00:06 Good morning. It's been a rough year for vaccines. We'll start at the beginning. Okay, that doesn't do it. Let me say this. This thing doesn't do it. My little, did it. Okay, great. So January 30th, 2025 Robert F Kennedy Jr. By the way booing is okay I don't know the cheering as I claimed Robert F Kennedy Jr appears before the Senate Health, education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

00:35 This is now the the second committee that he is going to appear before to determine whether or not he will be confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The head of that committee was Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, who is a gastroenterologist, and had been a long, term, supporter of the hepatitis B vaccine he had taken as an adult gastroenterologist.

00:58 He had taken care of patients with cirrhosis, taking care of patients with liver cancer, and had often talked about the importance of that vaccine. Now, Senator Cassidy called me four times before that meeting, including the night before the meeting, and he certainly knew who Robert F Kennedy Junior was. He knew that for 20 years he had been the head of, un for 20 years, he had been an end and anti-vaccine activist, a science denialist and a conspiracy theorist.

01:26 He knew that for ten years he had been paid, upwards of $500,000 a year to head an anti-vaccine group called Children's Health Defense. He knew all of that. And so he asked the question, do you agree that abundant evidence shows that vaccines don't cause autism? So RFK Jr refused to say that to to agree with that. He said that, as show him good science, show him gold standard science that vaccines don't cause autism and health saying and to support his point of view, he held up this paper towards the end of that hearing, a paper by Anthony Mawson and, Jacob, which is titled Vaccination and Neurodevelopmental Disorders A study of nine year old children enrolled in Medicaid. This was in Florida, he said this this is a gold standard study. This is the study that shows that vaccines, in fact, do cause neurodevelopmental delays, including autism. So this paper, wasn't published in the scientific journal. It wasn't published in medical journal, it was published in a WordPress blog. It was never peer reviewed.

02:30 It was funded by an anti-vaccine group called the National Vaccine Information Center. The study defined vaccinated and unvaccinated based on billing code. So you really couldn't tell who might have or not not have been vaccinated through the vaccine for children's program, which means you really couldn't tell who was being vaccinated or unvaccinated. They never tracked specific vaccines, failed to control for key confounding variables like health care seeking behavior, socioeconomic background, and medical background.

02:57 But to Robert F Kennedy Jr, this was a gold standard science science study. So keep in mind whenever you hear the term gold standard science, this is what he means. Okay. So, Senator Cassidy, voted yes. I sort of sensed he was going to vote. Yes, because the night before that meeting happened, when we're talking.

03:18 And so he's he's a smart guys, good guy. He said that his vote was and I quote tricky, which I thought meant political. And he ended up being a yes vote. But he tried to make us all feel better by holding up a sheet of paper, which had a number of statements on it. Mr. Kennedy and the administration committed that he and I would have an unprecedentedly close, collaborative working relationship.

03:43 He is committed that he would work within current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems and not establish parallel systems. If confirmed, he'll maintain the CDC, ACIp practices or ACIp recommendations without changes. So this was to calm us down. He was going to have an unprecedentedly close working relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr. So February 13th, 2025 RFK Jr was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 52 to 48 and is now Secretary of Health and Human Services.

04:15 The following day, this headline appeared in a, West Texas newspaper. Lubbock health officials confirmed the first measles case in county found in an unvaccinated child. Now, this this this child was actually admitted to the hospital. So the first evidence you had that there was an outbreak of measles in West Texas was a hospitalized child. So most children aren't hospitalized with measles.

04:37 So you already knew you were looking at the tip of a bigger iceberg. This outbreak centered on a Mennonite community that generally doesn't seek outside help for medical care. And that's the initial case, ultimately became 58 cases, which became 90 cases, which became 198 cases. And then on February 26th, 2025, the first child died of measles in this country since 2003.

05:06 So it had been more than 20 years since we had had a child die from measles. And typically when you die from measles, you die from measles, pneumonia, you struggle to breathe. And, it is hard to watch a child who is er, hungry enough that they can't, be able to oxygenate their blood stream. Then a second child died of measles and measles outbreaks.

05:29 Then, as Doctor Tan said, swept across this country. And so if you look at the most recently available, CDC released what we currently call the CDC, website, it shows that there are 1681 confirmed cases, and 44 outbreaks in that 42 states and jurisdictions. But if you talk to people on the ground, they say that is a vast underestimate of what's really happening.

05:54 They think there's at least 5000 cases in this country and maybe more which which is actually the most frightening part of this. I think it's not only that, we have a current administration that is sort of backing away from promoting vaccines. But that we really aren't going to know exactly what's going on because the CDC surveillance mechanisms have really been crippled by the current, administration.

06:19 The, the, there have been three people who have died of measles this year that equals the total number of measles deaths over the last 25 years in this country. And we have now exceeded this outbreaks, has exceeded anything we've seen in more than three decades. And we're RFK Jr, a typical, secretary of Health and Human Services, he would use his the platform of his famous name and the platform that he has been being Secretary of Health and Human Services and stand up and say, vaccinate your children.

06:48 It's not okay. The children are dying of measles in this country. This is a preventable illness. There's so much in medicine that we don't know. There's so much that we can't do this. We know this. We can do. So please vaccinate your children. I mean, we've had almost 300 children die of influenza this year. We haven't seen a number that big since the last influenza pandemic in 2009.

07:08 We've had states that have experienced pertussis deaths that have not seen, children die of pertussis in years. Stand up for children. That didn't happen. Measles, not. Doctor ten has gone through this already, so I'll do it. Briefly, Doctor Tan said something that that I also was about to say, but she already said it, which is I'm surprised when people come up to me and say they've never seen a case of measles, because I'm a child of the 50s and like all children in 1950s, I had measles.

07:34 I also lived through the 1991 Philadelphia measles outbreak, where we had 1400 cases and nine deaths in our city over a period of three months. So old people like me have seen measles. In case the measles rash starts typically at the hairline. It's a blotchy red rash that then extends to the face, trunk, arms and legs. Before the measles vaccine was available in 63.

07:55 And the last best vaccine, actually, the Morton strain was, around 68. About 3 to 4 million people would be infected with measles, 48,000 to be hospitalized, and 500 would die. Hospitalizations were typically caused by severe pneumonia or dehydration, or both. About 20% of children with measles are hospitalized. Measles virus also infected the brain, causing about 1000 cases of encephalitis every year, about a quarter of which would be left with permanent brain damage, meaning blindness or deafness.

08:22 Between 1 to 3 children, 1 to 3 per thousand children with measles will die from the disease. And then also, as Doctor Tan mentioned, there's this subacute sclerosing pan encephalitis, which occurs in about one per 100,000 cases. I've seen five cases in my life, but typically children get measles and then they recover. But they have a chronic measles infection of the brain, which presents years later as a deterioration in personality, a deterioration in handwriting skills, and ultimately a descent into a vegetative state from which there is no escape.

08:53 This is a 100% fatal infection, and it's preventable. So now how will RFK Jr respond to the measles outbreak? As head of HHS, he is not being paid by Children's Health Defense any more. He's being paid by you and me to represent the health of children and adults in this country. Would he respond the way you would hope?

