UNAUTHORIZED IMUS TRANSCRIPT

The following is an unauthorized transcript of IMUS interview with CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson.

IMUS: Let's go to Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News, who had a report last night with Dr. Bernadine Healy about the possible link between thimerosal, a mercury based preservative, still in some vaccines, flu vaccines....and autism.  Good morning Ms. Attkisson

Watch the interview here:

SHARYL: Good Morning.

IMUS: I had Dr. Healy on about an hour ago.  The question I had for her is why did she want to get involved in this?

SHARYL: What did she say?

IMUS: Well, she thought it was important.  She really didn't give me a good answer.  She now writes for US News and World Report and the Vaccine Court cranked up...and she said she got motivated to get involved in this because of the Poling case, that child down in Atlanta.  So, I guess she did give me an answer.

SHARYL: Well, that's what she told me as well.  When she saw the Poling case, which had been quietly settled by the government but not announced last fall, it piqued her medical curiosity...and she started digging.  When she dug, what she told me was, she was very surprised to find the state of things were not what had been presented for the past decade.  Largely by public health officials.  The more she dug, the more she found out and the more curious she got.  She really had a sense of outrage, when she described for me, what she felt.  What questions were and haven't been answered.....versus what we have been led to believe.

IMUS: As I observed to her, I don't have an autistic child myself, thank God, however, because of David Kirby's book, "Evidence of Harm", which was based upon a statement the CDC or IOM made....they said they found no evidence of harm, no casual link between thimerosal and autism....which as Mr. Kirby pointed out...and seemed to make common sense to me....saying they haven't found any casual link is one hundred and eighty degrees from saying it's safe.  So, the people who think there is a link, and there is a wide body of evidence suggesting there is....they're characterized as being crazy.  So one of the things I asked Dr. Healy was, did she suspect she was going to be lumped in with those folks by all of her colleagues.  She didn't seem to care.

SHARYL: That's why I felt the interview was very important.  There are a lot of medical voices that have been saying the same thing, but, they are not well-known people.  I guess its pretty easy to paint them with a broad brush and call them (unintelligble)...and, they don't know what they're talking about.  I think its pretty important when someone with the stature of Bernadine Healy, the former head of the National Institute of Health, with a whole lot of credentials to her name.  When she says something like this, that agrees with those people who have been labeled somewhat off center, I think you really do pay attention.  And, it is newsworthy.

IMUS: I found it interesting she was also head of, as you obviously know, the Red Cross.  Any resistance from the powers that be over there at CBS to put this story on the air?  Apparently not, I guess.

SHARYL: No.  And Dr. Healy is no longer head of the Red Cross.  CBS News is very interested in pursuing any story that sounds like it has merit and value.  People would be interested in that.  So, that's where we went with this one.  They're familiar with Dr. Healy's credentials as well. When you mentioned how the government will sometimes say there is no casual evidence found...one of the things Dr. Healy pointed out....that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  The point she tried to make in the story we aired last night was....she believes they haven't looked and they intentionally haven't looked because they know what they might find.  They are afraid of the repercussions, people may not vaccinate their children at all.  She takes issue with that "all or nothing" mentality.  That people get all their vaccines on time...or get not vaccines....and diseases will come back.  What she said was "There is something in-between".  If you can identify there are susceptible children, you can handle them a little bit differently.  Then you can still vaccinate the population properly...but a little bit more safely and differently.  That was the point she was making in our piece last night. 

IMUS: That was the point that David Kirby made. When the government says they haven't found any causal link, you're right, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  It also doesn't mean these vaccines are safe.  Not only is thimerosal, a more lethal form of mercury than the mercury found in fish, still remaining in vaccines.  Aluminum, which is a neuro-toxin and formaldehyde....which is not only a neuro-toxin but a carcinogen as well.  The people who support safe vaccines are not against, like for example my wife and others, are not against children getting vaccinated.  They are simply demanding safe vaccines, which seems like a reasonable request.

