WEBVTT - Anti-Vax America: Anti-Vax Genealogy 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:05.519 Alson media. 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:08.680 Welcome back to it could happen here and to episode 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:14.080 two of Anti vax America. I'm Stephen Monachelly. Last episode 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.800 I explored the ongoing measles outbreak that started in West 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.759 Texas and has since spread to several states across the nation. 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:22.800 A big part of that story is the underlying anti 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.920 vax beliefs that are fueling a decline in vaccination rates 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:29.040 across the country, and how the leader of our federal 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.320 health bureaucracy, our Hearth K. Junior, has helped seed, spread 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:36.440 and embed those beliefs into policy. But behind all that 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.000 is a deeper history of anti vaccination beliefs in America. 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:43.280 And while it is undoubtedly the case that the COVID 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.680 nineteen pandemic brought anti vaccination beliefs to the forefront of 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:51.760 American politics, opposition to vaccines is not new. It's about 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:53.920 as old as the technology itself. 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.440 It actually goes back to the founding colonies and even 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:02.880 the nearly eighteen hundreds when you had people kind of peddling 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:08.000 various what they called botanicals as substitutes for mainstream medicine. 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.640 That's doctor Peter Hotez. He's a doctor in Houston with 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.119 a long and impressive list of credentials. 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.600 I'm a pediatrician scientist. I have an MD and PhD, 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:23.000 and I'm a professor of pediatrics and Molecular Virology at 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.720 Baylor College of Medicine, where I'm also co director of 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:29.320 the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, and also 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:31.920 dean of our National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:36.600 College and Medicine. And my interest is a lifelong interest 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:41.279 in developing new vaccines, particularly vaccines that the big pharma 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.360 companies have no interest in making because they're vaccines for 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:49.200 diseases of poverty. We've made a low cost COVID vaccine 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.760 that reached technology, reached one hundred million people in India 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:57.920 and Indonesia during the pandemic, and now vaccines for parasitic 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:03.240 diseases that occur only among the world's poor. And that's 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:04.680 a lifelong passion of mine. 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:12.079 The first vaccination was created in seventeen ninety six by 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.880 Edward Jenner, who was able to build on prior methods 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.280 of inoculation, and he was able to create a vaccine 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.200 for smallpox, one of the deadliest viruses in human history, 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.760 within a matter of decades, vaccination had become widespread in 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:31.480 the Western world. The United Kingdom passed the Vaccination Act 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.320 of eighteen forty to provide free vaccinations to the poor, 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:36.840 and then passed another act in eighteen fifty three that 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.720 made it compulsory for infants, and another in eighteen sixty 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:44.799 seven that extended the compulsory vaccination requirement to fourteen and 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.280 added penalties for non compliance that could be cumulative over time. 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.520 Resistance to these laws began in eighteen fifty three with 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:55.960 a few riots in towns across England, and this eventually 0:02:56.000 --> 0:03:01.000 formalized into the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League, which contributed literature 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:05.000 likening vaccination to a monster and lobbied the British government 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:09.000 to change the laws. Their efforts actually proved successful, and 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.360 a new law was passed in eighteen ninety eight to 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:15.400 remove cumulative penalties and create an exemption for what they 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.639 termed conscientious objectors, which is the first time that term 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:23.679 had ever been used in British law. Parallel anti vaccination 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.119 movement made similar strides in the United States, and one 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.960 of the leaders of the British anti vaccination movement even 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:32.520 came to the United States to help co found one 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:36.640 of the anti vaccination leagues in America. Several states also 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.040 passed compulsory vaccination laws in the United States, spurring the 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.600 American anti vaccination leagues to fight in the legal courts, 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:46.520 in the court of public opinion and the legislatures across 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:54.760 the country, and they successfully repealed compulsory vaccination laws in California, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Utah, 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:59.960 West Virginia, and Wisconsin. But opposing compulsory vaccinations was only 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:04.360 one part of the strategy of these early anti vaccine organizations. 