09:13 He would respond in the in the midst of a, measles epidemic? So on March 17th, 2025, he appeared with Sean Hannity, on Fox News to a state contract to promote beef tallow over seed oils, because apparently saturated fats are better than unsaturated fats, which is news to me. But, you know, it's a brave new world, anti-science world.

09:36 So, also, you know, he's always eating ultra processed foods. I mean, at least when you see him. Isn't that it? It's supposed it's a bad thing, right? Isn't that part of splenetic? So. Okay, so what he said during that, during this interview, he said the measles vaccine kills people every year, which is obviously not true. He said the measles vaccine causes blindness and deafness.

09:58 He said the measles vaccine causes the same symptoms as measles virus and that natural measles prevents cancer, heart disease and autoimmune diseases. Right booing yeah, booing is okay. No. Right then in there he should have been asked to step down as secretary of HHS. I mean, it's in the midst of the biggest measles epidemic we've seen in more than three decades, decades.

10:22 And he says this on national television. And I think when he said it and nothing happened and nothing happened, I think that that he knew that he was free from government oversight, that were they free from congressional oversight anyway? April 29th, 2025 he visits, West Texas to make the point that, we really need to focus on chronic diseases like autism and diabetes and really not focus so much on these children who are suffering and dying from measles.

10:51 May 27th, 2025. He appears on a one minute video that he posts on X with Marty MacQuarrie, who is the commissioner of the FDA, on his right, Jay Bhattacharya, who is the head of the National Institutes on his left and says this today, the Covid vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.

11:14 Bottom line it's common sense and it's good science. We are now one step closer to realizing the president of the United States has promise to make America healthy again, thus violating one of the promises that he made to Senator Cassidy, which is, if confirmed, he'll maintain the CDC. ACIp recommendations without changes. The ACA had recommended that this vaccine be given to children who had never been vaccinated or naturally infected.

11:41 The AP certainly recommended, as does every country in this world, that the vaccine be given to pregnant women because pregnancy is a high risk, condition for severe Covid. Typically, changes in vaccine policy are made by the ACIp with input from liaison groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics. Decisions are often an open, transparent, deliberative process with allowance for public comment.

12:04 This decision was made behind closed doors, in direct contrast with Kate Junior's claim that his would be an era of, quote, radical transparency. So should healthy young children receive a primary Covid vaccine. This was a presentation that was made by Fiona Havers, who is a 13 year CDC veteran, to the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices. Back in April of 2025, when we still had a CDC and still had an advisory committee for immunization practices, we need to think of new names.

12:36 I'm not sure what specifically, but every time you think of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, you think of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, but this is more like us or the advisory committee to the Children's Health Defense. Okay. So what Doctor Haber's found was that about 4% of Covid 19 hospitalizations were in children, primarily. If you look on the right hand portion of this slide, primarily young children, if you look at the total number of hospitalizations that worked out to about 10,000 hospitalizations, us for the previous year, about 1 in 5 children and adolescents with Covid associated hospitalization were admitted to the intensive care unit.

13:13 And again, you can see it's mostly younger children, that those 6 to 23 months of age, about 60% were previously healthy. Despite RFK Junior's claim that you didn't need to vaccinate previously healthy children, and that about 40% of children 2 to 4 years of age were previously healthy, and about 152 children died of Covid over the past year.

13:37 Obviously, you're a far greater risk of dying if you're an older person and a young person. But but being young doesn't exclude you from being hospitalized or going to the intensive care unit or dying from Covid. But RFK Jr now is making public policy. And so if you look at under the Covid section there, where it's sort of blue and says see notes, basically it just says that vaccination is now part of shared clinical decision making.

14:04 And in other words, well, now I'll get to that. All right. So shared clinical decision making or individual decision making. So SARS-CoV-2 virus will likely continue to circulate for years if not decades if not centuries. There are four strains of human coronavirus that circulate in the human population. All, like this one, were an animal to human spillover event.

14:25 The first the first one entered the human population in the late 1700s. The second human coronavirus entered the human population in the late 1800s. The other two are more recent than plus. This one makes the fifth one. Assume this virus is going to be with us for a while. All children will be fully susceptible to this virus by six months of age, after passively transferred antibodies from the placenta have faded.

14:47 Absent a clear recommendation for young children, parents might be less likely to vaccinate them, putting them at risk to be among the thousands of young children who will be hospitalized every year. Absent a clear recommendation, issues of insurance company and liability have also been raised. So when Fiona Harris saw that Robert F Kennedy Jr had basically not paid attention to her, her, presentation, she quit the CDC and to her credit, she stood up.

15:12 She said she she did interviews, as you see here with the New York Times. She did interviews with CNN to say that this was this decision was unconscionable. Good for her. August 19th, 2025, the American Academy of Pediatrics stood up. Sue Chrisley, who was head of the American Academy of Pediatrics and published this through the Committee of Infectious Diseases in her journal or in the AARP journal Pediatrics, making it clear that infants and children six through 23 months of age are at high risk for severe Covid.

15:45 The AAP clearly recommends all infants and children in this age group who do not have contraindications receive this vaccine. Good for her. I mean, I'm really, you know, why sue Chrisley? Because Sue cross is from Philadelphia. She's a Philadelphia Eagles season ticket holder. And that's where this bravery comes from, right? Go birds. So, Robert F Kennedy Jr immediately responded to this Politico headline says RFK Jr attacks pediatricians group over vaccine recommendations.

16:18 So he posted this. This is a screenshot from the American Academy of Pediatrics web page, thanking the organization's top corporate donors. These four companies make virtually every vaccine on the CDC recommended schedule, recommended a childhood vaccine schedule. AP is angry that CDC has eliminated corporate influence in decisions over vaccine recommendations and returns. CDC to their IT is gold standard science and evidence based medicine laser focused on children's health.

16:47 So why did he say this? Why did he post this? He posted this because he doesn't have data to support his position. If he believes that young children shouldn't be vaccinated, where's the evidence that they shouldn't be vaccinated? He doesn't have those that evidence. So he does what every personal injury lawyer does. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts.

17:04 If the data on your side or if the the laws on your side argue the law. If neither on your side attack the witness. So that's what he does. He just attacks the AP without evidence supporting his position. Also, just for the record, that's an actual screenshot of the A website under President Circle. He manipulated his. Okay, so should healthy pregnant women receive a Covid 19 vaccine?

17:30 This is a paper published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine show, which was a retrospective review of eight published studies of about 860,000 women with Covid 19 pregnancy was associated with a statistically significant increase in intensive care unit admission and need for mechanical ventilation when compared with women of reproductive age infected with Covid 19 who were not pregnant.

17:53 Similarly, this paper published in Jama Pediatrics this was a retrospective review of 700 or so women infected with Covid 19 during pregnancy, compared with 1400 pregnant women without Covid 19. Pregnant women with Covid 19 had a higher risk of pre-eclampsia, eclampsia, intensive care unit admission, maternal mortality, preterm birth and neonatal mortality. Asymptomatic women with Covid 19 remained at higher risk for maternal morbidity and pre-eclampsia, the authors concluded, quote, Covid 19 and pregnancy was associated with consistent and substantial increases in severe maternal morbidity and mortality and neonatal complications.

