Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephen Monicelli, a journalist in Dallas and an occasional
Speaker 2: contributor to Cool Zone Media, and welcome to episode four
Speaker 2: of Anti vax America, a special five part mini series
Speaker 2: for It Could Happen Here exploring the measles outbreak as
Speaker 2: a microcosm for where we are now, how we got here,
Speaker 2: and where we could be going. Today's episode we'll focus
Speaker 2: on the twisted history of eugenics as it relates to
Speaker 2: vaccinations and how the current MAHA agenda, as pushed by
Speaker 2: RFK Junior, is a sort of echo of eugenic beliefs
Speaker 2: of the past. Vaccination hesitancy historically has been framed by
Speaker 2: opponents to vaccines as a matter of medical freedom, about
Speaker 2: the ability to decide what one wants to do with
Speaker 2: their own body. It's an argument that we've discussed can
Speaker 2: appeal to crunchy granola types and religious zelots alike. But
Speaker 2: there's also a darker side to this rhetoric that reveals
Speaker 2: an embrace of eugenic ideas among anti vax advocates who
Speaker 2: prefer quote unquote herd immunity approaches to outbreaks which subordinate
Speaker 2: the interests of older people, those with disabilities, and members
Speaker 2: of minority communities to those who choose not to be vaccinated.
Speaker 2: On this episode of Anti vax America, we will dive
Speaker 2: into the overlapping histories of eugenic thinking and anti vaccination
Speaker 2: beliefs to untangle this mess. As we previously discussed in
Speaker 2: episode two, vaccinations took off in the eighteen hundred, shortly
Speaker 2: after the creation of the first smallpox vaccine in seventeen
Speaker 2: ninety six, and so did anti vaccination rhetoric and movements.
Speaker 2: In parallel, there were a lot of scientific developments going on.
Speaker 2: The eighteen hundreds were a heady time in Western science.
Speaker 2: There was Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which was
Speaker 2: presented in Darwin's eighteen to fifty nine book on the
Speaker 2: Origin of Species. Five years later, sociologists heard Robert Spencer
Speaker 2: mixed concepts from Thomas Malthus, the economist who proposed that
Speaker 2: population growth would outpaces food production, with Darwin's theory to
Speaker 2: coin the term survival of the fittest and apply it
Speaker 2: to industrial capitalism, with the end conclusion that basically those
Speaker 2: who were on top were deserving of all the privileges
Speaker 2: that they have, and that those at the bottom were
Speaker 2: also deserving of their position in society. In eighteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, coined the term eugenics in his
Speaker 2: book Inquiries into Human Fertility. In its developments, the book
Speaker 2: proposed to give to quote, more suitable races a better
Speaker 2: chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable. To understand
Speaker 2: a bit more about Galton's thinking, I spoke with doctor
Speaker 2: Michael Phillips, who we heard from in a previous episode.
Speaker 3: Galton was in despair that all those improvements in delivery
Speaker 3: of healthcare, medical care itself nutrician, all the humanitarian efforts
Speaker 3: to improve the workplace, eliminate child labor, improve factories so
Speaker 3: people don't get blown up, et cetera. What that was
Speaker 3: doing was it was allowing the unfit, you know, the
Speaker 3: people he saw as inferior, to survive past childhood, to
Speaker 3: survive into adulthood, to have longer, healthier lives. And if
Speaker 3: they live a longer lifespan and they're healthier during that span,
Speaker 3: they're going to have more children. And he believed that
Speaker 3: because they are less gifted with intelligence, you know, because
Speaker 3: you know, he said, history is driven by genius. And
Speaker 3: he actually did the first major study on intelligence where
Speaker 3: he traced the family histories of what he said were
Speaker 3: the gifted men. And he claimed all of this was
Speaker 3: biological inheritance. You know, everything was biology. And not only that,
Speaker 3: but all traits, all traits were biological. Work, ethic, honesty,
Speaker 3: fidelity to your partner, alcoholism, Every single trait a human
Speaker 3: might have he tied to biology. And he said that
Speaker 3: the people with the worst traits it's called disgenic. People
Speaker 3: who were disgenic, people who had the worst traits were
Speaker 3: now producing large families. And because they were less intelligent,
Speaker 3: they gave into their sexual urges more often. They didn't
Speaker 3: plan families based on their economic circumstances. They were impulsive,
Speaker 3: Well we have eight children, let's have sex. And you
Speaker 3: know if we have a ninth child, well we have
Speaker 3: a ninth child. And that meant that those families were
Speaker 3: growing exponentially. But the fit who plan their families more carefully,
Speaker 3: and you know, the partners are busier job creators, as
Speaker 3: innovators in science and education. The women want to have
Speaker 3: a life outside of the hum that they were less fertile,
Speaker 3: they were having fewer children, and of course what the
Speaker 3: result would be is you have the unfit out numbering
Speaker 3: the fit, and that leads to catastrophe society falls apart.
