Dr. Paul Offit
Appearances
Apple News Today
Trump froze federal spending. Confusion and disarray followed.
The problem is not only that we've largely eliminated these diseases, we've eliminated the memory of these diseases. And for that reason, parents are now more scared of the safety of vaccines, real or imagined, than the diseases that they prevent. And so you're starting to see then an erosion in vaccine confidence and as a consequence, an erosion in vaccine rates.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
I mean, I don't know if you listen to the whole Rogan thing, but he attacks me all the time because I committed the unpardonable sin of being the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, which, by the way, saves about 165,000 lives a year in the world. I thought that was a good thing, but apparently, according to him, I'm just a pharma show.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
Not publicly. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how his brain works.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
Maybe it was that worm. Maybe the worm was telling him to do it.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
I don't think it was terribly hard to solve. It just takes a long time to solve these things. Although the veterinarians knew this to be a cause of disease in animals since the 40s, it wasn't really described as a human pathogen until the 70s, so there wasn't a lot of information about this.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
So we developed a small animal model for the disease in the early 80s, and then we figured out, and simply put, which part of the virus made you sick. and which part of the virus induced an immune response that was protective.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
And with that information, we then combined strains that were avirulent, benign, with virulent strains to knock out the virulent part but include the protective part, thus summarizing 26 years of work in 40 seconds.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
And with that, you know, the vaccine really eliminated hospitalizations from this country. Most pediatric residents in our hospital have never seen an inpatient with rotavirus, which is amazing because it dominated my residency.
Revisionist History
The RFK Jr. Problem
Oh, yeah. No, over the winter, you were just flooded with kids, both in the emergency department and coming into the hospital, severe dehydration.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
It's understandable, right? I mean, children get, in the first few years of life, will get vaccines to prevent 14 different diseases, which can mean as many as 27 inoculations, to prevent diseases most people don't see, using biological fluids most people don't understand. That there's pushback on vaccines makes perfect sense. I get it.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But when I came onto that committee, I asked the head of the group, the ACIP, if I could be head of the polio working group, because I wanted to get us away from that vaccine. because it was unconscionable. I just couldn't stand that we had another alternative.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And so what was interesting at the time, there was enormous pushback from people who I respected, people who were the head of the AAP, one person who was on the short list for the Nobel Prize. Is that because of the Cutter incident still, like the remaining sentiment? That is a great question. And the answer, shockingly, is yes.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
There were still some people who believe we couldn't make an inactivated vaccine by completely inactivating the virus, that there still may be residual live virus, even though this was, whatever, 45 years earlier. So it was really hard. One person I remember said, think about it. We're going to be paying $4.5 million for every case of vaccine-associated paralysis prevented. Yeah, and?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I'm with you so far. So what I did was, there was a guy named John Salamone, who was the head of the Italian American Association, who... was really good. I mean, he was a vaccine safety activist, an actual vaccine safety activist because his son was paralyzed by the oral polio vaccine and subsequently passed away.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And so I brought him on the committee at a time when we really weren't bringing sort of non-MD PhDs on the committee because I wanted those people who didn't want to make that leap back to the inactivated vaccine to tell him that it was too much money. It was an interesting process, that whole process.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I'm waiting for people to reference something I heard on the bus on the way to work. They are saying. There's sort of a little bit of a loss, I think, in terms of the degree to which there is oversight of that kind of information. So you're right, and we're very quick to jump to the next magical, mystical thing that's going to make everything better, not realizing that
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So we haven't been using the oral vaccine in this country really since 2000, so it's almost 25 years. The advantage of the oral polio vaccine is, one, you can just squirt it in the mouth, so it doesn't require a medical person to do that because it's not a shot. And there's also something called contact immunity, which is not herd immunity.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Contact immunity is you get the vaccine, it continues to reproduce and shed in the stool. So about 25% of people in the home, say, who weren't immune to polio will come in contact with the shed virus from that child, and they too will become immunized. So you get immunization beyond the people that you immunize.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Well, it's sort of arbitrary. I mean, at the time when we met in December of 2020, hundreds and to some extent thousands of people were dying every day. So the benefit was clear if this vaccine worked. And so the question, did we know about, was essentially the first trial was 40,000, that's 20,000 that got the vaccine. The second trial was 30,000, that's 15,000 that got the vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
You had 35,000 people. Was that enough? I think it was enough to tell you that you didn't have an uncommon side effect, but it wasn't enough to tell you you didn't have a rare side effect.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But you did have processes like the vaccine safety data link, this linked computerized medical record system, which involves about 9% of the country, where you can, once the vaccine rolls out, you can very quickly tell who got it and who didn't. And if there was a problem that came up, you would see it.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And we were looking, and then myocarditis popped up, which occurred in roughly one per 50,000 people, but in children, or in people 16 to 29, it was one in 6,600. Not that small. But, you know, you were protecting against a disease that was potentially fatal. Now, you could argue for that age group, the 16 to 29-year-old, it's unlikely to be fatal in them.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But, you know, there's about 1,800 children less than 18 who have died of COVID. It's not like you can't die of COVID as a child. And the good news about the myocarditis, if there was any good news to be had, was that it really was self-limiting and transient. Initially, we admitted those kids to the hospital, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. it.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
A lot as a teenager, 16, 17, 18. I played poker all the time.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Also, I grew up in Baltimore. I spent my life at the track, just so we're clear. Even early college, life at the track. So Bowie, Laurel, Pimlico, I spent my life at the track. But make your bet. Make your bet. Be willing to make your bet, realizing you may have to tear up your ticket at the end of the race. And there's something to be said for that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
All these innovations, historically, every single one of them have been associated with some human price. There's always a human price to pay for knowledge, always. And I don't think we accept that. We think we're so far along now in the world of science and medicine that that learning curve is finished, and it's never finished.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
personality, if you will, to realize that because you are making a bet. I mean, doing nothing is also making a bet. Correct. Doing nothing is doing something.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Well, the hope, I mean, is to take blood transfusions. Back in the old days, I mean, blood transfusions were done even using animal blood. I mean, because we didn't know anything about the fact that you could have a, what we call now a transfusion reaction when you're being inoculated with antigens that you've never seen before and you have this massive reaction.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And so you learn each time that you go. I mean, look at the... I mean, the early transplants were brutal. I mean, solid organ transplants were brutal, bone marrow transplants were brutal early on. And even that was true when I was a resident at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh, bone marrow transplants were really in their early stages.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
You learn as you go because the choice to do nothing is also a choice. And for someone who has cancer or someone who needs an organ, that can be also a fatal choice. So that's true. So vaccines are different because vaccines generally are given to healthy people. So there the bar is much higher.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right. So I would say they fall into two groups. Um, the, the one group are people who really want to know whether or not there's a problem. They smelled the smoke. They want to know whether there's any fire there. You try and find out what it is that they're worried about.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Um, is it that, that, you know, that they've seen on that, that Joseph Ladapo, for example, who's the Florida state surgeon general has said that there's that the vaccines are contaminated with, um, with DNA and that that's going to insert itself into your DNA and cause cancer or autoimmune disease. So you can answer those questions if they have a specific question.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But you have to find out what it is that they're worried about. Sometimes it's just free floating, but they need to be reassured. They smell the smoke.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
See, this is the biggest problem with this whole thing. I mean, so we're living in a misinformation, disinformation age, right? And it doesn't bother me so much when Marjorie Taylor Greene says that mRNA vaccines cause cancer, or it doesn't bother me when RFK Jr. says that vaccines are causing all these chronic diseases.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
What bothers me is that when Joseph Ladapo, who's an MD, PhD from Harvard, gets up there and says that he's the Florida State Surgeon General and sends out a missive, a letter to every healthcare worker in Florida saying, don't give these mRNA vaccines for that reason. I mean... You know, it's MD, PhD from Harvard. I mean, it's a good school. It's not panned, but it's a good school.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And, you know, I just, so how do you fight that? It's this enemy, you know, I've seen the Pogo, right? I've seen the enemy in the Eros. So I think that's what this is. And Robert Malone, who says the same thing. I mean, he did seminal work on mRNA vaccines. He could have been up for the Nobel Prize and he says it in front of Congress. So that's the fight.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
