Bill Posey on CDC Whistleblower Dr. William Thompson and the Vaccine Autism Connection

Video Transcript:

Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida Mr. Posey for five minutes. Thank you Mr. Speaker. I arrive today on matters of research and scientific integrity. To begin with I am absolutely, resolutely, pro-vaccine. Advancements in medical immunization have saved countless lives and greatly benefited public health. That being said, it's troubling to me that in a recent Senate hearing on childhood vaccinations, it was never mentioned that our government has paid out over $3 billion through a vaccine injury compensation program for children who have been injured by vaccinations. Regardless of the subject matter, parents making decisions about their children's health deserve to have the best information available to them. They should be able to count on federal agencies to tell them the truth. For these reasons, I bring the following matter to the House floor. In August 2014, Dr. William Thompson, a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, worked with a whistleblower attorney to provide my office with documents related to a 2004 CDC study that examined the possibility of a relationship between Mumps, measles, rebella, vaccines, and autism. In a statement released in August, 20214, Dr. Thompson stated, I regret that my co-authors and I omitted, omitted, statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the Journal of Pediatrics. End quote. Mr. Speaker, I respectfully request the following excerpts from the statement written by Dr. Thompson be entered into the record. Now quoting Dr. Thompson, My primary job duties while working in the immunization safety branch from 2000 to 06 were to later co-lead three major vaccine safety studies. The MADDSP MMR Autism Cases Control Study was being carried out in response to the Wakefield Lancet study that suggested an association between the MMR vaccine and an autism-like health outcome. There were several major concerns among scientists and consumer advocates outside the CDC in the fall of 2000 regarding the execution of the Verstratian study. One of the important goals that was determined upfront in the spring of 01 before any of these studies started was to have all three protocols vetted outside the CDC prior to the start of the analyses so that consumer advocates could not claim that we were presenting analyses that suited our own goals and biases. We hypothesized that if we found statistically significant effects at either 18 or 36 month thresholds, we would conclude that vaccinating children early with MMR vaccine could lead to autism-like characteristics or features. We all met and finalized the study protocol and analysis plan. The goal was to not deviate from the analysis plan to avoid the debacle that occurred with the Verstratian Thummerosal study published in the Pediatrics in 03. At the September 5th meeting we discussed in detail how to code race for both a sample and the Berserative Get Sample. At the bottom of table 7 it also shows that for the non-Berserative Get Sample the adjusted race effect, statistical significance was huge. All the authors and I met and decided some bind between August and September 02 not to report any race effects for the paper. Sometimes soon after the meeting we decided to exclude reporting any race effects. The co-author scheduled the meeting to destroy documents related to the study. The remaining four co-authors all met and brought a big garbage can into the meeting room and reviewed and went through all the hard copy documents that we had thought we should discard and put them in a huge garbage can. However, because I assumed it was illegal and would violate both FOIA and DOJ request I kept hard copies of all documents in my office and I retained all associated computer files. I believe we intentionally withheld controversial findings from the final draft of the Pediatrics paper end of quote of the doctor. Mr. Speaker I believe it's our duty to ensure that the documents Dr. Thompson provided are not ignored. Therefore I will provide them to members of Congress and the House Committees of Ponder Quest considering the nature of the whistleblower's documents as well as the involvement of the CDC a hearing and a thorough investigation is warranted. So I ask Mr. Speaker I beg I implore my colleagues on the appropriations committees to please please take such action. Thank you Mr. Speaker I yield back. General Maniel's back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from California Mr. Lamolfe for five minutes.