Re: Amatuer transcript of TODAY SHOW WITH WAKEFIELD

[Guest guest]

For those who may have missed Matt Lauer TODAY SHOW...the following is my amateur attempt to transcribe the gist of what was said:

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MATT LAUER: According to the CDC, autism affects 1 out of every 150 children here in the U.S....and..one doctor has ignited a raging debate suggesting some of those cases can be tied to a childhood vaccine...the MMR. His name is Dr. Wakefield and he sat down with us exclusively for his first in-depth interview.

LAUER: VOICE-0VER VIDEO OF PARENTS APPLAUDING DR. WAKEFIELD APPEARING SOMEWHERE ON STAGE.

"He's one of the most controversial figures you've probably never heard of"

WAKEFIELD ON VIDEO....SPEAKS TO AUDIENCE OF PARENTS:

"I encourage you to be stronger, stick together and unite...."

LAUER: VOICE OVER VIDEO IMAGES OF WAKEFILED WITH PARENTS GETTING PHOTOS AND AUTOGRAPHS

"But he has influenced and stirred the passions of millions of parents world-wide"

PARENT: I don't know where we would be without him...because no one would listen to us before him"

LAUER: VOICE OVER..."Dr. Wakefield is something of a hero to parents of children with the development disorder autism".

LAUER: VIDEO IMAGES...VOICE OVER:

"But, at the same time, he has outraged the medical establishment".

LAUER TO DR. OFFIT (First shown peering into a microscope): Do you think he's done a lot of damage?"

DR. OFFIT: I think this man has done a tremendous amount of harm and it amazes me that he doesn't accept responsibility for that harm.

LAUER: VOICE-OVER IMAGES OF A VERY YOUNG DR. WAKEFIELD (peering into a microscope):

"In 1998, Dr. Wakefield was considered a rising star, practicing here, at London's Royal Free Hospital....and....then he published a study in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal...suggesting a possible link between the MMR combination vaccine given to children to prevent measles, mumps and rubella....and...autism."

LAUER TO DR. WAKEFIELD: "What do you remember about the headlines, the day after the press conference?"

DR. WAKEFIELD: The headlines are always dramatic. The headlines in some newspapers were, you know, vaccine linked to autism. Now, I didn't know, I didn't have the proof...so...my concern was to see the correct message out there.

LAUER: VOICE OVER: "And so, Dr. Wakefield counseled parents not to use the combined MMR. Telling them in this video made by the Royal Free Hospital (shown) to "choose single vaccines...given over a span of time" instead.

WAKEFIELD: FROM VIDEO PROVIDED: I would recommend to use the single vaccines...you do not incur a greater risk of those diseases in the children.

LAUER: VOICE OVER: "His small study of 122 autistic children has given parents of children with the disorder something they desperately wanted...a clue...a possible answer to the devastating question: Why? And..for parents of healthy children a reason to be concerned about the MMR vaccine."

WAKEFIELD TO LAUER: 'They took their children to be vaccinated and then something happened.....their children fell apart".

LAUER: VOICE OVER COPY OF "THE LANCET"

"However, in the years following his publication, no large scale study could reproduce what Dr. Wakefield had found. In fact, those studies could find no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. One from Denmark studied over 537,000 children....another from Finland studied over 1.8 million children....and...so the medical establishment considered the case closed."

VIDEO IMAGE OF DR. OFFIT PEERING INTO A VIDEO SCREEEN

OFFIT TO LAUER: 'You now have studies, looking at hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children, who did or did not get the MMR vaccine, and the results were clear...MMR didn't cause autism".

LAUER: VOICE OVER IMAGES OF CHILDREN BEING VACCINATED

"Even though Wakefield says he only suggested spreading out the vaccines, many parents heard something different. Vaccines cause autism...and....a world-wide movement questioning the safety of vaccine was born".

VIDEO IMAGE OF WAKEFIELD AND MOM....WAKEFIELD SAYS: "I feel like the queen".

LAUER VOICE OVER: Dr. Wakefield's popularity in the face of the medical evidence disproving his hypothesis....is a source of frustration to many in the medical establishment."

DR. OFFIT TO LAUER: "He's a fascinating character. I mean, most scientists, when proposing a hypothesis, are open to that hypothesis being tested in a scientific venue.

LAUER: "It's healthy"

DR. OFFIT: Yet, he apparently isn't. Despite this amazing wealth of data that has shown his hypothesis to being incorrect, he still walks staunchly ahead, his head held high, and he's unwilling to accept all the data that has shown him to be incorrect."

VIDEO IMAGE....MOM "EMOTIONALLY" THANKING DR. WAKEFIELD

LAUER TO WAKEFIELD: "You could also say you are dealing with a group of people, parents, who are so emotionally involved in this....and....are desperate for answers that they, perhaps, have not examined the science carefully enough. They are simply looking for something or someone to blame...and....your critics say you've provided that for them".

DR. WAKEFIELD: 'No, what I am doing...and..what my colleagues did as early as 1995 at the Royal Free...and....beyond....was to answer their questions....to seek as doctors...to address the questions they posed, that you might have posed sitting across the desk about your child."

LAUER: 'Just the way you are talking to me right now....is what parents want to hear. It's what the people who talk about you say all the time....."This is a guy who stands up for those people who have no one else to turn to and no one else is listening to them....and he provides them some comfort or some answers. But, they also say, there's no scientific fact behind it"

DR. WAKEFIELD: "And, that's wrong. It used to be me, ten years ago...perhaps....there were just a few doctors doing this.....just a few. But now there are many, many, many doctors who are telling the same story and doing the same thing."

LAUER VOICE OVER IMAGE OF JENNY MARCHERS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

"And many more parents beginning to question vaccine safety....then deciding not to vaccinate"

VIDEO OF MOM: "I have to ask the likelihood of my child contracting a disease...but...I also have to look at the particular vaccination...and....look at the likelihood of a severe or fatal reaction to that".

LAUER: VOICE OVER: "Leaving the nation's pediatricians to deal with the collateral damage".

DR. OFFIT TO LAUER: "You've seen whooping cough outbreaks in the last 10 years, in this country, like we've never seen before. You saw a measles epidemic in 2008 that was bigger than anything in more than a decade. We have 3 deaths in Philadelphia, there was a death in Minnesota.....all perfectly preventable because of the false notion that vaccines cause autism".

MATT LAUER....CLOSING COMMENTS:

It is an enormously emotional debate. To see entire exclusive interview with Dr Wakefield in it's entirety, be sure to tune in and watch "A Dose of Controversy"....a special edition of DATELINE....this Sunday at 7:00 PM 6:00 PM Central time.