Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Pay there and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, doctor, doctor,
Speaker 1: give me the news. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And this is going to be part
Speaker 1: two of our two part series on vaccines. And the
Speaker 1: last time we talked about the history of vaccines and
Speaker 1: how they work. And this time we're gonna do what
Speaker 1: we do on the show and look at the future
Speaker 1: of the future of vaccines where we can go with
Speaker 1: this technology. But if you haven't listened to that original episode,
Speaker 1: the one we did last time, you should probably go
Speaker 1: back listen to that one first to get the foundation
Speaker 1: that the science basis, yeah, the foundation for the discussion
Speaker 1: we're about to have, and then come back and rejoin
Speaker 1: us here for a journey into the great unknown. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're gonna start with some fud, fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Speaker 1: It's true. We mentioned right back at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the last episode that I have a theory that news
Speaker 1: about developments in vaccine technology kind of gets undersold in
Speaker 1: the in the media a little bit because the media
Speaker 1: space for vaccine related stories is mostly taken up by
Speaker 1: anti vaccine activism controversy. In fact, if you if you
Speaker 1: were to do internet searches on things about vaccines, and
Speaker 1: you know, just you're you're using good search techniques, a
Speaker 1: lot of your results are going to come up with
Speaker 1: some very non scientifically minded material that has no real
Speaker 1: relationship to any proven foundation. Yeah, if I can be
Speaker 1: if I could be straight with all of you guys
Speaker 1: out there in podcast world. I suggested this topic specifically
Speaker 1: because over over on a show called What the Stuff,
Speaker 1: which is a video show that we run through how
Speaker 1: stuff works, we published a video about about misconceptions about
Speaker 1: the flu. Caroline Irvin hosted it. I wrote the script.
Speaker 1: It was a really terrific episode, and the comment thread
Speaker 1: on YouTube is interesting. I gotta I gotta ask, was
Speaker 1: there a sizeable anti vax incredibly sizeable? Interesting? And and
Speaker 1: actually even even the pro vaccination faction was being really
Speaker 1: quite impolite, which which I don't think was helping the matter.
Speaker 1: And this is part of why the debate gets so hot. Yes, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: this this was well, for one, we're literally talking about
Speaker 1: life and death. Yeah, this is not. This is not
Speaker 1: some minor issue. This is something that you know, we
Speaker 1: as we mentioned in part one, vaccines have saved countless lives,
Speaker 1: not just the people they directly saved, but their descendants. Right. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: and also heard immunity, and we'll we'll get into this
Speaker 1: a little bit a little bit later on. But protecting
Speaker 1: other people who can't catch a disease from you if
Speaker 1: you don't have that disease, it's a really huge part
Speaker 1: of why vaccination is rad Well, we should address this topic,
Speaker 1: I think by starting with the sort of historical facts
Speaker 1: about where the current strain of this controversy came from. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things I think we should say at
Speaker 1: the outset is that vaccines are medications, and pretty much
Speaker 1: every medication that exists can, in some number some subset
Speaker 1: of cases have side effects. And this is true. This
Speaker 1: is true of vaccines as well. But the problem is
Speaker 1: the side effects that have been claimed most of the
Speaker 1: time by the anti vaccination movement are not the real
Speaker 1: side effects, or they've been claimed to happen at a
Speaker 1: much higher frequency than is actually observed in the medical
Speaker 1: medical literature. And I think the most commonly cited side
Speaker 1: effect has been this perceived association between vaccines and autism.
Speaker 1: That's the leavy big one, easily the most the most
Speaker 1: covered of all of the controversies, right in the basket.
Speaker 1: So uh, as we often do on forward thinking, uh,
Speaker 1: the the vaccine autism connection or lack thereof. As I
Speaker 1: wrote in our notes, Uh yeah, the the general thought
Speaker 1: was that that because of the publication of a particular paper,
Speaker 1: and I'll get to that in a second, that that
Speaker 1: childhood vaccination schedules were somehow not just correlated, but had
Speaker 1: a cause effect relationship with the rise in the diagnosis
Speaker 1: of autism in children. Uh. This all really got started
Speaker 1: back in n seven when Andrew Wakefield, who was a
Speaker 1: British surgeon, published a paper in The Lancet allegedly establishing
Speaker 1: this link between MMR vaccine. Uh that's mumps, measles and
Speaker 1: rubella I believe, uh, and arise in the number of
Speaker 1: children being diagnosed with autism. Now the lens it is
Speaker 1: a highly respected journal like it's This isn't a blog
Speaker 1: that someone has put up and given a vaguely scientific
Speaker 1: or medical sounding name and then treats it as if
Speaker 1: it were a pure reviewed journal. This is top notch
Speaker 1: stuff in the field of medicine. Yes, but even a
Speaker 1: respected journal can make mistakes, absolutely yes, And and in
Speaker 1: this case, since the publication of this article, the research
Speaker 1: has been really gone over and through and and it does.
Speaker 1: It does not hold up. The scientific method was not
Speaker 1: being used properly. Some people have gone so far as
Speaker 1: to accuse Wakefield of knowingly misrepresenting data, not just cherry picking,
Speaker 1: but misrepresenting. There were procedural errors. There were undisclosed financial
Speaker 1: conflicts of interests. Essentially, Wakefield was getting money from parties
Speaker 1: that had a vested interest in alternatives to vaccination. So
Speaker 1: this was a big deal and eventually took longer than
Speaker 1: many of us would have liked. The scandal cost Wakefield
Speaker 1: his medical license in the UK, and the Lancet retracted
Speaker 1: the paper and said, uh, this it was a mistake
Speaker 1: to ever publish it in the first place. We don't
Speaker 1: stand by the results as anymore and they don't seem
Speaker 1: to be true. However, when a cat is let out
Speaker 1: of a bag, the bag is no longer filled with cat,
Speaker 1: and it's even worse if that cat goes on to
Speaker 1: have many, many litters of kittens. Yes, including people who
Speaker 1: have a visible place in the public consciousness, like people
Speaker 1: who have a platform upon which to continuously promote this
Speaker 1: idea of a connection between vaccines and autism. Yeah. This,
Speaker 1: this has been a factor in the history of this
Speaker 1: debate because even though the medical establishment considers this link
Speaker 1: between vaccines and autism completely debunked, uh, it has had
Speaker 1: some very popular celebrity endorsements. And you guys know him,
Speaker 1: you've heard him. I mean, we're not going to name yeah,
Speaker 1: mostly because I won't be able to complete the rest
Speaker 1: of this podcast. I will just be drooling at and
Speaker 1: foaming and yelling. Yeah. But but the but the absolute
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is I'm and I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard it before, but here it again from us. There
Speaker 1: have been studies, peer reviewed, well researched, like good science
Speaker 1: studies that have shown that there is no link between
Speaker 1: vaccines and autism exactly. It just does not exist, as
Speaker 1: far as a scientific method can tell, right, Like, as
Speaker 1: as certain as we can be about anything, at this point,
Speaker 1: we can be certain vaccines do not lead to autism.
Speaker 1: There there are other theories about why the diagnosis for
Speaker 1: autism has been on the rise, largely due to things
Speaker 1: like redefining what the autism spectrum is autistic spectrum, I
Speaker 1: should say. And by redefining it, suddenly, if you have
Speaker 1: a wider net, what do you know, more people fall
Speaker 1: into that definition. If you're paying attention to these to
Speaker 1: these poor people who otherwise would have slipped through the cracks,
Speaker 1: that of course you're going to find more of them.