18:33 But that's not the only reason we vaccinate pregnant women. We also vaccinate them to protect their unborn child. If you look at this, this is a, again presented by Fiona Havers. Among all children and adolescent rates of Covid 19 associated hospitalizations were actually highest among children less than six months of age who are not going to be protected by active immunization.

18:53 They will be protected by passive immunization by vaccinating their mothers with a vaccine. Nonetheless, what happened after RFK junior said that is that if you look under Covid 19, in pregnancy, it's got a gray box. And if you look on the right hand upper right hand point and it's passed, it says no guidance, not applicable. Now this is changing over time.

19:15 But but what this did immediately is it made it much harder for women who were pregnant to get a vaccine. I mean, I got a lot of calls from people who said went to the pharmacist, wanted to get a vaccine, pregnant woman and the pharmacist wouldn't do it because the pharmacist really is. It's a little different than, physicians, or people who work in the hospital where you're pretty much covered by the vaccine injury compensation program for pharmacists.

19:39 If it's not an ACIp recommendation, they feel they're not covered. And so people weren't getting vaccinated who clearly would have benefited from being vaccinated. And, there was a law firm in, based in Chicago that is suing, Senator Kennedy. And I'm sorry, Secretary Kennedy over his advice. You can see that this this suit, which is now, based in Massachusetts, seeks to restore Covid vaccines to the list of recommended immunizations for healthy children and pregnant women.

20:11 And I think, well, I'll get to June 9th, 2025. You know, I'm going to say something positive at the end. Okay. So hang in there. I'm just trying to think of what that could be. But. So RFK Jr fires all 17 members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee, claiming that they were in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry, which wasn't true, again, violating one of Senator Cassidy's commitments that he is committed, that he would work within current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems and not establish a parallel system.

20:41 Again, Senator Cassidy was strangely quiet while all this was happening, and people were and he was breaking the commitments that he had made to Senator Cassidy, June 11th, he basically hired his own crowd, which his first seven of his first seven people that he hired. And these were people who, like him, have an anti-vaccine, arguably anti-science bias. Two members have testified on RFK Junior's behalf as paid experts by him in trials against Merck's HPV and mumps vaccines, a clear conflict of interest.

21:13 One member had published a bogus claim about harms caused by the mRNA Covid vaccines. He's now head of the Covid Vaccine Working Group. One member who work for the National Vaccine Information Center, which is an anti-vaccine group, has lobbied for years against school vaccine entry requirements and only two members were involved in primary care likely to have ever seen a vaccine preventable disease, or counsel patients and parents about vaccines.

21:35 This is now the ACIp for this. Thank you. June 25th, 2025. This actually was the most upsetting to me. This was the unkindest cut of all. So Gabby, which is the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, was founded in 2000. Gavi has immunized about 1 billion children in the developing world and saved an estimated 20 million lives, in part with our support, we had a commitment this year for about $2 billion, but RFK Jr withdrew that commitment.

22:13 Why? You can see it in the subheading here. He believe that Gavi had, quote, ignored the science about vaccine safety and to prove that he held up this paper a paper by Peter RB and coworkers called evidence of increase in mortality after the introduction of diphtheria tetanus pertussis vaccine to children aged 6 to 35 months of age in Guinea-Bissau, which is West Africa.

22:38 A time for reflection. This, he said, is gold standard science, showing that we should not be supporting this vaccine, the DTP vaccine for the developing world. Now, in fact, the this paper appeared, very soon after, called retesting the hypothesis that early DTP vaccination increases leaving mortality an observational study with randomized trials. So that's what Abby had originally claimed, that that this vaccine, the DTP vaccine was, was killing young girls.

23:09 Which was now not reproducible by the same authors speed of rabies. Also on this paper, we did not find that early DTP was associated with increased female mortality, as found in a previous study. This study was available when RFK junior withdrew that money for Gavi and then the World Health Organization. Also commissioned a number of studies to try and see whether in other developing world countries, this held up, and it did.

23:34 Studies performed in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Quote showed no negative effect of DTP vaccination June 26th, 2025. The former leader of the anti-vaccine group founded by RFK junior to present at first meeting of the new CDC vaccine about. So this is the 1st June is the first time that this new look ACIp is meeting.

24:01 The person who presented at this meeting was a woman named Lyn Redwood, who first sort of came to prominence, around 1999, 2000, when the ACIp, when there was an ACP, was considering the the notion that whether thimerosal in vaccines was in any way harmful, we were adding more and more vaccines to the schedule. Vaccines that were, contained in multi-dose files needed a preservative, thimerosal or ethyl mercury was that preservative.

24:29 And so, Lynne Redwood founded a group called Safe Minds, believing that her son's autism was caused by thimerosal in vaccines. She eventually became part of Children's Robert F Kennedy Junior Health Defense. So she was the one she now she is now part of the CDC. She is now present. She's now at this meeting presenting to the CDC.

24:49 Now typically before a vote. And this was a vote about whether or not we should continue to have thimerosal containing flu vaccines, which is good. When you when you say the purpose of thimerosal is that you need it for a multi-dose form, when we we never really took thimerosal out of vaccines in 1999, 2000, we just moved from multi-dose files to single dose, which made the vaccines far more expensive without any advantage.

25:13 So she was she was all part of that. And so it's like, you know, I this I was on the ACP from 98 to 2000. It's like reliving these horrors. I mean, I'm still getting over the post-traumatic stress disorder of this thimerosal story back in 1999, 2000 and the same people are showing up again. It's like jaws two, you know?

25:32 So normally when you present at these meetings, you have to do something called ETR evidence to recommendation. So your, your, your talk is reviewed by subject matter experts before a vote to make sure that there's an agreement that there's nothing being presented that's incorrect. Her talk contain references that didn't exist, and her talk contained references that made conclusions about papers, where the authors almost immediately stood up afterwards and say, no, no, no, that's not what we said at all.

25:59 So so that's what you had before this vote about whether or not we should continue to have thimerosal containing influenza vaccines, which was not a big part of the market at this point. There's maybe 4 or 5% of the market. So it wasn't a big hit, but nonetheless, it showed you you could get an anti-science vote, which is what happened.

26:17 And what, what, Lynn Redwood didn't do is she didn't present all the studies showing that you were no more likely to have a neurodevelopmental problem if you received a thimerosal containing vaccine than if you didn't. These were easy studies to do. We had taken Western Europe, had taken thimerosal out of vaccines by the early 1990s. There were there were provinces in Canada use name aerosol containing vaccines right next to provinces in Canada that use the same vaccines.

26:43 It didn't contain thimerosal. It was easy to do this. Plus, you know, you live on this planet, right? Pretty much everybody I know, all of you. But if you if you live on this planet, you were going to be exposed to methylmercury. Anybody who has any beverage in front of them is drinking methylmercury. I mean, mercury is in the Earth's crust.