Speaker 2: These sorts of ideas are represented in the satirical two
Speaker 2: thousand and six film Idiocracy, which plays out a future
Speaker 2: in which stupid people outbreed smart people and society consequently devolves.
Speaker 4: As the twenty first century began, human evolution was at
Speaker 4: a turning point. Natural selection the process by which the strongest,
Speaker 4: the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest,
Speaker 4: A process which at once favored the noblest traits of man,
Speaker 4: now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of
Speaker 4: the day predicted a future that was more civilized and
Speaker 4: more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to
Speaker 4: be heading in the opposite direction, a dumbing down. How
Speaker 4: did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With
Speaker 4: no natural predators toin the herd, it began to simply
Speaker 4: reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent
Speaker 4: to become an endangered species.
Speaker 2: Having kids is such an important decision, We're just.
Speaker 5: Waiting for the right time.
Speaker 4: It's not something you want to rush into.
Speaker 1: Obviously, no way.
Speaker 5: Shit, I'm putting it again.
Speaker 2: Actually, damn kids, thought you was on the pills and
Speaker 2: shitll no.
Speaker 3: I must have been thinking really.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly meant in jest. The fundamental principle of idiocracy
Speaker 2: demonstrates the staying power of Galton's eugenic ideas, which became
Speaker 2: highly influential in the twentieth century. Within two decades of
Speaker 2: the release of his book, coining the term eugenics, eugenic
Speaker 2: thinking was widespread among white Anglo Saxon leaders of the West.
Speaker 2: But before we hear more about that from doctor Michael Phillips,
Speaker 2: a quick ad break.
Speaker 3: The two biggest hugenicists in the early twentieth century. They
Speaker 3: were best selling authors Madison Grant, who was a friend
Speaker 3: of Theodore Roosevelt's, and Walthorpe Stoddard. Stoddard in particular warned
Speaker 3: that this was fueling radical politics, that the unfit essentially
Speaker 3: were demanding the riches created by the geniuses in the world,
Speaker 3: and they were expropriating the wealth they created, and they
Speaker 3: were just they were just milking the fit for every advance,
Speaker 3: and that as that became more difficult, that would breed revolution.
Speaker 3: And in particular thought there was a link to communist revolution.
Speaker 2: As advancements in sanitation and modern medicine continued in parallel
Speaker 2: with the spread of leftist thought, eugenicists were consumed with
Speaker 2: nightmares of a Malthusian crisis and were increasingly worried about
Speaker 2: their position in society. Something in their minds had to
Speaker 2: be done to stem the growing tide of unfit masses.
Speaker 3: Because natural selection in the minds of the genesis had
Speaker 3: basically been suspended. The four sterilizations were the substitute for that.
Speaker 3: Eugenicists were in despair about vaccines that they there was
Speaker 3: an organized campaign to ban them on eugenics reasons, because
Speaker 3: I think they knew politically that would be unpopular, because
Speaker 3: there were enough people who realize they could see the
Speaker 3: benefits as vaccinations became more common.
Speaker 2: In other words, some early genesists were both supportive of
Speaker 2: things like for sterilization, but were also a poe those
Speaker 2: to vaccinations because they believe that vaccinations would allow the
Speaker 2: weak and unfit to survive, prosper and multiply. But not
Speaker 2: all eugenicists were inherently opposed to vaccinations. The Nazi regime,
Speaker 2: which exterminated millions of Jews, and other people deemed undesirable
Speaker 2: also embraced widespread vaccination against diseases like typhus, even if
Speaker 2: they actually rolled back mandatory vaccination laws that had been
Speaker 2: put in place prior to the rise of the Nazis. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: the relationship between eugenic thinking and anti VAXX beliefs goes deep,
Speaker 2: and it reveals a helpful heuristic for thinking about eugenics. So,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, there's a sort of active or
Speaker 2: hard eugenics, in which medical authorities or the state forcefully
Speaker 2: sterilize and exterminate people who are deemed unfit. And then
Speaker 2: on the other hand, there's a sort of passive or
Speaker 2: soft eugenics, in which potentially preventable deaths are written off
Speaker 2: as a product of a process in which the to
Speaker 2: survive and go on to improve the overall gene pool. Now,
Speaker 2: before we go any further, it is important to note
Speaker 2: that eugenics has been morally and scientifically discredited so thoroughly
Speaker 2: that it shouldn't even be necessary to mention it. But unfortunately,
Speaker 2: eugenesis thinking is in resurgence. President Donald Trump himself has
Speaker 2: said there are a lot of bad genes in our
Speaker 2: country right now, and that immigrants are poisoning the blood
Speaker 2: of our country.
