Speaker 1: Hello to listeners old and new.
Speaker 2: We are trying something new this week and next we
Speaker 2: are going to be re releasing two of our favorite
Speaker 2: past episodes, Vaccines Part one and two.
Speaker 1: These are two episodes that we are really, really proud of.
Speaker 1: We've referenced them both countless times since we release them,
Speaker 1: and our audience has grown a lot since our second season,
Speaker 1: so there's probably a fair amount of you that haven't
Speaker 1: ever heard these And as we've.
Speaker 2: Seen in the past two years, as this pandemic has
Speaker 2: reached on, the importance of vaccines is still so apparent.
Speaker 1: And misinformation and disinformation abounds.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in two weeks with fresh new content
Speaker 2: for your ears, but for now, we hope you enjoy
Speaker 2: for the second time Vaccines.
Speaker 3: After I did my MD and PhD, I was a
Speaker 3: pediatric house officer or resident Boston, and I was admitting
Speaker 3: a child to the hospital every couple of weeks with
Speaker 3: a horrific disease called homophlis influenza type B meningitis. It
Speaker 3: has the word influenza in it because it used during
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic. It was erroneously thought this
Speaker 3: was a bacteria that caused influenza, not the virus we
Speaker 3: know today, but it turns out it causes a terrible
Speaker 3: disease and I would have to do the spinal tap
Speaker 3: on those kids. The lumbar punctures you would see the
Speaker 3: puss coming out were cerebral spinal fluid should be. And
Speaker 3: these children had terrible outcomes. They were either deaf or
Speaker 3: permanent intellectual injuries. And some of the kids didn't make it.
Speaker 3: And this took a tremendous emotional toll on the pediatric
Speaker 3: house staff as well. And that was in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: seven nineteen eighty eight. By the time I finished my residency,
Speaker 3: a new vaccine had come online that was developed in
Speaker 3: parallel at the Niation with students of health and in
Speaker 3: Rochester by another group, and within three years that disease
Speaker 3: had vanished from the United States. It was a disease
Speaker 3: that I talked about to the next generation of house
Speaker 3: staff purely for historic interests, so like the old timers
Speaker 3: would talk to me about dip theory and tetanus. So
Speaker 3: it just goes to show you the power of vaccines,
Speaker 3: you know, admitting a child every two weeks with meningitis
Speaker 3: from this disease and now gone.
Speaker 1: So that was doctor Hotz sharing with us one of
Speaker 1: his stories about vaccines, and you are going to hear
Speaker 1: more from him later in the episode. Hi, I'm erin Welsh.
Speaker 2: And I'm Aaron omen Updike.
Speaker 1: And this is this podcast will kill You. This is
Speaker 1: the second episode in our two episode series on vaccines.
Speaker 1: In the first episode, we covered vaccine basics, how they work,
Speaker 1: the history of vaccine development, and where we stand with
Speaker 1: various vaccination programs and vaccine preventable diseases today, So if
Speaker 1: you haven't already listened to that episode, you should pause
Speaker 1: right now and check it out before listening to this one.
Speaker 2: Definitely. On today's episode, we're going to discuss the opposition
Speaker 2: to vaccination that has really taken hold in a lot
Speaker 2: of places around the world, with the result that vaccine
Speaker 2: preventable diseases have increased, and we'll have some discussions on
Speaker 2: what to do about it.
Speaker 1: We are also joined today by two very exciting guests
Speaker 1: who were kind enough to take the time to share
Speaker 1: their experiences and knowledge with us. The first doctor Peter Hotez.
Speaker 1: You just heard from. Doctor Hotez is dean of the
Speaker 1: National School of Tropical Medicine, at Baylor College of Medicine
Speaker 1: in Houston and is also co director of the Texas
Speaker 1: Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. He has spent his
Speaker 1: entire career working on infectious disease, particularly neglected tropical diseases,
Speaker 1: and developing vaccines for them. We'll hear more from him
Speaker 1: later in the episode when we talk about the most
Speaker 1: common misconceptions or questions about vaccines and vaccine safety.
Speaker 2: We were also thrilled to chat with Bill Nye.
Speaker 1: Bill Nye, you guys like Bill.
Speaker 2: Nye, the science guy? Have you heard of him? Not joking?
Speaker 2: We got to chat with him about the challenges facing
Speaker 2: science communication in this age when headlines travel at lightning
Speaker 2: speed and it can be really difficult to distinguish between
Speaker 2: information and misinformation.
Speaker 1: The format of this episode is a bit different than
Speaker 1: our others. So first I'll talk about the history of
Speaker 1: vaccine opposition, and then doctor Hotez will help us go
Speaker 1: through some of the common misconceptions about vaccines, and finally
Speaker 1: we'll talk with Bill Nye about science communication. So let's
Speaker 1: get going.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: But first first, what time is it?
Speaker 2: It's quarantine? Any time?
Speaker 1: That's right? What are we drinking today?
Speaker 2: Today we're drinking injection of reason. MS.
Speaker 1: What's an injection of reason?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, erin It's basically a passion fruit.
Speaker 1: Mohido, Oh got my favorite?
Speaker 2: You do you want to know? Why? Do you want
Speaker 2: to know why?
Speaker 1: Tell me? Tell me why passionfruit.
Speaker 2: Because people get so passionate about these debates.
Speaker 1: Wonderful.
Speaker 2: Oh it's my fav also delicious, so good.
Speaker 1: So it's basically rum, passion fruit, juice, mint, simple syrup,
Speaker 1: lime juice, et cetera.
Speaker 2: We'll post the full recipe for that along with our
Speaker 2: place burrita, which is the non alcoholic version, on our
Speaker 2: website and all of our social media channels. Yep.
Speaker 1: We also really quick need to make a fun little announcement.
Speaker 1: We are working on an episode where we answer questions
Speaker 1: you send us about us, or about disease ecology or epidemiology,
Speaker 1: or podcasting or cocktail techniques or honestly whatever you can
Speaker 1: think of.
Speaker 2: Anything you want to know, So send us your questions
Speaker 2: by email to this podcast will kill you at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you decide to send us a question that
Speaker 1: you want us to answer for this episode, please put
Speaker 1: ask the Errands or something to that effect in the
Speaker 1: subject line and let us know whether you're okay with
Speaker 1: us saying your name on the episode.
Speaker 2: We can't wait to hear from you. Now, can we
Speaker 2: get goy now?
Speaker 1: We can get gone now, We're ready.
Speaker 2: Excellent after a quick word from sponsors.
Speaker 1: In the first vaccine episode, I covered the history of
Speaker 1: vaccine development and touched on some of the amazing impacts
Speaker 1: they've had on the world. But throughout that entire history,
Speaker 1: there's a parallel story of people to vaccination, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really important to explore that story because in
Speaker 1: tracing these histories, we can see that what's happening now
Speaker 1: is not new, not really the rise in vaccine preventable
Speaker 1: diseases as opposition increases, we've seen that before. And the
Speaker 1: rhetoric that's being used to manipulate and incite fear in
Speaker 1: people heard it before. Opposition to vaccines is as old
Speaker 1: as vaccines themselves. By and large. When Edward Jenner smallpox
Speaker 1: vaccine began making the rounds in seventeen ninety six, it
Speaker 1: was hailed as a modern medical achievement, and vaccine rates
Speaker 1: continually grew. Yes, there was outcry and political cartoons and
Speaker 1: religious opposition, but in general it was viewed as a
Speaker 1: positive because smallpox is horrific and people don't want to
Speaker 1: get it. And if you don't believe us, listen to
Speaker 1: episode three. Yeah, get into the gory details.
Speaker 2: It's very gory.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. By the mid eighteen hundreds, though, vaccination rates
Speaker 1: had dropped considerably, both in the US and in England.
Speaker 1: What happened in the US a country wide anti vaccine
Speaker 1: movement had emerged from a fringe element that was ludite
Speaker 1: esque in their philosophy. So the Ludyites. Do you know
Speaker 1: who the Luddites are?
Speaker 2: No? I was gonna ask, can you tell me what
Speaker 2: that means? Because I'm dumb?
Speaker 1: No? No, So the Ludyites were in nineteenth century group
Speaker 1: that destroyed agricultural technology like cotton, gins and so on
Speaker 1: because they believed that machines were stealing jobs for humans.
Speaker 2: Oh it's almost like I've heard that before.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the term is kind of used as
Speaker 1: a catch all for anti technology, but that's in specific roots.
Speaker 1: So what started out as anti vaccine murmurings took on momentum.
Speaker 1: Satirical cartoons showing vaccinated people with animal like features like
Speaker 1: horns and udders and whatever were taken as a real
Speaker 1: warning by the uneducated public of what was actually going
Speaker 1: to happen to them if they got vaccinated, and in England,
Speaker 1: vaccine rates had plateaued or started to fall, also likely
Speaker 1: because the lower disease incidents made people a bit complacent.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty three, the newly founded Epidemiological Society of
Speaker 1: London lobbied the British Parliament for a compulsory Vaccination Act,
Speaker 1: coming on the heels of a deadly smallpox epidemic. The
Speaker 1: bill required all children to be vaccinated by six months
Speaker 1: of age, and those who were not in compliance were
Speaker 1: fined or imprisoned, but there was basically no enforcement, so
Speaker 1: vaccination rates fell even more. The government passed another new
Speaker 1: and improved act in eighteen sixty seven, and this one
Speaker 1: required parents to show a certificate proving vaccination and if
Speaker 1: they couldn't, they were taken to court and fined. But
Speaker 1: because the lowest vaccination rates were among the poorest due
Speaker 1: to the cost of vaccines, they often didn't have the
Speaker 1: money to pay for the fines or court costs, in
Speaker 1: which case family assets were seized and sold at public
Speaker 1: auction geez. And if that didn't settle the bill, someone
Speaker 1: was going to jail. So this act that required vaccination
Speaker 1: is what gave birth to the anti vaccine movement in England.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 1: Within a few decades, tens of thousands of members belonged
Speaker 1: to the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League, which urged people to
Speaker 1: join as an act of patriotism.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: This league spread all kinds of rumors about the smallpox vaccine,
Speaker 1: like that it was made from the venom of adders,
Speaker 1: the blood entrails and excretions of bats and toads and
Speaker 1: suckling whelps. That's like a quote suckling welps.
Speaker 2: Sorry, right, any old suckling welper No any that's like
Speaker 2: just a catch all term for baby animals, right or
Speaker 2: only dogs?
Speaker 1: Our thoughts, it's anything yeah weird. Yeah, well these these people.
Speaker 1: This league also distributed pictures of vaccinated children turning into
Speaker 1: all kinds of mythical monsters, and at the public auctions
Speaker 1: where the property of those who couldn't pay the fines
Speaker 1: was sold, the league held large protests, which frequently turned violent.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety eight, the British government gave up the
Speaker 1: fight and passed a conscientious objection law, which is where
Speaker 1: we get the term conscientious objector.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, wow, from vaccination.
Speaker 1: From vaccination. I really thought it was war me too,
Speaker 1: but no. So within a year of passing this law,
Speaker 1: more than two hundred thousand conscientious objectors had gotten their
Speaker 1: pass and vaccine rates started to plummet, with smallpox outbreaks
Speaker 1: following meanwhile. Around the same time, so in the mid
Speaker 1: to late eighteen hundreds in the US, several prominent anti
Speaker 1: vaccine voices started to grow louder, largely motivated by occultists
Speaker 1: and mystical beliefs such as that of the Swedish mystic
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Swedenborg.
Speaker 2: Don't you know I'm Swedish.
Speaker 1: One of Swedenborg's beliefs was that infection or contamination left
Speaker 1: a scar on the soul and was viewed as sin
Speaker 1: in that way, and so to Swedenborg, the wilful vaccination
Speaker 1: of yourself or your children was morally reprehensible.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: The focus of these anti vaccine efforts narrowed in on children,
Speaker 1: thanks in large part to an American woman named Laura Little,
Speaker 1: whose six year old son died in eighteen ninety five
Speaker 1: after a short and tragic life filled with injuries, ear
Speaker 1: and throat infections, measles, and diphtheria, which is what ultimately
Speaker 1: got him in the end. However, his death from diphtheria
Speaker 1: was preceded by smallpox immunization by several months I think
Speaker 1: like seven months or something. Oh no, yeah, which were
Speaker 1: required for school. Laura, his mom, was distraught over his
Speaker 1: death and sought any explanation except for diphtheria, which I
Speaker 1: guess was too obvious or something. She concluded that it
Speaker 1: wasn't theoria that caused his death, but the smallpox vaccine,
Speaker 1: oh dear. So she took up the anti vaccine crusade,
Speaker 1: and she, as well as all of the anti vaccine
Speaker 1: voices during this time and well into today, had no
Speaker 1: regard for truth and constantly spouted statistics or medical quote
Speaker 1: facts that were blatantly false. But her voice was reaching
Speaker 1: a sympathetic audience because due to the political climate at
Speaker 1: the time, people felt that the government had to too
Speaker 1: much reach. So it was a campaign of fear. And
Speaker 1: I think we all know how difficult it is for
Speaker 1: logic to fight fear. Yeah, And when it's something as
Speaker 1: important at stake as children, it's really easy to win
Speaker 1: people over with that fear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is so.
Speaker 1: Laura Little's anti vaccine campaign was supported in large part
Speaker 1: by The Truth Teller, which was a paper or like
Speaker 1: a journal kind of thing whose primary role was advertising
Speaker 1: for homeopathy and snake oil remedies, both of which had
Speaker 1: taken a major blow when in nineteen oh six Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt signed into law the Pure Food and Drug Act
Speaker 1: that forbade false advertising and unregulated ingredients.
Speaker 2: These were like old school blogs, man, basically, yeah, I
Speaker 2: love I love it. I love that they've been around
Speaker 2: for so long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah. So they lost this battle once Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt signed that into law, and so they switched their
Speaker 1: attention to vaccine publishing completely made up exposees supported by
Speaker 1: authentic facts, which were anything but at this time. So
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, it is true that vaccine production
Speaker 1: wasn't as well regulated as it is today, and there
Speaker 1: were some bad batches that caused a lot of suffering
Speaker 1: and some deaths, and I mentioned some of these in
Speaker 1: the last episode. But those events, which were the exception
Speaker 1: and not the rule, still did not justify her campaign
Speaker 1: against vaccination, which was based on their unnaturalness and her
Speaker 1: belief in their immorality. Her issues with vaccines had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with regulation. It was just more of a
Speaker 1: hand wavy. You're putting this artificial thing into your body
Speaker 1: and it's harming you in some way that I can't
Speaker 1: define or describe because I have no experience or knowledge
Speaker 1: of molecular immunology, not that anyone did at that time.
Speaker 1: But it didn't matter to her, right because what good
Speaker 1: are facts and knowledge when faced with righteousness and fear.
