Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nol.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. Let's start out with something just
Speaker 3: fun and easy and entirely uncomplicated.
Speaker 4: You guys like vaccines, fun stuff, really an undivisive topic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people just love talking about it at dinner.
Speaker 2: They do, they do.
Speaker 3: I think it's fair to say, without putting all of
Speaker 3: us us on the spot, that we are we are,
Speaker 3: in general fans of vaccination. It saved us as a
Speaker 3: group from a lot of nasty, nasty things. Right Like,
Speaker 3: you guys got COVID vaccines. I got a COVID vaccine,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I even got the little
Speaker 3: boosties because I'm a completionist.
Speaker 4: Mad boosties. I got the one. I think I'm due
Speaker 4: for another. I need to look it up, but definitely
Speaker 4: got at least one.
Speaker 2: Boost no comment.
Speaker 3: Okay, see see in case in points again very uncomplicated
Speaker 3: dinner table conversation. But in the wake of COVID nineteen,
Speaker 3: vaccines yet again became the subject of massive conspiracy theories. Right,
Speaker 3: and the pandemic itself has all sorts of conspiratorial things
Speaker 3: associated with it. Some of those are provably true, like
Speaker 3: the PPP loan that actually happened.
Speaker 4: It was a Pokemon card. Now what the peace stands
Speaker 4: for in PPP?
Speaker 3: Remember that one guy as from Georgia. He used his
Speaker 3: money to fraudulently purchase a very very expensive Pokemon card. Well,
Speaker 3: there we go, man, what we see here is in
Speaker 3: tonight's show, we're exploring another story of conspiracy and vaccination.
Speaker 3: But it's not necessarily a story the Jedi will tell you.
Speaker 3: For most Americans today, the most famous case of polio
Speaker 3: is that of former US President and almost dictator Franklin
Speaker 3: Delano Roosevelt. But the story of polio starts way earlier
Speaker 3: than FDR's infection in nineteen twenty one. He was thirty
Speaker 3: nine at the time. Here are the facts. Polio is terrified.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter like how cool you are. It doesn't
Speaker 3: matter if you can find a kangaroo one on one.
Speaker 3: Polio is scarier well, and especially with this the historical
Speaker 3: association with children, you know, and the idea of polio
Speaker 3: wards and burning piles of clothes and just the virulent
Speaker 3: contagiousness of it all.
Speaker 4: You know, it really had the world standing still when
Speaker 4: it was at its peak.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's terrifying because it's it's one of
Speaker 2: those things if you could be afraid of something big
Speaker 2: that could like cut you right or burn you, or
Speaker 2: something that is that you could see coming like there's
Speaker 2: that's that's one type of fear. The type of fear
Speaker 2: with polio, and I think a lot of other most
Speaker 2: other infectious diseases, is that it somehow gets into your
Speaker 2: system and you didn't know it got into your system,
Speaker 2: and then it takes a while, like with polio, takes
Speaker 2: a while, and the end result after it's done with
Speaker 2: your body could be what paralysis.
Speaker 3: Or worse, Yeah, anything from difficulty breathing to lifelong paralysis.
Speaker 3: We're talking withered limbs type stuff, or even death. Right,
Speaker 3: you will possibly die from polio. And polio is the
Speaker 3: street name for a disease called polio. Myletis very nasty
Speaker 3: thing caused by variations of the polio virus. Like you said, Matt,
Speaker 3: it's easy to miss some kind of transference of this
Speaker 3: thing because it transfers through ingestion, and polio has a
Speaker 3: favorite part of the human body nerves in the spinal
Speaker 3: cord and the brainstem.
Speaker 4: You're seeking of terrifying things associated with and already terrifying things.
Speaker 3: Do you guys remember the device known as the iron lung.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was like it's like a hyperbaric chamber, but
Speaker 4: it essentially was a huge savor of lives, you know,
Speaker 4: for folks that's contracted polio. But I believe you had to,
Speaker 4: you know, use it for the rest of your life.
Speaker 4: Like it was literally like being on light like this
Speaker 4: very kind of steampunk form of life support.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It always used for a lot of different things,
Speaker 2: and unless you could cure whatever the infection was, right,
Speaker 2: then you're stuck. Yeah, it's like somebody being on life
Speaker 2: support now, right, I mean, that's still a thing. The
Speaker 2: choice to continue someone's life on life support knowing it
Speaker 2: would be limited to that situation is one of the
Speaker 2: tough Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's making me emotional. It's one
Speaker 2: of the toughest things. You can toughest choices, you can
Speaker 2: be forced to make.
Speaker 4: Well again, not to mention if you're considering it when
Speaker 4: it comes to a child.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then there's also the quality of life argument
Speaker 3: at that point, it's the iron lung. May sound like
Speaker 3: a barbaric solution to a problem, but as we'll see soon,
Speaker 3: polio was much more horrific. The iron lung. As terrible
Speaker 3: as it was, it was better than the alternative for
Speaker 3: many people. And so okay. Today, the wild naturally occurring
Speaker 3: polio virus group, it's been. The good news is it's
Speaker 3: been virtually eradicated on every continent except Asia. As of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries
Speaker 3: where polio is still considered endemic, like very common, very prevalent,
Speaker 3: easily spread. Nigeria was on that list for a while,
Speaker 3: but thankfully it has moved off that list. We still
Speaker 3: don't know, by the way, the origin story of polio.
Speaker 3: All we know is it's been a sort of dark
Speaker 3: passenger of humanity for thousands, thousands of years. That's right.
Speaker 4: In fact, it can be seen, or the very least
Speaker 4: depictions of it can be seen in ancient Egyptian artwork
Speaker 4: dating back circa fifteen eighty to thirteen fifty BCE showing
Speaker 4: a priest with a withered leg and using a crutch
Speaker 4: to help them walk, and experts believe that this official
Speaker 4: likely contracted the disease and for a time survived. It
Speaker 4: was then first officially described in the West in seventeen
Speaker 4: eighty nine, when British physician doctor Michael Underwood addressed it
Speaker 4: as a quote debility of the lower extremities.
Speaker 3: But by seventeen eighty nine, this disease was absolutely everywhere.
Speaker 3: He was describing something that everyone knew about, and you
Speaker 3: were it was kind of like dysentery, Like you may
Speaker 3: not have personally encountered it, but you knew someone at
Speaker 3: the very least who knew someone who died because of polio.
Speaker 3: And it's still an ongoing struggle to eradicate this virus,
Speaker 3: but it's a massive success story for humanity. I mean,
Speaker 3: like when we talk about polio in the United States,
Speaker 3: it feels like we're talking about smallpox, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like it feels very much as though it
Speaker 3: is a disease of yesteryear. So it's it's tough to
Speaker 3: remember that during the early nineteen hundreds and well before,
Speaker 3: polio was one of the most feared diseases in all
Speaker 3: of the industrialized countries. Like, you would have a lot
Speaker 3: of kids because there was a non zero chance that
Speaker 3: one of them would die due to polio. You were helpless.