Speaker 3: That's been an ongoing thing with immigration debates ever since
Speaker 3: the late nineteenth century, this idea that certain groups of
Speaker 3: immigrants are disease carriers, and that has particularly been aimed
Speaker 3: at Mexican immigrants. That's been a ongoing thing. And during COVID,
Speaker 3: Greg Abbott, he's the governor of Texas, was saying it
Speaker 3: was Mexican immigrants, undocumented immigrants, who were bringing COVID to Texas.
Speaker 3: At one point he made that accusation, and it's exactly
Speaker 3: like what they were saying. We had in Texas during
Speaker 3: this period of this panic bat immigration. Late nineteenth early
Speaker 3: choice centric Galveston. A medical doctor who was inspecting people
Speaker 3: coming into the Port of Galveston who were Jewish immigrants,
Speaker 3: and he was rejecting them because he was saying they're
Speaker 3: carrying infectious eye diseases, tuberculosis, all of that, and Jewish
Speaker 3: civil rights scripts had to intervene to stop that.
Speaker 2: Racism, anti semitism, and eugenics historically have gone hand in hand,
Speaker 2: but it hasn't been since the early nineteen hundreds that
Speaker 2: people who hold such beliefs also hold so much power
Speaker 2: in the state. RFK Junior, a longtime anti vaccination activist
Speaker 2: and now head of the United States Department of Health
Speaker 2: and Human Services, said in twenty twenty three that COVID
Speaker 2: was quote ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi, Jews and Chinese people. Now,
Speaker 2: his make America Healthy Again agenda is absolutely dripping with
Speaker 2: soft eugenic thinking. And to unravel all that, I spoke
Speaker 2: with doctor David Gorski, a doctor who regularly writes in
Speaker 2: a blog called Science Based Medicine.
Speaker 5: My name is David Gorsky. I'm a professor of surgery
Speaker 5: and oncology at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Speaker 2: So, doctor Gorski, you're also a bit of a writer,
Speaker 2: and you keep a pretty regular blog in RICHI o'pine
Speaker 2: on a number of things, and recently you've written a
Speaker 2: couple of blog posts about the measles outbreak, the anti
Speaker 2: vaccination movement. RFK Juniors make America Healthy Again an agenda.
Speaker 2: And you know what folks over at the Conspiratuality podcast
Speaker 2: called soft eugenics, or perhaps what we could also think
Speaker 2: of as a sort of social Darwinist logic or sort
Speaker 2: of passive eugenics.
Speaker 5: You know, a couple months ago when I first came
Speaker 5: across the episode of conspiratuality, which was called MAHA's soft eugenics,
Speaker 5: like kind of like a light bulb went off in
Speaker 5: my brain in that it sort of helped me crystallize
Speaker 5: things that I had been thinking of about the anti
Speaker 5: vaccine movement, but not so much the rest of Maha, which,
Speaker 5: you know, let's face it, a mishmash of you know,
Speaker 5: anti vaccine beliefs, you know, appeals to nature, anti pharma,
Speaker 5: a lot of quackery mixed in with some you know,
Speaker 5: semi reasonable stuff like you know, yeah, sure, diet, exercise,
Speaker 5: it's good for you. I think measles really epitomizes what
Speaker 5: they called the quote unquote soft eugenics, which was basically,
Speaker 5: instead of you know, like actively trying to kill children
Speaker 5: or people that you you know, whose genes you don't
Speaker 5: want passed on, you're basically letting nature do it. And
Speaker 5: you hear this a lot when they talk about for example,
Speaker 5: one of the most common arguments you'll hear from anti
Speaker 5: vaxers about measles is that, you know, if someone gets
Speaker 5: really sick for measles or dies of measles, they must
Speaker 5: have had something wrong with them, They must not have
Speaker 5: been healthy like that. Measles is harmless if you are healthy.
Speaker 5: And of course, you know, there's a whole lot of
Speaker 5: appeal to virtue as far as health goes. In other words,
Speaker 5: there's this this belief system that's kind of embedded in Maha,
Speaker 5: and it's been around for ages and ages and the
Speaker 5: alternative medicine crowd that you know, you have basically total
Speaker 5: control over your health. In other words, if you do
Speaker 5: the right things, eat the right diet, you know, take
Speaker 5: the right supplements, you know, do the exercise appropriately, you know,
Speaker 5: you can keep yourself healthy. And it's even as good
Speaker 5: as vaccines or better to prevent vaccine preventable diseases, infectious diseases. Right.
Speaker 2: So, I think that's a great way to understand the
Speaker 2: differences here. You know, we're not talking about the hard
Speaker 2: active eugenics of the past, which was epitomized by the
Speaker 2: Nazi regime and their quote unquote final solution.
Speaker 5: And also, you know, you're in the good old us
Speaker 5: of Aga years ago, right.
