Speaker 1: Are we going to do it?
Speaker 2: Are we going to do the vaccine episode as a
Speaker 2: classic tonight?
Speaker 3: May?
Speaker 1: Maybe we should just Yeah, I hope it aged well.
Speaker 1: That's that's all I'm going to say.
Speaker 3: I think it did well. Let's say this original episode
Speaker 3: came out in July twenty nineteen. Yeah, it near months
Speaker 3: before a pandemic rocked the world and vaccinations became the topic.
Speaker 1: D jore all right, but an issue. We have to
Speaker 1: say this.
Speaker 2: We get accused of preseats not infrequently, usually when we're
Speaker 2: when we're exploring something, it's because our research has indicated
Speaker 2: what do we call it, a statistical inevitability, sure or certitude.
Speaker 2: This is very interesting. I love the point about how
Speaker 2: well or not well this has aged.
Speaker 3: Do you guys remember how pro vaccination we are in
Speaker 3: this Nope, We're a crazy pro vaccination is And in
Speaker 3: a way that is like us trying to be helpful
Speaker 3: because we're trying to go with the science and we're like,
Speaker 3: this seems like a really great thing on the whole.
Speaker 2: Guys, I think we also correct, we course correct the
Speaker 2: popular misconceptions about Tuskegee.
Speaker 1: This might be the one.
Speaker 2: Where, of course, people would be anti vaccination knowing that
Speaker 2: horrid piece of history. But we share this together, fellow
Speaker 2: listeners as a sort of time capsule.
Speaker 3: Time capsule that you may or may not want to
Speaker 3: inject into your ears.
Speaker 1: Or right into your neck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's roll it.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 4: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Noel.
Speaker 2: They called me Ben. We were joined as always with
Speaker 2: our super producer, Paul Mission Control Deca. Most importantly, you
Speaker 2: are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know, and it is a doozy.
Speaker 2: But first, as we've been doing recently, let's let's check
Speaker 2: in Noel, how are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm doing okay. I'm still kind of nursing this scooter
Speaker 1: injury to my arm, but I'm at about seventy five
Speaker 1: percent maybe last time I was at sixty five. Show
Speaker 1: steadily on the men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you've been shaking hands with your right hand.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it really sucks when someone has a really,
Speaker 1: really powerful handshake. It sets me back a couple of
Speaker 1: percentage points. My recovery.
Speaker 2: Powerful handshakes are such a literally a weird flex.
Speaker 1: I think so too.
Speaker 2: What about you, Matt, how's it going.
Speaker 3: I've been practicing my power shakes, my power handshakes. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm great. Everything's Everything's good.
Speaker 2: There's a new Magic the Gathering set coming out one
Speaker 2: of our one of our SuperMods. I believe it was
Speaker 2: Zach who recently had a birthday, So happy birthday to
Speaker 2: you u. Zach just pointed it out. We were talking
Speaker 2: on our behind the scenes chat.
Speaker 3: Nice. I'm still behind on all that I need to
Speaker 3: catch up again, but happy birthday, Zach, and thanks for
Speaker 3: letting us know.
Speaker 2: And your birthday's coming up as well, so act surprised
Speaker 2: and don't buy any magic cards.
Speaker 1: Oh you know what. We all have the same birthday month, right,
Speaker 1: except for Paul. Except for Paul on now Paul mission control.
Speaker 2: Paul I believe is in September. Paul, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs up, fu.
Speaker 1: Speaking thumb yes, he does well.
Speaker 3: Speaking of birthdays, we're going to talk about something that
Speaker 3: that occurs on well around your first birthday and in
Speaker 3: theory and then continues to happen to you and in
Speaker 3: scheduled times throughout your life, depending on where you live
Speaker 3: and if you decide to do it, if you can
Speaker 3: or cannot.
Speaker 2: Again depend on where you live, because in some places
Speaker 2: it is mandatory no if sands or butts.
Speaker 1: And perform and tell you the episode.
Speaker 2: For everyone who doesn't read the titles before they before
Speaker 2: they listen, what we're exploring today is going to be
Speaker 2: a bit of a hot topic, even for us, not
Speaker 2: the store. So as you're listening along, don't hesitate. If
Speaker 2: you have input, feel free to just pause the podcast
Speaker 2: and give us a call.
Speaker 3: Yeah one std w TK.
Speaker 2: You have three minutes. You can call back if you
Speaker 2: need to expound further, but make the best use of
Speaker 2: your time, and most importantly, let us know if you
Speaker 2: do not want us to air what you said.
Speaker 1: We're not going to stop the show to take your call,
Speaker 1: but we will get it eventually and then you know,
Speaker 1: use that on a later call in show.
Speaker 3: That's right. And by the way, we have entirely too
Speaker 3: many messages right now for me to go through all
Speaker 3: of them, so we might have to divide that up.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, Matt, that's on my list. I will
Speaker 2: I will take some of this burden off you and
Speaker 2: thank you for being a one man army.
Speaker 1: There, yes a lie. Just give me that Ring Central
Speaker 1: log in and I'll get the app and have it
Speaker 1: on my phone so it wakes me up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night too, all right, And.
Speaker 2: Speaking of speaking of waking up or being woke, we
Speaker 2: are finally doing it, folks, fellow conspiracy realist, true believers
Speaker 2: and hardcore skeptics alike. This is the episode on vaccination. Paul,
Speaker 2: can we get a dramatic sound cue?
Speaker 1: Perfect?
Speaker 2: Depending upon who you ask, vaccines are either absolute life
Speaker 2: savers human lives, not the candy which is awesome favorite
Speaker 2: flavors cherry obviously, or if you ask someone else, they
Speaker 2: may be something sinister pushed upon the population through false
Speaker 2: and misleading information. For our part here, we want I
Speaker 2: wanted to explore this by looking at the history of vaccination,
Speaker 2: the history of anti vaccination movements, sort of the shadow
Speaker 2: of vaccination that has been there for as long as
Speaker 2: widespread vaccination existed, and the current state of health today,
Speaker 2: with a little bit about the trends going into twenty
Speaker 2: twenty and the near to mid future spoiler alert, we
Speaker 2: do not get to everything. There will probably have to
Speaker 2: be later episodes about this, related both to feedback from
Speaker 2: our fellow listeners and different topics such as forced vaccinations
Speaker 2: in the military or in prisons and so on. However,
Speaker 2: at the offset, we need to be very, very crystal
Speaker 2: clear here we do have an agenda. We have a
Speaker 2: single agenda the four of us in today's episode, and
Speaker 2: that is tracing the causes and motivations behind various allegations
Speaker 2: of conspiracy in this subject. We were not prevented from
Speaker 2: making this episode, nor were we worn against it. We
Speaker 2: were not told to find some specific conclusion by any
Speaker 2: third party. I know a lot of folks have written
Speaker 2: to us and said, iHeart is making you do things guys,
Speaker 2: our show.
Speaker 1: They don't even listen to it. Yeah, I heeart does
Speaker 1: not care what we do. They've got big fish to fry,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. To be completely clear, we've never been told
Speaker 1: what to do or not to do ever, no matter
Speaker 1: what the parent company, and this is absolutely no exception.
Speaker 2: Right right. A few years back, I think we mentioned
Speaker 2: this previously. A few years back, we were asked by
Speaker 2: Discovery Communications to do one thing and I talked about
Speaker 2: this on Here's where it gets crazy. We were asked
Speaker 2: to do a They put out this fairly exploitative, manipulative
Speaker 2: thing purporting to be a documentary about the discovery of mermaids, right,
Speaker 2: and they asked us to do an episode as if
Speaker 2: it were a real thing, and we refused.
Speaker 3: That's right, We just made one about the folklore about
Speaker 3: surrounding mermaids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, we were super We were super shady to
Speaker 2: our pary company the entire time.
Speaker 1: And that's where the line between like sponsored content and
Speaker 1: fake news kind of comes in to play, right, Like,
Speaker 1: It's one thing to do kind of a hoax show
Speaker 1: to try to prop up some kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: big event television thing, but it's another thing to say, well, hey, okay,
Speaker 1: y'all do your thing, but we're going to do something
Speaker 1: that maybe is in the same vein as this, But
Speaker 1: we're not going to be your Patsy's and pretend like
Speaker 1: mermaids are real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to talk about mermaids, Okay, Well we
Speaker 2: would have anyway, but we're not going to we're not
Speaker 2: going to actively lie to people.
Speaker 1: And we're definitely not talking about mermaids today.