Speaker 1: The message of Laura Little and others in this anti
Speaker 1: vaccine movement was being heard loud and clear across the US,
Speaker 1: and their impact was clearly seen in the increased infection
Speaker 1: rate and death toll of vaccine preventable diseases, notably smallpox,
Speaker 1: which had almost been eradicated in the US in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds geez. The vaccine opposition movement and the prevalence
Speaker 1: of vaccine preventable illnesses had grown so much, in fact,
Speaker 1: that it resulted in a nineteen oh five Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decision about compulsory vaccination, Jacobson versus Massachusetts, heard from a
Speaker 1: Swedish born pastor where vaccination was mandatory, who felt that
Speaker 1: vaccination violated his rights as an individual The Court decided
Speaker 1: seven to two in favor of the state, so upholding
Speaker 1: the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The
Speaker 1: court acknowledged that, yeah for certain people who have medical restrictions,
Speaker 1: forced vaccination would be a violation, but Jacobsen didn't have
Speaker 1: any legitimate grounds for denying vaccination. The court stated that
Speaker 1: individual rights are superseded by the rights of masses when
Speaker 1: individual rights may harm others. This decision, however, did not
Speaker 1: permit the forceful vaccination of people, but upheld that states
Speaker 1: could be permitted to enforce legal and financial consequences if
Speaker 1: someone refused to vaccinate. And seventeen years later, after this
Speaker 1: Supreme Court decision, the Court doubled down on vaccine refusal
Speaker 1: and ruled that a school could refuse admission to an
Speaker 1: unvaccinated student. And that's being talked about a lot today
Speaker 1: in headlines. The reasons for opposition to vaccines in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds came in a lot
Speaker 1: of different flavors, ranging from spirituality or religious beliefs, to
Speaker 1: a deep fear that personal rights were being violated, to
Speaker 1: legitimate concern about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. So
Speaker 1: let's just give ourselves a bit of historical context to
Speaker 1: see if we can understand where these views are coming from. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: for about the first sixty ish years of the smallpox vaccines,
Speaker 1: use microbiology wasn't a thing. No one knew that microbes
Speaker 1: caused disease and could be transmitted from person to person,
Speaker 1: and even once the field developed, it would be a
Speaker 1: while for the science to reach the general public. People
Speaker 1: tend to be afraid of things they don't understand, so
Speaker 1: it makes sense that they would have been scared of vaccines.
Speaker 1: They had been equally scared of variolation. I can't really
Speaker 1: speak to the spirituality or religious aspect of vaccines being immoral,
Speaker 1: but I guess it sort of just goes along with
Speaker 1: people being afraid of something that seemed to work, like magic.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but anyway, But then there were the
Speaker 1: people who were opposed to vaccines, not necessarily because they
Speaker 1: hated it vaccines themselves, but because vaccines represented the long
Speaker 1: arm of the government, one more way for the government
Speaker 1: to violate your personal rights. And yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: repercussions for not vaccinating could be severe and involve violence.
Speaker 1: They were also classist and racist in part because not
Speaker 1: everyone was equally targeted to prove they had gotten their vaccines,
Speaker 1: and certain groups were blamed for spreading disease over others.
Speaker 2: Even when totally not true.
Speaker 1: Even when totally not true, compulsory vaccination was one small
Speaker 1: part of many different groups campaigns against government overreach, which
Speaker 1: is why you see anti vaccine advocacy from abolitionist groups,
Speaker 1: suffrage groups, and other groups that seemed very forward thinking otherwise.
Speaker 1: And finally, there were those opposed because they didn't believe
Speaker 1: vaccines were safe and there was some truth to that.
Speaker 1: Vaccines did not have the oversight that they do today,
Speaker 1: and there had been serious incidents. But because many of
Speaker 1: these people wanted to see reform in vaccine regulation rather
Speaker 1: than no vaccination whatsoever, they tended to be drowned out
Speaker 1: by the other reasons. Of course, I'm oversimplifying here quite
Speaker 1: a bit. People could certainly be opposed to vaccines for
Speaker 1: many different reasons, all at the same time, but these
Speaker 1: seemed to be the strongest motivators. And some of these
Speaker 1: reasons probably sound a bit familiar to the rhetoric of
Speaker 1: the anti vaccine lobby today. And there are other echoes
Speaker 1: claiming that doctors are evil and motivated only by greed
Speaker 1: or worse, a desire to cause human suffering, public rallies
Speaker 1: that are filled with a burning rage resulting in the
Speaker 1: destruction of images of vaccine advocates, such as when an
Speaker 1: effigy of Edward Jenner was hanged and decapitated, or when
Speaker 1: giant photos of the director of the CDC's National Immunization
Speaker 1: Program were labeled terrorists in big block letters wow wow.
Speaker 1: Language that planted feelings of paranoia or the thought of
Speaker 1: conspiracy in anyone who would listen happened to both then
Speaker 1: and now. And then there's the outright lying about vaccines
Speaker 1: being unsafe to further their cause. Minimizing the deadliness of
Speaker 1: vaccine preventable illnesses, suggesting that natural infection is better was
Speaker 1: another big line of both then and now, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, it's not it's not.
Speaker 2: That's a really scary one too, because it's yeah.
Speaker 1: So who stood to benefit from opposition to vaccines back then?
Speaker 1: First it was smallpox varilators, whose job security was under
Speaker 1: serious threat when the smallpox vaccine, much much safer than variolation,
Speaker 1: came onto the scene.
Speaker 2: Wait, that's interesting, isn't that.
Speaker 1: Oh, Yeah, it was also people who developed or sold
Speaker 1: alternative treatments for vaccine preventable diseases, just your typical snake
Speaker 1: oil salesman. Let's throw lawyers into the mix, because there's
Speaker 1: plenty of those wanting to capitalize on this. These people
Speaker 1: who could make money off of parents fear and grief
Speaker 1: stoked those flames until the movement grew and grew, and
Speaker 1: that I think is the biggest similarity between the historical
Speaker 1: and modern opposition to vaccines. A moral, greedy and opportunistic
Speaker 1: people preying on a vulnerable population using lies and manipulative
Speaker 1: rhetoric to make money. Yep, let's talk about the origins
Speaker 1: of the modern anti vaccine lobby. Oh gosh. As government
Speaker 1: oversight of vaccine development and deployment increased throughout the first
Speaker 1: half of the twentieth century, vaccine oppositions settled down, never
Speaker 1: completely going away, but fading into the background as the
Speaker 1: benefits of vaccines became obvious. But that would change in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, when an English pediatrician named John Wilson
Speaker 1: gave a presentation in which he said that the Protessi's
Speaker 1: vaccine was linked to frequent and dangerous health outcomes in children,
Speaker 1: including a fever leading to seizures, coma, and possibly death.
Speaker 1: His study was the result of him seeking out and
Speaker 1: compiling these cases, and his findings were preliminary and not
Speaker 1: independently confirmed. Despite this, his claim quickly made its way
Speaker 1: onto the headlines of newspapers, calling for vaccine production to
Speaker 1: immediately cease. The year before Wilson made his announcement, seventy
Speaker 1: nine percent of British children were immunized against protussis. Four
Speaker 1: years after his announcement, that number fell to thirty one percent.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, yeah, thirty one percent, and the drop
Speaker 1: was largely due to family practice doctors not recommending the vaccine.
Speaker 1: Ooh all, because this one preliminary, extremely biased study wasn't
Speaker 1: even a study. It was a collection of anecdotes. As
Speaker 1: you might expect, an outbreak of whooping cough occurred in
Speaker 1: which over one hundred thousand children were infected, five thousand
Speaker 1: were hospitalized, two hundred developed severe pneumonia, eighty had seizures,
Speaker 1: and later reports suggest six hundred children died. Six hundred
Speaker 1: children died of a preventable disease because of a study
Speaker 1: that was essentially stories, just a collection of stories and Wilson.
Speaker 1: This pediatrician found himself a nice gig as advisor to
Speaker 1: the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children, which quickly
Speaker 1: began seeking monetary reparations for their suffering. Ultimately, it would
Speaker 1: turn out that the children in Wilson's study likely had
Speaker 1: Dravet's syndrome, which is a genetic disorder caused by mutations
Speaker 1: that happen long before birth, nothing to do with vaccines
Speaker 1: at all. While many physicians were taken in by Wilson's study,
Speaker 1: researchers wanted to see a carefully planned study with appropriate
Speaker 1: controls to determine whether his claims would hold true. Doctor
Speaker 1: David Miller, a professor of community medicine, launched a comprehensive
Speaker 1: study examining the relationship between children with neurological illnesses and
Speaker 1: the DTP vaccine. He found a statistically significant association between
Speaker 1: the two. According to his study, three doses of the
Speaker 1: vaccine caused permanent brain damage in one in one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand children. This study would be used as the basis
Speaker 1: for countless lawsuits over the course of the next several decades.
Speaker 1: Put a pin in that study. Recover.
Speaker 2: Miller's study Miller study one in one hundred thousand three doses.
Speaker 1: In response to the headlines about the possible dangers of
Speaker 1: Protessa's vaccines, parents began to organize crusades and by radio
Speaker 1: time to time get their message out. Fear is an
Speaker 1: effective motivator, and I get it. There's a voice in
Speaker 1: your head that says what if. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: that what if question that the anti vaccine lobby asks
Speaker 1: is what if I choose to have my kid vaccinated
Speaker 1: and something bad happens, Not what if I don't get
Speaker 1: my kid vaccinated and they die of a preventable illness?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, The anti vaccine movement, just like an infection, was spreading.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two, in Washington, DC, a TV station
Speaker 1: broadcasts a documentary made by reporter Leah Thompson called DPT
Speaker 1: Vaccine Roulette, which featured a bunch of grief stricken parents
Speaker 1: who recounted their tales of how their children had suffered
Speaker 1: due to the vaccine. The camera slowly panned over horribly
Speaker 1: sick or developmentally disabled children and their teary parents, with
Speaker 1: a voiceover that stated that these tragic cases were all
Speaker 1: due to the protest. Part of the DPT vaccine. The
Speaker 1: voiceover also minimized the seriousness and often deadly outcomes of
Speaker 1: actual infection with protussis, and it overstated the adverse outcomes
Speaker 1: of vaccination. It made unsubstantiated claims that dozens of children
Speaker 1: every year were permanently brain damaged by the vaccine, a
Speaker 1: claim that after many many scientific studies, epidemiological and otherwise,
Speaker 1: was found to be completely false. Leah Thompson, the reporter
Speaker 1: who made this documentary, She called it the most important
Speaker 1: story of her life and said only that she regrets
Speaker 1: not telling it ten years earlier. For parents with children
Speaker 1: that had suffered seizures or been diagnosed with developmental disabilities
Speaker 1: and had asked themselves why, why us, they suddenly had
Speaker 1: an answer. It was the vaccine. The TV stations set
Speaker 1: up a hotline for people to call in, and they
Speaker 1: provided an extra service. They connected callers with other callers,
Speaker 1: allowing for a massive grassroots movement to form WHOA. Soon
Speaker 1: after it aired, a couple of people with no background
Speaker 1: in medicine or science found it a group called Dissatisfied
Speaker 1: Parents Together DPT. This group would only grow in members
Speaker 1: in financial backing over time. In the nineteen nineties, they
Speaker 1: made a slight adjustment. They changed their name to the
Speaker 1: National Vaccine Information Center what, and their singular goal was
Speaker 1: to convince parents that vaccines are far more dangerous than
Speaker 1: the diseases they prevent.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me? They called themselves the National Vaccine
Speaker 2: Information Center. Yep, that is just oh no, that.
Speaker 1: Is a classic branding technique that's used by the anti
Speaker 1: vaccine lobby. They say, we are not anti vaccine, we
Speaker 1: are pro safety in vaccines or whatever else like. It's
Speaker 1: very it's very manipulative and very sneaky. It's yucky, it's disgusting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this website, their organization, whatever, is full of blatant misinformation
Speaker 1: that's pushed on fearful parents who don't feel heard by
Speaker 1: their pediatricians. In nineteen eighty five, the two founders published
Speaker 1: a book that became a bestseller, Money, Money, Money, that
Speaker 1: stated that vaccination in general was directly responsible for all
Speaker 1: kinds of neurological impairments and children, including but not limited to, seizures,
Speaker 1: chronic and svalopathy, and autism. Also all disproven, also all false.
Speaker 1: As you might expect, things quickly turned litigious as parents
Speaker 1: sought to get some financial remedy for their child's health issues,
Speaker 1: and cases like these required scientific experts to be on
Speaker 1: the stand to give their professional opinion. The prosecutions experts
Speaker 1: tended to be fringe. One who was in several trials
Speaker 1: in the UK was a real piece of work, as
Speaker 1: we like to say. His name was Gordon T. Stewart,
Speaker 1: and he used his credentials as a physician to promote
Speaker 1: radical ideas about disease transmission, including that the human immune
Speaker 1: deficiency virus HIV didn't actually cause AIDS, but that AIDS
Speaker 1: was just a manifestation of the gay lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm gonna oh, I'm going to rage.
Speaker 1: Okay, just wait, just wait. So many people, a disturbing
Speaker 1: number of people bought into this, including the President of
Speaker 1: South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. It's estimated that three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand South Africans died unnecessarily because of the
Speaker 1: policies of HIV denial. So this was the guy who
Speaker 1: was the star witness on several anti vaccine trials in
Speaker 1: the UK, which were highly publicized.
Speaker 2: Cool cool, cool, cool, cool, cool cool cool yea.
Speaker 1: The rulings were consistently against the parents, who sometimes failed
Speaker 1: to disclose that their child actually had been diagnosed with
Speaker 1: epilepsy prior to being given any vaccines, or that the
Speaker 1: fever and spasms arose five months after the vaccine was administered,
Speaker 1: not seven hours after they as they had initially claimed.
Speaker 1: Throughout all this, Gordon Stewart made a fool of himself,
Speaker 1: contradicting himself and being caught out time after time.
Speaker 2: Shocking.
Speaker 1: He also made you know, some money, as in his
Speaker 1: role as professional witness, not a single bit of the
Speaker 1: prosecution's expert testimony could be supported by actual scientific research,
Speaker 1: and the cases slowed down in the UK, unlike in
Speaker 1: the US, where things got more litigious.
Speaker 2: Great the amount of.
