March 16, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
12:25
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| The decision to run a controversial documentary about vaccines has Robert De Niro at the center of a big screen backlash. | |
| But late tonight, a new twist. | |
| ABC's Eva Pilgrim has more. | |
| Tonight, the film festival Robert De Niro started Under Fire, the Hollywood heavyweight, initially defending the screening of a controversial new film that many are characterizing as anti-vaccine. | |
| Grievous harm to innocent children. | |
| De Niro writing in a statement why this is important to the actor and his wife. | |
| Grace and I have a child with autism. | |
| This is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, though he isn't anti-vaccine. | |
| That statement generating backlash on Twitter comments like disappointing and really irresponsible. | |
| The film is directed by Andrew Wakefield, who authored the faulty study that leaked vaccines and autism. | |
| That report now retracted and Wakefield stripped of his medical license. | |
| But the message from the medical community is clear. | |
| This is one of those scientific questions where science has provided an answer. | |
| Study after study have been done and have shown vaccines do not cause autism. | |
| And late tonight, a reversal from the star. | |
| De Niro telling ABC News that after conferring with scientific experts, he's decided Vaxxed will be taken out of the Tribeca Film Festival, saying he does not believe it contributes to the discussion I had hoped for. | |
| Eva Pilgrim, ABC News, New York. | |
| Okay, are we ready? are we ready? | |
| Hold on, let me turn my phone off. | |
| All right, ready to go. | |
| Okay, thank you. | |
| We're rolling. | |
| Great. | |
| So the first thing I wanted to ask you is just to say your name and spell it. | |
| My name is Del Bigtree. | |
| That's first name D-E-L. My last name is Bigtree. | |
| B-I-G-T-R-E-E. And what do you want your title to be on the screen? | |
| Vaxxed from cover-up to catastrophe. | |
| Oh, my title personally? | |
| Producer. | |
| Yes. | |
| Producer. | |
| Producer is the name of the film. | |
| Okay. | |
| Yep. | |
| So the first thing I wanted to ask you is what made you want to be involved in this film when the ideas first came to you to be a producer? | |
| I have been a producer on the daytime talk show The Doctors, the best medical talk show in the world. | |
| I'm known for doing stories that a lot of people don't want to touch. | |
| I've done stories about pesticides and GMO foods and pollution and how these things are affecting the health of people and their children. | |
| So I became aware of the CDC whistleblower story and I was beginning to investigate it and look into it. | |
| And that led me all the way to Andy Wakefield. | |
| And I met Andy Wakefield and discovered that he had been working with Brian Hooker and they had been speaking on the phone with a whistleblower from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control. | |
| And this whistleblower was saying that the CDC had committed fraud on the MMR study and that they believed that It was actually a connection between autism and this vaccine. | |
| And I looked at the data that the CDC whistleblower was providing to Andy and Brian, and it is the most compelling evidence of fraud I've ever seen in my life. | |
| And I realized in that moment that I was looking at probably the biggest story of my lifetime. | |
| And as a journalist, I realized it was a story I had to tell. | |
| And I had to help Andy Wakefield. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Did it concern you that Dr. | |
| Andy Wakefield had been accused of so many things and that his study from 2004 had been debunked? | |
| It's absolutely concerning when you think about the history of Andy Wakefield. | |
| When you look at a career I had, a great career as a medical producer on a great show, to leave that and work with someone like Andy Wakefield is, most people would say it's, you know, career suicide. | |
| So that's why I had to investigate Andy Wakefield before I ever went near this story. | |
| And I did all of my research and I looked very deep into the fraud surrounding Andy Wakefield and his career. | |
| And it would fill a whole book or a whole other movie if I was to explain to you every detail that I found. | |
| So let me just say this. | |
| The world lost one of the greatest scientific minds of our times when Andy Wakefield was taken from us. | |
| This was a man who was doing studies that were going to lead to healthier vaccines and better ways to take care of the health of our children. | |
| That, unfortunately, was going to cost a lot of money for the vaccine industry, and they cared a lot more about their industry and their money than they did about the health of children. | |
| And so I can confidently say, and I'm proud to be working on this picture, about the CDC whistleblower with Andy Wakefield. | |
| I'm just taking notes. | |
| So what's your hope for this film? | |
| What do you want people to take away after they see it? | |
| Well, the first hope is I want people to know the truth. | |
| I think that vaccines need to be made safer. | |
| I think money needs to be spent to do that, and more research and study needs to take place. | |
| What you realize when you look at these claims by the CDC whistleblower, Dr. | |
| William Thompson, is that the studies we have been trusting are not being carried out correctly. | |
| There's fraud taking place. | |
| I don't know where that ends and I'd really like a lot more reporters to start getting on this story and getting to the bottom of it. | |
| It used to be when something like this happened in the media that we would all jump on it. | |