that there were adverse events that followed something, whether it was vaccines or whether it was blood transfusions or whether it was chemotherapy, whatever it was that you didn't know about. And so... I think if you ask people, do you think we're going to know more about science or medicine 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, than we know now, everybody would say yes.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So I think that this is a good question. I had to be on CNN about this issue. It was Brianna Keel, I remember, it's on CNN. For me, it was about trying to explain why it wasn't possible.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Not only that it didn't, because when you say that it didn't and all the evidence is that there is no increased cancer in those who got the vaccine who didn't, what you're saying is, trust me, I think what you have to be able to do is to say, Here's why it doesn't make sense.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Okay, first of all, you know, these fragments of DNA are contained in anything that started with cells, whether it's the measles vaccine, the mumps vaccine, the German measles vaccine, the chickenpox vaccine, the rotavirus vaccine, anything that's, the Novavax vaccine, anything that started with cells will have fragments of DNA.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Assuming you live on this planet and you eat anything made from vegetables or animals on this planet, which is pretty much everybody, you're going to ingest foreign DNA, some of which will end up in your circulation, okay? But it won't get into your nucleus, which is where your DNA resides. One, because it's very hard to get across the cell membrane anyway.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Two, even if it gets across the cell membrane, and it's in that area called the cytoplasm, which is sort of outside the nucleus, There are innate mechanisms that will destroy and recognize foreign DNA. If it gets across the cell membrane, which it can't because it doesn't have a nuclear access signal, it can't get across a non-dividing cell, it won't enter that nucleus.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Even if it entered by some magical way, it doesn't have an enzyme that allows it to insert into your DNA. So it's not possible. It can't possibly happen, which is basically what I said earlier.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
on cnn i mean and so brianna killer was nice she said well how come everybody doesn't know this i don't know i don't know why but because it's i think i because i've been dealing with this now for more than 20 years trying to deal with anti-vaccine activists and i think my best shot so to speak is when i can say here's why it doesn't make sense i remember with it back in the andrew wakefield when he first launched
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine causes autism with that paper in the Lancet. I had to testify in front of Dan Burton's Committee on Government Reform. So there was Wakefield and some sort of hucksters on one side talking about how they were going to prevent or cure autism. Wakefield was going to prevent it by having you not give the MMR vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
The other ones were going to have this series of sort of alternative medicines to cure it. And then I was on the same side with Colleen Boyle from the CDC. So my job at that, my five minutes I had to speak was, here's why it doesn't make sense. Here's why what he said doesn't make sense. He makes this proposition and this proposition and this proposition, none of which makes sense.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
It's like the Red Queen from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland imagining six impossible things before breakfast. That's, I think, your most powerful argument. And at the end, and that was a packed meeting. I mean, a number of parents came up to me when it was over and said, thank you. They cared. I mean, they had children with autism. They wanted to understand what the cause or causes were.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
They didn't want to have other children if it also meant they were going to have autism. What can they avoid autism by not getting a vaccine? So... You're right. I mean, because in the end, they're not gonna look at all the papers that show innate mechanisms by which the cytoplasm destroys DNA. They can't do that. And so, for example, I'll give, oh, sorry, I'm ranting. But I have just one more.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
No, this is very positive. When the varicella vaccine came out, chickenpox vaccine in 1995, I had a number of parents call me and say, I've done my research and I'm not gonna get the vaccine. But what does doing your research mean? To them, what it meant is going online and seeing other people's opinions about the vaccine. That's doing their research, but that's not what research is.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But when it comes to their disease or most recently our pandemic, they want you to believe you know everything right now when you don't, because you never do.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And if you really want to do the research, you should read the roughly 300 papers that were published at the time on the varicella vaccine, which would have meant that you would have had to have an expertise in immunology, virology, statistics, epidemiology, which few parents have and few doctors have. And so they don't know either really the details of that vaccine, but at least collectively,
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
The FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee and the CDC Vaccine Advisory collectively have read those papers. And they will often have experts on that particular subject. There, we interviewed, we had the dengue vaccine. Are we going to recommend the dengue vaccine for Puerto Rico? So I'm not a dengue vaccine expert.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But they brought on dengue vaccine experts, and at least we read all the papers that were associated with that. So collectively, there is that expertise. But that doesn't work, right? Trust us, we're experts. It doesn't work. And so you just have to find another way to be believable by explaining to me, I think, why these things wouldn't make sense.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, what the arguments are against the vaccine don't make sense. Some arguments against vaccines do make sense. I mean, the argument against the oral polio vaccine made sense, right? John Salomon was a true vaccine safety activist. His son was paralyzed and ultimately died from the oral polio vaccine. Can't we use another vaccine? Maybe the oral polio vaccine should have a black box warning.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And people didn't treat him well. They didn't early on. I mean, he would go to these American Academy of Pediatrics national meetings, and he would be in a corner with his group, Informed Parents Against Vaccine-Associated Paralytopolia, which was a tortured sort of acronym that he had, IPAV. But he would have children who were paralyzed by that vaccine, and they didn't like him there.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
They didn't. They thought he was an anti-vaccine activist, but he wasn't. He was a vaccine safety activist. I mean, it was like a scene out of Kafka's The Hunger Artist, you know, just shoved into a corner and then, you know. not treated well, but he should have been elevated, and he was, and he got his way, and ultimately the CDC gave him an award for his activism.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right. So it's understandable, right? I mean, children get, in the first few years of life, will get vaccines to prevent 14 different diseases, which can mean as many as 27 inoculations in that first few years of life. It can mean as many as five or six inoculations at one time to prevent diseases most people don't see. Using biological fluids most people don't understand.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That there's pushback on vaccines makes perfect sense. I get it. But in terms of that issue, which makes sense, right? I mean, How can they handle all this? They're getting just fire bombed with all of these.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I know he didn't get that right. Sometimes he doesn't get things right. Well, in any case, but if you look just again, the way I tried to make the argument there, one is what you said, which is that, you know, that you are constantly exposed to pathogens. You have 10 times more bacteria on the surface of your body than you have cells in your body.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right. What worries me there is that it's scientific innovation without conscience. I mean, without necessarily an overarching ethical, moral conscience, which is historically true of scientists. I mean, scientists will see sort of science uber alice, and they don't necessarily see the bigger picture. I mean, if you look at
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right, exactly right. I mean, if you really want to scare yourself, just take a swab of your nose and put it on a wet mound on a microscope slide. It's teeming with bacteria. And if you're born without an immune system, severe combined immune deficiency, those bacteria can invade and do permanent harm. So you need an immune system because you're constantly exposed to that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, just trillions of sort of antigens. But the argument I try and make is that, so 100 years ago, we got one vaccine, right? Which was the smallpox vaccine. The smallpox is the largest of the mammalian viruses. So it has 200 structural and non-structural proteins. It's a big virus, okay?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Now, if you add up all the immunological components, 200, 100 years ago, if you add up all the immunological components today in vaccines with advances like recombinant DNA technology and protein purification, it comes out to about 150. So you actually have a lesser challenge to your immune system today in vaccines than you had 100 years ago because of those advances.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
See, when you see that a child gets, say, you know, vaccines, again, 14 different disease, the number 14 is greater than one. I get that. But what matters is what's in the vaccine. And it's much, much, or it's less. It's certainly not, you don't have a greater challenge from vaccines now than you did 100 years ago. And we don't give the smallpox vaccine anymore. That's interesting.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
No. Well, I mean, certainly there are wild-type viruses, natural viruses that can suppress your immune system. Measles can do that. Chickenpox can do that, true, but not the vaccine. The vaccines are too weak to do that. I mean, first of all, influenza is not a – I mean, the nasal spray vaccine is a live, very weakened form of the virus.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right, so you make about 10 to the ninth, a billion new BNT cells every day to handle the onslaught that you have every day from coming attack- The food you eat isn't sterile. The dust you inhale isn't sterile. You have trillions of bacteria living on the surface of your body, many of which to which you make an immune response. I mean, you're constantly making immune response.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
The challenge from vaccines is not just figuratively, but I think literally a drop in the ocean of what you encounter and manage every day. But I think people don't understand. I get it. I don't think they should necessarily understand it. But so that's our job to try and explain it. But see, the thing you brought up is the thing that is most upsetting to me now.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
It's probably why I'm talking too fast is that, you know, the what do you do when really accomplished, intelligent people who have MDs or PhDs or both stand up and say these things? Because historically, that has been true for a long time.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
at people like William Shockley, who invented the transistor, or James Watson, who was with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins figured out the structure of DNA. They saw that as the cure-all, that we could, with eugenics and sterilization, that we could make for a better population.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
No. And this is Marjorie Taylor Greene's most recent thing. I mean, just in the last couple of days, she said that we need to look into this. There's just this dramatic rise in cancers and it's being caused by this mRNA vaccine because, you know, we're compelled by coincidence. I mean, the mRNA vaccines are designed to prevent the COVID vaccines.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
There's now an mRNA vaccine against RSV, but they're designed to prevent specific diseases, not everything else that happens in life. And that's what you're up against. Got a vaccine, had a problem. I mean, my wife is a private practicing pediatrician and she was in on a weekend helping inoculate children, helping the nurse inoculate. And so there was a four month old sitting on her mother's lap.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And while my wife was drawing the vaccine up into the syringe, the four month old had a seizure. and went on to have a permanent seizure disorder, epilepsy, and at age five was dead of a chronic neurological condition.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
If she had given that vaccine five minutes earlier, I think there are no amount of statistical data in the world that would have convinced her of anything other than the vaccine caused her problem. I'm the mother of a vaccine damaged child. And you understand the emotion of that. And so you're trying to argue against emotion with statistics, which is hard to do.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
No, they're doing fine, right? They're staying out of the hospital. That's the goal. I mean, you know, these viruses like respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza virus, influenza virus, rotavirus, I mean, those are all short incubation period mucosal infections. COVID, another short incubation period mucosal infection. And I think if there's...