Speaker 3: People didn't know how it transmitted. They knew that thousands
Speaker 3: of children in every country would get paralyzed every single year,
Speaker 3: and the doctors couldn't help you.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and again not just polio, right, like you said,
Speaker 2: at smallpox too. Your children could die from any number
Speaker 2: of these diseases until effective vaccinations were like became a
Speaker 2: thing that really did change how human beings live and
Speaker 2: choose to have children. It's nuts to think about that
Speaker 2: a technological medical invention could have that great an effect
Speaker 2: on all of humanity.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, we'll get to it. But there
Speaker 3: were vaccines that were introduced or discovered or created in
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, and so for those
Speaker 3: developed industrial countries, this made polio a containable disease. As
Speaker 3: we record this evening, polio is incurable. There is not
Speaker 3: a cure for polio even now in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: This means the condition or the disease can only be
Speaker 3: prevented or treated after you contract it. We know the
Speaker 3: first polio vaccine was developed by doctor Hillary Koprowski, and
Speaker 3: weird fact, it was administered almost exactly seventy four years
Speaker 3: ago tonight. It was first administered on February twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty.
Speaker 4: And the second, even more well known vaccine was created
Speaker 4: by Jonas Salk in nineteen fifty two and was officially
Speaker 4: announced to the world on April twelfth, nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 4: Big deal for human race, Yeah, exactly. But there's a
Speaker 4: little wrinkle in all of this clutch medical innovation, isn't there, Ben.
Speaker 3: There is no. A series of missteps and possibly sinister
Speaker 3: events made the treatment arguably worse than the disease, and
Speaker 3: as a result, polio vaccination has led to thousands of
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories, some more plausible than others. It's also led
Speaker 3: to a continual distrust, paranoia, and fear a vaccination that
Speaker 3: continues in the modern day. It has real world consequences
Speaker 3: for everybody listening tonight. What do you say, guys, you
Speaker 3: want to take a break for a word from our
Speaker 3: sponsors or should we dive right in.
Speaker 4: Oh, let's take a little break, give us some breathing
Speaker 4: room here before we get into the weeds with this
Speaker 4: pretty gnarly misstep series of missteps or iron lungs.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Let's talk about it. The
Speaker 3: Cutter incident.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we just we have to say at
Speaker 2: the top here before we get into all of this
Speaker 2: the ben would you say the treatment was arguably worse
Speaker 2: than the disease itself? For we just have to say,
Speaker 2: with a little cave out there, for some people that
Speaker 2: took the treatment right, not for everybody. And I think
Speaker 2: that's why this story is so sinister, because for most
Speaker 2: people who were going through the process, everything's fine. But
Speaker 2: just like with the chance that you have to contract
Speaker 2: pull the wild when you take the treatment to take
Speaker 2: care of polio, you had this same like small but
Speaker 2: significant percentage that something really bad is going to happen.
Speaker 3: Well, it didn't happen, thankfully, in the case of the
Speaker 3: rapid I guess approval process for COVID vaccine.
Speaker 4: But it's a similar kind of mad dash, you know,
Speaker 4: a scramble to get something out as quickly as possible
Speaker 4: and as we know. When that is the case, sometimes
Speaker 4: things slip through the cracks or possibly even worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So with those necessary caveats and conditions here, let's
Speaker 3: get to the story. It's nineteen fifty one. Our buddy
Speaker 3: Jonas is receiving two hundred thousand dollars a year just
Speaker 3: to research a vaccination or cure for polio. And this
Speaker 3: happens due to crowdsourcing. The largest public fundraising activity ever
Speaker 3: the March of Dimes, which I still like. I think
Speaker 3: we're all old enough to remember. You might see a
Speaker 3: little box that when more people used cash, and I'm
Speaker 3: at a dairy queen or something, you know, at the counter.
Speaker 4: Sometimes there'd even be a fun little thing or you'd
Speaker 4: put your coin down a shoe and it would go
Speaker 4: around a little whirligig kind of thing, I guess, to
Speaker 4: make it feel like a fun activity and not just
Speaker 4: you know. No, actually that was something else. The March
Speaker 4: of Dimes was specifically a little thing like a little
Speaker 4: sheet with little recessed places where you'd put your dime.
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, I remember that one. But I
Speaker 3: swear I thought you there.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that was I can't say for
Speaker 4: certain if that was associated specifically with the March of Dimes,
Speaker 4: it might have been like some other thing, but very
Speaker 4: much part of my childhood memory. And I is it
Speaker 4: still active or is this?
Speaker 3: Is this not something.
Speaker 2: March of Babies. There's a pretty huge organization. I want
Speaker 2: to say, my parents, I know for a fact, still
Speaker 2: I know this. They still donate to them every year
Speaker 2: as part of their like I guess end of the
Speaker 2: year tax donations kind of thing. Wow, well do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, Like a lot of families do
Speaker 2: that where you will donate certain amounts of money to
Speaker 2: charitable organizations rather than just paying the government taxes because
Speaker 2: you can write those off, which I would highly recommend
Speaker 2: to anybody out there that is paying too many taxes,
Speaker 2: which is all of us.
Speaker 3: The tax right off is sort of like the little
Speaker 3: whirligig toy, you know, for there's a fun feature.
Speaker 2: But think about that, Like an amazing charitable organization can
Speaker 2: take several hundred dollars or whatever it is that the
Speaker 2: government would just take and then allocate towards you know, missiles,
Speaker 2: that missfire. I'm just joking.
Speaker 3: Everything's great, everything's great. Trident is going completely on course. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so okay, just for a quick we do this on
Speaker 3: ridiculous history pretty often. Just for a wick inflation calculator,
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. But
Speaker 3: polio is a big problem. So if one of us
Speaker 3: could do the odders, how much is two hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a year in nineteen fifty one? What does that
Speaker 3: equate to in twenty twenty four?
Speaker 2: Two million, three hundred and seventy two thousand, four hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty eight dollars and forty six cents.
Speaker 4: Still dropping the bucket and compared to military spending, but
Speaker 4: it's you know, not insignificant.
Speaker 2: Well, think about that amount of money to develop, like
Speaker 2: to a drug, Yeah, to develop a cure for a
Speaker 2: seriously dangerous, scary thing.
Speaker 3: It does seem kind of lowball. Low ball, Yeah, okay, good, but.
Speaker 2: But that is everybody pulling again like dimes and just
Speaker 2: a little amount of money that they can spare to
Speaker 2: all give at once, which I think, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it becomes extremely impactful when you've got crowdsourcing like that.
Speaker 2: In nineteen what is it fifty or fifty one? Fifty one?
Speaker 4: Why is the government not subsidizing this more.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll take questions at the end. That's what
Speaker 3: they would have said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally saw that as like the next question, please.
Speaker 3: The time difficult question exactly. So by this time, in
Speaker 3: the early nineteen fifties, there were like fifty nine thousand
Speaker 3: cases of polio every single year in the US alone,
Speaker 3: And in nineteen fifty two, the US encountered the worst
Speaker 3: outbreak of polio on its record, fifty seven thousand people
Speaker 3: were infected. But again, it's the dark lottery, right, you're
Speaker 3: rolling the dice, so you don't know whether these people
Speaker 3: are going to be paralyzed, whether they're going to survive
Speaker 3: relatively unscathed, or whether they're going to die. And in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty two, twenty one thousand people got paralyzed whoa
Speaker 3: twenty one thousand, many of them children. And the US
Speaker 3: population that time is about one hundred and fifty three million,
Speaker 3: which again it doesn't seem like that many people when
Speaker 3: you when you think about the overall population, but it
Speaker 3: really is.