27:03 It comes to the soil as an inorganic form. It comes to the soil via rock erosion, volcanoes, where it then is taken up by bacteria in the soil or in the seas and methylated. So. So we are always exposed to methylmercury, which has a much longer half life than thimerosal, which is ethyl mercury is 50 days versus five days.

27:21 So you can't tell. If you look at children who receive thimerosal containing vaccines that you've in any way increase their burden of mercury. Which makes sense, then, that you wouldn't find that thimerosal in vaccines would have ever caused harm. Actually, I think the thing that was I still have this. Yes. So in any case, they voted then to remove thimerosal, this thimerosal containing flu vaccine, which would be good if you're trying say it in a in a pandemic situation, it'd be nice to have that Multi-Dose starts with a cheaper and it's easier to mass vaccinate when you have a multi-dose file.

27:51 My favorite part of this was, Martin Dorf, who was the sort of acting head of the CDC. That's the ACIp. He said he was very proud of this, but he said, wouldn't you much rather have a mercury free hot dog than a mercury containing hot dog? First of all, hot dogs contain water. There are no mercury free hot dogs on this planet.

28:13 Okay, August 5th, 2025 RFK Jr cancels $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccines for diseases like Covid. So this was from Barda. So board is the Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority. That's what Barda is. And and other. Well and I'll get to that. So he said data showed that mRNA. Why did he remove $500 million of funding for part of this research development authority theories?

28:42 I just showing a few here data show that mRNA vaccines fail to protect against upper respiratory infections like Covid. The goal of the Covid vaccine is to prevent severe disease, keep you out of the hospital, keep you out of the ICU, keep you out of the morgue for short incubation periods like like SARS-CoV-2 or influenza or a respiratory syncytial virus, rotavirus, you're not going to protect against against mild to moderate disease for long, because that's really because it's a short incubation period disease.

29:09 You really need antibodies in your circulation to prevent against mild or moderate disease. The goal is to prevent severe disease. We're really for the most part, it takes longer time to develop severe disease. So there you only need immunological memory which is longer live. So that's the goal of this vaccine. You're not trying to prevent all infections, he said that HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risks and benefits for these respiratory viruses.

29:32 In 2021, you were 12 times more likely to be hospitalized and die if you weren't vaccinated against Covid than if you were in 2022. You were six times more likely to be hospitalized and die if you weren't vaccinated, than if you were. This vaccine saved our lives. I mean, we had between an estimated two and a half to 3 million people whose lives were saved by this vaccine.

29:51 And although the mRNA vaccines did have a side effect, which was myocarditis, it was relatively short lived, transient and and for the most part pretty rare, I mean, roughly in the overall, maybe 1 in 50,000. But, it's it's I mean, there any medical innovation is so severe is associated with the human prize for knowledge. You learn as you go and we learned here.

30:14 The good news is that there are systems in place to pick that up pretty quickly. So within really weeks of this vaccine then being mass distributed, you knew that this vaccine was a rare cause of myocarditis. And, I mean, I was on the FDA vaccine advisory committee, in December of 2020 when we consider the mRNA vaccines and if you look at Pfizer, Moderna, Pfizer was a 40,000 person trial.

30:35 Moderna was a 30,000 person trial, placebo controlled. So basically 35,000 total people who were 18 years of age had received that vaccine at the time that we agreed to authorize that use, knowing that hundreds of millions of people were about to be vaccinated, knowing the other shoe was going to drop, knowing you're going to find some rare, serious adverse event.

30:54 The only question was going to be how rare and how serious. And the same thing happened in February of 21, 21 when we, authorized use of the Johnson and Johnson adenovirus vector vaccine, which was found to be a very rare cause of clotting like 1 in 250,000, a very rare cause of severe clotting, including clotting of the brain and food, including fatal clotting of the brain, which ultimately drove that vaccine off the market by by, May and March of 2023.

31:22 So we do we do have systems in place to pick these things up, to pick them up quickly and to respond to them. And so because there's always a human price paid for knowledge, and it's something that I think nobody ever quite gets, you never know everything. When we make a decision to authorize that vaccine, it's because we think we know enough, not because we think we know everything.

31:42 He also said that HHS will invest in whole virus vaccines and novel platforms that don't collapse when viruses mutate. First of all, all viruses mutate. So we're clear that they mutate differently, but they all mutate. Also, he was so proud of this. I don't know if you've ever heard him talking about this, but he talks about whole kill viral vaccines like he invented them.

32:00 Honestly, it's just like, first of all, Louis Pasteur was the first one with the rabies vaccine in the late 1800s. Jonas Salk, polio vaccine, 1950s. It also ignores China's experience with their whole kill Covid 19 vaccine, which was not as good as the mRNA vaccines. It wasn't. They didn't that vaccine didn't induce neutralizing antibodies that nearly the level that the mRNA vaccines that.

32:22 So he withdrew with Barda funding, for mRNA bird flu vaccines. And what I think this fails to recognize is the importance of NIH during this pandemic. So I think there were three heroes in this pandemic. One was was Drew Weissman and Katie Kariko, who in 1997 collaborated to work on mRNA as a technology to try to try and reconfigure mRNA using these nucleoside analogs so that it wouldn't have this, this, pension to stimulate the innate immune response.

32:52 So for which they won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2023, I think the second hero was Operation Warp Speed. I mean, that was a Levin, an $11 billion commitment by this country to basically take the risk out of it for pharmaceutical companies. I mean, we isolated this virus in January of 2020. Within 11 months, we had done two large prospective, placebo controlled clinical trials.

33:14 That's amazing. I mean, that's the fastest vaccine ever made. And really, corners weren't cut. They weren't I mean, we went phase one face to face. Three, you know, make the build a building mass produce. The reason it was so fast is you took the risk out of it for pharmaceutical companies. Normally pharmaceutical companies go step by step. Now they could move more quickly because they know if they build a building and manufactured hundreds of millions of doses, that they still had to throw away because the vaccine didn't work or wasn't safe, they weren't going to pay a price for that.

33:40 That's why this was so fast. But the third hero, I think, was the National Institutes of Health, because when in 2002, 2003, SARS one raised its head in Foshan, China, Barney Graham and others, at the end, I started working on a source one mRNA vaccine. So they had worked on that for about 15 years. By the time SARS-CoV-2 raised its head and came into this country and started killing people.

34:03 So we had a lot of information, and that's what Barda does. It's a research development authority that enables you to generate a lot of research data in advance of something happening. I mean, it may be that bird flu never becomes a pandemic, but it might. And you would like to have as much information as you can before that.

34:20 Okay. September 18th, 2025 the ACIp discusses, delaying the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, and this isn't going to go away. They didn't make a vote. They didn't have a vote on this in their September meeting, but they will on the December 4th, December 5th meeting. So they are looking to delay this birth dose. So let's talk about that.

34:42 If you are a child born to a mother who has hepatitis B infection, you have an 85% chance of getting hepatitis B. If you develop hepatitis B as a newborn, you have a 90% chance of going on to develop cirrhosis of liver cancer, 90%. If you get hepatitis B in the first five years of life, you have about a 25 to 30% chance of developing cirrhosis of the liver cancer.