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:08.000 Another key plank, which may sound familiar to those of 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:11.240 you who follow the news, was the promotion of alternative 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:15.320 remedies such as homeopathy, which were quite popular at the 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:19.400 time among certain sects of medicine. Now, these movements didn't 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.520 neatly fall across political lines in the way that they 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:27.200 largely do today. Progressive and conservative anti vaccination activists were 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.840 tied together by strongly held beliefs in things like quote 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:36.320 unquote medical freedom, sometimes philosophical beliefs around freedom, their spiritual faiths, 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:41.760 or in some instances, even anti Semitic conspiracy theories. Consider 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:46.240 Eugene carl During, a philosopher and economists, considered one of 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.360 the founding fathers of German anti Semitism, who argued that 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.400 Jewish doctors were behind a conspiracy to drum up business 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.159 for themselves by promoting vaccination to healthy people. These are 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.360 all tropes that live on to this day and that 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.320 someone like do Hotz knows all too well, and because 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.320 of his advocacy of vaccines, he's often been a target 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:06.560 of it. 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.719 I'm a scientist, the vaccine scientists, the Jewish vaccine scientists. 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.320 So they've got me doing this in secret with George 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:16.800 Soros or one of the rothschilds that I'm doing it 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:21.040 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Haven't even invited 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:21.680 to Davos. 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:25.200 While some of the progressive strain of the historic anti 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.839 vaccination movement has lived on in the stereotypical hippie naturalist 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.040 lifestyle culture that is popular in parts of the Northwest, 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.080 that strain is long and fringe and is kind of 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.279 extinct at this point. It had its heyday after the 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:44.479 sixties and seventies, when a lot of alternative therapies and 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:48.119 medicines were being promoted and embraced. In the West. Most 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.320 of the anti vaxxers of that variety today have largely 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:54.760 been drawn towards more right winging values and have been 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.680 subsumed by the sort of politics that defines the larger 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.760 Make America Healthy Again agenda. The way doctor Hotess sees it, 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:05.800 there's a direct line between these old anti vaccine movements 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.840 and the modern day MAHA movement, which combines anti vaccine 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.640 beliefs with alternative medicine and libertarian mindsets around health freedom 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.279 into a sort of single bundle of sticks. 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:21.360 There's an older thread that goes back to colonial times, 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:26.880 and it has to do with libertarian concepts of what's 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:29.840 sometimes called health freedom medical freedom. Hey, you can't tell 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.400 us what to do about our kids, and now we 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.080 see that today, right, you know. And this is coming 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.520 partly out of the health and wellness and influencer industry. 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.040 And that's why you get you know, ivermectin which does 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.520 absolutely nothing for covid, or hydroxychloroquine which has done nothing 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:49.040 for covid, or when you heard mister Kennedy talk about 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.120 vitamin A or as a preventative, or budesini as steroid 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.080 which does nothing, or clarithromycin and antibiotic does nothing. Whatever, 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.559 you know, they can buy in bulk and then sell 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.920 at a profit. That's you know, that's a lot of 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:07.400 the wellness and influencer industry. And so what you have 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:12.040 now is that converging thread around that and libertarian politics. 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.560 And that's what you saw. I think, after you know, 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:18.600 we started to debunk the false links between vaccines and autism, 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.560 they needed a new thing. And this is when you 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:26.600 saw here in Texas, this rise in parents requesting vaccine 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:30.520 exemptions around the banner of health freedom, medical freedom. And 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.400 here's where it became really tough to talk about because 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:38.400 it got adopted by the Republican Tea Party in Texas. 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.920 And so anti vaccine groups started getting pack money, political 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:46.119 action committee money to lobby the or educate the state 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:51.840 legislature about health freedom, medical freedom, and even provide money 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.040 for candidates to run on anti vaccine platforms. 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:59.320 But before we explore the contemporary anti vaccination movement further, 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.640 we have to turn to history, and before we do that, 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:17.280 we're obligated to take a quick ad break. Anti vaccine 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.000 movements appeared to be gaining steam in the late eighteen 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:22.960 hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, but their progress largely halted 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:27.080 when a nineteen oh five US Supreme Court ruling upheld 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.480 the authority of states to pass and enforce compulsory vaccination laws. 