Keeping Abreast

Hey, breastie. Welcome to Keeping Your Breast. I'm your host, Dr. Jenn Simmons. I walked away from breast cancer surgery because I couldn't stay inside a system that promotes fear, dismisses root causes, and calls itself healthcare. This show is dedicated to you, your education, your clarity, your confidence, and your power. Here we have transparent conversations about real health, the kind that actually changes outcomes. We're talking prevention, hormones, healing, longevity, and the truth behind the choices you're being offered so you can stop outsourcing your decisions and start leading your life. Here, you're going to hear from the disruptors, the innovators, the shining examples, and the unsung heroes who are proving that there's a better way. So give me the next hour of your life and I'll make sure you leave with something that makes you healthier. Because, as I always say, breast health is health. So stay tuned for this week's episode of Keeping a Breast. So you would literally have to be living under a rock to not be affected by all the talk around vaccines and what has. Come out and come to light over the last, let's say, year or 2 years. And though this is not my focus, I felt it was important to bring someone on because I do get asked all the time. When you take care of women, they ask you about their children. So I do get asked all the time what my stance is. And I think it doesn't really matter what my stance is. I think it's more important to know what the facts are. And I decided that I was going to bring someone on the show To talk about the facts. So Dr. Joel Warsh, I just found out, went to medical school in the same place that I went to medical school. So it's always nice to be with an alum. He grew up in Canada. He trained in my hometown of Philadelphia and then in LA. He is a pediatrician and he has been someone who has been navigating this vaccine conversation for pretty much as long as he's been practicing.

So Dr.

Warsh, welcome.

Thank you for having me on. I'm excited to chat.

And I think people know you as Dr. Gator on Instagram where you have a great account and you're putting great information out there. So first, let's hear a little bit of your origin story. Like why did you go into pediatrics and, and what's that all about?

Well, yeah, first, thank you for having me on. I know it's Always a crazy topic. As soon as the word vaccine gets mentioned, everybody loses their minds. And I wish it wasn't the case.

Yeah, they lose their mind with mammograms too. So I'm very comfortable in this space.

That's fair. I mean, I've gotten comfortable with it. It wasn't— there's no training in medical school about social media or navigating controversial topics, or even maybe during that time that even the word vaccine or mammogram is controversial. But when you get into the, I guess, real world, Than it is. And you know, for me, like you said, I did all the regular medical training. I wasn't particularly integrative minded back then. Met my wife during my residency training at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and she was very holistic minded and kind of grew up eating healthy and just a little bit more conscious of that. And so it opened up my eyes a little bit to integrative medicine and started doing some courses in it. And you know, all you hear in Training is like oh it's all woo woo it's out there it's crazy stuff and then you go and you do a course and I did some functional medicine courses and you're like whoa like why aren't we learning this there's nothing woo woo about sleep or diet or exercise like why are we not learning this I was like why are we not learning about this stuff it's so very useful especially if you're going into primary care that we obviously should be thinking about the root cause and obviously should be thinking about why and so I really just fell in love with it and I did more training. And then when I started working, I started working in integrative medicine. And so that's how my practice kind of evolved. And I'm not against Western medicine at all. We give medications when we need it. I have done that my whole career, but I just try to have an integrative spin and try to minimize using medications as much as possible and use other modalities whenever it makes sense. And so that's the way that I practice. And that was kind of what I was doing for a long time. And then over the last decade, I realized, especially being in pediatrics, that Parents had a lot of questions about vaccines, and as I started getting those questions, I realized I really didn't know all that much about vaccines. And so I had to start learning more and more about it and reading more and more about it because you know at the time you don't really think about it. But in training you really learn: All right, here are the vaccines. Here are the horrible diseases. Here's how much better they are than they used to be. Here's your schedule. Go do it. And you don't learn that much more than that. And and and I'm getting—