Speaker 2: No, no, not unless there's a big plot twist that
Speaker 2: comes in while we're recording. So the only people who
Speaker 2: matter to us in terms of this show are going
Speaker 2: to be the people listening. So the only folks who
Speaker 2: ever told us they'd like to hear this topic on
Speaker 2: air were your fellow listener and our own. So let's
Speaker 2: get started. The human species here, we are picturess in
Speaker 2: your head. The human species has a long, long history
Speaker 2: of distrusting vaccines, and in recent years, especially in the West,
Speaker 2: this has become a hot button issue all over again.
Speaker 2: Mission Control wrote to us off air, wanted us to
Speaker 2: want to make sure we mentioned Jessica Biel is a
Speaker 2: new I guess they're called anti vaxers now, yeah, don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that kind of labeling as a
Speaker 2: thought terminating cliche, but yes, a lot of celebrities are
Speaker 2: picking this up, similar to the way that many celebrities
Speaker 2: in years past fell for the propaganda about flat earth
Speaker 2: propagating on Twitter. It's so look, you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: a hot button issue now. Regardless of where you fall
Speaker 2: in the in the conversation, a few people have probably
Speaker 2: already pulled up their email or paused the recording to
Speaker 2: dial our phone number start writing to us. So this
Speaker 2: leads us to the question, what the hell has been
Speaker 2: going on here and for how long. To answer that question,
Speaker 2: we have to define what a vaccine is. So here
Speaker 2: are the facts.
Speaker 1: A vaccine is a substance that's used to stimulate antibodies
Speaker 1: or the production thereof, and it's meant to be a
Speaker 1: guard to increase immunity or provide immunity to prevent diseases
Speaker 1: that are able to be prevented by these vaccinations. And
Speaker 1: they are prepared from basically a little piece of that disease.
Speaker 1: That's the idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, We're creating an antidote from the original poison.
Speaker 2: Essentially to quote our asscience from dilated peoples, or to paraphrasem.
Speaker 2: So this is treated. Vaccines are treated just as you said, nol.
Speaker 2: They act as an antigen without inducing the actual disease.
Speaker 2: And antigen is a toxic or other foreign substance which
Speaker 2: creates an immune response in the body and helps your
Speaker 2: body teach itself to fight a disease. So I was
Speaker 2: thinking about awkward comparisons or analogies to this. Imagine if
Speaker 2: you could be shot with a rubber bullet that would
Speaker 2: function like a bullet but not kill you, and then
Speaker 2: later it just made you immune to bullets. WHOA, that's
Speaker 2: kind of that's very imperfect, but it's kind of similar thinking,
Speaker 2: except in this case vaccines actually work, and it's a
Speaker 2: powerful it's a powerful thing. The question is what are
Speaker 2: they meant to do and how do they work? The
Speaker 2: concept of vaccination is old.
Speaker 1: Old, old, old old.
Speaker 2: Several years ago we had a animated show for children
Speaker 2: called Stuff of Genius, where when we looked at great
Speaker 2: inventors and inventions, and we learned that in school, many children,
Speaker 2: especially in the West, are taught that the first vaccinations
Speaker 2: occurred due to the efforts of a man named Edward Jenner.
Speaker 2: Edward Jenner, according to the story, learned to successfully inoculate
Speaker 2: people against smallpox by infecting them with another related disease, cowpox.
Speaker 2: In seventeen ninety six, he inoculated a thirteen year old
Speaker 2: boy with vaccina virus cowpox and then demonstrated that this
Speaker 2: immunized the kid to smallpox. In seventeen ninety eight, the
Speaker 2: first smallpox vaccine hit the mainstream. Right was developed, and
Speaker 2: it is okay, I don't want to dismiss this guy.
Speaker 2: It is true that Edward Jenner changed the world. It
Speaker 2: is true that he is responsible in a very large
Speaker 2: and profound way for widespread smallpox vaccination. However, a lot
Speaker 2: of people are taught and have been taught that he
Speaker 2: was the first person to figure this out. That is
Speaker 2: categorically untrue. Vaccines and vaccination techniques are much much, much older.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you go back to Buddhist monks who would actually
Speaker 3: take some snake venom into their body, like they would
Speaker 3: drink it just enough to get or to confer immunity
Speaker 3: to it, or at least to get some immunity to
Speaker 3: this to a snake bite while they're walking around. And
Speaker 3: then you can also look back even well even back
Speaker 3: to the seventeenth century in China, when there was a
Speaker 3: thing called variolation where they would actually smear like cowpox
Speaker 3: on their body, like they would just put it on
Speaker 3: their body and then they would be immune to smallpox
Speaker 3: in the same way that Edward Jenner used, or a
Speaker 3: similar way that Edward Jenner used.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of like, who's the first one
Speaker 1: to decide it. I'm going to eat this mushroom, and
Speaker 1: you know, see what happens. Yeah, it's it's it's genius,
Speaker 1: but it's also so risky, you know, because I mean yet, like,
Speaker 1: if you're doing this thing with a snake venom, surely
Speaker 1: someone took too much and died and someone had to
Speaker 1: try it again take just the right amount to get
Speaker 1: the immunity. It's it's like a weird kind of like
Speaker 1: blunt instrument version of science, you know, but with human
Speaker 1: lives kind of as the collateral damage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of it's brute force hacking with high attrition.
Speaker 2: You talked about this too with an episode we did
Speaker 2: earlier on heroin and opium. You know, heroin and opium
Speaker 2: have done horrific things to the world wide community, but
Speaker 2: you have to at some level just respect the ingenuity.
Speaker 2: It's impressive how somebody figured out they saw a poppy
Speaker 2: plant and then ultimately they said, you know what, I
Speaker 2: bet there's a way to invent syringes to distill this
Speaker 2: into something else.
Speaker 1: It's gonna milk that poppy, right, something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so there's this huge, this huge swath of human
Speaker 2: experience that has lost the time. When we talk about this,
Speaker 2: accounts from the fifteen hundreds describe what is clearly smallpox
Speaker 2: inoculation in both China and in India. There's a guy
Speaker 2: named Joseph Needham who wrote a book called Science and
Speaker 2: Civilization in China, and he talks about this in volume six.
Speaker 2: In the Life and Death of Smallpox, it's noted that
Speaker 2: in the late sixteen hundreds, an emperor named Kang Shi,
Speaker 2: who had survived smallpox as a child, had his children inoculated.
Speaker 2: He was an early proponent of this and the Yeah,
Speaker 2: the method that he used was pretty gross. They would
Speaker 2: take they would take actual smallpox scabs, they would grind
Speaker 2: them up like mortar and pestle style, and then they
Speaker 2: would blow that into people's nostrils.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and hence the inoculation you can get by
Speaker 3: spraying in your nose.
Speaker 1: Now insulflation.
Speaker 2: Right. It's difficult to pinpoint when this actually began, and
Speaker 2: some sources will date this back as early as two
Speaker 2: hundred BCE, but that's still I mean, that's debatable. Nobody
Speaker 2: nobody was really saying, hey, let's record this for posterity.
Speaker 2: It's going to change the world, at least not to
Speaker 2: the degree that you know historians would hope nowadays. But whatever,
Speaker 2: and whenever the origin of this technology. Over the eighteenth
Speaker 2: and nineteenth centuries, systematic implementation of mass smallpox immunization eventually
Speaker 2: led to the eradication of smallpox in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: In the nation. That was a doozy of a senate's ben,
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: It was across the world.
Speaker 1: No, no, I know. But you had a lot of
Speaker 1: like immunization, vaccination.
Speaker 2: Implement Yeah, it was good. Sometimes they get carried away.
Speaker 1: No, no, it was. It was was brilliant. I had
Speaker 1: to hind it within the nation. But as you say, Ben, no,
Speaker 1: this is not just national, this is global. It's so
Speaker 1: crazy to actually kill a disease. Bill Gates is actively working. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what he says on this sort of stuff. And
Speaker 1: then we have several other big highlights for the pro
Speaker 1: vaccination community. Right then you have Louis Pasteur, who was
Speaker 1: working live, as we say, with attenuated live attenuated cholera
Speaker 1: vaccine and inactivated anthrax vaccines, working with human subjects in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety seven and nineteen oh four, respectively, for each
Speaker 1: of those vaccines. Then there was plague vaccine. Big deal
Speaker 1: was also invented in the nineteenth century. Between eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: and nineteen fifty, we started to see bacterial vaccine develop
Speaker 1: and that included the basilis kalamat Goren BCG vaccination. I'm
Speaker 1: perhouncing that right, which is very much still in use today.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about a lot of this stuff, right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't get much better once you figure it out,
Speaker 1: like that's the puzzle piece, you know.