Speaker 1: Money requested in these court cases in the US rose
Speaker 1: from twenty five million dollars in nineteen eighty one to
Speaker 1: three point two billion dollars in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: Whoa in four years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you hear about one success and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh hmm. These court cases were quite a bit different
Speaker 1: in the US compared to the UK. First of all,
Speaker 1: the defendant in the UK cases tended to be the
Speaker 1: physician or health services, although every now and then a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company would stand in whereas in the US it
Speaker 1: was often the pharmaceutical companies themselves. At the beginning of
Speaker 1: this rise in lawsuits, pharmaceutical companies settled out of court,
Speaker 1: but the lawsuits just kept coming in. In response, the
Speaker 1: companies began increasing the prices of their vaccines to pay
Speaker 1: for the lawsuits. Within three years of that DPT vaccine
Speaker 1: roulette documentary quote unquote airing, the cost of one dose
Speaker 1: of the DTP vaccine was thirty five times higher than
Speaker 1: it was in nineteen eighty two. Uh yeah, So there
Speaker 1: seemed to be only one way forward for these companies
Speaker 1: stop making vaccines, and that naturally led to a shortage. Basically,
Speaker 1: they had to be rationed out under an unideal vaccination schedule.
Speaker 2: Cool cool, cool.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is pressure was still on to
Speaker 1: create a new protests vaccine, despite the first one not
Speaker 1: being shown to cause epilepsy or any other neurological impairments.
Speaker 1: But the a cellular protests vaccine, which is in the
Speaker 1: DETAP nowadays, came onto the market in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties. With all this uproar about vaccine safety, there
Speaker 1: was increasing pressure on the government to do something to
Speaker 1: ensure that children were protected. In nineteen eighty six, Reagan,
Speaker 1: US president at the time, bind into law the National
Speaker 1: Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which tasked a bunch of highly trained,
Speaker 1: credentialed researchers with investigating the safety and potential health outcomes
Speaker 1: of various vaccines. After four years, they determined that there
Speaker 1: was absolutely no link between the DTP vaccine and autism, meningitis,
Speaker 1: chronic neurologic damage, spasms, and many many other side effects.
Speaker 1: The first line of this report read, quote next to
Speaker 1: clean water, no single intervention has had so profound an
Speaker 1: effect on reducing mortality from childhood diseases as had the
Speaker 1: widespread introduction of vaccines. This act put into place several
Speaker 1: programs to increase vaccine safety and information access even more.
Speaker 1: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System was established VAHS, which
Speaker 1: requires that all healthcare providers report certain adverse events, regardless
Speaker 1: if there's a causative link. It also says up the
Speaker 1: National Vaccine Program Office, which works with various other branches
Speaker 1: of the US government to coordinate the vaccine immunization campaigns.
Speaker 1: It also require that all healthcare providers give their patients
Speaker 1: an informational sheet describing the disease and the risks and
Speaker 1: benefits of the vaccine. So you've probably gotten this with
Speaker 1: the flu shot every year or whatever else yellow fever shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, or when you take your kids to get
Speaker 2: all their vaccines that as well.
Speaker 1: What happens when a vaccine does cause an adverse reaction,
Speaker 1: So we can actually see how this plays out. With
Speaker 1: the rotavirus vaccine that had been licensed in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: there had been reports of into susception, which is when
Speaker 1: one segment of the small intestine kind of telescopes or
Speaker 1: goes into another and gets stuck.
Speaker 2: It's gross, it's gross, it sucks into it. You're intestines.
Speaker 1: Well, this horrible thing was happening infants, which is unusual,
Speaker 1: so it can happen just naturally, but this was happening
Speaker 1: in infants, and that was not normal and not good.
Speaker 1: Fifteen children experiencing this were reported to the Vaccine Adverse
Speaker 1: Events Reporting System VARs within ten months of the vaccine
Speaker 1: being licensed. The CDC immediately pulled its recommendation for the vaccine,
Speaker 1: even though the risk of this adverse event was still minuscule,
Speaker 1: and the company that produced it stopped selling it, so
Speaker 1: it was just done off the shelves. No more of this,
Speaker 1: and you said, fifteen kids, fifteen kids, okay, fifteen one
Speaker 1: to five.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Seven years later, a new and safer roadavirus vaccine came
Speaker 1: onto the market with no such adverse side effects scene.
Speaker 1: So this response happened rapidly and very effectively shut down
Speaker 1: any any dangerous aspect of this. And so that should
Speaker 1: reassure parents, and it should have that not only are
Speaker 1: the CDC and other government organizations actly monitoring the safety
Speaker 1: of currently available vaccines, they are also incredibly cautious when
Speaker 1: dealing with the lives of children. Yeah, okay, So let's
Speaker 1: go back to that pin that you put in that
Speaker 1: study that sets so much of this.
Speaker 2: Off, Miller ten one in ten.
Speaker 1: Thousand, one hundred thousand came so close and three doses
Speaker 1: of DTP, Yeah okay. This study inspired many other researchers
Speaker 1: to try and replicate Miller's findings. Some studies asked what
Speaker 1: was the mechanism by which the protests vaccine caused brain damage,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't one. Actual protesses, like a live infection,
Speaker 1: can cause brain damage by reducing the amount of oxygen
Speaker 1: in your blood due to non stop coughing, but the
Speaker 1: protests vaccine consisted of whole killed bacterial cells, so their
Speaker 1: presence alone could not and did not cause that oxygen depletion.
Speaker 1: And maybe it was tiny amounts of endotoxin in the vaccine,
Speaker 1: but that didn't work either. And atoxin causes brain damage
Speaker 1: through a pathway that necessarily involves fever, but many of
Speaker 1: the children who had seizures or mental disabilities never had
Speaker 1: a fever after the vaccine. Other studies looked at the
Speaker 1: epidemiological side of things, so one compared two groups of children.
Speaker 1: In one group, which was one hundred and thirty thousand children,
Speaker 1: the kids had just received the dt vaccine, so the
Speaker 1: diptheria and tetanus vaccine. In the other group, also about
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty thousand children, they received the full
Speaker 1: DTP vaccine including protessis. The researchers then looked to see
Speaker 1: are there more cases of brain damage or other negative
Speaker 1: outcomes in the DTP group. No, there was absolutely no
Speaker 1: difference between the groups. None. Another study who looked at
Speaker 1: how changing the vaccination's schedule might affect the occurrence of
Speaker 1: this if the vaccine caused epilepsy or other negative side effects,
Speaker 1: the occurrence of those should change along with the change
Speaker 1: in vaccine schedule, but it didn't. So time and time again,
Speaker 1: studies involving tens or hundreds of thousands of children all
Speaker 1: around the world simply could not find a link between
Speaker 1: the DTP vaccine and any epilepsy or other neurological damage.
Speaker 1: Miller himself kind of came under scrutiny after all of
Speaker 1: these studies could not find a link. So it turns
Speaker 1: out came out during a trial that doctors in the
Speaker 1: study had actually been instructed if there is doubt, code
Speaker 1: the worst picture, so they had been advised to draw
Speaker 1: conclusions when there were not conclusions to be drawn, to
Speaker 1: paint the horrible picture, to give the worst outcome what
Speaker 1: It was also revealed that the study had been published prematurely,
Speaker 1: with only a subset of the children said it had
Speaker 1: studied were actually involved in the analysis, so when the
Speaker 1: follow up was finally completed and the data were reanalyzed,
Speaker 1: no association was found.
Speaker 2: It's like a really number one rule is you can't
Speaker 2: only analyze on the subset of your data.
Speaker 1: Right And also if you're a co author on that paper,
Speaker 1: do your due diligence and make sure it's done right. Yeah, man, okay,
Speaker 1: But with the Miller study, damage had already been done.
Speaker 1: And speaking of damage done, let's talk Wakefield.
Speaker 2: Do we have to We absolutely have to, We have to.
Speaker 1: Discredited Doctor Andrew Wakefield got his medical degree at Saint
Speaker 1: Mary's Hospital in England, specializing in gastorentrology. He did not,
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, although I could be wrong, receive any
Speaker 1: formal training in medical research beyond what might be covered
Speaker 1: as part of medical school, which means he was not
Speaker 1: trained to, designed, to conduct or analyze scientific studies. But
Speaker 1: he wanted to make a name for himself. On February
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen ninety eight, Andrew Wakefield published an article
Speaker 1: in The Lancet, which is an old, well known and
Speaker 1: well respected medical journal. In this article, Wakefield describes his
Speaker 1: study in which he linked impaired neurological development and autism
Speaker 1: with MMR vaccination. His sample size was twelve children, eight
Speaker 1: of which he said had developed autism following the MMR vaccine.
Speaker 1: Wakefield didn't posit any mechanism by which the vaccine could
Speaker 1: cause autism beyond some vague handwaving. But when this report
Speaker 1: came out, people latched onto it. It promised an answer
Speaker 1: for so many parents that had been waiting for one
Speaker 1: for so long. Let's take a closer look at Wakefield
Speaker 1: Study because it really needs it. An investigative journalist named
Speaker 1: Brian Deere focused on the Wakefield Study over the course
Speaker 1: of six years from two thousand and four to twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Deer was suspicious of the study after reporting on the
Speaker 1: many class action lawsuits that seemed to be motivated by
Speaker 1: greed and by the lawyers preying on grieving parents over
Speaker 1: the supposed vaccine connection. Over the course of his investigation,
Speaker 1: Deer examined every aspect of the Wakefield Study and uncovered
Speaker 1: some pretty appalling things. Starting in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: he announced his findings in a series of reports from
Speaker 1: two thousand and four twenty ten. What did he find Well, first,
Speaker 1: Wakefield was straight up paid to fabricate these findings, just paid,
Speaker 1: just straight up. Yeah. An attorney named Richard Barr paid
Speaker 1: for Wakefield Study and put him in contact with the
Speaker 1: twelve kids. These twelve kids were selected by Bar because
Speaker 1: they were all part of his lawsuit to get more
Speaker 1: money from vaccine companies. And it goes deeper when publishing
Speaker 1: in any peer review journals, you are supposed to just
Speaker 1: close whether you have any potential conflicts of interest, and
Speaker 1: you also have to state where your funding comes from.
Speaker 1: It's standard practice. Wakefield lied on both counts. He didn't
Speaker 1: say he was getting any money from the lawyer, and
Speaker 1: he didn't say where his funds were coming from. And
Speaker 1: he also lied when directly asked by the British Medical
Speaker 1: Research Council. He didn't disclose that a his study was
Speaker 1: fully funded by an attorney actively seeking remuneration in a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. B that the kids in his
Speaker 1: study were all involved in the lawsuit, and see that
Speaker 1: he himself had already received fifty thousand pounds for his work.
Speaker 2: Fifty thousand Gee, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of casual law.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Nor did he disclose to the Council or his co
Speaker 1: authors that he had put the children through unethical and
Speaker 1: painful medical procedures, including lumbar punctures, general anesthesia and intrusive
Speaker 1: bowel imaging. Why great question, money, Money is the answer,
Speaker 1: money and some sort of other agenda. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And it didn't end there. It turns out Wakefield wasn't
Speaker 1: even opposed to vaccines. He was just opposed to ones
Speaker 1: that he couldn't directly profit off of. He had actually
Speaker 1: filed for patents for his own measles, mumps and rebella vaccine,
Speaker 1: and this study was just step one in trying to
Speaker 1: discredit the existing safe vaccine and to strike fear into
Speaker 1: parents so that he could get them to opt for
Speaker 1: his vaccine instead.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is deeper than I knew.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. It also turns out that he paid at
Speaker 1: his son's birthday party. He paid his son's friends five
Speaker 1: pounds each to draw blood from them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sorry, that's just where were their parents?
Speaker 1: It's a great question.
Speaker 2: There was his Oh dear yep.
Speaker 1: Once these extremely unethical behaviors were revealed, there was public
Speaker 1: outcry and Wakefield was stripped of his license in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: That's why he's discredited. Doctor Andrew Wickfield no longer doctor,
Speaker 1: no longer a doctor, cannot practice. The Lancet retracted the
Speaker 1: paper in twenty ten. Also, in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: the Omnibus Autism proceeding, which is basically this massive class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit against vaccines. This was a huge decision that
Speaker 1: was made. The MMR vaccine did not cause autism, nor
Speaker 1: did Thai mirisol containing vaccines. That meant that that limited
Speaker 1: the ability for people to sue on the basis on
Speaker 1: the grounds that those vaccines caused autism. One special master wrote, quote, Sadly,
Speaker 1: the petitioners in this litigation have been the victims of
Speaker 1: bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance
Speaker 1: medical and scientific understanding of autism spectrum disorder. The evidence
Speaker 1: in support of petitioner's causal theory is weak, contradictory, and unpersuasive.
Speaker 1: This is particularly apparent when considering the impressive body of
Speaker 1: epidemiologic evidence contradicting their theories. But that should be it,
Speaker 1: that should be shutting the door then, right, so we
Speaker 1: know for sure there's no link.
Speaker 2: These doors never get shut.
Speaker 1: Nope, As I have said many times in this episode,
Speaker 1: the damage had already been done. Wakefield could then play
Speaker 1: the role of martyr, crying conspiracy and continuing to promote
Speaker 1: his anti vaccine agenda. He wrote books, he made a documentary,
Speaker 1: he gave paid lectures, and he gained followers, among them
Speaker 1: many celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Alicia Silverstone,
Speaker 1: Charlie Sheen and Robert Kennedy Junior, Bill Maher, and Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who has tweeted multiple times about a link between vaccines
Speaker 1: and autism, long after those links had been proven not
Speaker 1: to exist. Even more appalling are the doctors that have
Speaker 1: climbed aboard this train. Robert Sears is a California pediatrician
Speaker 1: who wrote a best selling book in two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven that openly says this is not an anti vaccine book,
Speaker 1: and then goes on to suggest an alternative vaccine schedule
Speaker 1: approved by no vaccine researcher. And he also tells parents,
Speaker 1: don't share your fears about vaccinating with your neighbors because
Speaker 1: if too many people avoid MMR vaccine, there will be outbreaks.
Speaker 1: He has no background in vaccine research. He has no
Speaker 1: background in any field remotely related to vaccine research that
Speaker 1: would give him any sort of credentials to write this
Speaker 1: book and advise parents.
Speaker 2: How do you not see that as a huge red flag, like, hey,
Speaker 2: do this thing, but don't tell anyone, because if everyone
Speaker 2: does it, we're all gonna die of measles.
Speaker 1: Like well, it's it's it's the tragedy of the commons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it does make sense in a certain respect to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, it is safer if I don't vaccinate,
Speaker 1: But then everyone believes that, and then it becomes unsafe
Speaker 1: for everyone, right, because if.
Speaker 2: You don't vaccinate, you essentially have to never go in
Speaker 2: contact with any other people. It is what that means, right,
Speaker 2: because that's the only way to actually stay safe.
Speaker 1: And then even the ground because tetanus well yeah, just.
Speaker 2: Kind of like tile floors.
Speaker 1: No, don't be fooled by this by this book by
Speaker 1: by Robert Sears. He lies throughout it, and he couches
Speaker 1: I think this is the most galling thing is that
Speaker 1: he couches his false statements in scientific language to manipulate
Speaker 1: readers into thinking that he's telling the truth and that
Speaker 1: he has all the information and that he has the
Speaker 1: right facts. Then there's doctor Oz telling pregnant women don't
Speaker 1: get the flu vaccine it's not safe.
