DIEDRE: Well, the Poling family's daughter, Hannah.....the government conceded in vaccine court, that the vaccines did cause, in their words "Autism-like symptoms"...and.....as I made clear yesterday on CNN, (with Hiede Collins, whose great by the way), that there is no valid distinction between "autism-like symptoms and autism".  It's autism.  Their child has autism.  It was probably one of the best days so far, for all these families who have a child with autism...because this raises a lot of awareness and a lot more questions that parents have been asking and haven't been getting answers to.  What do we do about vaccines?  Hiede even asked me that.  I talked about the mercury and other toxins in the shots.  But, there's a couple of things parents need to do.  They have to ask their pediatricians and ask the CDC to look at the schedule.  Many, many organizations are recommending this.  The vaccines must be mercury and toxin free...because they do contain aluminum, formaldehyde and some other toxins.  Aluminum is a neuro-toxin, formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, on top of the mercury that's in them.  Also, fewer shots.  When I was a kid and even in 1983, there were only 10 shots given before you were 5 years old.  Today, these children, along with Hannah, are given up to 36 vaccines.  Hannah was given 9 vaccines in 1 day.  There's a lot of pressure for pediatricians to get them in the office and give them their shots.  They do it out of convenience.  I have your child, lets give them the shots.  Even Ms. Poling, a registered nurse, said in the press conference she went in for her 18 month checkup and she had skipped some shots, so they gave her those shots as well.

IMUS; You're not asking, I know you're not because we had Wyatt vaccinated, we just had him vaccinated with thimerosal free vaccines.  So, you're not saying parents shouldn't get their kid vaccinated?

DIEDRE: No, that's not what I'm saying and that's not what any parent out there is saying.  What they are saying is the vaccine schedule needs to change.  Even Dr. Sanja Guptka said it last night.  That we're at a point here where we maybe need to look at the schedule because there are so many vaccines that we're giving to children.  They are getting so many and a lot are susceptible and it's ruining their immune systems.  So, fewer shots, given later in life and also spacing them out.  In fact, we did that with Wyatt.  I don't go in the doctor's office and he gets 3 or 4 or 5 shots.  I would ask they be separated.  You come back in another month, so you can space them out.  So as the child is developing, it's not so much of a burden.  At the same time, they have to be given shots without all these toxins.

IMUS: Don't they bunch these shots together for the convenience of the doctors and in a lot of cases for the parents it's an economic situation., where they have to take off work to haul them to a doctor.

DIEDRE: Absolutely.  Well that's why they do this.  Convenience and money.

IMUS: It's not just for them, it's also for the parents in some cases.  So what are parents to do?

DIEDRE: It's important now that this case is out.  A lot of parents that didn't know this or weren't paying attention....or heard it and their doctor said "Don't worry".  I think maybe they will, because Hannah Poling is only one out of many.  Even last night, they were trying to say this might be an isolated case.  Julie Gerberding from the CDC, their statement was unbelievable because they didn't address the issue.  The danger of getting that many shots with all those toxins and covering up with a vaccine schedule that should be made safer for our children.

IMUS: What they never calculate, even I understand, when giving these multiple shots to children with thimerosal,......aren't most of the vaccines now, except for the flu vaccines, free of thimerosal?

DIEDRE: Well, they contain trace amounts.  They call them thimerosal-free or preservative-free...what that means is there is still a trace amount in the manufacturing of vaccines...and they you put the needle into the child.  They used to say 24 micrograms, which is the full amount in flu shots, or, 12 micrograms.  They used to call that trace amounts.  So we still have a dilemma there, because trace amounts.......NO AMOUNT OF MERCURY......has been proven to be safe.  No doctor will tell you it's okay.  We know the smallest amount of mercury can kill cells, can destroy animal brains.  There are so many tests that have been done on this.  When they took out most of the mercury, they replaced it with aluminum.

IMUS: As I started to say, what they failed to calculate back when thimerosal as routinely in these vacines....if you add 25 micrograms for each shot and you give a kid 5-6-8 shots...on the Poling kid 9 shots....and they all contained thimerosal, the CDC or IOM, or whoever is supposed to think about it, injecting that into the bloodstream of an infant child would be more than a 550 pound adult male could take.

DIEDRE: Excellent point.  That point should be acknowledged because that is exactly what happened over the years when they accelerated the vaccine schedule.

IMUS: I saw the Gerbil, what's her name?

DIEDRE: Gerberding, she's head of the CDC.

IMUS: I saw Julie Gerbilding, saying this was an isolated case.  As you just said a couple of minutes ago, there is no way you could conclude all of the other cases are the same.  Aren't there a bunch of cases pending that are identical to the Poling's kid?

DIEDRE: Yes.  There's 5,000 cases just like Hannah Poling pending.  So its quite disturbing to have the head of the CDC make a comment like that.  You would think she would address making the vaccines safer and pushing for research.  She had that opportunity with everyone listening yesterday to say: "We really have to look into this to make sure because there is already enough of a connection" and all these other studies that have been done showing a link.  But they keep denying.  As you can see, this really exploded the issue.

IMUS" It reminds me of the tobacco situation.

DIEDRE: Oh my God.  It's very similar, if not worse.

IMUS: Earlier in this conversation, what was the woman you were on CNN with?

DIEDRE: Hiedi Collins

IMUS: You said she was great?

DIEDRE: Well, she asked questions that a lot of people won't ask.  She really wanted to know about the vaccines.  This has been an issue, you've been asking for years, nobody else will ask.  Finally you get people like Hiedi Collins and people at CNN now asking the same questions.

IMUS: Thanks for explaining the issue to us.  I know it makes people crazy and they want to pull their hair out, but they wouldn't feel that way if they met one of these parents who has a child with autism.

CHAS MCCORD: It doesn't now, not nearly as much as it did.  Because the Poling case is a wake-up call.