WEBVTT - Re-Release: Ep 27 Vaccines Part 2: Have you thanked your immune system lately? 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:04.840 Hello to listeners old and new. 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:09.399 We are trying something new this week and next we 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:12.320 are going to be re releasing two of our favorite 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:15.800 past episodes, Vaccines Part one and two. 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.280 These are two episodes that we are really, really proud of. 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:24.279 We've referenced them both countless times since we release them, 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.720 and our audience has grown a lot since our second season, 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.560 so there's probably a fair amount of you that haven't 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:33.680 ever heard these And as we've. 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:35.839 Seen in the past two years, as this pandemic has 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:40.480 reached on, the importance of vaccines is still so apparent. 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:44.000 And misinformation and disinformation abounds. 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:47.600 We'll be back in two weeks with fresh new content 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.320 for your ears, but for now, we hope you enjoy 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.560 for the second time Vaccines. 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:57.880 After I did my MD and PhD, I was a 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:02.080 pediatric house officer or resident Boston, and I was admitting 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.920 a child to the hospital every couple of weeks with 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:10.720 a horrific disease called homophlis influenza type B meningitis. It 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.640 has the word influenza in it because it used during 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:17.080 the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic. It was erroneously thought this 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.039 was a bacteria that caused influenza, not the virus we 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:22.560 know today, but it turns out it causes a terrible 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.920 disease and I would have to do the spinal tap 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.640 on those kids. The lumbar punctures you would see the 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.800 puss coming out were cerebral spinal fluid should be. And 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:38.039 these children had terrible outcomes. They were either deaf or 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:41.840 permanent intellectual injuries. And some of the kids didn't make it. 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:48.240 And this took a tremendous emotional toll on the pediatric 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.160 house staff as well. And that was in nineteen eighty 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.880 seven nineteen eighty eight. By the time I finished my residency, 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:58.240 a new vaccine had come online that was developed in 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.840 parallel at the Niation with students of health and in 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:07.440 Rochester by another group, and within three years that disease 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:10.120 had vanished from the United States. It was a disease 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.160 that I talked about to the next generation of house 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:18.000 staff purely for historic interests, so like the old timers 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.639 would talk to me about dip theory and tetanus. So 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:23.800 it just goes to show you the power of vaccines, 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:28.000 you know, admitting a child every two weeks with meningitis 0:02:28.040 --> 0:03:12.840 from this disease and now gone. 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.600 So that was doctor Hotz sharing with us one of 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.840 his stories about vaccines, and you are going to hear 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:24.519 more from him later in the episode. Hi, I'm erin Welsh. 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:25.960 And I'm Aaron omen Updike. 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.520 And this is this podcast will kill You. This is 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:33.080 the second episode in our two episode series on vaccines. 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.960 In the first episode, we covered vaccine basics, how they work, 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:39.720 the history of vaccine development, and where we stand with 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:44.320 various vaccination programs and vaccine preventable diseases today, So if 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.480 you haven't already listened to that episode, you should pause 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:50.520 right now and check it out before listening to this one. 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:55.720 Definitely. On today's episode, we're going to discuss the opposition 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:59.200 to vaccination that has really taken hold in a lot 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:02.440 of places around the world, with the result that vaccine 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:06.560 preventable diseases have increased, and we'll have some discussions on 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:07.480 what to do about it. 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:12.119 We are also joined today by two very exciting guests 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:14.760 who were kind enough to take the time to share 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:19.360 their experiences and knowledge with us. The first doctor Peter Hotez. 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:22.640 You just heard from. Doctor Hotez is dean of the 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:26.000 National School of Tropical Medicine, at Baylor College of Medicine 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.600 in Houston and is also co director of the Texas 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.720 Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. He has spent his 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:38.760 entire career working on infectious disease, particularly neglected tropical diseases, 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.440 and developing vaccines for them. We'll hear more from him 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.400 later in the episode when we talk about the most 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:49.320 common misconceptions or questions about vaccines and vaccine safety. 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:54.320 We were also thrilled to chat with Bill Nye. 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:57.120 Bill Nye, you guys like Bill. 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.880 Nye, the science guy? Have you heard of him? Not joking? 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.960 We got to chat with him about the challenges facing 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.760 science communication in this age when headlines travel at lightning 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.919 speed and it can be really difficult to distinguish between 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:13.599 information and misinformation. 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:16.760 The format of this episode is a bit different than 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:19.640 our others. So first I'll talk about the history of 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.839 vaccine opposition, and then doctor Hotez will help us go 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.480 through some of the common misconceptions about vaccines, and finally 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.239 we'll talk with Bill Nye about science communication. So let's 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:31.320 get going. 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:32.599 Let's do it. 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.560 But first first, what time is it? 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:37.799 It's quarantine? Any time? 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.160 That's right? What are we drinking today? 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:45.760 Today we're drinking injection of reason. MS. 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:48.240 What's an injection of reason? 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:52.039 Well, you know, erin It's basically a passion fruit. 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:54.400 Mohido, Oh got my favorite? 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:56.880 You do you want to know? Why? Do you want 0:05:56.880 --> 0:05:57.440 to know why? 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.120 Tell me? Tell me why passionfruit. 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:04.040 Because people get so passionate about these debates. 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:07.640 Wonderful. 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.120 Oh it's my fav also delicious, so good. 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:15.640 So it's basically rum, passion fruit, juice, mint, simple syrup, 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:17.440 lime juice, et cetera. 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.240 We'll post the full recipe for that along with our 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.360 place burrita, which is the non alcoholic version, on our 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.159 website and all of our social media channels. Yep. 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:32.080 We also really quick need to make a fun little announcement. 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.920 We are working on an episode where we answer questions 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:40.400 you send us about us, or about disease ecology or epidemiology, 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.280 or podcasting or cocktail techniques or honestly whatever you can 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:44.720 think of. 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:48.960 Anything you want to know, So send us your questions 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.760 by email to this podcast will kill you at gmail 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:53.480 dot com. 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:56.880 And if you decide to send us a question that 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.799 you want us to answer for this episode, please put 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.880 ask the Errands or something to that effect in the 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.480 subject line and let us know whether you're okay with 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:07.159 us saying your name on the episode. 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.280 We can't wait to hear from you. Now, can we 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:11.440 get goy now? 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.560 We can get gone now, We're ready. 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:17.000 Excellent after a quick word from sponsors. 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.120 In the first vaccine episode, I covered the history of 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:53.360 vaccine development and touched on some of the amazing impacts 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:57.080 they've had on the world. But throughout that entire history, 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:02.000 there's a parallel story of people to vaccination, and I 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:04.720 think it's really important to explore that story because in 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.679 tracing these histories, we can see that what's happening now 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:12.400 is not new, not really the rise in vaccine preventable 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:16.960 diseases as opposition increases, we've seen that before. And the 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:19.880 rhetoric that's being used to manipulate and incite fear in 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:25.080 people heard it before. Opposition to vaccines is as old 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.320 as vaccines themselves. By and large. When Edward Jenner smallpox 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:32.720 vaccine began making the rounds in seventeen ninety six, it 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.360 was hailed as a modern medical achievement, and vaccine rates 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:41.080 continually grew. Yes, there was outcry and political cartoons and 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:44.440 religious opposition, but in general it was viewed as a 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:48.480 positive because smallpox is horrific and people don't want to 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:50.720 get it. And if you don't believe us, listen to 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.600 episode three. Yeah, get into the gory details. 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:54.920 It's very gory. 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:59.800 Oh yeah. By the mid eighteen hundreds, though, vaccination rates 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.160 had dropped considerably, both in the US and in England. 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.920 What happened in the US a country wide anti vaccine 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.000 movement had emerged from a fringe element that was ludite 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:15.520 esque in their philosophy. So the Ludyites. Do you know 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:16.280 who the Luddites are? 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:18.160 No? I was gonna ask, can you tell me what 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:19.840 that means? Because I'm dumb? 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.480 No? No, So the Ludyites were in nineteenth century group 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:28.080 that destroyed agricultural technology like cotton, gins and so on 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.520 because they believed that machines were stealing jobs for humans. 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.880 Oh it's almost like I've heard that before. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.679 Yeah. Yeah, So the term is kind of used as 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:42.199 a catch all for anti technology, but that's in specific roots. 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:47.480 So what started out as anti vaccine murmurings took on momentum. 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.800 Satirical cartoons showing vaccinated people with animal like features like 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:57.280 horns and udders and whatever were taken as a real 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.800 warning by the uneducated public of what was actually going 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:04.720 to happen to them if they got vaccinated, and in England, 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:09.680 vaccine rates had plateaued or started to fall, also likely 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.239 because the lower disease incidents made people a bit complacent. 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:18.920 In eighteen fifty three, the newly founded Epidemiological Society of 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:23.240 London lobbied the British Parliament for a compulsory Vaccination Act, 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.280 coming on the heels of a deadly smallpox epidemic. The 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:30.800 bill required all children to be vaccinated by six months 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.480 of age, and those who were not in compliance were 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:39.120 fined or imprisoned, but there was basically no enforcement, so 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:43.880 vaccination rates fell even more. The government passed another new 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:47.360 and improved act in eighteen sixty seven, and this one 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:51.440 required parents to show a certificate proving vaccination and if 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.560 they couldn't, they were taken to court and fined. But 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.160 because the lowest vaccination rates were among the poorest due 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.360 to the cost of vaccines, they often didn't have the 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.160 money to pay for the fines or court costs, in 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.960 which case family assets were seized and sold at public 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:10.800 auction geez. And if that didn't settle the bill, someone 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:15.280 was going to jail. So this act that required vaccination 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.920 is what gave birth to the anti vaccine movement in England. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:20.160 Huh. 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:24.960 Within a few decades, tens of thousands of members belonged 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:29.680 to the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League, which urged people to 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:31.880 join as an act of patriotism. 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.120 Wow, yeah, that's fascinating. 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.760 This league spread all kinds of rumors about the smallpox vaccine, 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:42.920 like that it was made from the venom of adders, 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.520 the blood entrails and excretions of bats and toads and 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:52.360 suckling whelps. That's like a quote suckling welps. 0:11:52.400 --> 0:12:00.320 Sorry, right, any old suckling welper No any that's like 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.199 just a catch all term for baby animals, right or 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:04.319 only dogs? 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:11.720 Our thoughts, it's anything yeah weird. Yeah, well these these people. 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.839 This league also distributed pictures of vaccinated children turning into 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:20.199 all kinds of mythical monsters, and at the public auctions 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.800 where the property of those who couldn't pay the fines 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:27.760 was sold, the league held large protests, which frequently turned violent. 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.800 In eighteen ninety eight, the British government gave up the 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.520 fight and passed a conscientious objection law, which is where 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:37.520 we get the term conscientious objector. 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:41.480 Huh yeah, wow, from vaccination. 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.640 From vaccination. I really thought it was war me too, 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:49.600 but no. So within a year of passing this law, 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:54.520 more than two hundred thousand conscientious objectors had gotten their 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:59.040 pass and vaccine rates started to plummet, with smallpox outbreaks 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:03.559 following meanwhile. Around the same time, so in the mid 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:07.000 to late eighteen hundreds in the US, several prominent anti 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:11.400 vaccine voices started to grow louder, largely motivated by occultists 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.720 and mystical beliefs such as that of the Swedish mystic 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:16.200 Emmanuel Swedenborg. 