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
One of the worst things we did early on in this COVID pandemic when the vaccine came out in December of 2020 was not explain that. This is a short incubation period disease, which is to say that you are not going to be protected against mild disease for long. Even if you're naturally infected or vaccinated or both, six months later, you're going to be because antibodies in your circulation will
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
decline and antibodies are critical in protection against mild to moderate disease, you could get this disease again. And we should have explained that. We didn't. And I think we didn't because we were desperate to get people vaccinated. You know, in 2021, you were 12 times more likely to be hospitalized if you weren't vaccinated, 12 times more likely to die.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And we wanted people to get vaccinated. So I think we over... promised because people would get the vaccine and it was mandated, which made people even angrier. And then they would get a mild or moderate infection, which wasn't easy, right? Fever, headache, I mean, joint pain, coughing. And they were saying, you know, they lied to me here.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
They told me to get this vaccine and I got sick, but you didn't get hospitalized. And that's the goal. Keep you out of the hospital, keep you out of the ICU, keep you out.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, I mean, we're an outbred population. So I think we do, you know, some of us are better than this than others. Flu is interesting because flu is, the phrase original antigenic sin was born of flu, which was Thomas Francis' work in the late 40s.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But he said correctly that I can tell you when you were born based on how you respond to influenza virus because you respond as if you were responding to your first one. We now call that imprinting. You sort of imprint to that. And that's a real phenomenon. And it's what makes SLU so hard because you're imprinted to that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Because they just saw science as a cure for everything, not realizing that there are ethical and moral problems with that kind of style. But you see it now. I mean, you see it now with our politics. I mean, the notion that people are coming to this country with bad genes. So that still hasn't gone away.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Exactly. Okay. That was an amazing year though, right? I mean, we, shut down schools, we shut down business, we restricted travel, and we eliminated influenza from this country. And we eliminated RSV from this country. Our hospital is overwhelmed with those viruses starting around September, October, November. We didn't see anything. So this is a way to stop respiratory disease. Just stop this.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Just shut down the economy entirely and don't have children get educated.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Meaning natural virus, you're exposed to natural virus.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So you haven't seen the virus before, so therefore its capacity to replicate, it replicates initially unrestricted, until you click in and make antibodies that keep the virus from bounding to cells, and you make something called cytotoxic T cells, which once the virus enters the cell, the cell is quickly killed so that it can't reproduce itself.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Now you've been exposed once, whether from natural infection or immunization. Now the second time you see it, your immune response comes much quicker. So to lessen the degree to which the virus reproduces itself. See, this is going to be a hard concept, but stop me if I'm not doing this well, but
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
For long incubation period diseases, like measles, for example, you develop antibodies when you're vaccinated, and you also develop memory cells. The good news about measles is a long incubation period disease. So therefore, it takes 7, 10, 14 days for you to get sick.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That's plenty of time for activation of those memory cells to become B cells that make antibodies or T cells that kill virus-infected cells. So you can prevent even mild disease. So if you can prevent mild disease, then you can prevent transmission, and you can eliminate the disease from the face of this earth. So smallpox is a long incubation for disease.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Because it gives you a longer window for your immune system to kick in and act. That's right, to even prevent mild disease. So you can eliminate measles. We eliminated smallpox, a long incubation for disease. You can eliminate rubella, which we did in this country by 2005. You can eliminate polio, which we did in this country by 1979. Those are all long incubation period diseases.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But for short incubation period diseases, you initially make an immune response, which gives you antibodies, which will protect you for four months or so against mild disease. Then the antibodies are gone in your circulation. So now you have memory. But that's not enough time for those, because it's a short incubation period from the time you're exposed to when you develop symptoms.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
This notion of sort of the genetics of intelligence still hasn't gone away, which is frightening.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That's not enough time for those memory cells to become activated and make antibodies, for example, to prevent mild disease. So you're always going to get mild disease again and again. I mean, we'll be living with COVID for the rest of your life and my life and my children's life. and my two new grandchildren's lives. I mean, so this is going to be around for a while.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And I just think we have to get people to understand that you may still get mild disease again and again. The goal is to keep you out of the hospital. That's the goal.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, so if you're... As a general rule, memory cells are lifelong. So if there was a member study done with an isolated island nation that had a measles epidemic. Okay, then everybody got it and it faded away. And then that was it. It wasn't circulating anymore in the community. And then like 40 years passed and some sailors from another country came and reintroduced it.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And it would again cause disease in younger people who hadn't been exposed to it. But all those older people, 40, 50, 60-year-old people never got it because they had immunological memory, which tells you that it is very long-lived. Memory cells are long-lived. They remember for a long time. So for long incubation period diseases, you're protected for the rest of your life.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, I'm a child of the 50s. I had measles, mumps, German measles, chickenpox, because I was born and was a child before any of those vaccines were introduced. I am protected for the rest of my life against those viruses.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
You're testing for antibody, which will fade. So what you really want to be testing for is the frequency of memory B cells or the frequency of memory T cells, which are research tools. That's not the kind of thing that's easily commercially available. But I think it's possible that if you test me, I'm not going to have circulating antibodies against measles.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But if you test me, I think I will, even at this age, still have memory T cells and B cells, which will protect me against those diseases.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Many won't, though. Oh, really?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
If you apply this to COVID... The current recommendation is that everybody over six months of age should get a COVID vaccine. But the goal of the vaccine is to keep you out of the hospital, keep you out of the morgue, keep you from dying. So that's the question. Who's getting hospitalized? Who's dying? And if you look, it's really high-risk groups.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So people who are over 75, people who have high-risk medical conditions, people who are pregnant, people who are immune compromised, and anybody who's not vaccinated is at risk. And so we should, I think, target those groups.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But what you really want to know, and what I'd love to see sort of both the CDC in collaboration with academic immunologists answer this question, which is who's getting, I mean, why are some people getting hospitalized? So for over 75, you're at greater risk. You are. So I'd like sort of immunologists to look at the question of, How long do these memory T cells and B cells last?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, do you get to a certain age where they really do start to fade? Because as you get older, your immune system is less capable than when you're younger. And are there certain medical conditions where you don't have long-lived memory response? Because it's really all about memory. I mean, think about it. We have... The incidence of hospitalization and deaths is way down from where it was.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yet the virus continues to evolve, right? And so that's always evolving. Yet those numbers are way down. Why? Because of T cells. I mean, T cells really are the main reason why. And we never talk about T cells, including at our FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee. We never talk about T cells. We should talk about them more.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, and that is a longer incubation period disease. I can only imagine that the immunity is incomplete, that when you get it, it's not, you don't, Epstein-Barr virus is the cause of mono, that you don't get a complete immunity. Which can happen sometimes. So mono, Epstein-Barr virus is a herpes virus, in the herpes virus group. And mono can, you know, those kinds of viruses can sort of,
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
hang out. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean, certainly varicella hangs out, herpes simplex virus hangs out.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I don't think so. And here's why. I think that... If you ask, so only two countries recommend it for everybody over six months of age, us and Canada, but Western Europe doesn't, Australia doesn't, the World Health Organization doesn't, so we're really one of only two countries that do this.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
If you ask people, because I have sort of been nationally saying things like I think we should target high-risk groups, and that's meant that I have managed to alienate the few remaining friends I had actually in this business because I wasn't sort of toeing the line. And so I saw actually Dr. Fauci recently at a meeting and I said, you know, Tony, Dr. Fauci, am I wrong?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Actually, I've done it for 30 years. Am I wrong? And he said, no, you're not wrong. I think we should target high-risk groups. The question is how best to do that. And he believed, and he may be right, that when you have a targeted recommendation, that's a nuanced recommendation,
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
and therefore a garbled recommendation, that you're much more likely to get those high-risk groups vaccinated if you recommend it for everybody. The problem I have with that is that why do healthy young men need to be vaccinated if they're going to have little benefits? So then the question is, what is the benefit?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So if you look at the most recent CDC data from Ruth Link-Gellis, which she presented both to our committee, the FDA committee, and the CDC committee, what she showed is that if you have a match to what you were vaccinated with, to what you were challenged with.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So for example, you got the XBB15 vaccine last year and you were challenged with XBB15, you decrease your chance of hospitalization, assuming you're in a high-risk group, by about 55% for three months. That's what you do. Beyond that, not as much because you've been previously vaccinated. So it's not as much.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right, exactly right. I mean, so there's an HIV researcher at the University of Penn named Jim Hoxie, who, as it turns out, doesn't have the HIV binding receptor. Good news for him. And so could you genetically engineer children so that they don't have that binding receptor? Yes, you could.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
If it's a mismatch, and it's likely to be a mismatch because if you use the XBB15 from last year, that was very quickly replaced by JN1 by the winter. So you get XBB15, then you get the JN1 challenge. It's about 33% for three months and then not as great. So this would be easier if it was like flu or RSVM was a winter disease, but it hasn't settled into a winter pattern yet.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
It's still a year-round disease. So when you get it, say, October, September, October, November, you're going to be protected for that winter season, but then you still have the summer where it hasn't still settled into that pattern yet. So I think it's low risk, low reward. I think there's a benefit for those few months, and so therefore it becomes a style question. And I think the risks are low.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So I think it's low risk, low reward.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That historically has never happened. I mean, when you look at the side effects, severe and occasionally fatal side effects of vaccines, they invariably happen within a few weeks of getting a vaccine. So that's why the FDA enforces the fact that you have to wait till two months after the last dose before they will consider approval or licensure.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
It's always been the oral polio vaccine is a cause of polio. You would see that really within a few weeks. The measles vaccine is a cause of lowering platelet count thrombocytopenia occurs really very quickly. What else? Latex, allergies, or allergies associated with some components of vaccines.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I don't think so. I mean, so when you get your mRNA vaccine, that vaccine will then enter your cell and join roughly 200,000 other pieces of mRNA that are making the proteins and enzymes necessary for life. And like all those other pieces of mRNA, it will largely be degraded within a few days. So it's not like it sort of hangs out forever.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
What's interesting about this vaccine is this is the most potent immunization I've seen since smallpox. I mean, I had to – because I'm at the Whistler Institute and had to give smallpox vaccines for people who were – these were veterinarians who were taking a –
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
smallpox virus an attenuated smallpox virus that had cloned into it a rabies gene that coded for a surface protein so what they did was a they soaked chicken heads with this then brought it to paramore island sort of off the coast of virginia because they want to try and eliminate rabies and wildlife there that that story and so i had to give a lot of these guys um these veterinarians these sort of ansel adams flannel shirt type guys this vaccine and they they they all had
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
You know, swelling of lymph nodes, fever. I think one guy thought, clearly, I'll never forget this story because I was still a young person. He had a massive swelling of a lymph node under his arm. He had fever, chills. So I brought him to my boss, Stanley Plotkin, who's the inventor of the rubella vaccine. I said, should we admit him to the hospital?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, it's interesting that, again, to go back to James Watson, when he was asked about gene editing, he's still alive, actually. He's like 96 years old. He said, you know, we could make girls prettier. And what's wrong with that? This is why you don't want scientists weighing in on this stuff.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Does he have this bacterial lymph node infection? And he looked at it and he said, good take. And this vaccine was that, mRNA vaccine also.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So tinnitus is common, especially in older people. I have tinnitus. And so it's very easy to make that association.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So then the question is, doing the right kinds of studies that answer the question, are you more likely to have tinnitus, especially because you're immunizing an older population, if you got the vaccine, if you didn't, and it hasn't played out, even though some prominent people have stepped forward and said this is clearly a side effect. I don't see the data for that as being clearly...
