The MeidasTouch Podcast
Meidas Health, Episode 7: Misinformation, MAHA, Measles, and the Future of Medicine (with Drs. Peter Hotez and Sapna Singh)
Mon, 26 May 2025
Two of the nation’s most preeminent pediatricians, Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor, and Dr. Sapna Singh, Chief Medical Officer of Texas Children’s Hospital, join host Dr. Vin Gupta for an expansive conversation on tackling health misinformation, the real meaning of the MAHA agenda, and the ongoing measles epidemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Well, hello, everybody. This is episode eight of the Midas Health. I am so delighted that you're with us, that you've been sticking with us as we've been building out this health content for the Midas Touch Network, which, as I'm sure many of you have seen, is the number one most downloaded podcast in the country.
Big credit to the founders and especially for diversifying the content and really focusing in on health. As mentioned, we're trying to use this time as efficiently as possible. We're trying to bring the nation's best. Since the nation's best is not necessarily in government at the highest levels anymore, we're going to bring them to you through this venue.
Dr. Califf was our Episode 2 former FDA Commissioner. We had the WHO lead on pandemic preparedness for Episode 4. Meena Stacey-Oshami, the Secretary of Health from Maryland in Episode 5. I'm Chiquita Brooks-Lashore, head of CMS, Episode 6. You get the picture.
These are the nation's best healthcare leaders coming in and speaking on topics that really matter to all of us, matter to you, especially as it pertains to the news cycle. Episode 8 is not going to disappoint. I have two of the nation's leaders in all things pediatrics, infectious disease, with us to talk about the state of the measles epidemic, especially in Texas.
We have Dr. Peter Hotez, who I know is known to many of you. dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, and Dr. Sapna Singh, who's the chief medical officer of Texas Children's. I'm going to bring them in right now, and I really appreciate them both being here. I know they're very, very busy. Dr. Hota, Dr. Singh, welcome.
It's great to see you, Dr. Gupta.
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Chapter 2: Who are the featured pediatricians discussing health misinformation?
It's glad to be here. Thank you.
Absolutely.
Well, we're going to then I miss our discussions during the pandemic. A lot of people don't realize that a lot of the people who were going on talking about covid, we were often talking behind the scenes to compare notes because there was so much incoming. I don't think any one person could keep it up with everything.
So, you know, you were a valuable source for me then and helping me in many things.
Well, I should say for all our listeners here, and it's a wide listener or wide audience that we're reaching. So I should say for that audience that, and Dr. Singh, I don't know if I shared this with you, that I first met Dr. Hotez back in 2009. When I was doing, it was before we all left for Fogarty Fellowships and I was going to China for a year.
And Dr. Ho just gave an incredibly inspiring speech just on the purpose of an academic career in medicine, all things related to scholarship in medicine and really pursuing a career. an impactful career beyond the bedside in addition to bedside care. And so, Dr. Hotez, that has stuck with me 16 years later. And just thank you for everything in the intervening years in your leadership. Thank you.
Sticking with you, Dr. Hotez, to begin with, I'm curious your thoughts on the current state of, you know, we'll get to measles in a second. But, you know, again, I just said that I met you first at the NIH. You're seeing what's happening. Wondering now three months in how you're digesting it all.
Well, there's a lot to digest, and I don't think we understand the full implications. But, you know, the the attack on science, biomedicine, especially in the virology and infectious disease space has been pretty awful. And I think it's starting to translate into breakdowns in our infectious disease and pandemic preparedness. I think the measles epidemic in West Texas...
It was actually both predicted and predictable. It's not like this thing came out of nowhere. I had written an article in 2016, almost 10 years ago, called Texas and its measles epidemics that more or less predicted this was going to happen, even identified the county where it would begin.
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Chapter 3: What are the current trends in measles cases in Texas?