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:20.760 Don't you know I'm Swedish. 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:25.880 One of Swedenborg's beliefs was that infection or contamination left 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:28.560 a scar on the soul and was viewed as sin 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:33.640 in that way, and so to Swedenborg, the wilful vaccination 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.360 of yourself or your children was morally reprehensible. 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:37.360 Wow. 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.520 The focus of these anti vaccine efforts narrowed in on children, 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:45.520 thanks in large part to an American woman named Laura Little, 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:48.720 whose six year old son died in eighteen ninety five 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:53.360 after a short and tragic life filled with injuries, ear 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:58.640 and throat infections, measles, and diphtheria, which is what ultimately 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:03.119 got him in the end. However, his death from diphtheria 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:08.800 was preceded by smallpox immunization by several months I think 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.640 like seven months or something. Oh no, yeah, which were 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:17.800 required for school. Laura, his mom, was distraught over his 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:23.920 death and sought any explanation except for diphtheria, which I 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.560 guess was too obvious or something. She concluded that it 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:30.920 wasn't theoria that caused his death, but the smallpox vaccine, 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.920 oh dear. So she took up the anti vaccine crusade, 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.600 and she, as well as all of the anti vaccine 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:43.640 voices during this time and well into today, had no 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:48.480 regard for truth and constantly spouted statistics or medical quote 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:53.160 facts that were blatantly false. But her voice was reaching 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:57.160 a sympathetic audience because due to the political climate at 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.160 the time, people felt that the government had to too 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.520 much reach. So it was a campaign of fear. And 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.600 I think we all know how difficult it is for 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.120 logic to fight fear. Yeah, And when it's something as 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:14.160 important at stake as children, it's really easy to win 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:15.920 people over with that fear. 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:17.480 Yeah, it is so. 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:21.360 Laura Little's anti vaccine campaign was supported in large part 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.280 by The Truth Teller, which was a paper or like 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:29.120 a journal kind of thing whose primary role was advertising 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:33.000 for homeopathy and snake oil remedies, both of which had 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:35.720 taken a major blow when in nineteen oh six Teddy 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.760 Roosevelt signed into law the Pure Food and Drug Act 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.520 that forbade false advertising and unregulated ingredients. 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:47.040 These were like old school blogs, man, basically, yeah, I 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:49.480 love I love it. I love that they've been around 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:50.640 for so long. 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:56.120 Yeah, oh yeah. So they lost this battle once Teddy 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.800 Roosevelt signed that into law, and so they switched their 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:03.840 attention to vaccine publishing completely made up exposees supported by 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:09.320 authentic facts, which were anything but at this time. So 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.640 the early nineteen hundreds, it is true that vaccine production 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:16.040 wasn't as well regulated as it is today, and there 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:18.400 were some bad batches that caused a lot of suffering 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:20.720 and some deaths, and I mentioned some of these in 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:24.280 the last episode. But those events, which were the exception 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.960 and not the rule, still did not justify her campaign 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:34.040 against vaccination, which was based on their unnaturalness and her 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:39.320 belief in their immorality. Her issues with vaccines had nothing 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.080 to do with regulation. It was just more of a 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:46.080 hand wavy. You're putting this artificial thing into your body 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:48.800 and it's harming you in some way that I can't 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.720 define or describe because I have no experience or knowledge 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:56.640 of molecular immunology, not that anyone did at that time. 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.240 But it didn't matter to her, right because what good 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.520 are facts and knowledge when faced with righteousness and fear. 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:07.160 The message of Laura Little and others in this anti 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.800 vaccine movement was being heard loud and clear across the US, 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.480 and their impact was clearly seen in the increased infection 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.920 rate and death toll of vaccine preventable diseases, notably smallpox, 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:21.920 which had almost been eradicated in the US in the 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:26.280 eighteen hundreds geez. The vaccine opposition movement and the prevalence 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.760 of vaccine preventable illnesses had grown so much, in fact, 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.960 that it resulted in a nineteen oh five Supreme Court 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:39.480 decision about compulsory vaccination, Jacobson versus Massachusetts, heard from a 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:44.560 Swedish born pastor where vaccination was mandatory, who felt that 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:50.000 vaccination violated his rights as an individual The Court decided 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:53.280 seven to two in favor of the state, so upholding 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:57.399 the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:01.080 court acknowledged that, yeah for certain people who have medical restrictions, 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:05.600 forced vaccination would be a violation, but Jacobsen didn't have 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:10.120 any legitimate grounds for denying vaccination. The court stated that 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.600 individual rights are superseded by the rights of masses when 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:19.119 individual rights may harm others. This decision, however, did not 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:23.200 permit the forceful vaccination of people, but upheld that states 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:27.160 could be permitted to enforce legal and financial consequences if 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:32.199 someone refused to vaccinate. And seventeen years later, after this 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:37.360 Supreme Court decision, the Court doubled down on vaccine refusal 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:42.199 and ruled that a school could refuse admission to an 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:46.040 unvaccinated student. And that's being talked about a lot today 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:51.000 in headlines. The reasons for opposition to vaccines in the 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:53.920 eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds came in a lot 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:58.399 of different flavors, ranging from spirituality or religious beliefs, to 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:02.199 a deep fear that personal rights were being violated, to 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:06.359 legitimate concern about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. So 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.480 let's just give ourselves a bit of historical context to 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:13.639 see if we can understand where these views are coming from. Okay, so, 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.879 for about the first sixty ish years of the smallpox vaccines, 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:22.560 use microbiology wasn't a thing. No one knew that microbes 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.479 caused disease and could be transmitted from person to person, 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.679 and even once the field developed, it would be a 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.320 while for the science to reach the general public. People 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.280 tend to be afraid of things they don't understand, so 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.480 it makes sense that they would have been scared of vaccines. 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:42.560 They had been equally scared of variolation. I can't really 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.840 speak to the spirituality or religious aspect of vaccines being immoral, 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.000 but I guess it sort of just goes along with 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.320 people being afraid of something that seemed to work, like magic. 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.240 I don't know, but anyway, But then there were the 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.639 people who were opposed to vaccines, not necessarily because they 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:03.280 hated it vaccines themselves, but because vaccines represented the long 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.240 arm of the government, one more way for the government 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.639 to violate your personal rights. And yeah, I mean the 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.879 repercussions for not vaccinating could be severe and involve violence. 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:18.960 They were also classist and racist in part because not 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.439 everyone was equally targeted to prove they had gotten their vaccines, 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:26.160 and certain groups were blamed for spreading disease over others. 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:28.800 Even when totally not true. 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:33.600 Even when totally not true, compulsory vaccination was one small 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:37.880 part of many different groups campaigns against government overreach, which 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.840 is why you see anti vaccine advocacy from abolitionist groups, 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:46.080 suffrage groups, and other groups that seemed very forward thinking otherwise. 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:50.240 And finally, there were those opposed because they didn't believe 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:53.240 vaccines were safe and there was some truth to that. 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.600 Vaccines did not have the oversight that they do today, 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.399 and there had been serious incidents. But because many of 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:04.160 these people wanted to see reform in vaccine regulation rather 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:07.520 than no vaccination whatsoever, they tended to be drowned out 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:11.640 by the other reasons. Of course, I'm oversimplifying here quite 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.080 a bit. People could certainly be opposed to vaccines for 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:18.000 many different reasons, all at the same time, but these 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.400 seemed to be the strongest motivators. And some of these 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:24.879 reasons probably sound a bit familiar to the rhetoric of 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:28.960 the anti vaccine lobby today. And there are other echoes 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.919 claiming that doctors are evil and motivated only by greed 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:37.960 or worse, a desire to cause human suffering, public rallies 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:40.600 that are filled with a burning rage resulting in the 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.439 destruction of images of vaccine advocates, such as when an 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:48.600 effigy of Edward Jenner was hanged and decapitated, or when 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.159 giant photos of the director of the CDC's National Immunization 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:57.840 Program were labeled terrorists in big block letters wow wow. 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:02.199 Language that planted feelings of paranoia or the thought of 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:05.639 conspiracy in anyone who would listen happened to both then 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:10.480 and now. And then there's the outright lying about vaccines 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:15.680 being unsafe to further their cause. Minimizing the deadliness of 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:20.200 vaccine preventable illnesses, suggesting that natural infection is better was 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:23.640 another big line of both then and now, which, by 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:25.760 the way, it's not it's not. 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:31.040 That's a really scary one too, because it's yeah. 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.760 So who stood to benefit from opposition to vaccines back then? 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:39.760 First it was smallpox varilators, whose job security was under 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:44.480 serious threat when the smallpox vaccine, much much safer than variolation, 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:45.840 came onto the scene. 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:48.240 Wait, that's interesting, isn't that. 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:54.320 Oh, Yeah, it was also people who developed or sold 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:58.600 alternative treatments for vaccine preventable diseases, just your typical snake 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:02.560 oil salesman. Let's throw lawyers into the mix, because there's 0:23:02.560 --> 0:23:06.560 plenty of those wanting to capitalize on this. These people 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:09.600 who could make money off of parents fear and grief 0:23:09.760 --> 0:23:13.800 stoked those flames until the movement grew and grew, and 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:16.840 that I think is the biggest similarity between the historical 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:21.400 and modern opposition to vaccines. A moral, greedy and opportunistic 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:25.600 people preying on a vulnerable population using lies and manipulative 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:32.160 rhetoric to make money. Yep, let's talk about the origins 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:37.960 of the modern anti vaccine lobby. Oh gosh. As government 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:41.800 oversight of vaccine development and deployment increased throughout the first 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:46.520 half of the twentieth century, vaccine oppositions settled down, never 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:49.520 completely going away, but fading into the background as the 0:23:49.560 --> 0:23:53.960 benefits of vaccines became obvious. But that would change in 0:23:54.080 --> 0:23:58.480 nineteen seventy three, when an English pediatrician named John Wilson 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:01.600 gave a presentation in which he said that the Protessi's 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:05.600 vaccine was linked to frequent and dangerous health outcomes in children, 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:09.800 including a fever leading to seizures, coma, and possibly death. 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:13.760 His study was the result of him seeking out and 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:18.240 compiling these cases, and his findings were preliminary and not 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:23.120 independently confirmed. Despite this, his claim quickly made its way 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:26.760 onto the headlines of newspapers, calling for vaccine production to 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:34.120 immediately cease. The year before Wilson made his announcement, seventy 0:24:34.200 --> 0:24:38.840 nine percent of British children were immunized against protussis. Four 0:24:38.920 --> 0:24:43.640 years after his announcement, that number fell to thirty one percent. 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:48.760 Oh my goodness, yeah, thirty one percent, and the drop 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:53.520 was largely due to family practice doctors not recommending the vaccine. 0:24:53.920 --> 0:25:01.040 Ooh all, because this one preliminary, extremely biased study wasn't 0:25:01.080 --> 0:25:06.360 even a study. It was a collection of anecdotes. As 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:09.359 you might expect, an outbreak of whooping cough occurred in 0:25:09.400 --> 0:25:13.240 which over one hundred thousand children were infected, five thousand 0:25:13.280 --> 0:25:18.399 were hospitalized, two hundred developed severe pneumonia, eighty had seizures, 0:25:18.920 --> 0:25:24.840 and later reports suggest six hundred children died. Six hundred 0:25:24.960 --> 0:25:28.440 children died of a preventable disease because of a study 0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:34.840 that was essentially stories, just a collection of stories and Wilson. 0:25:35.000 --> 0:25:38.879 This pediatrician found himself a nice gig as advisor to 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:44.119 the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children, which quickly 0:25:44.160 --> 0:25:49.840 began seeking monetary reparations for their suffering. Ultimately, it would 0:25:49.880 --> 0:25:52.640 turn out that the children in Wilson's study likely had 0:25:52.720 --> 0:25:56.720 Dravet's syndrome, which is a genetic disorder caused by mutations 0:25:56.760 --> 0:26:00.879 that happen long before birth, nothing to do with vaccines 0:26:01.119 --> 0:26:04.919 at all. While many physicians were taken in by Wilson's study, 0:26:05.480 --> 0:26:09.320 researchers wanted to see a carefully planned study with appropriate 0:26:09.359 --> 0:26:13.359 controls to determine whether his claims would hold true. Doctor 0:26:13.440 --> 0:26:17.560 David Miller, a professor of community medicine, launched a comprehensive 0:26:17.600 --> 0:26:22.119 study examining the relationship between children with neurological illnesses and 0:26:22.200 --> 0:26:28.080 the DTP vaccine. He found a statistically significant association between 0:26:28.080 --> 0:26:31.680 the two. According to his study, three doses of the 0:26:31.760 --> 0:26:35.600 vaccine caused permanent brain damage in one in one hundred 0:26:35.640 --> 0:26:40.040 thousand children. This study would be used as the basis 0:26:40.080 --> 0:26:43.800 for countless lawsuits over the course of the next several decades. 