Speaker 2: I hate that human.
Speaker 1: Listen to anything doctor Oz says about anything, ever, ever.
Speaker 2: Ever, that's a horrible human rate there.
Speaker 1: Yes, after the Wakefield study, vaccine rates plummeted, particularly among
Speaker 1: rich educated people. MMR vaccine coverage went from over ninety
Speaker 1: percent to eighty percent by two thousand and three. Five
Speaker 1: years after the study was published, and measles cases increased,
Speaker 1: including the first measles death in fourteen years in the UK.
Speaker 1: Because you need ninety five percent ninety five to ninety
Speaker 1: seven percent coverage to prevent outbreaks in.
Speaker 2: Those vaccination rates that was in the UK.
Speaker 1: That was really okay, I believe Yeah. This increase in
Speaker 1: measles cases can be directly linked to the drop in
Speaker 1: vaccine coverage by people choosing not to vaccinate their children
Speaker 1: or themselves. In a way, the Vaccine Roulette documentary and
Speaker 1: Wakefield study would act as templates for constantly shifting arguments
Speaker 1: of the vaccine lobby. It goes something like this vaccine
Speaker 1: A causes disease A, but then that gets debunked, so
Speaker 1: then its vaccine B actually causes disease A, and then
Speaker 1: that gets debunked and the specific or vaccine or vaccine
Speaker 1: ingredient changes as does the disorder or condition or whatever
Speaker 1: it's supposed to cause. The anti vaccine lobby needs something
Speaker 1: to cling to after their unscientific claims are debunked time
Speaker 1: after time. After measles and epilepsy, it was the homophilus
Speaker 1: influenza B vaccine and diabetes or other chronic diseases. Then
Speaker 1: it was MMR and autism, then thymerisol on autism, then
Speaker 1: aluminium in autism.
Speaker 2: All of these have.
Speaker 1: Been extensively studied and disproven. Since removing thymerisol from vaccines,
Speaker 1: rates of autism have not changed. It's actually looking more
Speaker 1: like autism develops prenatally. The vaccine lobby has done a
Speaker 1: huge disservice to the autism community as well, because so
Speaker 1: much time and money has been devoted to a cause
Speaker 1: that has no scientific basis. Wouldn't it have been better
Speaker 1: spent developing programs or services for autistic people who aren't
Speaker 1: able to live alone, or to raise awareness about the
Speaker 1: neurodiversity movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, instead, what a concept?
Speaker 1: What a concept? But instead, what the anti vaccine lobby
Speaker 1: has done has made parents afraid and mistrustful. They have
Speaker 1: told parents, you did this to your kid. There are
Speaker 1: so many people in the anti vaccine lobby making a
Speaker 1: massive profit by praying on the fears of the parents
Speaker 1: who just want to do the right thing for their child.
Speaker 1: Lawyers quote doctors peddling alternative disease prevention therapies or treatments
Speaker 1: for autism, such as bleach enemas or kelation.
Speaker 2: Know, yep, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Don't do that. Eighty percent of people who reported to
Speaker 1: veyrs that vaccines caused autism weren't doctors or nurses or
Speaker 1: nurse practitioners or parents. They were personal injury lawyers. Oooh yeah.
Speaker 1: So we hear a lot about the anti vaccine movement
Speaker 1: in the US and in the UK and sort of
Speaker 1: the different lines of argument that they use. Those are
Speaker 1: not the only places in the world that have anti
Speaker 1: vaccine lobbies. Focus on those because those are the ones
Speaker 1: that I could find the most information about, to be honest,
Speaker 1: but anti vaccine sentiment has caused huge issues in other
Speaker 1: places as well. So, for instance, in Nigeria in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, a rumor started that the polio vaccine
Speaker 1: caused AIDS and infertility in young girls. Vaccinations basically stopped
Speaker 1: so up to that point in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: polio had been so close to eradication. But within three years,
Speaker 1: polio cases that had originated in Nigeria had popped up
Speaker 1: in twenty countries that had been previously polio free.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: As a result, five thousand people were permanently paralyzed from
Speaker 1: the infection.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: This is a problem all over. Yeah, and so much
Speaker 1: of it has to do with just not understanding how
Speaker 1: vaccines work and not believing that they work. And there
Speaker 1: are also long there's I mean, there are are long
Speaker 1: term issues of for sterilization and people being injected with
Speaker 1: things that they that are not good for you.
Speaker 2: So it is there's a lot of mistrust of organizations
Speaker 2: that are imposing vaccinations on people, and a lot of
Speaker 2: that mistrust is not necessarily misplaced. So it does make
Speaker 2: it very very complicated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, put those who fall prey to the manipulation
Speaker 1: and lives of the anti vaccine lobby are themselves victims.
Speaker 1: It's completely understandable to have questions and fears about what
Speaker 1: is safe for your child, and it has gotten so
Speaker 1: difficult to know how to find factual information on the internet,
Speaker 1: especially if you have no background in science. The rapid
Speaker 1: spread of misinformation surrounding vaccines is highly concerning and it
Speaker 1: can be tough to know how to educate yourselves. Hopefully
Speaker 1: these vaccines episodes will help a little bit, hopefully, and
Speaker 1: we will also post in our show notes some links
Speaker 1: to credible websites that have lots of info on vaccines. Okay, okay, Aaron,
Speaker 1: take us through some of the common misconceptions around vaccines today.
Speaker 2: Oh can't wait too, So let's talk about some of
Speaker 2: the major myths that the major misconceptions that surrounding vaccines.
Speaker 2: I feel like we might as well start with the
Speaker 2: vaccines and autism situation, because this is where you ended. Yes, okay,
Speaker 2: so let's dive deeply. There are a few main arguments,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, that have been cycled through as to
Speaker 2: what it is about vaccines that causes autism. I'll first
Speaker 2: of all say none of them have any merit. But
Speaker 2: let's go through each one individually and explain why it
Speaker 2: has no merit. Okay. I'll also say that there is
Speaker 2: a document that I will link to you on our website.
Speaker 2: It's a twenty one page document a little bit old.
Speaker 2: So I also have a number of more recent studies
Speaker 2: on our website. But this twenty one page document has
Speaker 2: links to and summarizes a number of different papers that
Speaker 2: outline all of these points. So it's not like just
Speaker 2: a few papers. We're talking dozens and dozens of studies
Speaker 2: across hundreds of thousand, in some cases millions of children.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, the amount of the amount of information that
Speaker 2: we have about vaccines and autism is quite frankly incredible.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's one of the most it's one of
Speaker 1: the best studied topics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so number one, the MMR vaccine does not cause autism.
Speaker 2: The assertion that it did, as you said, was based
Speaker 2: on that single study by Andrew Wakefield, and since then,
Speaker 2: dozens and dozens of studies, epidemiological studies have looked at
Speaker 2: the connection between getting the MMR vaccine and later being
Speaker 2: diagnosed with autism, and they have found absolutely not a
Speaker 2: single link.
Speaker 1: And can we also point out that these studies by
Speaker 1: and large are funded by government grants, and so the
Speaker 1: scientists are not getting paid to They're not getting directly
Speaker 1: paid for this research. They are usually employed by the
Speaker 1: university and then they have to apply for funding to
Speaker 1: then fund the research materials. Yes, and so these are
Speaker 1: not people who are paid by pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccine.
Speaker 1: Exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for saying that. It's an important part
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: That's a big that's a big thing that people that
Speaker 1: pro vaccine activists get accused of being shills for pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: companies and that's simply not the case. Like No one
Speaker 1: goes into science, No one goes into academia to get rich,
Speaker 1: because that would be the most foolish way to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there also is another study, a very recent
Speaker 2: one that just came out in March of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: looking at hundreds of thousands of children that again found
Speaker 2: no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. There's also
Speaker 2: been studies that specifically looked, and I think this is
Speaker 2: very interesting. They specifically looked at children who had an
Speaker 2: older sibling who was autistic, who had previously been diagnosed
Speaker 2: with autism, and they found that even in those children,
Speaker 2: there was no increase in autism diagnoses in children who
Speaker 2: received the MMR vaccine if they had a sibling who
Speaker 2: was also autistic. So what that means is that even
Speaker 2: if because some groups tried to say, well, MMR only
Speaker 2: causes autism insusceptible people. So if there is a genetic
Speaker 2: component to autism, then people who would be susceptible might
Speaker 2: be people who have a family history of autism. But
Speaker 2: even in those groups, there was no link between the
Speaker 2: MMR vaccine and autism.
Speaker 1: Right, that's a very powerful study.
Speaker 2: It's a very powerful study. Some more thymerisol in vaccines
Speaker 2: causes autism.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is thymerasol.
Speaker 2: Thymerisol is a preservative. It contains mercury. It's a preservative
Speaker 2: that used to be used in some vaccines as a
Speaker 2: protection against infection of vaccine vials. So when pediatricians used
Speaker 2: to use multi dose vials of vaccines, then thymerisol was
Speaker 2: added to those vaccines to make sure that they didn't
Speaker 2: get contaminated. I will say that in the US all
Speaker 2: pediatric vaccines are now single dose vils, so they no
Speaker 2: longer contain thymerasol.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you get for each person, you get one
Speaker 1: one vile little dose, one vile.
Speaker 2: So we're just filling the landfills, but not use thymerisol.
Speaker 2: So another assertion has been it's not the MMR vaccine itself,
Speaker 2: it's this mercury containing thimerisol compound that causes autism. Again,
Speaker 2: here people have very specifically looked at this. Dozens of
Speaker 2: studies on hundreds of thousands of children who received thymerisol
Speaker 2: containing vaccines, not just MMR, a number of different thymerisol
Speaker 2: containing vaccines. There is no link whatsoever between thymerisol in
Speaker 2: vaccines and autism. Denmark actually found an increase in the
Speaker 2: rates of autism diagnoses after discontinuation of thymerisol. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: whatever that means, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well. I think it's probably has to do with the
Speaker 1: changing criteria for what is considered autistic or not. And
Speaker 1: this is another thing where another anti vaccine lobby statement
Speaker 1: is that autism is going to increase at such a
Speaker 1: rapid rate that it'll be one in two children by
Speaker 1: the time whatever whatever, And that's not true, but it
Speaker 1: is probably true that rates of autism diagnoses probably will
Speaker 1: increase because we're just sort of getting a better grasp
Speaker 1: on what it is, and then also particularly what autism
Speaker 1: might look like in females, which historically have been a
Speaker 1: more difficult thing to sort of describe or nail down.
Speaker 2: Interesting, I didn't know that, Okay. So then once thimerosol
Speaker 2: and the MMR vaccine were pretty thoroughly discredited, a newer
Speaker 2: assertion was that it's aluminum.
Speaker 1: So I love this one because it's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so fun. So aluminum aluminum hydroxide, I think it's.
Speaker 2: Aluminum hydroxide and aluminum phosphate are both two aluminum salts
Speaker 2: that are sometimes used in vaccines. These are mostly used
Speaker 2: in conjugate vaccines, and what aluminum does in a vaccine
Speaker 2: is it helps to stimulate a more robust immune response. So,
Speaker 2: like we talked about in our first episode, which again
Speaker 2: if you haven't heard it, it's a great episode if
Speaker 2: we do say so ourselves, about the biology and history
Speaker 2: of vaccines. Some vaccines, like the conjugate vaccines, you have
Speaker 2: to get a number of different boosters because they don't
Speaker 2: stimulate a super robust immune response. So adding aluminum it's
Speaker 2: called an adjuvant. It essentially stimulates your immune system because
Speaker 2: it's another foreign particle that stimulates your immune system to
Speaker 2: give you a more robust immune response. You have more
Speaker 2: immune cells coming to the injection site, and therefore you
Speaker 2: get a better and longer lasting response to that vaccination.
Speaker 2: So that's why we have aluminum aluminum salts in some vaccines.
Speaker 2: But then some people said this is what it is
Speaker 2: in the vaccines at cause autism. Okay, a number of
Speaker 2: the studies that we've already I've already highlighted that again
Speaker 2: are linked on our website. The vaccines that also contained
Speaker 2: thimerisol also contained aluminum, and again no association between aluminum
Speaker 2: in these vaccines and autism. I also want to point
Speaker 2: out that the amount of aluminum in vaccines is very,
Speaker 2: very very minuscule. So over the first six months of
Speaker 2: a baby's life, if they get all their recommended vaccines,
Speaker 2: they'll get about four milligrams of aluminum from their vaccines.
Speaker 2: If they're feeding on formula, they can get anywhere from
Speaker 2: thirty eight to one hundred and seventeen milligrams of aluminum
Speaker 2: just from that formula. If they're breastfed, they get less,
Speaker 2: but still over seven milligrams from breast milk. So aluminum
Speaker 2: and it's not just in the food that we eat.
Speaker 2: Aluminum is in the dirt that your child is probably
Speaker 2: shoving into their mouth, it's in skin care products that
Speaker 2: we use. What our body does with aluminum is it
Speaker 2: mostly excretes it through our kidneys. So not all of
Speaker 2: the aluminum that you're injecting or ingesting is staying in
Speaker 2: your body. The vast majority of it your kidneys filter out.
Speaker 2: They do a really good job of it. As it
Speaker 2: turns out.
Speaker 1: Don't adult humans ingest through just food, normal food, like
Speaker 1: five to ten milligrams a day or something like that.
Speaker 2: Probably I didn't look up what adults ingest.
Speaker 1: But let me check, because I do have that somewhere. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: every day, five, every day, I.
Speaker 2: Have the ten milligrams cool cool, cool cool, so and so. Again,
Speaker 2: in a number of different studies that have looked at
Speaker 2: vaccines that contained aluminum, there's been no links found between
Speaker 2: any of those vaccines and autism. Okay, so there's one
Speaker 2: more floating around that is very new, and that is
Speaker 2: that maternal vaccines cause autism. So giving vaccines to a
Speaker 2: pregnant person causes autism in the fetus. Now, this is
Speaker 2: a very new, very recent assertion, so there have not
Speaker 2: been quite as many papers specifically addressing this topic, but
Speaker 2: there have been a number of studies looking at vaccination
Speaker 2: in pregnant people and the outcomes of babies in general.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that. In general, there's only two
Speaker 2: vaccines that are recommended to be given to pregnant women,
Speaker 2: the influenza vaccine and the DTP or the DETAP vaccine.
Speaker 2: The influenza vaccine you ideally get early in pregnancy because
Speaker 2: you are immunal compromised when you're pregnant, and getting infected
Speaker 2: with influenza can have very serious complications for the fetus.
Speaker 2: There's been a number of studies that have shown that
Speaker 2: infection with influenza can have very serious outcomes, and you
Speaker 2: get the DETAP vaccine so that when the baby is
Speaker 2: born it has antibodies against protessis because protessis is a
Speaker 2: very very serious illness if babies get it. So both
Speaker 2: of these, the influenza and the DETAP vaccine, are not
Speaker 2: live vaccines, which means there's no way to actually cause
Speaker 2: an infection whatsoever.