Speaker 1: Uh So. And furthermore, okay, adding to this, adding to
Speaker 1: this problem of celebrities, uh, misinforming the public about this issue,
Speaker 1: you have a few misguided people in the government who
Speaker 1: have accused the CDC of destroying or covering up evidence
Speaker 1: that vactsines cause autism. And if you've heard about that,
Speaker 1: these accusations have been proven to be completely unfounded. Uh.
Speaker 1: Data from the studies that these governmental people were talking
Speaker 1: about was neither destroyed nor covered up. It's there, you
Speaker 1: can you can go look at it for yourself. Um.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, every study that has been conducted that potentially
Speaker 1: indicated a link between vaccines and autism has been shown
Speaker 1: to have used really shoddy statistics to bend the data
Speaker 1: to their to their wishes. You again largely cherry picking information,
Speaker 1: ignoring anything that does not back up your claim and
Speaker 1: only picking the stuff that does seem to back up
Speaker 1: your claim. That's a that's bad science for anything, right,
Speaker 1: not just with vaccines, but any kind of science where
Speaker 1: you are you feel motivated to only present the information
Speaker 1: that supports your hypothesis, that's bad science. It's not the
Speaker 1: way science is supposed to work. And that's why we
Speaker 1: have the pure review process so that others can come
Speaker 1: in and really scrutinize the work that you've done to
Speaker 1: make sure that that hasn't happened. Sometimes it even happens unconsciously.
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily saying that people do it on purpose
Speaker 1: all the time. And sometimes you can look at numbers
Speaker 1: and think that they're leading in one way, and you
Speaker 1: know if perhaps your sample size is too small, or
Speaker 1: or you've you've assumed a variable is in play that
Speaker 1: is not, or there there are variables that you did
Speaker 1: not take into account. Sure, sure, absolutely, like lots lots
Speaker 1: of completely honest mistakes can happen in this kind of situation. Now,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, not vaccinating people leads
Speaker 1: to disease outbreaks and potentially to fatalities. As an example,
Speaker 1: UH in California back in there was an outbreak of
Speaker 1: pertussis also known as whooping cough. Whooping cough had not
Speaker 1: been seen in any large numbers for sixty years in California,
Speaker 1: and then there's an outbreak of more than nine thousand cases.
Speaker 1: So that also included ten infant deaths. Right, And when
Speaker 1: we talk about herd immunity, part of that is our
Speaker 1: responsibility to be vaccinated against diseases, so we don't pass
Speaker 1: them onto people who are too young to have been
Speaker 1: vaccinated already, yeah, or who have compromised immune systems vaccines. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm getting a little head up about this. I
Speaker 1: apologize for that, but this is one of those those
Speaker 1: those topics that are really get very passionate about. So
Speaker 1: at any rate um vaccines and autism, there is no
Speaker 1: credible scientific link between the two. This is not the
Speaker 1: only thing that vaccines have been um allegedly connected to.
Speaker 1: Another one is type one diabetes. This was popularized by
Speaker 1: Dr J. Bartholow Klassen, who who had claimed that the
Speaker 1: rise and diabetes diagnoses in the US were tied to
Speaker 1: childhood vaccination schedule. So very similar to the autism story
Speaker 1: and also very similar to the autism story. Other scientific
Speaker 1: studies do not seem to bear this out at all.
Speaker 1: One of the ones I looked at was a study
Speaker 1: that followed twenty one thousand four children over the course
Speaker 1: of ten years after they had received the hip conjugate
Speaker 1: vaccine the hib conjugate vaccine, and found that there was
Speaker 1: no greater incidents in diabetes than a control group of
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand, five d fifty seven children who did
Speaker 1: not receive the vaccination. In other words, there's no rise
Speaker 1: in diabetes in the test group compared to the control group.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty decent sample size. I was about to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's what you like to call a good sample size.
Speaker 1: And of course that's not the only study that has
Speaker 1: been conducted in terms of vaccines and diabetes. That was
Speaker 1: just the one that I had looked at too choose
Speaker 1: as an example. But uh, again, there does not seem
Speaker 1: to be any credible scientific link between the two. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also the fear about vaccines containing toxins, heavy metals,
Speaker 1: for example, or formaldehyde. Yeah, yeah, because there are now
Speaker 1: some vaccines like we we've outlawed some of these chemicals
Speaker 1: to be used in vaccines, even though at the levels
Speaker 1: that they were in in vaccines, they were well below toxic, right,
Speaker 1: because because there's certain chemicals that you can you can
Speaker 1: come into contact with and not have any toxicity. There's
Speaker 1: no toxicity involved. You have to have more than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you eat enough nutmet it can kill you. Guys,
Speaker 1: don't eat too much nutmeg. Yeah, the don't like, drink,
Speaker 1: don't like, don't don't like, just chew on nutmeg all days.
Speaker 1: It's for you. Or like, if you eight five pounds
Speaker 1: of apple seeds, then you might have enough cyanide to
Speaker 1: actually do some damage to you, but otherwise the levels
Speaker 1: are so low that they aren't toxic. That was the
Speaker 1: very case of the materials that are in vaccines. Um,
Speaker 1: this is just a misunderstanding of what toxic means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because of course formaldehyde is toxic. Of course, mercury is
Speaker 1: a bad thing to drink, right, but there are certain
Speaker 1: levels that you can encounter that aren't going to harm you.
Speaker 1: In fact, when it comes to things like formaldehyde, our
Speaker 1: own metabolic processes create formaldehyde right in your body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and more so than you would find in any vaccine.
Speaker 1: So the thing that drives me nuts in this is
Speaker 1: when people are will say, like, oh, the same chemicals
Speaker 1: that are in formaldehyde are in this, uh, this material
Speaker 1: that's inside of vaccines. Have you look to see what
Speaker 1: other stuff these chemicals are in. I mean, they're in
Speaker 1: like lots of things. You don't understand chemistry is what
Speaker 1: what this is telling me? Yeah, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: that's another, you know, another fear that is largely unfounded. Clearly,
Speaker 1: any substance that we're introducing to our body, Uh, there
Speaker 1: needs to be a great deal of testing to make
Speaker 1: certain that it's not toxic. But these are materials that
Speaker 1: at these levels we know aren't toxic. Um another fear
Speaker 1: that vaccines caused the very disease they're meant to prevent.
Speaker 1: In other words, you go in, you get a vaccination,
Speaker 1: and then two days later you've come down with whatever
Speaker 1: it is you got vaccinated against. Clearly the vaccine did
Speaker 1: it right. If you don't know what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: this makes sense. Yeah, sure, well, and we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about this one in the previous episode. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's um. The way the vaccines work is that it
Speaker 1: takes a while for your body to take the information
Speaker 1: in the vaccine and to extrapolate it out and build
Speaker 1: up a resistance to that disease, right, And in that
Speaker 1: time between when it gets the information and when it's ready,
Speaker 1: you could still catch that disease. You could still encounter
Speaker 1: it and end up becoming sick because your body isn't
Speaker 1: in the ready state yet, right, right. And we should
Speaker 1: say that that it's not that this has never in
Speaker 1: the history of vaccines happened. No, it did happen once.
Speaker 1: It happened one time, literally one time, really one patient
Speaker 1: the oral polio vaccine, which is no longer used in
Speaker 1: the United States. But yeah, that's the one time there
Speaker 1: was a recorded case where this actually happened. In all
Speaker 1: the other cases, the reactions that a person had to vaccines,
Speaker 1: they were something else. It wasn't that they were caught
Speaker 1: the disease they got in the vaccine. Sometimes there's a
Speaker 1: complication because the immune system reacts in a way that
Speaker 1: is far too uh too strong, and as a result,
Speaker 1: someone can suffer something like seizures or or brain damage
Speaker 1: even in some cases. But it's super rare for that
Speaker 1: to happen. But it's not the disease that did it.