And it's coming from so many different directions that for those of us in healthcare who are working in the trenches, it's hard. It's hard to kind of be the only voice that's fighting back against that and trying really hard to be thoughtful and compassionate. and to educate families that this is, you know, it's a decision that has really significant consequences.
So I can certainly tell you we're obviously seeing small case rates here and there. In fact, Hayes County just reported a positive case, and now we're chasing that exposure history. So this happens... not just in effect with the West Texas case, but what you're hearing now is literally week after week after week, we're chasing more exposures, more positive cases.
It may be a one-off, but I think our greatest fear is that as vaccine rates drop, even across other areas of Texas, that that one-off case will turn into an outbreak very, very quickly. And so that's something that we've been really, really concerned with because in the outpatient setting, our entire population
Work has been around preventing these diseases, and that is really becoming significantly harder to do now.
You know, Dr. Hodes, in hearing that and what's happening in just the broader catchment of tested children, it strikes me that when I hear the current health secretary sort of explain away what's happening and sort of passing the buck a bit, you know, he says, well, if there's a measles case now, it's getting a headline, whereas 40 years ago, there was tens of thousands of cases, none of it wasn't getting nearly the same attention.
What are your thoughts on that deflection and how much of this is the convergence with him now at the top and what Dr. Singh is noting is happening in their outpatient clinics? Is this just business as usual? Could you clarify that for our listeners?
No. I mean, he has become sort of disinformation officer in chief. I was kind of hoping with the wind down of COVID, not that it's totally wound down by any means, but I would get a break from TV, but Mr. Kennedy seems determined to call me out of retirement. you know, it's because it's a zinger every few days, right? And I mean, and it's very, and it all is a very consistent theme.
I mean, what does he say? He says, first of all, you know, the draw is the false equivalency between MMR vaccine and these phony baloney nutritional supplements that nobody needs. That's point one. Then he says the hospitalizations are due to Um, he says the hospitalizations are due to quarantine and isolation when those 90 plus kids who've been hospitalized are really, really sick.
They have measles, pneumonia, measles, neurologic, uh, uh, involved involvement in, in, in severe dehydration or, and he keeps going. He says the MMR vaccine is a, as a leaky vaccine, whatever that means. And he, you know, says that the MMR immunization rates declines 4% per year. It's nonsense. There's one modeling study suggesting it may decline 0.04% per year. That's a hundredfold difference.
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Chapter 4: How is misinformation affecting vaccination rates?
It was due to an organized, politically driven and financially driven disinformation campaign, financially driven by the health and wellness industry, politically driven by this libertarian movement. ideology that gets PAC money, political action committee money, and it's having deadly consequences now. So the worry, of course, is that this continues and two things happen.
One, we lose our measles elimination status, which was defined more than 25 years ago by the CDC for global immunization that says if transmission goes out for a full year, we've lost our measles elimination status. And remember, measles is usually the tip of the iceberg on this stuff. Measles is often the first breakthrough infection we see because it's so highly transmissible.
But we've got a six-fold rise in pertussis cases, whooping cough cases from 2023 to 2024. We've got polio in the wastewater in New York State. So So the concern is that our whole vaccine ecosystem is starting to unravel. And then you saw what the FDA did yesterday with blocking COVID vaccine use in kids and younger adults. And
And then the false claims that no childhood vaccines were tested through placebo controlled trial is absolute BS. I put up on my social media, just did a simple PubMed search, an informal PubMed search and, you know, printed out does dozens of. placebo-controlled trials for most of the childhood vaccines that I searched for. So I don't want to make this just about Mr. Kennedy.
We'd have a big problem anyway, but now he's actively seeking to amplify this.
You know, Dr. Singh, when I hear Dr. Hotez kind of just full gamut talking about all these challenges, measles just being the first indicator sign or sort of public health playbook when it comes to vaccines potentially collapsing. I am wondering, it always feels like the response is, well, have a conversation with your medical provider or talk to your pediatrician. My wife's a pediatrician.