Speaker 2: I mean, what is that percentage?
Speaker 5: How many did you say, Ben, twenty one thousand wry
Speaker 5: this equals Okay, that's actually a really low that's what
Speaker 5: one two it's like less than one percent point oh
Speaker 5: one point oh well four percent of the population.
Speaker 4: To your point, though, it's less, so maybe impressive and
Speaker 4: impressive is the wrong way as a proportion of the population.
Speaker 4: But that's a lot of human beings. Yeah, you laid
Speaker 4: them out in a line visually. Oh my god, that's shocking.
Speaker 4: I mean, go up right, yeah, three round.
Speaker 3: Forty five people died that year.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh see. And what I'm trying to do is
Speaker 2: put my mind into like a policy maker, right, or
Speaker 2: a lawmaker that hasn't been affected by this disease, right,
Speaker 2: And you look at those numbers on the paper, and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, well, this isn't this isn't more concerning
Speaker 2: than these twelve things that I've got on my priorities list, Right,
Speaker 2: But that's why when somebody when you have something like
Speaker 2: the March of Dimes, and wasn't Roosevelt involved with FDR
Speaker 2: involved with that? So when you've got a public figure
Speaker 2: that then is going through it publicly, right, but except
Speaker 2: not publicly because they were taking great pains to hide
Speaker 2: his what he was going through. Isn't that correct too?
Speaker 2: That you guys, didn't you do an episode on that
Speaker 2: I feel Look, we've had that conversation just the great
Speaker 2: pains that the government took to hide FDR's bodily changes.
Speaker 3: There was also to contextualize that there was also a
Speaker 3: far higher degree of prejudice against people who had disabilities
Speaker 3: or handicaps. So it was still like the days when
Speaker 3: they would hide folks in addicts and so on.
Speaker 2: So again, like we're just kind of I think we're
Speaker 2: trying to paint a picture here of like what it
Speaker 2: would have felt like to be going through this and
Speaker 2: what it would have looked like from way above in
Speaker 2: the forty thousand foot view of policymakers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the issue was that this disease was striking pretty
Speaker 3: much regardless of socioeconomic demographic right, so anyone could get
Speaker 3: the smoke, unfortunately, and the stakes therefore became inexpressibly high.
Speaker 3: Uncle Sam opened the wallet and begged Jodahs solked to
Speaker 3: save the nation. And like you were saying, Noel, the
Speaker 3: scale of this research and this rollout was unprecedented, both
Speaker 3: in terms of the amount of money thrown at it
Speaker 3: and that accelerated timeline. So like what we say, nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty one, he's getting two hundred grand or like two
Speaker 3: point three million today. By nineteen fifty four, his vaccine
Speaker 3: is ready for a clinical trial, and so the US
Speaker 3: government gets one point eight million children into this clinical trial.
Speaker 3: Wow wow, And they didn't all get the vaccine, because
Speaker 3: that's not how science works.
Speaker 2: And you gotta have a control, right. Did they just
Speaker 2: give a bunch of the kids nothing or a saline
Speaker 2: solution or something.
Speaker 3: Well, I like to hope that a couple of them
Speaker 3: just got like a cookie or you know, like something pleasant.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Four hundred and twenty thousand got the actual vaccine, two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand got a placebo, one point two million got nothing.
Speaker 3: They were the control group.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, but they're all enrolled, so they're being monitored
Speaker 2: and tracked right right, right? Okay? Do we know if
Speaker 2: I can't remember? Man, is this this early back the
Speaker 2: Salk vaccine. Is this the one that is oral or
Speaker 2: is this the one that's like you puncture the arm
Speaker 2: and then the substance goes into the wound.
Speaker 3: It was a very different time. Which I had to
Speaker 3: do is grease up a hand and rub the armpit
Speaker 3: of the kit.
Speaker 2: Wait what I'm lying? Okay, No, No, I'm serious. I
Speaker 2: don't know the Jonas Salk vaccine, Like, maybe it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to imagine what those actual little kids
Speaker 2: four in twenty thousand they had the experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, I believe it would be injection.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So the big part is that the vaccine. It was
Speaker 3: a gamble to roll this out. The vaccine actually worked,
Speaker 3: and because it appeared to have efficacy, which it did,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of political pressure and literally the
Speaker 3: day after the results came in, the government green lit it.
Speaker 3: And so for two hectic weeks, five different companies went
Speaker 3: into overdrive and made about five million doses. And then
Speaker 3: about thirteen days after the first doses hit the field,
Speaker 3: there were reports of polio and children who had been immunized.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's horrifying. It is through an injector,
Speaker 2: and you were correct, Ben, like a shot right the
Speaker 2: way we get shots these days. When I'm thinking about this,
Speaker 2: before we even get into it, I'm imagining that some
Speaker 2: of those children who are in the control may have
Speaker 2: already contracted polio before they got a vaccine, quite possibly,
Speaker 2: And I don't know how you could ever control for
Speaker 2: that or even know if if polio was already moving
Speaker 2: through a system through the gut, right, because that's the
Speaker 2: way it goes. You ingest it, and it goes down
Speaker 2: into your cells. They're in your stomach and your intestines.
Speaker 2: I just maybe I just don't know the science behind it,
Speaker 2: if you could even tell if somebody had it already
Speaker 2: in the early stages. Yeah, the.
Speaker 3: It does sound forty thousand foot view and kind of
Speaker 3: brutal to put it this way, but it was necessary
Speaker 3: to include more than a million children with no intervention,
Speaker 3: such that you could build a snapshot of what happens
Speaker 3: without it. So the idea that some of those children
Speaker 3: would have already contracted polio is baked into the concept. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3: so people panic, they freak out. You know, this is
Speaker 3: an incredibly evil version of like taking aspirin to cure
Speaker 3: a headache and getting a migraine, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or much more, even more unfortunate, let's say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even worse. And so people immediately dig in and
Speaker 3: they find that all of the initial cases of polio
Speaker 3: infection via vaccine, all of those people received a vaccine
Speaker 3: manufactured by one company, Cutter Laboratories, Cutter, not Qatar.
Speaker 4: So after all was said and done, at least two
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty thousand people were infected with a live
Speaker 4: polio virus contained in Cutters vaccine, and that included one
Speaker 4: hundred thousand contacts of immunized children.
