Sunday Bonus Podcast-Award Winning Journalist Cheryl Atkisson-Vaccines & Autism

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. You have reached the Michael Bari Weiss podcast, and I'm honored to have you here. If I could just take a few seconds to tell you a little bit about our show, how we do it, why we do it. We are big believers in American excellence. We are big believers in old-fashioned culture, treating a woman properly. being respectful to your parents, being attentive parents to our own kids. Those are the values that underpin more than party or anything else, everything that we do. And hopefully you hear that in every show that we put on. And in the process, hopefully we make you laugh a little bit as well. I want to say thanks to our show sponsor, Ray Breyer's, at The Pipeyard Inc. He buys and sells pipe. So if you've got a pipeline that you're abandoning, they'll come and rip it out and sell it. If you need to buy or sell pipe, this is my guy, you will talk to the top guy, and they will buy everything you have and loads of it. Thepipyard Inc.com. 409-788 pipe. 409-78 pipe. Turns out, at least according to my urologist, that all that talk about taking testosterone is bad for your prostate. That was based on one study that's been debunked. But you know what? Don't trust me. Do your own reading. Cross-reference. Learn more. Go to fixmylowtie.com. That's synergenics. That's who I use for my testosterone replacement. It makes me energetic. It makes me happy. I lost some belly fat out of it, which was really nice. And yes, it does that too. Fix my lowt.com. There comes a point where you don't want to go to the gym. You don't want to drive there, park, go in, be around a bunch of folks that are dropping weights and talking and waiting. You want your... fitness to come to you, to your living room, to your garage. You don't even need a weight set. They'll bring bands. Whether you're trying to recover from a stroke, a heart attack, you just want to get up out of the wheelchair. Petru in-home fitness. It's a breath of fresh air coming to your home every day. The older you are, hey, that's not a problem. Folks do it well into their 90s. Petru in-home fitness. The Michael Bari Weiss Show. Cheryl Atkinson is an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist and author known for her Fearless, and it is Fearless, reporting and her commitment to holding the powerful accountable. A former correspondent for CBS News, she was at CNN, she was at PBS. She now hosts the Sunday TV program Full Measure and the Full Measure After Hours podcast where she continues doing what she did, tackling stories that those in the mainstream media won't or can't. One of the stories she's covered is about the correlation between vaccines and autism.

One of the things we do here on the show is amplify the work of other people. If you enjoy this, I encourage you, at Kisson is not easy to spell. It's A-T-K-I-S-S-O-N. But you can find, and Cheryl, her first name is not easy either. It's S-H-A-R-Y-L. But her work is all online. I encourage you to support her. To watch more of what she's done, she does great, just brilliant investigative work. And hopefully we're going to deliver her some new fans after today by amplifying her work. Here we go. Year after year, autism continues to rise at an alarming rate in American children. One fact few would dispute. So why is the topic so toxic in debate? If you would want to hold a hearing on an issue like vaccines and autism. Your own leadership might fight you on that because of the financial influence, the pharmaceutical industry. No, they wouldn't fight you. They would kill it. It's dead. This week, we tackle the taboo subject of autism and links to vaccines as the Trump administration's CDC begins to actually follow the science. If you're living with moderate to severe plaquesiriasis or pre-1997, you rarely saw a drug ad. And that's because the FDA enforced the regulation. The new head of the FDA is promising to pump the brakes on what he's called pill pushers. We're going to crack down. This week, a new sheriff steps into the wild west of pharmaceutical advertising. After 50 years of striking fear in America's enemies, a farewell for a fierce airframe. Is there any other plane in the Air Force that can do what the A-10 can do? Not in my opinion. We look at an air base pivot toward the new face of war.

Welcome to Full Measure. I'm Cheryl Ackison. We begin today with America's still growing autism epidemic, a crisis that in terms of sheer numbers deserves much more attention than it's gotten over two and a half decades. The newest data updated every two years, continue to show an alarming climb. Today, at least one in 31 eight-year-olds have autism. That's more than 2.2 million children. One area that we are closely examining as the president mentioned is vaccines. At a White House event with President Trump at his side, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. announced a massive research effort to identify possible root causes, including food dyes, painkillers during pregnancy, and vaccines. One, two. Seven-year-old twins Drew and Dylan are taking a break from schoolwork, which can be a special challenge. Their parents, Kimberly and Demeek Adams, say they first knew something was wrong when the boys were toddlers. One, two, three. Their language started to regress. It seemed like their connection. was different around two, a little bit, you know, before two. And so they weren't responding to their names. So they were just regressing in some of their skills. I mean, did you go to the doctor and say, we're concerned, or did the doctor do some milestone test? No, my wife's intuition drove it. They enrolled the twins in early intervention and got the official diagnosis, autism. You do grieve, you know. You know, a lot of people don't talk about that guilt that parents feel when they get the diagnosis and they're heartbroken because we were, you know, because we didn't know what was ahead of us. Is it good? No. Drew and Dylan are among America's autistic children who are visible. They can go out in public. But more than 330,000 children have autism so severe they're rarely seen by the outside world.