We talk about this too. What are the forces that... That's how you became such a nice guy.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do pediatricians face in combating misinformation?
I didn't know.
She definitely reigns me in. But I will say that It always feels like the corrective action is, okay, we'll ignore what you see on social media or on TV and talk to the most trusted medical voice in your life, which for a lot of people is their medical provider. Is that working?
Have you noticed that you're able to parry some of these macro trends on these one-on-one conversations or is that not working anymore?
I think it works when you have the ability and the time to be able to spend in the room with these patients. And I think that one of the things, there's certainly a population of parents, they are bought, sold, and opposed at a level that we're not going to convince them.
They're the parents who come in with, I've done my research, and in fact, will try to convince us to do research in the same thread. But you've got this huge group of folks that are They're questioning whether what they've seen and heard is true. And as a parent, you can understand that you don't want to make mistakes with your kid. You don't want to mess up.
And so a big piece of this conversation for us, I think, is really understanding. finding a way to pull them back from that questioning of things that really are coming from places that are not rooted in science. I mean, a lot of the influencers out there do not have medical degrees, did not go to medical school, have never worked in the scientific field.
And as Dr. Hotez said, there's not even evidence that half of the things they're discussing would work. I mean, vitamin C is not going to health and immune system that's been completely decimated by an illness like measles or influenza, for example. And so it's kind of our job to give that education. I think what we are dealing with is I get 10 or 15 minutes in a room
And they are getting hours and hours and hours of this outside of my clinic exam room in all kinds of different forms. And I will say that we're working really hard to teach our physicians how to have a little bit better social media presence. This is not something we're taught in medical school. You do a great job being out there. Dr. Hotez does.
And I think it's so refreshing to have your voices out there supporting what we're doing you know, working towards, but a majority of us are just not trained to do that. We don't have the ability to be on social media hours and hours and hours a day the way some of the influencers do. And so I certainly believe that the trust our patients have in us
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Chapter 6: How can AI assist in addressing health misinformation?
So through better education, a little more training, scripting, helping us figure out how do we make the connection with these patients who are receiving all this information from the outside, you know, that counters so much of what I'm saying,
We've got to be able to do a better job of doing that, getting our physicians better training, better ability to get out there and speak in a way that reaches the patients that we know we can still reach. be able to build trust with and establish that trust with, I think that's gonna be super important.
And I have hope because fundamentally, what I think is really interesting is, I think it was like a line from the show, The Pit, where it's, you come to us for the treatment, but not the advice. Well, if they're still coming to us for the treatment, I think the door is still open. So there is some fundamental belief in the back of everyone's mind that we are there to do the right thing.
We are there to help. We are there to heal. And it's just a matter of kind of pushing past all the other stuff that's now coming at them to get back to that place where we can convince them, you know, my goal in this room is to just do my best job with your child. And I have the same focus that you do.
You want what's best for your kid, so do I. And I think we really fundamentally have to find a better way to communicate that. It may take multiple different facets of communication and many different platforms. And I think we're gonna have to move out of our comfort zone to do that. But I have a lot of hope. I'm in clinic today and I'm telling you,
Every time I have the interaction with a family, it just refreshes my faith in the fact that I'm here for this purpose. And yes, things are tough, but we are going to be able to do this because this is our calling. This is what we were called to do is take care of these children. So that keeps me hopeful and optimistic despite everything else that's out there.
That's fine. Dr. Hostos.
Well, something that gives me hope is Dr. Singh. I mean, listening to her, how articulate she is, and I'm so proud that she's our chief medical officer at Texas Children's Hospital. I mean, what could be better than that, right? I mean, just that was really brilliant. And, by the way, the pediatricians at Texas Children's are an extraordinary group of people.
I mean, and pediatricians in general in our country. I mean, the commitment, the passion, I mean, it comes through every time you talk to an American pediatrician most times. And so that gives me a lot of hope. Yeah. The other thing that gives me hope is the science itself is extraordinary.
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