Speaker 2: You know, or even you know, in the lingering sterilization
Speaker 2: regimes that continued up until you know, the later twentieth century,
Speaker 2: which we're you know, sort of originally rooted in this
Speaker 2: idea that we should be calling people out of the
Speaker 2: reproductive pool who have these undesirable traits or are you know,
Speaker 2: considered to be unfit in some way, so that that's
Speaker 2: not what we're talking about. We're talking about this more
Speaker 2: let nature take its course, survival of the fittest type mindset.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's a resurgence or it's just
Speaker 2: continuing to gain in popularity. There's a recent conference, it's
Speaker 2: been one of two conferences that have happened in Austin,
Speaker 2: Texas where a lot of these quote unquote liberal eugenics
Speaker 2: also met up with people who are in the pro
Speaker 2: natalist movement. And then there's this overlap with people who
Speaker 2: are kind of dabbling in race science or trying to
Speaker 2: resuscitate old ideas that are basically you know, eugenic in
Speaker 2: nature with regard to some people, you know, being smarter
Speaker 2: by genetic basis.
Speaker 5: I mean there's a lot of that around too, and
Speaker 5: that's not soft eugenics, that's like straight up eugenic.
Speaker 2: Right, And so there's a continuum, you could say, there's
Speaker 2: this spectrum and you know, these things are not disconnected,
Speaker 2: but they also can be understood as somewhat discrete phenomenon
Speaker 2: or ideologies or belief systems. And so you did write
Speaker 2: a little bit about one specific document that you know,
Speaker 2: I hadn't been particularly familiar with, called the Great Barrington Declaration.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: Okay? So I can't believe it's like four and a
Speaker 5: half years ago now, but way back in early October
Speaker 5: of twenty twenty three, scientists were brought together by a
Speaker 5: far right wing, you know, activist named Jeffrey Tucker, who
Speaker 5: was associated with a right wing thing tank at the
Speaker 5: time called the American Institute for Economic Research. The idea
Speaker 5: behind the document was, you know, all of these measures
Speaker 5: to control COVID are like, you know, destroying the economy.
Speaker 5: So what we should really do, supposedly based on science
Speaker 5: but not really as I'll get into, is to let
Speaker 5: the virus spread among quote unquote young and healthy, you know,
Speaker 5: those who are not at high risk, so not the elderly,
Speaker 5: not those with pre existing conditions that make them high
Speaker 5: risk for severe disease complications and death from COVID. Just
Speaker 5: let it spread to reach what they call you know,
Speaker 5: quote unquote natural herd immunity heard immunity for those not
Speaker 5: familiar with it, is when a pathod is so prevalent
Speaker 5: in the population and that so many people have developed
Speaker 5: what they call natural immunity, but the more appropriate term
Speaker 5: is post infection immunity. You know, immunity after having been
Speaker 5: infected to the point where you know a sufficient proportion
Speaker 5: of the population is immune and the virus doesn't spread
Speaker 5: much like if you have a sufficient proportion of the
Speaker 5: population vaccinated the virus, you know, you might get sporadic
Speaker 5: cases in small outbreaks, but it just can't spread further.
Speaker 5: If you don't know much about infectious diseases, including COVID,
Speaker 5: it sounds like not unreasonable given that there wasn't a
Speaker 5: vaccine back then. The other part of it is what
Speaker 5: they call it, quote unquote focus protection. So the idea
Speaker 5: was supposedly that you could protect those at high risk
Speaker 5: while letting the virus circulate, which are pretty incompatible, because
Speaker 5: how are you going to you know, how are you
Speaker 5: going to keep these high risk people from coming into
Speaker 5: contact with people who could have the virus, unless you
Speaker 5: like quarantine them all or something like that, which again
Speaker 5: would be impractical because you know, it's what twenty percent
Speaker 5: of the population at least. The other problem with this
Speaker 5: idea is for there to be natural herd immunity. I
Speaker 5: hate that term, but I'll use it just because it's
Speaker 5: what they use. A couple of conditions are necessary. First,
Speaker 5: post infection immunity has to be lifelong or at least
Speaker 5: very long lasting. The second is, in other words, that
Speaker 5: the virus can't be mutating to avoid immunity, which we
Speaker 5: all know now and even new then that coronaviruses are
Speaker 5: very good at doing. So that it was expected that
Speaker 5: you know, new variants would come up and they could
Speaker 5: evade even post infection immunity in terms of like influenza.
