Mr. Speaker, as we close the 112th Congress and I prepare to retire from Congress, I would like to leave a few comments regarding health related matters for my colleagues who will return to the 113th Congress. Throughout my decades in…
Mr. Speaker, as we close the 112th Congress and I prepare to retire from Congress, I would like to leave a few comments regarding health related matters for my colleagues who will return to the 113th Congress. Throughout my decades in public service, I have strived to give consideration to those whose issues fall through the cracks of our government, and to those who become targets of government authorities for daring to deliver or seek alternative therapies.
Complementary and Alternative Therapies: While Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I initiated a comprehensive evaluation of the role of complementary and alternative therapies in our health care system. During this time we heard from researchers, practitioners, and patients about the value that complementary and alternative therapies can play in our health system. These therapies include acupuncture, massage therapy, traditional healing systems from various cultures around the world such as Traditional East Asian Medicine, Kampo, Native American Medicine, Homeopathy and energy therapies such as QiGong and Reiki as well as the use stress management tools and nutrition and dietary supplements. These also include conventional therapies used for purposes not yet recognized as mainstream such as Chelation Therapy for cardiovascular benefit.
I hope my colleagues in 2013 will continue to protect access therapies and products so that Americans can continue to make their own choices in health care and retain their health freedom. I also believe a hard look at the management of resources provided to these issues is overdue. For instance, the first ever head to head research study looking at an alternative cancer treatment for pancreatic cancer as compared to the mainstream therapy was an absolute management disaster. Ten years, millions of dollars, and several federal investigations validating violations of patient protections by the academic conventional cancer therapy principal investigator has been swept under the rug by the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Too often, I hear that the studies that are funded, especially those on herbs are ``designed to fail''. After 20 years and more than a billion dollars, too little quality research on the therapies Americans are most interested has in has been conducted. When my colleague Senator Tom Harkin gave the initial instruction to the National Institutes of Health to ``investigate and validate'' therapies being used around the world, we all envisioned an aggressive campaign to go into the field and look at what is working an report this to the American people. Former Congressman Berkley Bedell championed this issue after being successfully treated with alternative therapies for Lyme disease and Prostate Cancer. Much good has been accomplished, but better work can and should be done.
In early 2013, the results of a national multi-site Chelation Therapy study will be published. I hope my colleagues will review this study and look to the history of how doctors who have provided this therapy have been attacked for daring to use a therapy approved decades ago by the Food and Drug Administration to treat heavy metal exposure in children ``off label'' for cardiovascular benefit. Medicine is increasingly recognizing that exposure to lead, mercury and other heavy metals have on the body including the cardiovascular system. Chelation Therapy may be improving
cardiovascular health by removing heavy metals. This study was attacked by closed-minded individuals who oppose chelation therapy and all alternative therapies. Sadly, we have lost a decade in looking at the benefits of chelation therapy in children as the National Institutes of Health reneged on its promise to conduct a study at the Clinical Center on chelation therapy in the pediatric population. The American people deserve honest inquiry into chelation therapy for all its possible benefits.
Keep in mind, 1 in 6 women of childbearing age are carrying a higher than normal body burden of mercury, and mercury is the second most toxic substance on the planet. Mercury in all its forms can be harmful especially to babies in the wound and in the first years of life.
We first became aware of mercury in vaccines after the FDA was required by our body to conduct an inquiry on the amount of mercury in the products they regulated. A new inquiry is due in 2013 to determine the amount of mercury still in all FDA regulated products. Congress will once again need to require this of the FDA. I am disturbed that in 2013 we continue to have mercury in any form in medicines and in other products Americans routinely use without the knowledge they are exposing their families to mercury. It is a travesty that public health authorities have discounted the risk of mercury in vaccines and other products because it is a ``trace amount''. The whole body of evidence on mercury shows it can be harmful and is best avoided. Sadly the American Academy of Pediatrics and the public health officials at FDA and the rest of the Department of Health and Human Services should be leading the charge to get mercury out of all medicines, and they have instead continued to protect the industry and not our children. It has been left to families who have formed organizations such as the Coalition for SafeMinds to fight for children to be protected from exposure to mercury through medicine.
Autism and Vaccine Injury: The Committee did not set out to investigate the epidemic rise in autism rates; however, in late 1999 as we were looking at reports of injury within the military form the adulterated anthrax vaccine, we began hearing about children being injured from vaccines and developing autism. It was a crisis we could not ignore.
Just as Bob Wright, the founder of Autism Speaks, recently testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that his daughter Katie reports that her son suffered a vaccine injury and developed autism, my both of my own grandchildren suffered vaccine injuries and my grandson developed autism shortly after he was vaccinated with multiple vaccines, exposed to high levels of mercury and suffered adverse reactions. We heard from thousands of families whose experienced similar injuries. Almost 5,000 of these families sought relief through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) as is required by law. Congress and the American people are repeatedly told that vaccine injury does not cause autism. Of the 5,000 families only 1, a little girl named Hannah Poling, has received justice in this program because her parents, both health professionals were able to document a mitochondrial dysfunction that was exacerbated by exposure to mercury and vaccine injury. The government conceded her case, but it still took years of negotiations and legal battles for little Hannah to be compensated. This program is not working at Congress intended and I hope my colleagues in the 113th Congress will conduct a thorough review of the management of the VICP and direct through legislation improvements to the law so that all that are seriously injured may be compensated swiftly, fairly and without long litigious battles. Sadly the autism omnibus proceeding was fraught with injustices. There was only limited discovery, many actions by government lawyers that in any other court would lead to disbarment, and an appearance of bias by the Special Masters who seemed to work as partners to Justice to defend against vaccine injury rather than to sit as unbiased administrators and many other matters deserve a thorough oversight review by Congress to insure the program operates as it was designed.