| When a CDC whistleblower, a top scientist from the CDC comes forward and says, hey, we're committing fraud in here. | |
| I would have expected every news agency in the world to jump in there and investigate that story. | |
| And I'm amazed that this film is the only ones that are looking at it. | |
| So I want the truth. | |
| I want vaccines to be safer for our children. | |
| And I want vaccines to be tested with the same rigors that every drug we take are. | |
| There's this free pass being given to vaccines. | |
| And it appears they may, some of them, may be dangerous. | |
| And we're injecting these things directly into the veins of our babies. | |
| I want better testing. | |
| The people here that watch the trailer, it's scary and it's sort of ominous music and the wording. | |
| Is the intent of this film to scare people or more or less to just inform them? | |
| This film is just the truth as we have found it. | |
| And if that truth is scary, then I don't know what to say about that. | |
| This is not a sensationalized film, and if you see it, you will realize it's really just a fact-based movie. | |
| It's alarming. | |
| We all thought that this discussion was over, that the vaccine-autism link had been disproven and we could all move on. | |
| I know that I thought that and everyone I worked with thought that. | |
| Until new information came forward. | |
| New information from a CDC scientist who's involved in the exact study that we all point to when we say vaccines are safe. | |
| We're being told that's a fraud. | |
| And in our film, we show you the data and the proof that it's a fraud. | |
| If that's alarming, it should be. | |
| But we don't have to go out of our way to make it alarming. | |
| It is what it is. | |
| How is the information in this film different from the study that Wakefield came under fire for in 2004 and then again in 2010? | |
| How is it? | |
| Tell me that question. | |
| Is there anything new in this that he wasn't saying then? | |
| What's new in this story is that we have the most important health agency in the world that is supposed to be looking out for the health of children. | |
| And they are throwing out data and removing data and changing numbers on studies to make a vaccine seem safe. | |
| It's nothing like what Andy Wakefield was involved in, but it does point to this MMR vaccine. | |
| The MMR vaccine appears to be problematic. | |
| Andy Wakefield was just beginning to do research in looking at that, and the CDC actually did this study we're talking about because they knew Andy Wakefield was looking at it, and he'd spoken to Congress about it. | |
| So they went and did their own study, and it appears that they found the exact same thing that Andy Wakefield did. | |
| And when they saw it, what they decided to do was to hide it and cover it up. | |
| What sort of research went into making this film? | |
| I've spoken to... | |
| All right, so... | |
| I flew all over the country, and I've spoken to people from all around the world, scientists and specialists. | |
| We've had mathematicians and doctors all look at this, and we've spoken to people about their specialties. | |
| I've covered this as thoroughly as any story I've ever done as a medical journalist in my life. | |
| And the really sad thing is the amount of doctors I've spoken to that say to me, Del, I know that vaccines are causing autism, but I won't say it on camera because the pharmaceutical industry will destroy my career just like they did to Andy Wakefield. | |
| And that's where we find ourselves, being bullied by an industry that doesn't actually care about the health of our children the way it should. | |
| And what do you say to the critics of this film, the people that are angry that this is airing at the Tribeca Film Festival? | |
| I would say to the critics of the film, I thought in order to critique a film, you had to see the film. | |
| I find it amazing the pages and pages of reviews I'm seeing about my film, all based on a two and a half minute trailer. | |
| It reminds me of when I was in third grade and I kind of cheated on my book review because I hadn't read the book. | |
| What I say to the critics is, see the movie, and then you can have an opinion about it. | |
| But for major news outlets to be telling people, don't go see this movie. | |
| I mean, what's next? | |
| Are we going to have papers tell us to go out and burn books? | |
| This is about freedom of expression. | |
| These are about thoughts. | |
| We have a real whistleblower at the CDC. I'd like these critics to do their job and look into that story. | |
| We need help here. | |
| There's a major cover up going on and it's affecting millions of children. | |
| Is there anything else you want to add? | |
| I know that we're tight on time to bring this, you know, to make sure it makes air. | |
| I just wanted to say that this is not an anti-vaccine movie. | |
| This is a movie about fraud, scientific fraud committed by the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, the most important study body on health in the world. | |
| That's what this film is about. | |
| It's not about Andy Wakefield. | |
| It's not about me. | |
| It's about Dr. | |
| William Thompson. | |
| And people need to see this story if they want to know the truth about vaccines, if they want to get involved in making these vaccines safer for their children. | |
| I also want to thank Tribeca. | |
| It is such an honor as a filmmaker to be selected by Tribeca, one of the greatest film festivals in the world. | |
| I am proud that they have stood by their decision to screen this film in the face of immense pressure. |
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