Speaker 2: Well there, I mean, there are there are some things
Speaker 2: we got wrong or.
Speaker 1: Along one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, these are incredible breakthroughs. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm maybe there's a hot take, and this
Speaker 2: is just my personal opinion. I try to keep my
Speaker 2: personal opinion out of the show for big deal issues.
Speaker 2: But I would say I'm anti plague and I'm glad
Speaker 2: that I don't have it.
Speaker 3: That's a good idea.
Speaker 1: I think that that's a very respectable position. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: a hot take.
Speaker 2: Nineteen twenty three, guy named Alexander Glenny perfects a method
Speaker 2: of inactivating tetanus toxin with formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is bad for you.
Speaker 2: So that's one of our first dings against the vaccine.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 2: The same method that he used was used to develop
Speaker 2: a vaccine against diphtheria in nineteen twenty six, the same
Speaker 2: year that this building where we record the podcast was constructed.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, by a man named mister Sears.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 2: And then there was the Pretussis vaccine development. It took
Speaker 2: a lot longer, and the first the first good vaccine
Speaker 2: version of that was legal to use in the US
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty eight, but the development was a lot tougher.
Speaker 1: In between nineteen fifty nineteen and eighty five, we had
Speaker 1: lots of developments, advancements and viral tissue culture methods that
Speaker 1: led to the advent of the polio vaccine, the salk Or,
Speaker 1: an activated polio vaccine, and the saban which which is
Speaker 1: a live attenuated oral polio vaccine. Polio was a ravaging disease.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was such a problem for children. It
Speaker 1: was very communicable. Clothes had to be burned. It was
Speaker 1: just absolute, almost its own kind of mini plague.
Speaker 2: US presidents had it.
Speaker 1: That's right. No one was safe because there was no
Speaker 1: way around it. And now it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: distant memory.
Speaker 2: In most of the world, hopefully. Yes, let's look at
Speaker 2: the other side of this. While we talked briefly about
Speaker 2: the history of vaccines and You can find some wonderful
Speaker 2: work on this and other podcasts which we're glad to
Speaker 2: recommend if you're write. There is also a history of
Speaker 2: vaccine resistance, or what is sometimes called vaccine hesitancy, or
Speaker 2: what is sometimes called anti vaccination movements. It's tough to
Speaker 2: conjecture how local populations felt about ancient vaccination attempts. What
Speaker 2: you want my scabs, grind them up, blow them in.
Speaker 2: Who's knows why? These are good questions, But more modern
Speaker 2: vaccination technology has met some form of organized resistance since
Speaker 2: literally the early eighteen hundreds, right when the first widespread
Speaker 2: vaccination about smallpox came out. For some parents, the smallpox
Speaker 2: vaccination process itself induced just horror and terror and protests.
Speaker 2: And it's no wonder because Matt, you had mentioned this before.
Speaker 2: Could you describe the method a little?
Speaker 3: Uh? Sure? So the first thing you do is you
Speaker 3: take a child's arm and then you cut into it
Speaker 3: so that there's open flesh there. Then you take the
Speaker 3: the limph, kind of the seepage out of somebody who
Speaker 3: had a blister of small yah. Someone else in person too,
Speaker 3: who has smallpox. You take that stuff, that liquid, and
Speaker 3: then you put it into that person's arm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this person their only qualification needs to be
Speaker 2: that they are alive, and they were vacated about a
Speaker 2: week earlier, so it gave blisters time to form. This
Speaker 2: means that the person could be a stranger, They could
Speaker 2: be someone who is a different religion, ethnicity, or community,
Speaker 2: all three of which were huge deals back then and
Speaker 2: for some people still are today. And then now that
Speaker 2: person's blood or their bodily fluids are literally going to
Speaker 2: be in your child. Phrase it that way. That's how people.
Speaker 2: That's how people felt about it, and a lot of
Speaker 2: folks who objected to this, including local clergy, believed that
Speaker 2: the vaccine was Unchristian because it came originally from an animal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. And well, but thinking about all of that stuff,
Speaker 3: it really gives you a picture of the concept of
Speaker 3: herd immunity, which is the whole point of a vaccine. Right.
Speaker 3: You were literally sharing from one person to the next
Speaker 3: to make sure that we're all going to be immune
Speaker 3: to a disease.
Speaker 2: I don't even like to drink after people, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean? On a fundamental level. I get this.
Speaker 2: One time I was out with a family member and
Speaker 2: they were thirsty and they drank some water and I
Speaker 2: was like, burn it down, that's yours. Now I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't care how related we may or may not be.
Speaker 2: For other people who are against this movement. Originally, right
Speaker 2: when it was still very new, they didn't trust the
Speaker 2: smallpox vaccine because they were in a way they were
Speaker 2: they were skeptical of the science as it was at
Speaker 2: the time, because they said, you know, doctors, what do
Speaker 2: doctors know? It's not so long ago in this part
Speaker 2: of the world, when being able to cut hair meant
Speaker 2: that you were also qualified to perform amputations.
Speaker 1: Because you had, you know, cutty tools already just laying around,
Speaker 1: and you understood how the body works.
Speaker 2: And as we'll get more bang for your buck with
Speaker 2: your cutting tools exactly. And so they objected to Edward
Speaker 2: Jenner's ideas about how smallpox spread. They said, no, you're
Speaker 2: being foolish. This is fake news, unproven science. We all know,
Speaker 2: based on our personal feelings and our personal opinions, that
Speaker 2: this spreads because of quote decay in the atmosphere. It
Speaker 2: does not. Lastly, many people objected to the vaccination process
Speaker 2: because they thought it violated their personal liberty, their individual rights,
Speaker 2: and this just became worse as the government of the
Speaker 2: time developed mandatory vaccine policies. Because if you want to
Speaker 2: make anyone hate anything, just make it mandatory. Right, there's
Speaker 2: going to be at least one person who was like,
Speaker 2: this is bs the revolution begins. Now, it does not
Speaker 2: matter what it is.
Speaker 1: That's when you get the Vaccination Act of eighteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: which ordered mandatory vaccinations for infants up to three months old,
Speaker 1: and then you had the Act of eighteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: that extended the age requirement to fourteen year olds, and
Speaker 1: it added some penalties for refusal to do so.
Speaker 2: Right, and these laws were met with immediate and sciferous
Speaker 2: resistance from citizens who demanded not only the right to
Speaker 2: control their own bodies, but those of their children. And
Speaker 2: they said, you know, big government has no place telling
Speaker 2: me what to do with my family. The Anti Vaccination
Speaker 2: League and the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League formed in response
Speaker 2: to these mandatory laws, and a lot of journals popped
Speaker 2: up that were touting the advantages of avoiding vaccines and
Speaker 2: the disadvantages of having them, and these marches were huge.
Speaker 2: There was one in March of eighteen eighty five in
Speaker 2: Leicester which was the most notorious of its time, eighty
Speaker 2: thousand to one hundred thousand protesters. They were They had
Speaker 2: an effigy of Edward Jenner, they had a bunch of
Speaker 2: fake baby coffins as these carrot top style props. And again,
Speaker 2: this is like one hundred thousand people in eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: five when there were way fewer people in general. So
Speaker 2: that's that's fascinating. This was huge issue. But this so
Speaker 2: far has all been Europe. We're talking Europe. Now, let's
Speaker 2: talk about the Anti Vaccination Society of America, which was
Speaker 2: founded in eighteen seventy nine and was founded because there
Speaker 2: was a guy who was a sort of a polemical,
Speaker 2: controversial medical figure, a guy named William Tebb. He was
Speaker 2: from Britain, and he visited the States, and then after
Speaker 2: he visited people really took up the torch. And then
Speaker 2: this was far from the only anti vaccination league.
Speaker 3: It is, and we're also going to see, weirdly enough,
Speaker 3: that echoed in the modern era where a British scientist
Speaker 3: who's working in this area goes to the United States
Speaker 3: and starts a.
Speaker 1: Movement foreshadowing Yes, indeed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got two other leagues, the New England Anti
Speaker 3: Compulsory Vaccination League. These names are pretty great. You've also
Speaker 3: got the Anti Vaccination League of New York City, so
Speaker 3: that's eighteen eighty two and then eighteen.
Speaker 2: Which also the New York one has some modern successors
Speaker 2: today it does.