which is kind of scary because what is the vaccine schedule? I mean, what, as a pediatrician, are you expected to recommend for your patients?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of vaccines, especially compared to when we were growing up. You know, we maybe just had a few depending on how old, you know, you are. You might have had 5 or 10 vaccines when you were young, you know, maybe measles and whooping cough and polio. And now there are many, many more, you know, depending on how old You might get 20+ vaccines in the first few years. There's lots of combination vaccines, so it kind of depends on how you get them, but they're way, way more than there used to be. And so parents have concerns, and I was starting to hear those concerns early on and realize very quickly that a lot of people were coming to me just because I was open to having discussions about vaccines. And, you know, thinking back even just 5 years ago, it was very hard to have these conversations online. I was very hesitant to do it. I didn't really talk about vaccines online. I talked about it in the office. But didn't really speak about it online. And during COVID got really frustrated, like I think a lot of people did, that we were not able to have open and honest discussions. And I'm not against vaccines. I never have been. We give vaccines in our office. I just believe that people should be able to choose. And I don't believe my job is to force anybody to do anything. It's to help people to make the best decision for them, provide informed consent, discuss benefits versus risks, and help people to make a decision. And I didn't feel like that was happening. And so I got frustrated enough, that's when I decided to write a book, which is Between a Shot and a Hard Place. And I thought, well, okay, if I'm going to write a book and I'm gonna talk about this, I have to get as educated as possible because obviously it's such a controversial topic that I better be as educated as I could possibly be to have these discussions. And so that's what led me to write that book. And then I've been talking about it for probably the last 2 years now. And thankfully, things have changed somewhat where at least you're allowed to talk about it and people are much more open to talking about it. And I've been able to get on all sorts of Big podcasts and shows, and and it's been great because people are at least a lot more open to talking about it. Still obviously very very controversial, but the conversations are at least happening, and I think that's really important because that's why I got into writing the book and discussing this in the first place. I just want to have open honest conversations, not to tell you what to do. Like you said, like you know my opinion doesn't matter. What matters is what the research shows and what the facts are, and parents. want their kids to be healthy. That's all they want. And they're so confused right now, you know, do I get my kid more vaccines or fewer vaccines? I hear all these stories and I don't know what's true. And I think it's the most difficult time as a parent to be thinking about the word vaccine because everybody has a different opinion, whether it's the CDC, your doctor, a different doctor, social media influencer. And so you're hearing all these different opinions and stories and you don't know what to believe.

I agree. It's so confusing. So I want to take But take you back to the time of COVID because in California, things were especially bad because you had vaccine mandates. And I have a friend, I don't know if you're friendly with Dr. Jess Petross, but Jess lost her license to practice medicine because she wouldn't give her— she wouldn't require her patients. to get vaccinated. And they actually— California contacted Oregon and she lost her Oregon license as well. Now her license has been restored, but she'll never get that time back. How did you handle that time when there were— were there— were the mandates, did they apply to children as well?

So I mean, with California, I mean, mandate, it's kind of a tricky word because You essentially are mandated, but you're not technically mandated. Like even now you're required to get vaccines for school, but you're not necessarily required to have them. You can homeschool. So same thing with, with the COVID vaccine in general, people were not mandated to get the vaccine. They were just mandated to get it if they wanted to go to school or go to work or to do certain things. So with pediatrics especially, there were never a full-on mandate. And my patients are pretty holistic-minded in the first place. So most didn't want to get it. But for me, we just offered it and basically nobody took it. But we just had the option, you know, if people wanted it, maybe just a couple, you know, very, very few people in my office did it. So that's kind of how we navigate and that's how I've navigated in general. I think where most people have run into trouble is where they start to recommend against the regular schedule or they tell people not to do it. That's generally where we get in trouble where I haven't done that. I've never told people not to do it. I've given them information to help them to make a decision that's right for them and offered it. And I think that's, At least thus far kept me out of trouble. Where yeah, a lot of people did get in trouble. A lot of people, especially in California, have left. A lot of the doctors that were open-minded left, and that's just kind of where we are. It's a tough place. I mean, it's a very tough place if you want to be very opinionated and you want to push people, I guess, against from getting vaccines. But I don't, I don't, I still don't even think that's our job. I think our job is to give information and let people choose, and if they choose not to get it, then that's their choice. And there are risks to every decision that you make. But but yeah, it's it's tough. I mean, New York is really tough, and California is really tough, and a few states are. Really very strict with the vaccine rules. And even here, I mean, most people maybe don't realize that they don't live here, but it's almost impossible to get an exemption in California for vaccines if you want your kid to go to school. I mean, you have to go through public health and you have to have a very extraordinarily serious reaction. Even then, they still might not accept it. So it's basically you have to get your vaccines no matter what here, and, or you choose not to go to school. And I don't think that's right. I don't think school should be tied To vaccines. I think you should decide if you want to do it. Most people do. Most states don't have a requirement, and so most people get vaccines. So I don't think you need to force the people that don't want to do it.

Well, but I mean, for instance, in my situation, I didn't have the choice. Now, my children didn't get vaccinated, but that's a different story. I didn't have the choice of homeschooling them, right? Like, I work full-time. Who's teaching them? Who's doing homeschooling? No one. I mean, the inmates would be running the asylum.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

So that's why I think it's so unfair.

So we make it like it's a choice, but it's not a choice.

