ms. boyd attended mississippi state and received her doctorate degree from ole miss. welcome to the committee. >> i would like -- >> oh, punch that button. >> i want to thank this committee and on behalf of many mississippians and families of autism i represent. and senator cochran's leadership as he's held meetings with various of us throughout the state of mississippi. in the late fall of 2005, our family was living in san antonio, texas, while my husband completed his surgical fellowship. my youngest child at the age of 22 months developed regressive autism. almost overnight he digressed from using words and sentences in two languages with fine gross motor coordination well above his developmental peers. to someone who lost almost all of those skill sets. it was as though a tornado had hit our lives and there was no end in the foreseeable future. at age 25 months, my son began a rigorous program filled with behavioral, speech and occupational therapy that has continued after our move back t

about the number of vaccines and how we set up that kind of a study that ms. boyd -- i think it was misspellms. halverson. i just do not know how to do it. you can see your kids are not getting immunizations because we will put them on a study. if you wanted to determine that, i do not know how you go about doing that. >> one of the reasons i wanted to bring that up, mr. harkin, there are so many families right now, and this greatly concerns me. i'm a vaccine proponent. i believe and vaccines. i believe there are a great public health achievement that we have ever had. i am a huge proponent of it. what i am concerned about, there are so many families right now that are not vaccinate their children. we do vaccinate our children. there are so many that are not vaccinating right now because of what they perceive as a huge risk. and so i am concerned that n theih and the cdc -- the nih and the cdc and people may have some interest into this. they are doing more harm to lower the heard immunization rates than anybody that is spilling out there to be concerned about vacc

. >> ms. boyd? >> of all senators, -- centers, this is where there are many people in the medical community, and i mentioned to the doctor that feels like this issue has not been appropriately evaluated, particularly also looking at some populations of the artisan community to look at whether there are -- are to some community to look at whether there many issues involved with that. she has articulately made those things out that are missing from the studies right now. -- played of those things out that are missing from the study is right now. i think it is imperative that we look at those particular studies. we already have populations of families that are not doing this anyway. absolutely, we should look at whether or not their children develop measles. but quite frankly, senator, measles and autism? >> if you have a choice? i had all those diseases when i was a kid. we have mums and measles and chicken pox and i had everything like that. >> [inaudible] >> i did not have it. i do not think i did.