Speaker 2: So let's just talk about that. Why is it a
Speaker 2: big deal that it's live poliovirus? In our discussions previously
Speaker 2: about vaccinations, one of the methods to create a workable
Speaker 2: vaccine that will actually prevent you from getting a disease
Speaker 2: is to use a let's say, dead virus, pieces of
Speaker 2: the genetic material of a virus. Inject that into you
Speaker 2: so your body and your immune system recognizes it as
Speaker 2: a threat. So when you see the when it then
Speaker 2: sees the real polio virus come through, it knows to
Speaker 2: fight it. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, picture your picture your immune system going to a
Speaker 3: gun range. Right. So the idea is that a vaccination
Speaker 3: contains a de weaponized version of a virus, right, a
Speaker 3: snake without the thangs, And so it's like it's as
Speaker 3: though they have a copy of the virus close enough
Speaker 3: to the actual threat that it may as well be
Speaker 3: a target in the gun range. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a bunch of deactivated terminators, right, and FIR
Speaker 2: the deactivator pop.
Speaker 3: It up like that amazing Larry David sketch from Sarah Live.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but doesn't It does still make you sick, though
Speaker 4: it can.
Speaker 3: I know they can't.
Speaker 4: Well. When they get a vaccination, it can be very
Speaker 4: similar symptoms to the actual condition they're being vaccinated against.
Speaker 2: But generally you're not going to get the actual one
Speaker 2: saying that you're being vaccinated for, unless there's some kind
Speaker 2: of mess up like in this situation. See what is
Speaker 2: it called Cutter Laboratory from California.
Speaker 3: Yes, I still remember that salsa commercial, so all right, yeah.
Speaker 3: So Unfortunately, as a direct result of these vaccinations, seventy
Speaker 3: thousand victims developed muscle weakness, one hundred and sixty four
Speaker 3: were severely paralyzed like iron lung level, and then ten
Speaker 3: die that we know of. The question is what happened?
Speaker 3: How could a vaccine spread the very same disease it
Speaker 3: was created to prevent. How could the aspirin be the
Speaker 3: source of your headache? Here's what went wrong. I guess
Speaker 3: we should talk about Cutter Pharmaceutical Company for anyone playing
Speaker 3: along at home. They were later purchased by the pharmaceutical
Speaker 3: conglomerate Bear.
Speaker 2: They as our most medical pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems so.
Speaker 4: And so they started out as a lab like doing research,
Speaker 4: and then I guess they parlayed that research into a
Speaker 4: full blown pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you're absolutely correct. In eighteen ninety seven they started,
Speaker 3: and in their early days they quickly got involved with
Speaker 3: swine fever, cholera anthrax. To be clear, they got involved
Speaker 3: with attempting to prevent those yeah, yeah, yeah, potato patata.
Speaker 2: They weren't just writing letters to congressmen with some substance
Speaker 2: inside it.
Speaker 3: Swine fever was the new NFT, right, So all right,
Speaker 3: even before the flu, we had the fever. Right there
Speaker 3: we go. So there's this rush for this polio treatment.
Speaker 3: Lives are on the line. No one knows how to
Speaker 3: prevent it. And if you ask the average American at
Speaker 3: this time, what scares them the most is that it
Speaker 3: could be their kid. It could be their kid tomorrow.
Speaker 3: They have no idea how to prevent it.
Speaker 2: It's an astonishing situation. Really. Imagine in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: when there was such a public outcry like my, get
Speaker 2: these vaccines ready, now, hurry up, get these vaccines ready. Now,
Speaker 2: that was happening then with polio because there were such
Speaker 2: public fear.
Speaker 4: And with COVID it was more like this could be
Speaker 4: my parents or grandparents, right, But then you know, it's
Speaker 4: just like times ten x that that's redundant. But you
Speaker 4: get what I'm saying when it comes to children, my children,
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, largely COVID nineteen minute affected all kinds
Speaker 4: of people, but the folks that were experiencing the largest
Speaker 4: numbers of fatalities were you know, buy large, older folks.
Speaker 2: But I would just say I had a four year
Speaker 2: old at the time. He's eight years old, thank goodness,
Speaker 2: and sitting over there playing Minecraft right now. But like that,
Speaker 2: the fear for themes was what, we don't know what's
Speaker 2: going to happen if my child gets this, because I
Speaker 2: got it right, and you just again, I think the
Speaker 2: same thing's happening with polio because if you accidentally, as
Speaker 2: an adult ingest some of it accidentally, then you're cooking
Speaker 2: for your child. It's over right, right, very much so.
Speaker 3: And with this massive rush to treat this condition, right
Speaker 3: to propagate a preventative measure, some batches of the Cutter
Speaker 3: produced vaccine. They passed standard safety test, which meant they
Speaker 3: you know, they had just the targets instead of the
Speaker 3: actual enemies, and the problem was they still carried live polio.
Speaker 3: So the thousands thousands of people were injected with the
Speaker 3: disease that they were attempting to avoid. They were given
Speaker 3: the disease, which differs from Tuskegee. To be clear, the
Speaker 3: Tuskegee syphilis experiments were a conspiracy on the part of
Speaker 3: the US government to pretend to treat syphilis and not
Speaker 3: actually do anything and watch people slowly die. This is
Speaker 3: different because the disease is actively been inserted into human bodies.
Speaker 2: Well, and the big question you may have right now
Speaker 2: as you're hearing all of this is, well, did that
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical company know that they were injecting people with a
Speaker 2: live poliovirus or was it an accident?
Speaker 4: Well, that's where the conspiracy stuff comes from, right, Like
Speaker 4: the did they know? Was this intentional? Was this designed
Speaker 4: to cull a portion of the population. That's where the
Speaker 4: conspiratorial mind kind of leaps to right.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent, And we can answer that quickly. First,
Speaker 3: before we answer, we have to give a big shout
Speaker 3: out to two people. Jonas Sulk already got enough attention, right,
Speaker 3: you know, he did a good job earned it. Shout
Speaker 3: out to you someone who doesn't get enough recognition. Here
Speaker 3: is Bernice E. Eddie Eddy in the mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: Eddie is a scientist at the National Institute's Plural of
Speaker 3: Health in Bethesda, Maryland. And Eddie is doing a routine
Speaker 3: safety test on a batch of these cutter vaccines, and
Speaker 3: just to be very clear, folks, they were testing on primates.
Speaker 3: And as a result, Eddie notices, Hey, this vaccine we
Speaker 3: gave to a monkey to several monkeys has actually given
Speaker 3: the monkeys polio. There's a great Washington Post article that
Speaker 3: talks about this. She finds that three of the six
Speaker 3: samples she's testing have paralyzed the monkeys, and she asked
Speaker 3: a colleague, you know, what do you think's wrong with
Speaker 3: the monkeys? And the guy looks at him and he's like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: they have polio. Obviously, you know, we got to give
Speaker 3: some of them polio. We got to figure out what's
Speaker 3: going on. She's like, no, they we gave these monkeys
Speaker 3: the vaccine. And then they have that like Christmas Story
Speaker 3: moment where the kid finally says the F word. They're
Speaker 3: looking at each other and they're goudge oh fudge, Yeah.
Speaker 2: What did we do? Or like, what happened? How did
Speaker 2: this happen? What's going on? Because we're giving people this stuff?
Speaker 2: And do you mind if we shout out that article
Speaker 2: really quickly, Ben that you're pulling from right there, because
Speaker 2: it's really good.