It's not a choice. And that's the thing. So it's— so technically, this is how they get away with it. They say, well, it's a choice. You don't have to. You don't have to send your kids to school. You could move. You could, you know, do whatever. But essentially, most people need their kids to go to school or want their kids to go to school. And so you're requiring vaccines for this one thing when kids go to other programs and go to church and go to, you know, all sorts of places where they don't need a vaccine, and then we choose school to be the one place that they do, and we force them to do it. And, and there's no precedent that I'm aware of that that's needed. There are so many states where it's not required, where most people choose to do it, where a few people can get an exemption if they want to or have a serious reaction or family history or whatever it is that excludes them from, from getting vaccines. And that's been okay in a lot of places around the world to do that. So unless something changes, I don't know why we have to force everybody to do vaccines. We should be able to educate about vaccines, and if the vaccine is really worth it for you, if the benefits outweigh the risk, then people should willingly want to choose it. There's no need in my mind to force people to do it. I don't, I don't know why we have to do that. I mean, I know why they do it, but, you know, I don't think that's right way to go about it. I think that's creating mistrust. I mean, I think we have this trust problem when it comes to vaccines. Vaccines are at the lowest rates they've ever been. The fewest people are getting them. We have the most exemption around the country that we've ever had. And I think that's because medicine feels like it needs to force instead of to educate.

So I do want to get into the education part of it because it's not— of course it's happening in offices like yours, but it's not happening in most offices. In most offices, it's the science is settled and you're either getting your vaccine or else, right? Like that's, that's how it's happening. And my friends who are, let's say, vaccine literate, they get a really, really hard time from their, from their providers. And what ends up happening is that they just find creative ways to lie. Well, we'll do it on the next visit, or yeah, I, they got it when they were visiting my What my in-laws in whatever, wherever, like that. This is what's happening is that we're creating this environment of distrust and lies between you and your provider because there's no other choice. I mean, I see the same thing happening with mammogram all the time that, you know, they end up lying to their provider because it's not worth having the fight.

Yeah. I mean, we have a massive trust issue in medicine. Medicine is becoming so dogmatic. It's getting worse and worse and worse in terms of the fact that it's my way or the highway. If you don't agree with my opinion or my belief or what the science has settled or what I believe the science says, then, you know, either we're gonna kick you outta the office or I'm gonna give you a very difficult time. And, and to me that's so frustrating cuz again, that's not the way medicine's supposed to be. We're supposed to be educators, literally. Doctor is docer, means to teach.

Teach, right?

And so your job has always been to educate and not to force. And you can fully believe in vaccines, that's totally fine. The doctor could think that vaccines are the best thing ever and everybody should get them all the time, but it still doesn't mean that you should force that opinion on other people. You should educate them, you should explain to them why you think this vaccine is going to be beneficial for their kids. And ultimately, if they choose not to do it for themselves, if they're pregnant, or for their child As they're growing up, then that's their choice and their risks and benefits. And your job is to explain those risks. And you can say, well, you know, your risk of getting measles is this. And if you get measles, then your risk of dying is this and your risk of getting pneumonia is this. And you let people know. And if they choose to have that risk, everything has a risk. A vaccine has a risk. Not getting a vaccine has a risk. You have to decide what you feel like is right for your child. And that's how we do everything else with cancer medication, right? If you're getting chemo, then There's a risk to that. We tell people, okay, look, your hair might fall out. It's gonna wreck your immune system. That's what it's supposed to do. And so you might get sick and die. Like, that's part of the deal, but it might save your life, right? Here's the upside of why we recommend chemotherapy. And some people are gonna say, yeah, I want that risk. I know that there's a potential positive here in the long run, so I'm gonna do it. And other people are like, look, I don't want to get chemo. I don't want my hair to fall out. I don't want to feel really sick. I'm gonna just not decide to do it. And we're okay with that. Like, we don't force people to do it just cuz we believe that it might be better for them. But with vaccines, that's different. That's just not the way we're moving in medicine. We're moving more towards force and away from personal choice. And I believe that's a very wrong direction. And I think we're seeing it more and more. We saw it with COVID where it works in the short term, right? You can force people in the short term to do it, but in the long term, almost nobody wanted to get it after that. And I think we're seeing that with the rest of the vaccines. Now we're seeing this pushback where people feel, if I was lied to about this and that in COVID, then what else are you lying to me about? And if I was forced to do this based on the research that we're seeing with vaccines during COVID okay, what's actual research for the rest of the vaccines? And so now we're getting all this pushback, especially with the ability to look things up and the ability to have the internet and social media. And so we're seeing a response like never before. And that's why I think you see RFK in the position where he is because you have such a pushback against the mainstream narrative against a lot of our public health and a lot of the medical establishment. And that's really unfortunate. Like, doctors and patients are on the same team. We're on the same team. And it seems like people hate doctors now, and for very good reason. It's like it used to be one of the most respected professions, and now it's probably very low on that list of professions that people actually respect. And that's not a good thing.

