of Congress are rushing to dispel the notion that vaccines result in serious disorders such as autism, but that hasn’t always been the case.
About 15 years ago, the powerful House Oversight Committee held a series of hearings questioning whether vaccines could cause harmful side effects and featuring a number of parents who testified that they do.
At the time, members appeared receptive to their stories.
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Jeana Smith said her son Jacob’s autism began when his immune system was damaged by the Hepatitis B vaccine. Judy Converse said there was “no doubt” in her mind that the Hepatitis vaccine caused her son’s development disorders. Rick Rollens said his son’s autism was induced by a series of vaccines.
The hearings were led by former Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, who contends that his grandson became autistic after receiving nine vaccine shots in one day.
“There is enough evidence emerging of some kind of connection for some children that we can’t close our eyes to it. We have to learn more,” Burton said at a panel in April 2000. “I’m very concerned about the increased number of childhood vaccines. I’m concerned about the ingredients that are put in these vaccines.”
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Some members including the panel’s top Democrat, former Rep. Henry Waxman of California, urged caution in drawing any conclusions that weren’t supported by science. But lawmakers also appeared open to considering the possibility of a link between vaccines and autism.
“I believe we need to increase our efforts to understand the causes of autism,” Waxman said at the same hearing. “In this search, no possible cause including vaccines should be off the table.”
“We need to find out if there’s a link,” said former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. “And if there’s a link, we need to find out and go right back to the way the vaccine is made and what it’s made of because the problem may not be in our children. The problem may be in what our children are being given.”
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Since then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said studies show that vaccines don’t increase kids’ risk of autism. Nor does a mercury-containing preservative known as thimerosal, which hasn’t been used in most vaccines since 2001 but fueled some of the anti-vaccine fears.
Some parents aren’t convinced and have opted against getting their kids vaccinated, as evidenced by the recent outbreaks of whooping cough and most recently the outcropping of measles cases in California and several other states.
But lawmakers in Washington — both Democrats and Republicans — didn’t spend much time this week talking about whether the government should or shouldn’t require vaccines and who should get excused from them.
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Their message was pretty much the same: Get your kids vaccinated, period. The science supports it.
When asked whether vaccine exemptions should be done away with, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “It shouldn’t require a law for people to exercise common sense and do the right thing.”
House Speaker John Boehner said he doesn’t think there needs to be a federal requirement , but said he believes “all children ought to be vaccinated.”
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Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., went out of his way to make sure federal health officials clarified the official guidance on getting the recommended vaccines at a hearing otherwise focused on this year’s flu strains. And Rep. Mike Burgess, R-Texas, issued a plea to the public.
“For people listening, please have your children vaccinated,” Burgess said.
Senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday on the re-emergence of diseases that can be prevented by vaccines, where Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, will testify.
Even Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who was widely criticized for saying he has heard of children with mental disorders after getting vaccinated, quickly walked back his comment. “I did not say vaccines caused disorders, just that they were temporally related,” he said. “I did not allege causation.”
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