0:26:44.720 --> 0:26:46.399 Put a pin in that study. Recover. 0:26:46.800 --> 0:26:51.240 Miller's study Miller study one in one hundred thousand three doses. 0:26:52.400 --> 0:26:55.320 In response to the headlines about the possible dangers of 0:26:55.359 --> 0:26:59.560 Protessa's vaccines, parents began to organize crusades and by radio 0:26:59.600 --> 0:27:02.520 time to time get their message out. Fear is an 0:27:02.520 --> 0:27:06.520 effective motivator, and I get it. There's a voice in 0:27:06.560 --> 0:27:09.560 your head that says what if. And for some reason, 0:27:10.080 --> 0:27:13.199 that what if question that the anti vaccine lobby asks 0:27:13.359 --> 0:27:16.399 is what if I choose to have my kid vaccinated 0:27:16.480 --> 0:27:20.080 and something bad happens, Not what if I don't get 0:27:20.119 --> 0:27:22.920 my kid vaccinated and they die of a preventable illness? 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:24.200 Yeah. 0:27:24.400 --> 0:27:29.120 Yeah, The anti vaccine movement, just like an infection, was spreading. 0:27:30.400 --> 0:27:34.520 In nineteen eighty two, in Washington, DC, a TV station 0:27:34.720 --> 0:27:39.399 broadcasts a documentary made by reporter Leah Thompson called DPT 0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:43.880 Vaccine Roulette, which featured a bunch of grief stricken parents 0:27:43.880 --> 0:27:46.680 who recounted their tales of how their children had suffered 0:27:46.760 --> 0:27:51.119 due to the vaccine. The camera slowly panned over horribly 0:27:51.200 --> 0:27:55.119 sick or developmentally disabled children and their teary parents, with 0:27:55.200 --> 0:27:58.840 a voiceover that stated that these tragic cases were all 0:27:58.960 --> 0:28:03.480 due to the protest. Part of the DPT vaccine. The 0:28:03.560 --> 0:28:08.000 voiceover also minimized the seriousness and often deadly outcomes of 0:28:08.080 --> 0:28:12.960 actual infection with protussis, and it overstated the adverse outcomes 0:28:13.000 --> 0:28:18.119 of vaccination. It made unsubstantiated claims that dozens of children 0:28:18.200 --> 0:28:21.679 every year were permanently brain damaged by the vaccine, a 0:28:21.760 --> 0:28:27.320 claim that after many many scientific studies, epidemiological and otherwise, 0:28:27.800 --> 0:28:32.320 was found to be completely false. Leah Thompson, the reporter 0:28:32.359 --> 0:28:36.159 who made this documentary, She called it the most important 0:28:36.200 --> 0:28:40.280 story of her life and said only that she regrets 0:28:40.360 --> 0:28:45.160 not telling it ten years earlier. For parents with children 0:28:45.160 --> 0:28:49.280 that had suffered seizures or been diagnosed with developmental disabilities 0:28:49.560 --> 0:28:53.479 and had asked themselves why, why us, they suddenly had 0:28:53.480 --> 0:28:58.200 an answer. It was the vaccine. The TV stations set 0:28:58.240 --> 0:29:00.880 up a hotline for people to call in, and they 0:29:00.920 --> 0:29:05.800 provided an extra service. They connected callers with other callers, 0:29:06.360 --> 0:29:12.760 allowing for a massive grassroots movement to form WHOA. Soon 0:29:12.840 --> 0:29:15.760 after it aired, a couple of people with no background 0:29:15.840 --> 0:29:19.440 in medicine or science found it a group called Dissatisfied 0:29:19.520 --> 0:29:25.880 Parents Together DPT. This group would only grow in members 0:29:25.960 --> 0:29:29.400 in financial backing over time. In the nineteen nineties, they 0:29:29.400 --> 0:29:33.280 made a slight adjustment. They changed their name to the 0:29:33.400 --> 0:29:38.720 National Vaccine Information Center what, and their singular goal was 0:29:38.800 --> 0:29:42.320 to convince parents that vaccines are far more dangerous than 0:29:42.320 --> 0:29:43.560 the diseases they prevent. 0:29:43.960 --> 0:29:47.600 Are you kidding me? They called themselves the National Vaccine 0:29:47.640 --> 0:29:54.600 Information Center. Yep, that is just oh no, that. 0:29:54.720 --> 0:29:58.120 Is a classic branding technique that's used by the anti 0:29:58.200 --> 0:30:01.280 vaccine lobby. They say, we are not anti vaccine, we 0:30:01.320 --> 0:30:04.280 are pro safety in vaccines or whatever else like. It's 0:30:04.560 --> 0:30:13.160 very it's very manipulative and very sneaky. It's yucky, it's disgusting. Yeah, 0:30:13.400 --> 0:30:18.080 this website, their organization, whatever, is full of blatant misinformation 0:30:18.480 --> 0:30:21.320 that's pushed on fearful parents who don't feel heard by 0:30:21.320 --> 0:30:25.880 their pediatricians. In nineteen eighty five, the two founders published 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:30.440 a book that became a bestseller, Money, Money, Money, that 0:30:30.520 --> 0:30:34.400 stated that vaccination in general was directly responsible for all 0:30:34.560 --> 0:30:39.560 kinds of neurological impairments and children, including but not limited to, seizures, 0:30:39.640 --> 0:30:46.360 chronic and svalopathy, and autism. Also all disproven, also all false. 0:30:47.160 --> 0:30:50.400 As you might expect, things quickly turned litigious as parents 0:30:50.440 --> 0:30:53.760 sought to get some financial remedy for their child's health issues, 0:30:54.440 --> 0:30:57.680 and cases like these required scientific experts to be on 0:30:57.720 --> 0:31:02.520 the stand to give their professional opinion. The prosecutions experts 0:31:02.760 --> 0:31:08.520 tended to be fringe. One who was in several trials 0:31:08.520 --> 0:31:11.560 in the UK was a real piece of work, as 0:31:11.560 --> 0:31:14.760 we like to say. His name was Gordon T. Stewart, 0:31:15.080 --> 0:31:18.000 and he used his credentials as a physician to promote 0:31:18.120 --> 0:31:22.400 radical ideas about disease transmission, including that the human immune 0:31:22.440 --> 0:31:26.920 deficiency virus HIV didn't actually cause AIDS, but that AIDS 0:31:27.040 --> 0:31:30.120 was just a manifestation of the gay lifestyle. 0:31:30.440 --> 0:31:33.320 Oh my god, I'm gonna oh, I'm going to rage. 0:31:33.680 --> 0:31:38.160 Okay, just wait, just wait. So many people, a disturbing 0:31:38.240 --> 0:31:41.120 number of people bought into this, including the President of 0:31:41.160 --> 0:31:45.680 South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. It's estimated that three hundred and 0:31:45.760 --> 0:31:52.239 sixty five thousand South Africans died unnecessarily because of the 0:31:52.280 --> 0:31:59.280 policies of HIV denial. So this was the guy who 0:31:59.360 --> 0:32:03.200 was the star witness on several anti vaccine trials in 0:32:03.280 --> 0:32:05.920 the UK, which were highly publicized. 0:32:06.040 --> 0:32:08.560 Cool cool, cool, cool, cool, cool cool cool yea. 0:32:09.320 --> 0:32:13.720 The rulings were consistently against the parents, who sometimes failed 0:32:13.720 --> 0:32:17.120 to disclose that their child actually had been diagnosed with 0:32:17.160 --> 0:32:21.880 epilepsy prior to being given any vaccines, or that the 0:32:21.920 --> 0:32:26.040 fever and spasms arose five months after the vaccine was administered, 0:32:26.200 --> 0:32:29.320 not seven hours after they as they had initially claimed. 0:32:30.000 --> 0:32:33.480 Throughout all this, Gordon Stewart made a fool of himself, 0:32:33.880 --> 0:32:37.640 contradicting himself and being caught out time after time. 0:32:38.120 --> 0:32:38.600 Shocking. 0:32:39.040 --> 0:32:42.120 He also made you know, some money, as in his 0:32:42.280 --> 0:32:46.160 role as professional witness, not a single bit of the 0:32:46.200 --> 0:32:50.280 prosecution's expert testimony could be supported by actual scientific research, 0:32:50.480 --> 0:32:54.600 and the cases slowed down in the UK, unlike in 0:32:54.680 --> 0:32:57.400 the US, where things got more litigious. 0:32:57.800 --> 0:32:59.560 Great the amount of. 0:32:59.560 --> 0:33:03.840 Money requested in these court cases in the US rose 0:33:04.080 --> 0:33:07.280 from twenty five million dollars in nineteen eighty one to 0:33:07.640 --> 0:33:10.800 three point two billion dollars in nineteen eighty five. 0:33:12.200 --> 0:33:14.760 Whoa in four years? 0:33:15.120 --> 0:33:17.960 Yeah, I mean, you hear about one success and you're like, 0:33:18.040 --> 0:33:22.560 oh hmm. These court cases were quite a bit different 0:33:22.600 --> 0:33:25.400 in the US compared to the UK. First of all, 0:33:25.440 --> 0:33:28.120 the defendant in the UK cases tended to be the 0:33:28.120 --> 0:33:31.120 physician or health services, although every now and then a 0:33:31.120 --> 0:33:35.000 pharmaceutical company would stand in whereas in the US it 0:33:35.080 --> 0:33:39.000 was often the pharmaceutical companies themselves. At the beginning of 0:33:39.040 --> 0:33:42.600 this rise in lawsuits, pharmaceutical companies settled out of court, 0:33:43.000 --> 0:33:47.040 but the lawsuits just kept coming in. In response, the 0:33:47.040 --> 0:33:50.080 companies began increasing the prices of their vaccines to pay 0:33:50.120 --> 0:33:56.880 for the lawsuits. Within three years of that DPT vaccine 0:33:56.960 --> 0:34:01.400 roulette documentary quote unquote airing, the cost of one dose 0:34:01.520 --> 0:34:06.040 of the DTP vaccine was thirty five times higher than 0:34:06.080 --> 0:34:11.960 it was in nineteen eighty two. Uh yeah, So there 0:34:12.000 --> 0:34:14.320 seemed to be only one way forward for these companies 0:34:14.920 --> 0:34:21.240 stop making vaccines, and that naturally led to a shortage. Basically, 0:34:21.320 --> 0:34:25.360 they had to be rationed out under an unideal vaccination schedule. 0:34:25.760 --> 0:34:27.640 Cool cool, cool. 0:34:27.840 --> 0:34:30.759 But the funny thing is pressure was still on to 0:34:30.880 --> 0:34:34.480 create a new protests vaccine, despite the first one not 0:34:34.560 --> 0:34:38.640 being shown to cause epilepsy or any other neurological impairments. 0:34:39.840 --> 0:34:43.279 But the a cellular protests vaccine, which is in the 0:34:43.360 --> 0:34:47.000 DETAP nowadays, came onto the market in the nineteen eighties 0:34:47.000 --> 0:34:51.120 and nineties. With all this uproar about vaccine safety, there 0:34:51.160 --> 0:34:53.759 was increasing pressure on the government to do something to 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:57.960 ensure that children were protected. In nineteen eighty six, Reagan, 0:34:58.239 --> 0:35:01.360 US president at the time, bind into law the National 0:35:01.440 --> 0:35:05.800 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which tasked a bunch of highly trained, 0:35:05.840 --> 0:35:10.160 credentialed researchers with investigating the safety and potential health outcomes 0:35:10.160 --> 0:35:14.080 of various vaccines. After four years, they determined that there 0:35:14.160 --> 0:35:19.719 was absolutely no link between the DTP vaccine and autism, meningitis, 0:35:19.840 --> 0:35:24.560 chronic neurologic damage, spasms, and many many other side effects. 0:35:25.320 --> 0:35:28.880 The first line of this report read, quote next to 0:35:28.920 --> 0:35:33.080 clean water, no single intervention has had so profound an 0:35:33.080 --> 0:35:36.960 effect on reducing mortality from childhood diseases as had the 0:35:37.000 --> 0:35:43.280 widespread introduction of vaccines. This act put into place several 0:35:43.320 --> 0:35:47.359 programs to increase vaccine safety and information access even more. 0:35:48.200 --> 0:35:52.200 The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System was established VAHS, which 0:35:52.239 --> 0:35:57.000 requires that all healthcare providers report certain adverse events, regardless 0:35:57.000 --> 0:36:00.279 if there's a causative link. It also says up the 0:36:00.360 --> 0:36:04.040 National Vaccine Program Office, which works with various other branches 0:36:04.040 --> 0:36:07.520 of the US government to coordinate the vaccine immunization campaigns. 0:36:08.600 --> 0:36:12.040 It also require that all healthcare providers give their patients 0:36:12.040 --> 0:36:15.239 an informational sheet describing the disease and the risks and 0:36:15.280 --> 0:36:18.160 benefits of the vaccine. So you've probably gotten this with 0:36:18.239 --> 0:36:22.880 the flu shot every year or whatever else yellow fever shot. 0:36:22.920 --> 0:36:24.719 Yeah, sure, or when you take your kids to get 0:36:24.719 --> 0:36:27.480 all their vaccines that as well. 0:36:27.680 --> 0:36:31.440 What happens when a vaccine does cause an adverse reaction, 0:36:32.320 --> 0:36:34.560 So we can actually see how this plays out. With 0:36:34.600 --> 0:36:37.719 the rotavirus vaccine that had been licensed in nineteen ninety eight, 0:36:38.600 --> 0:36:43.440 there had been reports of into susception, which is when 0:36:43.480 --> 0:36:46.560 one segment of the small intestine kind of telescopes or 0:36:46.680 --> 0:36:48.160 goes into another and gets stuck. 0:36:48.400 --> 0:36:56.200 It's gross, it's gross, it sucks into it. You're intestines. 0:36:56.880 --> 0:37:02.320 Well, this horrible thing was happening infants, which is unusual, 0:37:02.360 --> 0:37:05.120 so it can happen just naturally, but this was happening 0:37:05.160 --> 0:37:08.080 in infants, and that was not normal and not good. 0:37:08.800 --> 0:37:13.080 Fifteen children experiencing this were reported to the Vaccine Adverse 0:37:13.120 --> 0:37:16.480 Events Reporting System VARs within ten months of the vaccine 0:37:16.480 --> 0:37:21.560 being licensed. The CDC immediately pulled its recommendation for the vaccine, 0:37:21.680 --> 0:37:25.319 even though the risk of this adverse event was still minuscule, 0:37:25.800 --> 0:37:28.680 and the company that produced it stopped selling it, so 0:37:28.719 --> 0:37:30.799 it was just done off the shelves. No more of this, 0:37:31.160 --> 0:37:35.520 and you said, fifteen kids, fifteen kids, okay, fifteen one 0:37:35.560 --> 0:37:35.919 to five. 0:37:36.239 --> 0:37:37.080 Yeah. 0:37:37.440 --> 0:37:40.759 Seven years later, a new and safer roadavirus vaccine came 0:37:40.800 --> 0:37:43.920 onto the market with no such adverse side effects scene. 0:37:44.600 --> 0:37:50.479 So this response happened rapidly and very effectively shut down 0:37:50.640 --> 0:37:53.680 any any dangerous aspect of this. And so that should 0:37:53.760 --> 0:37:56.960 reassure parents, and it should have that not only are 0:37:56.960 --> 0:38:02.040 the CDC and other government organizations actly monitoring the safety 0:38:02.080 --> 0:38:06.040 of currently available vaccines, they are also incredibly cautious when 0:38:06.040 --> 0:38:09.760 dealing with the lives of children. Yeah, okay, So let's 0:38:09.760 --> 0:38:12.480 go back to that pin that you put in that 0:38:12.520 --> 0:38:14.000 study that sets so much of this. 0:38:14.040 --> 0:38:17.520 Off, Miller ten one in ten. 0:38:17.320 --> 0:38:23.160 Thousand, one hundred thousand came so close and three doses 0:38:23.200 --> 0:38:28.080 of DTP, Yeah okay. This study inspired many other researchers 0:38:28.120 --> 0:38:32.120 to try and replicate Miller's findings. Some studies asked what 0:38:32.400 --> 0:38:36.080 was the mechanism by which the protests vaccine caused brain damage, 0:38:36.480 --> 0:38:40.600 and there wasn't one. Actual protesses, like a live infection, 0:38:40.800 --> 0:38:43.640 can cause brain damage by reducing the amount of oxygen 0:38:43.680 --> 0:38:46.920 in your blood due to non stop coughing, but the 0:38:46.960 --> 0:38:51.440 protests vaccine consisted of whole killed bacterial cells, so their 0:38:51.480 --> 0:38:55.200 presence alone could not and did not cause that oxygen depletion. 0:38:56.160 --> 0:38:59.040 And maybe it was tiny amounts of endotoxin in the vaccine, 0:38:59.440 --> 0:39:02.560 but that didn't work either. And atoxin causes brain damage 0:39:02.600 --> 0:39:06.799 through a pathway that necessarily involves fever, but many of 0:39:06.840 --> 0:39:10.440 the children who had seizures or mental disabilities never had 0:39:10.440 --> 0:39:14.480 a fever after the vaccine. Other studies looked at the 0:39:14.520 --> 0:39:18.440 epidemiological side of things, so one compared two groups of children. 0:39:18.760 --> 0:39:22.360 In one group, which was one hundred and thirty thousand children, 0:39:23.440 --> 0:39:26.640 the kids had just received the dt vaccine, so the 0:39:26.640 --> 0:39:30.160 diptheria and tetanus vaccine. In the other group, also about 0:39:30.160 --> 0:39:33.319 one hundred and thirty thousand children, they received the full 0:39:33.520 --> 0:39:39.239 DTP vaccine including protessis. The researchers then looked to see 0:39:39.280 --> 0:39:41.760 are there more cases of brain damage or other negative 0:39:41.760 --> 0:39:46.640 outcomes in the DTP group. No, there was absolutely no 0:39:46.680 --> 0:39:50.960 difference between the groups. None. Another study who looked at 0:39:50.960 --> 0:39:54.600 how changing the vaccination's schedule might affect the occurrence of 0:39:54.640 --> 0:39:58.840 this if the vaccine caused epilepsy or other negative side effects, 0:39:58.920 --> 0:40:01.560 the occurrence of those should change along with the change 0:40:01.600 --> 0:40:05.640 in vaccine schedule, but it didn't. So time and time again, 0:40:06.200 --> 0:40:09.560 studies involving tens or hundreds of thousands of children all 0:40:09.600 --> 0:40:12.440 around the world simply could not find a link between 0:40:12.480 --> 0:40:17.000 the DTP vaccine and any epilepsy or other neurological damage. 0:40:17.120 --> 0:40:21.120 Miller himself kind of came under scrutiny after all of 0:40:21.160 --> 0:40:24.280 these studies could not find a link. So it turns 0:40:24.320 --> 0:40:26.640 out came out during a trial that doctors in the 0:40:26.680 --> 0:40:31.440 study had actually been instructed if there is doubt, code 0:40:31.520 --> 0:40:36.640 the worst picture, so they had been advised to draw 0:40:36.760 --> 0:40:39.239 conclusions when there were not conclusions to be drawn, to 0:40:39.600 --> 0:40:43.000 paint the horrible picture, to give the worst outcome what 0:40:44.120 --> 0:40:48.120 It was also revealed that the study had been published prematurely, 0:40:48.560 --> 0:40:51.879 with only a subset of the children said it had 0:40:51.880 --> 0:40:55.560 studied were actually involved in the analysis, so when the 0:40:55.600 --> 0:40:59.200 follow up was finally completed and the data were reanalyzed, 0:40:59.840 --> 0:41:02.280 no association was found. 0:41:02.400 --> 0:41:05.439 It's like a really number one rule is you can't 0:41:05.560 --> 0:41:07.920 only analyze on the subset of your data. 0:41:08.280 --> 0:41:11.480 Right And also if you're a co author on that paper, 0:41:12.239 --> 0:41:19.160 do your due diligence and make sure it's done right. Yeah, man, okay, 0:41:19.920 --> 0:41:24.840 But with the Miller study, damage had already been done. 0:41:25.000 --> 0:41:28.400 And speaking of damage done, let's talk Wakefield. 0:41:29.400 --> 0:41:33.080 Do we have to We absolutely have to, We have to. 0:41:34.760 --> 0:41:39.240 Discredited Doctor Andrew Wakefield got his medical degree at Saint 0:41:39.239 --> 0:41:44.440 Mary's Hospital in England, specializing in gastorentrology. He did not, 0:41:44.640 --> 0:41:47.839 to my knowledge, although I could be wrong, receive any 0:41:48.000 --> 0:41:51.600 formal training in medical research beyond what might be covered 0:41:51.640 --> 0:41:54.400 as part of medical school, which means he was not 0:41:54.600 --> 0:41:59.160 trained to, designed, to conduct or analyze scientific studies. But 0:41:59.360 --> 0:42:02.200 he wanted to make a name for himself. On February 0:42:02.280 --> 0:42:06.200 twenty eighth, nineteen ninety eight, Andrew Wakefield published an article 0:42:06.200 --> 0:42:09.200 in The Lancet, which is an old, well known and 0:42:09.239 --> 0:42:13.920 well respected medical journal. In this article, Wakefield describes his 0:42:14.000 --> 0:42:18.840 study in which he linked impaired neurological development and autism 0:42:19.000 --> 0:42:24.439 with MMR vaccination. His sample size was twelve children, eight 0:42:24.480 --> 0:42:29.120 of which he said had developed autism following the MMR vaccine. 0:42:29.520 --> 0:42:33.000 Wakefield didn't posit any mechanism by which the vaccine could 0:42:33.000 --> 0:42:37.400 cause autism beyond some vague handwaving. But when this report 0:42:37.480 --> 0:42:42.040 came out, people latched onto it. It promised an answer 0:42:42.239 --> 0:42:44.359 for so many parents that had been waiting for one 0:42:44.400 --> 0:42:48.080 for so long. Let's take a closer look at Wakefield 0:42:48.120 --> 0:42:52.719 Study because it really needs it. An investigative journalist named 0:42:52.719 --> 0:42:55.720 Brian Deere focused on the Wakefield Study over the course 0:42:56.360 --> 0:42:59.600 of six years from two thousand and four to twenty ten. 0:43:00.520 --> 0:43:03.440 Deer was suspicious of the study after reporting on the 0:43:03.560 --> 0:43:06.520 many class action lawsuits that seemed to be motivated by 0:43:06.560 --> 0:43:09.759 greed and by the lawyers preying on grieving parents over 0:43:09.800 --> 0:43:13.920 the supposed vaccine connection. Over the course of his investigation, 0:43:14.560 --> 0:43:18.880 Deer examined every aspect of the Wakefield Study and uncovered 0:43:18.920 --> 0:43:22.560 some pretty appalling things. Starting in two thousand and four, 0:43:22.719 --> 0:43:25.440 he announced his findings in a series of reports from 0:43:25.440 --> 0:43:31.160 two thousand and four twenty ten. What did he find Well, first, 0:43:32.080 --> 0:43:37.879 Wakefield was straight up paid to fabricate these findings, just paid, 0:43:38.360 --> 0:43:41.880 just straight up. Yeah. An attorney named Richard Barr paid 0:43:42.000 --> 0:43:45.239 for Wakefield Study and put him in contact with the 0:43:45.280 --> 0:43:49.400 twelve kids. These twelve kids were selected by Bar because 0:43:49.400 --> 0:43:51.879 they were all part of his lawsuit to get more 0:43:51.920 --> 0:43:57.520 money from vaccine companies. And it goes deeper when publishing 0:43:57.560 --> 0:43:59.840 in any peer review journals, you are supposed to just 0:44:00.040 --> 0:44:03.719 close whether you have any potential conflicts of interest, and 0:44:03.880 --> 0:44:06.279 you also have to state where your funding comes from. 0:44:06.520 --> 0:44:12.040 It's standard practice. Wakefield lied on both counts. He didn't 0:44:12.040 --> 0:44:14.160 say he was getting any money from the lawyer, and 0:44:14.239 --> 0:44:16.840 he didn't say where his funds were coming from. And 0:44:16.920 --> 0:44:20.320 he also lied when directly asked by the British Medical 0:44:20.360 --> 0:44:24.239 Research Council. He didn't disclose that a his study was 0:44:24.400 --> 0:44:27.680 fully funded by an attorney actively seeking remuneration in a 0:44:27.760 --> 0:44:32.120 lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. B that the kids in his 0:44:32.200 --> 0:44:35.319 study were all involved in the lawsuit, and see that 0:44:35.440 --> 0:44:38.600 he himself had already received fifty thousand pounds for his work. 0:44:39.480 --> 0:44:42.120 Fifty thousand Gee, yeah. 0:44:42.640 --> 0:44:43.839 That's a lot of casual law. 0:44:44.160 --> 0:44:46.200 Yeah. 0:44:46.239 --> 0:44:48.879 Nor did he disclose to the Council or his co 0:44:48.960 --> 0:44:52.000 authors that he had put the children through unethical and 0:44:52.120 --> 0:44:59.040 painful medical procedures, including lumbar punctures, general anesthesia and intrusive 0:44:59.080 --> 0:45:06.160 bowel imaging. Why great question, money, Money is the answer, 0:45:07.239 --> 0:45:09.480 money and some sort of other agenda. I don't know. 0:45:10.600 --> 0:45:14.759 And it didn't end there. It turns out Wakefield wasn't 0:45:14.920 --> 0:45:18.640 even opposed to vaccines. He was just opposed to ones 0:45:18.680 --> 0:45:22.320 that he couldn't directly profit off of. He had actually 0:45:22.360 --> 0:45:25.800 filed for patents for his own measles, mumps and rebella vaccine, 0:45:26.360 --> 0:45:29.600 and this study was just step one in trying to 0:45:29.719 --> 0:45:33.680 discredit the existing safe vaccine and to strike fear into 0:45:33.760 --> 0:45:35.960 parents so that he could get them to opt for 0:45:36.040 --> 0:45:37.320 his vaccine instead. 