Latest / Macroaggressions / #663: The Bequest | Andy Wakefield (Clip)

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#663: The Bequest | Andy Wakefield (Clip) · Macroaggressions

• 0:04
  Is it a collection of real-life events, perhaps, that are rolled into a fictional character?
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  Okay, you got me there, Charlie. Right. I'll tell you how it came to be. It's an interesting
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  story, unusual. And that is, I was an autism conference giving a lecture. And one of the
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  parents who had helped organize the conference, a mother, she had a teenage son, severely affected,
• 0:33
  nonverbal, and her only child. And she took me out for dinner that night. And over dinner,
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  she asked me if I would father a child for her. Now, you may think, well, an odd thing to bring
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  up on the Charlie Robinson show. But it wasn't it was what she was asking was symptomatic of a
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  very, very big problem in autism. And that is this, the thing that keeps millions of parents
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  across this country around the world awake every night is what happens to my child when I'm no
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  longer there. When I become infirm or die, what happens to my child? And I was so her motives
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  were entirely sincere, she wasn't interested in a night of passion with Andy Wakefield, what she
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  wanted was to conceive a healthy child to protect her son when she was no longer around.
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  And this is it, I was so moved by this request. So inspired, I said to her that night,
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  so I'm going to, this is a screenplay, I'm going to tell this story. This is a story
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  that the world needs to hear because what happens in these circumstances is the care of
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  the individual with autism falls to the siblings. But what if there are no siblings?
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  What if there aren't any? And having a child with autism is often a reason that parents cite
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  for not going on and having other children, we don't, we can't risk having another child
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  with autism. So it's a real issue and a devastating issue because the parents know that the world
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  doesn't understand their child doesn't care about their child and most certainly doesn't love them.
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  And so I wanted to write a story about this. And I wanted to do another thing as well and that
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  is to take it away from the issue of causation to not get embroiled in the vaccine issue.
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  That's got a life of its own now and indeed we're prevailing on that front. All the science now that's
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  coming in is says there is a major problem with autism and the childhood vaccine schedule. So put
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  that to one side, focus on this issue, what happens when I'm no longer there? And so I wrote
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  a Western. It's set in 1867 on the Oregon Trail in one of the harshest environments imaginable
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  on the American frontier. And I wanted to do that because I wanted for the mother and her child,
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  the protagonist and her son, I wanted to make this just the most brutal environment in which they
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  had to survive or not. And so that is the book, The Bequest, and it's a very powerful story, I
• 3:33
  think, but you're absolutely right. It's based upon a series of true events. It's based upon
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  reality and the reality that these parents face every day. Hey, thanks for watching that clip.
• 3:46
  If you want to watch the entire video, it is available as well or you can check it out
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  as an audio podcast, wherever podcasts are served. Thanks a lot.