Speaker 3: So the American anti vaccinationists, they were, you know, they
Speaker 3: were engaging in court battles. They were trying to repeal
Speaker 3: a lot of these laws. There were the compulsory ones
Speaker 3: that they named their institutions after, and in several states
Speaker 3: they're working, including California, Illinois, and Wisconsin. And you would
Speaker 3: see it just continue to grow there, the anti vaccination movement.
Speaker 2: Yes, and then in the nineteen seventies and eighties there
Speaker 2: was a period of increasing litigation regarding vaccines, and this
Speaker 2: also led to decreased profitability, or it occurred concurrently in
Speaker 2: step with decreased profitability for vaccine manufacturers, and this led
Speaker 2: to a decline in the number of companies producing vaccines. Yes,
Speaker 2: Big Farma is already very deeply in ployee here or
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, right, profit motivated medicine
Speaker 2: one of the some we'll call it necessary evil, some
Speaker 2: will call it one of the greatest missteps.
Speaker 1: Of our species.
Speaker 2: That's it's definitely going to be on us at some
Speaker 2: point the bill comes due. So this leads to what
Speaker 2: could have been a very dangerous time for people who
Speaker 2: are pro vaccination or you know, as they would phrase it,
Speaker 2: anti disease. However, the decline gets mitigated because something happens
Speaker 2: in the US in nineteen eighty six. It's called the
Speaker 2: National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. And that's this was made
Speaker 2: because it is true that in some cases this is
Speaker 2: according to Health Resources and Service administration of the US,
Speaker 2: in some cases, vaccines can cause very serious problems. The
Speaker 2: one most often cited on their side is the severe
Speaker 2: allergic reaction that can affect some people, depending on the
Speaker 2: vaccine and their personal reaction to it. In these cases,
Speaker 2: this compensation program may provide financial compensation to people who
Speaker 2: file a petition are found to be injured by a
Speaker 2: vaccine that is covered by this stuff. And this doesn't
Speaker 2: cover all vaccines, but it did stop that decline. People
Speaker 2: felt a little less unsafe. The legacy of this era
Speaker 2: lives on in the present day in supply crises and
Speaker 2: continued media efforts by a incredibly dedicated anti vaccination lobby.
Speaker 2: Anti vaccination groups continue today. Twenty eighteen survey by Zogbie
Speaker 2: Analytics found that nearly twenty percent of Americans, about one
Speaker 2: in five people, believe vaccines are inherently unsafe. So what gives?
Speaker 2: Why are some people convinced there's something more to vaccines
Speaker 2: than saving lives and preventing disease? Will tackle the answer
Speaker 2: after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: So there's a root to this issue, and it's threefold.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, First, you're going to get into some kind
Speaker 3: of religious objection to doing this, whether it's something that's
Speaker 3: actually written in a scripture and a text somewhere that
Speaker 3: just talks about putting other people's blood into your body
Speaker 3: or just you know, some small thing like that. And
Speaker 3: also just you know, into specific religious reasons for not wanting.
Speaker 2: To do this, or even even the idea that this
Speaker 2: is an attempt to shirk a duty or a trial
Speaker 2: sent by a religious authority. It is not our place
Speaker 2: to go against the judgment of God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God has a plan and if I am to
Speaker 3: be sick, I will be sick and He will make
Speaker 3: me better as well. Then you've got concerns about personal liberty,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, I think that's right on the
Speaker 3: face of it, as we talked about with anything being mandatory,
Speaker 3: like if I do not have a choice to do this,
Speaker 3: then I'm not going to agree with it, or at
Speaker 3: least I'm going to object to it. And then the
Speaker 3: third ist skepticism or just all out rejection of the
Speaker 3: benefits that we all humans get from vaccination. And it's
Speaker 3: also accompanied by the belief of vaccines, you know, have
Speaker 3: harmed people over the course of the history of using them,
Speaker 3: and specifically though the belief that vaccines in general hurt
Speaker 3: people more than they help them.
Speaker 1: And more so, I mean, that's the one that really
Speaker 1: leans more into the conspiracy realm, where there's this perceived
Speaker 1: agenda that vaccines are used as some sort of controlling
Speaker 1: factor or some sort of this whole mandatory idea is
Speaker 1: the government, you know, it's it's just the thing they
Speaker 1: don't want us to know, you know, what the vaccines
Speaker 1: are actually doing.
Speaker 3: It's the one that's stuck around for the longest.
Speaker 2: At least, Yeah, it has the most staying power by far. Now,
Speaker 2: those first those first two objections still exist, and you
Speaker 2: can see modern cases of religious objections and you can
Speaker 2: see modern cases of you know, forget the science. This
Speaker 2: is a matter of personal philosophy, and your control ends
Speaker 2: where my personal space begins. An argument of liberty. And
Speaker 2: these objections, the ones from the stain power, the skepticism
Speaker 2: about the science, they go through a gamut of responses.
Speaker 2: Some will purport to be based on science, and we'll
Speaker 2: look at that more in a second. To some that
Speaker 2: would be you know, be called more conspiratorial in the
Speaker 2: mainstream media. In the nineteen seventies, the diphtheria tetanus and
Speaker 2: produces or DTP vaccine was blamed for neurological conditions in
Speaker 2: some British children, even though numerous other studies and subsequent
Speaker 2: studies indicated there was no close association with their quote
Speaker 2: brain disease.
Speaker 1: That's what they call them.
Speaker 2: They said it just biologically wasn't possible for the method
Speaker 2: or the mechanism that the vaccine used to cause malfunctions
Speaker 2: in neurological systems.
Speaker 3: And even though historically that was what was found when
Speaker 3: that nineteen seventies DTP vaccine saga that was occurring, you
Speaker 3: will still have groups who believe that, you know, this
Speaker 3: concept that there was no association coming from studies performed
Speaker 3: by doctors, and this is one of the you know,
Speaker 3: as we get into the more conspiratorial things, people will
Speaker 3: outright reject that conclusion and continue to believe that, no,
Speaker 3: that is an example of vaccines being harmful.
Speaker 1: Or question the source.
Speaker 2: So now you know, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme,
Speaker 2: as it's so often said. Let's look at the concept
Speaker 2: of mercury health effects allegations of neurological damage. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight, a British gastro enterologist named Andrew Wakefield published
Speaker 2: a report that linked the combination measles, mumps and rubella
Speaker 2: or MMR vaccine to autism and bowel disease in infants.
Speaker 2: This vaccine had been more or less routinely distributed since
Speaker 2: the early nineteen seventies. First things first, if this is true,
Speaker 2: if the science bears out, then this is a tremendous
Speaker 2: problem because tons of people have had this vaccine. This
Speaker 2: needs to be solved yesterday, you know, before this thing publishes.
Speaker 2: But the problem here is that subsequent researchers, nearly all
Speaker 2: of them, were unable to reproduce Wakefield's results. And that's
Speaker 2: very important in studies. In two thousand and four, an
Speaker 2: investigation by The Sunday Times revealed that he had in
Speaker 2: fact fabricated his research. So the Lancet where this was
Speaker 2: published with Drew's report and Wakefield was barred from practicing
Speaker 2: medicine in the United Kingdom. That's when he moved to
Speaker 2: the US and he doubled down on his claims. He
Speaker 2: said that, you know, he alleged there was a conspiracy
Speaker 2: by the Academy or the powers the be to shut
Speaker 2: him down.
Speaker 3: And this is where the echo of William Tebb.
Speaker 1: Comes in exactly.
Speaker 2: And he directed a film called Vaxed from Cover Up
Speaker 2: to Catastrophe in twenty sixteen, which several of us have
Speaker 2: probably seen.
Speaker 1: I watched it as well.