35:07 If you get hepatitis B as an adult, it's about 5%. So this is a vulnerable period. And that's why we it's so important to vaccinate early on. So the the hepatitis B vaccine was actually first licensed in 1981. In 1982, the birth dose was recommended for all infants whose mothers were hepatitis B surface antigen positive in the first trimester.

35:29 In 1988, that was extended to all infants born to mothers in racial or ethnic groups at high risk of hepatitis B, like Southeast Asian immigrants, and in 1991 it was extended to all infants. Why? The first is that many women aren't screened. In this country, about 15% of women are not screened in the first trimester. We're actually one of the worst countries in the developed world at screening.

35:55 We have, because we don't have national health insurance. I think that's probably the biggest reason most developed world countries do look at Denmark has virtually many of these countries have virtually 100% screening in the first trimester. We're not that country. Reason number two is the screening test is imperfect. So, screening test for hepatitis B has about a 5% false negative rate.

36:16 We're said another way, falsely reassuring rate. Three women can contract hepatitis B virus in the second or third trimester after they'd already been screened to be negative. Fourth, and this is the one nobody gets, is that many children don't acquire who get infected in the first few years of life, don't acquire the disease from their mother. This was a study, by Greg Armstrong and Hal Margolis, how Margolis was the head of the hepatitis B, working group at the CDC.

36:47 Called childhood hepatitis B infections in the US before hepatitis B immunization. But what they found was in 1991, about 30,000 children were infected with hepatitis B before ten years of age. Half were infected passing through a birth canal from a mother infected with the virus. The other half were infected when coming in contact with someone chronically infected with hepatitis B virus.

37:08 Relatively casual contact millions of people in this country are chronically infected with hepatitis B, more than half don't know it. It's true. This virus is transmitted by tiny, unseen amounts of blood on shared towels, washcloths, toothbrushes, nail clippers, among others. Between 100 million to 10 billion infectious particles, primarily in acutely infected people per ML of blood. As around it's viable on surfaces for up to seven days.

37:33 That's how these children were getting it. They were getting it by coming in contact with people who had chronic hepatitis B and didn't know it. So when people like Donald Trump or Robert F Kennedy, junior Rand Paul say, you know, why are we vaccinating children? Because, you know, they're not there. Who knows what? They're probably not going to become intravenous drug users or sex workers.

37:53 These children less than ten, weren't sex workers or weren't intravenous drug users. They were coming in contact with people who are chronically infected and didn't know it. And it was a tremendous accomplishment. I mean, because of that birth dose, we've virtually eliminated this disease in children.

38:09 September 19th. So now we're at the, the second ACIp meeting. The ACIp does this does not recommend Covid 19 vaccine for high risk groups. This was another sort of seminal moment. So the the this is again first for me, Fiona Haber. Over the past year, we've had between 200,000 and 400,000, hospitalizations from Covid, 30,050 thousand Covid deaths.

38:34 The goal of the Covid vaccine, as I said before, is to keep prevent severe infection. So who are the people most likely to be hospitalized? Who are the people most likely to die? They include the elderly, those with chronic medical conditions such as heart and lung disease, pregnant women and people who are immune compromised. Pretty much every other country in this world recommends those people get vaccinated, because they're the ones who are at greater risk now, according to a vote that happened in September at this new look ACIp, they didn't recommend that they didn't recommend a vaccine.

39:09 They said you could get it, that it's shared clinical decision making, individual decision making. You could choose to get it, but it's not recommended. And that's where they're heading. If you look at at project 2025 under CDC, what it says is they want to eliminate the CDC as a recommending body. And I think that that what they would like, that what this group would like to have happen.

39:31 I think RFK Jr in this ACIp is they would like to move everything to shared clinical decision making, everything MMR vaccine, everything. Get it? If you want. As RFK Jr says, I'm not going to take away the vaccine from anybody. But what he is doing is he's not making it clear who should or shouldn't get this vaccine or these vaccine.

39:51 Okay, September 29th, Secretary Kennedy posted this to elevate America's health, restore public trust, and reclaim our reputation for integrity. And there it is gold standard science. The president of the United States is HHS will challenge even the most sacred public health dogmas through open debate and disciplined scientific scrutiny. So what he did is he gave a talk, a seven minute talk to make the point that vaccines don't save lives.

40:21 He said that that look at measles mortality, which declined clearly before we had a vaccine, which is true. I mean, we had advanced we had advances in refrigeration, advances in hygiene events, in sanitation. There were advances that also that did truly lower the incidence of these, these before we had vaccines. So he made the case for measles. He made the case for pertussis.

40:43 But what he failed to mention was that the measles vaccine, introduced in 63, decreased childhood deaths from 500 to virtually zero. What he failed to mention is that the pertussis vaccine, introduced in the late 1940s, reduced pertussis deaths from 9000 to generally fewer than ten. Also, by choosing folks just a mere bit mortality, he ignored morbidity, such as liver cancer caused by hepatitis B virus or blindness caused by measles, or deafness caused by mumps or congenital birth defects caused by rubella or cervical cancer caused by human papillomavirus.

41:16 So why, during a year when deaths from measles, flu, and pertussis are greater than anything seen in decades, did RFK Jr. To show this video? To try and make the point that vaccines don't save lives, when he should be making the opposite point? To know the answer to that question, you should read his book. I actually don't read his book, but I'll summarize it for you.

41:37 His book called The Real Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. So between pages 285 and 288, you see this in his book The Real Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr writes, the ubiquity of pasteurization and vaccinations are only two of the many indicators of the dominating ascendancy of germ theory as the cornerstone of contemporary public health policy.

42:03 A $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, bricks, potions and poisons, and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology. The best approach to public health is to boost individual immune responses. The terrain is everything. The microbe is nothing. Just be healthy. Just make sure you're well nourished. And when those two little girls died in West Texas, when those six year old and eight year old girls died in West Texas, the first thing he said is they were in a food desert, not true.

42:31 He said that they were, that they were malnourished. Not true. He recommended vitamin A over and over again for those children in West Texas. To the point that many children were hospitalized with liver toxicity associated with too much vitamin A, and never made the point to make it very clear that a pregnant woman should not take vitamin A because that increases, risks to the unborn child.

42:54 He doesn't believe in the germ theory. The Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States of America doesn't believe in the germ theory. I'd like to think there's like a minimum criteria for being head of HHS. That that would be one of them. And has he said when he was running for president, before he joined forces with Donald Trump, he said vaccines have just replaced infectious diseases with chronic disease.

43:15 That's what he believes. He believes he's put on this earth to prevent chronic diseases. And he believes vaccines are a very big point, a big part of why we have chronic diseases. So he is in this all out war against vaccines. If you want to eliminate vaccines in this country, here's what you do. You mess around with the vaccine injury compensation program.

43:38 So, I should go back for those of you who may not remember, but. So the vaccine injury compensation program was part of the Ronald Reagan's National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. It was put in place in 1986 because during that decade, starting in 1982 up through 1985, there was a flood of litigation about against vaccine makers, claiming that the pertussis or whooping cough vaccine caused permanent brain damage, and it drove vaccine makers off the market.