Speaker 1: It's the body's own immune system went haywire, uh well,
Speaker 1: And in the case of the flu, we should say
Speaker 1: there are there's okay, there's a lot of different strains
Speaker 1: of the flu going around at any given times. So
Speaker 1: if you catch the flu after you've received a vaccine, uh,
Speaker 1: it could just be a different strain. Because the vaccine
Speaker 1: for the flu that's sent out every year is made
Speaker 1: up of is made to target two to four strains
Speaker 1: that global researchers have guessed is going to be are
Speaker 1: are going to be the most active in the coming year,
Speaker 1: And they're making real educated guesses, you guys. So it's
Speaker 1: like they're looking at pipe. Yeah it's not like a
Speaker 1: dice roll, but yeah, they might be looking at a
Speaker 1: big pie chart, right and saying like this, this particular
Speaker 1: strain of the virus has this percentage chance of being
Speaker 1: one of the really prevalent ones this year. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: looking yeah, they're they're looking at Yeah, they're looking at
Speaker 1: patient data from from people around the world, and uh,
Speaker 1: but but you know, it's it's completely possible to catch
Speaker 1: a different strain what was in the vaccine. We've seen
Speaker 1: outbreaks of flu where it would end up being a
Speaker 1: strain of flu that everyone was fairly certain was going
Speaker 1: to be more or less inert and turn out that
Speaker 1: they were wrong. It does happen. Um, So anyway, that's
Speaker 1: that's a list of things that people often fear are
Speaker 1: bad or can go wrong with vaccines. Now, there are
Speaker 1: some things that can go wrong, you want to address them. Sure,
Speaker 1: we've mentioned a couple of times already that, like all medications,
Speaker 1: vaccines can have side effects. They typically the approved vaccines
Speaker 1: that are given out are going to have an extremely
Speaker 1: low incidence of of catastrophic side effects, though maybe you
Speaker 1: know one in a million type things can go very wrong.
Speaker 1: The standard side effects you might get are like soreness
Speaker 1: at the injection site, something maybe a low grade fever
Speaker 1: depending upon the vaccination that you received, And that's your
Speaker 1: body's immune system kick. But yeah, and obviously if you
Speaker 1: are someone who has a compromised une system, it could
Speaker 1: be much more serious than that, which is why you
Speaker 1: know most vaccines you would never administer to someone who
Speaker 1: has that kind of condition. Sure, you can't have allergies
Speaker 1: to certain ingredients in vaccines, Yeah, and that can that
Speaker 1: can be pretty scary. I mean, as someone who has
Speaker 1: I have a couple of pretty severe allergies not to
Speaker 1: anything that's in vaccines. As far as I know anyway.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: the reaction is pretty quick after you're introduced to the thing,
Speaker 1: and it can be pretty terrifying. But again that's that's
Speaker 1: your body misidentifying something as being super duper dangerous, so
Speaker 1: it goes into hyper attack mode. You stay away from
Speaker 1: the shellfish vaccine. Yeah, for me, it's a lobster and alcohol.
Speaker 1: Those are the two things I can't have because I
Speaker 1: will go into anaphlyctic shock. It's exciting, it's a fun
Speaker 1: trick to do it parties, but I can only do
Speaker 1: it once. Um. One other problem that we sometimes encounter
Speaker 1: with vaccines is access right and then absolutely you know this.
Speaker 1: This is sometimes in the case of shortages where we
Speaker 1: literally do not have enough vaccines for the populations that
Speaker 1: are most in need of them. Sometimes it has to
Speaker 1: do with the vaccines are not in the part of
Speaker 1: the world where we need them to be right, like
Speaker 1: the the outbreak may be in one part of the world,
Speaker 1: and all the vaccine production centers could be in a
Speaker 1: different part of the world. Um. Part of that issue
Speaker 1: is that it's it's difficult to ship vaccines. A lot
Speaker 1: of vaccines have to be kept at a very low
Speaker 1: temperature in order for them to remain viable. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this a little bit later when we're talking
Speaker 1: about the future of vaccines. Not all places in the
Speaker 1: world have temperature controlled storage. So while you could argue, hey,
Speaker 1: why is this even an issue. We have vaccines for
Speaker 1: that disease, Well, if we can't get the vaccine to
Speaker 1: the people who need it, then there's still very much
Speaker 1: a problem. So in that case, the problem isn't so
Speaker 1: much with the vaccine itself and what it is, but
Speaker 1: rather how much of it do we have and do
Speaker 1: we have it in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 1: But there's a serious issue with vaccines, has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with autism or diabetes or anything along those lines. Now,
Speaker 1: let's go on and talk about some of the future
Speaker 1: of vaccines because there's some really exciting stuff. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And and to to start us out, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to give a shout out to genome sequencing because being
Speaker 1: able to take a look at the entire genetic code
Speaker 1: of a bacterium or virus has let researchers start to
Speaker 1: make again those very educated guesses about sequences of code
Speaker 1: that could work as antigens in the future. Um. It's
Speaker 1: sometimes called reverse vaccinology, like trying to create a vaccine
Speaker 1: out of something that that you're you're not sure will work,
Speaker 1: but this might be the right puzzle piece to plug
Speaker 1: in there. Um uh. There's also been study into the
Speaker 1: genes that turn on in microbes when those microbes switch
Speaker 1: from being passive to being active when they become virulent.
Speaker 1: That is, and um we talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: that one in our episode about antibiotics and back to communication.
Speaker 1: That one was called forget going viral Bacterial communication is awesome.
Speaker 1: Who came up with that title? It's Jonathan? Was it me?
Speaker 1: I can only assume that probably was me. It wasn't me.
Speaker 1: I was the one who called the operation plowshare. That's
Speaker 1: the bomb. Oh my goodness. I'm not proud of that.
Speaker 1: But uh that that episode about bacterial communication came out
Speaker 1: in September. If you would like to go check that
Speaker 1: one out. Um so, so, yeah, genome sequencing good good technology.
Speaker 1: It's not like a new technique the way that a
Speaker 1: lot of these others are going to be. But I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say, hey, thanks Jeans. Yeah. So some
Speaker 1: other stuff that's being that's under research and development right
Speaker 1: now and various companies around the world. And vaccines are
Speaker 1: big business, right We're talking you know, as part of
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical business. It's it is and well, and I
Speaker 1: did want to say that, like that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason that some people distrust vaccines because it's big pharma,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I get it. I get that
Speaker 1: it it's a scary industry. And and there are some
Speaker 1: downsides to write, like there's some some diseases that big
Speaker 1: Pharma might not be that motivated to go out and
Speaker 1: develop vaccines for because there's not a lot of money
Speaker 1: back there. If you're talking about diseases that largely affect
Speaker 1: the developing world versus the developed world, there might be
Speaker 1: this it's pretty grim to talk about this, but there
Speaker 1: might be this you know, investment versus reward discussion. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: and and actually that was that was an issue with
Speaker 1: Big Pharma and the flu vaccine for a number of years.
