Departments Of Labor, Health And Human Services, And Education, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 17, 2007)

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Mr. WELDON of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise to speak about an amendment that was introduced by me in the committee, and overwhelmingly adopted by the committee by voice vote. And I rise mainly to address the concerns being raised by members of the American Academy of Pediatrics and other members sending letters to the Congress from the public health community.

Let me state from the outset, as a physician, I strongly support vaccinating children and adults. Indeed, I gave a lot of vaccines. Immunizing kids against the flu is a particularly good idea. It prevents the kids from getting the flu, but it also, because children have bad personal hygiene and they tend to spread the flu around if they get it, by vaccinating kids and preventing them from getting the flu you actually prevent adults from getting the flu.

Certainly I believe the American Academy of Pediatrics is a great organization, as are the public health officials who do the work in administering these vaccines, even though they are complaining about my amendment.

Let me just state from the outset, my amendment simply implements the policy that the American Academy of Pediatrics established in 1999, when they stated, The Public Health Service, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturers agree that thimerosal-containing vaccines should be removed as soon as possible. My amendment does nothing more than implement that policy.

Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative that is toxic. If I brought some thimerosal to this Chamber, spilled it on that table, we would have to evacuate the Chamber. That is how toxic it is.

Now, in 1999, the manufacturers, in coordination with the AAP, the CDC and the drug industry, removed all of the mercury from all of the childhood vaccines in 18 months. They removed it from the DPT and the hepatitis B. Eighteen months after adopting that policy in 1999, all of the pediatric vaccines had been produced and manufactured without any mercury in them. And then in 2004, a decision was made to add flu vaccine to the vaccine scheduled for children. And since that time it has been very difficult for me to get the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC and the manufacturers to take this issue seriously and get the mercury out of the childhood vaccines.

And let me just also add, this is a bipartisan issue. I have a bill that I've introduced with Representative Carolyn Maloney from New York to get all this mercury out. There are many Democrats and many Republicans on this bill.

Now, some of the people who are opposing my amendment are actually claiming that children who were not vaccinated last year who got the flu died, and if there's not enough flu vaccine available, that more children may not get vaccinated and there may be more deaths. I would like to just simply point out that one of the issues here is public confidence in the vaccine program, and that many of these parents who didn't get their kids vaccinated maybe didn't get their kids vaccinated because they were concerned about the mercury in the flu vaccine. And, indeed, you might ask the question of the deaths that occurred last year, might some of them not have occurred if we had a mercury-free vaccine on the market?

Now, I want to refer to this chart briefly because I think this basically says it all.

In 2004, we were producing a little bit over 80 million doses of flu vaccine, and today we're producing over 130 million doses. But yet, officials have made no attempt to increase the amount of mercury-free vaccine that is being produced in this country. Mind you, the Europeans are producing more than enough mercury-free to vaccinate their kids. They have figured out how to do it. Mind you, I said earlier 18 months was all it took to get the mercury out of all of the other childhood vaccines. And why, after all these years, year after year, they say they want to get the mercury out of the childhood vaccines and they're not doing it. They're got getting it out of the flu vaccine. And they can do it and they will do it.

What this really boils down to, my colleagues, is an issue of leadership. CDC, AAP, the public health community has not exercised proper leadership on this issue, and it falls to us to do the right thing.

The language that I put in this bill is not covering this flu season, it's covering next flu season. They have more than a year to address this issue. I think they can. And that's why I put that language in the bill.

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