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:34.920 The continued spread of viruses like smallpox, the deadly Spanish 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.920 flu pandemic, and the outbreak of World War II all 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:44.040 spurred advancements in vaccination research and programs to ensure widespread vaccination, 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:46.959 and as this science continued to advance, more and more 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.680 states began to mandate vaccines for public school attendance, as 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:54.280 did employers for their workers. By nineteen sixty three, twenty 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:56.960 states required children to be vaccinated before going to school, 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.640 and by nineteen eighty every state in the nation had 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.560 a similar law on the books. And as the decades 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.760 went on, the incident's rates of several diseases dramatically plummeted. 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:10.720 By nineteen eighty, smallpox had been eradicated. But along the way, 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.920 there were things done in the name of medical science 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:17.240 that would undercut the great strides made during that period 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:20.400 of time, things that ultimately showed the seeds for some 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:24.240 of today's vaccination skepticism. 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:30.479 I think it's important to understand that not all suspicion 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:38.679 regarding medicine and doctors, you know, research that not all 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:43.199 of this resistance is totally irrational, it's based on experience. 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:46.800 That's doctor Michael Phillips, who you may recognize from prior 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.680 episodes if it could happen here. He's a historian of race, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.160 eugenics and right wing politics in Texas. 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:57.160 Going back to the time of slavery, enslaved men and 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:03.880 women were often the unwilling, involuntary subjects of medical experiments. 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:08.680 We have, for instance, a a man named maryon Sims, 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:12.360 and they actually put a statue up of him in 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:17.240 Central Park in New York that's been taken down since, 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.680 who was credited as the father of gynecology. There was 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:27.760 a problem in that era before the discovery of germ theory, 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.920 where whenever women would give birth and there would be 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:36.439 vaginal tears, doctors would often sew up the wounds and 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.280 then there'd be an infection and the woman would die 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.680 or get seriously ill or infertile. And the infertility and 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:47.559 death of slaves meant a loss of property. So in 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:53.120 slavers we're very concerned about this issue. Maryon Sims at 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:58.280 some point discovers that if you use silver thread silver 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.880 sutures when you operate on women who have had these 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:08.240 vaginal terrors that the infection doesn't happen. Now, he wanted 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.320 to prove this. He wanted to perfect his technique, so 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:13.400 he did it on enslaved women. 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:17.640 During the COVID nineteen pandemic, Black Americans lagged behind whites 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:21.120 in terms of vaccination rates. According to a systemic literature 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.760 review on the determinants of vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans, 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:27.559 vaccine hasn't seen in Black communities. Is rooted in a 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:32.280 troubling history of unethical medical experiments, and it persists to 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.040 this day due to how this group of the population 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:39.760 still experiences discrimination, racism, mistreatment, and overall health iniquity. 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:46.200 The most famous case of the medical abuse of marginalized people, 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:50.360 and it's really entered the folk culture to the point 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.440 that when I was teaching American history classes at a 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:57.319 community college, all the students had heard about this particular 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:01.760 atrocity and it was called the Tuskegee experiment. What actually 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:06.160 happened is that African American men who got sexually transmitted 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:10.960 diseases would go to this medical clinic that had been established, 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:14.280 and the doctors with this grant wanted to see what 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.800 the trajectory of syphilis would be if it was untreated. 