Mary Holland heads up the nonprofit Children's Health Defense, which advocates on child health issues. What is the current status of how much autism is in the United States today? So the current data is that one in 31 children, age eight in the United States, has autism. Like many parents, Holland says her son regressed into autism after his battery of vaccines at age two. It was very clear there was no cogent explanation for what was happening to him other than he had had very serious toxic exposures through his early recommended vaccination schedule. There's no such thing as a genetic epidemic. It must be epigenetic or purely environmental. In simple terms, meaning... There could be a genetic component that predisposes somebody to the injury if they have some kind of trigger or other exposure. So you brought this out most importantly, Cheryl, in your interview with Bernadine Healy, who was at the time the head of, or had just retired recently, is the head of the National Institutes of Health. It sounds like you don't think the hypothesis of a link between vaccines and autism. is completely irrational. When I first heard that there was a link between autism and vaccines, I thought, well, that's silly. The more you delve into it, if you look at the basic science, if you look at the research that's been done in animals, if you also look at some of these individual cases, and if you look at the evidence that there is no link, what I come away with is the question has not been answered. This is the time when we do have the opportunity to understand whether or not there are susceptible children, perhaps genetically, perhaps they have a metabolic issue, mitochondrial disorder, immunological. issue that makes them more susceptible to vaccines plural or to one particular vaccine or to a component of vaccine like mercury. Probably there's a subset of people who have a certain genetic predisposition and when they come in contact with the mercury in vaccines or the aluminum in vaccines or all of the antigens, the formaldehyde, the polysorbate 80. There's all kinds of very toxic ingredients in the childhood vaccine schedule. Associations between vaccines and autism are loudly disputed, yet well documented in more than 200 scientific papers and court documents. In addition, autism once appeared on the warning label for a DTAP vaccine. The government secretly agreed vaccines triggered autism in a girl named Hannah Poling and paid her millions in a landmark settlement, but had the record sealed so the public wouldn't know. CDC's top immunization safety official, Frank DiStefano, admitted vaccines may trigger autism in vulnerable children like Hannah Poling.

CDC's senior scientist William Thompson claimed the agency covered up data linking MMR vaccines to autism and black boys. Famed pediatric neurologist, Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, reversed his original stance and determined vaccines can cause autism after all, but says when he told Justice Department lawyers, they fired him as an expert witness and covered up his opinion. And most recently, a study reported vaccinated kids face a 170% greater risk of autism. Both Democrats and Republicans have told me there's been a long-standing effort in Congress to protect the vaccine industry. If you would want to hold a hearing on an issue like vaccines and autism, your own leadership might fight you on that because of the financial influence, the pharmaceutical industry. No, they wouldn't fight you. They would kill it. It's dead. They don't even want to discuss it. It's dead on arrival. If you as an individual member want to take on the pharmaceutical industries, it's forget it. Can you describe an incident or just how that would go? It would typically be in a hallway or on the street and, you know, people would come up to you and say, you know, you really need to, you know, back off on this. It could be. It could be bad for the community or bad for the country or bad for you. For every study or allegation linking vaccines and autism, the industry and other vaccine defenders have lengthy counterpoints. No, vaccines do not cause autism. It just so happens that kids get several vaccines around the same time, that some children start to show signs of autism. But that's a coincidence, not a cause. Based on dozens of studies and everything I know as a physician and a scientist, there's no link between autism and vaccines. There are a lot of other chemical exposures kids are getting today as well. As someone who... focused on vaccines early on, are you looking at other contributing causes? We're also looking at the water. We're also looking at the air. We're also looking at the food supply. We're looking at the pesticides that are used. And we believe that it is a toxic load that we have to look at. You can't look at one factor. They integrate. They're synergistic. This past week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said no stone will be left unturned. Historically, NIH has focused almost solely on politically safe and entirely fruitless research about the genetic drivers of autism. And that would be like studying the genetic drivers of lung cancer without looking at cigarettes. And that's what NIH has been doing for 20 years.

In addition, based on NIH research, the FDA says it's approving a prescription form of an essential B vitamin for treating autistic children with speech issues. The American Academy of Pediatrics, funded in part by the vaccine industry, doesn't want any part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s effort examining autism when it comes to vaccines. The group says devoting more research dollars to answer a question that is already known does not add to our knowledge about the safety of vaccines. It does a disservice to individuals with autism and their families. by diverting funding that is needed to learn more about autism and how we can strengthen supportive communities. For their part, the Adams say they do not blame vaccines for their children's autism. With help, the twins have progressed from no language and few skills to conversations and interactions. One, two. I mean, we don't believe in a cure because I don't believe it's a disease, right? So it's nothing to cure. It's a neurotype, right? And so you have to get the right services in order to adapt to the way someone learns or someone thinks or the way someone's brain is wired. But when I tell you the what I got from a... how to how to love differently yeah it's nothing any child could have gave me as far as me as an individual evolving and developing right and i just think when people see some of these things they think of the negative right but like The special, like, joy I get in their milestones, the small, small incremental milestones that I just took for granted if I had a typical kid. Like, you can't beat that. For more on this story, listen to my podcast, Full Measure After Hours. If you like the Michael Bari Weiss Show and podcast, please tell one friend. And if you're so inclined, write a nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions, and interest in being a corporate sponsor and partner can be communicated directly to the show at our email address, Michael at Michaelberryshow.com, or simply by clicking on our website, Michaelberryshow.com. The Michael Bari Weiss Show and podcast is produced by Ramon Robles, the King of Ding. Executive producer is Chad Nakanishi. Jim Mud is the creative director. Voices, jingles, tomfoolery, and shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean. Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our assistant.

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