Speaker 5: That's why the flu vaccine has to be updated, you know,
Speaker 5: every year, because the strains mutate, and the rise of
Speaker 5: the delta wave, the omicron wave, et cetera kind of
Speaker 5: showed that people getting infected again and again that you know,
Speaker 5: post infection immunity for COVID was not long lasting. So
Speaker 5: basically the Great Barrington Declaration was, you know, giving up
Speaker 5: more than anything else in order to let people make
Speaker 5: money again. And it never would have worked because even
Speaker 5: back then we had every reason to expect that post infection,
Speaker 5: immunity after COVID infection would not be long lasting, and
Speaker 5: that the virus would mutate and you know, come up
Speaker 5: with new strains that could bypass pre existing immunity from
Speaker 5: previous infections. However, this idea was very influential, and in fact,
Speaker 5: the Great Barrington Declaration was kind of late in the
Speaker 5: game because the idea of just letting the virus spread
Speaker 5: to achieve natural herd immunity was being pushed as early
Speaker 5: as March and April in twenty twenty. And one of
Speaker 5: the writers or the scientists who wrote the Great Barrington
Speaker 5: Declaration is now our director of the NIH doctor J. Bodichario.
Speaker 5: The other was doctor Senatragupta in England. And then there
Speaker 5: was of course Martin Caldor, who I now hear is
Speaker 5: involved in the autism you know, vaccine study that RFK
Speaker 5: Junior is supposedly organizing. So basically, you know, these these
Speaker 5: are the idea behind the Great Barrington Declaration, far from
Speaker 5: being censored and canceled, et cetera, actually found purchase at
Speaker 5: the highest levels of government in the US and the UK,
Speaker 5: the Boris Johnson government and Donald Trump administration both you know,
Speaker 5: listen to these scientists, and I mean great Barrington Declaration
Speaker 5: writers you know, actually got to meet with Trump at
Speaker 5: one point, I believe in July, and it was unfortunately
Speaker 5: very influential, and it was discouraged stronger public health measures.
Speaker 5: I did call this idea eugenesis at the time, although
Speaker 5: maybe you can argue if it's soft eugenics or social Darwinist.
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe more social Darwinists, given that, oh well,
Speaker 5: it's kind of like screw the old people who will
Speaker 5: die of this, you know, seem to be part of
Speaker 5: the attitude behind it. You know, we throw up this
Speaker 5: focused protection kind of as an afterthought, you know, where
Speaker 5: the main idea is just to you know, let the
Speaker 5: virus spread and most people will be okay. And this
Speaker 5: is the same sort of idea that we that I
Speaker 5: heard again and again years and years before with the measles,
Speaker 5: you know. And in fact, if you go back to
Speaker 5: twenty fifteen, which was you know, after the Disneyland measles
Speaker 5: outbreak and during the holidays of twenty fourteen that you know,
Speaker 5: took part in the early part of twenty fifteen, you
Speaker 5: would see a lot of anti vaccine activists going on
Speaker 5: and on about how if you just keep yourself healthy.
Speaker 5: Measles is not a danger. That natural immunity to measles
Speaker 5: is far greater than vaccine induced immunity. What they always
Speaker 5: fail to mention is that a price of getting post
Speaker 5: infection immunity can be besides just being sick. Could it
Speaker 5: involve the risk of you know, complications, neurologic damage, or even.
Speaker 2: Death right And so in a way, there's a sort
Speaker 2: of moralization around health in that you know, it's something
Speaker 2: that individuals have to be personally responsible for, and as
Speaker 2: you said, if they succumbed to an illness like measles,
Speaker 2: it is sort of an indication that maybe they were
Speaker 2: unfit in some way or unhealthy, And his dovetails with
Speaker 2: something you also wrote about RFK Junior's recent speech in
Speaker 2: which he talked about autism and described it as a
Speaker 2: tsunami and likened it to an epidemic. He claimed that
Speaker 2: the increasing statistical prevalence of autos is due to environmental
Speaker 2: risk factors and is something that is sort of induced
Speaker 2: by human behavior, as opposed to that statistical prevalence being
Speaker 2: a result of improvements and diagnostic tools that more accurately
Speaker 2: measure a phenomenon, and he also portrayed autistic people as
Speaker 2: a sort of burden on society, you know, or people
Speaker 2: who will never be able to do things like fall
Speaker 2: in love or get a job, despite the fact that
Speaker 2: there are countless examples of people with autism or under
Speaker 2: the umbrella of what we call autism, doing exactly those things.
Speaker 2: And there's this undercurrent of rhetoric that you sort of
Speaker 2: describe it as an echo of something. I hadn't heard
Speaker 2: this term before, but I'm familiar with the idea of it,
Speaker 2: or rather the way in which it was deployed, the
Speaker 2: idea of quote unquote useless eaters. And so, can you
Speaker 2: just walk us through sort of what your reaction to
Speaker 2: RFK Junior's speech was in you know how you made
Speaker 2: that connection.
Speaker 5: Well, look at what the very first thing he said
Speaker 5: about people with severe autism. Okay, what did he say?
Speaker 5: He said, they'll never pay taxes, they'll never have a job,
Speaker 5: and then oh, they'll never go on a date, they'll
Speaker 5: never play baseball. It's what are the first two things
Speaker 5: he mentions paying taxes and having a job. This is
Speaker 5: straight up useless eaters rhetoric, and useless eaters was basically
Speaker 5: a term that the Nazis used, you know, for people
Speaker 5: with you know, severe you know, neurologic conditions or diseases
Speaker 5: that made it such that they would require lifetime care
Speaker 5: and would never contribute to society. So that was the echo.