Speaker 1: It was definitely like a like a loss item for them,
Speaker 1: for for most companies for a very long time. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of newer vaccines that are they're they're able
Speaker 1: to incorporate more strains of the flu in a single vaccine,
Speaker 1: and so those are actually like capable of making money
Speaker 1: because you can sell them to richer populations as like
Speaker 1: an upgrade sort of thing. But but for the for
Speaker 1: the most part, certainly the flu vaccine and some other
Speaker 1: vaccines as well are are not big money makers. These
Speaker 1: are not the things that big farm is going out
Speaker 1: and looking at to to make all of their Boku bucks. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: there's still quite a few uh labs out there that
Speaker 1: are actively looking into improving our processes with vaccines. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is right, right, it's it's it's a complicated price issue,
Speaker 1: is basically what I wanted to say. That's a good point,
Speaker 1: it's an excellent point. So one of those one of
Speaker 1: those technologies we're talking about a live orcombinant vaccines. This
Speaker 1: is the practice of using a vaccine of one attenuated
Speaker 1: virus or bacterial strain to prompt an immune response to
Speaker 1: a different illness. Well, wait a minute, isn't this kind
Speaker 1: of what happened when Edward Jenner put smaller cow pox
Speaker 1: into one person to protect them from a small box
Speaker 1: very much? So, yeah, that's a great example of an
Speaker 1: early use of this. So really it's a it's an
Speaker 1: idea that's been around since we had the word vaccination. Well,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit more of a direct application though,
Speaker 1: because in that case he was using one disease to
Speaker 1: prevent another, and and in this one, uh, you're you're
Speaker 1: directly putting some of some of the dangerous disease into
Speaker 1: a less dangerous disease. Yeah, it gets a little yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it does get a little more comfortable, right, right, So infection,
Speaker 1: let's see, let's see if my my example that I
Speaker 1: wrote when I was getting into nap mode makes sense.
Speaker 1: Here's how I wrote it out. I said, so you
Speaker 1: want to vaccinate somebody for disease A. All right, so
Speaker 1: you take you take a vaccine that's meant for disease B,
Speaker 1: totally different disease, but you incorporate some of the protein
Speaker 1: from disease A into the vaccine for disease B. So
Speaker 1: now the disease B contains a little bit of protein
Speaker 1: from disease disease A, and you administer that to an
Speaker 1: uninfected person, their immune system kicks in the gear. Their
Speaker 1: immune system recognizes the protein that belongs to disease A.
Speaker 1: Even though disease A is not really represented otherwise in
Speaker 1: this vaccine, and as a result, you develop a resistance
Speaker 1: or immunity to disease A. This is a great way
Speaker 1: of UH using a method to protect someone from a
Speaker 1: disease that otherwise would be far too dangerous to introduce,
Speaker 1: even in a vaccine form. Now, what would make a
Speaker 1: disease too dangerous to introduce? Would it be if if
Speaker 1: you can't make it safe enough, Like you can't knock
Speaker 1: it out the way you would these others. HIV is
Speaker 1: a great example of this. Right, So HIV is is
Speaker 1: so potentially dangerous that you cannot attenuate it enough for
Speaker 1: it to fall below the threshold of danger, you would
Speaker 1: constantly be endangering any uninfected person with its Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could contract HIV and then that could develop into AIDS.
Speaker 1: So this is an example of a way to get
Speaker 1: around that where you incorporate some of that protein so
Speaker 1: it's not the actual HIV virus, it's just some of
Speaker 1: the protein that marks it as such and help your
Speaker 1: immune system defend against it. Now, HIV in particular, there
Speaker 1: might be a totally different vector that we discover to
Speaker 1: to vaccinate against that. We'll talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit a little bit later, but this one holds a
Speaker 1: lot of promise. I'm excited about it. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Another one that I think is really neat is, uh
Speaker 1: the DNA vaccine approached. Um, So, these vaccines consist of
Speaker 1: DNA coding for a specific antigen. You take that DNA
Speaker 1: coding and you inject the vaccine directly into muscle tissue,
Speaker 1: which sounds so comfortable. That's that's what you do with
Speaker 1: most vaccines. Yeah, I just whenever it's worded that way,
Speaker 1: I can't help. But I can't help but feel that
Speaker 1: tetan is shot right, Like that's the one that always
Speaker 1: that I always also seen he prefers them injected into
Speaker 1: his eyeballs. I have had things. Why would you say
Speaker 1: that show I had? I've had my eyes messed with before.
Speaker 1: Thank you. We haven't done an episode about lasik. I
Speaker 1: could talk about it. Uh so strange enough, it doesn't
Speaker 1: bother me at this point. But so the DNA from
Speaker 1: the antigen integrates itself into the patient's cells, which begin
Speaker 1: to produce the antigen. And because the antigen is a
Speaker 1: molecular marker that indicates a foreign microbe, you can go
Speaker 1: back and listen to our first episode. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what that means, this triggers the body's immune response.
Speaker 1: Now one big advantage, so back up, hold on. So
Speaker 1: you are you were essentially programming cells within your body
Speaker 1: to make the antigens that you would need to recognize
Speaker 1: for the vaccine. Yes, exactly, yeah ye, so so they
Speaker 1: don't have to pick it up from any from any microbes, right. So,
Speaker 1: So these antigens, remember, are just molecular markers. They're not
Speaker 1: they're not the actual disease carrying microbe, but rather kind
Speaker 1: of like their name badge. So your cells are printing
Speaker 1: out these name badges, your immune system recognizes that and
Speaker 1: then can build that into its antibody response. One, yeah,
Speaker 1: it can. It can take those antigens and build it
Speaker 1: into its DNA code, so that that's that's a name
Speaker 1: badge that knows to look for and kick right out
Speaker 1: of its par Right. So, even though it's never never
Speaker 1: encountered that particular disease, if you ever encountered it in
Speaker 1: the future, at least in theory, you would be able
Speaker 1: to produce the correct antibodies to fight it off. So
Speaker 1: why would this be better than a regular vaccine, Well,
Speaker 1: a DNA is is relatively easy to manufacture, so it
Speaker 1: could be very efficient. It could be very relatively inexpensive
Speaker 1: compared to other methods of producing vaccines. But there are
Speaker 1: some drawbacks as well, because you'd say, well, if it's
Speaker 1: easy to do, then why why isn't that the standard.
Speaker 1: The big reason is that, um they've yet to be
Speaker 1: proven to induce an immune response strong enough to create
Speaker 1: immunity to prevent future infection of diseases. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: they can be used to help create antibodies for a
Speaker 1: particular disease, but so far we have not demonstrated this
Speaker 1: approach as being effective enough to truly create immunity, so
Speaker 1: you could still be vulnerable to some of these diseases.
Speaker 1: Your body would be fighting it off, but it might
Speaker 1: not win. So that's a big reason why DNA vaccines
Speaker 1: haven't been completely adopted as the new approach. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of work going into improving it, and it
Speaker 1: is possible that this will be useful in creating vaccines
Speaker 1: for diseases against which we have no current preventative measure.
Speaker 1: But we've got some other stuff we can talk about. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's the use of adjuvants or adjuvants. Have you heard
Speaker 1: about these? I read about. Yeah, this is like this
Speaker 1: is like special sauce that you put in with your
Speaker 1: vaccine to make it a little give it a little
Speaker 1: more oomph. Essentially, these are additives that stimulate the immune
Speaker 1: system in one way or another. So it's not directly
Speaker 1: related to the disease necessarily, but it's meant to ramp
Speaker 1: up your immune system's response to make it more effective.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah, yeah, because as as we were discussing in
Speaker 1: the first episode, there's a few different signals that go
Speaker 1: on among the cells in your immune system that that
Speaker 1: get everyone rear and to go. It's the big big
Speaker 1: coach speech before the before halftime is over. Come on, guys,
Speaker 1: we know what we're up against. Now, let's not give
Speaker 1: up another yard. So uh, that's literally everything I know
Speaker 1: about football is just I just exhausted it in that
Speaker 1: one analogy. Um So anyway, yeah, this is that's exactly
Speaker 1: right like that. These are additives that are meant to
Speaker 1: boost that ability for your immune system to respond very
Speaker 1: quickly and uh and build up those those antibodies. Um.