Speaker 1: You can't get sick.
Speaker 2: From these vaccines. So a study just came out in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen last year that specifically showed no link between
Speaker 2: DETAP vaccination during pregnancy and autism in the baby. Later on,
Speaker 2: another study looked at influenza infection and influenza vaccination and
Speaker 2: overall found no link between prenatal influenza infection or vaccination
Speaker 2: and autism at all. Okay, so yeah, again, there haven't
Speaker 2: been quite as many studies, but the ones that there
Speaker 2: have been have shown no effect whatsoever. In contrast, there
Speaker 2: are a number of studies that suggest that maternal infection,
Speaker 2: especially infections that are severe enough to result in hospitalization
Speaker 2: during pregnancy, can potentially increase the risk of autism. So
Speaker 2: While that one study didn't find a risk, didn't find
Speaker 2: an association between influenza infection and autism, other studies have
Speaker 2: suggested maybe that is possible. Again, the question of what
Speaker 2: does cause autism is something that we don't know at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 1: So we're starting to get a little bit of a
Speaker 1: better grasp on a better grasp on it.
Speaker 2: And it definitely seems like something that happens very early
Speaker 2: on in development and not something that vaccines have anything
Speaker 2: to do with, even maternal vaccines. And someday we will
Speaker 2: have an episode about this because I think it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: So there are physical iological markers that seem to be
Speaker 1: associated with autism, and these are evident long before any
Speaker 1: vaccines or even given to infants. So one research group
Speaker 1: was able to predict with ninety percent accuracy whether a
Speaker 1: six month old infant will develop autism at two years,
Speaker 1: which really strongly indicates this happens pre italy. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not linked to vaccines in any respect.
Speaker 2: We also there's a lot of developmental child psychology videos
Speaker 2: that they make to that you watch in med school
Speaker 2: to learn about child developmental psychology, and yeah, there are
Speaker 2: markers that you see even very very early on before
Speaker 2: you get a lot of these vaccines, especially the MMR
Speaker 2: vaccine and things like that that are usually the ones
Speaker 2: quoted as anyways, So moving on, I think that we've
Speaker 2: fully covered that. What do you think?
Speaker 1: I think so vaccine. But if there are stilltions that
Speaker 1: you guys have, please please send us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, that's not all the myths and misconceptions
Speaker 2: that we have, though, we've got plenty more.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, good.
Speaker 2: So here's a common myth. Overall, vaccines aren't safe. Period.
Speaker 2: They're not safe. They're dangerous. The risks of vaccination outweigh
Speaker 2: the risks of infection. Okay, so vaccines are safe. There
Speaker 2: are a number of a number of oversight bodies that
Speaker 2: make sure that vaccines are extensively tested before they're released
Speaker 2: and continue to monitor them as they circulate through the
Speaker 2: population as people are actually getting these vaccines. There are
Speaker 2: some risks that are associated with vaccines. The most common
Speaker 2: side effect from vaccination, which we talked about a little
Speaker 2: bit in the biology section of the first episode, is fever.
Speaker 2: That's one of the most commons side effects from vaccines.
Speaker 2: You also can get pain or redness or swelling at
Speaker 2: the injection site. All of these are from your body
Speaker 2: mounting an immune response to the vaccination. All of these
Speaker 2: even if they suck and you feel cruddy or your
Speaker 2: baby is crying because it's arm hurts and it has
Speaker 2: a fever, this is a part of how the vaccine
Speaker 2: actually works. And this is something that even though it
Speaker 2: is normal, is considered a minor adverse reaction. So even
Speaker 2: though it's not serious, it's fever and pain, it still
Speaker 2: is considered a minor adverse reaction. Okay, so there are
Speaker 2: some more serious adverse events that are possible. Probably the
Speaker 2: most common serious adverse event is having a seizure after
Speaker 2: a vaccine. This is called a febrow seizure. As it
Speaker 2: turns out, when you are a small kid, you can
Speaker 2: get a seizure from a fever, whatever the cause of fever.
Speaker 2: So because vaccines can potentially cause a fever, they can
Speaker 2: in some cases precipitate a seizure in some kids. For
Speaker 2: an example of how rare this is though with vaccines,
Speaker 2: it's most common in the measles, mumps, rubella, and vericella,
Speaker 2: so that's four vaccines at once. Mmr V. It happens
Speaker 2: in about eight point five per ten thousand doses. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: And again that febrile seizure is the only one that
Speaker 2: will happen the vast majority of time that seizure is isolated.
Speaker 2: There's just that one. So eight point five per ten
Speaker 2: thousand doses will have this one single febrile seizure. So
Speaker 2: even though that's very scary, I can imagine how terrifying
Speaker 2: that would be. It's very rare. Now, other adverse events
Speaker 2: are possible. It is possible to have Like you mentioned,
Speaker 2: the old rotavirus vaccine had a rate of inter susception
Speaker 2: at about one per twenty thousand to one per one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand doses, and that vaccine was pulled because that
Speaker 2: was too high of a risk. It's possible to have
Speaker 2: severe allergic reactions, so things like anaphylactic shock would be
Speaker 2: a severe allergic reaction. These are generally in less than
Speaker 2: one per one million doses of vaccine, right, And.
Speaker 1: It's not something that you can know beforehand whether.
Speaker 2: It's right exactly. I mean, unless you know that you're
Speaker 2: allergic to a certain component of a vaccine, in which
Speaker 2: case then you should not get that vaccine. And all
Speaker 2: of these adverse events, the very serious ones and the
Speaker 2: not serious ones like fever and things like that. These
Speaker 2: are all tracked by what you mentioned already, the Vaccine
Speaker 2: Adverse Events Reporting System or VS. So parents, providers, and
Speaker 2: vaccine manufacturers can all make reports and apparently lawyers I
Speaker 2: didn't know that part can make reports on VARES.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: And VERS takes every single report, no matter how serious
Speaker 2: the adverse event or how minor the adverse event, and
Speaker 2: they do investigate it. So based on this is from
Speaker 2: Peter Hotez's book, because he summarizes these very nicely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does.
Speaker 2: Between two thousand and six and twenty fifteen, about three
Speaker 2: billion doses of vaccine were given in the United States.
Speaker 2: Three billion doses that is, I know, that's three hundred
Speaker 2: million doses annually. This is like a dose per person.
Speaker 2: There's like a little over three hundred million people in
Speaker 2: the US, right, Yeah, So of these three hundred million
Speaker 2: doses annually, VERS gets on average about thirty thousand reports.
Speaker 2: So that's point zero one percent of all the vaccines, Okay,
Speaker 2: And that is all of the adverse events combined.
Speaker 1: And not necessarily causally linked.
Speaker 2: Right, They don't have to be causal just to be
Speaker 2: reported to VERS, so four more numbers about fifteen percent
Speaker 2: of those reports, So three to four thousand of those
Speaker 2: thirty thousand reports are more serious and involve quote hospitalization,
Speaker 2: permanent disability, or death which may or may not have
Speaker 2: actually been caused by the vaccine.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But again VERS is going to follow up on all
Speaker 2: of those to determine whether or not there is a
Speaker 2: causal relationship with vaccines. So overall vaccines are extremely safe.
Speaker 1: Do we have numbers for what VERS has found in
Speaker 1: terms of what is causally linked in those severe case
Speaker 1: in those severe outcome cases.
Speaker 2: So if you look at the numbers of overall how
Speaker 2: many vaccine doses are given and how many serious adverse
Speaker 2: events are reported, it's about one in a million adverse
Speaker 2: events are reported. Okay, so one in a million doses,
Speaker 2: and again some of those are likely not directly from
Speaker 2: the vaccine, right all right, that was misconception number two.
Speaker 2: Misconception number three.
Speaker 1: Ooh boy, Okay, so.
Speaker 2: Long, Okay, this is a very common concern that I hear,
Speaker 2: and I actually think it's an interesting one to talk about.
Speaker 2: There are too many vaccines given all at once. Your
Speaker 2: baby's immune system can't handle it. We have to delay
Speaker 2: the vaccination schedule. Okay, so first of all, there's a
Speaker 2: misconception here. The misconception is that your immune system can't
Speaker 2: handle the number of vaccinations that are given, or the
Speaker 2: number of vaccinations that are given at once. So we
Speaker 2: mentioned this briefly in the first episode. I feel like
Speaker 2: I've said that lot. But pathogens aren't the only antigen
Speaker 2: that your body is responding to. Your immune system is
Speaker 2: responding to literally everything all of the time. Every breath
Speaker 2: that you breathe has thousands of particles in it, viral particles,
Speaker 2: bacterial chunks, dust, dander, pet fur, poop, urine, all of
Speaker 2: these things, hundreds food, hundreds and thousands of antigens that
Speaker 2: your body is going to react to, and we do
Speaker 2: from the very beginning. So what that means is that
Speaker 2: even when you are a tiny baby, you already have
Speaker 2: an immune system that's capable of responding to thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of antigens. One study that looked at the number
Speaker 2: of b cells that a baby has and the amount
Speaker 2: of antibodies that it can produce, found that a baby
Speaker 2: can respond to one hundred thousand vaccines at once and
Speaker 2: it would be fine.
Speaker 1: That's that's just a few more than what they're currently
Speaker 1: just a couple more. It's really cool. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's it just shows how amazing our immune
Speaker 1: system is to constantly be working all the time.
Speaker 2: It's incredible. It's so cool, Like, thank you, thank your
Speaker 2: immune system. Today, I'm gonna think mine and I have
Speaker 2: a cold right now.
Speaker 1: Have you thanked your immune system lately?
Speaker 2: All right, we've got only a couple more. I swear
Speaker 2: I'm almost done.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't believe you.
Speaker 2: Myth number four misconception four. The flu vaccine straight up
Speaker 2: does it work. It sucks. I get the flu from
Speaker 2: it every year and it's not even effective. So why
Speaker 2: should I have to get the flu vaccine?
Speaker 1: Not to mention, okay, can we also address the people
Speaker 1: who say I'm too busy to get the flu vaccine
Speaker 1: because that drives me app a wall. I gotta say,
Speaker 1: it really grinds by gears, grinds your gears. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just too busy with life. Man.
Speaker 2: Some places try and make it easy and bring the
Speaker 2: flu vaccine to you stuff. But okay, here's how the
Speaker 2: flu vaccine works. Every year, scientists have to use data
Speaker 2: and models from the previous year's flu season to predict
Speaker 2: what are going to be the circulating strains of flu
Speaker 2: for next year's flu season. If you haven't listened to
Speaker 2: episode one of this podcast will kill You So so
Speaker 2: long ago. If you have listened to that, then you
Speaker 2: will know that the influenza virus is a very tricky virus.
Speaker 2: It has a very high mutation rate, and it has
Speaker 2: a number of different surface an egens, which means it's
Speaker 2: constantly changing, so it's not the same virus year to
Speaker 2: year to year. So that means that fairly far in
Speaker 2: advance we have to start develop being vaccines for next
Speaker 2: year's flu season, and we don't necessarily know exactly what
Speaker 2: those flu viruses are going to look like. So some
Speaker 2: years we estimate correctly and we know exactly what strains
Speaker 2: of flu are going to be circulating, and those years
Speaker 2: the flu vaccine is especially effective. Other years, a new
Speaker 2: strain of flu pops up that we didn't see coming,
Speaker 2: and so then the flu vaccine that we have is
Speaker 2: not quite as effective. However, even in years when the
Speaker 2: flu vaccine doesn't precisely match the strains that are circulating,
Speaker 2: the flu vaccine is still effective at a number of
Speaker 2: different things. It has been shown to reduce the rate
Speaker 2: of hospital admissions and doctor's visits for the flu, which
Speaker 2: means that even if you get the flu, you don't
Speaker 2: get as sick from it, so you don't end up
Speaker 2: in the hospital or getting a secondary bacterial pneumo. The
Speaker 2: flu vaccine prevents tens of thousands of hospitalizations every year,
Speaker 2: and it also seriously reduces children's risk of being admitted
Speaker 2: to the intensive care unit for flu infection. From twenty
Speaker 2: ten to twenty twelve, it reduced the risk of being
Speaker 2: admitted to the ICU for children by seventy four percent.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, amazing.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants their kid to be in the ICU. No,
Speaker 2: it's horrible. It also reduces the risk of adult hospitalizations
Speaker 2: and admissions to the ICU, but from twenty twelve to
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen it reduced hospitalizations by forty percent and ICU
Speaker 2: admissions eighty percent.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And it reduces children's risk of dying from influenza even
Speaker 2: if you still get sick with the flu in that year,
Speaker 2: because you have some antibodies against it, even if they're
Speaker 2: not perfect. It helps your immune system not get so
Speaker 2: overwhelmed that you end up with a very serious infection.
Speaker 1: The other thing too, which I didn't really talk about
Speaker 1: in the history, but I want to get across, is
Speaker 1: that when you choose not to vaccinate, whether it's for
Speaker 1: childhood vaccines or whether it's for influenza, you're not making
Speaker 1: a choice just for yourself or just for your child.
Speaker 1: You are also making a choice for everyone that you
Speaker 1: are going to come in contact with. Ever. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that could mean someone who is compromised and cannot get
Speaker 1: a vaccine, or an elderly person who similarly cannot get
Speaker 1: a vaccine, and you could be responsible for transmitting an
Speaker 1: infection to them. So next time you think, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: swamped with work, I cannot get the flu vaccine this year,
Speaker 1: think about the infant that you might pass into the
Speaker 1: grocery store, think about the old person that you might
Speaker 1: sit next to on a bus. It's there's a social
Speaker 1: responsibility I feel like we all should think about when
Speaker 1: it comes to vaccination.
Speaker 2: Because remember a lot of illnesses, including measles and influenza,
Speaker 2: can be transmitted before you ever show symptoms. So it's
Speaker 2: not like you can say, don't worry, I'll stay home
Speaker 2: if I get sick. You might be infectious before you
Speaker 2: even know it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so vaccines are great. Two more, that's all I've got. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: myth number five vaccines are made of fetus. I don't
Speaker 2: want to inject fetus into my baby who's no longer
Speaker 2: a fetus. Okay, so this is essentially not true. So
Speaker 2: Aaron Welsh, you who I'm talking.
Speaker 1: To, Yes, that's me here.
Speaker 2: In the first episode, you discussed how some vaccines were developed,
Speaker 2: and a few vaccines, including rubella, hepatitis A, rabies more
Speaker 2: of them. They are grown in cell culture lines that
Speaker 2: were made from fetal lung tissue.
Speaker 1: That we are actually called strains because they die lines.
Speaker 2: Are oh really know that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I did not know that little actually.