Speaker 3: It's Yeah, I'm I'm citing the tainted polio vaccine that's
Speaker 3: sicken and fatally paralyzed children in nineteen fifty five, published
Speaker 3: in April twenty twenty by Michael E.
Speaker 2: Rowing. You can read that one for free online from
Speaker 2: the National Library of Medicine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a lot of attention on this now, right,
Speaker 3: and at least part of that is, as we'll find,
Speaker 3: it's due to the beat by beat story progression of
Speaker 3: COVID vaccine conspiracies. There's another guy we should shout out,
Speaker 3: paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at
Speaker 3: the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and author of the best
Speaker 3: book about the Cutter Incident. Spoiler. It is titled the Cutter.
Speaker 2: Incident subtitle how America's first polio vaccine led to the
Speaker 2: growing vaccine crisis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred and twenty thousand children got this tainted vaccine,
Speaker 3: and they became a part of what off It describes
Speaker 3: as quote, one of the worst biological disasters in American history,
Speaker 3: a man made polio epidemic.
Speaker 2: No, thank you, I mean.
Speaker 3: And it's weird too, because for some folks in the
Speaker 3: crowd tonight you might say, well, that's what you get
Speaker 3: for trusting these authority figures on the basis of their authority. Right.
Speaker 3: You have to understand though, that at this time the
Speaker 3: atomic bomb still had a frightening new car smell to it.
Speaker 3: And if you asked Americans, as off at sites, if
Speaker 3: you asked Americans at this moment in history what their
Speaker 3: top fears were, the atomic bomb was number one, Polio
Speaker 3: was number two.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and think about the other types of fears
Speaker 2: that would stoke that one, like, oh, is this some
Speaker 2: kind of disease the Soviet Union is trying to like
Speaker 2: infiltrate our the ranks of our children with some schools,
Speaker 2: or it's like that. The fear is very real.
Speaker 3: It even got the president, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: once upon a time. So that is that is front
Speaker 3: of mind in the American zeitgeist. And just like we
Speaker 3: said with COVID nineteen, people weren't sure how it transmitted originally,
Speaker 3: they became increasingly paranoid. What I like about off Its
Speaker 3: book is that he draws these comparisons very well. He says,
Speaker 3: you know, people were wearing masks, were wearing gloves, They
Speaker 3: were afraid to go to the grocery store and touch
Speaker 3: fruit in the produce section. Also, you should watch the
Speaker 3: produce if you can't.
Speaker 4: Just I remember when people were like getting their groceries
Speaker 4: and leaving them in their garage for a couple of days.
Speaker 4: You know, they were just like again, I'm sorry to
Speaker 4: repeat myself, just the not know of it all, something
Speaker 4: so novel literally was in the name of our virus,
Speaker 4: the coronavirus. It just breeds so much like paranoia, you know,
Speaker 4: And it's like how I'll do anything, Matt to your
Speaker 4: earlier point about how it's not like a knife or
Speaker 4: you know, a punch or something you can dodge or
Speaker 4: duck or guard yourself against. Therefore everything becomes a candidate
Speaker 4: for like this invisible kind of assailant, you know, for
Speaker 4: it to get into you and you just it can
Speaker 4: really breed some very serious mental health issues. In addition
Speaker 4: to God forbid, if you actually get the illness.
Speaker 2: Well, with a contractable disease, every other human being you
Speaker 2: interact with is a potential infection point right until exactly
Speaker 2: unless somehow you know that person has been vaccinated and
Speaker 2: is immune. Right, so now that person is safe, and
Speaker 2: then if you've gotten it, oh wait, now I'm safe
Speaker 2: and I could be a safe person for other people.
Speaker 2: You can see psychologically, the thing you're describing there, guys,
Speaker 2: is like the vaccine. It becomes a mental cure almost
Speaker 2: more than not more than the same way it becomes
Speaker 2: a physical prevention.
Speaker 3: There's some symbolism to it, right, There's some siop aspects
Speaker 3: for sure. I mean, look, it's so, what's the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: A ton of people acting good faith vaccinated their kids
Speaker 3: and they got polio as a result. And it should
Speaker 3: be no surprise that conspiracy theories take wing span. That's
Speaker 3: for you know, almost not immediately, the questions are thriving
Speaker 3: because there's a lack of transparency at this point. Could
Speaker 3: the US government really have just screwed up such an
Speaker 3: important job? Could there be another goal behind these vaccinations?
Speaker 3: What if people asked this was somehow by design? I
Speaker 3: suggest we take a break for a word, from our sponsors,
Speaker 3: Cutter Laboratories.
Speaker 4: Can we keep that in absolutely yes QA T A R.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, the.
Speaker 3: Nation Nation Cutter, our number one supporter. All right, keep
Speaker 3: it all all hurt, and we've returned. There's this aftermath,
Speaker 3: and to the credit of the US government, the response
Speaker 3: was pretty immediate, like they're freaking out too, because they
Speaker 3: are also human, they also have children. They also don't
Speaker 3: want anyone they care about to have polio.
Speaker 4: Right then, the Surgeon General's Office polls immediately all of
Speaker 4: these vaccines produced by Cutter. But unfortunately, as you may imagine,
Speaker 4: the damage had largely already been done, and subsequent research
Speaker 4: would show polio vaccines that were manufactured by Eli, Lilly Park, Davis, Pittman, Moore,
Speaker 4: and Wyeth may also have paralyzed some children. This is
Speaker 4: not very good for public opinion and morale in general, you.
Speaker 3: Know, especially after the just the bait and switch of
Speaker 3: it all.
Speaker 4: You know, you're already like again, living in these very
Speaker 4: paranoid conditions and then you have this this golden kind
Speaker 4: of like you know, parachute extended to you, only to
Speaker 4: realize that it as a giant.
Speaker 3: Hole in it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to
Speaker 3: put it, the public opinion pulls a one eighty pretty
Speaker 3: much overnight.
Speaker 2: The Surgeon General, Uh what a what a title, what
Speaker 2: an interesting like thing to be in charge of? It
Speaker 2: was Leonard A. Shield S C. H. E. E. L. E.
Speaker 2: I know there's a huge list online of all the
Speaker 2: surgeon general. I don't know any of them.
Speaker 3: I think most people don't.
Speaker 2: But it's such a cool I don't know, it's such
Speaker 2: a cool position. It seems really important.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a Dungeons and Dragons class, right, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, like.
Speaker 2: An insurgeon and the general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his buffs are crazy. But people went from eagerly
Speaker 3: supporting vaccination, extolling the virtues, exhorting each other to get vaccinated.
Speaker 3: They went to believing it would actually kill them to
Speaker 3: encounter not only this vaccination, but anybody who had received it.
Speaker 3: And to their credit, they were not wing nuts, they
Speaker 3: were not unintelligent people. They knew that this vaccine, in
Speaker 3: this situation gave people the disease it purported to prevent.
Speaker 4: That's right, And it just goes to show how one
Speaker 4: mistake of this proportion, you know, with such public results,
Speaker 4: can result in decades and decades of distrust, like to
Speaker 4: claw that credibility back.
Speaker 3: You know, you could argue it's still for some it's
Speaker 3: not back. It's easier to close the door than to
Speaker 3: open one, for sure.
