Bachmann vaccine story spurs reward offers

WASHINGTON -- A University of Minnesota scientist and his former boss are offering more than $10,000 in rewards if the story GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told about a vaccine causing mental disability can be verified.

Bachmann sparked the controversy by telling Fox News and "The Today Show" after Monday's GOP presidential debate that a woman had come up to her and said that her daughter's mental disability had been caused by a vaccination against HPV, the human papilloma virus. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer.

The Minnesota congresswoman appeared to have scored points against Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the debate in Tampa, Fla., by attacking him for issuing an executive order that required sixth-grade girls to receive the vaccine. Bachmann called it "flat-out wrong" to force girls to get a "government injection."

Afterward, she continued to press that issue in televised comments.

"There's a woman that came up crying to me tonight after the debate," Bachmann told Fox News. "She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She said her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine."

University of Minnesota bioethicist Steve Miles is now offering $1,000 if the woman Bachmann described comes forward with medical proof that her daughter was left mentally disabled because of the vaccination. Art Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and Miles' former boss at the Minnesota university, went further -- offering $10,000 if the woman's claim is verified.

"These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public health harm," Miles said of why he made the offer. "It's an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed." Miles and Caplan said they are prepared to pay should the medical records be released.