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:22.280 So these were people who already had STDs and they 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.600 were given a placebo. They were given basically a sugar 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:31.319 pill rather than penicillin or any other ameliative care. And 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:37.200 the doctor's mission in their minds was that's find out 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:43.280 if syphilis progresses in the same way with African American 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.360 men as it does with white men. And so they 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:49.600 wanted to see because they knew that syphilis will untreated 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:55.040 eventually attack the central nervous systimuli, seizures, blindness, any number 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.800 of terrible side effects. So they would go to the doctor, 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:03.920 they would get the placebo, and syphilis will go into remission, 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:09.560 and so the patient wouldn't have the benefit of medical 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:14.319 knowledge about how syphilis progresses, would think the pill made 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.360 it better. And then they would ask them to return 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:21.160 and the doctor would come and then he'd record the 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:26.320 damage that was happening to the patient's body as the 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:30.239 disease progressed. And this went on until the nineteen sixties, 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:37.720 and they published results with no professional repercussions, you know, 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.800 And one thing they proved is that syphilis attacks black 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.080 people the same way it does white people. If you 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:48.600 leave it untreated, the same symptoms developed. The nervous systems 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.280 of black and white people are the same. But they 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:56.760 published these results in ACCLAIM Medical Journal, and the backlash 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.880 was not immediate. Eventually, you know, it became a scanned 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:05.480 So that really did strike a chord in the Black 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:12.040 community that I think to this day we've seen skepticism 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:17.200 about white medicine. And again there's valid historical reasons. RFK 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:20.320 Junior and the anti vaccination movement have seized on this 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:25.440 particular historical atrocity, so doubt about vaccines among Black Americans. 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:29.520 More generally, Children's Health Defense, the anti vax group, previously 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:33.240 led by RFK Junior, invoked the Tuskegee Syphlist study in 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:37.480 an anti vaccine film called Medical Racism the New Apartheid. 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.560 But before we talk a bit more about Children's Health 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:44.400 Defense and the more recent history of the anti vaccination movement, 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:58.360 we've got to take another ad break. Black Americans aren't 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:02.480 the only population group that organizations like Children's Health Defense 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:07.200 have targeted in recent years. For decades, the anti vax 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:09.800 movement has sought to recruit the parents of autistic children 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.280 to their cause. By way of the argument that vaccines 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:16.800 directly cause autism. Incidentally, one such parent of an autistic 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:21.920 child is doctor Hotes, whose twenty thirteen book Vaccines did 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:26.720 Not Cause Rachel's Autism directly targets RFK Junior's long held 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.480 belief about the link between autism and vaccines. 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:37.000 It actually came about after a year of discussions with 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:40.240 Robert F. Kennedy Junior explaining to him the evidence showing 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:44.720 vaccines don't cause autism, and finally decide to write it 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:47.440 all up in a book. And it's about my daughter. 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.320 So you know, I wear two hats as a vaccine scientist, 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.200 but also wound up going up against anti vaccine groups 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:57.440 because I do have a daughter with autism and intellectual 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:02.280 disabilities and now she's an adult. And essentially, there's two 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:06.480 major threads in the book other than telling the story 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:10.200 about Rachel and our family, and one is the overwhelming 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.480 evidence showing there's no link between vaccines and autism. And 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:17.120 even within that, there's a lot of subcategories because what 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:22.360 happens is anti vaccine groups keeps switching up the concern 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.480 about a specific vaccine, and when it gets debunked and 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.000 they just switch it up to something else. I call 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.000 it biomedical whack a mole or moving the goalposts of 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:34.520 The original assertion came out of the late nineteen nineties 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:36.760 of the false claims that it was the MMR vaccine 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:40.400 the measles, smumps rubella vaccine, and that was actually published 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:43.400 in a biomedical journal called The Lancet in the UK. 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:46.560 The paper was retracted eventually because it was some to 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:50.440 be false, and also the scientific community responded with large 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:54.680 epidemiologic studies showing that kids who got the MMR vaccine 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.400 were no more likely to acquire autism than kids who didn't, 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:00.960 and similarly, kids on the autism we're no more likely 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.960 to have gotten MMR the kids not on the autism spectrum. 