Speaker 2: Do you think do you guys think there's anything to
Speaker 2: the nature of a patented vaccine that's produced by a
Speaker 2: private company that is like the unseen nature of that,
Speaker 2: especially in something that's an injectable like this, where you
Speaker 2: don't know what it is, you know that this company
Speaker 2: controls it. You watch it come out in a needle
Speaker 2: that then just goes into your arm, and you have
Speaker 2: to trust that whatever is in that needle is going
Speaker 2: to be helpful for you and it's gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: rather than hurt you, rather than I don't know, some
Speaker 2: kind of I'm trying to think of it. I don't
Speaker 2: know what the good comparison would be, but something that
Speaker 2: you could look at and go, okay, there's no mold
Speaker 2: on this. This looks fresh, This looks like the right
Speaker 2: the way the tomato should look. It smells like a tomato. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's good. I can eat that. I'm gonna be okay.
Speaker 2: But it's this weird, patented chemically thing that just gets
Speaker 2: shot into your arm.
Speaker 4: I mean, heck, even you know how some with the
Speaker 4: epidemic of say, tainted street drugs, there are the very
Speaker 4: least kits that people can use to test.
Speaker 2: They're oh interesting, they're illegal drugs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've been around a long time.
Speaker 4: So you can put a little whatever, I don't know
Speaker 4: how it works, but put a little drop of something
Speaker 4: on it and see if it's pure, if it's got
Speaker 4: some adult trint in it.
Speaker 3: This is a thing that's so new. There's no test
Speaker 3: for it. There's no way. You just have to trust it.
Speaker 3: And then if there were some sort of testing kit
Speaker 3: for your vaccine, then who would manufacture that? That's right,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Like that's also say, then
Speaker 3: you need a test for the test. You need a
Speaker 3: test for the test of the test. Maybe we're the
Speaker 3: wrong business because I think we just figured out design
Speaker 3: test amazing rift. So yeah, who watches the watchman's situations?
Speaker 3: And so as a result of this absolute disaster, there
Speaker 3: are something like sixty lawsuits which off it traces in detail,
Speaker 3: and the very first creates a judicial precedent that continues
Speaker 3: in the West today. It's the idea of liability without fault,
Speaker 3: which I know sounds very boring, and it's something that
Speaker 3: doesn't really happen to human individuals, but it does happen
Speaker 3: to corporations. They said, Look, Cutter Laboratories was not negligent
Speaker 3: in their production of the vaccine, but they had violated
Speaker 3: public trust because people believed it was safe. Sort of
Speaker 3: like when you go on an airplane, he just kind
Speaker 3: of assume the thing's going to land the way they
Speaker 3: told you it was going to land.
Speaker 4: It is kind of weird when you really start to
Speaker 4: think of how just living, you know, in the world,
Speaker 4: you have to trust so many systems, and how the
Speaker 4: erosion of that trust, you know, whether for a good
Speaker 4: reason or not, really prevents you from kind of living
Speaker 4: a normal life and can really lead to some serious difficulties,
Speaker 4: just like you know, in getting around or in you know,
Speaker 4: being healthy. You know, and there's people that really go
Speaker 4: down those rabbit holes of distrust. And again it is
Speaker 4: sometimes for good reason. But is it trusting blindly or
Speaker 4: is it just deciding that I'm not going to live
Speaker 4: in fear? I think there's some I don't know. The
Speaker 4: smart move is somewhere in between those two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the best way to describe human existence is probably
Speaker 3: like a non consensual group project, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: No one signed up for it, no one's really no
Speaker 3: one decided to be born on purpose for a thing,
Speaker 3: and you just sort of get this group and you're like, oh, gosh,
Speaker 3: I hope there aren't too many problems today.
Speaker 2: I was trying to come up with a sound that
Speaker 2: would encapsulate the human experience.
Speaker 3: And oh it's the Curby your Enthusiasm soundtrack or the
Speaker 3: sad trombone.
Speaker 2: This is this is my pitch ready, all right?
Speaker 3: Wow, perfect cut? Yeah, yeah, nailed it, like.
Speaker 2: Poetry, immediate awe and then just goes downhill.
Speaker 3: From there, right. And that's what we see here, this
Speaker 3: concept of liability without fault. It sounds boring, it's very
Speaker 3: important because it means that companies are can be held
Speaker 3: responsible for the effects of the things they create and sell,
Speaker 3: even if they were not negligent in their design and
Speaker 3: manu factor. And this gets us to a different conversation
Speaker 3: about pharmaceuticals, about you know, firearms, all the fun stuff.
Speaker 3: But what we see here is a standing case of disaster.
Speaker 3: It affects absolutely everyone listening in the modern day spoiler,
Speaker 3: even if you have never been to the US, and
Speaker 3: you never plan to visit. It's the worst vaccine disaster
Speaker 3: in US history, and the first. I think there are
Speaker 3: like three big consequences. The first one, innocent people died,
Speaker 3: and they died because they trusted a group of powerful
Speaker 3: people who made some terrible mistakes. I don't think there's
Speaker 3: a conspiracy. I don't think they did it on purpose.
Speaker 3: Like to the earlier point you guys made, if you
Speaker 3: wanted to kill a lot of people in this manner,
Speaker 3: then why didn't all the vaccines kill them?
Speaker 2: No, you're absolutely right. Of people didn't die, like let
Speaker 2: me go paralized.
Speaker 3: It's true though, I mean that's that's also you know,
Speaker 3: we have some fellow conspiracy realist listening this evening who
Speaker 3: may be partially or fully paralyzed. Right, And there are
Speaker 3: certainly still people.
Speaker 4: Alive today that are still, you know, dealing with the
Speaker 4: aftermath of the stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, history is way closer than it looks in
Speaker 3: the rear view mirror. Right. The second consequence, or to
Speaker 3: sow up the first one, it does not seem like
Speaker 3: there is proof of a grand conspiracy. It seems the
Speaker 3: truth is even more frightening. People got in a hurry
Speaker 3: and as a result of moving from fear and being
Speaker 3: in a hurry. They messed up.
Speaker 2: In social pressure, right, Yes, it's that like time plus
Speaker 2: pressure equal you make mistakes. And if you don't have
Speaker 2: a governing body or some kind of regulatory organization or
Speaker 2: third party that is going behind you and checking your work,
Speaker 2: then you can make a mistake like this.
Speaker 3: And maybe you should listen to scientists, because human history
Speaker 3: is just rife with scientists at experts raising their hands
Speaker 3: and saying, hey, wait, you know what I mean, shout
Speaker 3: out Samuelvies. They should not have killed that guy. Think
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: As I agree, by the way, but I imagine it
Speaker 2: as like a moon mission or something like, there's so
Speaker 2: much pressure to do it. You got really a ton
Speaker 2: of smart people working on the problem, but nobody checks
Speaker 2: any of the work, so they just kind of go
Speaker 2: with it and just oh wait, whoops, we missed by
Speaker 2: like a lot.
Speaker 3: Uh dang, the rockets take it off, and someone's like, wait,
Speaker 3: did anyone put glass in the windows?