Speaker 1: There are a lot that are under various clinical trials
Speaker 1: right now that could end up um increasing the efficacy
Speaker 1: of a lot of promising vaccines as well as just
Speaker 1: increasing the efficacy of existing vaccines. So one frontier in
Speaker 1: vaccines that has seemed like an interesting possibility to me
Speaker 1: is the delivery mechanism itself. Because I know it sounds
Speaker 1: kind of sad to say this, but I do think
Speaker 1: a fairly serious obstacle to everybody getting their flu shot
Speaker 1: and stuff like that is the whole shot part is
Speaker 1: the needle. Yeah, yeah, I mean people don't like getting shots.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've even wondered sometimes if this contributes to
Speaker 1: parental fears about vaccines for their infants, because you don't
Speaker 1: want to see your baby stabbed with the needle. Oh,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. And I I accompanied one of my friends
Speaker 1: when her one year old boy was getting one of
Speaker 1: his rounds of vaccines and and the baby was fine,
Speaker 1: like like I mean, I mean, like like literally literally
Speaker 1: the moment that that the immediate pain of the actual
Speaker 1: prick was over, the baby was fine. Uh, the mother
Speaker 1: and I were traumatized because the baby was so upset
Speaker 1: for that one moment that it was who I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm like cool just thinking about it. So, So when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, get it, man, When I was
Speaker 1: a kid and me and my sister went in to
Speaker 1: get our jabs as the Brits called them. Um, this
Speaker 1: was before we actually got the the shot they need
Speaker 1: to take a quick blood sample. And why when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, why was the place of choice to
Speaker 1: remove blood the tip of a finger where most of
Speaker 1: your nerve endings are, right, But they would, you know,
Speaker 1: prick the tip of your finger and put a little
Speaker 1: tube down so that blood would go up the tube
Speaker 1: and you all know how it works. Still, I'm still
Speaker 1: I think it's ridiculous that all the places to take blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: blood comes out of everywhere. It's not at the place
Speaker 1: where every nerve ending ever is. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: so my sister should take it from right inside your
Speaker 1: nose or your nipple. Okay, just pass that along your
Speaker 1: lip or your eyeball. You're just getting the fluid out
Speaker 1: of an eyeball despite despite the fact that you at
Speaker 1: the back of your knee. Maybe let's think of all
Speaker 1: the different places you can take blood. How about the
Speaker 1: lobe of an ear at any rate? Um, So they
Speaker 1: they did this too, exactly, So they did this to
Speaker 1: my sister. So it's not not directly a shot that
Speaker 1: shows the whole traumatizing effects of the needle. So my sister,
Speaker 1: the stoic young lady, she was, she was just all
Speaker 1: enough to talk, and she stared at the nurse, one
Speaker 1: solitary tear running down her face, and she said thank you,
Speaker 1: and the nurse burst into sobbing, a sobbing wreck. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, here's a practitioner who's she's working in a
Speaker 1: pediatrician's option, hundreds of kids, sensitized to the pain of children,
Speaker 1: and yet my sister broke her Good on you, sis.
Speaker 1: At any rate, Yes, there was a long way of
Speaker 1: getting dinggentially around the people needles. People don't like needles.
Speaker 1: My wife is one of those people. See I've gotten
Speaker 1: to a point where it doesn't phase me anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: but for my wife it's a big deal. She it
Speaker 1: takes a lot to work herself up to going to
Speaker 1: get a shot. Uh So, one of the things that
Speaker 1: people have been looking into our alternatives to that, and
Speaker 1: we've seen some of that already, right, Like there's some
Speaker 1: vaccines that are orally administered. There's some like the influenza virus.
Speaker 1: There's there's the nasal spray that's that's a vaccine for
Speaker 1: some strains of of influenza year over gear. And there
Speaker 1: are also some developments going on into creating patches that
Speaker 1: would administer a vaccine. The patches actually have little needles
Speaker 1: in them, but they're very very very tiny, so you
Speaker 1: don't really feel it, and the medication releases over time.
Speaker 1: It goes through the needles into your blood stream and
Speaker 1: then you end up producing the antibodies that way. So
Speaker 1: that that must be the micro needle thing that that
Speaker 1: I that I read about and didn't have time to
Speaker 1: follow up on. Micro needles. Oh yeah, yeah, micro needles
Speaker 1: that thing. Yeah. Now, I you guys have seen the
Speaker 1: Star Treks, right, the Star Treks, Star Trek Collective, Star Treks.
Speaker 1: I've seen some tracks around stars, so you know the
Speaker 1: one with the lightsabers, No, that would be the would
Speaker 1: be the Wars and the Stars. Now the Star Treks.
Speaker 1: So you know, Bones has this thing that he would
Speaker 1: always put up against someone's neck and you would hear
Speaker 1: a sound and then they'd be magically okay. You know,
Speaker 1: they actually developed one of those. Once upon a time
Speaker 1: there was a device that was meant to administer shots
Speaker 1: in this kind of way. My dad actually had it
Speaker 1: done when he was younger, and uh he reports that
Speaker 1: it hurts like all hades. Yeah, so not less an
Speaker 1: advantage to getting the old needle. Well, keep working on
Speaker 1: that one bounds. It might be for people who who
Speaker 1: maybe like me or bothered not so much by the
Speaker 1: pain of the injection but the creepiness of the needle
Speaker 1: and its thinness and some sometimes I feel like I'd
Speaker 1: almost rather just get stabbed with a knife than a
Speaker 1: tiny little like like like a knife is honest. Have
Speaker 1: you been stabbed with a knife? Oh yeah, I know
Speaker 1: all about it. Okay. I was just about to say, like,
Speaker 1: I've never been stabbed with a knife, but I've been
Speaker 1: cut by a knife before. I've stabbed myself with a knife.
Speaker 1: It's a little different when you're doing yourself, So you're
Speaker 1: you're right, I'm much less creeped out by by like knives,
Speaker 1: and like i'd like paper, Like I slice myself open
Speaker 1: with paper all the time. I think I've just had
Speaker 1: enough really close calls with severe allergic reactions to just
Speaker 1: not even register anymore. That's true. Yeah, yeah, like you're
Speaker 1: a weary desert warrior, just dscape. Okay, hit me all right,
Speaker 1: but but but bring bringing it back, bring it back.
Speaker 1: Researchers are also working on other ways to to get
Speaker 1: more vaccines, like orally nasily or through other mucus membranes
Speaker 1: in order to yep in your butt or regina. That is,
Speaker 1: that is what's going on. So um yeah, so oh man,
Speaker 1: I just said but on a science podcast, you guys,
Speaker 1: I feel real, I feel real scientific. Um hey, hey,
Speaker 1: these are all very scientific words, according to the Ninja Turtles.
Speaker 1: Um alright, so so why why would we want to
Speaker 1: use mucus membranes Because lots of infections start at the
Speaker 1: mucus membranes. Lots of lots of stuff gets into us
Speaker 1: via our mucus membranes. It's basically the primary way that
Speaker 1: stuff gets into us, unless you happen to have an
Speaker 1: open wound. Because your skin, you guys, is so good,
Speaker 1: so good at preventing microbes from getting into you. It's
Speaker 1: essentially it's it's it's it's one job and it does.