Speaker 5: I think that echo was pretty clear describing them that way. Now,
Speaker 5: the other interesting thing about the eugenics angle, there's a
Speaker 5: very strong denial of what we know thus far about autism,
Speaker 5: which is that it's like roughly eighty percent genetic. You know,
Speaker 5: you can argue over the exact figures, but it's predominantly genetic.
Speaker 5: I think there's little doubt about that. So parents who
Speaker 5: have an autistic child, they often blame themselves or they think, wait,
Speaker 5: if it's genetic, that means it must be me and
Speaker 5: or my partner, you know, which if you're thinking in
Speaker 5: terms of the whole health is virtue thing, you know,
Speaker 5: if there is something about you that is not changeable,
Speaker 5: mainly your genetics, and that you know, no amount of
Speaker 5: exercise or you know, living right is going to change,
Speaker 5: it's easy to fall into denial of that and seek
Speaker 5: to blame something else. So there's that, and you know,
Speaker 5: one of the things I'm kind of afraid of is
Speaker 5: that if it becomes undeniable, you know, if they keep
Speaker 5: doing all this stuff and failing to find, you know,
Speaker 5: any real evidence that an external exposure is causing autism,
Speaker 5: and they're forced to reckon with autism being primarily but
Speaker 5: not exclusively, but primarily genetic. Where does that lead you
Speaker 5: in terms of what do you do about autism? And
Speaker 5: my mind has gone in some fairly dark directions thinking about.
Speaker 2: That, right right, And there's little discussion of what autistic
Speaker 2: people think or want.
Speaker 5: No, it doesn't matter to them at all. Really, In fact,
Speaker 5: they're almost entirely dismissive of what autistic people themselves think exactly.
Speaker 2: And there's also a total disregard for the value of
Speaker 2: difference and the contributions that people who are autistic have
Speaker 2: made to society that perhaps they might even correlate with
Speaker 2: the fact that they're autistic. So there's this erasure of
Speaker 2: not only what an entire group of people actually want
Speaker 2: for themselves as advocates for themselves, but also their value,
Speaker 2: you know, not just as a group of people, but
Speaker 2: as individuals as well.
Speaker 5: To add to that, let's go back to around two
Speaker 5: thousand and seven, two thousand and eight when Jenny McCarthy
Speaker 5: was the face of the anti vaccine movement. So like
Speaker 5: one of the things she said after, you know, supposedly
Speaker 5: after her son Evan got vaccinated, was that quote unquote
Speaker 5: the light went out of his eyes. And then you
Speaker 5: hear this a lot when parents realize their children are
Speaker 5: showing the signs of, you know, the early signs of autism.
Speaker 5: Is it like they there's language about how their child
Speaker 5: was stolen from them, in other words, as if this
Speaker 5: autistic child is not their child, rather their idealized version
Speaker 5: of what their child should be is their real child
Speaker 5: or their quote unquote normal child. This is some really
Speaker 5: ancient stuff in that, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 5: you there's the whole idea of the changeling myth, in which,
Speaker 5: you know, the idea of being. You know, children with
Speaker 5: mental illness, you know, have been taken over or their changelings.
Speaker 5: They are no longer what they were before. It's almost
Speaker 5: as if they are no longer human. I mean, the
Speaker 5: dehumanization that you hear from the anti vaccine movement about
Speaker 5: autism has long been horrific, and it's just that up
Speaker 5: until now, most people have not heard that rhetoric, and
Speaker 5: now they're hearing it from a high government official and
Speaker 5: it is becoming federal health policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is certainly a new development. Is something we've
Speaker 2: discussed on previous episodes, is the deeper history of anti
Speaker 2: vaccination belief or hesitancy that goes deep in American history.
Speaker 2: You know, for almost as long as vaccines have ever existed,
Speaker 2: it has rarely ever been enshrined in law and policy
Speaker 2: in the way that it is now being done. And
Speaker 2: so we've talked about one of these people, high level
Speaker 2: government officials, RFK Junior, whose statements have drawn your attention
Speaker 2: and elicited your concern. But he's not the only one.
Speaker 2: So you also wrote about oprah adjacent television personality, doctor
Speaker 2: menad Oz.
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, well doctor Oz actually is sort of surprising
Speaker 5: you a little bit, but then in retrospect not really.