Speaker 2: Okay, uh so yeah, these these cell culture strains came
Speaker 2: from a single fetus that had been aborted over fifty
Speaker 2: years ago, right in the nineteen sixties, nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two. So those are the cell line. Those
Speaker 2: are the cell culture strains that are used to culture
Speaker 2: some vaccines. This does not mean that babies are being
Speaker 2: aborted to make vaccines. All of these cell cultures came
Speaker 2: from the same fetal lung tissue and they've been in
Speaker 2: use ever since, so no new fetuses are needed. And
Speaker 2: it also doesn't mean that your vaccine is full of
Speaker 2: fetal tissue. You can kind of think of a cell
Speaker 2: line like the soil that you grow your vegetables in.
Speaker 2: So when you pull out a potato, yes, maybe there's
Speaker 2: some dirt left on it, but does that mean your
Speaker 2: potato is made of dirt. No. In the same way,
Speaker 2: your vaccine might have been grown on a cell culture
Speaker 2: that was derived from fetal lung tissue, but that does
Speaker 2: not mean that it is made of fetal lung tissue.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 1: That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: Excellent.
Speaker 1: Can I also just say I so I am not
Speaker 1: a religious person, but even the Catholic Church has rubber
Speaker 1: stamped it's okay, oh with with the vaccines that are
Speaker 1: that are grown in fetal lung tissue.
Speaker 2: New Pope or old Pope.
Speaker 1: Uh, old Pope. Actually, all right, there you go, Benedict, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, he said, as long as there is no alternative,
Speaker 1: it is completely lawful for Catholics to use these, and
Speaker 1: you actually should because you have a responsibility, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Cool al right, WTG last one, I think this is
Speaker 2: my favorite. The HPV vaccine.
Speaker 1: Oh good, Okay, I had a whole section and I
Speaker 1: was like, I have too much.
Speaker 2: I'm only going to say a couple of things about it,
Speaker 2: but they're really important things. Okay, Apparently there's a myth
Speaker 2: I didn't even know this was a myth that the
Speaker 2: HPV vaccine causes cancer.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're gonna have a whole episode on HPV.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: HPV stands for human papillomavirus. This is a very serious
Speaker 2: infection because it is the number one caused by far
Speaker 2: of cervical cancer. It doesn't only cause cervical cancer. It
Speaker 2: also causes throat cancer, it causes penile cancer, and it
Speaker 2: causes anal cancer and a number of other cancers. HPV
Speaker 2: infects basically your surface cells, so anywhere where you have
Speaker 2: what's called squamous cells, HPV can infect and the way
Speaker 2: that HPV replicates in your body can lead directly to cancer.
Speaker 2: So HPV is very serious. The HPV vaccine does not
Speaker 2: cause cancer because it is not a live vaccine. It's
Speaker 2: not even a killed vaccine. It's a component vaccine or
Speaker 2: a subunit vaccine. So the vaccine itself is just made
Speaker 2: of particles of the virus, not the whole virus. So
Speaker 2: there's no way for it to infect yourselves the way
Speaker 2: that a real virus would and cause the changes that
Speaker 2: a real virus could cause in order to cause cancer.
Speaker 2: So the HPV vaccine, which I just have to say,
Speaker 2: when it was first marketed, they did a terrible job
Speaker 2: of it because they marketed it as protecting you against
Speaker 2: genital warts, which it does, and like, who wants warts?
Speaker 2: It doesn't just protect against genital warts. It literally protects
Speaker 2: you against cancer.
Speaker 1: It's a cancer vaccine.
Speaker 2: It is a vaccine against cancer. Isn't that what everybody wants?
Speaker 2: Like people are like, why don't we have a vaccine
Speaker 2: for cancer? We do? Literally. Yeah. I also want to say,
Speaker 2: and this comes back to what I've said a couple
Speaker 2: of times now about how important it is to give
Speaker 2: vaccines to people before they're ever exposed. HPV is an
Speaker 2: extremely common virus. It's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's everywhere.
Speaker 2: I think it's something like it's estimated that eighty percent
Speaker 2: of adults will be exposed at some point in their life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and not every strain causes cancer, but there are a
Speaker 2: number of strains that do. And the vaccine protects against
Speaker 2: a number of strains that cause cancer. So some people
Speaker 2: are concerned that giving the HPV vaccine to young children,
Speaker 2: which is it's recommended for kids age like eleven to fourteen,
Speaker 2: that this is somehow going to increase sexual promiscuity or
Speaker 2: the rates of other STIs because oh, if we give
Speaker 2: them a vaccine that protects against an STI, they're just
Speaker 2: going to start having sex everywhere. There have been studies
Speaker 2: to specifically look at this, and there is absolutely no
Speaker 2: evidence that giving young people, including young girls who are
Speaker 2: apparently the precious angels that are never supposed to have sex,
Speaker 2: there is no evidence that giving young people the HPV
Speaker 2: vaccine increases sexual promiscuity at all.
Speaker 1: Can we talk though, about the recent study that came
Speaker 1: out that showed the measurable decrease in cervical cancer diagnoses
Speaker 1: since the HPV vaccine has been widely distributed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's it, because I mean, I understand that that was
Speaker 1: a big discussion about the whole sexual promiscuity thing, but
Speaker 1: it really bothers me that that has held up people
Speaker 1: I agree, giving it to their children. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: a similar argument was made against hepatitis B vaccine. When
Speaker 1: it was first introduced, they were like, this is a
Speaker 1: disease of drug addicts and its dirt. It's a dirty disease,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to give it to my precious
Speaker 1: angel because that implies that they're going to be dirty,
Speaker 1: going to be a drug addict or whatever. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that is so I can't even wrap my brain around it,
Speaker 1: and it kind of makes me feel it's like saying,
Speaker 1: let's have a debate with an anti vaccine person or
Speaker 1: community or whatever. I don't think that we should give
Speaker 1: them any more platforms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, talk about the hepatitis B vaccine. That's another
Speaker 2: vaccine that protects against cancer because hepatitis B increases your
Speaker 2: risk for liver cancer.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So those are all of the myths that I
Speaker 2: have to address. I think it's a lot of the
Speaker 2: biggest ones, the biggest concerns that people have. But we're
Speaker 2: not even done yet, are we.
Speaker 1: Noll you guys, this is a really long episode, so
Speaker 1: thanks for hanging in there with us. Yeah, we're very
Speaker 1: excited about it because there's so much information and we
Speaker 1: are about to bring you some very thrilling interviews.
Speaker 2: So thrilling. So you'll hear from doctor Peter Hotez about
Speaker 2: even more vaccine misconceptions and myths and more information about
Speaker 2: just how safe vaccines are. And then we'll talk psy
Speaker 2: Colm with Bill Nye, the SI guy.
Speaker 1: So let's get started on those interviews.
Speaker 2: All right, we should probably take a quick break, make
Speaker 2: yourself another place, ma Rita.
Speaker 1: Today we are joined by doctor Peter Hotez, dean of
Speaker 1: the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of
Speaker 1: Medicine in Houston and co director of the Texas Children's
Speaker 1: Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. Did I get that rightly?
Speaker 1: Wonderful doctor Hotez, thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time to chat with us today. So it's so great
Speaker 1: to hear from you because we have been huge fans
Speaker 1: since our epidemiology grad school days, like this is we're
Speaker 1: you know, this is definitely a celebrity moment for us, Like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, time too kind, but thank you really
Speaker 1: so today we wanted to chat with you about vaccines,
Speaker 1: in particular the misinformation and fear surrounding childhood vaccines and
Speaker 1: to go through some common questions about vaccines and the
Speaker 1: misconceptions that the anti vaccine movement holds on too and promotes.
Speaker 1: But let's start with you. Can you tell us a
Speaker 1: bit about yourself and your professional experience with vaccine development
Speaker 1: and research and how you became interested in this field.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, thanks for having me and thanks for the question.
Speaker 3: So I'm a vaccine scientist sometimes called a vaccinologist, and
Speaker 3: I co lead a group that's developing vaccines to prevent
Speaker 3: or treat poverty related neglected diseases, a group of conditions
Speaker 3: we call the neglected tropical diseases or NTDs. And I've
Speaker 3: been doing this my whole professional life since I was
Speaker 3: in graduate school, since I was an MD PhD student
Speaker 3: at Rockefeller University in New York. So I have a
Speaker 3: lifelong passion to develop the vaccines that nobody else will
Speaker 3: make because therefore they're targeting the diseases of the world's
Speaker 3: poorest people and there's no financial pot of gold at
Speaker 3: the end of the rainbow. So one of the interesting
Speaker 3: things that we do is not only the science of
Speaker 3: how we develop vaccines, but trying to figure out sustainable
Speaker 3: business models because no one's done this before, and so
Speaker 3: that's my major, that's my major research activity. So it's
Speaker 3: an interesting one in that it's a hybrid between the
Speaker 3: academic culture. So we write papers and grants like other
Speaker 3: academic scientists, but we're also trying to develop stuff. We're
Speaker 3: trying to make a product. So we're a hybrid between
Speaker 3: a biotech culture and an academic culture, which sometimes works
Speaker 3: and sometimes there are kinks to work out. But it's
Speaker 3: been a very exciting thirty year ride developing these vaccines.
Speaker 3: We now have vaccines to combat hookworm and shist asamiasis
Speaker 3: and moving into phase two clinical trials, and we have
Speaker 3: a new shagas disease vaccines going into phase one and
Speaker 3: hopefully leishmaniasis vaccine to follow. So we target the what
Speaker 3: we'd like to call the most common diseases you've never
Speaker 3: heard of.
Speaker 2: Amazing. We actually mentioned your hookworm vaccine in our recent
Speaker 2: Hookworm episode, and I studied Shaugust for my PhD. So
Speaker 2: that's really thrilling that there's a Shogus vaccine in the works.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: How did you become interested in in vaccines?
Speaker 2: Like what?
Speaker 1: So? In terms of neglected tropical diseases, which is a
Speaker 1: phrase I believe you coined or at least helped to promote,
Speaker 1: and you know this is, as its name suggest is
Speaker 1: a neglected area. So what kind of spurred your interest
Speaker 1: in that particular field.
Speaker 3: Well, it was actually I had a lifelong passion for
Speaker 3: studying tropical diseases and parasites. So I was a nerdy
Speaker 3: kid who grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut and had
Speaker 3: a microscope in my own lab in the basement. And
Speaker 3: you know, you grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. You either
Speaker 3: want to pitch for the Yankees of the Red Sox
Speaker 3: and I want that to study tropical diseases. So it's
Speaker 3: been a life I'm living out my boyhood fantasies. The
Speaker 3: vaccine component, I think, is a certain humanitarian drive that
Speaker 3: I began in medical school and graduate school and have
Speaker 3: continued ever since. So my whole life I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a laboratory investigator. The one piece that I did
Speaker 3: not really think i'd be doing it, either earlier in
Speaker 3: life or this stage in life is all the public
Speaker 3: engagement to get people to care about poverty related to
Speaker 3: neglected diseases, and getting people to care about diseases of
Speaker 3: the poor and neglected tropical diseases. And now this latest
Speaker 3: craziness about vaccines and the anti vaccine.
Speaker 1: Movement, so moving into that area. In your book called
Speaker 1: Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, which was published last year,
Speaker 1: you talk about your personal experience as ofvaccine developer and
Speaker 1: as a parent of a child with autism spectrum disorder.
Speaker 1: Writing about such a deeply personal part of your life
Speaker 1: must have been a difficult process, and you mentioned in
Speaker 1: the book that it was a difficult decision to make.
Speaker 1: But it's also so enlightening to hear your perspective, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it resonated amongst many readers. Could you share
Speaker 1: with us a bit about your daughter, Rachel and why
Speaker 1: you decided to write that book.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 3: So, My wife Anna and I have four adult kids,
Speaker 3: and Rachel is our youngest daughter. She's twenty six, has autism,
Speaker 3: but not only autism, number of other intellectual severe intellectual disabilities.
Speaker 3: And I wrote the book because I became very alarmed
Speaker 3: by this aggressive rise in the anti vaccine movement. We
Speaker 3: were starting to see measles outbreaks across Europe was starting
Speaker 3: in the United States. So we could talk about why
Speaker 3: we see measles before we see the other vaccine preventable diseases,
Speaker 3: and this rising chorus of anti vaccine sentiments to the
Speaker 3: point where the anti vaccine movement had morphed from a
Speaker 3: culture or fringe movement to now dominating the Internet. And
Speaker 3: on the other side, I did not see a robust
Speaker 3: system in place to counter it.
Speaker 5: There wasn't really a.
Speaker 3: Narrative that was out there that was easily accessible promoting vaccine.
Speaker 3: So I thought, well, here, I am a vaccine scientist, pediatrician,
Speaker 3: and the parent of an adult daughter with autism. If
Speaker 3: I don't do it, who's going to do it? And
Speaker 3: talked about it with my wife and with Rachel and
Speaker 3: with the other members of my family, and they were very,
Speaker 3: very supportive. And so the product is an interesting book.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen too many like it. It's a science book.
Speaker 3: It goes into some detail explaining the science of showing
Speaker 3: that there's no link between vaccines and autism, whether it's
Speaker 3: the MMR vaccine is originally thought stated by the anti vaxxers,
Speaker 3: or thimerisol preservative that used to be in vaccines, or
Speaker 3: spacing vaccines close together, or aluminum They play this kind
Speaker 3: of pyrrhic game of vaccine whackamole. So it goes into
Speaker 3: the science showing there's no link and studies over one
Speaker 3: million children, and then also going into autism, what it
Speaker 3: is and how it begins in early fetal brain development,
Speaker 3: the genetics of autism, the ninety nine genes, some of
Speaker 3: the epigenetics. But then the other thing I do in
Speaker 3: the book is tell a very personal story, and it
Speaker 3: interweaves a very personal story. So I haven't seen too
Speaker 3: many books like this that's both science book and tells
Speaker 3: the personal narrative of a scientist. And it occurred to
Speaker 3: me as I was writing this book, you know, we
Speaker 3: need to have more books like that. We need we
Speaker 3: need so much more of this. We need to have
Speaker 3: a new generation of scientists that have an interest and
Speaker 3: ability to do the public engagement. And that was the
Speaker 3: reason for the book.
Speaker 2: So your book also dives into the history of the
Speaker 2: modern anti vaccine movement and examines a lot of the
Speaker 2: common misconceptions about the safety or health risks of childhood vaccines.
Speaker 2: And we've gotten a lot of questions from listeners and
Speaker 2: then also just seen common questions and concerns online and
Speaker 2: so we're hoping that you can help us go through
Speaker 2: some of these sort of specific questions and kind of
Speaker 2: address them specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, happy to all right.
Speaker 2: So the first one is because of a lot of
Speaker 2: advances in vaccine development over the years, the schedule for
Speaker 2: vaccinations for children today looks a lot different than it
Speaker 2: has in generations past, even in the time that we
Speaker 2: were growing up. And so sometimes today parents can feel
Speaker 2: overwhelmed looking at the list of how many vaccinations their
Speaker 2: baby has to get or how frequent these vaccinations are.