I mean, we're supposed to be Yeah, but unfortunately, I think in many instances, medicine and providers became another arm of industry. And they, and they more or less forced it on us by giving us these mandates, right? Like if we don't have a choice and the patients don't have a choice, then we've taken away the autonomy of Providers.

Yeah, I mean, I, I didn't realize this until I would say a few years ago where I really got, was able to get outside of it. We really are an arm of pharma. I mean, you don't realize it, you don't think about it, you're not necessarily consciously doing it.

No, but I agree.

We're taught pharma. I mean, that's what medical school is. It's a pharma model. It didn't used to be, right? And, and it's not that medicines are bad or can't save you. Of course they can. Lots of medications are amazing. But when you go to school, you're taught, all right, here is the symptom. Here are the symptoms. Here's the pill that you take. Here's what the diagnosis is. Here's the medication. Here's the disease. Here's the vaccine. That's the model that we learn in. And you don't learn a lot of the other stuff. You don't learn a lot of the prevention. You don't learn a lot of the diet and exercise and sleep and how to think about things more holistically. It's just, it's just not the way we're taught. And so when you get out of practice, you're like, okay, well, here are the symptoms. Here's the pill. And that is marketing. I mean, we don't realize that the news is bought by pharma and media is bought by pharma and medicine is bought by pharma and the journals are— all of them are mostly funded by pharma. And they're not doing it because they're just like the friendliest people in the world. They're doing it because if they pay for most of the marketing, Let's say for the news, then it's unlikely the news is gonna say anything bad about them. And, and they know that. And, and when you're talking about, let's say medical training, well, if pharma funds the schools and the journals, then you go to school and you learn, okay, well, this is the best study that we have. It's in the New England Journal of Medicine. This is the medication that you should be taking, and this is what the, the best clinical trial states. And, and that's all true, but it's still— biased towards pharma. And that doesn't make it good or bad, it just makes it what it is. And so you don't also get the trial of, I don't know, vitamin D or sunshine or exercise or whatever it is compared to that. And that's not the New England Journal of Medicine because nobody's paying for that. And so you only have one side of the information. And that's very problematic long term, because then you have a bunch of providers, especially doctors who are very pharma biased, because that's what we're Taught, and we don't think of it like that. But we're literally an arm of pharma because that's just the education that we're getting. So it's not good or bad; it's just reality. But I think that it's becoming a problem because we've lost, I guess, the forest through the trees, and we've lost all of the other more natural modalities that have been around forever that are also very useful. And it's not like we're that much healthier, right? I mean, maybe we're living longer than we were 100 years ago. But we have chronic disease like we've never had before. So we need to have some humility, I think, to say, look, there are some things that we're doing much better and medicine is really good at some things and emergency rooms and things like that. And that's great and that can keep us alive longer and our food, our nutrition, we have some nutrition, so therefore people are living longer, but we're also getting way more chronic disease than we used to have. So maybe some of the things we used to do Are not so bad. And maybe some of the things we're doing recently are not the best. And maybe we can alter course and try to live longer, but also live healthier. And I think that should be our goal, right? And there should be nothing wrong with having a little bit of humility to say maybe not everything we're doing is the best. And with vaccines, we really need to have some humility to say, hey, maybe we don't have the best vaccine program humanity's ever going to have. And maybe there are some ways we can make it safer or better. Maybe there are some vaccines we don't need. need anymore, or maybe we don't need as many of them, or maybe we could take the same vaccines and make a better version of them. But no one's ever going to do that if we put vaccines on a pedestal and say they're the best thing ever, and no one ever gets harmed, and we never have a problem with them. Instead of pushing back, nobody pushes back on pharma because there's no way to do that. I mean, they have immunity, so you really can't sue them. So there's nothing to make them improve vaccines.

So I do want to push back a little bit because When you're talking about what is available in the literature, and you said there's, there's no qualifier, it's not good or bad, I actually do think it's bad that people don't get more than what is deemed publishable in the New England Journal or, or that kind of thing. And also, there are many publications that get presented to the New England Journal and are not commercially positive, right? And so they just don't get Exactly. It's like there's a lot of information suppression. It's selection. It's a very controlled narrative. And people think that that makes it truth. And if you're not telling both sides of the story, or if you're not allowing for discussion and for the varying opinions, then— and for the varying science. Then it's an it's I do think that that's a problem. The other thing that I want to stress is yes, we do have more longevity, but we don't have healthgevity. And the the last ten to fifteen years of most people's lives in the U.S. are not spent like their life before then. They're not active. They're in nursing homes. They're debilitated. And we may be living longer, but for sure we're not living healthier. And And we have kind of created this society that is designed to be dependent on pharmaceuticals for the last however many years of your life. And it's not, it's not a whole existence. So I agree with you that that's a problem. And if all we do is take longevity as the indicator, we are missing the forest for the trees.