Speaker 1: It's so good. And I keep saying weird stuff on purpose.
Speaker 1: I want you guys to know that I that I'm
Speaker 1: very articulate. That well, okay, so um, so if you
Speaker 1: if you put vaccines into the places where infections start.
Speaker 1: Giving those cells in that area direct access to that
Speaker 1: vaccine can actually help Nasal flu vaccines, for example, create
Speaker 1: not only the systemic response throughout your immune system, but
Speaker 1: also a local response to the flu. Straight up your nose,
Speaker 1: straight up your nose. Yeah. So, so your body will
Speaker 1: be better prepared to fight other strains of the flu
Speaker 1: in the future. And it's only the ones that it's
Speaker 1: perceiving the vaccine for. It's like, it's like the army
Speaker 1: itself knows what to look for, but the special forces
Speaker 1: that are in the hottest point of contention are really ready. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and so so some people are are some some researchers
Speaker 1: are working on some plant based delivery materials. Some some
Speaker 1: like transgenic plant cells that could carry these antigens into
Speaker 1: your mucous membranes really effectively. Interesting. Wow, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: anything else about interesting ways of delivering before we move
Speaker 1: on to oh yeah, yeah yeah. Also falling vaguely into
Speaker 1: this category are practices being studied in which vaccines can
Speaker 1: be given to pregnant women so that their babies can
Speaker 1: receive those antigens while they're developing and and while they
Speaker 1: have that the mother's immune system to to bolster its own.
Speaker 1: It's awesome because part of the spread out nature of
Speaker 1: child immunization schedules is that their their immune systems are
Speaker 1: so ADI BiDi and so and so working up to
Speaker 1: two bigger and better things that that you've got to
Speaker 1: you've got to give some time to just but if
Speaker 1: but if we could give that to to the mother
Speaker 1: while the baby's in the womb, then that could speak
Speaker 1: the whole process up a great deal and also help
Speaker 1: in those instances that I mentioned before with herd immunity,
Speaker 1: where you're worried about passing on an illness to a
Speaker 1: child who's not yet old enough to have received their
Speaker 1: scheduled immunization from a particular disease. Uh. We also are
Speaker 1: looking at new ways to keep vaccines viable in a
Speaker 1: wider spectrum of conditions. Earlier, I mentioned how in the
Speaker 1: shortages section we're talking about that problem about the idea
Speaker 1: of cold storage, and not everywhere in the world has
Speaker 1: access to good, reliable cold storage. One of the ways
Speaker 1: we're trying to address that, uh. You know, obviously one
Speaker 1: way would be to make sure that cold storage was
Speaker 1: something that was easily attainable in more parts of the world.
Speaker 1: But that's that's a long term Yeah, that's a big
Speaker 1: energy resource. There's a whole infrastructure that has to exist
Speaker 1: for that to work, right. So another approach is, well,
Speaker 1: what if we design vaccines that are more hardy and
Speaker 1: can remain viable in a greater list of UH or
Speaker 1: a greater range of temperatures, for example. And that's a
Speaker 1: big one like trying to find ways of creating a
Speaker 1: vaccine that is able to survive at higher temperatures. The
Speaker 1: smallpox vaccine, the reason why it was so effective, or
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it was so effective, is that
Speaker 1: relatively it could remain viable at a greater range of
Speaker 1: temperatures than a lot of other vaccines can. So we
Speaker 1: could get that two different parts of the world and
Speaker 1: treat people um. But there's a lot of work going
Speaker 1: into finding new ways of designing vaccines so that they
Speaker 1: stay viable. And one of them I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1: It involves suspending viral particles in a layer of sugar
Speaker 1: glass that's applied to a very thin membrane, so it's
Speaker 1: a solid storage mechanism for vaccine material. They found that
Speaker 1: if they used this particular approach, and they stored the
Speaker 1: vaccines in a relatively high temperature environment. We're talking a
Speaker 1: hundred thirteen degrees fare kneit or I'm assuming Lauren that
Speaker 1: you jumped in and helped me out with this fourth
Speaker 1: five degree celsius. Uh. Lauren's always looking out for you. Guys. Me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, hundred thirteen fahrenheit. Let them figure it out. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they stored it in a hundred thirteen degree fahrenheit forty
Speaker 1: five degrees celsius container for six months and it remained
Speaker 1: viable and all that time. Um, they actually did this
Speaker 1: to two different viruses. They did a different group where
Speaker 1: they stored it in liquid format, and in one of
Speaker 1: those two viruses, after just a couple of weeks in
Speaker 1: the degree fahrehkneight storage unit. Uh, it was completely destroyed.
Speaker 1: Like there was no real useful material left in that sample.
Speaker 1: So this is a possible solution, at least to some
Speaker 1: types of vaccines. UH. That could mean that you could
Speaker 1: get this material to the right destination. Of course, then
Speaker 1: you have the trick of how do you turn this
Speaker 1: solid stuff back into a usable vaccine? Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of development on that front as well, but
Speaker 1: very interesting work. And then we have something that doesn't
Speaker 1: really fit into those categories. But Joe, you wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about and it sounded really fascinating. Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to take a look at a different way of thinking
Speaker 1: about vaccination. This is a little bit more metaphorical, but
Speaker 1: it follows the same kind of idea of establishing immunity
Speaker 1: to a disease or debilitating condition, though in this case
Speaker 1: it would be a cognitive vaccine. And this is related
Speaker 1: to something that I talked about on an episode of
Speaker 1: the other podcast I'm on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: where we did a couple of episodes about the science
Speaker 1: behind Tetris, the video game Tetris, And one of the
Speaker 1: things that's interesting about Tetris is it has been used
Speaker 1: in all kinds of laboratory research with people studying what
Speaker 1: Tetris does to the brains of people who play it,
Speaker 1: especially playing it under certain conditions and in conjunction with
Speaker 1: certain tasks. And one of the most interesting things that
Speaker 1: has been found is uh the work of a scientist
Speaker 1: Emily A. Holmes out of Oxford and in her team
Speaker 1: on using Tetris as a cognitive vaccine to prevent the
Speaker 1: consolidation of traumatic memories. So y'all are familiar with PTSD.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes somebody has a traumatic experience. They might
Speaker 1: it might be a battlefield experience, or they're the victim
Speaker 1: of a crime, something violent happens to them, Uh whatever,
Speaker 1: it's some kind of traumatic experience that's very unpleasant and
Speaker 1: very difficult to get past, and it can cause recurrent flashbacks.
Speaker 1: So you can be doing other stuff in your life
Speaker 1: and suddenly you're you're presented with these these cascading unpleasant
Speaker 1: memories that can really mess up your life. And traditional
Speaker 1: and current treatments to it or things like cognitive therapy,
Speaker 1: exposure therapy, certain different drugs, uh E M d R,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting thing I talked about on that
Speaker 1: podcast and we got a bunch of interesting listener mail about.