44:05 We went from 18 companies that made vaccines in 1980 to 4 by the end of the decade. The only reason we still had vaccines by the end of the decades was this program, which at least stopped the bleeding. You can still sue vaccine makers. You just have to go through this program first. And in fact, during the, the second confirmation hearing, that hearing I showed you with Senator Cassidy, Elizabeth Warren actually asked that question.

44:28 She said you could manipulate this system, the vaccine injury compensation program system, to financially benefit yourself and your personal injury lawyer friends tell me you won't do that. He refused to send. So what he did was he hired a man named Drew Dowling, who's, from a law firm in Arizona to help him manipulate this program. He wants to add autism to this list of compensable injuries.

44:55 So this is an analysis that was, just published, by Peter Grossi. Making this point, we show that the immediate docket of profound autism plans would likely command composition awards totaling nearly $100 million, with awards thereafter running at about 330 billion a year. These awards would consume the current $4 billion bounce in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Trust Fund, a fund which can only be replenished by an excise tax that generates about $250 million a year, which is less than 1% of the amount needed to cover the projected annual compensation.

45:27 This would break that program, and then we'd be right back to where we were in the 1980s. And that is his goal. I can't tell you when I've testified in front of Congress several times, although I'm always preaching to the choir because it's only the Democrats who want to hear what I have to say. But this is his goal.

45:42 I don't think people realize how serious he is about this. He wants to eliminate vaccine manufacture in this country. There was just a, children's health defense meeting in Austin a few days ago, and Ron Paul was was there at least virtually? Ron Johnson was there. Does that oppose a surgeon general of Florida? Was there all promoting this notion that that, you know, the vaccines are doing more harm than good?

46:03 And several of the people who spoke said they want to eliminate vaccine manufacture in this country. So how can we put an end to this continued assault on vaccines? Well, one person who I didn't label this, sorry, that's President Donald Trump. The person who could ask RFK Jr to step down is President Trump. He could do that.

46:25 He has the authority to do that. Here's why he won't. On September 26th, he posted this pregnant women don't use Tylenol. But once again, we got to keep blaming mothers for their child's autism. Rate. Pregnant women don't use Tylenol unless absolutely necessary. Don't give Tylenol to your young child for virtually any reason. Break up the MMR shot into three totally separate shots, not mixed.

46:50 Take chickenpox shot separately. Take hepatitis B shot at 12 years of age or older, and importantly, take vaccines in five separate medical visits. This is not new for him. I mean, in, in 2015, I remember this when he was on a, the Republican debate while running for president. I just saw Republican, publicans that were debating.

47:12 He said a lot of this this isn't new for him. He believes this. So on October 8th, just a little bit after that, this was posted by, Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill, who was the acting director of the CDC. First, he thanked the president of the United States for his leadership. And then he said, I call on vaccine manufacturers to develop safe monovalent vaccines to replace the combined MMR and break up the MMR shot into its three totally separate trials.

47:37 This is this is Donald Trump. This is not RFK Jr. This is what Donald Trump wants. So I don't think Donald Trump is the person who's going to ask him to step down. So who will who will stand up for our children. So this is get getting to the part. The two slides that I have among the sort of 100 plus that I just showed, it's a little positive.

47:55 Okay. Parents still support vaccines and they support vaccine mandates, and it's really independent of their political parties. Most Republican parents, most Democratic parents, most independent parents support vaccines. You're starting to hear I'm sure it started here. And I'm sure you're already hear more from parents who are worried about all this, worried about the disease outbreaks, worried whether vaccines are going to be available.

48:17 That drumbeat is not going to go away. And certainly these diseases are not going to go away as we have a further erosion in vaccine rights. You're only going to see more and more of these diseases. And I think if it ever gets to the point and it's not impossible, if it ever gets to the point where you see polio come back, I think that changes the conversation.

48:35 Even actually, if you Aaron, Siri is the sort of, right hand man of Robert F Kennedy Jr, his lawyer, and he, a couple of years ago actually talked about how he wanted to pause the use of the polio vaccine. He felt that the inactivated polio vaccine had not been adequately tested. When he said that Donald Trump immediately respond, he said, no, no, don't touch that vaccine.

48:56 Why? Because Donald Trump was born in 1946. I mean, he remembers polio. Any of us who were young remember polio? I was into polio work when I was five. In 1956. I certainly remember polio. And that is a different disease. That is an emotional disease that really hits a chord and could have happened. Of course it could happen.

49:13 We had a case of paralytic polio in Rockland County, New York, in 2022 and a 27 year old man who never left this country. He was paralyzed by a revert and type two strain from the oral polio. Vaccine that we used in this country up until about 2000, but is still used in many areas of the world.

49:30 Polio is a hardy virus. I mean, it survives in the intestine, therefore it survives in sewage. And when you looked in the, wastewater of Rockland County, you found that virus because only about one inch 2000 people who are infected with that virus will be paralyzed. So he was the tip of a much bigger iceberg. And when you looked in surrounding counties, you found that virus.

49:48 And I think if you look in the wastewater samples in Philadelphia, Chicago or Los Angeles, you would find that virus lower immunization rates lowered enough and it would have to get much lower. But it could I mean, the person who got polio in Rockland County was living in an area where there was about 30% immunization rates for polio vaccine.

50:04 So that was low enough to let that virus come back. It could happen. And I think that would change things. Okay. Last slide. So trying to trying to end on a high note. So Galileo okay. I have to go back to the 1600s, come up with something positive. But nonetheless, this is false. So Galileo was a famous astronomer.

50:28 He looked through his telescope and described the phase of Venus moons of Jupiter rings around Saturn. Very, you know, published a treatise on that for which he was highly acclaimed. It was his second treatise that got him into trouble, because in his second treatise, what he did was he bought into Nicholas Copernicus notion that the earth revolves around the sun.

50:47 Now, that went against what at the time was Roman Catholic teachings, that Earth was the center of the firmament. So he was specifically admonished before you ever published that treatise, not to say, okay, we had a Roman Catholic church that that's, this this. Okay. It's I tell you what, let's talk about this afterwards. Okay. So so the, at least the interpretation as I understood it for the Roman Catholic Church at the time, was that the earth was the center of the firm.

51:12 In any case, they put him in chains and asked him to recant, to recant his statement. They did ask him to recant his statement that the Earth revolved around the sun. And he pushed back and said, And yet he said, it still moves, meaning you can put me in chains. That doesn't change the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun.

51:32 And that's true here, too. I think you're going to be hearing a lot over the next few months and years about all the things that RFK junior believes cause autism, all the vaccine, things that he thinks cause autism, and he's no doubt going to get discredited scientists and discredited physicians and media venues and congressmen to support him. But it does doesn't matter how many times he says it, it's not true.

51:54 And science is a powerful thing to have on our side, and we just need to stand up for the science. And with that, I think that we win in the end, because in the end, science does win out. I mean, the Earth does still revolve around the sun, despite the fact that Galileo was asked to recant that statement.