Speaker 5: So I'm surprised there wasn't more commentary about this. But
Speaker 5: when he gave his brief little acceptance speech after having
Speaker 5: been confirmed as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare
Speaker 5: and Medicaid Services, which is the part of HHS that
Speaker 5: administers you know, Medicare, Medicaid Affordable Care Act, it's like
Speaker 5: really important, huge programs. When he said, basically, it is
Speaker 5: your patriotic duty to take care of yourself, you know it,
Speaker 5: to be healthy, and then he goes, oh, and it
Speaker 5: feels better as well. But he said, it's your patriotic
Speaker 5: duty to take care of yourself and be healthy because
Speaker 5: then you, you know, draw less. I'm paraphrasing because I
Speaker 5: don't remember exactly what he said, but because you pull
Speaker 5: less from the pool, you know, which, interestingly E goes
Speaker 5: exactly almost exactly other than the patriotic duty part what
Speaker 5: RFK Junior said. When Bernie Sanders asked if healthcare was
Speaker 5: a human right, as you recall, RFKA Junior did his
Speaker 5: best not to answer, you know, he dodged and weaved
Speaker 5: around the question, and then he brought up the example
Speaker 5: of a someone who smokes cigarettes for decades and then
Speaker 5: develops lung cancer and is now drawing from the pool.
Speaker 5: He was like, very you know, emphasized drawing from the pool,
Speaker 5: as if that person does not deserve healthcare basically because
Speaker 5: an addiction gave you cancer. Because you know, what he
Speaker 5: neglects to mention is just how addictives you know, tobacco
Speaker 5: and nicotine are, and as a former addict himself, you know,
Speaker 5: I found that striking. But coming back to the whole
Speaker 5: patriotic beauty thing. Know, the whole idea is, again, health
Speaker 5: is virtue. You control your health, and if you don't
Speaker 5: do the right things and become ill, that you're somehow
Speaker 5: less worthy of healthcare.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And there's an interesting thread there in that some EU
Speaker 2: genesis thinkers, at least American ones, were somewhat concerned about,
Speaker 2: you know, the idea that vaccinations could prevent the weak
Speaker 2: or the unfit from being called naturally.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, definitely. Yeah, So there is.
Speaker 2: Some linkage here, even if these are somewhat discrete ideas.
Speaker 2: And you know, you also quoted something from a doctor
Speaker 2: Oz speech back in twenty thirteen. You pulled a video
Speaker 2: that had been and resurfaced in recent years, and as said,
Speaker 2: people don't have a right to health if they're uninsured.
Speaker 2: And so it's not like what he's saying is kind
Speaker 2: of new for him. He's been saying things like this
Speaker 2: for a while. And the idea that you know, there's
Speaker 2: this national body that we all have a duty to
Speaker 2: sort of be healthy cells of is something that there's
Speaker 2: a long history of that sort of thinking and policy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, the whole I mean, I can't help but
Speaker 5: think of Nazis and the vult quick aside.
Speaker 2: For those who don't know, the Nazi idea of the
Speaker 2: Vulcan has a few elements to it. Not only does
Speaker 2: it relate to racial and cultural homogeneity, but it also
Speaker 2: conceives of the nation as a sort of body composed
Speaker 2: of cells, one that must be cleansed of unfit or
Speaker 2: unhealthy cells in order to become perfect. In other words,
Speaker 2: a dutiful member of the Vulcan would prioritize their health
Speaker 2: as a sort of paireotic or nationalistic duty, and would
Speaker 2: participate in eugenic programs to eliminate the unfit.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm not saying this is straight up Nazi
Speaker 5: or anything like that. It's just that these sorts of
Speaker 5: themes have echoed through you know, not just eugenicist movements,
Speaker 5: but nationalist and authoritarian movements.
Speaker 2: And there's this concerning development. RFK Junior has proposed basically
Speaker 2: creating like a national database or registry of people with autism,
Speaker 2: and if it's not just autism, maybe other disorders like ADHD.
Speaker 2: And if you read reports that interview people with autism
Speaker 2: or similar disorders. They are very concerned by this for
Speaker 2: the reasons that you just described, So the creation of
Speaker 2: this database could be framed as a way to improve
Speaker 2: our ability to understand this hypothetical linkage that they are
Speaker 2: so doggedly stuck on between autism in vaccines. But I
Speaker 2: think those who know their history could easily imagine such
Speaker 2: a tool being used for other more nefarious purposes, because
Speaker 2: you know, similar policies were passed in Germany in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties to sort of, you know, identify these people
Speaker 2: and categorize them and then eventually do what they did
Speaker 2: with them. So, you know, for all those sorts of reasons,
Speaker 2: and you know, also the fact that we're living at
Speaker 2: a time in which American citizens and legal residents are
Speaker 2: being sent to a foreign prison colony as is certainly
Speaker 2: you know something that I think people are picking up
Speaker 2: on and maybe making connections with.
Speaker 5: As you mentioned, a lot of autistic people don't want
Speaker 5: to be on this database, and as a result, I've
Speaker 5: read reports in the news of parents are asking that
Speaker 5: their child not be given a diagnosis of autism so
Speaker 5: that they don't end up in the database, which could
Speaker 5: artificially cause, you know, the revolence of autism to level
Speaker 5: off and start to decline, at which point RFK declares victory.