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:42.520 Oh yeah, this is deeper than I knew. 0:45:42.880 --> 0:45:45.520 Oh yeah. It also turns out that he paid at 0:45:45.520 --> 0:45:50.280 his son's birthday party. He paid his son's friends five 0:45:50.320 --> 0:45:57.440 pounds each to draw blood from them. 0:45:57.840 --> 0:46:02.680 Yeah, I'm sorry, that's just where were their parents? 0:46:03.719 --> 0:46:04.560 It's a great question. 0:46:04.640 --> 0:46:08.040 There was his Oh dear yep. 0:46:10.080 --> 0:46:14.320 Once these extremely unethical behaviors were revealed, there was public 0:46:14.360 --> 0:46:18.040 outcry and Wakefield was stripped of his license in twenty ten. 0:46:18.680 --> 0:46:23.480 That's why he's discredited. Doctor Andrew Wickfield no longer doctor, 0:46:23.640 --> 0:46:28.239 no longer a doctor, cannot practice. The Lancet retracted the 0:46:28.239 --> 0:46:32.919 paper in twenty ten. Also, in two thousand and nine, 0:46:33.480 --> 0:46:37.760 the Omnibus Autism proceeding, which is basically this massive class 0:46:37.800 --> 0:46:43.200 action lawsuit against vaccines. This was a huge decision that 0:46:43.320 --> 0:46:49.279 was made. The MMR vaccine did not cause autism, nor 0:46:49.320 --> 0:46:53.160 did Thai mirisol containing vaccines. That meant that that limited 0:46:53.200 --> 0:46:56.480 the ability for people to sue on the basis on 0:46:56.520 --> 0:47:04.560 the grounds that those vaccines caused autism. One special master wrote, quote, Sadly, 0:47:04.840 --> 0:47:07.719 the petitioners in this litigation have been the victims of 0:47:07.840 --> 0:47:11.920 bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance 0:47:12.040 --> 0:47:16.680 medical and scientific understanding of autism spectrum disorder. The evidence 0:47:16.719 --> 0:47:21.600 in support of petitioner's causal theory is weak, contradictory, and unpersuasive. 0:47:22.280 --> 0:47:25.680 This is particularly apparent when considering the impressive body of 0:47:25.719 --> 0:47:31.840 epidemiologic evidence contradicting their theories. But that should be it, 0:47:31.880 --> 0:47:33.799 that should be shutting the door then, right, so we 0:47:33.880 --> 0:47:35.360 know for sure there's no link. 0:47:36.040 --> 0:47:37.560 These doors never get shut. 0:47:38.040 --> 0:47:42.040 Nope, As I have said many times in this episode, 0:47:42.160 --> 0:47:46.359 the damage had already been done. Wakefield could then play 0:47:46.360 --> 0:47:50.240 the role of martyr, crying conspiracy and continuing to promote 0:47:50.239 --> 0:47:54.640 his anti vaccine agenda. He wrote books, he made a documentary, 0:47:54.719 --> 0:47:58.560 he gave paid lectures, and he gained followers, among them 0:47:59.120 --> 0:48:03.200 many celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Alicia Silverstone, 0:48:03.280 --> 0:48:07.480 Charlie Sheen and Robert Kennedy Junior, Bill Maher, and Donald Trump, 0:48:07.560 --> 0:48:10.960 who has tweeted multiple times about a link between vaccines 0:48:11.000 --> 0:48:14.680 and autism, long after those links had been proven not 0:48:14.719 --> 0:48:18.640 to exist. Even more appalling are the doctors that have 0:48:18.760 --> 0:48:23.200 climbed aboard this train. Robert Sears is a California pediatrician 0:48:23.239 --> 0:48:25.319 who wrote a best selling book in two thousand and 0:48:25.400 --> 0:48:29.960 seven that openly says this is not an anti vaccine book, 0:48:30.680 --> 0:48:34.000 and then goes on to suggest an alternative vaccine schedule 0:48:34.360 --> 0:48:38.880 approved by no vaccine researcher. And he also tells parents, 0:48:39.440 --> 0:48:43.040 don't share your fears about vaccinating with your neighbors because 0:48:43.040 --> 0:48:47.840 if too many people avoid MMR vaccine, there will be outbreaks. 0:48:50.880 --> 0:48:54.239 He has no background in vaccine research. He has no 0:48:54.360 --> 0:48:58.400 background in any field remotely related to vaccine research that 0:48:58.440 --> 0:49:01.200 would give him any sort of credentials to write this 0:49:01.239 --> 0:49:02.720 book and advise parents. 0:49:03.160 --> 0:49:06.080 How do you not see that as a huge red flag, like, hey, 0:49:06.360 --> 0:49:09.080 do this thing, but don't tell anyone, because if everyone 0:49:09.120 --> 0:49:11.000 does it, we're all gonna die of measles. 0:49:11.200 --> 0:49:14.480 Like well, it's it's it's the tragedy of the commons. Yeah, 0:49:14.520 --> 0:49:18.080 because it does make sense in a certain respect to say, 0:49:18.120 --> 0:49:20.880 you know what, it is safer if I don't vaccinate, 0:49:21.040 --> 0:49:23.840 But then everyone believes that, and then it becomes unsafe 0:49:23.880 --> 0:49:26.440 for everyone, right, because if. 0:49:26.320 --> 0:49:28.799 You don't vaccinate, you essentially have to never go in 0:49:28.880 --> 0:49:31.600 contact with any other people. It is what that means, right, 0:49:31.640 --> 0:49:34.120 because that's the only way to actually stay safe. 0:49:34.239 --> 0:49:38.319 And then even the ground because tetanus well yeah, just. 0:49:38.320 --> 0:49:40.200 Kind of like tile floors. 0:49:40.800 --> 0:49:43.600 No, don't be fooled by this by this book by 0:49:43.800 --> 0:49:46.960 by Robert Sears. He lies throughout it, and he couches 0:49:47.320 --> 0:49:50.040 I think this is the most galling thing is that 0:49:50.080 --> 0:49:54.759 he couches his false statements in scientific language to manipulate 0:49:54.800 --> 0:49:58.080 readers into thinking that he's telling the truth and that 0:49:58.160 --> 0:50:00.440 he has all the information and that he has the 0:50:00.520 --> 0:50:05.399 right facts. Then there's doctor Oz telling pregnant women don't 0:50:05.400 --> 0:50:07.520 get the flu vaccine it's not safe. 0:50:08.120 --> 0:50:09.080 I hate that human. 0:50:09.320 --> 0:50:14.800 Listen to anything doctor Oz says about anything, ever, ever. 0:50:14.680 --> 0:50:17.359 Ever, that's a horrible human rate there. 0:50:17.680 --> 0:50:24.160 Yes, after the Wakefield study, vaccine rates plummeted, particularly among 0:50:24.320 --> 0:50:29.120 rich educated people. MMR vaccine coverage went from over ninety 0:50:29.160 --> 0:50:32.520 percent to eighty percent by two thousand and three. Five 0:50:32.600 --> 0:50:36.960 years after the study was published, and measles cases increased, 0:50:37.600 --> 0:50:40.680 including the first measles death in fourteen years in the UK. 0:50:41.320 --> 0:50:44.680 Because you need ninety five percent ninety five to ninety 0:50:44.680 --> 0:50:47.000 seven percent coverage to prevent outbreaks in. 0:50:46.920 --> 0:50:48.640 Those vaccination rates that was in the UK. 0:50:49.040 --> 0:50:53.120 That was really okay, I believe Yeah. This increase in 0:50:53.160 --> 0:50:56.080 measles cases can be directly linked to the drop in 0:50:56.200 --> 0:50:59.320 vaccine coverage by people choosing not to vaccinate their children 0:50:59.400 --> 0:51:04.360 or themselves. In a way, the Vaccine Roulette documentary and 0:51:04.400 --> 0:51:08.520 Wakefield study would act as templates for constantly shifting arguments 0:51:08.520 --> 0:51:12.440 of the vaccine lobby. It goes something like this vaccine 0:51:12.480 --> 0:51:17.080 A causes disease A, but then that gets debunked, so 0:51:17.120 --> 0:51:20.640 then its vaccine B actually causes disease A, and then 0:51:20.719 --> 0:51:24.200 that gets debunked and the specific or vaccine or vaccine 0:51:24.280 --> 0:51:28.000 ingredient changes as does the disorder or condition or whatever 0:51:28.080 --> 0:51:32.760 it's supposed to cause. The anti vaccine lobby needs something 0:51:32.800 --> 0:51:36.279 to cling to after their unscientific claims are debunked time 0:51:36.360 --> 0:51:40.880 after time. After measles and epilepsy, it was the homophilus 0:51:40.960 --> 0:51:45.600 influenza B vaccine and diabetes or other chronic diseases. Then 0:51:45.640 --> 0:51:49.160 it was MMR and autism, then thymerisol on autism, then 0:51:49.280 --> 0:51:51.280 aluminium in autism. 0:51:51.400 --> 0:51:52.560 All of these have. 0:51:52.520 --> 0:51:58.600 Been extensively studied and disproven. Since removing thymerisol from vaccines, 0:51:58.840 --> 0:52:03.279 rates of autism have not changed. It's actually looking more 0:52:03.440 --> 0:52:07.719 like autism develops prenatally. The vaccine lobby has done a 0:52:07.880 --> 0:52:11.600 huge disservice to the autism community as well, because so 0:52:11.760 --> 0:52:14.240 much time and money has been devoted to a cause 0:52:14.280 --> 0:52:18.240 that has no scientific basis. Wouldn't it have been better 0:52:18.280 --> 0:52:22.160 spent developing programs or services for autistic people who aren't 0:52:22.160 --> 0:52:25.360 able to live alone, or to raise awareness about the 0:52:25.440 --> 0:52:26.640 neurodiversity movement. 0:52:27.120 --> 0:52:29.520 Yeah, instead, what a concept? 0:52:29.760 --> 0:52:33.640 What a concept? But instead, what the anti vaccine lobby 0:52:33.640 --> 0:52:37.480 has done has made parents afraid and mistrustful. They have 0:52:37.560 --> 0:52:41.120 told parents, you did this to your kid. There are 0:52:41.120 --> 0:52:43.920 so many people in the anti vaccine lobby making a 0:52:43.960 --> 0:52:46.480 massive profit by praying on the fears of the parents 0:52:46.520 --> 0:52:48.760 who just want to do the right thing for their child. 0:52:49.600 --> 0:52:55.200 Lawyers quote doctors peddling alternative disease prevention therapies or treatments 0:52:55.200 --> 0:52:59.480 for autism, such as bleach enemas or kelation. 0:53:00.160 --> 0:53:02.440 Know, yep, don't do that. 0:53:03.239 --> 0:53:09.920 Don't do that. Eighty percent of people who reported to 0:53:10.040 --> 0:53:14.719 veyrs that vaccines caused autism weren't doctors or nurses or 0:53:14.800 --> 0:53:21.879 nurse practitioners or parents. They were personal injury lawyers. Oooh yeah. 0:53:22.080 --> 0:53:24.160 So we hear a lot about the anti vaccine movement 0:53:24.200 --> 0:53:27.000 in the US and in the UK and sort of 0:53:27.080 --> 0:53:30.359 the different lines of argument that they use. Those are 0:53:30.360 --> 0:53:32.920 not the only places in the world that have anti 0:53:33.040 --> 0:53:36.560 vaccine lobbies. Focus on those because those are the ones 0:53:36.560 --> 0:53:39.280 that I could find the most information about, to be honest, 0:53:40.320 --> 0:53:44.359 but anti vaccine sentiment has caused huge issues in other 0:53:44.400 --> 0:53:47.560 places as well. So, for instance, in Nigeria in two 0:53:47.560 --> 0:53:51.680 thousand and three, a rumor started that the polio vaccine 0:53:52.120 --> 0:53:57.880 caused AIDS and infertility in young girls. Vaccinations basically stopped 0:53:59.200 --> 0:54:01.879 so up to that point in two thousand and three, 0:54:01.880 --> 0:54:06.760 polio had been so close to eradication. But within three years, 0:54:07.400 --> 0:54:11.239 polio cases that had originated in Nigeria had popped up 0:54:11.280 --> 0:54:14.600 in twenty countries that had been previously polio free. 0:54:15.239 --> 0:54:15.719 Wow. 0:54:16.120 --> 0:54:20.520 As a result, five thousand people were permanently paralyzed from 0:54:20.560 --> 0:54:21.080 the infection. 0:54:21.880 --> 0:54:22.640 Wow. 0:54:23.719 --> 0:54:28.080 This is a problem all over. Yeah, and so much 0:54:28.080 --> 0:54:31.560 of it has to do with just not understanding how 0:54:31.680 --> 0:54:35.799 vaccines work and not believing that they work. And there 0:54:35.840 --> 0:54:39.279 are also long there's I mean, there are are long 0:54:39.360 --> 0:54:43.520 term issues of for sterilization and people being injected with 0:54:43.600 --> 0:54:45.799 things that they that are not good for you. 0:54:45.920 --> 0:54:49.560 So it is there's a lot of mistrust of organizations 0:54:49.600 --> 0:54:53.040 that are imposing vaccinations on people, and a lot of 0:54:53.120 --> 0:54:56.279 that mistrust is not necessarily misplaced. So it does make 0:54:56.320 --> 0:54:57.680 it very very complicated. 0:54:58.120 --> 0:55:03.000 Yeah. Well, put those who fall prey to the manipulation 0:55:03.160 --> 0:55:06.760 and lives of the anti vaccine lobby are themselves victims. 0:55:07.920 --> 0:55:11.319 It's completely understandable to have questions and fears about what 0:55:11.440 --> 0:55:14.000 is safe for your child, and it has gotten so 0:55:14.200 --> 0:55:17.640 difficult to know how to find factual information on the internet, 0:55:18.239 --> 0:55:22.160 especially if you have no background in science. The rapid 0:55:22.160 --> 0:55:26.200 spread of misinformation surrounding vaccines is highly concerning and it 0:55:26.239 --> 0:55:30.000 can be tough to know how to educate yourselves. Hopefully 0:55:30.080 --> 0:55:34.040 these vaccines episodes will help a little bit, hopefully, and 0:55:34.120 --> 0:55:36.320 we will also post in our show notes some links 0:55:36.320 --> 0:55:43.400 to credible websites that have lots of info on vaccines. Okay, okay, Aaron, 0:55:45.080 --> 0:55:49.120 take us through some of the common misconceptions around vaccines today. 0:55:49.440 --> 0:56:15.000 Oh can't wait too, So let's talk about some of 0:56:15.040 --> 0:56:22.680 the major myths that the major misconceptions that surrounding vaccines. 0:56:23.640 --> 0:56:25.200 I feel like we might as well start with the 0:56:25.280 --> 0:56:30.720 vaccines and autism situation, because this is where you ended. Yes, okay, 0:56:30.840 --> 0:56:36.880 so let's dive deeply. There are a few main arguments, 0:56:37.040 --> 0:56:39.880 as you mentioned, that have been cycled through as to 0:56:40.840 --> 0:56:45.600 what it is about vaccines that causes autism. I'll first 0:56:45.600 --> 0:56:47.279 of all say none of them have any merit. But 0:56:47.360 --> 0:56:51.120 let's go through each one individually and explain why it 0:56:51.160 --> 0:56:54.880 has no merit. Okay. I'll also say that there is 0:56:55.040 --> 0:56:57.200 a document that I will link to you on our website. 0:56:57.320 --> 0:57:00.800 It's a twenty one page document a little bit old. 0:57:01.040 --> 0:57:03.920 So I also have a number of more recent studies 0:57:04.120 --> 0:57:07.319 on our website. But this twenty one page document has 0:57:07.440 --> 0:57:11.160 links to and summarizes a number of different papers that 0:57:11.239 --> 0:57:14.160 outline all of these points. So it's not like just 0:57:14.200 --> 0:57:17.840 a few papers. We're talking dozens and dozens of studies 0:57:17.880 --> 0:57:22.080 across hundreds of thousand, in some cases millions of children. 0:57:22.920 --> 0:57:23.240 Wow. 0:57:23.320 --> 0:57:27.280 Okay, Yeah, the amount of the amount of information that 0:57:27.320 --> 0:57:31.400 we have about vaccines and autism is quite frankly incredible. 0:57:31.880 --> 0:57:33.800 Oh yeah, it's one of the most it's one of 0:57:33.800 --> 0:57:35.720 the best studied topics. 0:57:36.080 --> 0:57:41.880 Yeah, so number one, the MMR vaccine does not cause autism. 0:57:43.560 --> 0:57:46.280 The assertion that it did, as you said, was based 0:57:46.320 --> 0:57:50.680 on that single study by Andrew Wakefield, and since then, 0:57:51.920 --> 0:57:58.400 dozens and dozens of studies, epidemiological studies have looked at 0:57:59.080 --> 0:58:03.120 the connection between getting the MMR vaccine and later being 0:58:03.120 --> 0:58:08.320 diagnosed with autism, and they have found absolutely not a 0:58:08.480 --> 0:58:09.720 single link. 0:58:10.640 --> 0:58:14.360 And can we also point out that these studies by 0:58:14.440 --> 0:58:18.360 and large are funded by government grants, and so the 0:58:18.440 --> 0:58:23.080 scientists are not getting paid to They're not getting directly 0:58:23.160 --> 0:58:27.400 paid for this research. They are usually employed by the 0:58:27.480 --> 0:58:30.280 university and then they have to apply for funding to 0:58:30.360 --> 0:58:34.320 then fund the research materials. Yes, and so these are 0:58:34.360 --> 0:58:37.960 not people who are paid by pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccine. 0:58:38.080 --> 0:58:39.040 Exactly right. 0:58:39.640 --> 0:58:42.200 Yes, thank you for saying that. It's an important part 0:58:42.240 --> 0:58:42.480 of it. 0:58:43.320 --> 0:58:45.480 That's a big that's a big thing that people that 0:58:46.120 --> 0:58:51.440 pro vaccine activists get accused of being shills for pharmaceutical 0:58:51.480 --> 0:58:54.919 companies and that's simply not the case. Like No one 0:58:55.000 --> 0:58:59.520 goes into science, No one goes into academia to get rich, 0:58:59.640 --> 0:59:01.520 because that would be the most foolish way to go. 0:59:04.000 --> 0:59:08.080 Yeah. So there also is another study, a very recent 0:59:08.080 --> 0:59:10.520 one that just came out in March of twenty nineteen, 0:59:10.600 --> 0:59:13.800 looking at hundreds of thousands of children that again found 0:59:13.920 --> 0:59:18.120 no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. There's also 0:59:18.240 --> 0:59:20.960 been studies that specifically looked, and I think this is 0:59:21.040 --> 0:59:24.240 very interesting. They specifically looked at children who had an 0:59:24.240 --> 0:59:28.120 older sibling who was autistic, who had previously been diagnosed 0:59:28.120 --> 0:59:31.080 with autism, and they found that even in those children, 0:59:31.320 --> 0:59:34.720 there was no increase in autism diagnoses in children who 0:59:34.760 --> 0:59:37.880 received the MMR vaccine if they had a sibling who 0:59:37.960 --> 0:59:40.800 was also autistic. So what that means is that even 0:59:40.880 --> 0:59:45.760 if because some groups tried to say, well, MMR only 0:59:45.840 --> 0:59:51.000 causes autism insusceptible people. So if there is a genetic 0:59:51.040 --> 0:59:54.040 component to autism, then people who would be susceptible might 0:59:54.080 --> 0:59:56.680 be people who have a family history of autism. But 0:59:56.800 --> 0:59:59.840 even in those groups, there was no link between the 1:00:00.080 --> 1:00:01.920 MMR vaccine and autism. 1:00:02.480 --> 1:00:05.160 Right, that's a very powerful study. 1:00:05.200 --> 1:00:12.560 It's a very powerful study. Some more thymerisol in vaccines 1:00:12.840 --> 1:00:13.720 causes autism. 1:00:13.880 --> 1:00:15.160 Okay, what is thymerasol. 1:00:15.360 --> 1:00:21.919 Thymerisol is a preservative. It contains mercury. It's a preservative 1:00:22.120 --> 1:00:27.520 that used to be used in some vaccines as a 1:00:27.600 --> 1:00:33.160 protection against infection of vaccine vials. So when pediatricians used 1:00:33.200 --> 1:00:38.480 to use multi dose vials of vaccines, then thymerisol was 1:00:38.480 --> 1:00:40.920 added to those vaccines to make sure that they didn't 1:00:40.920 --> 1:00:44.400 get contaminated. I will say that in the US all 1:00:44.560 --> 1:00:48.520 pediatric vaccines are now single dose vils, so they no 1:00:48.600 --> 1:00:49.840 longer contain thymerasol. 1:00:50.280 --> 1:00:53.720 Okay, so you get for each person, you get one 1:00:54.720 --> 1:00:56.520 one vile little dose, one vile. 1:00:56.720 --> 1:01:00.960 So we're just filling the landfills, but not use thymerisol. 1:01:02.240 --> 1:01:06.680 So another assertion has been it's not the MMR vaccine itself, 1:01:06.760 --> 1:01:12.120 it's this mercury containing thimerisol compound that causes autism. Again, 1:01:12.160 --> 1:01:16.560 here people have very specifically looked at this. Dozens of 1:01:16.600 --> 1:01:21.560 studies on hundreds of thousands of children who received thymerisol 1:01:21.600 --> 1:01:26.200 containing vaccines, not just MMR, a number of different thymerisol 1:01:26.240 --> 1:01:31.760 containing vaccines. There is no link whatsoever between thymerisol in 1:01:31.840 --> 1:01:38.160 vaccines and autism. Denmark actually found an increase in the 1:01:38.240 --> 1:01:43.680 rates of autism diagnoses after discontinuation of thymerisol. Yeah, so 1:01:43.840 --> 1:01:46.240 whatever that means, I don't know. 1:01:47.320 --> 1:01:49.800 Well. I think it's probably has to do with the 1:01:50.080 --> 1:01:54.960 changing criteria for what is considered autistic or not. And 1:01:56.160 --> 1:02:00.480 this is another thing where another anti vaccine lobby statement 1:02:00.560 --> 1:02:03.680 is that autism is going to increase at such a 1:02:03.760 --> 1:02:06.480 rapid rate that it'll be one in two children by 1:02:06.520 --> 1:02:09.480 the time whatever whatever, And that's not true, but it 1:02:09.560 --> 1:02:13.680 is probably true that rates of autism diagnoses probably will 1:02:13.680 --> 1:02:17.280 increase because we're just sort of getting a better grasp 1:02:17.360 --> 1:02:21.080 on what it is, and then also particularly what autism 1:02:21.200 --> 1:02:25.680 might look like in females, which historically have been a 1:02:25.920 --> 1:02:28.840 more difficult thing to sort of describe or nail down. 1:02:29.560 --> 1:02:34.040 Interesting, I didn't know that, Okay. So then once thimerosol 1:02:34.120 --> 1:02:37.800 and the MMR vaccine were pretty thoroughly discredited, a newer 1:02:37.840 --> 1:02:39.919 assertion was that it's aluminum. 