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:05.480 That should have been the end of it. But then 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.560 our friend Robert F. Kennedy Junior came on the scene 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.199 in two thousand and five and wrote an article in 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:15.040 Rolling Stone magazine claiming, Okay, if it's not MMR, it 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:19.600 must be the thimerosol preservative that's in vaccine, and that 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:23.600 was also retracted and thoroughly debunked through large epidemiologic studies, 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.800 even nonhuman primate studies, and its switched up again to 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.520 spacing vaccines too close together. We have to green our 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:35.159 vaccine ecosystem. And you saw celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, your husband, 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.800 Jim Carrey walking around in green t shirts. It was 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:41.959 all phony boloni and that was debunked, and then it 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.760 was alum in vaccine. So it became this kind of 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:48.240 exhausting exercise, and each time we were able to successfully 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:49.000 refute it. 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:55.320 Founded in two thousand and seven, Children's Health Defense represented 0:17:55.320 --> 0:18:00.359 a formalization of late twentieth century anti vaccination resistance. Unlike 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.160 the anti vaccination leagues of the late nineteenth and early 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:08.400 twentieth century, Children's Health Defense pedals dubies cures like homeopathy 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:12.840 and promotes conspiratorial narratives like the Great Reset, which claims 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:15.439 that billionaire Bill Gates and others have used the COVID 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.080 nineteen pandemic as a part of a plan to make 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:22.399 America Marxist. The idea that vaccines cause autism is a 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:26.400 part of a larger claim that vaccines can cause injuries 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.720 among those who receive them, and that our understanding of 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:33.679 these injuries is far less than what the science shows. 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.719 This notion gained traction in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.959 when controversy erupted regarding the DPT vaccine for diphtheria, pertussis, 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:48.880 and tetanus. A sensational film called DPT Vaccine Roulette drew 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.119 an erroneous link between the vaccine and illnesses of some 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:55.760 children who received it. Two parents of children who received 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.760 the vaccine formed the National Vaccine Information Center, which exists 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:01.960 to this day and was a major source of COVID 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:06.440 nineteen misinformation. The controversy around the DPT vaccine led to 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:10.800 lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, leading many of those manufacturers to 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:13.440 stop producing the vaccine by the end of nineteen eighty five. 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.679 Because of this, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:21.919 Act in nineteen eighty six, establishing a no fault system 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:26.000 to alleviate pressure on vaccine manufacturers and provide an avenue 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:30.360 for victims of a vaccine injury to be compensated. As 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.160 doctor Hotez describes it, a lot of this is overblown. Yes, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.679 there are individuals who can have reactions to vaccines that 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:43.520 can cause issues, but the studies around DPT and the 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:47.040 notions that it caused these illnesses that these parents were 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:50.920 concerned about, actually showed that there was no connection. Nevertheless, 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.159 it is a reality that some people may face some 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:57.520 sort of complications and we can't dismiss that. But when 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:01.119 we stack it up against the side effects disease and 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:04.760 one of those being death, well it's a pretty easy 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:05.640 comparison to make. 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:09.560 Yeah, it's going to be so important to keep up, 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.359 you know, the education about vaccines. And one of the 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:18.480 things that I've done has been preparing these infographics, which 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:20.600 I initially did with a guy named Bill Marsh at 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:22.760 the New York Times. Is this brilliant guy who does 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.720 all these cool graphics for the New York Times, and 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.800 he had this really interesting idea that we published in 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.840 The New York Times in twenty twenty where you create 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:37.560 a box representing ten thousand kids and two boxes aligned 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:40.280 side to side. One box is what happens if ten 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:45.600 thousand kids get saved, for instance, the MMR vaccine versus 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:50.280 the other box ten thousand kids getting measles, and you know, 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.840 the ones getting the MMR vaccine. You see these tiny 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:58.000 little pinpricks of very rare side effects like allergic reaction 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:01.800 or febrill seizures one and three thousand, that sort of thing. 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:04.679 So maybe there's a tiny little pinprick representing you know, 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:09.399 three or thirty kids as opposed to measles, which you know, 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:13.080 twenty percent of kids hospitalized in measles deaths. And these 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.600 are large red and black boxes. I think those kinds 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:18.840 of things are helpful because I think one of the 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:22.159 problems is the anti vaccine guys. What they'll do is 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:27.240 they will exaggerate the frequency of rare, rare side effects 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:32.480 and in simultaneously downplay the severity of the illness. And 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:34.679 we even heard that before the two deaths. You know, 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:37.840 you heard all this rhetoric all measles is just like 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:41.160 a benign illness. And now we've got two deaths right 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.480 here in Texas of nice school age kids that never 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:48.399 had to lose their lives because the parents, you know, 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:51.040 were taken in by the disinformation machine. 