Speaker 2: This was not a fringe figure at this time, not
Speaker 2: near as much as some of us might think just
Speaker 2: hearing that information. In fact, he attended the inauguration ball
Speaker 2: of the current president in twenty sixteen, So it's not
Speaker 2: like he is. It's not like he's being entirely dismissed
Speaker 2: in the US, right, correct. And then going back to
Speaker 2: the claims of the claims that there is a poisonous
Speaker 2: ingredient in vaccines, right that the rubber bullet is still
Speaker 2: a bullet. Let's talk about something called fail mercal, theemerosol,
Speaker 2: as it's spelled differently in the UK and US. It's
Speaker 2: an anti fungal preservative and it's been used in small
Speaker 2: amounts in different multidose vaccines, multi dose vaccines. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that you get dosed for multiple diseases. It means
Speaker 2: that the vaccine comes in a container or a vial
Speaker 2: and you use it for multiple patients. Right, like a
Speaker 2: two liter of soda here, you would expect your friends
Speaker 2: have cups. We're not just each guzzling one unless it's
Speaker 2: a game night, right. So this stuff, this anti fungal substance,
Speaker 2: was included in these vials and these multi dose vaccines
Speaker 2: to prevent them from becoming contaminated as they were used
Speaker 2: across multiple patients. So it works as a preservative. It's
Speaker 2: controversial because this substance contains mercury, which studies do conclusively
Speaker 2: show is super bad for you. Don't play like, have
Speaker 2: you ever played with aometer? Do you guys ever break
Speaker 2: mercury into it? Yeah? Really it's so Coolowah, it's not
Speaker 2: a good idea.
Speaker 3: It don't do it.
Speaker 2: It amids poisonous fumes. Don't let it touch your skin,
Speaker 2: but man.
Speaker 3: And really don't drink it. Ever. Let's say you're working
Speaker 3: with a Flint River, don't don't drink.
Speaker 2: It or you know, even if you watch T one
Speaker 2: thousand in the Terminator films, don't try to build one
Speaker 2: out of mercury, which is what I did.
Speaker 1: That was liquid medal, Right, liquid medal.
Speaker 3: Without getting off too far out of track here, did
Speaker 3: you see with the the Flint River water crisis. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's an update with all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the claims got rejected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're shutting down essentially the prosecution or they're
Speaker 3: not going to prosecute anyone, but they're gonna reach, like
Speaker 3: I reinvestigate basically.
Speaker 2: The water still burns. Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, those
Speaker 2: people are probably not going to see a day in jail.
Speaker 2: The folks who were who were largely responsible, and to
Speaker 2: be fair, there's a little we did an episode on this.
Speaker 3: We did.
Speaker 2: It's an important update. Yeah, because once something leaves the news,
Speaker 2: it's very easy for the legal shan against to begin
Speaker 2: when the world doesn't have its eye on things, right, So, yes,
Speaker 2: mercury is terrible. Apologies to Flint, Michigan. We've had and
Speaker 2: thank you so much to some of our fellow listeners
Speaker 2: who wrote in from Flint and the surrounding area to
Speaker 2: let us know that this story continues even if CNN
Speaker 2: is not paying attention to it.
Speaker 3: In that case, it was lead. By the way, I
Speaker 3: don't know why my tangent went from mercury to lead contamination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there you go contamination. And also, yeah, when
Speaker 2: I say the water still burns, it's a bit hyperbole.
Speaker 2: The places where water tends to burn are places that
Speaker 2: have been contaminated by cracking. Yeah, which is a real thing. Still,
Speaker 2: back to vaccines. In nineteen ninety nine, the CDC Center
Speaker 2: for Disease Control, It's health the subject of no small
Speaker 2: amount of conspiracy theories, and the American Academy of Pediatrics
Speaker 2: or the AAP asked vaccine makers to remove this theomercal,
Speaker 2: from vaccines as quickly as possible. They said, just to
Speaker 2: be safe, Just to be safe. Mercury is bad for you.
Speaker 2: We all know that. Let's let's get it out of here.
Speaker 2: He's out of here three strikes or before three strikes occur.
Speaker 2: Let's not hit anyone with this. So now this substance
Speaker 2: is absent from the vast majority of vaccines in Europe
Speaker 2: and the US, except for some preparations of the flu vaccine,
Speaker 2: So make your choice. No, no, no, kitty. There are trace
Speaker 2: amounts that are in some vaccines due to production processes.
Speaker 2: What that means is that the people actually manufacture the vaccines,
Speaker 2: who are not necessarily the people who invented or discovered them,
Speaker 2: say hey, we've got the system in place that already works.
Speaker 2: It's tremendously expensive and may be dangerous for us to
Speaker 2: change it, so we have to keep this in and
Speaker 2: for anyone wondering this mercury. Mercury bearing substance occurs at
Speaker 2: around a maximum of one microgram in some vaccines. That's
Speaker 2: about fifteen percent of the average daily mercury intake in
Speaker 2: the US, which is a thing, in case you didn't know,
Speaker 2: there's daily mercury intake for all seafood fans out there.
Speaker 1: There's allowable limits of all kinds of toxins, right, arsenic, yeah, rap,
Speaker 1: v sason, cereal.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's how it works. That's fifteen percent of
Speaker 2: the daily intake for US adults, two point five percent
Speaker 2: of the daily level considered tolerable by the World Health
Speaker 2: Organization who Yes, Yes, the World Health Organization. The presence
Speaker 2: of the this mercury bearing substance in vaccines is one
Speaker 2: of the primary reasons that some people and organizations link
Speaker 2: vaccines and vaccinations to incidences of autism. What exactly is
Speaker 2: autism other than something deserving an episode entirely of its own.
Speaker 2: We'll answer this after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: We've returned.
Speaker 2: Autism as it's commonly called, or autism spectrum disorder ASD,
Speaker 2: as it's named officially, refers to a broad range of conditions.
Speaker 2: They're characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech,
Speaker 2: and nonverbal communication. According again to the CDC Centers for
Speaker 2: Disease Control, autism effects an estimated one in fifty nine
Speaker 2: children in the United States today. We know there's not
Speaker 2: saying something first off, Autism isn't cancer, But saying something
Speaker 2: is autism is a lot like saying something is cancer.
Speaker 2: It's sort of an umbrella terms for many different types
Speaker 2: of things.
Speaker 3: That's why that spectrum ispects so important.
Speaker 2: And they're most often influenced by a combination of genetic
Speaker 2: and environmental factors. Science even now in twenty nineteen, is
Speaker 2: still attempting to understand how those factors combine to create
Speaker 2: conditions or events on this spectrum, and how best to
Speaker 2: help people who live with a condition from the ASD,
Speaker 2: whether that's you know, as Berger's or whether it is
Speaker 2: some sort of I believe the correct terminology is profound autism.
Speaker 2: Is that correct, Matt?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's all there's all kinds of things functioning,
Speaker 3: non functioning, verbal, nonverbal, all that that we kind of
Speaker 3: discussed already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So, multiple studies from various groups like the National Academy
Speaker 2: of Sciences in the UK and so on, have not
Speaker 2: verified a link between vaccination and this condition. And Wakefield's research,
Speaker 2: although it's been soundly dismissed by mainstream medicine, is still
Speaker 2: cited by a lot of anti vaccination groups, and sometimes
Speaker 2: depending on the group, and depending on the tone of
Speaker 2: the group or the agenda of the group, you will
Speaker 2: also run into some conspiratorial stuff. Some groups will just
Speaker 2: cite it without citing other studies that outnumber it and
Speaker 2: contradict it, or some other groups maybe a little further
Speaker 2: out there, will say that will intimate or kind of
Speaker 2: kind of allude to some great cover up of Wakefield's research.
Speaker 2: This leads us to another medical concern, the concept of
Speaker 2: vaccine overload, which is something that might not be familiar
Speaker 2: to people, but it's an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: So vaccine overload, which is a non medical term, refers
Speaker 1: to this idea that giving lots of vaccines in one
Speaker 1: go could overwhelm or weaken a child's very you know,
Speaker 1: developing immune system and lead to adverse effects. So, for example,
Speaker 1: when when my kid got vaccinated, we broke it up
Speaker 1: into a couple of different little sessions, and that's pretty common.
Speaker 1: So vaccine overload is also a term that's used as
Speaker 1: it's often cited as a cause for autism. Again, there's
Speaker 1: not much science to back this up. In fact, that
Speaker 1: any of the science that exists doesn't really bear this out.
Speaker 1: Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades,
Speaker 1: improvements in the designs of these vaccines in the way
Speaker 1: they're administered have created serious reduction to the immunologic load
Speaker 1: from those vaccines and the total number of these components.
Speaker 1: The immunological components in the fourteen vaccines administered to children
Speaker 1: in the United States in two thousand and nine is
Speaker 1: less than ten percent of what it was in the
Speaker 1: seven vaccines given in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: So we see we see this tremendous reduction in the
Speaker 2: amount of work immune systems are asked to do. Right.
Speaker 2: That's that's essentially what we mean when we say immunologic load.
Speaker 2: I think immuneologic's a really cool word too. By the way,
Speaker 2: it sounds like some West Coast hip hop guy's name.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 2: If it's not, then here you go. I think the
Speaker 2: only person who will have a problem with you taking
Speaker 2: that name will be Logic, who seems like he doesn't
Speaker 2: have a problem with other people having names related to that.
