The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Hated By Anti-Vaxxers & His Public Fallout w/ Joe Rogan | Dr. Peter Hotez
Sun, 25 May 2025
Pre-order Dr. Peter Hotez' new book "Science Under Siege" here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/michael-e-mann/science-under-siege/9781541705494/Follow Dr. Hotez on X/Twitter: https://x.com/PeterHotez?I'll teach you how to become the media's go-to expert in your field. Enroll in The Professional's Media Academy now: https://www.professionalsmediaacademy.com/00:00 Intro2:04 Complexity of Battling Misinformation05:51 Making His Owns Vaccines14:23 His Joe Rogan/RFK Controversy25:00 Doctors On Social Media27:45 Online Abuse From Elon Musk29:22 Meeting with RFK Jr. / Measles42:30 Attacks From Other Doctors44:44 The Failure Of COVID Messaging53:37 Vaccine Funding / Autism1:07:47 Casey Means / Removing MAHA1:10:12 The Future Of Medical Experts1:19:18 AI1:23:03 Climate Change vs. Vaccines1:27:42 Our Impact / Hookworm VaccineHelp us continue the fight against medical misinformation and change the world through charity by becoming a Doctor Mike Resident on Patreon where every month I donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, organization, or cause of your choice! Residents get access to bonus content, an exclusive discord community, and many other perks for just $10 a month. Become a Resident today:https://www.patreon.com/doctormikeLet’s connect:IG: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/instagram/DMinstagramTwitter: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/twitter/DMTwitterFB: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/facebook/DMFacebookTikTok: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/tiktok/DMTikTokReddit: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/reddit/DMRedditContact Email: [email protected] Producer: Doctor MikeProduction Director and Editor: Dan OwensManaging Editor and Producer: Sam BowersEditor and Designer: Caroline WeigumEditor: Juan Carlos Zuniga* Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **
Chapter 1: What happened between Dr. Hotez and Joe Rogan?
You have now a rough relationship with Joe Rogan. It started off positive.
How are you, sir? How are you? Good to see you again. I'm thrilled to be here.
Chapter 2: How has misinformation evolved during the pandemic?
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?
I criticize him when he puts out vaccine disinformation and ask him not to do that.
If you're like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, no.
I was writing to him. I said, Joe, have me on because what you're doing is dangerous. People are now making decisions based on what they're hearing.
How did he respond to your messages?
There was no response. I didn't hear from him in two years until he taunted me to debate RFK Jr., There were a few reasons why I wasn't going to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I didn't want to send the message that science is done by a debate with crackpots. And whoever says more clever things in a debate, that's how science gets done. I thought that would be very dangerous.
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Chapter 3: What is Dr. Hotez's experience with online abuse?
You faced a lot of abuse during that time. Harassment, anger, vitriol from the general public. What was that like?
I got stalked at my home by an anti-vaxxer, a couple of anti-vaxxers. It was very dark, very quickly.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Well, Mike, it's gotten more complicated because the anti-vaccine movement has grown in sophistication. They've grown in political power, in money, in infrastructure. And the kinds of pieces of disinformation that they're putting out have become more more sophisticated also. I mean, not really, but it requires people with more technical knowledge than the past to debunk it.
So for instance, saying Bill Gates is sticking microchips into your vaccine, most general physicians could debunk that. But You know, when the Florida Surgeon General, Latipo, says mRNA vaccines are causing turbo cancers because they're inserting nucleic acid into our genome, you have to think about that for a minute. And you have to say, wait a minute, there's no such thing as a turbo cancer.
It's a made-up term. Right. mRNA lipid nanoparticles delivered the nucleic acid package past the cell membrane into the cytoplasm, but they don't get into the nucleus. For that, you need electroporation. That's why we have no DNA vaccines. And even if they did, we have proteins of our innate immune system that prevent incorporation of foreign nucleic acid into our genome.
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Chapter 4: How did Tito's Vodka support vaccine development?
And I certainly have no, you know, harbor ill feelings towards him. But what happened was in 2021, during that Delta wave, you started to see Fox News go into full gear and try to discourage people from getting vaccinated. So in their zeal, to push back against vaccine mandates, which you could kind of understand.
They started going, unfortunately, to the next step and bringing on all these talking heads that would falsely discredit the effectiveness and safety of vaccines. So you saw this at Fox News, you saw this... You know, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, every night, you know, were discrediting vaccines.
This was documented by two groups, Media Matters, a watchdog group and a research group out of the Federal University of Science and Technology in Switzerland. Then you had the CPAC Conference of Conservatives. Again, in their zeal to push back against vaccine mandates.
And they would say over the top things like, you know, first they're going to vaccinate you, then they're going to take away your guns and your Bibles. Okay, I get that. But then they brought on all the really toxic anti-vaccine activists to discredit the effectiveness and safety of vaccine.
And essentially what Rogan did was, you know, push the agenda, the influencer and wellness industry, which is, you know, built on buying up anything they can that they can get in bulk, like low cost ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, jacking up the price and then selling it with telehealth visits. That's the basis of the health and wellness industry. And so he was pushing hard on the ivermectin.
