October 18, 2025 • 15 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show. Cheryl Atkisson 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
(00:22):
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
(00:45):
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 at kisso n, but you
can find and Cheryl. Her first name is not easy either,
it's Sha Ryl. But her work is all online. I
(01:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
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 lists.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So they wouldn't fight you. If they would kill it,
it's dead.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
This week we tackle the taboo subject of autism and
links to vaccines as the Trump administration CDC begins to
actually follow the science.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
If you're living with moderate to severe plax riasis.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Or nineteen ninety seven, you rarely saw a drug add
and that's because the FDA enforced their regulation.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
The new head of the FDA is promising to pump
the brakes on what he's called hill pushers.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
We're going to crack down.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
This week, a new sheriff steps into the wild West
of pharmaceutical advertising.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
After fifty years of striking fear and America's enemies. A
farewell for a fierce airframe? Is there any other plane
in the Air Force that can do what the A
ten can do?
Speaker 6 (02:34):
Not?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
In my opinion, we look at an air base pivot
toward the new face of war.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Welcome the 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 thirty one eight year olds have autism.
(03:21):
That's more than two point two million children.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
One area that we are closely examining as the president
is vaccines.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
But a White House event with President trumpet his side,
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior announced a massive research
effort to identify possible root causes, including food dies, painkillers
during pregnancy, and vaccines. Seven year old twins Drew and
Dylan are taking a break from schoolwork, which can be
(03:52):
a special challenge. Their parents, Kimberly and Demique Adams, say
they first knew something was wrong when the boys were toddlers.
Speaker 7 (04:01):
Their language started to regress. It seemed like their connection
was different around two a little bit you know before too,
and so they weren't responding to their names. So they
were just regressing in some of their skills.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Did you go to the doctor and say we're concerned,
or did the doctor do some milestone test or.
Speaker 6 (04:27):
No, my wife's intuition drove it.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
They enrolled the twins in early intervention and got the
official diagnosis autism.
Speaker 7 (04:37):
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 their heartbroken because we were,
you know, because we didn't know what was ahead of us.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Drew and Dylan are among America's autistic children who were visible.
They can go out in public, but more than three
hundred thirty thousand 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.
(05:16):
What is the current status of how much autism is
in the United States today?
Speaker 8 (05:21):
So the current data is that one in thirty one
children age eight in the United States has autism.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Like many parents, Holland says, her son regressed and do
autism after his battery of vaccines at age two.
Speaker 8 (05:36):
It was very clear there was no cojun 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.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And simple terms, meaning there could be a genetic component
that predispose as somebody to the injury if they have
some kind of trigger or other exposure.
Speaker 8 (06:05):
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 as the head
of the National Institutes of Health.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
It sounds like you don't think the hypothesis of a
link between vaccines and autism is completely irrational.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
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
(06:43):
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
(07:04):
vaccines plural, or to one particular vaccine, or to a
component of vaccine like mercury.
Speaker 8 (07:10):
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 eighty, there's all
kinds of very toxic ingredients in the childhood vaccine schedule.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Associations between vaccines and autism are loudly disputed, yet well
documented in more than two hundred scientific papers in 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
(07:52):
in a landmark settlement, but had the record sealed so
the public wouldn't know CDC's top immunization safe The official,
Frank DiStefano, admitted vaccines may trigger autism in vulnerable children
like Hannopoling. CDC's senior scientist, William Thompson, claimed the agency
(08:32):
covered up data linking MMR vaccines to autism and black boys.
Famed pediatric neurologist doctor 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,
(08:55):
a study reported vaccinated kids face a one hundred and
seventy percent 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,
(09:15):
your own leadership might fight you on that because of
the financial influence the pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
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, if you as an individual member, want to
take on the pharmaceutical industries, it's forgeted.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Can you describe an incident or just how that would go.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
For every study or allegation linking vaccines and autism, the
industry and other vaccine defenders have lengthy counterpoints.
Speaker 10 (10:08):
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.
Speaker 9 (10:23):
Based on dozens of studies and everything I know as
a physician and a scientist, there's no link between autism
and vaccines.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:39):
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 their youth, 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.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
This past week, health Secretary, Kennedy said no stone will
be left on.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Historically, NIH has focused almost solely on politically save and
entirely fruitless research about the genetic drivers of autism, and
I would be like studying the genetic drivers of lung
cancer without looking at cigarettes. And that's what AIH has
been doing for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
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 Kennedy's effort examining autism. When it comes to vaccines,
(11:43):
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
(12:09):
say they do not blame vaccines for their children's autism.
With help the twins that progressed from no language and
few skills to conversations and interactions.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
Who 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
(12:42):
someone's brain is wired.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
But when I tell you the the what I got
from a 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
(13:07):
the negative, right, But like the special like joy I
get in their milestones, the small, small incremental milestones that
I just just took for branded if I had a
typical kid like you can't beat that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
For more on this story, listen to my podcast Full
Measure after Hours.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
If you like the Michael Berry 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
(13:47):
Michael Berryshow dot com or simply by clicking on our
website Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry Show and
Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, The King of Dan.
Executive producer is Chad Knakanishi. Jim Mudd is the creative director.
(14:11):
Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean.
Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our
assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated and often incorporated
into our production. Where possible, we give credit. Where not,
(14:34):
we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the
memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be a simple
man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God bless America. Finally,
if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp
Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(14:59):
a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide free counseling.