Speaker 2: But that's but that's one of the I mean, like
Speaker 2: stress testing a product, anything like this, a plan, a strategy.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most important parts of a plan
Speaker 2: or a strategy right is to just is to test
Speaker 2: it out and see how it functions and test an
Speaker 2: end product. And it does feel like that for my money,
Speaker 2: that was the mistake in this instance.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that leads us to the second consequence,
Speaker 3: which is Americans increasingly distrusted their government and a healthy
Speaker 3: skepticism of authority is inherent to the American experiment. But
Speaker 3: this distrust is valid as it was because again those
Speaker 3: people got polio. There's no way are out as valid
Speaker 3: as it was. This distrust has directly resulted in the
Speaker 3: loss of further life. That leads us to the third consequence.
Speaker 3: Polio survived. It's real. We cannot over if the size.
Speaker 3: How much that sucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pretty much gone pretty much Yeah, And
Speaker 2: again statistically it was gone for almost all of the
Speaker 2: Western world. Most of the world were the only couple
Speaker 2: of places Asia and for a while was it Nigeria.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But is that because it's really resilient or it
Speaker 4: just wasn't actually fully eradicated. It kind of hung out
Speaker 4: dormant and then said, ah, I'm mac.
Speaker 3: There are a couple of reasons. Unfortunately, the fumbles here
Speaker 3: are man made in Nigeria. For a long time, one
Speaker 3: of the most prevalent conspiracy theories was that people were
Speaker 3: being sterilized through vaccination, and they were like, the idea is, hey,
Speaker 3: these Western groups, these NGOs are pretending to help you,
Speaker 3: but what they're really trying to do is depopulate your.
Speaker 2: So a bunch of people don't get the vaccinations, so
Speaker 2: then herd immunity is a lessened or gone, and then
Speaker 2: people get infected again, cycle cycles.
Speaker 3: And this is something to your points right now. If
Speaker 3: you're looking at the largest Poleo populations, you're going to
Speaker 3: find them in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And there are a
Speaker 3: lot of factors to it, like you just described, Matt,
Speaker 3: but one of the most intriguing factors is yet again
Speaker 3: the US messed up, and they messed up very bad
Speaker 3: in this one. You guys, No, you've heard of.
Speaker 2: This, right, I don't know much about this thing. Tell
Speaker 2: me about this. I do not know so either.
Speaker 3: All right. So there's this guy named Osama bin Laden.
Speaker 3: He's a real pos He's kind of a pill. Uh,
Speaker 3: I would say, so, yeah, I hope that's not a
Speaker 3: hot take, but I don't care for him, you know.
Speaker 3: So there's this global search for obl for Osama bin Laden.
Speaker 3: And that's in itself, that's a story for another evening,
Speaker 3: right because all right, it's I know Matt's art. For
Speaker 3: everybody listening. Matt just like arked one eyebrow as like,
Speaker 3: is now the time is it? Is it today?
Speaker 2: Let's do it. Get the stealth helicopter guys.
Speaker 3: And then just throw the body of the ocean whatever
Speaker 3: the CIA launched. This is true. The CIA launched a
Speaker 3: fake Hepatitis B vaccination grift to collect DNA in the
Speaker 3: neighborhood that they believed was harboring obl And they were saying, obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, bin Laden's not going to come out out
Speaker 3: and get his B vax, but maybe one of his
Speaker 3: family members will. This operation absolutely failed on multiple fronts. First,
Speaker 3: it didn't do what they wanted. That's not the reason
Speaker 3: they found quote unquote found Osama bin Laden. The worst
Speaker 3: consequence of this is that it absolutely wrecked any non
Speaker 3: Western trust in Western vaccines. Like they faked a vaccine
Speaker 3: program to find and kill a person.
Speaker 2: It's really so short sighted. You could have done an
Speaker 2: actual vaccination program.
Speaker 3: You could have also done that part. You would have
Speaker 3: helped people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you still have had the same result, no whatever,
Speaker 2: Leslie F.
Speaker 3: Roberts from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, real thing.
Speaker 3: Professor Roberts said, forevermore people would say this disease meaning polio,
Speaker 3: this crippled child is because the US was so crazy
Speaker 3: to get Asama bin laden. So now in parts of
Speaker 3: the world where polio is endemic, it is blamed upon
Speaker 3: Western governments, dude.
Speaker 2: And that's there's this whole other thing that we even
Speaker 2: even talked about, and we're already gosh, we're an hour
Speaker 2: in this episode. Almost The SV forty thing, what is
Speaker 2: it been, simeon virus something, what is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, SV forty, simion virus forty. It is there is
Speaker 3: a long running concern, you could say suspicion, you could
Speaker 3: say conspiracy theory that SV forty gives people cancer and
Speaker 3: that if someone is receiving polio vaccines contaminated with this
Speaker 3: monkey virus specific le between nineteen fifty five and nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty three, that it led to a much higher rate
Speaker 3: of contracting cancer. So the argument is similar to like
Speaker 3: asbestos and mes lithemioma or lead and crime.
Speaker 2: But it is weird because there's it's one of these
Speaker 2: things that you'll find on fact checking websites in places
Speaker 2: like the AP News will put out a special you
Speaker 2: can find on right now, a special fact checking article
Speaker 2: about this because there's some parts that are true. SV forty,
Speaker 2: this simion virus is used. Constituent parts of it are
Speaker 2: used to build things or components of a vaccine, several vaccines.
Speaker 2: But then and this virus does cause cancer in rodents
Speaker 2: in laboratory settings, but the same scientists running those things,
Speaker 2: running those experiments and those trials, also find that it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to cause cancer in humans. So it's all
Speaker 2: like it becomes muddled, especially for somebody like me that
Speaker 2: doesn't have a medical background that is just kind of
Speaker 2: going off the medical terminology that's written in these like
Speaker 2: places online. They're like, Okay, I think I understand what
Speaker 2: you're saying. This still feels a little creepy to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially the virus itself in like the Recis monkey.
Speaker 3: It's an infection that doesn't give them cancer, Yes, right, exactly.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's I think the uncertainty that we
Speaker 2: always talk about, Ben, the uncertainty is the scary thing
Speaker 2: at all times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. I think I think you're on the
Speaker 3: money with that. There is much more to the story
Speaker 3: SV forty. We had to mention it. As you can tell,
Speaker 3: we are not medical professionals. Nothing of this podcast should
Speaker 3: be taken as metal advice. Had to get that one
Speaker 3: in there, right.
Speaker 2: Guys, thank you?
Speaker 3: Does that Seyas? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That makes sense?
Speaker 3: Okay. We also haven't talked about the Russian disinfo campaigns
Speaker 3: surrounding COVID nineteen. Another story for another time. But there
Speaker 3: is some good news. As we were going in to
Speaker 3: record this evening this very day, February twenty sixth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, the Health Ministry of Afghanistan announced a new
Speaker 3: massive polio vaccination effort. They want to protect something like
Speaker 3: seven point six million children under the age of five
Speaker 3: from the endemic disease of polio. But now we have
Speaker 3: to wonder how will this be accepted on the ground.