Speaker 2: So can you explain a bit about how these schedules
Speaker 2: are developed and why there are so many more vaccines
Speaker 2: than we've seen in years past.
Speaker 3: Well, let's unpack that in a few ways. I mean,
Speaker 3: first of all, we're now vaccinating against diseases, whereas before
Speaker 3: we didn't have vaccines. What's happened is the industry is
Speaker 3: recognizes that they want to minimize the number of injections
Speaker 3: that kids get. So they've been combining these into pent
Speaker 3: evalent vaccines, meaning targeting five diseases at the same time.
Speaker 3: In some cases hepta valent, so getting diphtheria, pertossis, tetanus,
Speaker 3: this one, homophlus, influenza, type B, polio, sometimes hepatitis, And
Speaker 3: that way we've minimize the number of injections so I
Speaker 3: think you know, they're the f Food and Drug Administration
Speaker 3: and industry have done their best to limit the number
Speaker 3: of injections. You know, then the anti vaccine people respond well,
Speaker 3: because you're remunizing against two many diseases at once, you're
Speaker 3: somehow overwhelming the immune system. But in fact, you know,
Speaker 3: I point out that that's not what the science says.
Speaker 3: The science says, if you're an infant, your gastrointestinal track,
Speaker 3: your respiratory tree, your lungs are incredibly efficient organs of
Speaker 3: antigen presentation. Probably an infant on average is getting exposed
Speaker 3: to hundreds of new antigens every day. And the idea
Speaker 3: you're going to overwhelm the immune system quote unquote by
Speaker 3: giving five or six antigens at once simply doesn't pass
Speaker 3: the left test. But you see that takes time to explain.
Speaker 3: It's not a thirty second sound bite. So we you know,
Speaker 3: we're up against an anti vaccine lobby that will just
Speaker 3: spew out, oh, the we're overwhelming the immune system of
Speaker 3: our kids giving all these vaccines, and industry is profiting
Speaker 3: neglecting to say how life saving these vaccines are.
Speaker 5: Because of the horrific diseases.
Speaker 3: That are presenting and why it's outrageous to say we're
Speaker 3: overwhelming the immune system when there's zero evidence for that
Speaker 3: and there's no plausibility for it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: One of the examples of another one of a specific
Speaker 1: disease that people bring up as a reason not to
Speaker 1: vaccinate is chicken pox. And so it's a recommended childhood vaccine,
Speaker 1: but it's relatively new. So for instance, I didn't receive
Speaker 1: it as a child, I had chicken pox, but now
Speaker 1: it's recommended a lot and so a lot of people
Speaker 1: see chicken pox as just a routine childhood illness, not
Speaker 1: a big deal. And so can you explain why it
Speaker 1: actually is very important to vaccinate for a disease like
Speaker 1: chicken pox if the illness is mild in most cases?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, this is again one of the things,
Speaker 3: this is one of This is the anti vaxxer playbook, right.
Speaker 3: They are they do their best to minimize their diseases,
Speaker 3: and so for measles, for instance, they'll play an episode
Speaker 3: of The Brady Bunch where Marsha Brady thought it was
Speaker 3: a good thing to get measles because she stays home
Speaker 3: from school, As though that's evidence that measles isn't so bad,
Speaker 3: neglecting the inconvenient truth that prior to widespread vaccination, two
Speaker 3: point six million kids died of measles every year. It
Speaker 3: was the single leading killer of children globally. After smallpox
Speaker 3: was eradicated in the United States, hundreds of kids died
Speaker 3: every year and tens of thousands were hospitalized. And although
Speaker 3: vericella chicken pox is not as severe as measles, it's
Speaker 3: still a pretty bad actor. In the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 3: vericella chicken pox caused ten to thirteen thousand hospitalizations and
Speaker 3: to one hundred and fifty people died every year. As
Speaker 3: when I was back when I was attending in pediatric
Speaker 3: infectious disease, we saw some horrific disease from a chicken pox.
Speaker 3: So the fact that we have a vaccine is is great.
Speaker 3: And what can be done sometimes is to combine it
Speaker 3: with the MMR vaccine to give MMR V so you're
Speaker 3: not adding another injection.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Another one of the reasons that we hear
Speaker 2: often cited to not vaccinate is that getting infected naturally
Speaker 2: can provide a longer lasting immunity. So can you explain
Speaker 2: why that's not a good reason to not vaccinate.
Speaker 3: Well, so, in some cases experience with the pathogen will
Speaker 3: confer long lasting immunity, like measles. That's this, but you
Speaker 3: know there's the end of the dot dot dot is
Speaker 3: if you're lucky enough to survive the natural infection or
Speaker 3: survive without permanent injury. So yes, some of these infectious
Speaker 3: disease pathogens do confer immunity, but that's the whole point
Speaker 3: right of vaccinating is to confer that same or similar
Speaker 3: level of immunity. But doing it with a weakened or
Speaker 3: attenuated pathogens, you don't experience the illness, and that's why
Speaker 3: it can save lives. I mean, measles in the pre
Speaker 3: vaccine era in the early sixties caused one in four
Speaker 3: kids to be hospitalized, five hundred deaths, tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of hospitalization, and many from causing permanent injury from measles, pneumonia,
Speaker 3: measles encephalitis. That's why we vaccinate, to give you a
Speaker 3: similar or same level of immunity without the disease.
Speaker 2: Another question that we see very often is so vaccines
Speaker 2: have some risk associated with them, and in our first
Speaker 2: part of our vaccines episode, we'll talk about some of
Speaker 2: the potential adverse effects when we cover sort of the
Speaker 2: biology of vaccines. But I think that the fear of
Speaker 2: those adverse events happening is what drives some people not
Speaker 2: to choose not to vaccinate. So can you explain how
Speaker 2: the risks of vaccination differ from the risk of not vaccinating,
Speaker 2: and just how low these risks really are associated with vaccination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the two things that the anti vaccine lobby does.
Speaker 3: First of all, it tends to play down the likelihood
Speaker 3: of your getting one of these diseases. They inconveniently don't
Speaker 3: tell you that measles is back, pertessis which is whooping
Speaker 3: cough is back. You're always at risk for tetanus if
Speaker 3: you get a severe injury. So there is real risk
Speaker 3: out there for children in the United States or children
Speaker 3: all over the world. And the truth is, the risk
Speaker 3: of a serious adverse event from a vaccine is extremely rare.
Speaker 3: In the book, we put it about one in a
Speaker 3: million of a serious adverse event, and some would put
Speaker 3: it at one in ten million. And just to give
Speaker 3: you a sense of perspective there on a website, I
Speaker 3: found the likelihood of getting struck by lightning is one
Speaker 3: in seven hundred thousand, so you're more likely to be
Speaker 3: struck by lightning then have a serious adverse event from
Speaker 3: a vaccine. In fact, the risk of putting your child
Speaker 3: in a car, even with a car seat, is probably
Speaker 3: much higher than the risk of vaccinating, So we need
Speaker 3: to find a better way to communicate risk to lay
Speaker 3: audiences as well.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us know people who are
Speaker 1: opposed to vaccination or at least questioning whether they need
Speaker 1: to vaccinate in having these doubts, and I think we
Speaker 1: struggle with engaging with these people and talking to them
Speaker 1: about vaccines in a constructive way. What advice do you
Speaker 1: have to people who have friends or family members that
Speaker 1: don't vaccinate or are questioning vaccination. How can you best
Speaker 1: communicate the importance and safety of vaccination to these people.
Speaker 3: Well, I do it in a few ways. First of all,
Speaker 3: I explain to parents that they're victims of the misinformation campaign.
Speaker 3: Right now if you try to download that there's are
Speaker 3: such dominance of the anti vaccine lobby on the internet
Speaker 3: that if you now try to download any kind of
Speaker 3: health information about vaccines, you're much more likely to dominate
Speaker 3: phony vaccine anti vaxine misinformation than you are real information.
Speaker 3: So in some way, these parents are victims. And then
Speaker 3: I like to point out, you know, I give a
Speaker 3: number of lectures across the country every year, pediatric ran
Speaker 3: rounds talking to pediatricians and nurse practitioners and many parents.
Speaker 3: I find most of the parents are not deeply dug in.
Speaker 3: They've they've downloaded misinformation, They've heard something unsavory about vaccines
Speaker 3: from a friend or a relative. But if you're willing
Speaker 3: to take the time to have a discussion with them,
Speaker 3: you can make them understand why vaccines are safe and
Speaker 3: your why your child deserves to be vaccinated, and your
Speaker 3: child is a fundamental right to be protected against serious
Speaker 3: or deadly infections. Then there's another I don't know what
Speaker 3: the number is, whether it's five fifteen percent of parents
Speaker 3: who are deeply dug in and they buy the conspiracy theories,
Speaker 3: and those ones are very tough to reach. But most
Speaker 3: parents you can have a pretty meaningful conversation with and
Speaker 3: make them understand that the benefits of vaccination far out
Speaker 3: weigh the risks.
Speaker 1: For people who for our audience, are there certain websites
Speaker 1: or resources that you can suggest specifically that have accurate
Speaker 1: vaccine information that you that people can go to and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is how this is how vaccines work. This is
Speaker 1: a step by step breakdown. This is sort of dismantling
Speaker 1: all these myths and misconceptions that the anti vaccine movement
Speaker 1: is pushing.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I tried to do in my book,
Speaker 3: and especially in the epilogue. I provide the major phony
Speaker 3: talking points of the anti vaccine movement to refute them.
Speaker 3: But in terms of websites, the CDC web site actually
Speaker 3: has a ton of information. The problem is it's difficult
Speaker 3: to mine or wade through. So I know where to
Speaker 3: look because I have an MD and a PhD. But
Speaker 3: it's but it's it's not very user friendly for lay audiences.
Speaker 3: The vaccines dot gov website is pretty good, and the
Speaker 3: actually the Canadian equivalent one is I forget what it is,
Speaker 3: but it's it's quite good. The there are there, there
Speaker 3: are a couple of nonprofits. Vaccinate your Family dot org
Speaker 3: has got a good one. There's the Vaccine Education Center
Speaker 3: that's put out by the University of Pennsylvanian Children's Hospital
Speaker 3: of Philadelphia, but it's it doesn't have all the glitz
Speaker 3: in the panache that the anti vaxxer websites do, and
Speaker 3: so we're still we're still in the nineteen nineties when
Speaker 3: it comes to the internet.
Speaker 1: I think we've got one last fun question for you,
Speaker 1: hope fun.
Speaker 2: If you could snap your fingers and create a vaccine
Speaker 2: for any infectious disease today that doesn't have one, what.
Speaker 3: Would it be, Well, I would say the ones we're
Speaker 3: developing there are. I mean, the one that's really moving
Speaker 3: along nicely is our vaccine for shist of semiasis. This
Speaker 3: is a disease of two hundred million people who live
Speaker 3: in extreme poverty, a horrific cause of liver disease and
Speaker 3: testinal disease, and it causes a condition on this female
Speaker 3: genital shift of semiasis, which many people are surprised is
Speaker 3: actually the most common gynecologic condition on the African continent,
Speaker 3: a cause of pain and bleeding and stigma, marital discord,
Speaker 3: unipolar depression, and now it's been linked to a fourfold
Speaker 3: increase in HIV AIDS, probably because of the alcort of
Speaker 3: diseases and causes provides a conduit for the for the
Speaker 3: AIDS virus. So this may be Africa's leading cofactor for
Speaker 3: HIV eight's and we're developing that vaccine and i'd love
Speaker 3: to see that get to the license your stage.
Speaker 2: Great answer, Thank you so so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Like Aaron said, we are huge fans of your work.
Speaker 2: I think you are the single person I cited the
Speaker 2: most in my entire PhD dissertation. So it's been very
Speaker 2: thrilling to get to speak with you, and we really
Speaker 2: appreciate your time to talk with us about this topic.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, thanks for having me, and congratulations on
Speaker 3: what you're doing. As I mentioned a couple of times
Speaker 3: in this podcast, we need more podcasts like this. We
Speaker 3: need a public engagement at an unprecedented level, and there's
Speaker 3: only a few people like yourselves doing this, so I'm
Speaker 3: very grateful for what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much. It's been an absolute joy
Speaker 1: speaking with you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, that was awesome and amazing, and we're not done.
Speaker 2: This episode just keeps getting better, hopefully with the help
Speaker 2: of doctor hotes We've answered most or maybe all of
Speaker 2: your questions about vaccines and address some of the major
Speaker 2: misconceptions surrounding them.
Speaker 1: But like doctor Hotez pointed out, we need more people
Speaker 1: communicating this science to the public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do.
Speaker 1: So this episode is going out with a bang, and
Speaker 1: we've got one more interview to talk all things ycom
Speaker 1: with one of the biggest science communicators out there, a
Speaker 1: name you all heard.
Speaker 2: Today we are joined by the world famous Bill Nye,
Speaker 2: the science Guy. Can we still call you that? Uh?
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, yes, this is this is possibly.
Speaker 2: The most thrilling thing that has happened to us. We
Speaker 2: both are huge fans since we were kids. It's very
Speaker 2: surreal to get to talk with you today. You honestly
Speaker 2: have been a big, huge inspiration for both of us
Speaker 2: in sort of pursuing our science careers. So we really
Speaker 2: appreciate you taking the time to chat about the anti
Speaker 2: vaccine movement and about science communication in general today. So
Speaker 2: most people, I'm sure have heard of you, but can
Speaker 2: you take a second and introduce yourself and maybe tell
Speaker 2: us a bit about your background in science and science
Speaker 2: communication and how you got into this field.
Speaker 5: My mechanical engineer, I mean, I'm human, but mechanical engineer.
Speaker 5: I started out my first job was a Boeing Airplane
Speaker 5: commercial airplane company, and then I went on to work
Speaker 5: at several aerospace companies in the Seattle area, and I
Speaker 5: got concerned about the United States and the future. People
Speaker 5: were building the Ford Pinto automobile and the Chevy Vega.