Speaker 2: But you can't really get mad at someone who has
Speaker 2: who shares a component of your name and hip hop?
Speaker 2: How many bigs are there? How many littles are there?
Speaker 3: Little?
Speaker 2: How many youngs?
Speaker 1: So many youngs and lil's and bigs.
Speaker 3: Somebody named the Little Skies is putting stuff everywhere still
Speaker 3: in Atlanta, Little Skies, Little Skys medorists or no, just
Speaker 3: somebody's paying a lot of money, got put up posters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you gotta you know, you've got to be
Speaker 2: the change. I guess so, Little Skys. If you're listening.
Speaker 2: Send us some music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please be the little that you want to see
Speaker 1: in the world. That's what I say.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: A study published in twenty thirteen found no correlation between
Speaker 2: autism and the antigen number in the vaccines these children
Speaker 2: were administered up to age two. Again, the antigen is
Speaker 2: sort of the broken part of the of the infection
Speaker 2: that you're attempting to teach a body to fight. Right.
Speaker 2: Of the one thousand and eight children in this study
Speaker 2: back in twenty thirteen, one quarter of those diagnosed with
Speaker 2: some ASD condition were born between nineteen ninety four and
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine, and that's when the routine vaccine schedule
Speaker 2: for children can contain more than three thousand antigens. That's
Speaker 2: a single shot of a DTP vaccine. The vaccine schedule
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve has more vaccines, but the number of
Speaker 2: antigens the children are exposed to by the age of
Speaker 2: two is way way down. It's down to three point fifteen.
Speaker 2: So if this correlation is correct, then it would naturally
Speaker 2: follow This is just take like, let's just assume for
Speaker 2: the sake of argument that the opposition to vaccines because
Speaker 2: of that link to autism or perceived link. Let's assume
Speaker 2: that bore out somehow. If that was true, then it
Speaker 2: would follow that reducing this antigen load right would therefore
Speaker 2: result in a decline in people presenting with ASD conditions.
Speaker 2: That does not seem to be the case, or at
Speaker 2: least there's no literature on the anti vaccination side citing that.
Speaker 2: There's another argument too that we could have, which is
Speaker 2: that that's a schedule from twenty twelve. It's twenty nineteen now,
Speaker 2: so there's not enough time. Arguably, right, you would want
Speaker 2: to wait till maybe twenty twenty two or twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five or something like that. To be absolutely fair, there
Speaker 2: are no publicly available studies based on withholding vaccines from children.
Speaker 2: That is because there are tons of laws against unethical experimentation. Again,
Speaker 2: my opinion pops up a little bit here. I'm a
Speaker 2: huge fan of self experimentation, but even I understand that
Speaker 2: you shouldn't. You shouldn't conduct experiments on people who are
Speaker 2: not capable of informed consent. There you go, and children
Speaker 2: are not. So at this point, it's also fair to
Speaker 2: point out that no study directly comparing rates of ASD
Speaker 2: or spectrum in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done
Speaker 2: to our knowledge. If you find one, please send it out.
Speaker 1: And then there are some other conditions associated with vaccination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, aluminum has been a cause of concern. This
Speaker 2: will cause aluminum and things related to aluminum are even
Speaker 2: a cause concern for some people. With deodorant. Have you
Speaker 2: heard about this?
Speaker 3: Sure? Yeah, when you're using the strong antipersperans when it's
Speaker 3: like leeching into your body.
Speaker 1: Supposedly, but the other kind it doesn't work, man, the
Speaker 1: hippie crystal deodorant, it doesn't do the job. Yeah, Or
Speaker 1: I need heavy metals in my deodorant.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm a fan of bathing. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 2: just full of hot takes today, but I think people
Speaker 2: should shower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, But you know it's hot in Georgia, dude,
Speaker 1: and we it's hot in this hot box that we're
Speaker 1: sitting in right now. I need my I need my
Speaker 1: deodorant to be effective and we all's benefit.
Speaker 2: And the idea is that aluminum might also leach into
Speaker 2: people's bodies and unsafe levels affect some aspect of their development. Typically,
Speaker 2: the primary concerns for people opposed to vaccination are going
Speaker 2: to be focused on neurological aspects.
Speaker 1: What is the aluminum meant to be.
Speaker 2: In aluminum or aluminium for all the fans of Bush
Speaker 2: Yes and the band and everyone living in the UK
Speaker 2: or people who just prefer that sort of spelling pronunciation.
Speaker 2: Aluminum adjuvants are used in vaccines for hep A B,
Speaker 2: the diphtheria, tetanus vaccines, and a couple of other things.
Speaker 2: They're not used in what they call the live viral
Speaker 2: vaccines like measles, mumps, rubella, and rotavirus and so on.
Speaker 2: And adjuvant is a part of a vaccine component that
Speaker 2: boosts the immune response for the vaccine. Essentially, they allow
Speaker 2: you to get more bang for your buck. Lesser quantities
Speaker 2: of the vaccine and fewer doses can still have the
Speaker 2: same effect of older vaccines.
Speaker 1: Got it, Got it, And like you said, Ben, there
Speaker 1: have been other concerns raised about the HEPB vaccine in
Speaker 1: relation to a potential link between that and multiple sclerosis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hepatitis B vaccination and the risk of childhood onset
Speaker 2: multiple sclerosis. Right, that's the Pediatric Adolescence Medical Journal. And
Speaker 2: there were other things to examining this. The New England
Speaker 2: Journal of Medicine did a study on this Hepatitis B
Speaker 2: vaccination the risk of multiple sclerosis, and you can find
Speaker 2: plenty of literature on this at the CDC, which has
Speaker 2: a pretty good website. The problem is, for some people
Speaker 2: the CDC is considered a non starter. You know what
Speaker 2: I mean, they'll share it's compromised, right, Are you going
Speaker 2: to believe big, big disease? You know, aren't they linked
Speaker 2: to big pharma.
Speaker 1: So it's true.
Speaker 2: We've mentioned just a few We've mentioned multiple sclerosis, We've
Speaker 2: mentioned vaccine overload. We've got a couple of other things
Speaker 2: we should mention. First, why anti vaccination remains a hot
Speaker 2: topic today? Again, not sold in that store. It's kind
Speaker 2: of lazy, it was. I don't know why I cop
Speaker 2: using a hot topic. But first, there's a common concern
Speaker 2: sited that vaccinations cause seizures. It's very important to very
Speaker 2: important to mention this is technically true. All immune responses
Speaker 2: which vaccines are purposely created to trigger, have a chance
Speaker 2: of causing what are known as febrile seizures also called
Speaker 2: fever pits, or seizures associated with high body temperatures. Overall,
Speaker 2: you're going to find the risk of these seizures during
Speaker 2: vaccination is pretty low, but still very distressing. If you're
Speaker 2: a parent and your child is having seizures, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter to you that only three percent of children get them.
Speaker 2: It matters to you that one kid in particular has that,
Speaker 2: right now, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the complication rates of the seizures from the
Speaker 1: vaccines are still much lower than the exact same seizures
Speaker 1: when caused by the actual diseases that they are meant
Speaker 1: to prevent.
Speaker 2: Right, right, disease cause seizures have twenty times the rate
Speaker 2: of ICU admission. And this still goes into other We're
Speaker 2: talking about medical concerns, but it still goes into other
Speaker 2: widespread social concerns, some of which I've dealt with on
Speaker 2: the ground, like in the field. So in some countries,
Speaker 2: nonprofit and medical personnel, especially if they're in a non
Speaker 2: Western country and they're from the West, have been attacked
Speaker 2: even killed for attempting to administer vaccines to local populations.
Speaker 2: And Pakistan, for instance, some religious and militant groups alleged
Speaker 2: that vaccination was a cover story and that the substances
Speaker 2: being administered were meant to either sterilize or kill the
Speaker 2: local population simply for being Muslim.
Speaker 3: And you know, we've seen that echoed as well, even
Speaker 3: in places like New York City and Brooklyn, and a
Speaker 3: couple other in groups within that community believe that there
Speaker 3: is some type of conspiracy against them, where the vaccines
Speaker 3: are being administered specifically to them to cause harm to
Speaker 3: their community.
Speaker 1: Call them out of the population.
Speaker 3: There, at least a couple of there are a few
Speaker 3: outspoken rabbis there have been holding rallies in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen where they're speaking outwardly about that stuff.