1:02:41.600 --> 1:02:43.840 So I love this one because it's great. 1:02:43.920 --> 1:02:48.480 Yeah, so fun. So aluminum aluminum hydroxide, I think it's. 1:02:48.480 --> 1:02:52.360 Aluminum hydroxide and aluminum phosphate are both two aluminum salts 1:02:52.400 --> 1:02:56.240 that are sometimes used in vaccines. These are mostly used 1:02:56.280 --> 1:03:01.120 in conjugate vaccines, and what aluminum does in a vaccine 1:03:01.440 --> 1:03:05.360 is it helps to stimulate a more robust immune response. So, 1:03:05.600 --> 1:03:07.840 like we talked about in our first episode, which again 1:03:07.880 --> 1:03:11.160 if you haven't heard it, it's a great episode if 1:03:11.200 --> 1:03:14.680 we do say so ourselves, about the biology and history 1:03:14.720 --> 1:03:20.120 of vaccines. Some vaccines, like the conjugate vaccines, you have 1:03:20.200 --> 1:03:22.640 to get a number of different boosters because they don't 1:03:22.640 --> 1:03:29.400 stimulate a super robust immune response. So adding aluminum it's 1:03:29.400 --> 1:03:34.400 called an adjuvant. It essentially stimulates your immune system because 1:03:34.440 --> 1:03:38.800 it's another foreign particle that stimulates your immune system to 1:03:39.400 --> 1:03:42.280 give you a more robust immune response. You have more 1:03:42.360 --> 1:03:45.760 immune cells coming to the injection site, and therefore you 1:03:45.800 --> 1:03:50.600 get a better and longer lasting response to that vaccination. 1:03:51.600 --> 1:03:55.800 So that's why we have aluminum aluminum salts in some vaccines. 1:03:56.880 --> 1:03:58.880 But then some people said this is what it is 1:03:59.000 --> 1:04:04.440 in the vaccines at cause autism. Okay, a number of 1:04:04.480 --> 1:04:10.240 the studies that we've already I've already highlighted that again 1:04:10.320 --> 1:04:15.240 are linked on our website. The vaccines that also contained 1:04:15.240 --> 1:04:23.320 thimerisol also contained aluminum, and again no association between aluminum 1:04:23.920 --> 1:04:28.160 in these vaccines and autism. I also want to point 1:04:28.200 --> 1:04:33.400 out that the amount of aluminum in vaccines is very, 1:04:34.080 --> 1:04:39.880 very very minuscule. So over the first six months of 1:04:39.920 --> 1:04:42.920 a baby's life, if they get all their recommended vaccines, 1:04:43.560 --> 1:04:48.240 they'll get about four milligrams of aluminum from their vaccines. 1:04:49.480 --> 1:04:52.520 If they're feeding on formula, they can get anywhere from 1:04:52.560 --> 1:04:55.800 thirty eight to one hundred and seventeen milligrams of aluminum 1:04:55.840 --> 1:04:58.840 just from that formula. If they're breastfed, they get less, 1:04:58.880 --> 1:05:04.440 but still over seven milligrams from breast milk. So aluminum 1:05:04.720 --> 1:05:06.600 and it's not just in the food that we eat. 1:05:06.640 --> 1:05:09.320 Aluminum is in the dirt that your child is probably 1:05:09.360 --> 1:05:12.600 shoving into their mouth, it's in skin care products that 1:05:12.640 --> 1:05:17.600 we use. What our body does with aluminum is it 1:05:17.720 --> 1:05:20.600 mostly excretes it through our kidneys. So not all of 1:05:20.600 --> 1:05:25.200 the aluminum that you're injecting or ingesting is staying in 1:05:25.240 --> 1:05:28.640 your body. The vast majority of it your kidneys filter out. 1:05:28.880 --> 1:05:30.560 They do a really good job of it. As it 1:05:30.560 --> 1:05:31.280 turns out. 1:05:31.960 --> 1:05:36.800 Don't adult humans ingest through just food, normal food, like 1:05:36.880 --> 1:05:39.200 five to ten milligrams a day or something like that. 1:05:39.320 --> 1:05:41.680 Probably I didn't look up what adults ingest. 1:05:41.840 --> 1:05:47.600 But let me check, because I do have that somewhere. Yeah, yeah, 1:05:47.640 --> 1:05:49.560 every day, five, every day, I. 1:05:49.520 --> 1:05:53.960 Have the ten milligrams cool cool, cool cool, so and so. Again, 1:05:54.200 --> 1:05:56.320 in a number of different studies that have looked at 1:05:56.520 --> 1:06:01.200 vaccines that contained aluminum, there's been no links found between 1:06:01.240 --> 1:06:06.080 any of those vaccines and autism. Okay, so there's one 1:06:06.120 --> 1:06:10.400 more floating around that is very new, and that is 1:06:10.400 --> 1:06:15.400 that maternal vaccines cause autism. So giving vaccines to a 1:06:15.440 --> 1:06:20.760 pregnant person causes autism in the fetus. Now, this is 1:06:20.760 --> 1:06:24.760 a very new, very recent assertion, so there have not 1:06:24.880 --> 1:06:29.240 been quite as many papers specifically addressing this topic, but 1:06:29.360 --> 1:06:32.120 there have been a number of studies looking at vaccination 1:06:32.720 --> 1:06:36.560 in pregnant people and the outcomes of babies in general. 1:06:36.880 --> 1:06:39.800 So let's talk about that. In general, there's only two 1:06:39.880 --> 1:06:42.520 vaccines that are recommended to be given to pregnant women, 1:06:42.720 --> 1:06:46.920 the influenza vaccine and the DTP or the DETAP vaccine. 1:06:48.760 --> 1:06:52.560 The influenza vaccine you ideally get early in pregnancy because 1:06:52.920 --> 1:06:56.960 you are immunal compromised when you're pregnant, and getting infected 1:06:57.000 --> 1:07:01.640 with influenza can have very serious complications for the fetus. 1:07:01.960 --> 1:07:03.920 There's been a number of studies that have shown that 1:07:04.800 --> 1:07:08.960 infection with influenza can have very serious outcomes, and you 1:07:09.040 --> 1:07:12.720 get the DETAP vaccine so that when the baby is 1:07:12.760 --> 1:07:16.400 born it has antibodies against protessis because protessis is a 1:07:16.520 --> 1:07:21.000 very very serious illness if babies get it. So both 1:07:21.000 --> 1:07:24.200 of these, the influenza and the DETAP vaccine, are not 1:07:24.400 --> 1:07:27.360 live vaccines, which means there's no way to actually cause 1:07:27.360 --> 1:07:28.840 an infection whatsoever. 1:07:28.920 --> 1:07:30.040 You can't get sick. 1:07:29.880 --> 1:07:33.920 From these vaccines. So a study just came out in 1:07:33.960 --> 1:07:38.840 twenty eighteen last year that specifically showed no link between 1:07:38.920 --> 1:07:44.680 DETAP vaccination during pregnancy and autism in the baby. Later on, 1:07:45.920 --> 1:07:52.160 another study looked at influenza infection and influenza vaccination and 1:07:52.320 --> 1:07:58.240 overall found no link between prenatal influenza infection or vaccination 1:07:58.520 --> 1:08:04.400 and autism at all. Okay, so yeah, again, there haven't 1:08:04.400 --> 1:08:06.600 been quite as many studies, but the ones that there 1:08:06.640 --> 1:08:10.480 have been have shown no effect whatsoever. In contrast, there 1:08:10.480 --> 1:08:13.240 are a number of studies that suggest that maternal infection, 1:08:13.560 --> 1:08:17.160 especially infections that are severe enough to result in hospitalization 1:08:17.280 --> 1:08:21.280 during pregnancy, can potentially increase the risk of autism. So 1:08:21.320 --> 1:08:25.040 While that one study didn't find a risk, didn't find 1:08:25.080 --> 1:08:29.840 an association between influenza infection and autism, other studies have 1:08:29.920 --> 1:08:34.800 suggested maybe that is possible. Again, the question of what 1:08:34.920 --> 1:08:38.920 does cause autism is something that we don't know at 1:08:38.920 --> 1:08:39.519 this point. 1:08:39.920 --> 1:08:42.240 So we're starting to get a little bit of a 1:08:42.280 --> 1:08:44.160 better grasp on a better grasp on it. 1:08:44.200 --> 1:08:46.719 And it definitely seems like something that happens very early 1:08:46.760 --> 1:08:50.639 on in development and not something that vaccines have anything 1:08:50.680 --> 1:08:54.439 to do with, even maternal vaccines. And someday we will 1:08:54.439 --> 1:08:57.679 have an episode about this because I think it's very interesting. 1:08:59.280 --> 1:09:02.519 So there are physical iological markers that seem to be 1:09:02.560 --> 1:09:06.639 associated with autism, and these are evident long before any 1:09:06.720 --> 1:09:09.880 vaccines or even given to infants. So one research group 1:09:09.960 --> 1:09:13.400 was able to predict with ninety percent accuracy whether a 1:09:13.479 --> 1:09:17.160 six month old infant will develop autism at two years, 1:09:17.560 --> 1:09:21.439 which really strongly indicates this happens pre italy. Yeah, it's 1:09:21.479 --> 1:09:23.400 not linked to vaccines in any respect. 1:09:23.760 --> 1:09:29.640 We also there's a lot of developmental child psychology videos 1:09:29.680 --> 1:09:32.200 that they make to that you watch in med school 1:09:32.280 --> 1:09:37.800 to learn about child developmental psychology, and yeah, there are 1:09:37.840 --> 1:09:41.599 markers that you see even very very early on before 1:09:41.600 --> 1:09:43.719 you get a lot of these vaccines, especially the MMR 1:09:43.840 --> 1:09:46.840 vaccine and things like that that are usually the ones 1:09:46.960 --> 1:09:53.760 quoted as anyways, So moving on, I think that we've 1:09:53.760 --> 1:09:55.360 fully covered that. What do you think? 1:09:55.920 --> 1:10:00.400 I think so vaccine. But if there are stilltions that 1:10:00.439 --> 1:10:02.240 you guys have, please please send us. 1:10:02.439 --> 1:10:05.520 Yeah, all right, that's not all the myths and misconceptions 1:10:05.520 --> 1:10:06.840 that we have, though, we've got plenty more. 1:10:07.479 --> 1:10:08.400 Okay, good, good. 1:10:08.400 --> 1:10:15.760 So here's a common myth. Overall, vaccines aren't safe. Period. 1:10:16.080 --> 1:10:19.559 They're not safe. They're dangerous. The risks of vaccination outweigh 1:10:19.960 --> 1:10:28.719 the risks of infection. Okay, so vaccines are safe. There 1:10:28.760 --> 1:10:34.360 are a number of a number of oversight bodies that 1:10:35.080 --> 1:10:39.120 make sure that vaccines are extensively tested before they're released 1:10:39.160 --> 1:10:43.600 and continue to monitor them as they circulate through the 1:10:43.640 --> 1:10:47.960 population as people are actually getting these vaccines. There are 1:10:48.000 --> 1:10:51.439 some risks that are associated with vaccines. The most common 1:10:51.439 --> 1:10:54.760 side effect from vaccination, which we talked about a little 1:10:54.800 --> 1:10:58.000 bit in the biology section of the first episode, is fever. 1:10:58.520 --> 1:11:01.360 That's one of the most commons side effects from vaccines. 1:11:01.920 --> 1:11:05.240 You also can get pain or redness or swelling at 1:11:05.280 --> 1:11:08.920 the injection site. All of these are from your body 1:11:09.080 --> 1:11:13.080 mounting an immune response to the vaccination. All of these 1:11:13.479 --> 1:11:16.040 even if they suck and you feel cruddy or your 1:11:16.040 --> 1:11:18.559 baby is crying because it's arm hurts and it has 1:11:18.600 --> 1:11:24.320 a fever, this is a part of how the vaccine 1:11:24.360 --> 1:11:28.320 actually works. And this is something that even though it 1:11:28.400 --> 1:11:34.000 is normal, is considered a minor adverse reaction. So even 1:11:34.080 --> 1:11:38.280 though it's not serious, it's fever and pain, it still 1:11:38.360 --> 1:11:42.479 is considered a minor adverse reaction. Okay, so there are 1:11:42.520 --> 1:11:46.519 some more serious adverse events that are possible. Probably the 1:11:46.560 --> 1:11:51.320 most common serious adverse event is having a seizure after 1:11:51.400 --> 1:11:55.439 a vaccine. This is called a febrow seizure. As it 1:11:55.479 --> 1:11:59.680 turns out, when you are a small kid, you can 1:11:59.680 --> 1:12:04.080 get a seizure from a fever, whatever the cause of fever. 1:12:04.479 --> 1:12:07.800 So because vaccines can potentially cause a fever, they can 1:12:07.960 --> 1:12:12.559 in some cases precipitate a seizure in some kids. For 1:12:12.600 --> 1:12:15.960 an example of how rare this is though with vaccines, 1:12:16.760 --> 1:12:20.240 it's most common in the measles, mumps, rubella, and vericella, 1:12:20.400 --> 1:12:25.240 so that's four vaccines at once. Mmr V. It happens 1:12:25.320 --> 1:12:32.120 in about eight point five per ten thousand doses. Okay, okay, 1:12:33.120 --> 1:12:38.720 And again that febrile seizure is the only one that 1:12:38.800 --> 1:12:42.480 will happen the vast majority of time that seizure is isolated. 1:12:42.800 --> 1:12:45.240 There's just that one. So eight point five per ten 1:12:45.280 --> 1:12:49.200 thousand doses will have this one single febrile seizure. So 1:12:49.400 --> 1:12:52.519 even though that's very scary, I can imagine how terrifying 1:12:52.560 --> 1:12:57.639 that would be. It's very rare. Now, other adverse events 1:12:57.680 --> 1:13:00.799 are possible. It is possible to have Like you mentioned, 1:13:01.080 --> 1:13:05.200 the old rotavirus vaccine had a rate of inter susception 1:13:05.720 --> 1:13:09.800 at about one per twenty thousand to one per one 1:13:09.880 --> 1:13:15.080 hundred thousand doses, and that vaccine was pulled because that 1:13:15.200 --> 1:13:17.880 was too high of a risk. It's possible to have 1:13:18.080 --> 1:13:22.360 severe allergic reactions, so things like anaphylactic shock would be 1:13:22.400 --> 1:13:26.160 a severe allergic reaction. These are generally in less than 1:13:26.360 --> 1:13:31.040 one per one million doses of vaccine, right, And. 1:13:31.040 --> 1:13:33.400 It's not something that you can know beforehand whether. 1:13:33.200 --> 1:13:36.439 It's right exactly. I mean, unless you know that you're 1:13:36.439 --> 1:13:38.920 allergic to a certain component of a vaccine, in which 1:13:38.960 --> 1:13:42.320 case then you should not get that vaccine. And all 1:13:42.360 --> 1:13:46.200 of these adverse events, the very serious ones and the 1:13:46.600 --> 1:13:50.320 not serious ones like fever and things like that. These 1:13:50.320 --> 1:13:54.360 are all tracked by what you mentioned already, the Vaccine 1:13:54.400 --> 1:13:59.559 Adverse Events Reporting System or VS. So parents, providers, and 1:13:59.640 --> 1:14:03.880 vaccine manufacturers can all make reports and apparently lawyers I 1:14:03.880 --> 1:14:06.799 didn't know that part can make reports on VARES. 1:14:07.160 --> 1:14:07.320 Huh. 1:14:07.520 --> 1:14:10.919 And VERS takes every single report, no matter how serious 1:14:10.960 --> 1:14:14.240 the adverse event or how minor the adverse event, and 1:14:14.280 --> 1:14:20.240 they do investigate it. So based on this is from 1:14:20.640 --> 1:14:23.679 Peter Hotez's book, because he summarizes these very nicely. 1:14:24.160 --> 1:14:24.840 Yeah, he does. 1:14:25.160 --> 1:14:29.320 Between two thousand and six and twenty fifteen, about three 1:14:29.520 --> 1:14:33.920 billion doses of vaccine were given in the United States. 1:14:34.240 --> 1:14:40.000 Three billion doses that is, I know, that's three hundred 1:14:40.080 --> 1:14:43.080 million doses annually. This is like a dose per person. 1:14:43.120 --> 1:14:44.920 There's like a little over three hundred million people in 1:14:44.960 --> 1:14:49.160 the US, right, Yeah, So of these three hundred million 1:14:49.240 --> 1:14:55.360 doses annually, VERS gets on average about thirty thousand reports. 1:14:56.240 --> 1:15:01.519 So that's point zero one percent of all the vaccines, Okay, 1:15:02.280 --> 1:15:06.920 And that is all of the adverse events combined. 1:15:07.040 --> 1:15:10.280 And not necessarily causally linked. 1:15:10.600 --> 1:15:13.000 Right, They don't have to be causal just to be 1:15:13.120 --> 1:15:19.479 reported to VERS, so four more numbers about fifteen percent 1:15:19.720 --> 1:15:23.760 of those reports, So three to four thousand of those 1:15:23.880 --> 1:15:30.160 thirty thousand reports are more serious and involve quote hospitalization, 1:15:30.520 --> 1:15:34.519 permanent disability, or death which may or may not have 1:15:34.640 --> 1:15:36.320 actually been caused by the vaccine. 1:15:36.840 --> 1:15:37.040 Right. 1:15:38.080 --> 1:15:40.559 But again VERS is going to follow up on all 1:15:40.640 --> 1:15:43.200 of those to determine whether or not there is a 1:15:43.240 --> 1:15:49.719 causal relationship with vaccines. So overall vaccines are extremely safe. 1:15:50.360 --> 1:15:55.000 Do we have numbers for what VERS has found in 1:15:55.080 --> 1:15:58.040 terms of what is causally linked in those severe case 1:15:58.080 --> 1:15:59.799 in those severe outcome cases. 1:16:00.000 --> 1:16:02.120 So if you look at the numbers of overall how 1:16:02.120 --> 1:16:06.680 many vaccine doses are given and how many serious adverse 1:16:07.120 --> 1:16:12.080 events are reported, it's about one in a million adverse 1:16:12.120 --> 1:16:15.519 events are reported. Okay, so one in a million doses, 1:16:15.560 --> 1:16:19.240 and again some of those are likely not directly from 1:16:19.240 --> 1:16:24.320 the vaccine, right all right, that was misconception number two. 1:16:24.520 --> 1:16:25.840 Misconception number three. 1:16:26.240 --> 1:16:27.439 Ooh boy, Okay, so. 1:16:27.600 --> 1:16:31.120 Long, Okay, this is a very common concern that I hear, 1:16:31.160 --> 1:16:33.560 and I actually think it's an interesting one to talk about. 1:16:34.080 --> 1:16:37.160 There are too many vaccines given all at once. Your 1:16:37.160 --> 1:16:40.280 baby's immune system can't handle it. We have to delay 1:16:40.320 --> 1:16:44.960 the vaccination schedule. Okay, so first of all, there's a 1:16:45.000 --> 1:16:49.839 misconception here. The misconception is that your immune system can't 1:16:49.880 --> 1:16:52.640 handle the number of vaccinations that are given, or the 1:16:52.720 --> 1:16:56.240 number of vaccinations that are given at once. So we 1:16:56.360 --> 1:16:59.439 mentioned this briefly in the first episode. I feel like 1:16:59.439 --> 1:17:04.200 I've said that lot. But pathogens aren't the only antigen 1:17:04.520 --> 1:17:08.559 that your body is responding to. Your immune system is 1:17:08.600 --> 1:17:14.880 responding to literally everything all of the time. Every breath 1:17:15.000 --> 1:17:19.240 that you breathe has thousands of particles in it, viral particles, 1:17:19.560 --> 1:17:26.479 bacterial chunks, dust, dander, pet fur, poop, urine, all of 1:17:26.520 --> 1:17:32.360 these things, hundreds food, hundreds and thousands of antigens that 1:17:32.439 --> 1:17:35.479 your body is going to react to, and we do 1:17:35.800 --> 1:17:39.280 from the very beginning. So what that means is that 1:17:39.600 --> 1:17:44.280 even when you are a tiny baby, you already have 1:17:44.360 --> 1:17:47.640 an immune system that's capable of responding to thousands and 1:17:47.680 --> 1:17:51.800 thousands of antigens. One study that looked at the number 1:17:51.840 --> 1:17:55.160 of b cells that a baby has and the amount 1:17:55.240 --> 1:17:58.920 of antibodies that it can produce, found that a baby 1:17:58.960 --> 1:18:06.160 can respond to one hundred thousand vaccines at once and 1:18:06.240 --> 1:18:06.960 it would be fine. 1:18:07.479 --> 1:18:10.439 That's that's just a few more than what they're currently 1:18:11.720 --> 1:18:14.559 just a couple more. It's really cool. I mean, I 1:18:14.560 --> 1:18:17.400 think it's it's it just shows how amazing our immune 1:18:17.400 --> 1:18:21.280 system is to constantly be working all the time. 1:18:21.439 --> 1:18:25.000 It's incredible. It's so cool, Like, thank you, thank your 1:18:25.000 --> 1:18:28.040 immune system. Today, I'm gonna think mine and I have 1:18:28.080 --> 1:18:28.960 a cold right now. 1:18:29.320 --> 1:18:31.240 Have you thanked your immune system lately? 1:18:33.400 --> 1:18:36.080 All right, we've got only a couple more. I swear 1:18:36.320 --> 1:18:37.280 I'm almost done. 1:18:38.640 --> 1:18:39.680 Okay, I don't believe you. 1:18:41.360 --> 1:18:46.080 Myth number four misconception four. The flu vaccine straight up 1:18:46.120 --> 1:18:48.559 does it work. It sucks. I get the flu from 1:18:48.600 --> 1:18:50.800 it every year and it's not even effective. So why 1:18:50.840 --> 1:18:52.600 should I have to get the flu vaccine? 1:18:53.479 --> 1:18:56.000 Not to mention, okay, can we also address the people 1:18:56.040 --> 1:18:58.600 who say I'm too busy to get the flu vaccine 1:18:59.160 --> 1:19:02.080 because that drives me app a wall. I gotta say, 1:19:02.640 --> 1:19:06.960 it really grinds by gears, grinds your gears. Yeah, I'm 1:19:07.000 --> 1:19:08.240 just too busy with life. Man. 1:19:09.280 --> 1:19:11.439 Some places try and make it easy and bring the 1:19:11.439 --> 1:19:15.960 flu vaccine to you stuff. But okay, here's how the 1:19:15.960 --> 1:19:20.240 flu vaccine works. Every year, scientists have to use data 1:19:20.320 --> 1:19:25.280 and models from the previous year's flu season to predict 1:19:25.800 --> 1:19:29.679 what are going to be the circulating strains of flu 1:19:30.040 --> 1:19:33.360 for next year's flu season. If you haven't listened to 1:19:33.560 --> 1:19:38.000 episode one of this podcast will kill You So so 1:19:38.120 --> 1:19:41.080 long ago. If you have listened to that, then you 1:19:41.120 --> 1:19:45.400 will know that the influenza virus is a very tricky virus. 