The Michael Berry Show. Cheryl Atkisson 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
(00:22):
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
(00:45):
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 at kisso n, but you
can find and Cheryl. Her first name is not easy either,
it's Sha Ryl. But her work is all online. I
(01:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
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 lists.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So they wouldn't fight you. If they would kill it,
it's dead.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
This week we tackle the taboo subject of autism and
links to vaccines as the Trump administration CDC begins to
actually follow the science.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
If you're living with moderate to severe plax riasis.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Or nineteen ninety seven, you rarely saw a drug add
and that's because the FDA enforced their regulation.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
The new head of the FDA is promising to pump
the brakes on what he's called hill pushers.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
We're going to crack down.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
This week, a new sheriff steps into the wild West
of pharmaceutical advertising.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
After fifty years of striking fear and America's enemies. A
farewell for a fierce airframe? Is there any other plane
in the Air Force that can do what the A
ten can do?
Speaker 6 (02:34):
Not?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
In my opinion, we look at an air base pivot
toward the new face of war.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Welcome the 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 thirty one eight year olds have autism.
(03:21):
That's more than two point two million children.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
One area that we are closely examining as the president
is vaccines.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
But a White House event with President trumpet his side,
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior announced a massive research
effort to identify possible root causes, including food dies, painkillers
during pregnancy, and vaccines. Seven year old twins Drew and
Dylan are taking a break from schoolwork, which can be
(03:52):
a special challenge. Their parents, Kimberly and Demique Adams, say
they first knew something was wrong when the boys were toddlers.
Speaker 7 (04:01):
Their language started to regress. It seemed like their connection
was different around two a little bit you know before too,
and so they weren't responding to their names. So they
were just regressing in some of their skills.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Did you go to the doctor and say we're concerned,
or did the doctor do some milestone test or.
Speaker 6 (04:27):
No, my wife's intuition drove it.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
They enrolled the twins in early intervention and got the
official diagnosis autism.
Speaker 7 (04:37):
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 their heartbroken because we were,
you know, because we didn't know what was ahead of us.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Drew and Dylan are among America's autistic children who were visible.
They can go out in public, but more than three
hundred thirty thousand 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.
(05:16):
What is the current status of how much autism is
in the United States today?
Speaker 8 (05:21):
So the current data is that one in thirty one
children age eight in the United States has autism.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Like many parents, Holland says, her son regressed and do
autism after his battery of vaccines at age two.
Speaker 8 (05:36):
It was very clear there was no cojun 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.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And simple terms, meaning there could be a genetic component
that predispose as somebody to the injury if they have
some kind of trigger or other exposure.
Speaker 8 (06:05):
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 as the head
of the National Institutes of Health.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
It sounds like you don't think the hypothesis of a
link between vaccines and autism is completely irrational.
Speaker 9 (06:22):
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
(06:43):
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
(07:04):
vaccines plural, or to one particular vaccine, or to a
component of vaccine like mercury.
Speaker 8 (07:10):
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 eighty, there's all
kinds of very toxic ingredients in the childhood vaccine schedule.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Associations between vaccines and autism are loudly disputed, yet well
documented in more than two hundred scientific papers in 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
(07:52):
in a landmark settlement, but had the record sealed so
the public wouldn't know CDC's top immunization safe The official,
Frank DiStefano, admitted vaccines may trigger autism in vulnerable children
like Hannopoling. CDC's senior scientist, William Thompson, claimed the agency
(08:32):
covered up data linking MMR vaccines to autism and black boys.
Famed pediatric neurologist doctor 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,
(08:55):
a study reported vaccinated kids face a one hundred and
seventy percent 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,
(09:15):
your own leadership might fight you on that because of
the financial influence the pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
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, if you as an individual member, want to
take on the pharmaceutical industries, it's forgeted.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Can you describe an incident or just how that would go.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
For every study or allegation linking vaccines and autism, the
industry and other vaccine defenders have lengthy counterpoints.
Speaker 10 (10:08):
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.
Speaker 9 (10:23):
Based on dozens of studies and everything I know as
a physician and a scientist, there's no link between autism
and vaccines.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
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.
Speaker 8 (10:39):
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 their youth, 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.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
This past week, health Secretary, Kennedy said no stone will
be left on.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Historically, NIH has focused almost solely on politically save and
entirely fruitless research about the genetic drivers of autism, and
I would be like studying the genetic drivers of lung
cancer without looking at cigarettes. And that's what AIH has
been doing for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
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 Kennedy's effort examining autism. When it comes to vaccines,
(11:43):
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
(12:09):
say they do not blame vaccines for their children's autism.
With help the twins that progressed from no language and
few skills to conversations and interactions.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
Who 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
(12:42):
someone's brain is wired.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
But when I tell you the the what I got
from a 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
(13:07):
the negative, right, But like the special like joy I
get in their milestones, the small, small incremental milestones that
I just just took for branded if I had a
typical kid like you can't beat that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
For more on this story, listen to my podcast Full
Measure after Hours.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
If you like the Michael Berry 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
(13:47):
Michael Berryshow dot com or simply by clicking on our
website Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry Show and
Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, The King of Dan.
Executive producer is Chad Knakanishi. Jim Mudd is the creative director.
(14:11):
Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean.
Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our
assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated and often incorporated
into our production. Where possible, we give credit. Where not,
(14:34):
we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the
memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be a simple
man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God bless America. Finally,
if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp
Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(14:59):
a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide free counseling.
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