Speaker 1: A buddy of mine lives in a neighborhood in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: that the population is very largely made of Asidic devout Jews,
Speaker 1: and it's a really interesting community for sure, because they
Speaker 1: kind of all hang out together. They go out with
Speaker 1: their whole families, kind of like you know, in a group,
Speaker 1: and they don't really make eye contact or communicate with,
Speaker 1: you know, others that are not in that community. So
Speaker 1: it is very much like them looking out for themselves
Speaker 1: and each other. It's a very interesting world.
Speaker 3: Just to call out. A New York Times article if
Speaker 3: you want to learn more about that, it's called despite
Speaker 3: Measles warnings. Anti vaccine rally draws hundreds of ultra orthodox Jews.
Speaker 2: There you go, Yes, do learn about it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: When we're calling out communities as examples for feeling this way,
Speaker 2: we're not trying to pick on anybody. The truth is
Speaker 2: that this is an understandable thing that occurs, especially in
Speaker 2: insular communities. While this might sound the idea of someone
Speaker 2: hunting down your specific friends, families, and community members to
Speaker 2: kill you via fake vaccines, While it might sound pretty
Speaker 2: out there to some of us listening today, we have
Speaker 2: to understand that Western NGOs in particular, have an established
Speaker 2: history of functioning as covers for all sorts of nefarious activities.
Speaker 2: There is no proven case of modern vaccination attempts being
Speaker 2: a cover for the spread of disease. In this manner,
Speaker 2: it's a leap. It's not as far as a leap
Speaker 2: as it might seem, though it's still a leap, but
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it's not as much of a jump.
Speaker 2: The chasm is not as wide. When I was living
Speaker 2: in Central America, this was a very very common belief,
Speaker 2: and it was very very much a controversial thing because
Speaker 2: people thought that folks were being sent by the US
Speaker 2: big business and government, maybe in cooperation with drug cartels
Speaker 2: to sterilize their children or to render them somehow mentally inert,
Speaker 2: you know. And this goes hand in hand with the
Speaker 2: concerns of like the illegal organ trade, right, or that
Speaker 2: the idea that children be by vaccinated would be somehow
Speaker 2: marked or chipped, and that they could be traced and
Speaker 2: their organs later cold. There's a real thing that people believe. Wow,
Speaker 2: there are other conspiracies. There's the big business angle, which
Speaker 2: is always going to rear its ugly head here depending
Speaker 2: on who you ask time. As we said earlier time,
Speaker 2: medicine and the health of living innocent human beings to
Speaker 2: profit or a financial bottom line is either at best
Speaker 2: the necessary evil, or it is one of the great
Speaker 2: crimes of modern medicine rights. It's true that many people
Speaker 2: have died, are probably dying as you listen to this show,
Speaker 2: and will die after you're done listening in this show
Speaker 2: because it was no longer profitable for certain pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 2: to produce a given medicine, or because they increase the
Speaker 2: price of a medicine to the point that other people
Speaker 2: could not afford it. India is one of the countries
Speaker 2: that's been in increasingly tense conversations and arguments with Western
Speaker 2: medicine manufacturers because India as a government made a choice
Speaker 2: where they said, look, we're not going to we're not
Speaker 2: going to let people die because you think of medicine
Speaker 2: should be four hundred and fifty dollars, we can manufacture
Speaker 2: it here and we'll give it to them for three
Speaker 2: or something like that. You know, I'm pulling the numbers
Speaker 2: out of my head, but these are real arguments that
Speaker 2: are happening, and you can see why some people might
Speaker 2: be opposed to that because of the enormous cost of
Speaker 2: R and D. But then also on the other side,
Speaker 2: there are people dying. This all to say, it is very,
Speaker 2: very easy to see why a lot of people would
Speaker 2: not trust these profit driven companies to have the best
Speaker 2: interest of patients at heart. I'm not vilifying them. I'm saying,
Speaker 2: if you exercise even cursory attempts at empathy, you can
Speaker 2: clearly see how this seems like a rational and logical
Speaker 2: decision on their part. They're saying, well, these companies that
Speaker 2: experimented a marginalized populations in the past, what's to stop
Speaker 2: them from doing so again? And if we don't have
Speaker 2: enough money, these people don't care about us. There you go,
Speaker 2: and this is not look we're talking about right now.
Speaker 2: We're talking about largely developing countries when we talk about
Speaker 2: those concerns. But the concern of vaccination's population control is
Speaker 2: alive and well here in the United States, Matt, you
Speaker 2: had the excellent example of the ultra orthodox community again,
Speaker 2: factions within the ultra orthodox community in New York. What
Speaker 2: about Congressman Louis Gohmert, who voiced his concerns about vaccination
Speaker 2: on a broadcast for the Family Research Council. Pretty wholesome
Speaker 2: name right. He is convinced that liberal elites are using
Speaker 2: vaccination programs to call the Earth's population due to concerns
Speaker 2: about the scarcity of natural resources. Very Malthusian population collapse reasoning.
Speaker 2: He thinks there is an evil cabal behind this plan
Speaker 2: and that they're aiming for a target worldwide global human
Speaker 2: population of seven hundred million, very Georgia Guidestone style. But
Speaker 2: there's a huge problem with this. The overwhelming massive evidence,
Speaker 2: well not perfect right science never is, proves the vaccines
Speaker 2: overall tend to save lives. So this means that vaccines,
Speaker 2: even if they were more dangerous than they are today,
Speaker 2: are increasing the world's population rather than diminishing it. It's
Speaker 2: making it much much more likely that we reach nine
Speaker 2: billion then go down to seven hundred million. As a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, if you wanted people to get closer
Speaker 2: to seven hundred million, you would probably just stop vaccinating
Speaker 2: anyone and then a ton of people eventually down the
Speaker 2: road would die. But the problem with that is that
Speaker 2: people are very good at breeding, and it's one of
Speaker 2: our favorite things to do. So getting us down to
Speaker 2: seven hundred million means you would also need to sterilize
Speaker 2: a ton of people or convince them that there are
Speaker 2: things that are better than sex.
Speaker 3: Ooh ooh. What if you can convince them that taking
Speaker 3: a vaccine is the worst thing you can do because
Speaker 3: it will kill you for some reason, or it will
Speaker 3: do something bad for you. But you're a state actor
Speaker 3: and you want the population to decrease.
Speaker 1: Well, that is a very good segue.
Speaker 2: That because I like that you're talking about geopolitics. There
Speaker 2: is one thing we found that is a genuine improvable
Speaker 2: conspiracy in the argument about vaccination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it has to do again and every time
Speaker 3: we talk about a state actor or something like this.
Speaker 3: We meant this on the show all the time, but
Speaker 3: it's a faction of someone acting within a state government
Speaker 3: in this case Russia, or at least someone working even
Speaker 3: within a private institution somewhere in Russia. But that's what
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about. They've been spreading basically propaganda
Speaker 3: that is anti vaccination in nature.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a study by the Journal of Public Health
Speaker 2: showed that Russian trolls those are the biological actual people
Speaker 2: spreading disinfo, and then Russian bought campaigns those are the
Speaker 2: algorithms and fake accounts run by actual people have been
Speaker 2: working purposely to spread discord in the West around vaccination
Speaker 2: attempts or campaigns. According to David Bruniatowski from George Washington University, quote,
Speaker 2: a significant portion of the online discourse about vaccines may
Speaker 2: be generated by malicious actors with a range of hidden agendas.
Speaker 2: They reviewed more than two hundred and fifty tweets about
Speaker 2: vaccination from accounts linked to outfit called the Internet Research
Speaker 2: Agency IRA. Again, as long as you don't look at
Speaker 2: the acronym, that's pretty wholesome situation there. It's based in
Speaker 2: Saint Petersburg. In February, the agency was named in a
Speaker 2: US indictment over alleged election medaling. They use tweets with
Speaker 2: polarizing language that linked vaccination to statements about race, class,
Speaker 2: and the legitimacy of Western governments. According to the research,
Speaker 2: we have a couple of example tweets here. Does anybody
Speaker 2: want to do a voice?
Speaker 1: I could do a voice. Did you know that it
Speaker 1: was secret government database of HASTAG vaccine damage child HASTAG
Speaker 1: vaccinate US.
Speaker 2: Another that argued for vaccination said, listen at the us
Speaker 2: kno fixed stupidity, leath them die from measle I am
Speaker 2: for vaccination.
Speaker 3: Pretty good, guys.
Speaker 2: No apologies to our apologies to our Russian friends.