1:19:45.479 --> 1:19:47.479 It has a very high mutation rate, and it has 1:19:47.520 --> 1:19:50.639 a number of different surface an egens, which means it's 1:19:50.720 --> 1:19:54.400 constantly changing, so it's not the same virus year to 1:19:54.479 --> 1:19:57.960 year to year. So that means that fairly far in 1:19:58.040 --> 1:20:01.960 advance we have to start develop being vaccines for next 1:20:02.040 --> 1:20:05.559 year's flu season, and we don't necessarily know exactly what 1:20:05.600 --> 1:20:09.200 those flu viruses are going to look like. So some 1:20:09.400 --> 1:20:14.719 years we estimate correctly and we know exactly what strains 1:20:14.720 --> 1:20:16.800 of flu are going to be circulating, and those years 1:20:16.840 --> 1:20:20.680 the flu vaccine is especially effective. Other years, a new 1:20:20.720 --> 1:20:23.120 strain of flu pops up that we didn't see coming, 1:20:23.200 --> 1:20:25.160 and so then the flu vaccine that we have is 1:20:25.200 --> 1:20:31.800 not quite as effective. However, even in years when the 1:20:31.840 --> 1:20:35.920 flu vaccine doesn't precisely match the strains that are circulating, 1:20:36.479 --> 1:20:40.000 the flu vaccine is still effective at a number of 1:20:40.080 --> 1:20:43.960 different things. It has been shown to reduce the rate 1:20:44.000 --> 1:20:49.200 of hospital admissions and doctor's visits for the flu, which 1:20:49.240 --> 1:20:52.760 means that even if you get the flu, you don't 1:20:52.800 --> 1:20:56.280 get as sick from it, so you don't end up 1:20:56.400 --> 1:21:00.960 in the hospital or getting a secondary bacterial pneumo. The 1:21:01.000 --> 1:21:05.439 flu vaccine prevents tens of thousands of hospitalizations every year, 1:21:06.400 --> 1:21:10.719 and it also seriously reduces children's risk of being admitted 1:21:10.760 --> 1:21:14.920 to the intensive care unit for flu infection. From twenty 1:21:14.960 --> 1:21:18.400 ten to twenty twelve, it reduced the risk of being 1:21:18.439 --> 1:21:22.080 admitted to the ICU for children by seventy four percent. 1:21:22.880 --> 1:21:25.280 That's amazing, amazing. 1:21:25.400 --> 1:21:28.400 Nobody wants their kid to be in the ICU. No, 1:21:28.800 --> 1:21:33.720 it's horrible. It also reduces the risk of adult hospitalizations 1:21:33.760 --> 1:21:37.720 and admissions to the ICU, but from twenty twelve to 1:21:37.720 --> 1:21:41.800 twenty fifteen it reduced hospitalizations by forty percent and ICU 1:21:41.840 --> 1:21:43.360 admissions eighty percent. 1:21:43.960 --> 1:21:44.520 Wow. 1:21:45.120 --> 1:21:50.559 And it reduces children's risk of dying from influenza even 1:21:50.640 --> 1:21:53.439 if you still get sick with the flu in that year, 1:21:53.560 --> 1:21:56.559 because you have some antibodies against it, even if they're 1:21:56.600 --> 1:21:59.880 not perfect. It helps your immune system not get so 1:22:00.320 --> 1:22:03.000 overwhelmed that you end up with a very serious infection. 1:22:04.240 --> 1:22:07.000 The other thing too, which I didn't really talk about 1:22:07.320 --> 1:22:09.280 in the history, but I want to get across, is 1:22:09.280 --> 1:22:12.040 that when you choose not to vaccinate, whether it's for 1:22:13.160 --> 1:22:16.439 childhood vaccines or whether it's for influenza, you're not making 1:22:16.520 --> 1:22:19.120 a choice just for yourself or just for your child. 1:22:19.240 --> 1:22:22.439 You are also making a choice for everyone that you 1:22:22.520 --> 1:22:26.160 are going to come in contact with. Ever. Yeah, and 1:22:26.920 --> 1:22:30.439 that could mean someone who is compromised and cannot get 1:22:30.439 --> 1:22:35.360 a vaccine, or an elderly person who similarly cannot get 1:22:35.400 --> 1:22:38.720 a vaccine, and you could be responsible for transmitting an 1:22:38.720 --> 1:22:42.120 infection to them. So next time you think, oh, I'm 1:22:42.280 --> 1:22:45.240 swamped with work, I cannot get the flu vaccine this year, 1:22:45.640 --> 1:22:47.760 think about the infant that you might pass into the 1:22:47.760 --> 1:22:50.120 grocery store, think about the old person that you might 1:22:50.160 --> 1:22:53.479 sit next to on a bus. It's there's a social 1:22:53.520 --> 1:22:57.160 responsibility I feel like we all should think about when 1:22:57.160 --> 1:22:58.520 it comes to vaccination. 1:22:58.920 --> 1:23:03.080 Because remember a lot of illnesses, including measles and influenza, 1:23:03.200 --> 1:23:06.599 can be transmitted before you ever show symptoms. So it's 1:23:06.600 --> 1:23:08.800 not like you can say, don't worry, I'll stay home 1:23:08.840 --> 1:23:11.439 if I get sick. You might be infectious before you 1:23:11.520 --> 1:23:12.120 even know it. 1:23:12.320 --> 1:23:12.599 Yeah. 1:23:12.720 --> 1:23:17.160 Yeah, so vaccines are great. Two more, that's all I've got. Okay, okay, 1:23:17.400 --> 1:23:21.800 myth number five vaccines are made of fetus. I don't 1:23:21.840 --> 1:23:25.880 want to inject fetus into my baby who's no longer 1:23:25.920 --> 1:23:31.200 a fetus. Okay, so this is essentially not true. So 1:23:31.479 --> 1:23:34.720 Aaron Welsh, you who I'm talking. 1:23:34.439 --> 1:23:36.439 To, Yes, that's me here. 1:23:37.680 --> 1:23:41.880 In the first episode, you discussed how some vaccines were developed, 1:23:41.920 --> 1:23:46.439 and a few vaccines, including rubella, hepatitis A, rabies more 1:23:46.439 --> 1:23:50.439 of them. They are grown in cell culture lines that 1:23:50.520 --> 1:23:56.040 were made from fetal lung tissue. 1:23:55.520 --> 1:23:59.160 That we are actually called strains because they die lines. 1:23:58.880 --> 1:24:00.519 Are oh really know that? 1:24:00.640 --> 1:24:05.360 Oh yeah, I did not know that little actually. 1:24:07.040 --> 1:24:11.040 Okay, uh so yeah, these these cell culture strains came 1:24:11.120 --> 1:24:15.800 from a single fetus that had been aborted over fifty 1:24:15.880 --> 1:24:18.760 years ago, right in the nineteen sixties, nineteen sixty two, 1:24:18.920 --> 1:24:22.240 nineteen sixty two. So those are the cell line. Those 1:24:22.280 --> 1:24:26.879 are the cell culture strains that are used to culture 1:24:27.040 --> 1:24:31.360 some vaccines. This does not mean that babies are being 1:24:31.439 --> 1:24:36.160 aborted to make vaccines. All of these cell cultures came 1:24:36.200 --> 1:24:39.040 from the same fetal lung tissue and they've been in 1:24:39.200 --> 1:24:44.080 use ever since, so no new fetuses are needed. And 1:24:44.160 --> 1:24:46.880 it also doesn't mean that your vaccine is full of 1:24:47.240 --> 1:24:50.120 fetal tissue. You can kind of think of a cell 1:24:50.160 --> 1:24:52.960 line like the soil that you grow your vegetables in. 1:24:53.560 --> 1:24:56.360 So when you pull out a potato, yes, maybe there's 1:24:56.400 --> 1:24:58.680 some dirt left on it, but does that mean your 1:24:58.680 --> 1:25:02.160 potato is made of dirt. No. In the same way, 1:25:02.280 --> 1:25:04.839 your vaccine might have been grown on a cell culture 1:25:04.880 --> 1:25:07.920 that was derived from fetal lung tissue, but that does 1:25:07.920 --> 1:25:10.360 not mean that it is made of fetal lung tissue. 1:25:11.120 --> 1:25:11.719 That makes sense. 1:25:12.200 --> 1:25:13.040 That makes sense to me. 1:25:13.600 --> 1:25:14.120 Excellent. 1:25:14.600 --> 1:25:17.960 Can I also just say I so I am not 1:25:18.000 --> 1:25:21.839 a religious person, but even the Catholic Church has rubber 1:25:21.840 --> 1:25:25.400 stamped it's okay, oh with with the vaccines that are 1:25:25.520 --> 1:25:27.839 that are grown in fetal lung tissue. 1:25:27.960 --> 1:25:29.040 New Pope or old Pope. 1:25:30.080 --> 1:25:33.439 Uh, old Pope. Actually, all right, there you go, Benedict, Yeah, 1:25:33.439 --> 1:25:35.800 he said, he said, as long as there is no alternative, 1:25:35.840 --> 1:25:40.000 it is completely lawful for Catholics to use these, and 1:25:40.080 --> 1:25:42.439 you actually should because you have a responsibility, et cetera, 1:25:42.439 --> 1:25:42.800 et cetera. 1:25:43.040 --> 1:25:47.720 Cool al right, WTG last one, I think this is 1:25:47.760 --> 1:25:51.520 my favorite. The HPV vaccine. 1:25:51.720 --> 1:25:55.040 Oh good, Okay, I had a whole section and I 1:25:55.120 --> 1:25:57.200 was like, I have too much. 1:25:57.479 --> 1:25:59.439 I'm only going to say a couple of things about it, 1:25:59.479 --> 1:26:03.240 but they're really important things. Okay, Apparently there's a myth 1:26:03.439 --> 1:26:05.240 I didn't even know this was a myth that the 1:26:05.439 --> 1:26:07.559 HPV vaccine causes cancer. 1:26:08.080 --> 1:26:08.320 Yeah. 1:26:08.960 --> 1:26:14.000 Yeah, so we're gonna have a whole episode on HPV. 1:26:14.600 --> 1:26:14.840 Yes. 1:26:15.080 --> 1:26:19.320 HPV stands for human papillomavirus. This is a very serious 1:26:19.360 --> 1:26:23.960 infection because it is the number one caused by far 1:26:24.760 --> 1:26:29.720 of cervical cancer. It doesn't only cause cervical cancer. It 1:26:29.760 --> 1:26:33.840 also causes throat cancer, it causes penile cancer, and it 1:26:33.880 --> 1:26:38.160 causes anal cancer and a number of other cancers. HPV 1:26:38.360 --> 1:26:43.280 infects basically your surface cells, so anywhere where you have 1:26:43.400 --> 1:26:48.200 what's called squamous cells, HPV can infect and the way 1:26:48.240 --> 1:26:53.919 that HPV replicates in your body can lead directly to cancer. 1:26:55.320 --> 1:27:01.840 So HPV is very serious. The HPV vaccine does not 1:27:02.040 --> 1:27:06.639 cause cancer because it is not a live vaccine. It's 1:27:06.680 --> 1:27:10.479 not even a killed vaccine. It's a component vaccine or 1:27:10.520 --> 1:27:14.040 a subunit vaccine. So the vaccine itself is just made 1:27:14.080 --> 1:27:18.040 of particles of the virus, not the whole virus. So 1:27:18.080 --> 1:27:21.040 there's no way for it to infect yourselves the way 1:27:21.040 --> 1:27:24.519 that a real virus would and cause the changes that 1:27:24.600 --> 1:27:28.120 a real virus could cause in order to cause cancer. 1:27:29.600 --> 1:27:32.559 So the HPV vaccine, which I just have to say, 1:27:32.560 --> 1:27:34.840 when it was first marketed, they did a terrible job 1:27:34.880 --> 1:27:38.839 of it because they marketed it as protecting you against 1:27:38.840 --> 1:27:42.400 genital warts, which it does, and like, who wants warts? 1:27:44.040 --> 1:27:48.600 It doesn't just protect against genital warts. It literally protects 1:27:48.640 --> 1:27:50.439 you against cancer. 1:27:51.200 --> 1:27:52.840 It's a cancer vaccine. 1:27:52.880 --> 1:27:56.759 It is a vaccine against cancer. Isn't that what everybody wants? 1:27:56.800 --> 1:27:58.719 Like people are like, why don't we have a vaccine 1:27:58.760 --> 1:28:04.400 for cancer? We do? Literally. Yeah. I also want to say, 1:28:04.479 --> 1:28:06.920 and this comes back to what I've said a couple 1:28:06.920 --> 1:28:10.400 of times now about how important it is to give 1:28:10.479 --> 1:28:15.479 vaccines to people before they're ever exposed. HPV is an 1:28:15.600 --> 1:28:19.400 extremely common virus. It's everywhere. 1:28:19.479 --> 1:28:20.640 Yeah, it's everywhere. 1:28:20.880 --> 1:28:23.719 I think it's something like it's estimated that eighty percent 1:28:23.760 --> 1:28:27.320 of adults will be exposed at some point in their life. Yeah, 1:28:27.920 --> 1:28:30.559 and not every strain causes cancer, but there are a 1:28:30.680 --> 1:28:33.960 number of strains that do. And the vaccine protects against 1:28:34.080 --> 1:28:39.479 a number of strains that cause cancer. So some people 1:28:39.560 --> 1:28:43.320 are concerned that giving the HPV vaccine to young children, 1:28:43.439 --> 1:28:47.280 which is it's recommended for kids age like eleven to fourteen, 1:28:48.200 --> 1:28:51.840 that this is somehow going to increase sexual promiscuity or 1:28:51.880 --> 1:28:55.439 the rates of other STIs because oh, if we give 1:28:55.479 --> 1:28:59.960 them a vaccine that protects against an STI, they're just 1:29:00.160 --> 1:29:04.600 going to start having sex everywhere. There have been studies 1:29:04.640 --> 1:29:09.000 to specifically look at this, and there is absolutely no 1:29:09.160 --> 1:29:13.160 evidence that giving young people, including young girls who are 1:29:13.200 --> 1:29:16.120 apparently the precious angels that are never supposed to have sex, 1:29:16.760 --> 1:29:19.920 there is no evidence that giving young people the HPV 1:29:20.040 --> 1:29:24.719 vaccine increases sexual promiscuity at all. 1:29:26.479 --> 1:29:31.320 Can we talk though, about the recent study that came 1:29:31.360 --> 1:29:36.520 out that showed the measurable decrease in cervical cancer diagnoses 1:29:37.040 --> 1:29:40.720 since the HPV vaccine has been widely distributed. 1:29:41.040 --> 1:29:44.599 Yeah, there, that's it. 1:29:44.680 --> 1:29:49.120 That's it, because I mean, I understand that that was 1:29:49.160 --> 1:29:52.320 a big discussion about the whole sexual promiscuity thing, but 1:29:53.080 --> 1:29:56.000 it really bothers me that that has held up people 1:29:56.439 --> 1:30:01.679 I agree, giving it to their children. Yeah, yeah, because 1:30:01.720 --> 1:30:05.320 a similar argument was made against hepatitis B vaccine. When 1:30:05.360 --> 1:30:07.640 it was first introduced, they were like, this is a 1:30:07.680 --> 1:30:11.759 disease of drug addicts and its dirt. It's a dirty disease, 1:30:11.920 --> 1:30:13.920 and I'm not going to give it to my precious 1:30:13.960 --> 1:30:17.320 angel because that implies that they're going to be dirty, 1:30:17.400 --> 1:30:19.679 going to be a drug addict or whatever. Yeah, and 1:30:20.080 --> 1:30:24.479 that is so I can't even wrap my brain around it, 1:30:24.520 --> 1:30:27.240 and it kind of makes me feel it's like saying, 1:30:27.520 --> 1:30:31.800 let's have a debate with an anti vaccine person or 1:30:31.840 --> 1:30:34.960 community or whatever. I don't think that we should give 1:30:35.000 --> 1:30:36.400 them any more platforms. 1:30:36.520 --> 1:30:40.240 Yeah, well, talk about the hepatitis B vaccine. That's another 1:30:40.320 --> 1:30:44.280 vaccine that protects against cancer because hepatitis B increases your 1:30:44.360 --> 1:30:46.000 risk for liver cancer. 1:30:46.560 --> 1:30:47.000 It does. 1:30:47.800 --> 1:30:51.559 Yeah, So those are all of the myths that I 1:30:51.680 --> 1:30:54.120 have to address. I think it's a lot of the 1:30:54.160 --> 1:30:58.000 biggest ones, the biggest concerns that people have. But we're 1:30:58.000 --> 1:30:59.040 not even done yet, are we. 1:30:59.720 --> 1:31:04.040 Noll you guys, this is a really long episode, so 1:31:04.080 --> 1:31:06.519 thanks for hanging in there with us. Yeah, we're very 1:31:06.520 --> 1:31:10.400 excited about it because there's so much information and we 1:31:10.640 --> 1:31:14.880 are about to bring you some very thrilling interviews. 1:31:15.160 --> 1:31:20.240 So thrilling. So you'll hear from doctor Peter Hotez about 1:31:20.240 --> 1:31:25.200 even more vaccine misconceptions and myths and more information about 1:31:25.360 --> 1:31:28.559 just how safe vaccines are. And then we'll talk psy 1:31:28.760 --> 1:31:32.719 Colm with Bill Nye, the SI guy. 1:31:33.040 --> 1:31:35.040 So let's get started on those interviews. 1:31:35.200 --> 1:31:38.800 All right, we should probably take a quick break, make 1:31:38.840 --> 1:31:53.880 yourself another place, ma Rita. 1:32:04.400 --> 1:32:07.680 Today we are joined by doctor Peter Hotez, dean of 1:32:07.720 --> 1:32:10.559 the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of 1:32:10.600 --> 1:32:14.040 Medicine in Houston and co director of the Texas Children's 1:32:14.040 --> 1:32:18.840 Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. Did I get that rightly? 1:32:19.280 --> 1:32:22.840 Wonderful doctor Hotez, thank you so much for taking the 1:32:22.880 --> 1:32:25.840 time to chat with us today. So it's so great 1:32:25.840 --> 1:32:28.879 to hear from you because we have been huge fans 1:32:29.160 --> 1:32:32.719 since our epidemiology grad school days, like this is we're 1:32:33.120 --> 1:32:36.160 you know, this is definitely a celebrity moment for us, Like, 1:32:36.240 --> 1:32:41.240 oh my gosh, time too kind, but thank you really 1:32:42.280 --> 1:32:45.560 so today we wanted to chat with you about vaccines, 1:32:45.880 --> 1:32:50.640 in particular the misinformation and fear surrounding childhood vaccines and 1:32:50.720 --> 1:32:53.800 to go through some common questions about vaccines and the 1:32:53.840 --> 1:32:57.880 misconceptions that the anti vaccine movement holds on too and promotes. 1:32:58.520 --> 1:33:01.840 But let's start with you. Can you tell us a 1:33:01.880 --> 1:33:05.759 bit about yourself and your professional experience with vaccine development 1:33:05.800 --> 1:33:09.080 and research and how you became interested in this field. 1:33:09.680 --> 1:33:12.000 Sure, well, thanks for having me and thanks for the question. 1:33:12.160 --> 1:33:16.639 So I'm a vaccine scientist sometimes called a vaccinologist, and 1:33:17.920 --> 1:33:22.439 I co lead a group that's developing vaccines to prevent 1:33:22.600 --> 1:33:27.440 or treat poverty related neglected diseases, a group of conditions 1:33:27.479 --> 1:33:31.439 we call the neglected tropical diseases or NTDs. And I've 1:33:31.479 --> 1:33:34.559 been doing this my whole professional life since I was 1:33:34.600 --> 1:33:37.960 in graduate school, since I was an MD PhD student 1:33:38.080 --> 1:33:40.439 at Rockefeller University in New York. So I have a 1:33:40.479 --> 1:33:44.639 lifelong passion to develop the vaccines that nobody else will 1:33:44.640 --> 1:33:48.920 make because therefore they're targeting the diseases of the world's 1:33:48.920 --> 1:33:53.680 poorest people and there's no financial pot of gold at 1:33:53.680 --> 1:33:56.360 the end of the rainbow. So one of the interesting 1:33:56.400 --> 1:33:58.519 things that we do is not only the science of 1:33:58.520 --> 1:34:02.320 how we develop vaccines, but trying to figure out sustainable 1:34:02.439 --> 1:34:06.720 business models because no one's done this before, and so 1:34:06.960 --> 1:34:11.479 that's my major, that's my major research activity. So it's 1:34:11.520 --> 1:34:15.040 an interesting one in that it's a hybrid between the 1:34:15.080 --> 1:34:19.160 academic culture. So we write papers and grants like other 1:34:19.439 --> 1:34:23.599 academic scientists, but we're also trying to develop stuff. We're 1:34:23.640 --> 1:34:27.040 trying to make a product. So we're a hybrid between 1:34:27.040 --> 1:34:31.360 a biotech culture and an academic culture, which sometimes works 1:34:31.360 --> 1:34:35.760 and sometimes there are kinks to work out. But it's 1:34:35.760 --> 1:34:39.880 been a very exciting thirty year ride developing these vaccines. 1:34:39.920 --> 1:34:44.720 We now have vaccines to combat hookworm and shist asamiasis 1:34:44.800 --> 1:34:48.599 and moving into phase two clinical trials, and we have 1:34:49.000 --> 1:34:53.320 a new shagas disease vaccines going into phase one and 1:34:53.560 --> 1:34:59.240 hopefully leishmaniasis vaccine to follow. So we target the what 1:34:59.280 --> 1:35:02.479 we'd like to call the most common diseases you've never 1:35:02.560 --> 1:35:02.880 heard of. 1:35:03.920 --> 1:35:06.800 Amazing. We actually mentioned your hookworm vaccine in our recent 1:35:06.840 --> 1:35:11.280 Hookworm episode, and I studied Shaugust for my PhD. So 1:35:11.320 --> 1:35:13.639 that's really thrilling that there's a Shogus vaccine in the works. 1:35:13.680 --> 1:35:14.519 I didn't realize that. 1:35:15.040 --> 1:35:18.000 How did you become interested in in vaccines? 1:35:18.040 --> 1:35:18.280 Like what? 1:35:18.400 --> 1:35:21.200 So? In terms of neglected tropical diseases, which is a 1:35:21.240 --> 1:35:25.479 phrase I believe you coined or at least helped to promote, 1:35:26.000 --> 1:35:29.160 and you know this is, as its name suggest is 1:35:29.200 --> 1:35:32.040 a neglected area. So what kind of spurred your interest 1:35:32.200 --> 1:35:33.360 in that particular field. 1:35:34.640 --> 1:35:40.200 Well, it was actually I had a lifelong passion for 1:35:40.880 --> 1:35:45.439 studying tropical diseases and parasites. So I was a nerdy 1:35:45.560 --> 1:35:49.559 kid who grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut and had 1:35:49.600 --> 1:35:52.240 a microscope in my own lab in the basement. And 1:35:52.720 --> 1:35:54.680 you know, you grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. You either 1:35:54.720 --> 1:35:56.599 want to pitch for the Yankees of the Red Sox 1:35:56.680 --> 1:35:59.519 and I want that to study tropical diseases. So it's 1:35:59.560 --> 1:36:02.880 been a life I'm living out my boyhood fantasies. The 1:36:03.880 --> 1:36:08.439 vaccine component, I think, is a certain humanitarian drive that 1:36:08.600 --> 1:36:13.559 I began in medical school and graduate school and have 1:36:13.760 --> 1:36:17.400 continued ever since. So my whole life I wanted to 1:36:17.400 --> 1:36:22.599 be a laboratory investigator. The one piece that I did 1:36:22.640 --> 1:36:25.840 not really think i'd be doing it, either earlier in 1:36:25.880 --> 1:36:28.280 life or this stage in life is all the public 1:36:28.320 --> 1:36:32.200 engagement to get people to care about poverty related to 1:36:32.200 --> 1:36:36.960 neglected diseases, and getting people to care about diseases of 1:36:37.000 --> 1:36:41.360 the poor and neglected tropical diseases. And now this latest 1:36:42.720 --> 1:36:47.360 craziness about vaccines and the anti vaccine. 1:36:46.840 --> 1:36:53.120 Movement, so moving into that area. In your book called 1:36:53.600 --> 1:36:57.320 Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, which was published last year, 1:36:57.840 --> 1:37:01.120 you talk about your personal experience as ofvaccine developer and 1:37:01.240 --> 1:37:03.919 as a parent of a child with autism spectrum disorder. 1:37:04.600 --> 1:37:07.639 Writing about such a deeply personal part of your life 1:37:07.800 --> 1:37:11.400 must have been a difficult process, and you mentioned in 1:37:11.439 --> 1:37:13.479 the book that it was a difficult decision to make. 1:37:14.000 --> 1:37:16.920 But it's also so enlightening to hear your perspective, and 1:37:16.960 --> 1:37:20.320 I'm sure it resonated amongst many readers. Could you share 1:37:20.360 --> 1:37:22.840 with us a bit about your daughter, Rachel and why 1:37:22.920 --> 1:37:24.280 you decided to write that book. 1:37:24.760 --> 1:37:25.080 Sure. 1:37:25.280 --> 1:37:28.639 So, My wife Anna and I have four adult kids, 1:37:29.520 --> 1:37:34.280 and Rachel is our youngest daughter. She's twenty six, has autism, 1:37:35.040 --> 1:37:41.120 but not only autism, number of other intellectual severe intellectual disabilities. 1:37:41.479 --> 1:37:46.680 And I wrote the book because I became very alarmed 1:37:47.120 --> 1:37:51.680 by this aggressive rise in the anti vaccine movement. We 1:37:51.680 --> 1:37:55.439 were starting to see measles outbreaks across Europe was starting 1:37:55.479 --> 1:37:57.479 in the United States. So we could talk about why 1:37:57.520 --> 1:38:01.880 we see measles before we see the other vaccine preventable diseases, 1:38:03.080 --> 1:38:07.479 and this rising chorus of anti vaccine sentiments to the 1:38:07.520 --> 1:38:12.240 point where the anti vaccine movement had morphed from a 1:38:12.280 --> 1:38:16.360 culture or fringe movement to now dominating the Internet. And 1:38:16.400 --> 1:38:19.720 on the other side, I did not see a robust 1:38:20.560 --> 1:38:22.120 system in place to counter it. 1:38:22.200 --> 1:38:23.479 There wasn't really a. 1:38:25.640 --> 1:38:30.280 Narrative that was out there that was easily accessible promoting vaccine. 