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, so it's always risk-benefit. I mean, I think, I guess my, I would think that the, if they're in a high-risk group, that COVID would be the greatest risk, greater risk, but-
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Can I ask you a question? This has been bothering me and you're really good at this, so you can answer this question. It's the question of the value of transparency. Because I lived through this with this COVID vaccine. We always say you want to be transparent, but I think transparency might be overrated. And so I want you to tell me whether or not I'm wrong. Okay.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
When we had the bivalent vaccine, so this is June of 2022, right? We're deciding what to do. We had always used this, the ancestral strain, the original strain, the Wuhan strain. But then Omicron came into this country in December of 2021, which was a different virus. So even if you'd been vaccinated or naturally infected or both, you could still get mild disease. It was just you'd never...
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
been vaccinated or naturally infected. Now, you're still relatively protected against severe disease, but not mild disease. It swept across this country. And the thinking was, at the time, sensible, which is, why are we still giving this ancestral strain? Why don't we try and meet the strains that are currently circulating?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And so the decision was, let's give a half a dose of Wuhan and a half a dose of one of the Omicron variants, which ended up being something called BA.4, BA.5. Thus was born the bivalent vaccine introduced in 2022. That vaccine was no better than Wuhan. It wasn't. The immunological study showed it out of Harvard and Columbia. The clinical study showed it in U.S., France, and U.K. It was no better.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
It was no worse, but it was no better. Do we tell people that? Because what ended up happening is we certainly didn't. I mean, doctors don't know this. Most people don't know this. There were two papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine saying this was no better. I wrote a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine saying this is no better.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And my feeling was at least stop saying it's better. And we were. People were on national television saying it was better. I had to be on CNN for this. I remember with Ashish Jha, who's great. He's a brilliant guy, really smart. I think he's very good at explaining science and medicine. But he was toeing the line, which is we need to get this vaccine because it's better.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
This includes the Omicron strains. Therefore, those are the strains that are circulating, so it's better. And we've never used a bivalent vaccine again for that reason, right? And so he was there. So it was Pamela Brown on CNN shows a clip of Dr. Jha saying, better need to get it. So then she turns, I'm remote, but she turns to me, she says, well, was he wrong?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
See, that's not the question you want to ask because it's not about him. Also, my hospital doesn't like it when you sort of criticize COVID response coordinators from the White House. They're not big on that. So So my answer was, you know, it doesn't matter what he says. It doesn't matter what I say. The only thing that matters is what the data show.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
There's two papers in the New England Journal of Medicine showing it's not any better. It's not worse. So I think those at high risk should get it. But do you tell people that? Because see, people would argue, see, you weren't transparent. So be transparent. So they say, okay, this was no better. We learned a lesson. And now we're not giving the biovalent vaccine anymore.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And so the response is going to be, thank you for being transparent. Now I trust you more. Or it's going to be, these people don't know what the hell they're doing. I think the likelihood is B, these people don't know what the hell they're doing. But what do you think?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Got it. Yeah. Right, got it.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So let me ask you this then. When I was on the advisory committee for immunization practice, it was late 90s, early 2000s, it was sort of the one, two, three hit on vaccines. It was the false concern that measles, mumps, rubella vaccine caused autism, which wasn't true, but we had to vote on that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
We had to vote on whether or not the MMR vaccine should be separated into its three component parts because Dave Weldon was a Republican congressman from Florida who was on the Appropriations Committee. He knew Andrew Wakefield, and he believed that Andrew Wakefield was right, that we could avoid autism by separating that vaccine into its three component parts.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So instead of children getting three shots, or one, two shots, right, because it's a two-shot vaccine, they would get six shots, right, with no benefit. So we voted no, but it told me about the reader which politics and sort of Trump signed.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And then there was RotaShield, which was a rotavirus vaccine that was taken off the market because it was a rare cause of intestinal blockage called an interception. And then there was Stimerosal, right, this ethyl mercury-containing preservative vaccine. So that was where we basically put a gun to our head, even though all the evidence was that this was not a problem.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
It was an example of how not to communicate a theoretical risk, the way I saw this. But it was frightening, the degree to me, to which... people weren't communicating the fact that in the case, at least for MMR or thimerosal, that this really wasn't a problem. Scientifically, this wasn't a problem. And the pediatricians were good. I mean, they were out there. Vaccines are good.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Vaccine preventable diseases are bad. So we formed this Vaccine Education Center for the purpose of getting scientists together to try and learn to communicate the science to the public. But see, the minute you say that word science, you know, you've turned people off. When Brianna Keeler asked me on CNN to explain why it was that mRNA vaccines or the
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
the dna fragments that are in that vaccine because because they use the word contamination not contamination it's just part of the process you're starting with cells you're gonna end up with fragments of dna why that wouldn't be a problem you do have to explain the science at some level i think but maybe i'm wrong maybe you should just say trust me all the evidence isn't isn't uh doesn't support this there's a way to explain the science where it's not too much but it's enough um
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I just, I'll give you a personal story. I mean, I was fortunate enough to be part of a team at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia that created the strains that became the rotavirus vaccine, Rotatex. So it's sort of like, you know, when the gods are angry, this is the old Chinese proverb, that when the gods are angry, they grant your wish.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, and it's not trivial. What happened then, this may be inside base pollution, if it is, stop me, but thimerosal wasn't a problem. I mean, ethylmercury, the level contained in vaccines, was never harmful. And it was easy to show that. I mean... Preservatives have been used in vaccines since the 1940s.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
When you have a multi-dose vial, if you keep violating the rubber stopper with a syringe or needle, you could inadvertently introduce bacteria. So the person who gets the eighth or ninth or tenth dose could actually be inoculated with bacteria and cause serious problems. So hence preservatives.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And ethylmercury is actually a very gentle sort of bacteria static agent, meaning it keeps it from reproducing.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
First of all, assuming you live on this planet, which is pretty much everybody, you're going to be exposed to methylmercury. And methylmercury has a much longer half-life. Methylmercury is in anything made from water, including breast milk and infant formula, at far greater levels than you're ever going to get from this.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Ethylmercury, which has a much shorter half-life, is actually not a natural product. It's a synthetic product. But so you go through all that. I mean, there was no sense in trying to take that out of vaccines. But nonetheless, mercury sounds bad, right? It's not like there's a national center for the appreciation of heavy metals standing up in defense of mercury. So therefore, we did.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
We put a gun to the public health service, put a gun. I was never for this, but put a gun to the public, to the head of the pharmaceutical companies and said, take it out. So all we did was made multi-dose vials into single-dose vials made vaccines much more expensive and made it more difficult for the developing world to get the vaccines that we need. Waste, environment problems. Awful, right?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
The other thing that happened was when Rotashield came up, which was a rare cause of intussusception, right? Which can be a serious illness and occurred, the attributable risk was like one in 10,000, one in 30,000. And that's why we don't do a catch-up.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, so we were working for whatever, 25 plus years on trying to make a vaccine to prevent this disease, which can... causes roughly 2,000 children a day to die in the world. So, an important thing. But, you know, you don't know. I mean, you know that you've done work in, that 35,000 children have gotten, babies have gotten that vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Not really. So there's two vaccines, Rix, which is given as a two-dose vaccine, two informos, and then two, four, and six for Rotatec.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes. So now you're at month eight, month nine. So the concern was that natural interception occurred well before there ever was a rotavirus vaccine. It primarily is around five, six, seven. You start to see it peak then.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So the fear was, I was actually on this committee, is that the fear was is that you would give a vaccine at a time when interception was becoming more common so that people would make that association. That was why. Though you're right, yeah, that's why.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But you were still five to ten times more likely to die of rotavirus in this country, where 60 children die of rotavirus, than ever from the rotavirus vaccine. So I tried to make a case for RotaShield. I mean, the vaccine we developed at CHOP was RotaTech. But that we shouldn't kill it here because the benefits still outweigh the risks.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But that vaccine was sacrificed because we didn't vote to separate MMR into its proponent parts, and we pushed back very hard on thimerosal as a problem. We did. And so it looked like we didn't care. So here, by basically taking RotaShield off the market, it looked like we cared. And what ended up happening was, here's a virus that kills 2,000 children a day in the world.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
that it was seven years until the next vaccine came out. And four months later, the World Health Organization wanted to still keep this vaccine alive, wrote a show, because 2,000 children die a day. And I went to that meeting in Geneva in 2000, and country after country stood up.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Countries like, you know, Southeast Asia or South America said, look, if it's not safe for America's children, it's not safe for our children. even though the benefit-risk ratio was very different in countries where you'd have 2,000 children dying, you know, a day from this virus.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And I just felt that we sacrificed RotaShield and thus, I mean, 2,000 children dying a day for seven years until that next vaccine came out was an example of us trying to look like we cared and did more harm, far more harm than good.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And then, you know, the CDC, the FDA licenses it, and then the CDC recommends it, and your heart is in your throat. I mean, you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. I remember me and my, one of my co-inventors, Fred Clark, are just pouring through gene databases. What weren't we thinking about? Are we making immune response to the cells that lie in your joints?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Okay. Yeah. The other thing I think that was hard in all this was understanding risk or relative risk because that's what it was. I mean, that vaccine was a cause of interception, but it was rare probably. What was interesting about that when the dust settled on this whole thing was that there were high-use states and low-use states. This was late 90s, 1998 to 1999. There were states that used...