Yeah. And, and I wanna say to add to that, because, you know, there, there's one end of the spectrum, we're talking about longevity, and then you talk about the other spectrum, which is kids, which is what I deal with. Right. And, and every, basically every single chronic disease is skyrocketing, right? Every one of them you see.

Including—

IBD and autoimmune conditions and neurodevelopmental concerns and cancer. I mean, every single one is going through the roof and younger and younger, and the best Easiest example people to remember is diabetes, right? You have adult onset diabetes. It's literally called adult onset diabetes. That's very often happening in kids now, 10, 12, 13. We're seeing more and more kids developing diabetes. Like a third of kids have diabetes or prediabetes. I mean, the numbers are just absolutely insane.

Is it that high?

It is that high. So we have a major problem with our health. Most people are either Very unhealthy and have a chronic condition, or just teetering on the edge, and one little thing pushes them over the cliff. And you know, if talking about autism, then you're talking about rates of you know one in ten thousand, one in a thousand just a few decades ago, and now we're talking about rates of you know one in thirty, one in twenty. I mean, it's it's insane what the numbers are, and they just keep going up, and we have to figure out what's going on. I think most people know. to some degree what's going on, but we're not seeing that change. We're not righting the ship. And we have to get back to the basics. We have to think about our food and our exercise and sunlight and just the very basic things. I mean, that is what's going on. And it is possible that we could go for a better trajectory in the long run, but we're not—

We can have the pendulum swing back.

We can, we can. And I don't think it would take very long. I think it's not simple, obviously, but there are many, many things that we could do to swing the pendulum. Back to a place where we could still live very long, but also I think live a little healthier and decrease those rates of chronic disease. We're not going to get rid of it totally. I mean, we live in a world with chemicals and that's going to be there, but we can really put a big effort into minimizing it and trying to bring back local food and prioritizing exercise and movement. And I think if we did that, we would see a massive improvement overall in our long-term health. And it's possible, but it's obviously not simple and we'd have to Even acknowledge that we have a problem before we're gonna see a solution. And, and, and of, of anything that I would say, you know, you can love Secretary Kennedy or, or hate him, but I would say by far the most important thing that he's done, the best thing that he's done is he's made awareness of a lot of these issues like never before. Uh, and the first step to even correcting it is to talk about it. And, and so I think you can't, you, you'd have to be living under a rock to not be aware of chronic conditions and the concerns and autism and vaccines and all these things that, that are You know, all over the news, whether they're, you know, smearing him or praising him, but at least it's out there. At least we're talking about it and we weren't before. So I think that's a very good first step in moving in a little bit of a better direction, that at least there's a war, you know, whether it's on social media or whatever, discussing these issues.

Yeah.

So that way we can actually fix them. And, you know, hopefully over time people won't just be spewing out so much hate, but they'll be like, all right, I like that idea, that's important, let's do this, we don't like this, but at least we're gonna Work towards a better solution as opposed to just ignoring the problem.

Yeah, I agree. And it is the definition of insanity to continue to do the same thing and expect a different outcome. And so while everyone is outraged by the number of children with autism, they're outraged with the amount of chronic disease, they're outraged and horrifying— horrified with women developing breast cancer younger and younger, but we can't expect If we have a third of the children with diabetes or prediabetes, and breast cancer's a metabolic disease, those diabetic and prediabetic children, when nothing changes, become diabetic adults. And diabetic adults have a far greater risk of breast cancer. And if they get breast cancer, they have a far greater risk of dying of breast cancer. So why are we surprised? When we have changed nothing other than to say, "Hey, we have more disease," and no one's asking why.

Right, exactly.

Sticking with that pharmaceutical model of we're just going to suppress this symptom, and no one's asking why.