Speaker 1: But anyway, what if there was a way to instead
Speaker 1: of treating PTSD after you got it, to inoculate yourself
Speaker 1: before the symptoms set in. Uh. And so there there
Speaker 1: have been a few studies on this. One was in
Speaker 1: January of two thousand nine and it was the study
Speaker 1: was titled complaying the computer game Tetris reduced the build
Speaker 1: up of flashbacks for trauma a proposal from cognitive science,
Speaker 1: and they were sort of they were working with a
Speaker 1: couple of assumptions. One of them is that cognitive science
Speaker 1: suggests that the brain has selective resources with limited capacity,
Speaker 1: and the other one was that the neurobiology of memory
Speaker 1: suggests a six hour window to disrupt memory consolidation. And
Speaker 1: they came up with an interesting hypothesis based on these
Speaker 1: two facts that we know from neuroscience. If you make
Speaker 1: the brain do a visuospatial task during the period of
Speaker 1: memory consolidation, you basically deny the brain the resources it
Speaker 1: needs to consolidate a memory of a physical visual series
Speaker 1: of events. You can stop bad memories from consolidating with
Speaker 1: with this great emphasis in your brain. So so they
Speaker 1: had this essentially. The way their research went was they
Speaker 1: showed a bunch of people traumatic videos. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I'm already glad I was not part of this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they sat people down and they made them watch
Speaker 1: these film clips that were real scenes of human surgery,
Speaker 1: fatal road traffic at accidents, and drowning. Welcome to our
Speaker 1: snuff film experiment. Yeah, a lot of fun. I joked
Speaker 1: in the other podcast that they made them watch Faces
Speaker 1: of Death. But that doesn't see it seems like something
Speaker 1: along those lines. Yeah, But so anyway, they'd have them
Speaker 1: do this, And then they split the participants into different groups.
Speaker 1: That had a control group who just watched the horrible
Speaker 1: movie and then and then they had took a break
Speaker 1: and sat in silence. Then they had the other group
Speaker 1: played Tetris for ten minutes and the researchers. They sent
Speaker 1: the volunteers away with instructions to keep a diary on
Speaker 1: how many times they experienced flashbacks over the next week,
Speaker 1: and they checked back to see how many flashbacks the
Speaker 1: different groups had had, and they found that the ones
Speaker 1: who played Tetris had fewer flashbacks than the control group
Speaker 1: who didn't and so uh and interestingly, they found that
Speaker 1: both groups had the same level of voluntary recall of
Speaker 1: the film, so they could both remember just as well
Speaker 1: what had happened in the movie they watched. It's not
Speaker 1: like it blocked the actual formation of memory. But the
Speaker 1: only the group with that did not play Tetris experience
Speaker 1: the significant number of unintentional flashbacks to to this nasty
Speaker 1: thing they saw. Uh, and so that's a really interesting effect.
Speaker 1: Why did that work. And so there are a couple
Speaker 1: of things to note. Number one is that there are
Speaker 1: limitations to the study that the researchers themselves acknowledged, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, showing somebody a movie is not the same
Speaker 1: as having a real traumatic experience in their life. But
Speaker 1: it's the best you could approximate in the lab ethically, right,
Speaker 1: you could not you could not actually create a true
Speaker 1: traumatic experience for someone, right. But these but these findings
Speaker 1: were replicated and expanded on in subsequent studies. So they
Speaker 1: did another study where they found the same thing, and
Speaker 1: then they tested different kinds of games. They said, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's take Tetris and then also like a trivia
Speaker 1: quiz game, And it found that Tetris works, but the
Speaker 1: trivia quiz game didn't. So it's something specifically about Tetris,
Speaker 1: probably not just tetrisk, but games like it's some kind
Speaker 1: of visual spatial candy crash orientation. I was thinking it
Speaker 1: was just the soundtrack that Do Do Do Do Do Man.
Speaker 1: I love that soundtrack. Yeah, that's really cool. I mean
Speaker 1: it's obviously it's a little different from the other concepts
Speaker 1: of vaccination because you already have to be exposed to
Speaker 1: the event that would have created the the post traumatic
Speaker 1: kind of a response. It is. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: how you know, you get bitten by a dog and
Speaker 1: they take you to the hospital and you get a
Speaker 1: rabies vaccine immediately administered, and if you follow the course
Speaker 1: of the vaccine, I think they have to give you
Speaker 1: multiple ones. But it's a little different now that it
Speaker 1: used to be used to be that it was multiple
Speaker 1: shots and they were all delivered to the abdomen. It's
Speaker 1: it's changed since I was a kid. Well in the
Speaker 1: In both cases, you're you're talking about exposure. You're potentially
Speaker 1: exposed to to the flu, to measles, to whatever it is,
Speaker 1: uh and and what the vaccine is doing is preventing
Speaker 1: you from getting sick from it, right, So it's not
Speaker 1: a therapy. It's a preventative measure. That's why they call
Speaker 1: it a cognitive vaccine. So instead of you already having
Speaker 1: PTSD and experiencing flashbacks and then going through therapy to
Speaker 1: try to stop them from happening, this is supposed to
Speaker 1: they're obviously developing techniques for preventing flashbacks from every beginning
Speaker 1: in the first place. It's really really a cool h
Speaker 1: idea well, I guess we can conclude this by talking
Speaker 1: about some of the diseases that we don't yet have
Speaker 1: vaccines for, but people are working on them. The first
Speaker 1: is a universal flu vaccine. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've already kind of covered this a bit. Lauren mentioned that,
Speaker 1: you know, when we get a flu vaccine, If you
Speaker 1: get a flu shot, it typically has between two and
Speaker 1: four strains of flu represented within that flu shot, and
Speaker 1: if you come into contact with one of those strains,
Speaker 1: you're all right, But then the next year you have
Speaker 1: to get a whole new flu shot. Part of that
Speaker 1: is because the influenzas one of those viruses that mutates readily.
Speaker 1: It's constantly mutating, and if it mutates enough, then it
Speaker 1: no longer resembles its old self, and your body won't
Speaker 1: recognize it and can't effectively fight it off. So, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, there's some parts of the flu virus
Speaker 1: that remain consistent from one mutation to the next, and
Speaker 1: researchers are hoping that that's going to be an in
Speaker 1: road to creating a multi year vaccine, something that will
Speaker 1: protect you several years of flu season in a row
Speaker 1: before you have to get another shot. I mean eventually
Speaker 1: you probably will anyway, just because again the mutations will
Speaker 1: be enough where it will necessitate that. Uh. There's also
Speaker 1: the hope that perhaps they will be able to develop
Speaker 1: a universal flu vaccine, something where you find that route
Speaker 1: that is common to all strains of the flu, and
Speaker 1: because you have you have targeted that route, if it
Speaker 1: works against any kind of flu you would come in
Speaker 1: contact with, not just the ones that they are reasonably
Speaker 1: sure will be the most relevant for that year. And
Speaker 1: that would be fantastic. Another one, obviously, this would be
Speaker 1: a big deal's ebola. It's a viral infection. So just
Speaker 1: a few days before we recorded this episode, we're recording
Speaker 1: this on January two thousand and sixteen. Just a few
Speaker 1: days ago, there was an uh AN announcement from GAVY,
Speaker 1: the Vaccine Alliance, which released a statement to support a
Speaker 1: vaccine developed by Mark and Sharp and Domi Dome Dome
Speaker 1: the O h M e UH Corporation for the Ebola virus.