Speaker 2: We'll hear a bit more from doctor Gorski after a
Speaker 2: quick ad break. There's a recent proposal out of rfk's
Speaker 2: HHS that intends to provide placebo vaccines during testing for
Speaker 2: all quote unquote new vaccines.
Speaker 5: So the idea is, the vaccines in the childhood schedule
Speaker 5: have quote unquote never been tested against placebo control. Although
Speaker 5: ironically it's funny. I read an article the other day
Speaker 5: where they did admit that the COVID vaccine for children
Speaker 5: was indeed tested against a placebo control. I'm kind of
Speaker 5: surprised they conceded that, but I guess sometimes they have
Speaker 5: to concede reality. But here's the idea. So it's true
Speaker 5: that some of them vaccines have not been tested against
Speaker 5: the strict siline placebo control that they want, but there
Speaker 5: are a number of reasons for that. The primary reason
Speaker 5: is ethics. So let's go back. So if you have
Speaker 5: a new vaccine that is for a disease that has
Speaker 5: never had an approved vaccine before, yes, it's tested against
Speaker 5: a placebo control. This has been the case for a
Speaker 5: very long time. However, if you have a new vaccine
Speaker 5: for a disease that already has a vaccine that's been
Speaker 5: approved as safe and effective and is the standard of care,
Speaker 5: it is completely unethical to do a randomized study where
Speaker 5: you know one third to half of the participants will
Speaker 5: be randomized to a group that does not get the
Speaker 5: standard of care treatment as in, you know, the vaccine
Speaker 5: or the standard of care preventative. In that case, the
Speaker 5: only ethical way to test the new vaccine against the
Speaker 5: disease for which there's already a vaccine is to test
Speaker 5: it against an existing vaccine and then make sure that
Speaker 5: it is at least not inferior or preferably better. So,
Speaker 5: if you trace back the lineage of all the vaccines
Speaker 5: on the childhood vaccine schedule, if you go back to
Speaker 5: the first vaccine against the disease that was approved, it
Speaker 5: was tested against you know, placebo, when it was a
Speaker 5: new vaccine against a disease that didn't have a vaccine.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you agree with this, but it does
Speaker 2: sound like this proposal if it were to be implemented
Speaker 2: in a way that involves vaccines for existing diseases that
Speaker 2: have already been treated with vaccines, if there were placebos
Speaker 2: introduced into this testing, and you know, like you said,
Speaker 2: there's a random percentage of people that were given a placebo.
Speaker 2: I mean to me, it recalls like a soft version
Speaker 2: of a Tuskegee experiment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been meaning to make that that any but
Speaker 5: you beat me to it.
Speaker 2: As we discussed in a prior episode in this series,
Speaker 2: the Tuskegee Syphilist Study was a horrifically unethical, racist and
Speaker 2: eugenic experiment that helped seed a long standing distrust of
Speaker 2: vaccines and medical authorities, particularly among minority communities in the
Speaker 2: United States, and it straddled the intersection of hard and
Speaker 2: soft eugenics. While it was not a forced sterilization program,
Speaker 2: the intent of the experiment was to test the eugenic
Speaker 2: hypothesis that racial groups were differently susceptible to infectious diseases.
Speaker 2: And that's because they basically believed that black people had
Speaker 2: different nervous systems than white people and that they were
Speaker 2: not the same. And they also allowed black men who
Speaker 2: could have otherwise been treated for syphilis, which there were
Speaker 2: treatments for that at the time, to instead suffer and
Speaker 2: die after being given placebo treatments without their knowledge. Children's
Speaker 2: health defense while under the leadership of RFK Junior invoked
Speaker 2: the Tuskegee Syphliss experiment in a recent anti vaccine film
Speaker 2: they specifically promoted to Black Americans to encourage vaccine skepticism,
Speaker 2: and now the former leader of that organization is proposing
Speaker 2: an approach to vaccines that is eerily reminiscent of the
Speaker 2: sordid Tuskegee experiment. In the post COVID world, vaccination rates
Speaker 2: are on the decline, and anti vaccination beliefs are spreading
Speaker 2: in tandem with eugenesis thinking. The rhetoric of the leaders
Speaker 2: of our top health bureaucracies recall chilling episodes in recent history,
Speaker 2: ones that we would rather not repeat. But because we
Speaker 2: have history as a guide, it is not impossible for
Speaker 2: us to imagine what could happen if things continue to
Speaker 2: trend in the direction we are already headed. So on
Speaker 2: the next episode of Anti vaxx America, I'll explore some
Speaker 2: of the worst case scenarios that could unfold if the
Speaker 2: proponents of the MAHA agenda get their way. I'm Stephen Monchelli.
Speaker 2: Until next time.
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