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
a lot of roto-shield and then states that didn't. So the answer to the question, was the incidence of interception greater in the high-risk states than the low-risk states, which you would have assumed was true, but it wasn't. And the reason is, is that rotavirus, natural infection, also was a rare cause of interception. So it was basically a wash.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And now that we have much more data on this, it was a wash. because the vaccine both caused and prevented an inception at roughly the same rate. So it was sort of the same thing.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So basically you took this off the market and deprived not only this country's children, but the world's children of something that was highly, I mean, rotavirus, the problem with rotavirus is it's a vomiting illness, vomiting and diarrhea and fever. So you have three sources of water loss, but you vomit in that illness.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
You can't rehydrate with oral rehydration therapy, which is what the World Health Organization pushed unsuccessfully. It's a rapid dehydrating illness. And there's nothing you can do other than bring the child to the hospital, give them IV fluids, which is less quickly done in the developing world, which is why the death rate was so high.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And it just was hard to watch that Geneva meeting when sort of person after person stood up and said, it's not safe for America's children, it's not safe for our children because it's a matter of risk. So now I'm on the committee, right? I'm on the ACIP. And we were charged with what is an acceptable risk? Because now you have this attributive risk of one in 10 to one in 30,000.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
One in 50,000, one in 100,000, one in a million. And it's an unanswerable question because I think people, when you tell people that the risk is one in 50,000 or one in 100,000, all they hear is the one, right? So you're saying it's possible. It could be me.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Are we making immune response to the surface of cells in your pancreas that make insulin? I mean, is there where we could create diabetes? Is there something we didn't think about? Because you know you didn't think about everything because you can't think about everything.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, right. And so when I made that presentation to the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practice, trying to save Rhoda Shield, I said, here's the number. Here's a theoretical million children, got the vaccine, didn't get the vaccine. You're 10 times more likely to die in this country if you didn't get the vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But the way that this was heard was, it's sort of the sin of omission versus the sin of commission. The dying from getting the vaccine is perceived as much worse than dying from just the wild type natural virus because it's something you're doing, something we're doing, right? And so it's perceived as worse, I think.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I don't think it plays a role at all.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
No. First of all, it wouldn't serve you well in the vaccine world to manipulate data because you will soon be found out. I mean, and I wish this was available on the drug side. It's not. It's the vaccine safety data link. The minute a vaccine comes out, you know that there are hundreds of thousands of children who get it and don't get it.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And so if there's a problem, you very quickly will find it out, as was true with Rota, Shield, and Indeceptin, as was true with the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis. as was true with Johnson & Johnson's vaccine. And these are rare side effects. I mean, the Johnson & Johnson was one in 200,000, still fairly quickly picked up. There was no hiding.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And now the vaccine is going to be given to hundreds of millions of people and you're going to find out what you didn't think about. So your heart's always in your throat.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So if you're misrepresenting data, first of all, and you were ever found out to misrepresent data, you are screwed. I mean, the FDA, if you don't like what the FDA decides, there's only one person you can go to above them. That's God. I mean, the FDA is it. Don't upset the FDA. So no, I mean, so on those committees, you have to,
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
show that you have no relationship to a pharmaceutical company and no relationship with the government. You're an independent advisory committee. I think those discussions are generally really good. I think people are trying to get it right. They don't always get it right, but I think they're trying.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Well, so the FDA has to license a product, and then it goes to the CDC to decide whether or not to recommend it. So sometimes they'll license something that doesn't necessarily recommend it. Why does that happen? Well, so the Lyme vaccine would be an example of that. So late 90s, early 2000s with the Lyme vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So that was a licensed product, but it got a very soft recommendation from the CDC, which was that it could be considered for use, basically. Normally, when it's recommended, should is the word they use when it's recommended.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
When they give it a very soft recommendation, it could be considered for use for people who live in high-risk areas where the bacteria is circulating and engage in high-risk activities, like walking outside in the summer. You know, that would be a high-risk activity. So I just, I don't... I thought that that vaccine was sort of killed with a soft recommendation. Fair.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
In a better world, you wouldn't need to mandate vaccines. People would be fully informed. I mean, I would argue that in December of 2020, having read those 800 pages on the Pfizer-Moderna vaccine, I was a fully informed citizen. One of the few. Could not wait to get that vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So I am still on the FDA vaccine advisory committee.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So in the better world, people would get the right kind of information, the correct scientific information and make the right decision. But we don't live in that world. So people are making a decision not to do that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I can tell you, I think if we did not have school vaccine mandates, you would start to see what you're seeing, which is the CDC recently put out data showing that there's clearly been an erosion in school vaccine mandates from people choosing non-medical exemptions, philosophical, religious exemptions. So you're going from like 95% to 93% to 92%. And with that, what are you seeing?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
You're seeing that we've gone from 50 cases of measles last year to 200 this year. We have had more than 200 deaths from flu in children this year, which is very high. You've had a almost five-fold increase in whooping cough. We went from 3,000 cases last year to 17,000 this year.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
If you look back in the 70s, we've had school mandates for decades, but decades and decades, but they weren't really enforced early on until the 70s. In the 70s, what happened is you had massive outbreaks in Detroit, Alaska, Los Angeles, and with that, they enforced school mandates and the instance of measles went way down.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And we eliminated measles by the year 2000, but these non-medical exemptions that people choose And I think with COVID mandates, there was such a backlash to that that people are seeing vaccines and vaccine mandates as a dirty word. And so measles is coming back. So you're seeing more than 200 cases of measles this year.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Get to 1,000 cases with a virus that has a mortality rate of 0.1%, and you're going to start to see children dying of measles again in this country. It is unconscionable. And I wish we didn't have to have mandates. I wish we didn't have to have school mandates. Yeah.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Okay, so you know that your recommendation is based on the question, do you know enough? not do you know everything. So, for example, in December 2020, we were confronted with, on the 10th, December 10th, with the Pfizer's vaccine, Pfizer's mRNA vaccine, and a week later, the mRNA vaccine for Moderna. The way that works is you get
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right, no, here's a perfect story for that. I remember in the first year of COVID, when the vaccine came out in December 2020, so this was like 2021, there was a, and the vaccines were also available for children by May, children over 12.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So we were seeing adolescents who were coming in with severe respiratory disease, and we saw one child who came into the, initially on the floor, but then ultimately went up to the intensive care unit, lived, but he was really sick. So I remember talking to, there were two other siblings who were old enough to have gotten the vaccine. The mother wasn't vaccinated.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
The two siblings weren't vaccinated. And the father was in the room and I asked him whether he was vaccinated. He said, yeah, I had to for work. Just kind of like this, you know, I just had to.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I'm probably not the best person to answer that question. But more of a personal side.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
No, I just haven't really followed it. I mean, I'm willing to accept that I'm not immortal because every story should have an end and who the hell wants to be immortal?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
You know, I think it's basically an unregulated industry that's able to make claims, vague claims that are convincing. And I wish... I wish the word natural were applied more reasonably. I mean, at least from the infectious disease standpoint, Mother Nature has been trying to kill us ever since we crawled out of the ocean onto land. The term natural immunity has always bothered me, actually. Why?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Well, because it's fine as long as you live. I mean, I think actually if you get a COVID vaccine, you will have an immune response to that protein, the spike protein. If you're infected with COVID and you live, you'll have an immune response to all four proteins, including the nuclear protein, which is a major site for cytotoxic T-cell responses. Great, that's all great, but you have to live.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So I think we should call it survivor immunity. I just think that's the better term. Okay, that is a better term.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
They're both excellent. But I really do think that if you've gotten the vaccine and you get a natural infection and you live, you're actually better off. So getting both. Yeah, because you've had, now there's immune response to all four proteins.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That's why the rates of hospitalizations and death are so low. And how come- They are much, much lower than where they were before.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
For the first vaccine, you'll get 150 pages to 200 pages from the company where they go through all their phase one, phase two, phase three data, meaning bigger and bigger studies and ultimately the big definitive study, which was a 40,000-person prospective one-to-one placebo-controlled study. And then you also get 150 to 200 pages from
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
T cells, T cells. Cytotoxic T cells are clearly correlated with protection against severe disease. And T cells, unlike B cells, because B cells are recognizing that's part of the spike protein, the so-called receptor binding domain, which is the business end of the spike protein that binds the cells. That's always evolving. That's always mutating away from recognition by antibodies to some extent.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And T cells are not selective in that way. Conserved regions. I mean, those regions recognized by T cells have not evolved from the Wuhan 1 strain right up to the current XCC strain. It's just they've remained conserved. And so T cells is... Dan Baruch, who's a Harvard immunologist, says T cells are the unsung hero of this pandemic, and I think that's right. Wow.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
We were a blank slate. There was no population immunity to this virus. And I think you can assume this isn't the end of it. We had SARS-1 in 2002. We have MERS in 2012. Those are both pandemic coronaviruses that didn't really hit this country, but certainly could have. And now we have this virus, SARS-CoV-2, which raised its head in 2019. That's three pandemic viruses in 20 years.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, as we do things like deforestation, we live closer and closer to animals, especially bats, which are a fairly large part of the mammalian population. we are going to have another pandemic. And the thing that upsets me the most about this, we were talking about this a little earlier, is two-thirds of the American public believe this was a lab leak. And this was not a lab leak.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
This was an animal spillover event to human spillover event that occurred in the southwestern section of the Hunan wholesale seafood market. There are two excellent publications that show clear evidence that that virus began there.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Actually, there were two separate strains, two separate lineages that both began there, either among bamboo rats or palm civets or raccoon dogs, because all the DNA from there and the genetic evidence is all right there. It's on the cages. It's on the tools that were used to brush the animals or kill the animals. It's on the tables that were there. it's all there.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