And at that point, I had already been on his show twice, and I was writing to him. I said, Joe, have me on because what you're doing is dangerous. People are now making decisions based on what they're hearing not to get vaccinated.
How did he respond to your messages?
There was no response. He just didn't respond at all. And I didn't hear from him. That was in 2021. I didn't hear from him in two years until he taunted me to debate RFK Jr. along with Elon Musk in the summer of 2023. And... And he put out the $100,000. The $100,000. I mean, there were a few reasons why I wasn't going to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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?
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Chapter 5: What are the dangers of the measles virus?
I think this feels like a different country from the one I grew up in. And we're going to have to find some very innovative strategies to manage it.
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.
I used to say it was the two extremes, the far left and the far right, or many of us said that. I think a lot of the far left pieces have gone away. Although I was recently out giving a talk at University of California, Santa Cruz, and they
pointed out some old school, you know, far to the left anti-vaxxers, which there was sort, but there were sort of remnants of, of what was and, and, and now, but about 10, 12 years ago, it took this pivot in Texas to the far right around this concept of health freedom, medical freedom, and libertarian philosophies.
Chapter 6: What strategies does Dr. Hotez use to combat misinformation?
And anti-vaccine groups started getting PAC money, political action committee money, to push anti-vaccine legislation bills and support candidates to run anti-vaccine platforms. And then it really took off at the CPAC Conference of Conservatives in Dallas in 2021. And then you got Fox News, and then you got Senator Ron Johnson holding the phony baloney vaccine injury roundtables and Rand Paul.
So it became very much embraced by the MAGA movement. And as much as I would try to say, look, I don't care about your political views. That's your right as an American citizen. But don't adopt this one because it's going to kill you. And I just couldn't thread that needle very well.
And now, and there's a reason why you're seeing the big measles epidemic in West Texas and up in the panhandle into Oklahoma. Those are the same places where people refuse COVID vaccines. There's direct overlap. So there's now spillover. It went from childhood immunizations, health freedom, to COVID-19 refusal vaccines. Now it's spilling back over to childhood immunizations.
So that was one big track. Then the other big track is the health wellness influencer. And now they're reinforcing each other and that's playing out, you know, when you see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 's choice for surgeon general and you're starting to see this melding of the influencer movement with libertarians. Yeah, what is your take on the new pick of Dr. Means? I don't know.
She was never on my radar screen. I knew a little bit the one initially chosen who I would talk to during the pandemic around vaccines. She seemed fine. I think she would have been a good surgeon general. So I think it was...
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
That's already happened, but I don't know that the medical community has that influence. You don't think so? I don't think so. This administration does what they're going to do.
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?
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of vaccine misinformation in society?
Chapter 8: Why did Dr. Hotez refuse to debate RFK Jr.?
No, they were all through either cell phone conversations or through email. And I would do long walks with my wife, Anne, where we live in our neighborhood. And he was just really deeply dug in. And he was a tough person to get to know. And I never really saw kind of a lighter, cheery side of it. So what were they, like hour-long conversations? Some of them, some yes, some no.
But I remember one of the things that I got really perturbed about was I talked to him about autism genes. So we had done genomic sequencing on Rachel and we found Rachel's autism genes. So there's been about 100 autism genes that have been identified and they're all involved in early fetal brain development. So there were kind of three or four parts to the discussion with Bobby.
The first part was the evidence showing there's no link between vaccines and autism. And that in itself has a series of moving goalposts because the anti-vaccine lobby keeps on switching up what they're alleging. So it started with the MMR vaccine and the Wakefield paper. So that was 1998, the Wakefield paper.
And then in 2005, Mr. Kennedy wrote an article in that very important biomedical journal called Rolling Stone together with Salon that it was, okay, if it's not MMR, it's thimerosal preservative. And each time the scientific community
does these large cohort studies showing that there's no link that kids who get either MMR or thimerosal-containing vaccines are no more likely to acquire autism than kids who don't. And then in the thimerosal case, there were even non-human primate studies that were supported showing no neurodevelopmental link aspects.
And then it moved to, if you remember, they went through this whole thing of spacing vaccines too close together. I think it was Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey were parading around in green t-shirts saying we have to green our vaccines. It's all BS. And then it was Alamin vaccines. And it just went through these series of false claims that scientific community had to put a lot of effort into debunk.
So I went through all that with them, but then But then there was, for me, a more important aspect, which is the lack of plausibility, given that we have those 100 autism genes. They're all involved in early fetal brain development before kids are born.
This is all happening prenatally, probably early on in the first, maybe second trimester of pregnancy, which makes a lot more sense for something that used to be called pervasive developmental disorder. Now it's not. to say that there's no environmental toxin effects. But if they are, they're happening early on in pregnancy. So let me give you probably the best documented example.
So if you're pregnant and not aware of it on an anti-seizure medicine called adipocote, also known as valproic acid, that interacts with autism genes. And your child has a much higher likelihood of being born with an autism phenotype. And for Mr. Kennedy, I identified about half a dozen chemical exposures that do something similar.
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