Right, and and you're not going to fix this problem with a pill. It's just it's not going to happen because it's a lot of little decisions. It's what we do on a daily basis for many many years that's leading to this chronic disease epidemic, and. That is why I strongly believe that at least as a parent, if you are mindful of this, if you are aware of the trends, you can do things differently. And that makes a massive difference in your risk profile. And I have seen it personally because I am in an office where, you know, people are self-selecting. They're already gonna be somewhat naturally minded. And compared to when I used to work in the hospital and used to take care of patients 10, 15 years ago where every other kid had an issue, most of the kids were overweight or obese. I was dealing with chronic conditions and giving out medications multiple times a day, every day, because that's what you did in the hospital. Now I almost never give out a medication. I have to look up every dose because I have to give it out so infrequently. There are very few chronic conditions, not zero. I mean, there certainly are still some, but it's way, way lower than the average is. And it's not because I'm some magical doctor. It's because people are more conscious of what they eat and what they do. And that makes a massive difference. And I think Well, I know that you have a lot of power over your health and your children's health, and all those little decisions, they add up and they make a huge difference. And there's no magic. I mean, you can still get sick and do all the right things, but you're gonna way decrease your chances if you are focused on health. And that's something that comes into our minds. We were taught, we grew up in an era where everything became faster, cheaper, easier, and TV dinners, eat quick, you know, get something from the store as opposed to making it, you know, Grandparents, they all cooked every meal and they were home and they had big family meals, and that just wasn't as much of a priority in the last few decades. And we just have to go back to that. I mean, that those are just simple things, but those little decisions they add up. You're going to eat cake one time; that's not the end of the world. But if your kids are eating junk food every single day and they're not getting the nutrients they need, it should not be a surprise that your kids get sick and your body can't handle it and their immune system can't function. They you're literally built of what you eat, and if you're not feeding It, what it needs. If you give a plant, you know, a bunch of chemicals instead of water, it's not going to do very well. Like, that's what's happening with our kids. Like, we're just not, we're not giving us the inputs that we need to be healthy.

And that was a very tightly controlled narrative put out there by the food industry, by big food that, and they were targeting mothers and telling them like, your time is more valuable. You should be doing something more important than cooking for your family. So let us do the cooking for you. And You know, I don't want to make it like it was this big conspiracy, but more or less it was in that if we do the cooking for you, as it turns out, we can make sure that you develop diseases that require pharmaceuticals. So, you know, it was a great marriage between big food and big pharma, and we bought it hook, line, and sinker because I, you know, the narrative sounds good to me. My time is more important. Right? I look at all the things I can do. I can go to work, I can earn money, I can contribute to my family if I don't have to go shopping and cook dinner and clean up. And, you know, so it worked. It was a great ad campaign. Unfortunately, it's had a multi-generational, horrible, horrible impact as a result.

Yeah, I doubt at the beginning it was very nefarious. I think there was a lot of good intention of You know, we want to give moms, women, you know, more time to do other things and not just to have, just to feel like you have to cook. And there, these things are available. And, and I think that's great. You know, if you wanna work, that's wonderful. But I, I, I think that there, there is always something that's lost, right? There's something that's gained and something that's lost. And if, if women wanna work, wonderful, you should. But if you are not home cooking, if nobody's cooking, if dad's not cooking, if mom's not cooking, if no one's home cooking, Then you lose something. You you have to have something that's pre-prepared. It's not fresh, and if you're doing that every single day for many many years, then you're getting all those extra chemicals. You're not getting the nutrients that you would get if you're getting home-cooked meals every single day, and that's just something that is reality. It's it's not about you know I would say like sexism or you know men women whatever it is. That's just reality. That's just how it is. And so we have to think about those things and say okay, you know well if if I want my kids to eat. Healthy and I want prepared food that I'm gonna make or someone in my family's gonna make. How are we gonna do that? Are we gonna pass off, take turns? Are both parents gonna make food? Are we gonna work till, you know, not, not till 5 o'clock, but till 3 o'clock so I can be home making food? I don't know, whatever it is. But these are things that we just weren't thinking about. And I don't think there was a reason to necessarily think about it back then because there wasn't the chronic disease epidemic that we had now. So people were just not thinking about that. They're like, oh, I, I wanna go work. I can work. Okay, great. But you lose something with that if you have something fast food.

For sure.

Then you don't get the freshness and the quality. So that's a reality that we live with now. And I do think that we have to come to reality of what that is and then make some decisions moving forward. Do we want that for our kids? Do we want that for our future? Can we find a happy middle somewhere? Can we, you know, work part-time? Can parents work part-time some of the time if that's possible for them so they can be home more? I don't know, whatever it is. I mean, it's obviously not a simple thing because every family is different and, you know, not everybody can just Stay home and cook every meal. I get that, but you have to be realistic with what you're losing. And I don't think that our parents' generation and even our generation really thought about health in those equations. We thought about cheaper, faster, easier, and I think health needs to be in that equation for sure.

But they also didn't have to deal with what we deal with today either. So when they made that decision towards convenience, it was also. A totally different story. I mean, even Wonder Bread then and Wonder Bread now, it's no wonder we're sick, right? And everything that exists now that existed 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago barely resembles what was put out 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. And the quality of the products and the chemical burden in the products Now eclipses what was, what was then. So we, we are, even if it didn't start off nefarious, and I believe you, it probably didn't, it has certainly become something that is egregious.