One paper called it stall A, another one called it like stall 42 or something, but it was that stall where it started. Because otherwise you have to believe, one, that's something that's never happened before, which is that a pandemic virus was created in a laboratory. We've had a lot of pandemics. This has never happened before.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Two, it had to happen in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is where people saying it happened. And then- So they created it, and then they just happened to go right to a place where you would have expected an animal or human spillover event to occur instead of the 10,000 other places they could have gone in Wuhan to do this.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And it had to be two people because it was two separate lineages, and they had to both go to that spot. The animal to human spillover events occur all the time. Ebola is a bad virus. HIV is a chimp virus. Flu is a bird virus. I mean, probably 70% of the pathogens that cause our disease came from animals. Why is it so surprising this one also came from animals? So we need to know that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
the FDA, where they review those data to see whether there's any omissions or misrepresentation. So you're reading 400 pages for that first meeting. And how long do you have to read 400 pages? About a week. And you read it. You read every word because your heart's in your throat. Because you really, you want to see if there's anything there. And there was.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, this matters because China is culpable that they were selling at least 31 different species of animals illegally. They were housing them in unhygienic conditions. conditions. They were bringing them from all over China. And that's probably where that SARS-CoV-2 originally came from. It didn't come from right there. It came from many kilometers away.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And I just think it's going to happen again. And China was xenophobic. They didn't want outside investigators to come in, which I think gave rise to a lot of these conspiracies. But you have serious citizens getting up in front of Congress saying, like Christopher Wray, from the FBI saying this is credible evidence. Come on, where's the evidence?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, if you're gonna say something happened that never happened before, you should have some evidence rather, this is the Carl Sagan line, right? That extraordinary claims should be backed by extraordinary evidence. This is an extraordinary claim backed by innuendo and conspiracy. And what they did also this, sorry, one last thing. They killed all the animals, China killed all the animals.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
They didn't do that with SARS-1. With SARS-1, which happened in, I think, Foshan and then spread out, they didn't kill the animals. They let them continue to sell. So they were still there, and you could see that they were the ones who were infected. And an animal in those markets will have like 50 human contacts a day.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So Michael Warby, Chris Anderson, Eddie Holmes, and Marion Groupins, all the evolutionary biologists who really should be the ones testifying in front of Congress, not people who are head of the FBI or people who are surgeons at Hopkins to do that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right, so those kinds of wet markets have to be really much better supervised and tested. First of all, there's always animal to human spillover events. If you look, for example, in China, If you look in rural China where people are going to be exposed to bats, what percentage of them will have antibodies to bat viruses? About 2.5%, 1 in 40. So that happens all the time. It's not a rare event.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But if you look in urban areas where they're not exposed to bats, it's 0%. So know that. Know that these are where these viruses are coming from. And just be really careful about screening these animals when they come in and having them under hygienic conditions. And don't sell the illegal ones. What makes those animals illegal? No, there are certain protected animals.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Oh, so it's an endangered species, more than a virus issue. I'm not sure it's endangered. It's just that you're not allowed to sell them for whatever reason. Oh, interesting. And they sell them anyway. I mean, China was culpable here, I think. And also, you had to depend on a whistleblower to tell you that there was a virus that was circulating that was killing thousands of people? Really?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
We thought that there was a statistically, the numbers were small, but there was a statistically significant increase in Bell's palsy in the vaccinated group versus the unvaccinated, you know, one-sided facial paralysis. And so we were worried about that. I mean, that's a big price to pay for a disease that most people are going to get and not die from and not be permanently harmed by.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
He ultimately died, this ophthalmologist. He's a hero, but shouldn't have had to come to them.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I think it's more than one thing, long COVID. I mean, I think there are clearly physiological explanations, you know, whether it's clotting or continued viral replication that explains to some extent. And I think there's a psychological component to long COVID. The same reason for that you have long flu.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
For people who are hospitalized for any length of time with flu, also there can have longer term symptoms. I mean, I can say from the vaccine side that vaccines do decrease the risk of long COVID. There was one study in Italy that was probably the best study where they... And this is their definition of long COVID. But they looked at people who got COVID.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And then they had the incidence of long COVID was like 42%. Then they looked at people who got one dose of vaccine and then got COVID. And the incidence of long COVID went from 42% to 30%. And they looked at people who got two doses of vaccine, then got COVID. And the incidence of long COVID went from 30% to 17%.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
42% of people were getting long COVID. I know, it was loose. I mean, it was sort of persistent.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And even looser symptoms. Headaches or something. Brain fog. And then they looked at three doses and then got COVID and went from like 70% to 16%. So there were a couple other studies showing that there may have been a value for the third dose. For the people who were getting like their sixth and seventh and eighth dose because they think that's... lessening long COVID.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Although if they have that little Pfizer loyalty card and you get your tent dose, I think you get free pizza or something like that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I think it's coming from Southeast Asia. Really? And it's going to be another coronavirus pandemic. I think that it's only getting worse.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I think it's bat virus. It's bats, which represent like 13% of the million population. As we deforest, we're getting closer and closer to them. That's it. And the other H5 is a fear. You know, the bird flu is a fear. But that...
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That's never been a pandemic because it doesn't, we're discussing this at our FDA vaccine advisory committees, H5, and they're discussing it at CDC advisory committees too, but it's, there are flu pandemics, which occur several times a century, two or three times a century. And It's always H1, H2, or H3. It's never been H5 or H7, H9.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And the reason is that those viruses have never learned, the H5 and H7 viruses and H9, have never learned to bind to cells in our upper respiratory tract.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, so they can bind in the lower respiratory tract. So if you get enough virus down into your lower respiratory tract, you can get pneumonia and die. I mean, the mortality rate with H5 virus is like 50%. It's not trivial. And we've had almost 1,000 cases over the last 20 years or so.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But until that virus learns to reproduce, normally the way it works is the virus reproduces itself in the upper respiratory tract, it amplifies, then it goes down to the lower respiratory tract, then it causes pneumonia.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So if it doesn't replicate well in the upper respiratory tract, you're not going to shed the virus particularly well, and you're not going to have human-to-human transfer, and therefore it's not going to be a pandemic.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And as it turns out, when this vaccine was given to millions of people and there was enough on both sides to see, that went away. That wasn't a real problem. And then the next week, when you meet for Moderna's vaccine, you're getting another 400 pages to review. And you read every word because you're afraid you're going to miss something. And then you recommend authorization.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right, and that's what made it so frightening. Anybody could kill you when you're walking down the street.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right, well, that's why SARS-1 and MERS were never a problem. Exactly. Because when you got that, you were really sick. There really wasn't asymptomatic.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That's right.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
What else? Where do you want people to listen? I guess I just want people to have... Are you still doing the Substack? Oh, yeah, I do. I haven't done it in a couple weeks, but yeah, Beyond the Noise, it's called. It's fun. It gives me a chance to get out the angst. If Donald Trump's elected president, I'm going to do it three times a week.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I'm exactly the kind of person he wants, I can tell.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yeah, that's him. He's so introspective that way. So circumspect.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
No, I think I just, I guess the goal of my books in some ways is to get people to have a realistic expectation of what medicine and science can and can't do. And I'm not sure they do. I think they expect more. And maybe it's because we try and sell it as being more than it is.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I appreciate your work.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Thank you. Appreciate it.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
We're an advisory body, and you're in medicine. You know people can choose not to take your advice, and that's true of the FDA as well. But they authorize then through emergency use authorization this vaccine. But you're always... always waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it did drop.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, with the mRNA vaccines, there was myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle, primarily in boys 16 to 29 years of age, primarily after the second dose, primarily within four days, but generally it was transient and self-resolving. So it really wasn't that bad. That was a very small price to pay, I think, for that vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
But you had J&J's vaccine, which we reviewed in February of 2021, the adenovirus vectored vaccine. And That was, again, about a 30,000 person study. But so you saw 15,000 people got that vaccine. Then millions of people got it. And it was found to be a cause of clotting, including severe clotting, including clotting in the brain that ultimately drove that vaccine off the market by March of 2023.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Thank you.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And everybody looks at that story and they say, how did you not know that? How did you recommend something like that, which now has caused deaths in some people? How could you not know that?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And people then lose trust, which is in part sort of why I wrote this book, because I just think people have to have realistic expectations of the fact that you're going to learn as you go, which everybody agrees with, except when it comes to any personal experience they've had.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Yes, I'm really impressed by the committee. I actually... I know COVID has become a difficult discussion for people, but I think that Operation Warp Speed, which is to say an $11 billion outlay to bet on six horses, six vaccines to win one race, and basically taking the risk out of pharmaceutical companies, right?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Government's going to pay for your phase one trials phase, two trials phase, three trials. They're going to pay to build the building. They'll pay to you to make the vaccine. And if the vaccine doesn't work, you can throw it all away, and this will be no financial risk to you. I think that was... the greatest scientific or medical accomplishment in my lifetime.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, here's a virus that had unusual biological characteristics, unusual clinical characteristics that was met with the technology, messenger RNA, which we had no previous experience with, none. And yet it was a very safe and very effective vaccine. I think it was the greatest accomplishment of the Trump administration. So the question is, why, if anything, does he distance himself from that?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And I think it's because of his heart. He's a very modest man who doesn't like to put his name on things. Yeah. but I could be wrong about that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Well, certainly, I mean, so this year's Nobel Prize winners were Katie Carrico and Drew Weissman, University of Pennsylvania. I've actually known Drew for a while. They met at a copying machine. Ask your parents about it. It's where you physically could copy a piece of paper. But in 1997, and that's when they started their effort to do this. So you're right.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I mean, this isn't something that just happened. And so mRNA has been around for a long time. Actually, the original studies... that were done like in the late 1980s, where you showed that you could take messenger RNA, inject it into a mouse muscle, and that the muscle would take up the messenger RNA and make a protein.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