Speaker 1: Don't have any Russian listeners, there's no.
Speaker 2: I do well, I've got friends who are Russian.
Speaker 1: First into this show, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So shout out to shout out to Oleg. He used
Speaker 2: to live in San Francisco. He lives in London.
Speaker 1: Now I remember you've told me about him.
Speaker 2: Uh, he is going to kill me for that accent.
Speaker 2: But you know, accents aside, we're we're uh, we're having
Speaker 2: a little fun with it. But accents aside those are
Speaker 2: real tweets, and they are certainly not not meant to
Speaker 2: be associated with Russia in the environment in which they're published.
Speaker 2: They're meant to seem like someone you kind of know
Speaker 2: or a source you kind of respect that is telling you,
Speaker 2: you know, the brass tax real truth about what's going on.
Speaker 2: This is totally textbook foundation of geopolitics by Alexander Duken.
Speaker 3: There you go, Alexander Duken. It always I always feel
Speaker 3: like it's going to be a Star Wars character or something.
Speaker 2: It does. And he kind of is, you know, he
Speaker 2: got away from his more occult roots and is now
Speaker 2: just arguing state policy in Russia. But this leads us
Speaker 2: to our conclusion. Currently, several diseases appear to be on
Speaker 2: the rise in certain communities in certain global regions due
Speaker 2: to concerns about the perceived hidden dangers of vaccination. The
Speaker 2: BBC sums it up in pretty well in a fairly
Speaker 2: troubling way. In Europe, more than forty one thousand people
Speaker 2: are infected with measles in the first six months of
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen. That's nearly double the number of cases for
Speaker 2: the entirety of last year at that point. That report
Speaker 2: was made in twenty eighteen, thirty seven people had already died.
Speaker 2: Measles was on the rise in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and
Speaker 2: Greece and the US. The number of children being exempted
Speaker 2: from vaccines is also on the rise. In Italy, the
Speaker 2: upper house of Parliament voted through legislation to abolish the
Speaker 2: law that makes vaccines mandatory for children before they start school.
Speaker 2: Despite this area, despite the media coverage, the only serious
Speaker 2: medical condition ever linked to a vaccine was specific to
Speaker 2: the virus strain used in the manufacture of that vaccine.
Speaker 2: And whenever we talk about this sort of stuff, we
Speaker 2: have to treat everyone's concerned seriously. We are talking about
Speaker 2: human lives here, right, and both sides of the argument
Speaker 2: feel like they are either saving lives or saving the
Speaker 2: quality of life for people. So these are noble motives, right,
Speaker 2: But we also have to ask ourselves about the motivations
Speaker 2: behind any possible conspiracy that would exist other than the
Speaker 2: Russian disinfo stuff, which is absolutely true. Again, not a
Speaker 2: theory that's happening. Be careful who you retweet first. Why
Speaker 2: would someone want to spread a disease or a medical
Speaker 2: condition through the false pretense of preventing another disease. Are
Speaker 2: there any proving cases of this tactic being deployed on
Speaker 2: a widespread scale, not that we can find. That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean they don't exist. That just means that they're hard
Speaker 2: to find and they're hard to prove. We do know
Speaker 2: that diseases, for instance, have been utilized as weapons of
Speaker 2: war ever since the days of old, when the bodies
Speaker 2: of plague victims were catapulted up over walls during sieges.
Speaker 2: This species is not above using disease to kill each
Speaker 2: other on purpose, right, But we just haven't seen a
Speaker 2: case of people doing that on purpose with vaccines. Because again,
Speaker 2: the thing with vaccines is, although they are not perfect,
Speaker 2: they do tend to save more lives than they take
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: And they're you know that whole point of they're not
Speaker 3: using that live. Well, it's a different. The methodology of
Speaker 3: creating the disease and using the disease to get someone
Speaker 3: else six very, very very different. You have to keep
Speaker 3: that in mind when you're thinking about this. And the
Speaker 3: third question we have to ask here, have vaccinations ever
Speaker 3: actually been used for some kind of nefarious purpose, whether
Speaker 3: some kind of experimental vaccination or or you know, some
Speaker 3: other thing that we haven't even thought about yet, and
Speaker 3: that's an episode for another day. When we talked about
Speaker 3: this already, we're talking about militaries using vaccines for certain
Speaker 3: things that we've actually gotten some we've gotten some email
Speaker 3: some responses before from soldiers who have had to get
Speaker 3: vaccines and they were confused about how many there were,
Speaker 3: just so many vaccines. The schedule was strange, talking about
Speaker 3: vaccines in prisons, on marginalized populations, and some of the
Speaker 3: stuff Ben you were mentioning already about your you know,
Speaker 3: your travels and how people feel about vaccines. There's a
Speaker 3: lot more here to go into.
Speaker 2: Yes, and today for those of us listening. In the US,
Speaker 2: all fifty states have some sort of law requiring at
Speaker 2: the very least certain vaccines for students. There are exemptions
Speaker 2: based on medical reasons, religious exemptions. Seventeen states do allow
Speaker 2: parents to opt out based on personal or philosophical beliefs.
Speaker 3: And though we mentioned New York already, but just yesterday
Speaker 3: as we're recording this, on June thirteenth, New York lawmakers
Speaker 3: they voted to end religious exemptions for immunizations, which has
Speaker 3: you know, fully fully angered some of some of the
Speaker 3: people in those communities that we were mentioning earlier, and
Speaker 3: they joined up with several other states right now California, Arizona,
Speaker 3: West Virginia, Mississippi, and Maine that do not allow exemptions
Speaker 3: on religious beliefs.
Speaker 2: Which for some people still is you know, it's that
Speaker 2: other it's that, don't tread on the idea, don't tell
Speaker 2: me what to do with my family. So we reach
Speaker 2: our conclusion here. So far as we can tell, and
Speaker 2: so far as the bulk of research shows us, the
Speaker 2: majority of studies arguing for the efficacy of vaccination as
Speaker 2: well as the advantages of immunizing people to once fatal diseases,
Speaker 2: seem to be largely solid and their findings seem to
Speaker 2: be increasingly in agreement confirmed on multiple angles. The studies
Speaker 2: are reproducible and so on. And in contrast, the studies
Speaker 2: against vaccination overall have been largely debunked and the findings
Speaker 2: also don't seem to be reproducible, meaning that unrelated objective
Speaker 2: researchers with no horse in the race other than the
Speaker 2: survival of themselves and their progeny cannot reach the same
Speaker 2: conclusions without either purposely or accidentally really screwing something up
Speaker 2: along the way. Some studies of specific vaccines in the
Speaker 2: past did raise valid concerns about their danger right and
Speaker 2: their safety, and it appears that the medical community responded
Speaker 2: by improving these vaccines, either through new manufacturing techniques like
Speaker 2: you mentioned no, or by removing potentially harmful substances. At
Speaker 2: this point, we want to hear from you. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for listening to this show. What do you
Speaker 2: use think about vaccination? As we like to say here
Speaker 2: in the South, are you for it or again it?
Speaker 1: And why?
Speaker 3: I just I'd like to point out here with this
Speaker 3: and as you're thinking about your response, we are highly aware,
Speaker 3: as you probably are, that the current state of vaccinations
Speaker 3: it's not perfect. It is not a perfect system, no
Speaker 3: matter what you believe, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 3: it is dangerous to you. So just you know, just
Speaker 3: think about that, really think about that.
Speaker 2: And also, you know, this this episode really focused on
Speaker 2: the West. Outside of some of the ancient history and
Speaker 2: some cultural implications, we did not explore how these operations
Speaker 2: might be conducted in other countries, right, So it's possible
Speaker 2: there's something we need to hear from your neck of
Speaker 2: the global woods. Please don't hesitate to tell us, reach
Speaker 2: out and let us know, especially if you think it's
Speaker 2: something that it would be important for your fellow listeners
Speaker 2: to learn.
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Speaker 2: I just posted something that blew my mind. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you guys saw this, but biologists have discovered
Speaker 2: what they're calling an underwater octopus city. What they're calling
Speaker 2: it octlantis. Is it an octopus's garden in the shade
Speaker 2: they have? Yeah, someone made that joke.
Speaker 1: That was me.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it was uh scoop me on it.
Speaker 2: It was Alison Willard.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: The Bethley Gardens are amazing and shady, but I can you.
Speaker 1: Came up with it parallel thinking, like the cutover gym.
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Speaker 2: go ahead and hop on. Here's where it gets Crazy.
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