52:09 Thank you.

52:45 I'll have. I have a seat, please. Normally, this is the first time I've been doing this meeting for since 2010, and we've never had a single speaker up here for. We always have multiple, but this was too important a topic. A number of questions. What has this been like for you? You've been in this space for a long time.

53:09 I'm talking personally. You know, you were you were in the 80s. You were. You were part of the 90s. You were part of the decision making bodies back then. Of many of the topics that are circling back around, what is this meant for you and how do you how do you kind of deal with it? It's hard.

53:30 I think it's sort of there are certain things you count on. You counted on the fact, for example, that the CDC is an excellent epidemiological body that publishes good science, that they then advise the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which then, makes decisions based on good science. And that's all gone. I mean, the things that you count on are sort of gone.

53:52 And there's a W.H. Auden quote, which is something like when when all the mess and majesty of this world, when all the carries weight and always weighed the same lays lay in the hands of others. They were small and could not hope for help. And no help came. And I feel like that's where we are now. But I tell you, I tell you what makes me feel good.

54:09 I think a lot of people are standing up. I mean, it's states are standing up. States are forming coalitions. You see the AP, Acog, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology standing up. You see a lot of physicians standing up. I think people are standing up to this. So so therefore we will win. But there is there's been harm done and there's going to continue to be harm done.

54:27 And there's nothing harder for me than that. There isn't. I'll tell you the thing that was the most upsetting to me, and this is going to surprise you, but the, the, Children's Health Defense had a meeting in Austin, Texas and Texas over the last week or so. It was a two day meeting, I think. And Andrew Wakefield was there because we just keep recycling these people and, the, you know, there were other there were two.

54:49 The major Dell big tree, you know, all the sort of major anti-vaccine activists were there. The person who upset me the most, actually, was the father of the little girl, Daisy. The six year old who died, who got up and said, thank God for Donald Trump. Thank God for RFK Jr. Thank God for self-defense, because what they had done for him is they had given him a way out.

55:10 They they they I know if you followed this, but, people like Peter Corey went went to him and said your child died of medical malpractice, didn't die measles, died of medical malpractice. Or the other child was your child died of mycoplasma pneumonia. Pneumonia, which was none of those things were true. So they gave him a way out.

55:28 And I guess, for me, it's, that's the hardest of all, because parents are responsible for keeping their children safe. And and he didn't. And he was let off the hook. And I don't I guess I understand why he wanted to be let off the hook. I think that the most important thing you can do as a parent is to, protect your child.

55:54 And if your child suffers, there's nothing worse than that. And if your child suffers and dies because of you, there's nothing worse than that. And so they gave him a way out. And I guess I'm going to give you the real answer to that question. Okay? I'm going to give you the real answer is on. I'm not going to cry, I promise.

56:08 But so I was in a polio ward at age five. I was in a polio was not because I had full polio. I was polio worried because I was born with clubfoot. I had my feet were put in casts, which is what you should do. And then, my father didn't like it that my right heel didn't touch the ground.

56:24 So I wanted to tell you why this is emotional for me. And so my mother took me to the clubfoot clinic at Johns Hopkins. I grew up in Baltimore, and, the the head of that clinic said, what? Quote, whatever you do, don't operate on that foot. But because we didn't perfect that operation till like, the 90s.

56:39 Okay. So we were all we need to do at the time was cast. But my father didn't want to do that. He he didn't like it that my right heel didn't touch the ground. Exactly. And so he found, a friend of his father's whose son had recently graduated from and as an orthopedist. And so he was excited to do that surgery and did a surgery he should never have done.

56:59 And I have had, you know, osteoarthritis and have been, frankly, trying not to work with walk with a limp since I was about 6 or 7 years old, because I was an operation that should have never been done, because my father didn't protect me. Similarly, in that same year five, which was not a good year for me, I fell from a I had a traumatic injury, that caused me to have splenic rupture.

57:22 And so, my, private. So, so my mother took me to the doctor. Doctor said he's just complaining to through a secondary attention gain, and so don't worry about it. So, the next day, my pediatrician, who was I've been out of town, comes in and sees that I had been seen by someone in his office who came to our house at night to examine me and said, he's ruptured his plan.

57:45 He needs to go to the house. But my father said, nope, I want a second opinion. Yeah. the pediatrician was Milton Markowitz, who was. That was my private pediatrician in Baltimore, Maryland. And so he just took me put me in his car and drove me to the hospital.

57:58 And I had a surgery, surgery that night where they removed more than a quart of blood from my abdomen. Had I going to sleep that night, I probably wouldn't have left. Decades later, I was asked to give up the, Milton Markowitz, memorial lecture at the University of Connecticut, where he had become chairman of the Department of Pediatrics.

58:14 And I got up at the beginning of that lecture and I said, Milton, Mark, what saved my life? And I think people assumed I just meant that sort of rhetorically, that he helped me with decisions, but not I proceeded to tell that story to a hushed crowd. But I think I feel like my parents at some level didn't protect me.

58:31 And I think when I see that father standing back, letting his child suffer the way she must have suffered, it just it breaks my heart. That's it. That's where I am. It's that that's what drives me. And all this.

58:49 You know what? In 2009, there was this far more than answer that you ever wanted. But in 2009, there was a as a mom who had four children, the Children's Hospital thought of it. She vaccinated three, didn't vaccinate. The fourth the fourth child, 2009 comes in with now swine flu and pneumonia. Initially in the in the in the emergency department face in mass action comes up to the floor and ultimately is put on into an ICU on initially CPAp, then ventilator, then an oscillator, then a heart lung machine for like more than a month and ended up because of bouts of hypoxemia with some minimal brain damage.

59:24 And when it was over, I have some other how she put it together and she said I would. I'm I'm glad I didn't vaccinate him. This would have been much worse than if I vaccinate them. And on the surface, that doesn't make any sense. But when you think about it, it makes abundant sense because how do you live with it?

59:37 The notion that you put your child in a position where now he's at some level brain damage because of something you did. So she has to see I think think that. And so I see where this is coming from. So the people I really respect in this are those people from like families fighting flu, meningitis. Angeles National Meningitis Association who didn't vaccinate their child.

59:54 The child then suffers or dies of a vaccine preventable disease and then says, I am going to to take the lead on this. I am going to God is sending me a message. This happened to me for a reason. I'm going to get out there and explain how important these these diseases are. And the vaccines are people like, you know, Alyssa, Amanda kind of know this account of which from the email account of its foundation, whose child died of flu.

01:00:16 I mean, these are the heroes to me because it's the hardest thing in the world to do. So that's where all the emotion comes from. Have you ever thought about stepping back from the spotlight on this? No, I.

01:00:34 I think what I learned, first of all, I get a lot of hate mail. God only knows. And I get I do get legitimate death threats. I mean, the, the most recent was I got two men in California, eastern California, who threatened my life, and they both were tried and convicted. And, actually, the funny thing that's funny about this, but they're the one of them was out on bail.