That was Robert Malone did those studies in 1980, who has since become a virulent anti-vaccine activist, which is sad. So yeah, I think that it's been... an amazing story, and you're right. It's not when people say the technology was too new. It certainly was novel technology for a vaccine, but the technology itself wasn't new.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And I think that the size of those trials, 30,000 to 40,000 people, that's atypical pediatric or adult vaccine trial. So it wasn't, it was, the reason it happened so quickly was that the government took the risk out of it for the companies. I mean, we made a rotavirus vaccine in 26 years.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
I think if the government had completely paid for everything and taken the risk out of it for all the companies, it would have been a lot faster.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
The medical definition of safety for me is that the benefits have to clearly and definitively outweigh the risks. And I think what we found was that for the mRNA vaccines, that was clearly true. I think what we found with the vaccine, the Johnson & Johnson vector virus vaccine, was that wasn't true. And even though that side effect of clotting occurred in roughly one per 200,000 people,
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
Right. Well, it used to be that there were, in terms of the number of journal articles that were published per day internationally, it was about 4,000 journal articles a day. That has doubled in the time of COVID. And also there are many more preprints that are published. People will even reference preprints, meaning non-peer-reviewed preprints.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
that still was not okay. But the main reason that wasn't okay was we had another option. Yeah, we had another option. I mean, it's the same, you can make the same parallel for the polio vaccine. I mean, the Jonas Salk's vaccine was introduced in 1955, the take the virus, grow it up, kill it with formaldehyde. And that vaccine was used into the early 1960s.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And then we used the Albert Sabin vaccine, the live attenuated oral polio vaccine, which had a problem. The problem's rare. but it was real, which is one per 2.4 million doses were complicated by polio. I mean, that virus was not weakened, attenuated for growth in the intestine. It was attenuated for growth in the nervous system. So therefore it can continue to reproduce itself.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
And as it turns, it's a single stranded RNA virus. So it can have mutations that ultimately revert back to Neuro virulent virus, wild type virus, paralytic virus. And so one out of every 2.4 million people who were inoculated with that vaccine and some people who came in contact with them would get be paralyzed by the polio vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
So we eliminated polio with that vaccine, the real polio vaccine by 1979. And then for two decades, the 1980s and the 1990s, we continue to give that vaccine. And the only cases of polio in this country were caused by the polio vaccine. Seven to 10 children every year were paralyzed by that vaccine. That was unconscionable given that we had another vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Asking The Uncomfortable Questions About Vaccines | Dr. Paul Offit
We had the inactivated vaccine, which Scandinavian countries had always used and eliminated polio from their country without ever using the oral polio vaccine. And so I came onto the advisory committee for immunization practices. That's a CDC advisory committee. Now I'm on an FDA vaccine advisory committee.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
You have now a rough relationship with Joe Rogan. It started off positive.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
If you ever wondered how to fight misinformation without losing your mind or your funding, Dr. Hotez brings receipts, a few spicy stories, and a blueprint for keeping public health alive in 2025 and beyond. Without further ado, please welcome Dr. Peter Hotez to the Checkup Podcast. I'm excited to speak. I've seen your work throughout all of social media, all the major cable stations.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
First of all- Well, I'm curious before you get into your feelings on that, because I want to discuss that thoroughly. When Joe Rogan offers you $100,000 to debate RFK Jr., ignoring you for two years when you were messaging him about misinformation being shared on his show, what do you feel as a human?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
adding to the pot and i didn't even know who was who would pay the bill who would actually you know pay up or not but you know i just i wasn't gonna go there got it was it true that uh you were then saying instead donate to my lab uh 50 million dollars yeah i said that and then i thought that was that sounded cheesy too and i just i think i i think i took that down and
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Because I know he highlighted it after the fact.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Right. But so what you were starting to say, what was the concern or reasons that you were against debating RFK Jr. ?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Why would they ask you to speak with him in 2021? The NIH? Yeah. Why?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
You've been a prominent voice in debunking a lot of misinformation, both online, offline, and on television. What are some of the lessons you've learned over these last few years as to how complicated it is to battle misinformation?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Do you agree with your decision back then or do you have any regrets?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, I, too, shared the notion that debating individuals who are just fully anti-science... In fact, I had an opportunity to debate... And not willing to be honest with the facts.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. I remember there was this, a quote unquote scientist that did a documentary called plandemic. I don't know if you remember that. And we did a review of it on YouTube and it got millions of views and they want, someone wanted me to debate her. And I realized debating someone who's just making things up out of thin air wouldn't really get me anywhere.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Because if someone feels something, I can't tell them that they're wrong for feeling that way. And if I just kept saying, but the evidence doesn't show that, and they say, but I saw something, no one wins there.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
By putting them on the same platform.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah, I also, flip side, I'm seeing what's happening right now with RFK, the people that are in charge, Dr. Macari, Dr. Rene Persaud, all the individuals, Dr. Oz, these are all controversial figures to some degree. And they've become popular because they haven't been afraid of the media spotlight, have leaned into social media quite heavily.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
So I'm thinking, has the medical community missed out on the ability to fact check these individuals because we've stayed off these platforms?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Right.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Sure. But yeah, I thought the reason why I've done my social media work that I've done, I know you haven't come across it much, but it's because I feel doctors were almost shamed in being on social media. Like it was viewed as being unprofessional to some degree. There was some fear around it. And as a result, when, especially during the pandemic,
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
2020, there weren't a lot of voices on YouTube, for example, which is the number two most visited website in the world where people were spreading misinformation. And unfortunately it was me as the loudest voice that was able to fact check them. I would have loved to see support from the leading agencies doing it quite well, but they were behind. They didn't have that, uh,
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
system in place in order to fact check, make good content, get eyes on them. But people like Joe Rogan, they had tremendous success. Their shows grew exponentially during that time. So I thought it was a missed opportunity.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah, that makes sense. During that moment where Rogan offered you the $100,000 and there was some back and forth, you faced a lot of abuse during that time, harassment, anger, vitriol from the general public. What was that like?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Sure. In 2017, you met with RFK Jr. How did that go? Why did that come together?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
So you met in a room?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
He just said, no, I completely disagree?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
And after these conversations, did you speak to the people at NIH explaining that there's no beneficial outcome to speaking with him? Yeah, I think there was some follow-up. Got it. And then have you had any communication with him since?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
What about seeing what he's doing now in terms of... We have a measles outbreak over a thousand cases in the United States, largest we've had in 30 or so odd years. And he's not... fully supportive of the MMR vaccine as their best form of prevention for measles. But then he does put out a message saying, oh yeah, this is our best way of preventing measles.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Then if you ask him at a congressional testimony, the same question, he says, oh, you shouldn't listen to my medical opinion on this.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
He misread the Lancet article from 0.4%.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Maybe you could share with the audience what are the dangerous complications of measles and why people shouldn't just think, oh, it's no big deal.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. What, um, strategies have you used both successfully and unsuccessfully in helping people better understand what's true versus what's not?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
If he has his way and gets people to stop vaccinating as often as they do currently, maybe not just with MMR, but with other vaccines as well, what do you think happens in the United States?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
When you think about the health influencer industry, are there any individuals or groups that come up in your mind? There are a bunch of them.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Makes sense. Yeah. What about the people that are in charge surrounding RFK Jr., like Dr. Makary, Dr. Oz? Do you think that they're having a positive impact trying to get him to reconsider his stances on vaccines or you don't see that happening?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. You've also had some criticism from Dr. Prasad on social media. Oh yeah, he goes after me.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
I felt you were close to debating one another. Did that ever come to fruition?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
What did he say about you?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
I know that he pointed out that you were pro-toddler masking or something. That was a frequent talking point of his.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Because I think one of the big reasons, not the sole reason, obviously, that there's so much distrust in our major agencies and why the situation is the way it is right now is because folks spoke with a lot of certainty at an uncertain time, whether it was about masking, vaccinations, spread of the virus, predicted deaths, et cetera. But you said a statement that I think should be heard again.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
And this statement was said in March in 2020.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
I think we need to say that more often as scientists. I applaud you for saying that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, the original series did a good job against severe disease, even moving forward.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
So we had- And that wasn't the first time they did that. Yes. Because at the beginning of the pandemic, you had the Surgeon General laughing at people on planes wearing masks on Twitter. I don't know if you remember that. And saying like, oh, you don't need to do this.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Whereas like on this YouTube channel, we were saying, hey, right now, no need to mask because we need them for the first responders, et cetera. We're facing shortages, but in the future we may need them. But they were making jokes like, hey, no need for masks. That's completely unnecessary. So that was probably second or third time that they were going back and forth.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah, I remember even Dr. Offit mentioned One of his main frustrations with the booster messaging was that instead of making it for high-risk individuals, we instead recognized it for everybody, bypassing some of the usual approval steps. And he said that a lot of that came from the higher-ups saying they don't want a garbled message.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