SHARYL: Dr. Healy expressed herself as very pro-vaccine, over and over again, she's very supportive of vaccinations.  She was surprised about things like, studies that haven't been done that are very simple...and...she says would be obvious to do.  Like study those kids who are selected for vaccine court.....to see if there is a common factor we could find that would make them susceptible, either genetic or biological, or some other way.....to side effects of vaccines.  Also, I told her CBS News has found a number of cases as far back as 1991, that we were tipped off to, where the government has been paying brain damaged cases in vaccine court.  Some of which resulted in autism or autism symptoms.  At the same time, they've been saying publicly there is no reason to be worried about any association.  She said why aren't they tracking those cases.  So, I asked the government: "Are you tracking how many of your brain damaged cases you paid on for vaccines resulted in the specific kind of brain damage of autism?  And they said "No, we're not tracking it".  She said that's really unthinkable, that they're not even looking.

 

Comments

[Robin Nemeth]

Watching Imus interview Bernadine Healy, I notice that she says that there is no longer thimerosal in childhood flu shots.

Arrrgh! This is not true!

Right here http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaccine/thimerosal.htm#t1, on this FDA website, if you scroll down to table 1 (Thimerosal Content of Vaccines Routinely Recommended for Children 6 Years of Age and Younger ), you will see that there are influenza shots with twenty five micrograms of thimerosal in them! If she is unaware of whether or not there is a level of thimerosal in childhood flu shots that should be of concern, why does she make it a point to say, unequivocally, that there isn’t? Why can’t these people stop lying?

[Media Scholar]

There's a little more involved with Dr. Healy coming forward namely politics. The 1991 Merck memo from Dr. Maurice Hilleman clearly states that FDA CBER was directly asked by Merck officials if they had any consideration for going Thimerosal-free as several other countries were apparently doing at that time. Hilleman states that FDA did not have any.

Granted Healy was over a NIH, but the over-all implication is a document exists that suggests the epidemic began during her watch period.

Of course, the multiple dose demand would come later after Dr. Healy was replaced by the new Clinton White House as the first lady and her friends at Every Child By Two and the Children's Defense Fund pushed for a proliferation of mercury-laced vaccines.

The point is there has probably been new investigating by members of Congress going on and Dr. Healy now feels a sense to CYA. That's most likely the bottom line coupled with a desire to not conduct a vaccinated versus unvaccinated clinical study.

[John Stone]

There is, of course, another troubling point which Media Scholar touches on. While Bernadine Healy was right that epidemiology was a perverse way to research whether vaccine damage had happened in individual cases or sub-groups, the evidence is that in epidemiological study after epidemiological study the data had to be massaged quite hard, or heavily misinterpreted, or just very weak in the first place, to disguise possible population effects.

And we face difficulty that while the US vaccine court may begin to expose some of the issues, only a small proportion of cases stand to get compensated in relation to the entire problem - and really we need to be looking at wider government acknowledgement of damage and need. In the UK we do not even have a vaccine court, while compensation scheme settlements only begin to scratch the lifetime costs of the cases awarded.

[Media Scholar]

This is essentially two interviewers comparing notes. It is most interesting that they both talked to this Dr. Healy, and both are still attempting to figure out what she has up her sleeve.

The answer is she is advocating a close inspection of the Omnibus cases. Obviously, these cases have been fine-tooth combed already.

It will be interesting to see if this Dr. Healy will agree with a study of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated. Mrs. Don Imus was smart to mention this on Fox News.

[John Stone]

Why did Healy do it? She has chosen her moment carefully to break ranks - she may have wanted to do it for a long time - but she wants to be on the winning side. And she is telling her colleagues that if they do not back down, it will be the worse. So she is also trying to salvage the situation. The profession scarcely deserve it, and unfortunately they are all too unlikely to heed her call anyway. But she knows the time has come.

[Michelle O'Neil]

Sharyl Attkisson did an amazing job. Healy is a beacon of intelligence and common sense.