01:00:52 And so the Department of Justice, which periodically, keeps touch, they said, you know, just just I just want to know that this person who was who was, was in jail is now out on bail. So be careful. Be careful. The hell does that mean? But, in any case. So they they were convicted, and so I was asked to go give a victim impact statement in eastern California.

01:01:12 No, thanks. I need to meet these people. But so yeah, but I and on the one hand, I get, you know, like, you guys appreciate me. I mean, you give me a C anyway, so that's very nice. And and I get the sit the same day. Sometime later today I will get an email that calls me a Nazi bitch whore.

01:01:27 Okay. So this so, so what I've learned in this is that neither of those things are true. I am not great. I'm not awful. I'm just doing my best as many people are doing their best. So I don't take any of it terribly seriously. What can pediatricians do in their own practices, in their own lives, in their own communities?

01:01:43 Right. So people trust their doctors. They do. And they're not going to RFK junior when they're sick. I think that they're going to use when they're sick and they want you to like them. I mean, you want to do you want to they want you to hook into them and their child so that when they really need you, that you're in too safe to say that you don't want to get vaccinated is to push yourself away from your pediatrician, which, is uncomfortable for everybody.

01:02:06 I think all I can say is just be a vigorous activist for vaccine. I watch my wife. My wife is a private practicing pediatrician, so I've watched her go go through the cycles of this. Initially, she just tried to do the best that she could. Let me let me try and convince you. And if she could get 1 or 2 vaccines or whatever, moving forward, then that was up to her when she was maybe 25% effective at getting people to get vaccinated.

01:02:29 Then she'd had it, and she just let parents have it in a good way. She would say, let me love your child. Don't put me in a position where you're asking me to send this child out of this room where I know this child could come back, having suffered influenza, serious having suffered, you know, the pneumococcus or an awful influenza B or, you know, or measles or, you know, I can't do that.

01:02:51 I can't do it. I can't do it knowing that I put your child in. Later with that, she became far more, convincing. But it's hard. I mean, it's hard to be confrontational in any sense, because we're. We don't like that. But it's getting pretty critical out there. And you're you're the front line. I mean, you're the key out there in this war.

01:03:11 There were a couple of questions, that challenged some of this. One was farmers in it to make in vaccines, to make money. Another called vaccines poison. If a family or parents come and that's their view, how do you engage them on that. How do you respond to that? I mean, what are your what's your guidance?

01:03:40 So they're saying you're part of a conspiracy. You're part of a conspiracy to hide the truth because you're being paid to hide the truth, which is really, insulting. I mean, first of all, you know better than me. You're not making gobs of money on vaccines. It just doesn't work that way. And, I think that what I would say is that the physician should again be, be personal.

01:04:03 I mean, be talk about what it feels like to watch your child suffer in any way and how you feel responsible for that. I mean, make it personal and hook in with the parent and the child that that you're all on the same emotional plane in a sense. You're all trying to do what's best for this child, and that's what you're doing.

01:04:20 And the notion, I think you get the notion that you're you're saying that I'm in the pocket of industry, you know, and that that's why I'm doing with that. What I'm doing is it's offensive, but it's not why I do what I do. It's not why I wanted to pediatrics. It's not what I do, what I do. So I love your child and just lay it on the line.

01:04:36 But it's uncomfortable. It's hard. I mean, most parents do want to get vaccines. I mean, that's still true. I think the parents of the parents who call me, there's maybe 10 or 15% who just there's no talking about it. They just they're firm about this. They're scared. I think the other thing is we ask a lot of parents in this country.

01:04:55 We do. We ask them in the first few years to get vaccines to prevent 14 different diseases, which can mean as many as five inoculations at a single visit. It can mean as many as 25 inoculations during that time to prevent diseases most people don't see using biological fluids most people don't understand. I'm surprised there's not more pushback on vaccines, but, the when someone is scared about about a vaccine's, side effect, you know, real or imagined, take it seriously.

01:05:20 They are scared. They mean it. You can't say, well, that's silly, because this here's why this isn't true. They think it's true. So you have to sort of find that level ground where you accept that they are truly scared and try and gently show why their fear is unfounded. But don't dismiss it. They're they're scared. You showed, slides, a bunch of slides on measles, on pertussis.

01:05:44 You mentioned polio. What do you think? We are already seeing measles and pertussis. What do you think the next vaccine preventable diseases that will reemerge, that will be more commonly encountered, will be? Well, I think, certainly we've had major strides, Doctor Tan said on RSV in terms of vaccinating pregnant women and then also vaccinating, the, the child with monoclonal antibodies.

01:06:11 You'll be interested to hear that, that the MMR published a paper showing that because now we've had a year of maternal vaccination, a year of nursing home up that have we reduce the incidence of hospitalization for RSV, in the first two months of life? Yes, like by more than 50%. The administration did not want that. Promoted. If you know that they they really made a point not to promote it.

01:06:34 Normally you send out the the paper, you embargoed it for a day, you send out talking points. None of that was done because they don't want to in any way promote vaccines. And they've they've done the same thing with the wild Tamiflu program. They've just cut it. So, in terms of what do I think next is the next big one to come back, I guess I think we'll just see more more measles deaths.

01:06:53 I think that's the most likely because it's so highly contagious. And that's when rates rose, always the first one to come back. And I think that maybe that's it, that we'll just get to that level where it's too many measles deaths. Maybe. But I'm not sure what else will come roaring back, because I think rates would have to drive lower than they are.

01:07:12 And I mean, what we're now is we're building up a population of susceptibles. So you're going to see what's going to happen over the next few years. A couple of additional questions. Do you think that Senator Cassidy has buyer's remorse? You're asking me to say how politicians think. I think he made a political decision. I think he's probably happy with this political decision.

01:07:40 No, I don't I think you still have contact with people that. Do you still have calls with him or. I did for a little while. Then he stopped calling me. I put a, I had a I have a Substack called Beyond the Noise, and I had a couple pointed Substack about him, so I haven't heard from him lately.

01:07:57 All right. But one other thing, by the way. Let me tell you, it was like being in a polio ward. I remember iron lungs, and I remember the Sister Kennedy hot back treatments, which probably nobody knows about, but it was an Australian nurse who believed that if you put these excruciatingly hot packs on your, withered arms and legs, that you would restore function.

01:08:15 And so I just remember the screaming and I remember the, the people in iron lungs. There was one visiting hour week on Sunday from 2 to 3. My mother couldn't come because she was sick with, complications. My pregnancy with my brother, and, my father was a traveling salesman, so he never came, so nobody came. And so one visiting our week.

01:08:32 I just remember looking over my left shoulder because I was on the second floor. Carnahan's hospital for Crippled children. Back in the days when you could use words like crippled and feeble minded names of children's hospitals. But I remember looking over my left shoulder because I could look down at the front door of the hospital, just waiting for somebody to come save me.

01:08:48 That's what that six weeks experience was, and it was just like a Dickens novel. I mean, it was just scarring. And I think to sum it up, I think the scars of our childhood invariably become the passions of our adulthood. And I think that's what happened to me. That's the real answer. The question is, why do I keep doing it?

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