1:38:30.320 --> 1:38:34.800 So I thought, well, here, I am a vaccine scientist, pediatrician, 1:38:34.840 --> 1:38:37.280 and the parent of an adult daughter with autism. If 1:38:37.320 --> 1:38:39.280 I don't do it, who's going to do it? And 1:38:40.160 --> 1:38:43.360 talked about it with my wife and with Rachel and 1:38:43.680 --> 1:38:47.760 with the other members of my family, and they were very, 1:38:47.960 --> 1:38:52.759 very supportive. And so the product is an interesting book. 1:38:52.800 --> 1:38:55.320 I haven't seen too many like it. It's a science book. 1:38:55.360 --> 1:39:00.080 It goes into some detail explaining the science of showing 1:39:00.120 --> 1:39:03.200 that there's no link between vaccines and autism, whether it's 1:39:03.760 --> 1:39:08.560 the MMR vaccine is originally thought stated by the anti vaxxers, 1:39:09.240 --> 1:39:12.760 or thimerisol preservative that used to be in vaccines, or 1:39:13.160 --> 1:39:16.720 spacing vaccines close together, or aluminum They play this kind 1:39:16.760 --> 1:39:21.160 of pyrrhic game of vaccine whackamole. So it goes into 1:39:21.200 --> 1:39:26.000 the science showing there's no link and studies over one 1:39:26.080 --> 1:39:30.120 million children, and then also going into autism, what it 1:39:30.240 --> 1:39:33.520 is and how it begins in early fetal brain development, 1:39:34.439 --> 1:39:37.439 the genetics of autism, the ninety nine genes, some of 1:39:37.479 --> 1:39:40.920 the epigenetics. But then the other thing I do in 1:39:40.960 --> 1:39:43.320 the book is tell a very personal story, and it 1:39:43.360 --> 1:39:45.760 interweaves a very personal story. So I haven't seen too 1:39:45.800 --> 1:39:48.759 many books like this that's both science book and tells 1:39:48.800 --> 1:39:52.920 the personal narrative of a scientist. And it occurred to 1:39:52.920 --> 1:39:54.760 me as I was writing this book, you know, we 1:39:54.840 --> 1:39:57.479 need to have more books like that. We need we 1:39:57.560 --> 1:40:01.760 need so much more of this. We need to have 1:40:01.840 --> 1:40:04.880 a new generation of scientists that have an interest and 1:40:04.960 --> 1:40:08.040 ability to do the public engagement. And that was the 1:40:08.080 --> 1:40:08.880 reason for the book. 1:40:10.040 --> 1:40:12.760 So your book also dives into the history of the 1:40:12.800 --> 1:40:15.800 modern anti vaccine movement and examines a lot of the 1:40:15.800 --> 1:40:20.760 common misconceptions about the safety or health risks of childhood vaccines. 1:40:21.200 --> 1:40:23.640 And we've gotten a lot of questions from listeners and 1:40:23.680 --> 1:40:28.080 then also just seen common questions and concerns online and 1:40:28.120 --> 1:40:29.920 so we're hoping that you can help us go through 1:40:29.920 --> 1:40:33.280 some of these sort of specific questions and kind of 1:40:34.000 --> 1:40:35.600 address them specifically. 1:40:35.840 --> 1:40:37.599 Yeah, yes, happy to all right. 1:40:38.160 --> 1:40:40.760 So the first one is because of a lot of 1:40:41.320 --> 1:40:45.200 advances in vaccine development over the years, the schedule for 1:40:45.320 --> 1:40:48.120 vaccinations for children today looks a lot different than it 1:40:48.160 --> 1:40:50.880 has in generations past, even in the time that we 1:40:50.880 --> 1:40:54.000 were growing up. And so sometimes today parents can feel 1:40:54.080 --> 1:40:57.240 overwhelmed looking at the list of how many vaccinations their 1:40:57.280 --> 1:41:00.439 baby has to get or how frequent these vaccinations are. 1:41:00.760 --> 1:41:03.120 So can you explain a bit about how these schedules 1:41:03.120 --> 1:41:06.360 are developed and why there are so many more vaccines 1:41:06.360 --> 1:41:08.320 than we've seen in years past. 1:41:08.960 --> 1:41:11.840 Well, let's unpack that in a few ways. I mean, 1:41:11.920 --> 1:41:16.040 first of all, we're now vaccinating against diseases, whereas before 1:41:16.080 --> 1:41:19.559 we didn't have vaccines. What's happened is the industry is 1:41:20.000 --> 1:41:24.040 recognizes that they want to minimize the number of injections 1:41:24.040 --> 1:41:27.960 that kids get. So they've been combining these into pent 1:41:28.040 --> 1:41:32.439 evalent vaccines, meaning targeting five diseases at the same time. 1:41:32.840 --> 1:41:37.600 In some cases hepta valent, so getting diphtheria, pertossis, tetanus, 1:41:38.160 --> 1:41:43.519 this one, homophlus, influenza, type B, polio, sometimes hepatitis, And 1:41:43.560 --> 1:41:46.800 that way we've minimize the number of injections so I 1:41:46.840 --> 1:41:49.760 think you know, they're the f Food and Drug Administration 1:41:49.880 --> 1:41:53.599 and industry have done their best to limit the number 1:41:53.600 --> 1:41:58.240 of injections. You know, then the anti vaccine people respond well, 1:41:58.320 --> 1:42:02.040 because you're remunizing against two many diseases at once, you're 1:42:02.080 --> 1:42:05.120 somehow overwhelming the immune system. But in fact, you know, 1:42:05.400 --> 1:42:08.759 I point out that that's not what the science says. 1:42:08.840 --> 1:42:14.000 The science says, if you're an infant, your gastrointestinal track, 1:42:14.040 --> 1:42:18.320 your respiratory tree, your lungs are incredibly efficient organs of 1:42:18.840 --> 1:42:23.200 antigen presentation. Probably an infant on average is getting exposed 1:42:23.240 --> 1:42:26.479 to hundreds of new antigens every day. And the idea 1:42:26.640 --> 1:42:29.760 you're going to overwhelm the immune system quote unquote by 1:42:30.160 --> 1:42:33.759 giving five or six antigens at once simply doesn't pass 1:42:33.840 --> 1:42:37.400 the left test. But you see that takes time to explain. 1:42:37.520 --> 1:42:41.200 It's not a thirty second sound bite. So we you know, 1:42:41.280 --> 1:42:44.439 we're up against an anti vaccine lobby that will just 1:42:44.520 --> 1:42:48.200 spew out, oh, the we're overwhelming the immune system of 1:42:48.240 --> 1:42:52.520 our kids giving all these vaccines, and industry is profiting 1:42:53.000 --> 1:42:58.360 neglecting to say how life saving these vaccines are. 1:42:58.200 --> 1:43:00.320 Because of the horrific diseases. 1:43:00.080 --> 1:43:03.880 That are presenting and why it's outrageous to say we're 1:43:03.920 --> 1:43:07.120 overwhelming the immune system when there's zero evidence for that 1:43:07.439 --> 1:43:09.120 and there's no plausibility for it. 1:43:09.560 --> 1:43:10.160 Absolutely. 1:43:10.840 --> 1:43:13.880 One of the examples of another one of a specific 1:43:13.960 --> 1:43:17.000 disease that people bring up as a reason not to 1:43:17.080 --> 1:43:21.160 vaccinate is chicken pox. And so it's a recommended childhood vaccine, 1:43:21.439 --> 1:43:24.759 but it's relatively new. So for instance, I didn't receive 1:43:24.800 --> 1:43:27.719 it as a child, I had chicken pox, but now 1:43:27.880 --> 1:43:30.800 it's recommended a lot and so a lot of people 1:43:30.880 --> 1:43:34.559 see chicken pox as just a routine childhood illness, not 1:43:34.640 --> 1:43:37.280 a big deal. And so can you explain why it 1:43:37.360 --> 1:43:41.040 actually is very important to vaccinate for a disease like 1:43:41.120 --> 1:43:44.040 chicken pox if the illness is mild in most cases? 1:43:44.800 --> 1:43:47.719 Well, you know, this is again one of the things, 1:43:47.800 --> 1:43:50.840 this is one of This is the anti vaxxer playbook, right. 1:43:51.520 --> 1:43:55.560 They are they do their best to minimize their diseases, 1:43:55.600 --> 1:43:58.879 and so for measles, for instance, they'll play an episode 1:43:58.920 --> 1:44:01.880 of The Brady Bunch where Marsha Brady thought it was 1:44:01.920 --> 1:44:03.960 a good thing to get measles because she stays home 1:44:04.000 --> 1:44:07.519 from school, As though that's evidence that measles isn't so bad, 1:44:08.680 --> 1:44:12.960 neglecting the inconvenient truth that prior to widespread vaccination, two 1:44:13.000 --> 1:44:15.519 point six million kids died of measles every year. It 1:44:15.600 --> 1:44:19.280 was the single leading killer of children globally. After smallpox 1:44:19.760 --> 1:44:23.759 was eradicated in the United States, hundreds of kids died 1:44:23.800 --> 1:44:31.280 every year and tens of thousands were hospitalized. And although 1:44:31.360 --> 1:44:34.519 vericella chicken pox is not as severe as measles, it's 1:44:34.520 --> 1:44:38.680 still a pretty bad actor. In the early nineteen nineties, 1:44:40.600 --> 1:44:46.240 vericella chicken pox caused ten to thirteen thousand hospitalizations and 1:44:46.280 --> 1:44:50.040 to one hundred and fifty people died every year. As 1:44:50.080 --> 1:44:52.640 when I was back when I was attending in pediatric 1:44:52.720 --> 1:44:57.400 infectious disease, we saw some horrific disease from a chicken pox. 1:44:57.920 --> 1:45:00.960 So the fact that we have a vaccine is is great. 1:45:01.000 --> 1:45:04.080 And what can be done sometimes is to combine it 1:45:04.120 --> 1:45:07.360 with the MMR vaccine to give MMR V so you're 1:45:07.400 --> 1:45:09.160 not adding another injection. 1:45:10.760 --> 1:45:14.720 That's awesome. Another one of the reasons that we hear 1:45:15.479 --> 1:45:19.959 often cited to not vaccinate is that getting infected naturally 1:45:20.120 --> 1:45:22.960 can provide a longer lasting immunity. So can you explain 1:45:23.000 --> 1:45:26.200 why that's not a good reason to not vaccinate. 1:45:27.320 --> 1:45:31.000 Well, so, in some cases experience with the pathogen will 1:45:31.040 --> 1:45:35.120 confer long lasting immunity, like measles. That's this, but you 1:45:35.160 --> 1:45:38.559 know there's the end of the dot dot dot is 1:45:39.240 --> 1:45:43.600 if you're lucky enough to survive the natural infection or 1:45:43.640 --> 1:45:48.080 survive without permanent injury. So yes, some of these infectious 1:45:48.120 --> 1:45:51.639 disease pathogens do confer immunity, but that's the whole point 1:45:51.720 --> 1:45:55.719 right of vaccinating is to confer that same or similar 1:45:55.800 --> 1:45:58.479 level of immunity. But doing it with a weakened or 1:45:58.520 --> 1:46:03.679 attenuated pathogens, you don't experience the illness, and that's why 1:46:03.720 --> 1:46:06.960 it can save lives. I mean, measles in the pre 1:46:07.120 --> 1:46:11.400 vaccine era in the early sixties caused one in four 1:46:11.479 --> 1:46:15.719 kids to be hospitalized, five hundred deaths, tens of thousands 1:46:15.720 --> 1:46:20.480 of hospitalization, and many from causing permanent injury from measles, pneumonia, 1:46:20.560 --> 1:46:24.200 measles encephalitis. That's why we vaccinate, to give you a 1:46:24.200 --> 1:46:27.759 similar or same level of immunity without the disease. 1:46:29.280 --> 1:46:36.120 Another question that we see very often is so vaccines 1:46:36.479 --> 1:46:40.719 have some risk associated with them, and in our first 1:46:40.720 --> 1:46:43.200 part of our vaccines episode, we'll talk about some of 1:46:43.240 --> 1:46:46.360 the potential adverse effects when we cover sort of the 1:46:46.360 --> 1:46:49.840 biology of vaccines. But I think that the fear of 1:46:49.880 --> 1:46:53.559 those adverse events happening is what drives some people not 1:46:53.920 --> 1:46:57.000 to choose not to vaccinate. So can you explain how 1:46:57.160 --> 1:47:01.120 the risks of vaccination differ from the risk of not vaccinating, 1:47:01.200 --> 1:47:05.120 and just how low these risks really are associated with vaccination. 1:47:05.880 --> 1:47:09.720 Yeah, So the two things that the anti vaccine lobby does. 1:47:09.760 --> 1:47:15.200 First of all, it tends to play down the likelihood 1:47:15.240 --> 1:47:20.400 of your getting one of these diseases. They inconveniently don't 1:47:20.439 --> 1:47:24.080 tell you that measles is back, pertessis which is whooping 1:47:24.120 --> 1:47:27.320 cough is back. You're always at risk for tetanus if 1:47:27.320 --> 1:47:30.320 you get a severe injury. So there is real risk 1:47:30.360 --> 1:47:34.400 out there for children in the United States or children 1:47:34.560 --> 1:47:37.240 all over the world. And the truth is, the risk 1:47:37.320 --> 1:47:41.599 of a serious adverse event from a vaccine is extremely rare. 1:47:41.920 --> 1:47:44.640 In the book, we put it about one in a 1:47:44.680 --> 1:47:48.160 million of a serious adverse event, and some would put 1:47:48.160 --> 1:47:50.840 it at one in ten million. And just to give 1:47:50.880 --> 1:47:55.360 you a sense of perspective there on a website, I 1:47:55.400 --> 1:47:58.360 found the likelihood of getting struck by lightning is one 1:47:58.400 --> 1:48:01.600 in seven hundred thousand, so you're more likely to be 1:48:01.640 --> 1:48:05.320 struck by lightning then have a serious adverse event from 1:48:05.360 --> 1:48:10.479 a vaccine. In fact, the risk of putting your child 1:48:10.600 --> 1:48:12.839 in a car, even with a car seat, is probably 1:48:13.240 --> 1:48:17.280 much higher than the risk of vaccinating, So we need 1:48:17.320 --> 1:48:20.240 to find a better way to communicate risk to lay 1:48:20.240 --> 1:48:21.360 audiences as well. 1:48:22.320 --> 1:48:25.000 I think a lot of us know people who are 1:48:25.000 --> 1:48:28.920 opposed to vaccination or at least questioning whether they need 1:48:28.960 --> 1:48:32.439 to vaccinate in having these doubts, and I think we 1:48:32.520 --> 1:48:35.760 struggle with engaging with these people and talking to them 1:48:35.760 --> 1:48:39.280 about vaccines in a constructive way. What advice do you 1:48:39.439 --> 1:48:42.120 have to people who have friends or family members that 1:48:42.200 --> 1:48:45.479 don't vaccinate or are questioning vaccination. How can you best 1:48:45.560 --> 1:48:48.679 communicate the importance and safety of vaccination to these people. 1:48:49.520 --> 1:48:51.320 Well, I do it in a few ways. First of all, 1:48:51.760 --> 1:48:56.800 I explain to parents that they're victims of the misinformation campaign. 1:48:57.360 --> 1:49:00.240 Right now if you try to download that there's are 1:49:00.240 --> 1:49:05.040 such dominance of the anti vaccine lobby on the internet 1:49:05.640 --> 1:49:08.040 that if you now try to download any kind of 1:49:08.080 --> 1:49:12.640 health information about vaccines, you're much more likely to dominate 1:49:13.120 --> 1:49:17.920 phony vaccine anti vaxine misinformation than you are real information. 1:49:18.040 --> 1:49:21.160 So in some way, these parents are victims. And then 1:49:21.560 --> 1:49:23.400 I like to point out, you know, I give a 1:49:23.479 --> 1:49:27.479 number of lectures across the country every year, pediatric ran 1:49:27.600 --> 1:49:31.799 rounds talking to pediatricians and nurse practitioners and many parents. 1:49:32.240 --> 1:49:34.760 I find most of the parents are not deeply dug in. 1:49:34.880 --> 1:49:39.880 They've they've downloaded misinformation, They've heard something unsavory about vaccines 1:49:39.880 --> 1:49:42.599 from a friend or a relative. But if you're willing 1:49:42.640 --> 1:49:45.240 to take the time to have a discussion with them, 1:49:45.320 --> 1:49:48.439 you can make them understand why vaccines are safe and 1:49:48.479 --> 1:49:52.360 your why your child deserves to be vaccinated, and your 1:49:52.439 --> 1:49:55.360 child is a fundamental right to be protected against serious 1:49:55.800 --> 1:49:59.000 or deadly infections. Then there's another I don't know what 1:49:59.040 --> 1:50:02.679 the number is, whether it's five fifteen percent of parents 1:50:02.680 --> 1:50:06.680 who are deeply dug in and they buy the conspiracy theories, 1:50:06.720 --> 1:50:10.200 and those ones are very tough to reach. But most 1:50:10.280 --> 1:50:13.280 parents you can have a pretty meaningful conversation with and 1:50:14.200 --> 1:50:18.040 make them understand that the benefits of vaccination far out 1:50:18.360 --> 1:50:19.400 weigh the risks. 1:50:20.360 --> 1:50:25.240 For people who for our audience, are there certain websites 1:50:25.360 --> 1:50:29.000 or resources that you can suggest specifically that have accurate 1:50:29.080 --> 1:50:33.439 vaccine information that you that people can go to and say, Okay, 1:50:33.439 --> 1:50:36.000 this is how this is how vaccines work. This is 1:50:36.760 --> 1:50:40.360 a step by step breakdown. This is sort of dismantling 1:50:40.400 --> 1:50:44.920 all these myths and misconceptions that the anti vaccine movement 1:50:45.000 --> 1:50:45.879 is pushing. 1:50:46.600 --> 1:50:48.439 Well, that's what I tried to do in my book, 1:50:48.479 --> 1:50:52.040 and especially in the epilogue. I provide the major phony 1:50:52.760 --> 1:50:55.960 talking points of the anti vaccine movement to refute them. 1:50:56.560 --> 1:51:00.639 But in terms of websites, the CDC web site actually 1:51:00.720 --> 1:51:04.439 has a ton of information. The problem is it's difficult 1:51:04.520 --> 1:51:07.080 to mine or wade through. So I know where to 1:51:07.080 --> 1:51:09.000 look because I have an MD and a PhD. But 1:51:09.080 --> 1:51:14.040 it's but it's it's not very user friendly for lay audiences. 1:51:14.880 --> 1:51:18.559 The vaccines dot gov website is pretty good, and the 1:51:18.880 --> 1:51:21.880 actually the Canadian equivalent one is I forget what it is, 1:51:21.920 --> 1:51:27.559 but it's it's quite good. The there are there, there 1:51:27.560 --> 1:51:32.439 are a couple of nonprofits. Vaccinate your Family dot org 1:51:32.520 --> 1:51:36.040 has got a good one. There's the Vaccine Education Center 1:51:36.080 --> 1:51:40.040 that's put out by the University of Pennsylvanian Children's Hospital 1:51:40.080 --> 1:51:45.280 of Philadelphia, but it's it doesn't have all the glitz 1:51:45.400 --> 1:51:49.240 in the panache that the anti vaxxer websites do, and 1:51:49.320 --> 1:51:54.400 so we're still we're still in the nineteen nineties when 1:51:54.400 --> 1:51:55.519 it comes to the internet. 1:51:56.960 --> 1:51:59.400 I think we've got one last fun question for you, 1:51:59.680 --> 1:52:00.599 hope fun. 1:52:01.880 --> 1:52:05.480 If you could snap your fingers and create a vaccine 1:52:05.520 --> 1:52:08.920 for any infectious disease today that doesn't have one, what. 1:52:08.960 --> 1:52:11.800 Would it be, Well, I would say the ones we're 1:52:11.840 --> 1:52:16.320 developing there are. I mean, the one that's really moving 1:52:16.320 --> 1:52:20.000 along nicely is our vaccine for shist of semiasis. This 1:52:20.160 --> 1:52:23.559 is a disease of two hundred million people who live 1:52:23.600 --> 1:52:26.920 in extreme poverty, a horrific cause of liver disease and 1:52:27.280 --> 1:52:31.280 testinal disease, and it causes a condition on this female 1:52:31.320 --> 1:52:34.800 genital shift of semiasis, which many people are surprised is 1:52:34.800 --> 1:52:38.839 actually the most common gynecologic condition on the African continent, 1:52:39.320 --> 1:52:43.200 a cause of pain and bleeding and stigma, marital discord, 1:52:44.000 --> 1:52:47.680 unipolar depression, and now it's been linked to a fourfold 1:52:47.760 --> 1:52:50.880 increase in HIV AIDS, probably because of the alcort of 1:52:50.960 --> 1:52:54.200 diseases and causes provides a conduit for the for the 1:52:54.240 --> 1:53:00.120 AIDS virus. So this may be Africa's leading cofactor for 1:53:00.280 --> 1:53:03.840 HIV eight's and we're developing that vaccine and i'd love 1:53:03.880 --> 1:53:07.240 to see that get to the license your stage. 1:53:07.960 --> 1:53:12.360 Great answer, Thank you so so much for your time. 1:53:13.040 --> 1:53:15.960 Like Aaron said, we are huge fans of your work. 1:53:16.000 --> 1:53:18.519 I think you are the single person I cited the 1:53:18.560 --> 1:53:21.960 most in my entire PhD dissertation. So it's been very 1:53:21.960 --> 1:53:23.639 thrilling to get to speak with you, and we really 1:53:23.680 --> 1:53:26.400 appreciate your time to talk with us about this topic. 1:53:27.439 --> 1:53:30.120 Oh, thank you, thanks for having me, and congratulations on 1:53:30.120 --> 1:53:32.920 what you're doing. As I mentioned a couple of times 1:53:32.920 --> 1:53:38.040 in this podcast, we need more podcasts like this. We 1:53:38.120 --> 1:53:42.840 need a public engagement at an unprecedented level, and there's 1:53:42.920 --> 1:53:47.200 only a few people like yourselves doing this, so I'm 1:53:47.320 --> 1:53:49.080 very grateful for what you're trying to do. 1:53:49.880 --> 1:53:54.280 Well, thank you so much. It's been an absolute joy 1:53:54.280 --> 1:53:54.880 speaking with you. 1:53:55.000 --> 1:54:22.400 Yeah. 1:54:22.439 --> 1:54:27.479 Well, that was awesome and amazing, and we're not done. 1:54:27.640 --> 1:54:32.480 This episode just keeps getting better, hopefully with the help 1:54:32.520 --> 1:54:36.080 of doctor hotes We've answered most or maybe all of 1:54:36.120 --> 1:54:39.320 your questions about vaccines and address some of the major 1:54:39.360 --> 1:54:41.200 misconceptions surrounding them. 1:54:41.840 --> 1:54:45.200 But like doctor Hotez pointed out, we need more people 1:54:45.240 --> 1:54:47.200 communicating this science to the public. 1:54:47.480 --> 1:54:48.160 Yeah, we do. 1:54:48.440 --> 1:54:51.800 So this episode is going out with a bang, and 1:54:51.840 --> 1:54:55.240 we've got one more interview to talk all things ycom 1:54:55.520 --> 1:54:59.080 with one of the biggest science communicators out there, a 1:54:59.240 --> 1:55:00.840 name you all heard. 1:55:01.920 --> 1:55:06.280 Today we are joined by the world famous Bill Nye, 1:55:06.440 --> 1:55:09.760 the science Guy. Can we still call you that? Uh? 1:55:09.880 --> 1:55:15.320 Yes, absolutely, yes, this is this is possibly. 1:55:15.680 --> 1:55:18.680 The most thrilling thing that has happened to us. We 1:55:18.800 --> 1:55:22.320 both are huge fans since we were kids. It's very 1:55:22.360 --> 1:55:25.720 surreal to get to talk with you today. You honestly 1:55:25.760 --> 1:55:28.400 have been a big, huge inspiration for both of us 1:55:28.400 --> 1:55:31.400 in sort of pursuing our science careers. So we really 1:55:31.440 --> 1:55:33.920 appreciate you taking the time to chat about the anti 1:55:34.040 --> 1:55:37.480 vaccine movement and about science communication in general today. So 1:55:38.040 --> 1:55:40.320 most people, I'm sure have heard of you, but can 1:55:40.360 --> 1:55:42.480 you take a second and introduce yourself and maybe tell 1:55:42.560 --> 1:55:45.400 us a bit about your background in science and science 1:55:45.400 --> 1:55:47.400 communication and how you got into this field. 