Agreed. It's egregious and the entire food system would need to change for us to really be healthy. But in the short term, that's not realistic. It's not going to happen, but you can change Yes. What you choose to buy, and you can change what you choose to eat. And the more and more people that do that is going to change the system. Because if more and more people choose to go to farmers markets and choose to get fresh food, then more and more people are gonna create farms and create places where you can go to get that kind of food. And then you're gonna see a feedback loop over time where that's gonna become more and more accessible for families. And, and that's what I think we need. We need From a government level, support of that, but from a family level, you just got to do what you got to do for your own family to the best of your ability. And I think you don't have to get overwhelmed by it. You don't have to change everything. You don't have to move to a farm or move to the middle of the woods to be healthy. But whatever you can do, whatever you can afford, however much decisions you can make, try to buy healthy, local, fresh food wherever you can, even if it's part of that food. At least you're getting some of those nutrients. And I think that gets most people Far enough. But it starts with recognizing that there's a problem, recognizing the system is so screwed up and we're, we're so down the road in terms of these problems that right now you have to kind of recognize what's going on, like you said, and say, well, I get it. Like this Wonder Bread's not really good for my kids or whatever, you know, snacks were not really great for my kids. Maybe I can get better versions of that. So let's start there.

So I wanna get back to What we started to talk about in the beginning, which was that my opinion doesn't matter. All that matters is the science, the education. You don't tell people not to vaccinate, you give them the facts. So let's start to lay that out because I know that vaccine usage is at the lowest that it has been. When it was at the highest, we were no healthier. Our children were no healthier. It had no impact on chronic disease, or maybe it even had a negative impact on chronic disease because didn't, you know, the Del Bigtree documentary that he did, An Inconvenient Study. Didn't that study that came out of the Henry Ford Medical Center show that almost across the board, the vaccinated population had more chronic disease than the unvaccinated?

That's what that study showed that didn't ever get published, but it did. That's what it showed.

Has it still not been published?

No, it was never published. So the— I mean, that's the whole controversy, and that's the reason why the documentary happened in the first place. So for that study, Henry Ford's a major center. They have very good data in general, and a very pro-vaccine infectious disease doctor decided, agreed to do a study looking at vaccinated versus unvaccinated. And I guess even before getting into that, so I think it's important people realize, like, there really aren't studies that study vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids, like totally unvaccinated versus vaccinated kids. Those are almost never done. There really aren't studies like that, even though people say that they are. It's not actually true when you dig into the research. And we can talk about that in a second. So this was a truly vaccinated versus unvaccinated population. They were looking at the Henry Ford data that they had. And what they— what this researcher found was not what he expected. He found that on most of the things that he was looking at, the vaccinated kids were far less healthy than the unvaccinated kids, had far higher rates of chronic chronic disease. And the researcher decided that, you know, so never got published, right? And so Del Bigtree was the one who did the documentary. He was the one who kind of pushed him to do the research in the first place. And he later on went back to him. It's like, why isn't it published? Like, why aren't you publishing this? You said you would. And he took a hidden camera with him and he recorded. And basically the guy said, well, you know, I just know that it's going to ruin my career. And there's gonna be a lot of pushback and I'm gonna get in a lot of trouble. So I just don't want to do this. And mainstream media was like, oh, you know, the data was bad. And Henry Ford didn't allow it to come out and, you know, whatever, a lot of different stuff. But you can see on camera when this guy actually talks, he said like, no, no, I just, I didn't publish it. I didn't want to publish it. I didn't submit it for publication. I didn't get it peer-reviewed. I was just scared for my career. And so, you know, it's hard to know because it wasn't peer-reviewed. So who knows, you know, if there was some problems with that data or what, but that's not the point. Like the point is that kind of stuff needs to get out there. That kind of stuff needs to be peer-reviewed. It needs to be put in the literature. And then the people who disagree with it need to say why they disagree with it. And say, okay, this is what you did wrong. Here's where the data is bad. Let's redo it. Let's redo it at Harvard. Let's redo it in Finland. Let's redo it in Norway. Let's redo it wherever. And and let's see if we find the same thing. And and if we adjust it and do a better job at it, and we don't find that, okay, great. So you know vaccines are not causing these issues. But if you do it in ten different places and everybody finds the same thing, like oh oh okay like what? It's not to say vaccines are bad. It's to say okay well why are Kids having more eczema? Why are kids having more autoimmune condition if they're getting vaccines? Is there an ingredient? Like, what could we do to adjust that? Like, maybe there's something in there that's creating that problem, and maybe you take that out, you could have the benefit without the risk. But you can't even have that discussion because every time any study shows any sort of problem, the researchers lose their license. They get debunked. They get kicked out of there. So nobody wants to do it. And so you see that over and over and over again. And the only studies you get are the super pro-vaccine studies from CDC or other places like that. And they always find vaccines are the best thing ever. And so it's not to say that research is bad, but it's like you have biased research and you don't have the other side. And I think that's a big problem because you want—

So what is out there? What is the research? Because the industry keeps coming back to the science is settled. What is the science?

