They get an interesting interview out of her anyway — "Temple Grandin Wants Us to Think Differently About Kids Who Think Differently" — but it starts off incredibly awkwardly:
During the pandemic, there has been a lot of discussion about who’s vaccinated and who’s not, and historically, a fear of autism is one of the things that antivaxxers — I will make only one comment: I have two Pfizers and a booster and a flu shot. That’s all I’m going to say.
Well, if it’s OK, I have another couple of questions about vaccines and autism, and you can choose if you’ll answer or not. That’s a subject where that’s pretty much all I’m going to say. I am glad that I have my vaccinations. I don’t have to worry about going to the hospital. I’ll leave it at that.
In the past, you’ve expressed openness about people who felt skeptical about vaccines because of — No comment.
Is it your understanding that the concern that certain parents have with vaccines is — No comment.
OK, I’ll move on for now...
There's a footnote at "In the past, you’ve expressed openness about people who felt skeptical about vaccines":
In a 2013 interview with The Times, when Grandin was asked about mothers of autistic children who suspect links between vaccines and autism, she replied, “I have talked to maybe five or six of those mothers, and that’s the reason I don’t pooh-pooh it.”
The interviewer David Marchese moves on to some other things, but comes back to what I assume is the whole reason for choosing to interview this well-known public figure now:
There are specific studies debunking the idea that vaccines have a causal relation to autism, A 2011 analysis of more than 1,000 research articles concluded that there are no links between immunization and autism, right? No comment. No comment. No comment.
You don’t think it could be useful for people to hear your opinion? No comment. No comment.
I got it. You better get it. Because I’m not discussing it.
Have you gotten in trouble for talking about this subject before? No comment. I’ve had my two Pfizer shots and my booster. If they require a fourth shot, I’ll be first in line, thank you.
Again Marchese retreats into other material, and after a while — showing amazing doggedness — he tries again:
I realize that maybe earlier I should have just asked this question bluntly: Do you believe vaccines can cause autism? I’m not discussing that. I will give you one thing about vaccinations: I listened to the news, and a doctor was complaining about having heart-attack patients die because they could not get into the emergency room because the hospital was so full of unvaccinated Covid people. And then I talked to this person that was not vaccinated about, you know, maybe all these people filling up this hospital killed some heart-attack patients. He said, I never thought about that. That I will talk about.
But why not vaccines and autism? I don’t want to talk about that.
I’m curious about your reluctance. I’m not discussing it. OK. There are certain things I don’t talk about because it interferes with stuff I care about. It’s that simple.
He really wanted her to get into that. I am going to guess that he had an idea for an article that it might be possible to write: Maybe Grandin would give people reason not to dread autism and perhaps to advise us that it ought to be understood in a positive light, as part of the rainbow of human diversity.
But, good lord, how many times should a reporter pressure the interviewee to talk about a subject she's put off limits? It's interesting to print the entire sequence, so that we, the readers, live through the experience of a reporter not taking no for an answer.
I've been interviewed a few times by a reporter who kept coming back to something he seemed to already believe and wanted me to say, so I like the transparency! And Marchese never comes out and states what — if anything — he's trying to get her to say, so this interview is much better than what I've gone through.