1:55:48.720 --> 1:55:52.839 My mechanical engineer, I mean, I'm human, but mechanical engineer. 1:55:52.880 --> 1:55:56.840 I started out my first job was a Boeing Airplane 1:55:56.920 --> 1:56:00.600 commercial airplane company, and then I went on to work 1:56:00.640 --> 1:56:04.840 at several aerospace companies in the Seattle area, and I 1:56:04.880 --> 1:56:09.480 got concerned about the United States and the future. People 1:56:09.520 --> 1:56:13.160 were building the Ford Pinto automobile and the Chevy Vega. 1:56:13.800 --> 1:56:17.040 Abandoned teaching the metric system took solar panels off the 1:56:17.120 --> 1:56:20.040 roof of the White House in the United States. I 1:56:20.080 --> 1:56:24.920 got quite concerned about the future. So, like so many 1:56:24.960 --> 1:56:29.000 mechanical engineers, I started doing stand up comedy. After I 1:56:29.040 --> 1:56:32.120 won the Steve Martin lookalike contest in the Seattle area, 1:56:32.120 --> 1:56:37.560 I did not advance beyond there, and so I started 1:56:37.560 --> 1:56:40.280 writing jokes for a comedy show. I would work on 1:56:40.320 --> 1:56:43.320 a big drawing board six foot long, not quite two 1:56:43.360 --> 1:56:46.480 meter long drawing board all day, go home and take 1:56:46.480 --> 1:56:49.600 a nap, and then go to comedy clubs. And then 1:56:50.080 --> 1:56:53.840 the head of the NBC affiliate or director programming NBC 1:56:53.960 --> 1:56:57.920 affiliate in Seattle, decided to have a comedy show, so 1:56:58.000 --> 1:57:00.560 I started submitting jokes to that. I quit my job 1:57:00.640 --> 1:57:04.960 October third, nineteen eighty six, approximately, and then I worked 1:57:06.240 --> 1:57:09.800 part time as an engineer what you call a contractor engineer, 1:57:10.720 --> 1:57:15.080 for another seven or six seven years. And along the 1:57:15.080 --> 1:57:18.160 way we on the comedy show. We came up with 1:57:18.200 --> 1:57:20.920 Bill Ny. This art I came up with Bill Ny 1:57:21.000 --> 1:57:24.640 the Science Guy. The first bit was, as you know, 1:57:24.920 --> 1:57:28.760 was the household uses of liquid nitrogen, because we've all 1:57:28.800 --> 1:57:33.600 got liquid nitrogen around. And then I wanted to be 1:57:33.920 --> 1:57:36.680 and the way I would express it in those days 1:57:36.800 --> 1:57:39.880 was I wanted to be the next Mister Wizard. A 1:57:39.960 --> 1:57:45.400 Mister Wizard was a guy named Don Herbert who was 1:57:45.440 --> 1:57:48.480 on television in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, and 1:57:48.520 --> 1:57:51.640 it was a big inspiration to me. And I wanted 1:57:51.680 --> 1:57:55.920 to get the next generation of young people excited about science, 1:57:55.960 --> 1:57:58.760 so in the future we'd have more scientists and we 1:57:58.840 --> 1:58:03.320 could change here's the world, and so it's you know, 1:58:03.360 --> 1:58:05.600 I just remind everybody it takes years and years to 1:58:05.600 --> 1:58:07.960 get stuff like this together. But we did one hundred 1:58:08.040 --> 1:58:13.240 Science Guy shows and I'm now along with keeping my 1:58:13.360 --> 1:58:16.879 mechanical engineering license current. I think I can describe myself 1:58:16.920 --> 1:58:20.520 as a science educator. And I am able to read 1:58:20.560 --> 1:58:23.440 a graph if it's about climate change. I'm able to 1:58:23.480 --> 1:58:27.720 read a graph about human population growth. And I can 1:58:27.760 --> 1:58:31.720 also understand maps that describe the outbreak of let's say, 1:58:31.760 --> 1:58:34.960 measles or a colony collapse disorder or what have you. 1:58:35.680 --> 1:58:41.960 But science education is very, very important to our future, 1:58:42.000 --> 1:58:44.360 and you have to get people excited about science before 1:58:44.400 --> 1:58:50.240 they're ten years old. Aaron Aarin, You got excited before 1:58:50.280 --> 1:58:51.440 you were twelve. 1:58:51.200 --> 1:58:55.320 Right, absolutely, Yeah. 1:58:54.320 --> 1:58:58.320 It's still a very important thing. And I don't work 1:58:59.040 --> 1:59:02.640 that much in element tree science these days. Although my 1:59:02.760 --> 1:59:05.240 next book is called The Big Book of Science, comes 1:59:05.240 --> 1:59:08.480 out next spring and it is for young people. So 1:59:08.520 --> 1:59:11.280 we're just trying to change the world here, Aaron erin. 1:59:12.080 --> 1:59:14.000 No big deal, No big deal. 1:59:14.040 --> 1:59:17.080 How hard could it be? And so it's really a 1:59:17.120 --> 1:59:20.520 heck of a thing that we've got measles outbreaks. Now 1:59:20.520 --> 1:59:23.200 I'm so old. How old are you? I'm so old 1:59:24.440 --> 1:59:28.560 that I had measles and I live through it. My 1:59:30.720 --> 1:59:37.360 first cousin, once removed, died of the flu. So there's 1:59:37.400 --> 1:59:41.440 no need for this. Vaccines are what two hundred year old, 1:59:41.440 --> 1:59:45.960 two hundred and thirty year old technology? Why can't we? Yeah, 1:59:46.040 --> 1:59:49.680 what's wrongs? What's going on in the world's most technically 1:59:49.720 --> 1:59:51.760 influential country. What is happening? 1:59:52.880 --> 1:59:56.879 What is going on? That's a great question. So in 1:59:56.880 --> 2:00:01.120 in this episode, we're exploring these fears and misconceptions that 2:00:01.160 --> 2:00:05.040 surround vaccines and how the anti vaccine movement has grown 2:00:05.120 --> 2:00:09.200 and changed over time. So you are an expert science educator, 2:00:09.280 --> 2:00:12.200 expert science communicator, and so, as you mentioned, you know 2:00:12.240 --> 2:00:16.000 how to critically examine scientific research and interpret that and 2:00:16.040 --> 2:00:18.400 then explain it. And that's what you've been doing to 2:00:18.440 --> 2:00:21.000 the public for so much of your career. But so 2:00:21.160 --> 2:00:24.680 many of the people who are opposed to vaccination decided 2:00:24.720 --> 2:00:28.120 to do their own research and are often not equipped 2:00:28.120 --> 2:00:31.680 with the skills to evaluate whether this information source is 2:00:31.720 --> 2:00:35.320 scientifically accurate or whether that one is based in some 2:00:35.440 --> 2:00:39.560 foundation that is just a propaganda machine. And the widespread 2:00:39.600 --> 2:00:44.480 prevalence of misinformation about vaccines and many other things that 2:00:44.640 --> 2:00:47.880 is readily available on the internet is really concerning. So 2:00:48.120 --> 2:00:50.920 what advice do you have for people who want to 2:00:51.000 --> 2:00:53.680 learn more about vaccines but don't know how to find 2:00:53.720 --> 2:00:54.640 reliable sources. 2:00:54.720 --> 2:00:57.560 Well, listen to this podcast will kill you and turn 2:00:57.600 --> 2:01:03.400 it up around. That's my advice. Now we have to 2:01:03.480 --> 2:01:06.640 chip away at this problem. And I think, well, you've 2:01:07.200 --> 2:01:11.080 hit upon the skill that we need now. When I 2:01:11.480 --> 2:01:13.880 was in school, when I was well, when I was 2:01:13.920 --> 2:01:18.240 working as an engineer, the whole challenge was to find 2:01:18.320 --> 2:01:22.200 reliable information. You would go to the library, look in 2:01:22.240 --> 2:01:27.160 the card catalog and you'd find encyclopedias that were quite trustworthy. 2:01:29.160 --> 2:01:33.040 You could it took a long time to find let's say, 2:01:33.120 --> 2:01:39.240 four sources to verify a fact. When it comes to vaccines, 2:01:39.280 --> 2:01:42.680 you can find this conflicting information. And the skill we 2:01:42.840 --> 2:01:47.120 need to teach people or encourage people to acquire, is 2:01:47.160 --> 2:01:50.240 how to sort this stuff out. The skills we need 2:01:50.280 --> 2:01:55.680 to teach would be, for example, correlation does not imply causation. 2:01:55.880 --> 2:01:59.520 And this is old rhyme, that's just fantastic, but it 2:01:59.560 --> 2:02:03.880 means just because something happened at about the same time 2:02:04.000 --> 2:02:07.360 something else happened, it doesn't mean it's not a coincidence. 2:02:07.520 --> 2:02:11.000 It doesn't mean that there was a cause and an effect. 2:02:11.520 --> 2:02:14.320 And this is a huge idea in science, and it's 2:02:14.360 --> 2:02:17.960 a huge idea in philosophy, and in a sense it's 2:02:18.000 --> 2:02:21.800 a very important idea in mathematics. And the example is autism. 2:02:23.080 --> 2:02:26.600 People get autism at about the same time they get 2:02:26.640 --> 2:02:30.160 a certain round of vaccines, but that doesn't mean the 2:02:30.240 --> 2:02:33.240 vaccine caused autism. And this has been debunked out the 2:02:33.360 --> 2:02:37.280 ying yang as it's often said, completely wrong. And so 2:02:37.400 --> 2:02:43.520 now what do you do right? So er Erin, I 2:02:43.600 --> 2:02:47.960 wish I had the answer to this problem. But this podcast, 2:02:48.080 --> 2:02:52.800 I presume is part of the solution, that is to say, 2:02:53.360 --> 2:02:57.280 enlightening people about the cause and effect of vaccines. 2:02:58.480 --> 2:02:59.040 You've had a. 2:02:59.080 --> 2:03:02.280 Very long career in science communication and science education, and 2:03:02.600 --> 2:03:05.680 you've explored a lot of different media platforms, from television 2:03:05.680 --> 2:03:09.280 shows to books and Netflix and radio. So how have 2:03:09.400 --> 2:03:13.240 you seen the field of science communication and science education 2:03:13.520 --> 2:03:16.200 change over the course of your career and what do 2:03:16.240 --> 2:03:18.480 you see as some of the challenges that we face 2:03:18.600 --> 2:03:21.720 as science communicators and science educators going forward. 2:03:22.280 --> 2:03:26.600 So when I was coming along, there were three or 2:03:27.000 --> 2:03:33.440 four television stations in any TV market, There'd be ABC, CBSNBC, 2:03:33.560 --> 2:03:38.000 and then public broadcasting, and public broadcasting was often in 2:03:38.320 --> 2:03:42.480 what's called very high frequency VHF channels. You needed a 2:03:42.520 --> 2:03:45.280 loop antenna and the reception wasn't as good, and so 2:03:45.360 --> 2:03:49.600 on and so on. Now there are millions of channels 2:03:49.640 --> 2:03:55.000 available to anybody on the internet. And so what is 2:03:55.160 --> 2:04:03.600 lost is this peer review. What's lost is the discipline 2:04:03.760 --> 2:04:08.000 that required to broadcast something that was fact checked. But 2:04:08.120 --> 2:04:12.680 then the great benefit is it's freedom of speech. Anybody 2:04:12.720 --> 2:04:16.320 can say anything, and that's generally you would think a 2:04:16.360 --> 2:04:19.600 good thing. What's changed is we have to learn much 2:04:19.640 --> 2:04:23.840 more carefully how to evaluate evidence. The phrase that's used now, 2:04:23.840 --> 2:04:26.240 it's a fine phrase, is critical thinking. We have to 2:04:26.240 --> 2:04:29.720 teach critical thinking skills. When I was coming along, it 2:04:29.800 --> 2:04:33.280 might have been called reasoning or logic, but critical thinking 2:04:33.320 --> 2:04:36.440 is a fine phrase. As I mentioned earlier, there's a 2:04:36.440 --> 2:04:41.520 lot of a lot of media, a lot of television, radio, 2:04:41.840 --> 2:04:45.760 podcasts science for people who are already interested in science. 2:04:46.800 --> 2:04:50.720 And that's good, but we still need there's still a 2:04:50.800 --> 2:04:55.120 need for elementary science for getting people excited early on. 2:04:55.840 --> 2:05:01.720 Yeah, yeah, absolutely So. Based on your extensive experience in 2:05:02.440 --> 2:05:07.000 communicating science, what advice do you have for budding science 2:05:07.000 --> 2:05:09.800 communicators or people who are maybe interested in honing their 2:05:09.840 --> 2:05:13.560 skills as science communicators in this modern era of so 2:05:13.680 --> 2:05:17.120 much technology and the ability to communicate science on so 2:05:17.120 --> 2:05:19.200 many platforms, What kind of advice would you have for 2:05:19.280 --> 2:05:21.600 people interested in that are trying to get started. 2:05:21.680 --> 2:05:24.560 The first thing I tell everybody is figure out what 2:05:24.600 --> 2:05:28.080 you want to get across. What key idea do you 2:05:28.120 --> 2:05:30.880 want to transmit, do you want to communicate? Do you 2:05:30.920 --> 2:05:34.720 want people to get And when we were doing the 2:05:34.800 --> 2:05:39.080 Science Guy Show, the phrase was learning objective. What's the 2:05:39.160 --> 2:05:43.720 learning objective, and a learning objective is a technical educator word. 2:05:44.400 --> 2:05:47.400 It means something you can test at the end of 2:05:47.400 --> 2:05:50.680 the podcast, at the end of the television show, you 2:05:50.720 --> 2:05:52.560 can ask people, what did you get out of that? 2:05:53.400 --> 2:05:56.160 And I hope it's vaccines are two hundred year old 2:05:56.160 --> 2:06:00.040 technology and they work. I hope your listeners get that 2:06:01.600 --> 2:06:04.360 out of this podcast. And then the other thing it's 2:06:04.600 --> 2:06:09.240 very very important, is what I call discipline in vocabulary. 2:06:09.360 --> 2:06:15.640 Div you can't it's very difficult to communicate ideas to 2:06:15.680 --> 2:06:19.560 people with words they don't understand or words they're not 2:06:19.600 --> 2:06:23.400 familiar with. And what we all do once we are 2:06:23.560 --> 2:06:29.400 in this business like epidemiology, that word right there is 2:06:29.440 --> 2:06:33.920 not accessible to everyone. They're people who study epidemics. That's weird. 2:06:34.000 --> 2:06:35.640 Yeah it is weird, but I guess there's at least 2:06:35.680 --> 2:06:39.720 two of them and they're both named Erin. So that's 2:06:40.800 --> 2:06:43.920 that's a very important idea, is that discipline in vocabulary. 2:06:43.960 --> 2:06:47.240 What we did on the Science Guys show is pick 2:06:47.840 --> 2:06:51.760 fourth grade, and that was based on very compelling research. 2:06:52.560 --> 2:06:55.880 Back then people ten years old and younger. You want 2:06:55.920 --> 2:06:58.880 the sentences and words constructed so the ten year old 2:06:59.000 --> 2:07:01.280 can get it, and a ten year Old turns out 2:07:01.280 --> 2:07:04.200 to be a pretty good level for everybody, especially with 2:07:04.320 --> 2:07:09.400 topics you're unfamiliar with, areas of research you've never heard 2:07:09.440 --> 2:07:14.080 of as a listener. So this is easy to say, 2:07:14.120 --> 2:07:17.160 hard to do. And the analogs are if the Old 2:07:17.200 --> 2:07:19.840 saying I didn't have time to write a short letter, 2:07:21.560 --> 2:07:23.920 if you want it's shorter, that'll take a little longer. 2:07:24.560 --> 2:07:28.200 So if you want discipline and vocabulary, that's going to 2:07:28.240 --> 2:07:29.960 take me a few minutes to figure it out. 2:07:31.480 --> 2:07:34.920 So we were wondering what sort of projects are you 2:07:35.040 --> 2:07:36.800 working on now? If you could tell us a bit 2:07:36.840 --> 2:07:39.720 about some of the projects that you are getting started with. 2:07:39.760 --> 2:07:41.720 I know that you mentioned a book, so can you 2:07:41.720 --> 2:07:43.800 tell us a bit about that? And then we hear 2:07:43.840 --> 2:07:46.320 you have a podcast that's going to become a turn 2:07:46.360 --> 2:07:47.520 it off, a little more. 2:07:47.360 --> 2:07:51.040 Info Science Rules. Starts May sixteenth, It will change your life. 2:07:51.240 --> 2:07:53.400 And my co host is Corey Powell, who's the editor 2:07:53.480 --> 2:07:57.600 of my books, my grown up books, my general interest books, 2:07:57.600 --> 2:08:01.720 and I'm very proud of my first general interest book, 2:08:01.800 --> 2:08:06.000 Undeniable Evolution the Fact of Life, where I talk about 2:08:06.000 --> 2:08:09.680 the importance of germs. So one of our guests is 2:08:09.760 --> 2:08:14.040 peg Riley. Do you know her university of messages, so 2:08:14.240 --> 2:08:20.880 her big thing is bacteria sins. Bacteria sins are toxins 2:08:21.200 --> 2:08:26.240 that bacteria make to fight bacteria, and sin is old 2:08:26.320 --> 2:08:30.040 Greek where it means to cut, so that somehow bacteria 2:08:30.080 --> 2:08:35.120 sins cut open the cell membrane of a bacterium and 2:08:35.240 --> 2:08:38.400 in your gut, speaking of your gut microbiome, apparently you 2:08:38.520 --> 2:08:41.640 got bacteria sins fighting bacteria like crazy. It's a big 2:08:41.760 --> 2:08:47.640 happy war going on anyway. Peg Riley's one of our 2:08:47.720 --> 2:08:51.040 guests on the new podcast Science Rule starts May sixteenth. 2:08:51.080 --> 2:08:53.720 Turn it up loud May sixteenth. 2:08:53.720 --> 2:08:56.560 There you go, so it'll be out by the time 2:08:56.840 --> 2:08:59.120 that our listeners are listening to this podcast, so go 2:08:59.160 --> 2:09:00.040 find it. 2:09:00.040 --> 2:09:02.960 It's so exciting. Oh my goodness, it's so exciting. Oh 2:09:03.000 --> 2:09:05.000 my black hole universe, it's so exciting. 2:09:08.480 --> 2:09:11.240 Well, really, thank you again. That was super fun. If 2:09:11.280 --> 2:09:13.440 you had dreams when you were young of being the 2:09:13.480 --> 2:09:15.840 next mister Wizard, I had dreams when I was young 2:09:15.880 --> 2:09:17.920 of being the next Bill Ny the science guy. 2:09:19.240 --> 2:09:23.080 All right, well go get him, so please go out 2:09:23.080 --> 2:09:24.360 there and change the world. 2:09:26.600 --> 2:09:30.200 Thank you, thank you so much. We really appreciate this. 2:09:30.280 --> 2:09:54.919 We had a blast wasn't that the most exciting? 2:09:55.040 --> 2:09:58.440 I had the most fun with these two episodes, Aaron, Yes, 2:09:58.720 --> 2:09:59.240 I mean. 2:10:00.240 --> 2:10:05.080 Doctor Peter Hotez has been one of our heroes for ages, 2:10:05.600 --> 2:10:08.880 ages years and it was so thrilling. Also to talk 2:10:08.920 --> 2:10:13.680 to Bill Nye, who we watched his science program growing 2:10:13.720 --> 2:10:20.760 Boo boo babo, just like that science guy. So that 2:10:20.960 --> 2:10:23.560 was it was really amazing, and we really hope that 2:10:23.640 --> 2:10:26.160 you guys have enjoyed these Vaccines episodes. 2:10:26.560 --> 2:10:29.160 Want to give some special shout outs to people who 2:10:29.200 --> 2:10:32.080 helped us put these together. These episodes would not have 2:10:32.160 --> 2:10:35.280 been possible without the team at Rice University who helped 2:10:35.360 --> 2:10:38.800 us record our interview with Peter Hotez and with the 2:10:39.160 --> 2:10:41.600 one and only Stephen Ray Morris. 2:10:42.440 --> 2:10:44.720 How exciting we get to say his name. 2:10:45.240 --> 2:10:51.560 Not unintentionally on our podcast, who helped us record the 2:10:51.760 --> 2:10:56.360 interview with Bill Nye, the science guy. And to Danielle 2:10:56.400 --> 2:10:58.600 from Exactly Right, who set the whole thing up. This 2:10:58.800 --> 2:10:59.800 is so much fun. 2:11:00.320 --> 2:11:03.480 This was wonderful and thanks to the Exactly Right network period. 2:11:03.560 --> 2:11:08.040 I mean, we haven't gushed at all, but we cannot imagine. 2:11:08.040 --> 2:11:09.800 I mean, it's so exciting to be part of this 2:11:10.640 --> 2:11:14.360 network which feels very like a family. Like it's a 2:11:14.400 --> 2:11:17.040 really fun thing to be a part of it. Thrilled 2:11:17.080 --> 2:11:18.400 and it's extremely thrilling. 2:11:18.920 --> 2:11:20.920 So many of you are here because you heard of 2:11:21.000 --> 2:11:23.480 us do exactly right, which is also thrilling. So just 2:11:23.760 --> 2:11:26.800 everything is We're so happy right now, you guys. 2:11:26.880 --> 2:11:29.880 Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of 2:11:29.960 --> 2:11:30.320 a team. 2:11:30.840 --> 2:11:33.120 Everything is when you part of a team. 2:11:34.800 --> 2:11:35.720 We're living the dream. 2:11:36.000 --> 2:11:39.640 Everything is awesome when you live in a dream. 2:11:41.640 --> 2:11:47.920 Okay, sources sourses, so I will repeat the sources from 2:11:47.960 --> 2:11:51.240 the first episode. So Vaccines did Not cause Rachel's autism 2:11:51.320 --> 2:11:54.880 by doctor Peter Hotez. It's a fantastic book. Really highly 2:11:54.920 --> 2:11:58.600 recommend that everyone check it out. Between Hope and Fear 2:11:58.680 --> 2:12:02.000 by Michael kinch Deadly Choices by doctor Paul Offitt, The 2:12:02.080 --> 2:12:06.640 Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman, a few papers, and then 2:12:06.960 --> 2:12:10.080 again I'll recommend the Nova episode called Calling the Shots. 2:12:10.760 --> 2:12:13.880 There are two episodes of a podcast called Behind the 2:12:13.920 --> 2:12:19.200 Bastards that cover the anti vaccine movement, and also, if 2:12:19.240 --> 2:12:21.680 you want to hear more doctor Peter Hotez. He is 2:12:21.960 --> 2:12:25.440 featured on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan podcast. 2:12:25.600 --> 2:12:26.640 So go and check that out. 2:12:26.960 --> 2:12:31.440 Yeah, and as always, all of our sources will be 2:12:31.560 --> 2:12:34.160 posted on our website this podcast will kill You dot 2:12:34.280 --> 2:12:37.480 Com under the episodes tab. This is the most sources 2:12:37.720 --> 2:12:40.400 I have ever had, so there's plenty to keep you 2:12:40.480 --> 2:12:43.360 occupied in your vaccine reading and in our show notes, 2:12:43.680 --> 2:12:46.200 we'll also post links to websites where you can get 2:12:46.240 --> 2:12:48.839 more information about vaccines in general. 2:12:49.400 --> 2:12:55.080 M okay. Well, thanks to Bloodmobile for providing the music 2:12:55.200 --> 2:12:57.600 to this episode and all of our episodes, and you 2:12:57.680 --> 2:12:59.760 can find more of his music on band camp and 2:12:59.800 --> 2:13:01.400 there's a link to it on our website. 2:13:01.920 --> 2:13:04.960 And thank you guys so much for listening. We really 2:13:05.080 --> 2:13:08.920 hope that this episode was helpful for you and that 2:13:09.040 --> 2:13:12.080 you enjoyed it. And don't worry, you will get another 2:13:12.160 --> 2:13:15.360 episode next week. We're not messing around with the schedule. 2:13:15.600 --> 2:13:17.680 This was like a bonus episode. 2:13:17.320 --> 2:13:19.760 So three weeks in a row, you guys, can you even? 2:13:20.120 --> 2:13:21.720 It's like May is the best month ever? 2:13:24.640 --> 2:13:27.440 Okay, Well, until next time, wash your hands and 2:13:27.520 --> 2:13:29.560 Get vaccinated, you filthy animals.