Speaker 3: You know, if you live in a village in Afghanistan
Speaker 3: and then you have someone come up and say, hey,
Speaker 3: the Americans have a vaccine and they'd very much like
Speaker 3: to give it to your child. Yeah, what would you say.
Speaker 2: No, legs. I really appreciate it though, really pass Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've realized what was happening in my brain. S V
Speaker 2: four D is triggering in my head like Call of
Speaker 2: Duty and all these games I've played because of the
Speaker 2: SVD sniper rifle. It's the like Russian built draw again. No,
Speaker 2: I don't have to say it correctly, but it's the sniper.
Speaker 2: It's the sniper rifle that was very popular in Russia
Speaker 2: or USSR for a long time. But it's called SVD.
Speaker 2: So when you say s V four D, you just
Speaker 2: put a little four in between there.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it made me think of w D four d
Speaker 3: ah because I am woefully uninformed about most things. I
Speaker 3: don't know whether you can use it as an engine loop.
Speaker 3: You probably shouldn't you Probably you should probably just not
Speaker 3: have primate viruses on hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The one thing I know about WD forty, and
Speaker 2: it says it on all the bottles, is that it's penetrating,
Speaker 2: and I just feel uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 3: It's definitely a choice. It's definitely a choice on their end.
Speaker 3: So what do we think, guys? Is this something? Is
Speaker 3: this a conversation that continues? It feels like we gave
Speaker 3: ourselves some homework for some future episodes. I don't like
Speaker 3: I know it's again Like we said at the top,
Speaker 3: it's a very simple, uncomplicated subject, vaccination. What do we
Speaker 3: want to hear from our fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 2: I want people, if this is okay, this is one thing.
Speaker 2: I want people to check out the CDC's article. It's
Speaker 2: actually maybe just a landing page titled historical vaccine safety Concerns,
Speaker 2: and it's got a list with a pull down and
Speaker 2: you of things like the Cutter incident, the SV forty
Speaker 2: simean virus incident, the swine flew vaccine and how do
Speaker 2: you say that Gianbar syndrome. I mean, it's everything. It's
Speaker 2: got all the concerns into one like set up in
Speaker 2: one spot. I want to know what people's concerns are
Speaker 2: for real about this stuff. And then also like, what
Speaker 2: are you doing to protect yourself and your family and
Speaker 2: everybody around you in your neighborhood and your state every like?
Speaker 2: Because getting a vaccine to me still feels like the
Speaker 2: right thing, even though I've got I feel some type
Speaker 2: of way about it at times. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: I just how are you dealing with that? If you're
Speaker 2: listening to this?
Speaker 3: What about you, Neil?
Speaker 4: I mean, look, I think I've mentioned before on the
Speaker 4: show that you know, when we got our kid vaccinated
Speaker 4: early on, there were a few that I think we delayed,
Speaker 4: didn't do them all in one go, because there's some
Speaker 4: sources that we were reading up on on you know,
Speaker 4: my kid's mom and I that were just indicating that
Speaker 4: pumping all of that in one fell swoop could be
Speaker 4: a little much.
Speaker 3: For such a small system.
Speaker 4: You know, That's about as far as I've ever gone
Speaker 4: in terms of like distrusting any of the medical science,
Speaker 4: especially after such a long time, you know, with the
Speaker 4: basic kind of vaccinations that are required for you know,
Speaker 4: your child being able to attend school, and then after
Speaker 4: a point with the COVID stuff, Yeah, we've all gotten it.
Speaker 4: I'd like to live my life with some degree of
Speaker 4: trust of medical science. I know healthcare in the United
Speaker 4: States isn't always what it's cracked up to be, but
Speaker 4: I would like to think that at the heart of
Speaker 4: it is the desire to help people, and that no
Speaker 4: one's trying to feed us any secret microchips or five
Speaker 4: G or anything like that.
Speaker 3: You know. I just that's I have to I just
Speaker 3: it's too much.
Speaker 4: For me to choose to live otherwise, live my life
Speaker 4: you know, looking for the conspiracy and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I would like to hear. I would
Speaker 3: like to hear from our listeners, folks, everything that the
Speaker 3: guys just described There'd also like to hear what you
Speaker 3: would keep in a bunker, and would love to hear
Speaker 3: your opinions on the nineteen eighty eight cinematic masterpiece Vibes
Speaker 3: starring Jeff Goldbloom and Cindy Lapper. Tell us your thoughts,
Speaker 3: you know, odd Vibes, but also on the other stuff
Speaker 3: from this episode. Tell us if we should do an
Speaker 3: episode on obl talking to some tourists out there. If
Speaker 3: you are able to give us the scooper the skinny,
Speaker 3: then we try to be easy to find online. That's right.
Speaker 4: You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where
Speaker 4: we exist on Facebook, where you can find our Facebook group.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: We also exist at that handle on xa, Twitter, as
Speaker 4: well as YouTube, where we roll out new video content
Speaker 4: every single week. You can find us in the handle
Speaker 4: Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: Hey, we have a phone number. Why don't you give
Speaker 2: us a call. It's one eight three three st d
Speaker 2: wytk let us know if you're gonna take a tactical
Speaker 2: hammer or a tactical hatchet into the bunker with you.
Speaker 2: I love that idea of you. You get one or
Speaker 2: the other and that's it.
Speaker 3: That's so weird. Also, also, just on that poll for
Speaker 3: anybody playing along at home on our social media, we had,
Speaker 3: we owe a great deal of thanks to our pals
Speaker 3: Erica and west Over at Station sixteen. They did not
Speaker 3: include the number one thing you should have when you're
Speaker 3: thinking about bunkers, which is a secondary backup bunker.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you're gonna say that was your first question.
Speaker 4: You're like primary or secondary? Gonna get to the bunker question.
Speaker 3: You gotta have to is.
Speaker 2: It a bunker inside the other bunker below secondary the
Speaker 2: primary bunker?
Speaker 3: Nice? Try yeah, nar.
Speaker 2: Collar, tell us about your bunker and tell us where
Speaker 2: yours is so we could come hang out. Just kidding.
Speaker 2: Don't just don't give out information like that. If you
Speaker 2: don't want to do that, why not instead send us
Speaker 2: a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are the folks who read every single email we get.
Speaker 3: Give us the links, give us the pictures, give us
Speaker 3: the context. We love hearing from you. Shout out to
Speaker 3: Papa Caps.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but that oh, what is it? The oh,
Speaker 2: I can't remember the name of the sweet sweet, super
Speaker 2: spicy hot saucy makes up. There's Illinois.
Speaker 4: It was a ghostye right, or some flavor of maybe
Speaker 4: a variety of the ghost pepper.
Speaker 3: We're gonna find out. Yeah, we sure will. We'll find
Speaker 3: out together. Also, just to get in front of it.
Speaker 3: The Larry David SNL clip we mentioned earlier is FBI
Speaker 3: simulator featuring Larry David as Kevin Roberts. Please do check
Speaker 3: it out respect yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And while you're checking that out, that means you're probably online,
Speaker 3: so finally get into the end. Send us an email
Speaker 3: conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.