Speaker 5: Abandoned teaching the metric system took solar panels off the
Speaker 5: roof of the White House in the United States. I
Speaker 5: got quite concerned about the future. So, like so many
Speaker 5: mechanical engineers, I started doing stand up comedy. After I
Speaker 5: won the Steve Martin lookalike contest in the Seattle area,
Speaker 5: I did not advance beyond there, and so I started
Speaker 5: writing jokes for a comedy show. I would work on
Speaker 5: a big drawing board six foot long, not quite two
Speaker 5: meter long drawing board all day, go home and take
Speaker 5: a nap, and then go to comedy clubs. And then
Speaker 5: the head of the NBC affiliate or director programming NBC
Speaker 5: affiliate in Seattle, decided to have a comedy show, so
Speaker 5: I started submitting jokes to that. I quit my job
Speaker 5: October third, nineteen eighty six, approximately, and then I worked
Speaker 5: part time as an engineer what you call a contractor engineer,
Speaker 5: for another seven or six seven years. And along the
Speaker 5: way we on the comedy show. We came up with
Speaker 5: Bill Ny. This art I came up with Bill Ny
Speaker 5: the Science Guy. The first bit was, as you know,
Speaker 5: was the household uses of liquid nitrogen, because we've all
Speaker 5: got liquid nitrogen around. And then I wanted to be
Speaker 5: and the way I would express it in those days
Speaker 5: was I wanted to be the next Mister Wizard. A
Speaker 5: Mister Wizard was a guy named Don Herbert who was
Speaker 5: on television in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, and
Speaker 5: it was a big inspiration to me. And I wanted
Speaker 5: to get the next generation of young people excited about science,
Speaker 5: so in the future we'd have more scientists and we
Speaker 5: could change here's the world, and so it's you know,
Speaker 5: I just remind everybody it takes years and years to
Speaker 5: get stuff like this together. But we did one hundred
Speaker 5: Science Guy shows and I'm now along with keeping my
Speaker 5: mechanical engineering license current. I think I can describe myself
Speaker 5: as a science educator. And I am able to read
Speaker 5: a graph if it's about climate change. I'm able to
Speaker 5: read a graph about human population growth. And I can
Speaker 5: also understand maps that describe the outbreak of let's say,
Speaker 5: measles or a colony collapse disorder or what have you.
Speaker 5: But science education is very, very important to our future,
Speaker 5: and you have to get people excited about science before
Speaker 5: they're ten years old. Aaron Aarin, You got excited before
Speaker 5: you were twelve.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's still a very important thing. And I don't work
Speaker 5: that much in element tree science these days. Although my
Speaker 5: next book is called The Big Book of Science, comes
Speaker 5: out next spring and it is for young people. So
Speaker 5: we're just trying to change the world here, Aaron erin.
Speaker 1: No big deal, No big deal.
Speaker 5: How hard could it be? And so it's really a
Speaker 5: heck of a thing that we've got measles outbreaks. Now
Speaker 5: I'm so old. How old are you? I'm so old
Speaker 5: that I had measles and I live through it. My
Speaker 5: first cousin, once removed, died of the flu. So there's
Speaker 5: no need for this. Vaccines are what two hundred year old,
Speaker 5: two hundred and thirty year old technology? Why can't we? Yeah,
Speaker 5: what's wrongs? What's going on in the world's most technically
Speaker 5: influential country. What is happening?
Speaker 1: What is going on? That's a great question. So in
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're exploring these fears and misconceptions that
Speaker 1: surround vaccines and how the anti vaccine movement has grown
Speaker 1: and changed over time. So you are an expert science educator,
Speaker 1: expert science communicator, and so, as you mentioned, you know
Speaker 1: how to critically examine scientific research and interpret that and
Speaker 1: then explain it. And that's what you've been doing to
Speaker 1: the public for so much of your career. But so
Speaker 1: many of the people who are opposed to vaccination decided
Speaker 1: to do their own research and are often not equipped
Speaker 1: with the skills to evaluate whether this information source is
Speaker 1: scientifically accurate or whether that one is based in some
Speaker 1: foundation that is just a propaganda machine. And the widespread
Speaker 1: prevalence of misinformation about vaccines and many other things that
Speaker 1: is readily available on the internet is really concerning. So
Speaker 1: what advice do you have for people who want to
Speaker 1: learn more about vaccines but don't know how to find
Speaker 1: reliable sources.
Speaker 5: Well, listen to this podcast will kill you and turn
Speaker 5: it up around. That's my advice. Now we have to
Speaker 5: chip away at this problem. And I think, well, you've
Speaker 5: hit upon the skill that we need now. When I
Speaker 5: was in school, when I was well, when I was
Speaker 5: working as an engineer, the whole challenge was to find
Speaker 5: reliable information. You would go to the library, look in
Speaker 5: the card catalog and you'd find encyclopedias that were quite trustworthy.
Speaker 5: You could it took a long time to find let's say,
Speaker 5: four sources to verify a fact. When it comes to vaccines,
Speaker 5: you can find this conflicting information. And the skill we
Speaker 5: need to teach people or encourage people to acquire, is
Speaker 5: how to sort this stuff out. The skills we need
Speaker 5: to teach would be, for example, correlation does not imply causation.
Speaker 5: And this is old rhyme, that's just fantastic, but it
Speaker 5: means just because something happened at about the same time
Speaker 5: something else happened, it doesn't mean it's not a coincidence.
Speaker 5: It doesn't mean that there was a cause and an effect.
Speaker 5: And this is a huge idea in science, and it's
Speaker 5: a huge idea in philosophy, and in a sense it's
Speaker 5: a very important idea in mathematics. And the example is autism.
Speaker 5: People get autism at about the same time they get
Speaker 5: a certain round of vaccines, but that doesn't mean the
Speaker 5: vaccine caused autism. And this has been debunked out the
Speaker 5: ying yang as it's often said, completely wrong. And so
Speaker 5: now what do you do right? So er Erin, I
Speaker 5: wish I had the answer to this problem. But this podcast,
Speaker 5: I presume is part of the solution, that is to say,
Speaker 5: enlightening people about the cause and effect of vaccines.
Speaker 1: You've had a.
Speaker 2: Very long career in science communication and science education, and
Speaker 2: you've explored a lot of different media platforms, from television
Speaker 2: shows to books and Netflix and radio. So how have
Speaker 2: you seen the field of science communication and science education
Speaker 2: change over the course of your career and what do
Speaker 2: you see as some of the challenges that we face
Speaker 2: as science communicators and science educators going forward.
Speaker 5: So when I was coming along, there were three or
Speaker 5: four television stations in any TV market, There'd be ABC, CBSNBC,
Speaker 5: and then public broadcasting, and public broadcasting was often in
Speaker 5: what's called very high frequency VHF channels. You needed a
Speaker 5: loop antenna and the reception wasn't as good, and so
Speaker 5: on and so on. Now there are millions of channels
Speaker 5: available to anybody on the internet. And so what is
Speaker 5: lost is this peer review. What's lost is the discipline
Speaker 5: that required to broadcast something that was fact checked. But
Speaker 5: then the great benefit is it's freedom of speech. Anybody
Speaker 5: can say anything, and that's generally you would think a
Speaker 5: good thing. What's changed is we have to learn much
Speaker 5: more carefully how to evaluate evidence. The phrase that's used now,
Speaker 5: it's a fine phrase, is critical thinking. We have to
Speaker 5: teach critical thinking skills. When I was coming along, it
Speaker 5: might have been called reasoning or logic, but critical thinking
Speaker 5: is a fine phrase. As I mentioned earlier, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of a lot of media, a lot of television, radio,
Speaker 5: podcasts science for people who are already interested in science.
Speaker 5: And that's good, but we still need there's still a
Speaker 5: need for elementary science for getting people excited early on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely So. Based on your extensive experience in
Speaker 2: communicating science, what advice do you have for budding science
Speaker 2: communicators or people who are maybe interested in honing their
Speaker 2: skills as science communicators in this modern era of so
Speaker 2: much technology and the ability to communicate science on so
Speaker 2: many platforms, What kind of advice would you have for
Speaker 2: people interested in that are trying to get started.
Speaker 5: The first thing I tell everybody is figure out what
Speaker 5: you want to get across. What key idea do you
Speaker 5: want to transmit, do you want to communicate? Do you
Speaker 5: want people to get And when we were doing the
Speaker 5: Science Guy Show, the phrase was learning objective. What's the
Speaker 5: learning objective, and a learning objective is a technical educator word.
Speaker 5: It means something you can test at the end of
Speaker 5: the podcast, at the end of the television show, you
Speaker 5: can ask people, what did you get out of that?
Speaker 5: And I hope it's vaccines are two hundred year old
Speaker 5: technology and they work. I hope your listeners get that
Speaker 5: out of this podcast. And then the other thing it's
Speaker 5: very very important, is what I call discipline in vocabulary.
Speaker 5: Div you can't it's very difficult to communicate ideas to
Speaker 5: people with words they don't understand or words they're not
Speaker 5: familiar with. And what we all do once we are
Speaker 5: in this business like epidemiology, that word right there is
Speaker 5: not accessible to everyone. They're people who study epidemics. That's weird.
Speaker 5: Yeah it is weird, but I guess there's at least
Speaker 5: two of them and they're both named Erin. So that's
Speaker 5: that's a very important idea, is that discipline in vocabulary.
Speaker 5: What we did on the Science Guys show is pick
Speaker 5: fourth grade, and that was based on very compelling research.
Speaker 5: Back then people ten years old and younger. You want
Speaker 5: the sentences and words constructed so the ten year old
Speaker 5: can get it, and a ten year Old turns out
Speaker 5: to be a pretty good level for everybody, especially with
Speaker 5: topics you're unfamiliar with, areas of research you've never heard
Speaker 5: of as a listener. So this is easy to say,
Speaker 5: hard to do. And the analogs are if the Old
Speaker 5: saying I didn't have time to write a short letter,
Speaker 5: if you want it's shorter, that'll take a little longer.
Speaker 5: So if you want discipline and vocabulary, that's going to
Speaker 5: take me a few minutes to figure it out.
Speaker 1: So we were wondering what sort of projects are you
Speaker 1: working on now? If you could tell us a bit
Speaker 1: about some of the projects that you are getting started with.
Speaker 1: I know that you mentioned a book, so can you
Speaker 1: tell us a bit about that? And then we hear
Speaker 1: you have a podcast that's going to become a turn
Speaker 1: it off, a little more.
Speaker 5: Info Science Rules. Starts May sixteenth, It will change your life.
Speaker 5: And my co host is Corey Powell, who's the editor
Speaker 5: of my books, my grown up books, my general interest books,
Speaker 5: and I'm very proud of my first general interest book,
Speaker 5: Undeniable Evolution the Fact of Life, where I talk about
Speaker 5: the importance of germs. So one of our guests is
Speaker 5: peg Riley. Do you know her university of messages, so
Speaker 5: her big thing is bacteria sins. Bacteria sins are toxins
Speaker 5: that bacteria make to fight bacteria, and sin is old
Speaker 5: Greek where it means to cut, so that somehow bacteria
Speaker 5: sins cut open the cell membrane of a bacterium and
Speaker 5: in your gut, speaking of your gut microbiome, apparently you
Speaker 5: got bacteria sins fighting bacteria like crazy. It's a big
Speaker 5: happy war going on anyway. Peg Riley's one of our
Speaker 5: guests on the new podcast Science Rule starts May sixteenth.
Speaker 1: Turn it up loud May sixteenth.
Speaker 2: There you go, so it'll be out by the time
Speaker 2: that our listeners are listening to this podcast, so go
Speaker 2: find it.
Speaker 5: It's so exciting. Oh my goodness, it's so exciting. Oh
Speaker 5: my black hole universe, it's so exciting.
Speaker 2: Well, really, thank you again. That was super fun. If
Speaker 2: you had dreams when you were young of being the
Speaker 2: next mister Wizard, I had dreams when I was young
Speaker 2: of being the next Bill Ny the science guy.
Speaker 5: All right, well go get him, so please go out
Speaker 5: there and change the world.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you so much. We really appreciate this.
Speaker 1: We had a blast wasn't that the most exciting?
Speaker 2: I had the most fun with these two episodes, Aaron, Yes,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Doctor Peter Hotez has been one of our heroes for ages,
Speaker 1: ages years and it was so thrilling. Also to talk
Speaker 1: to Bill Nye, who we watched his science program growing
Speaker 1: Boo boo babo, just like that science guy. So that
Speaker 1: was it was really amazing, and we really hope that
Speaker 1: you guys have enjoyed these Vaccines episodes.
Speaker 2: Want to give some special shout outs to people who
Speaker 2: helped us put these together. These episodes would not have
Speaker 2: been possible without the team at Rice University who helped
Speaker 2: us record our interview with Peter Hotez and with the
Speaker 2: one and only Stephen Ray Morris.
Speaker 1: How exciting we get to say his name.
Speaker 2: Not unintentionally on our podcast, who helped us record the
Speaker 2: interview with Bill Nye, the science guy. And to Danielle
Speaker 2: from Exactly Right, who set the whole thing up. This
Speaker 2: is so much fun.
Speaker 1: This was wonderful and thanks to the Exactly Right network period.
Speaker 1: I mean, we haven't gushed at all, but we cannot imagine.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so exciting to be part of this
Speaker 1: network which feels very like a family. Like it's a
Speaker 1: really fun thing to be a part of it. Thrilled
Speaker 1: and it's extremely thrilling.
Speaker 2: So many of you are here because you heard of
Speaker 2: us do exactly right, which is also thrilling. So just
Speaker 2: everything is We're so happy right now, you guys.
Speaker 1: Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of
Speaker 1: a team.
Speaker 2: Everything is when you part of a team.
Speaker 1: We're living the dream.
Speaker 2: Everything is awesome when you live in a dream.
Speaker 1: Okay, sources sourses, so I will repeat the sources from
Speaker 1: the first episode. So Vaccines did Not cause Rachel's autism
Speaker 1: by doctor Peter Hotez. It's a fantastic book. Really highly
Speaker 1: recommend that everyone check it out. Between Hope and Fear
Speaker 1: by Michael kinch Deadly Choices by doctor Paul Offitt, The
Speaker 1: Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman, a few papers, and then
Speaker 1: again I'll recommend the Nova episode called Calling the Shots.
Speaker 1: There are two episodes of a podcast called Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards that cover the anti vaccine movement, and also, if
Speaker 1: you want to hear more doctor Peter Hotez. He is
Speaker 1: featured on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan podcast.
Speaker 1: So go and check that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as always, all of our sources will be
Speaker 2: posted on our website this podcast will kill You dot
Speaker 2: Com under the episodes tab. This is the most sources
Speaker 2: I have ever had, so there's plenty to keep you
Speaker 2: occupied in your vaccine reading and in our show notes,
Speaker 2: we'll also post links to websites where you can get
Speaker 2: more information about vaccines in general.
Speaker 1: M okay. Well, thanks to Bloodmobile for providing the music
Speaker 1: to this episode and all of our episodes, and you
Speaker 1: can find more of his music on band camp and
Speaker 1: there's a link to it on our website.
Speaker 2: And thank you guys so much for listening. We really
Speaker 2: hope that this episode was helpful for you and that
Speaker 2: you enjoyed it. And don't worry, you will get another
Speaker 2: episode next week. We're not messing around with the schedule.
Speaker 2: This was like a bonus episode.
Speaker 1: So three weeks in a row, you guys, can you even?
Speaker 2: It's like May is the best month ever?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, until next time, wash your hands and
Speaker 2: Get vaccinated, you filthy animals.