While government officials who settled the Hannah Poling case reported her mitochondrial dysfunction is rare, others reported that it is very prevalent in the autism population. Maybe as many as 1 in 5 with autism may have this same mitochondrial dysfunction. These same government officials have failed to share what their database of vaccine cases show--that almost since the inception of the VICP, the government has quietly been settling cases of vaccine induced brain injury that resulted in autism. The Elizabeth Birt Law Advocacy Center (EBCALA) conducted a review of settled cases within the program for vaccine induced brain injury such as encephalitis and seizures, confirmed dozens of cases in which the government compensated the vaccine injured. The way that the government has shielded this is that it is not listed as the primary injury. However, the EBCALA investigators validated through families and records that autism resulted from vaccine injury. There needs to improved transparency within this program. Every case that is settled should be published online in such a way that the public is informed what injuries have been acknowledged and the management of the program improved so that all cases for like injuries are compensated quickly. At present each report of injury is handled in isolation, with no discovery, no ability to refer to other cases and evidence previously accepted in cases, the program is wasteful in the use of its resources and certainly not fair to the injured. If we want to preserve vaccine policies in this country, it is essential to insure that the VICP works as Congress intended. I urge my colleagues to engage and stay engaged in investigating this program, talking to the lawyers and petitioners in the program, and improving it through legislation.
Autism: Autism in and of itself is a national emergency. We have gone in the time that I served in Congress from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 88 children age 8 on the autism spectrum. This cannot simply be genetics-- there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic. There are many issues that I urge my colleagues to address in 2013. The ERISA fix for insurance coverage of autism therapies such as Applied Behavioral Analysis is ``low hanging fruit'' for Congress. There is an urgent need to address adult and transition services for individuals with autism including those with higher functioning autism who, while often able to live independently as adults, are often under employed. We have a severe shortage of adequate housing for adults with autism who are no longer able to live with their parents. We have invested a billion dollars in autism research over the last decade, mostly on epidemiology and genetics. The autism community is frustrated that environmental factors are not given a greater share of the research dollars and that practically no funding has been provided to evaluate the dozens of therapies families who are able to pay out of pocket are using very successfully. Many of these are dietary related and alternative therapies and if there is ever to be insurance reimbursement, Medicaid coverage, or access through other government programs such as for military families, research to investigate for safety and benefit is needed. I hope my colleagues in 2013 will direct federal research resources to these much needed efforts in collaboration with the families and practitioners who have experience using them. The government cannot continue to sink significant resources simply into counting the children, without addressing the causes of the epidemic increase and focuses on prevention and treatments.
I am pleased that Chairman Darrell Issa committed during the November 29 autism hearing to stay engaged in looking at the federal response to autism. He is learning as I did while Chairman that the families and professionals involved in this community are desperate for Congress to do something to improve the Federal response, to hold accountable those who are subverting the truth about the causes of autism, and who have poorly managed the resources provided by taxpayers to get to the truth on autism and vaccine injury. I urge a review on how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has managed the Vaccine Safety Database, how Poul Thorsen was able to steal more than $1 million from the autism grant in the CDC-Denmark project, and why Diana Schendel of the CDC has continued publish studies as a co-author to Thorsen. Why does the CDC continue to promote his research after his federal indictment for 22 counts of wire fraud and money laundering? I am concerned that individuals at the CDC have participated in malicious acts of covering up the data showing a direct connection between exposure to mercury in vaccines in the first six months of life and an eleven-fold increase risk of autism. I urge the 113th Congress to shine the light of day on their actions and seek justice.
Military and Veterans: I cannot leave Congress without giving mention to the men and women of our armed services, active duty, National Guard, Reserves and Veterans. We recently lost one our own in the Congress, Senator Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran. All across the great nation, in veterans' hospitals, hospices and retirement homes, we are losing tens of thousands of World War II, the Korean Conflict, and Vietnam War veterans each month. Too many have no remaining family members to be with them and it is VA staff and volunteers who spend the last hours and days with them.
The signature injuries of the Global War on Terror of the last 12 years is Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (TBI/PTSD) I like many Members of Congress have been informed of the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy at 1.5 ATA for members of the military who have had concussive injury and developed TBI/PTSD. Professional athletes such as Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III who suffer a concussive injury are immediately provided access to all therapies that show benefit including hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT).
Sadly our troops not provided the same access. For a decade members of the military and veterans have been working to gain access to HBOT and other therapies and to have these therapies paid for through Tricare. Evidence show HBOT is both safe and effective, and unlike the anti- depressant, anti-psychotic and other drugs being handed out like candy by military doctors, do not have black box warnings for increased risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts. I urge my colleagues returning in 2013 as well as President Obama, the Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs to work together to make HBOT at 1.5 ATA (the validated dose) and other therapies as outlined in the TBI Treatment Act we passed twice in the House available to those with TBI/PTSD. Those who stepped up and volunteered to serve our nation deserve nothing less.
Health Freedom and the Constitution: At the foundation of all of my time in public service is the Constitution. The prevailing theme of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans are as important today as it was when I was first sworn in. As I leave Congress, I am grateful for the opportunity to serve the people of Indiana and the nation. I am grateful for all those who have worked with me over the years in my Congressional office and on Committee Staff. I am thankful to a God who has provided me strength and health to serve and pray that as we enter 2013 and I enter a new phase of my life, with a beautiful and intelligent wife and family whom I love, that new champions for health freedom will emerge.
