INOCULATED: The Nationwide RADICAL Radio Tour…

By Kent Heckenlively, J.D.

The first radio interview for my new book, INOCULATED: How Science Lost its Soul in Autism was with Robert Scott Bell out of Florida.

Since then I’ve been on radio shows in Boston, MA (Frankie Boyer’s Holistic Talk Radio), Pittsburg, PA (Hank Baughman show), New York, NY (Dirty, Sexy Funny with Jenny McCarthy on Sirius XM radio), Phoenix, AZ (the fiery libertarian, Ernie Hancock), Palm Springs, CA (Law of Attraction Radio with Jewels Johnson), and even laid back, Santa Cruz, CA (Food Chain Radio with Michael Olson).

And more coming…

I’m currently scheduled for approximately forty-five radio shows with another twenty shows trying to figure out a time I’m available.

Why am I getting all this attention for a controversy, vaccines and autism, that’s supposed to be “settled science?”  Maybe it’s because in the summer of 2014 a senior CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, turned over more than ten thousand documents to the office of Congressman William Posey, alleging that in the early 2000s the CDC investigated claims of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine being linked to autism, and found that there was a link.

Did they rush to tell us that there was a link and it required further investigation?  No, they covered it up.  Since at least 2002 the CDC has KNOWN of a link between vaccines and autism and DONE NOTHING.

Maybe it’s because the Thompson documents are currently being investigated by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Congressman Jason Chaffetz.  Chaffetz met with autism advocates in the summer of 2016, spent more than an hour with them, and promised to get to the bottom of the Thompson allegations.  Thompson has applied for and been granted federal whistle-blower protection and is waiting to be subpoenaed by Congress.

Perhaps it’s because of the recent revelations that President-Elect Donald Trump met with Dr. Andy Wakefield in August of 2016 in Kissimmee, Florida, as well as other autism advocates, for a FULL discussion of the vaccine-autism issues and that Trump promised that if he won, there would be further meetings.

President-Elect Trump also promised Dr. Wakefield that he would watch his documentary film, VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe.

But the mainstream media would have you believing that NONE of this has happened.  For example, take a look at a recent article from Fox News entitled “Meeting with Trump Emboldens Ant-Vaccine Activists, Who See an Ally in the Oval Office”, published on November 30, 2016.

Here is the cheerful email the reporter sent me as she prepared to write her article:

Hi Kent,

My name is Rebecca Robbins, and I’m a reporter for STAT, a Boston-based publication covering health, science, and medicine on a national and global scale.

In this post-election climate, I’m working on a story about where people concerned about vaccine safety are looking next. I’m hoping to understand which policy changes at the federal or state levels that folks are focused on, and what the hopes and expectations look like with respect to a President Trump.

I’m writing to you because I saw your blog post on related issues: “Trump Meets Dr. Wakefield” (BolenReport) if you might have a few minutes to talk by phone this afternoon, this evening, or tomorrow morning? The story will run first thing on Wednesday.

Thank you,

Rebecca Robbins
Reporter

This is my reply to her:

Rebecca:

Thank you for your interest in this subject.  The full account can be found in my new book, INOCULATED: How Science Lost its Soul in Autism, available now on Amazon.  We are hopeful that four things will happen in the new administration.

 CDC Whistle-blower, Dr. William Thompson will be called in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee chaired by Congressman Jason Chaffetz;

 The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act is repealed and vaccines are returned to the traditional civil court system;

 The MMR shot is immediately made available as a single shot option;

 Vaccines are re-classified as pharmaceutical drugs, rather than as a ‘public health measure’ which will subject them to greater scrutiny.

All the best,

Kent Heckenlively

One would have thought that my helpful comments to this member of the fourth estate would have been met with something like objectivity.  However, here is the section about ME from her article of November 30, 2016:

“Other activists have their own wish lists. Kent Heckenlively, a writer active in the movement to undercut vaccines, laid out several goals for the Trump administration in an email to STAT. Among them: give parents the option to get the vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella administered as three separate shots. And hold a congressional hearing about alleged fraud at the CDC. (That’s an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that been circulating online for several years.)”

WTF?

I spent more than a year poring through documents provided to me by Congress, interviewed many individuals involved in the vaccine program, and wrote an incredibly fast-paced 365 page book about the Thompson case and that’s all I get?

Where is there anything about my credentials as having written a previous book with a twenty-year government scientist, my status as an attorney, my current job for the past ten years as a science teacher, my work for a United States Senator and the United States Attorney’s Office in San Francisco, the time I spent as a writer and editor on law review, or the fact that my college chose me as their Rhodes Scholar candidate where I competed against the very best and brightest of our nation?  Not even anything about my recent stint at Lawrence-Livermore National Labs where I was placed for eight weeks in a virus lab studying RNA expression in a monkey model of Ebola?

Most of this was easily accessible information if she had simply gone to Amazon and looked up my book or gone to my web-site, www.inoculated.org.  Heck, she could’ve even gotten a Kindle version of the book immediately if she’d wanted.

But I don’t want to spend too much time decrying the fading members of the fourth estate.  It’s a little like throwing rotten fruit at a murderer on his way to the gallows.  Sure, it’s going to give you a momentary thrill, but really, what’s the point?

I want to spend some time celebrating the NEW members of a vibrant and revitalized press who are earning the people’s trust by telling the truth, without fear or favor.

I have to thank Robert Scott Bell, who quickly booked me into his program, even though he had a very busy schedule.

Frankie Boyer from Boston was just wonderful, sharing her own personal stories of worries about vaccines dating back thirty years.

Hank Baughman, a fabulous former CBS newsman from Pittsburg, who told me he did not have his children vaccinated because of a powerful book he’d read many years earlier, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, written by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn in 1979.

I loved being on the Ernie Hancock show in Phoenix, even though he jumped all over me when I said it seemed like some politicians, such as Trump and Congressman Jason Chaffetz were starting to listen to our concerns.  (Yes, Ernie, I know, never trust a politician.  They just want to make us go to sleep and THINK they are doing something.  I’ll keep banging this drum Ernie, believe me!)

Even though she has been vilified for her stance by many, Jenny McCarthy again proved herself to be a badass by having me on her Sirius XM show and waving off the commercial breaks so I spoke for 25 uninterrupted minutes to her audience across America.  (She even mistakenly introduced me as “Kent Heavenly” before quickly correcting herself.  I think she has a little crush on me.  Don’t tell my wife!)

Jewels Johnson out of Palm Springs, CA is a leader in the human potential movement and told my publicist that I was her most important interview of the past ten years.  I also contributed an article to her magazine, Law of Attraction, which is now out on newsstands.

I had a great time with Michael Olson of Food Chain Radio and appreciated how he kept coming back to the “Avalanche of Autism” and noting that in 1980 the rate of autism was 1 in 10,000 and today it is 1 in 50.  When he opened the phone lines he warned me that he’d been getting negative emails about my appearance.  But each one of the three callers was even more adamant than the last that this was a real issue.  The first was a former “Nader’s Raiders” and member of the White House Staff, who said that the entire government from top to bottom is corrupt.   The second caller was from a family of doctors and he claimed his relatives in the medical profession knew the entire story about vaccines wasn’t being told.  The final caller was an autism parent who worried about her daughter’s future.  I was able to tell her about the wonderful work being done by Dr. Robert Naviaux at the University of California, San Diego, which I believe may recover a generation of children like my daughter, who still lack the ability to speak.

I really do believe something is changing in our great land, and I hope my book may be a small part of that change.  See you on the radio!

By Kent Heckenlively, J.D.