Speaker 1: Now that vaccine has yet to be approved for use
Speaker 1: as a preventative for ebola. It's still in clinical trials. However,
Speaker 1: so far they've been very promising, having an overwhelmingly positive
Speaker 1: response efficacy according to the papers um, which is fantastic obviously,
Speaker 1: uh So, the next will be a wider range of
Speaker 1: clinical tests. They're they're part of the money that's being
Speaker 1: poured into this development is to allow for a broader
Speaker 1: array of tests which could potentially save hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of lives just as a result of the tests. And
Speaker 1: obviously the hope is that further down the line, the
Speaker 1: vaccine will be approved for for official use. But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of other companies that are also looking
Speaker 1: into ebola vaccines. That's not the only one. That was
Speaker 1: just one that was recently in the news as we
Speaker 1: record this. Also HIV we talked about that earlier. It's
Speaker 1: another viral infection. Computer models have shown that even a
Speaker 1: modestly successful HIV vaccine would make a massive impact on
Speaker 1: a sustainable response to the HIV AIDS epidemic across the world.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of companies that are currently
Speaker 1: researching potential approaches to developing an HIV vaccine. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I meant to say earlier. And an interesting thing about HIV,
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons why it in particular is
Speaker 1: so difficult for your body to fight is that HIV
Speaker 1: carries antigens that are really similar to those of common bacteria,
Speaker 1: like like equal I uh. And so when your immune
Speaker 1: system sends attackers, they're trying to attack the wrong thing
Speaker 1: and they have identified it as something it is not,
Speaker 1: and so they show up and nothing happens to the
Speaker 1: virus because that antibody doesn't fit with that particular anti
Speaker 1: and and furthermore, the virus can then attack your your
Speaker 1: your immune system cells, which is bad times for everybody, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also a lot of work in developing a vaccine
Speaker 1: for malaria, which is a parasitic infection that's been a
Speaker 1: target for a working vaccine for more than a decade,
Speaker 1: but it's really challenging, and that's largely because the parasite
Speaker 1: is responsible for malaria have a very complex life cycle,
Speaker 1: so protecting against each phase of that life cycles really challenging.
Speaker 1: Um Also, malaria is really good at avoiding the immune system,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to create a working vaccine to target malaria,
Speaker 1: but there is some hope that DNA vaccines in particular
Speaker 1: could lead to a working preventative for malaria. Then there's
Speaker 1: also pulmonary tuberculosis. So if you're an infant, you get
Speaker 1: the BCG vaccine that's an effective in protecting newborns against tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: but that vaccine does not appear to be effective in
Speaker 1: UH adults. So as an adult you can't get this
Speaker 1: to be a preventative or catching tuberculosis. It does not
Speaker 1: appear to be effective at all. So there's no booster
Speaker 1: shot that you can get that can extend that protection
Speaker 1: later in life. UH. And in addition, tuberculosis is one
Speaker 1: of those disease that in the Western world is not
Speaker 1: such a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, and in in largely
Speaker 1: developed countries it's not a big deal anymore. You tend
Speaker 1: to only encounter it like watching movies about Victorian age occasionally,
Speaker 1: if you're watching a Tombstone and you're watching a doc
Speaker 1: holiday slowly succumb to consumption. And by succumb to consumption,
Speaker 1: I mean we're more red Eyeliner. Yes, but um but
Speaker 1: but now over here huckleberry though. But it's still but
Speaker 1: it's still a very serious problem in many parts of
Speaker 1: the world. It is, and and there have been some
Speaker 1: outbreaks in Europe. But the issue is that one of
Speaker 1: the issues that this is going back to what we
Speaker 1: were saying before, um, there's not as big a return
Speaker 1: on investment on investing in a vaccine for tuberculosis, So
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization has been hard at work trying
Speaker 1: to come up with UH financial incentives to actually encourage
Speaker 1: tuberculosis vaccine development. There's some other ones that are pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of work looking into potentially creating a
Speaker 1: vaccine that could prevent Alzheimer's disease. So these are really
Speaker 1: more about therapeutic vaccines rather than a direct preventative of
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's itself. So the main target would be the sticky
Speaker 1: protein that can develop UH it's an aloid beta peptides.
Speaker 1: They form this plaque like substance in the brain that
Speaker 1: can lead to neuronal cell death. And there's also the
Speaker 1: HOW protein, which is correlated with dementia. So the idea
Speaker 1: here is creating therapeutic vaccines that target diseases that produce
Speaker 1: these proteins. So it's it's it's like, let's let's find
Speaker 1: the early steps that we believe leading and if we
Speaker 1: can stop those from happening, then maybe we can head
Speaker 1: off any development of Alzheimer's. Yeah, yeah, that's that's sort
Speaker 1: of in the way that that that vaccines against cancer
Speaker 1: currently are working. That's a great and that's a great
Speaker 1: lead into the final one. Yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of talk, there's a lot of talk about developing vaccines
Speaker 1: to prevent cancer. HPV vaccines are are being used right now.
Speaker 1: From that Cervical cancer is caused by cellular changes that
Speaker 1: are created by infection by the human papaluma virus or HPT. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are two types of the virus that cost of
Speaker 1: all cervical cancer. So clearly that sort of vaccination could
Speaker 1: be a really powerful tool in preventing that type of
Speaker 1: cancer for lots of people. Yeah. Even even just the
Speaker 1: development of tests to look for that virus, uh and
Speaker 1: to look for those kind of cellular changes have saved it.
Speaker 1: I think that I think the cervical cancer used to
Speaker 1: be certainly in the top three of causes of death
Speaker 1: of of American women up until like the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: like crazy amounts of death. So it's it's so so
Speaker 1: coming up with a vaccine for that is really big.
Speaker 1: So similar to what we were talking about with Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: this is looking at viral infections or bacterial infections that
Speaker 1: could lead to conditions that further develop into cancer, and
Speaker 1: if we can vaccinate against those initial conditions, then it's
Speaker 1: possible that someone who would have developed cancer won't. It's
Speaker 1: heading that cancer off at that that tipping point, that
Speaker 1: moment that causes it to all start off in the
Speaker 1: first place. So there's a lot of research in that
Speaker 1: area as well. Not clearly, not all cancers are alike.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of different types of cancer out there,
Speaker 1: a lot of different things to take into considerations. Some
Speaker 1: of them are caused by environmental factors. There are many
Speaker 1: carcinogens out there. If you've ever gotten kind of sick
Speaker 1: of news reports being like does this cause cancer? And
Speaker 1: you're like, well, doesn't just everything cause cancerner So, vaccinations
Speaker 1: are even at their peak. Once we like get to
Speaker 1: a point where we're reasonably sure we have covered as
Speaker 1: many bases as there are covered, likely there are going
Speaker 1: to be some things that we just can't address because
Speaker 1: it's beyond the ability to vaccinate against it. However, it's
Speaker 1: really encouraging to see the work that's going in and
Speaker 1: I really hope that we continue to see people advocating
Speaker 1: for good science, people advocating to make sure you know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about when you're looking at the risks
Speaker 1: versus reward of vaccines. Uh, that it's it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: from the science that the reward is enormous compared to
Speaker 1: the risk that we can't ever say there is no risk.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, And and there there's misinformation coming from
Speaker 1: from both camps. Honestly, you know, it's it's it's important
Speaker 1: to to take into consideration that like the flu vaccine
Speaker 1: is not effective. Honestly, it prevents the flu in about
Speaker 1: and in about half of people who receive it um
Speaker 1: and so it's it's it's understandable with that and with
Speaker 1: other side effects and with general misunderstandings about how vaccines
Speaker 1: work that people have doubts. Uh, but you know science, guys,
Speaker 1: and I never think it's a bad thing to ask questions.
Speaker 1: It's certainly, yeah, it's certainly not good to just assume
Speaker 1: you know the answer, or or to or to cling
Speaker 1: to something that has been disproven or debunked. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: lockness monster a side because she's real at any rate, guys.
Speaker 1: That wraps up this discussion about the future of vaccines.
Speaker 1: I think we had a really interesting talk here about
Speaker 1: what they are, what they do, where they're going and
Speaker 1: why they're so important. Guys, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of forward Thinking, maybe there's something else
Speaker 1: you've always wanted to know. What's that going to be
Speaker 1: like in the future. Let us know. Send us a message.
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