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.040 The contemporary rise of anti vaccine rhetoric in the US 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:57.959 can also be tied to the political climate of the 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:02.320 early twenty first century. Figures like Congressman Ron Paul, for example, 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.840 have capitalized on the growing sentiment that government should not 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:10.320 interfere with individual medical decisions. With increasing distrust in government, 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:14.920 particularly during the Bush administration, vaccine hesitancy began to align 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:18.919 with broader libertarian and some conservative ideologies. The idea that 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:21.840 the government should not mandate personal medical choices further gain 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:24.840 traction with the election of President Barack Obama in two 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.600 thousand and eight, adding fuel to the anti vaccination fire, 0:22:29.280 --> 0:22:31.639 and the anti vax movement began to dovetail with the 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:35.440 booming alternative health and wellness industry that excused Western medicine 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:39.359 in favor of natural medicines and holistic approaches, and often 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:42.720 this includes some sort of spiritual element. This convergence is 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:46.920 crystallized in modern figures like Vonnie Hare, also known as 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.560 the food Babe, who is a conservative wellness influencer. She's 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:55.679 aligned herself with RFK Junior's Maha agenda and promotes the 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.080 standard Goop like fare, but with a right wing edge. 0:22:59.480 --> 0:23:02.760 The American food industry, for example, or Big Pharma for example, 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:06.600 are poisoning us. But also you shouldn't get the flu vaccine. 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:10.119 Despite the best efforts of scientists like doctor Hotes to 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:14.080 debunk he claims that motivate the modern anti vaccination movement, 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:17.560 it has only gathered steam in the last few decades. 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:20.800 In recent years, a number of states have passed new 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:25.399 laws allowing for personal exemptions from vaccines, and because of 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:28.479 doctor Hotes's public involvement, he's had a front row seat 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.359 as anti vaccination beliefs have become part and parcel of 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:32.440 Republican politics. 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.200 And it was a physician, scientist. The last thing I 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:38.679 want to talk about is politics, right. I mean, I 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:42.000 feel that every American has a right to their political views. 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:45.040 That's embedded in our history and our constitution. But how 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:49.160 do you say, don't adopt this stuff because it's going 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:53.040 to be so detrimental. But that's what happened with the 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:57.080 formation of anti vaccine groups in the twenty tens in Texas. 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:00.600 He started to get these steep rides in parents questing 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:04.199 non medical exemptions that their kids could get out of 0:24:04.240 --> 0:24:08.560 being vaccinated for school. And it was particularly strong in 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:12.680 the same places where people were refusing COVID vaccine. Years later, 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:17.479 especially in conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas. 0:24:17.560 --> 0:24:20.600 The vaccination rates continue to be strong in our cities 0:24:20.600 --> 0:24:23.400 of the Texas Triangle, Dallas where you are, in Houston 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:27.800 where I am, and San Antonio and Austin. But you know, 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:31.800 in the more conservative rural areas of West Texas, East Texas. 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:36.560 That's where you saw big declines in kids getting vaccines. 0:24:36.600 --> 0:24:40.639 And once you go below a certain threshold, roughly below 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:44.200 ninety percent, and bam that you start to see break 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:47.800 through childhood infections. And usually the first one you see 0:24:47.840 --> 0:24:49.600 is measles. You can ultimately get all of them, but 0:24:49.680 --> 0:24:51.919 measles is the first one you see because it's so 0:24:52.000 --> 0:24:53.119 highly transmissible. 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:55.400 But Texas is not alone. 0:24:55.840 --> 0:24:56.040 Well. 0:24:56.160 --> 0:24:59.480 Immunization rates certainly have limited in Republican states faster than 0:24:59.520 --> 0:25:03.080 they have in Democratic states. Immunization rates have fallen in 0:25:03.160 --> 0:25:06.399 most states since the pandemic. But there was another event 0:25:06.480 --> 0:25:10.040 over half a decade before social distancing and vaccination cards 0:25:10.080 --> 0:25:13.640 became household concepts that also informed the Republican Party's embrace 0:25:13.960 --> 0:25:18.560 of anti vaccine politics. This was a particular viral outbreak 0:25:18.600 --> 0:25:22.679 of measles in California, one that ultimately spurred policy changes 0:25:22.760 --> 0:25:25.080 that reverberated across the country. 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:29.480 It started happening in the twenty tens and really ramped 0:25:29.600 --> 0:25:33.000 up after. There was a large measles epidemic in California, 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:36.600 of all places, on twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and the 0:25:36.640 --> 0:25:40.640 California legislature shut down vaccine exemptions. They said, Okay, from 0:25:40.680 --> 0:25:42.200 now on, you want to send you kids to school, 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:45.080