When you do say that, what's the feedback from the general audience?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
They just want a straight message, everyone should get boosted.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. Well, that brings up a good point where RFK Jr. frequently makes a dichotomy between chronic illness and infectious disease research. And he says, why are we putting all this effort in infectious disease research and ignoring chronic health conditions? I don't think anyone's ignoring chronic health conditions.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Even the newly appointed surgeon general makes statements on podcasts saying all doctors are ignoring chronic health conditions. I don't know, I've been practicing medicine for 11 years. We're not ignoring it. That's our conversation all the time.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
And very, I mean, I want to talk about that more, but very interesting. I'll also play a soundbite from your interview with Joe Rogan, where he actually was at this point in early 2020, very supportive of the fact that we need more research surrounding vaccines and prevention. So here's this.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
That's a pretty softball question. But isn't it interesting? He's for pandemic research, making sure it never happens again. And yet, right now, where are we? Cutting millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. I look at the HHS administration as it exists today, and they talk about fighting back against chronic diseases, fixing our nutrition. Then they're cutting all these budgets, losing Kevin Hall, these amazing researchers that are actually looking into what hyper-processed food does to our bodies.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
It seems like they're speaking on one side against all these issues, and yet when it comes to funding or actually trying to solve the problem, there's no real solutions put forth.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
I'm curious about that. How do you go about bypassing big pharma in creation of a vaccine like you did?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
First of all, it's not going to- Although it feels like we all are in a registry if he's running HHS.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Where do you see this going, this administration? Do you think at some point there'll be enough public pressure to get them out of their current positions? Or do you think this is going to be exactly as is?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah, and to echo your apolitical point, the anti-vaccine movement started on the left, on the West Coast, and now you have RFK in a conservative... administration, he was running for president as a Democrat. This is not about D's or R's.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
disappointed when when of all the people that turned down that was not the one yeah it seems weird when we have over a million practicing physicians in the united states to pick one who doesn't have a medical license to lead the surgeon generalship seems an awkward choice for sure yeah that's for sure um do you think that we're going to get to a point or do you maybe hope that we get to this point where a lot of doctors start calling on rfk to resign
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
But you don't think this administration also is very attuned to public pressure and hearing what they say if they make enough noise? I don't know. I guess we'll see. Have you publicly called for RFK to resign?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
So what do you think the incorrect attributes that RFK Jr. has?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, I think there was some recent podcast done by Malcolm Gladwell where he really saw from his books that it seemed like he was buying into the notion that germs don't cause disease. And that's why the whole notion of infectious disease research, vaccines don't make sense to him.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Not worrying about E. coli.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Interesting. Well, I've seen that experiment play out in both ways. I remember in some states they legalized raw milk sales, and the lawmakers who got that approved cheersed with a raw milk glass or a glass of raw milk, and they ended up getting a gastrointestinal bug after that they said was a virus.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, a lot of them are going to work for pharma in one way or another, and that might not have been their first choice. They wanted to pursue an academic career, but they're afraid of that. And I see that across the board, not just infectious disease research-wise, but also nutrition research. Metabolic labs are closing, so it's very hard.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
I just spoke at the Texas Medical Association last week. So a lot of your colleagues were there.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
So when there's no patent on it, no strings attached, that means the country's manufacturers can just start creating it, selling it without any royalties, any kickbacks to your organization.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
What about for those individuals that are going to work? I hope that doesn't happen. I mean, I hope we find ways. I mean, that's what makes America great. People came here and escaped persecution from their countries to do research here.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
This is the wrong direction. Yeah. What about those young students, postdocs who are going to work for the pharmaceutical companies? What message do you have for them, given the fact that you thought it wasn't for you to go work for a pharmaceutical company?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. I know that the current administration doesn't like that. They're making a push to say that if you work for the FDA, you can't go work for a pharmaceutical or biotech company after because they don't like that conflict of interest. I don't know if it's going to happen during this administration, but for the future, definitely reasonable.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Do you agree with Bill Gates about the fact that AI will replace doctors in a decade?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Do you use AI in any way right now?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. I'm trying to figure out unique ways to utilize it, but every time I do, it starts hallucinating and writing fake things that don't exist. And I get worried, especially around education. Like how are high school and college students using this or overusing it? Because there was always ways to cheat, but this feels new and different to some degree.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. Truth wrapped in a lie.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Continuing on our trail of doom and gloom, how is the climate change impacting infectious disease research for you?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
It's so strange because what happens to us impacts all of us. So if they're anti-vaccine and we start having pandemics, that's going to impact them, impact their businesses. They're almost like Hurting themselves by hurting others.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Does that mean also the refrigeration and the storage of the vaccine is easier?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
If you had the opportunity to go on Rogan again, would you do it?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, you're doing an amazing job in fighting the good fight. Thank you. In educating the world.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, it's great. I mean, this YouTube channel reaches this month 150 million people. That's watched. That's not subscribers. That's watched this month. And we're putting out evidence-based information, having conversations with leaders like yourself, Paul Offit.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
But this is where the young folks are.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Honestly, that's the symbiotic relationship. Where are you doing that? Atlantic Health System here in New Jersey. Oh, wonderful. But what most people don't see with social media is that I think social media and healthcare is really a symbiotic relationship. Because when I started doing social media, folks thought I would leave clinical medicine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
And I actually find doing social media, preparing scripts, doing research about certain conditions makes me a better doctor for my patients. But at the same time, when I see my patients, I know what language to use, what questions they have, what misinformation they're falling victim to that I can then bring to social media. So actually both jobs actually feed well.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, let's do this. Let's end this conversation on a bit of good news. What's something good that you've discovered? Well, I guess your 100% efficacy in clinical trials. Yeah, I'm really excited about that.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
And take people through, shine a light on this a little more, give it some more publicity, give it some more air. What illnesses do hookworms cause? What is this preventing?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
How does the vaccine work?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Okay. I wonder if that same principle can work to some degree with mosquito vaccinations.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah, that's what people don't realize, how many of these viruses are impacting us globally.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
A lot of excitement as well as frustration.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
I mean, you're vaccinating the public with good information.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, if you're going to be successful, it'll always take shots at you. That seems to be the case. I guess I'm very successful. Exactly. I'm curious. We did an interesting video, animated, talking about Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine. Were you inspired by some of his work? I see similarities.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
You know, I feel like we're going to have this conversation again. Obviously, we'd love to have you on to promote your book once that's ready. But also this year, I was named the UNICEF's ambassador. So I'm the ambassador for UNICEF in order to combat vaccine misinformation. So I'm sure that we're going to be talking about your hookworm vaccine.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
We'll continue sending your message.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Thank you so much.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Where can people follow along your work? Where do you want to send them?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Wow, that's amazing. What was the timeline in the creation of your vaccine in comparison to the big pharma ones?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Huge thank you to Dr. Hotez for traveling from Texas for this interview. Keep your eye out for his new book, Science Under Siege, which takes a deep look at how our most trusted scientific institutions are being attacked. If you liked this episode, I think you'll also like my conversation with Dr. Paul Offit. creator of the rotavirus vaccine. So scroll on back to find that episode.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
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The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
You faced a lot of abuse during that time. Harassment, anger, vitriol from the general public. What was that like?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
How much tweaking needed to be done in order to make the vaccines that were compatible with those coronaviruses with
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Interesting. And when was the completion of the vaccine? When was it ready for use? When did it go to India, Indonesia?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
So tracking kind of the same timeline as...
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
And is it true that because you were open sourcing this vaccine technology, that Tito's Vodka was one of the biggest sponsors? Is that true?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Today, I sit down with Dr. Peter Hotez, pediatrician, scientist, co-inventor of a $3 patent-free COVID vaccine, and the researcher anti-vaxxers love to target. In this episode, we peel back the curtain on how he was able to create a low-cost vaccine with the help of Tito's Vodka.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Oh, really?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
That's really amazing because in terms of governmental support. So I'm indebted to Peter Attia for that reason. Yeah. So you got the funding that came out. Results-wise, in terms of protection from severe illness, from death, how do they compare to the mRNA?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
He was inviting you on as an expert to talk about what's going on in the early days of the pandemic. How did that change?
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
It's interesting that you wouldn't be immune, pun intended, from criticism from people who don't like COVID vaccinations because of the mRNA technology, because the vaccine you created doesn't even use that technology. And yet it seems like people are still critical of you and putting you into the same category.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
And without the help of Big Pharma, we get into the details between his public clash with Joe Rogan and what really happened when RFK Jr. tried to lure Hotez into a debate cage match with Elon watching for $100,000. Sounds like I'm making all this up, but I'm not.
The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah, you have now a rough relationship with Joe Rogan. What happened there? It started off positive, right? He was inviting you on as an expert to talk about what's going on in the early days of the pandemic. How did that change? What was the turning point there?