Right. I mean, well, the first thing is if anybody says that, that's, you know, ridiculous. You should stop listening at that point because the, the very nature of science is never settled. All the great discoveries are always from someone who disagrees with the science and then like, oh, I don't think this is right. And then you research it, you find it's actually wrong. So we have the best possible evidence. We make decisions based on the best possible evidence. That's how science works. That's what we do as doctors. You take in the research, you synthesize it, you say, all right, this is what the evidence shows right now. So this is why I'm making these But if you start saying the science is settled, then you know that you don't understand science because you should always be testing and reevaluating, especially as things change. And nothing changes more than vaccines over the last 20— there's so many more. So the research that we did 20 years ago, the vaccine might be different. We have way more vaccines. So, you know, you should never say something like the science is settled. You should just say based on the best evidence that we have, here's my conclusion. That would be more reasonable. But what do we have? So The research that we have, I think we have very good research on what diseases are out there, right? We know what the disease is. We know in general what will happen if you get it or what the risk is of death or serious condition, serious disease. We have a pretty decent understanding of short-term risks from the vaccines. We understand how well the vaccines work in general in terms of giving you antibodies and having immunity from the diseases. So that's the stuff that we understand pretty well. What I think we don't understand very well is the long-term risks and the cumulative risks from vaccines, because it's just not how we study them. I mean, a company generally studies it before it comes out. They study it on a few kids, you know, maybe a couple thousand, maybe 10,000 if you're lucky. They study it for a few months, maybe a year or 2 if you're lucky. So, you're not really looking at long-term complications, and you're generally looking at that vaccine versus another vaccine. So, you're studying your vaccine versus a different vaccine. Yeah. Not against no vaccines, and you're not studying it long term, and you're not studying it in the setting of getting all your other vaccines. So having an understanding of that those long term risks, I think, is what's really missing from that picture, and I think what's very important to parents. And yet we just kind of say, oh, they're safe. But I don't think we really know. I I don't think we really have a great understanding of the full picture of safety of vaccines. I think we know that it can protect you from measles. But that's not the full question. It's not the full question. It's not, do I want your kid to die from measles? Of course I do not, right? Of course we don't want anybody to get measles. But the question is, if it protects you from measles, then at what cost, right? What are the risks? And, and, and okay, it's not just measles. Okay, so if you get the measles vaccine and the whooping cough vaccine and the polio vaccine and the rotavirus vaccine, you add those all together. Okay, what is your risk of having a complication from that versus what are the benefits of the protection from these diseases? That's the question that parents have, and that's not the answer that I think we have.

I agree. How does the vaccine schedule look different now from when you started to practice?

It's not that different than when I started to practice. There's certainly more. I mean, there's always more, right? So you never really take anything away in the last 30, 40 years. It's always more. There are a few more vaccines than when I started to practice. Most of the vaccines were added. So 1986, Was the year when the Vaccine Act went to effect. So that's a really important date because that's basically where there was a bunch of lawsuits and everyone was very worried that the vaccine manufacturers were gonna go outta business with all these lawsuits. So the government stepped in and decided that we're not gonna allow you to sue vaccine manufacturers anymore. And so if you, if you do have a problem from a vaccine, then there's a special program that's set up from the government. You would go to that and the vaccine manufacturers have basically immunity. It's not exactly immunity, but it's basically immunity. It's really impossible to sue them or very, very difficult. So after that point, there was a huge incentive switch to create more vaccines because if you could get a vaccine on the schedule, then you can't sue them, which is usually the way that there are checks and balances, right? If you have, if you make a product in pharma in general, they study it for a very long time because they don't wanna get sued because if they, if they're killing you or causing problems down the road, then they're gonna lose a lot of money in the long run. But with vaccines, they can actually do that so they can get a vaccine on the schedule. Then everybody gets it and they can't get sued. So that's a huge incentive switch, which really no other product has. And so you saw in the, you know, 1990s, early 2000s, lots of vaccines. It was kind of for, for different reasons too. I mean, obviously if you can protect against more diseases, that's good, but that's not looking at the safety picture from those vaccines. So you see more and more coming in. And then in the last couple years we had, you know, more people are getting flu shots, there's COVID shots, there's an RSV shot. So there are a few more vaccines that are recommended than when I started.

And What has happened with those diseases? Are there less of them? Are we making— what impact are the vaccines having?

So I mean, it depends how far you go back, right? So if you go back to the time before any vaccines were really on the market, so you're talking, you know, maybe like almost 100 years ago at this point. Back then, a lot of these diseases were very deadly, right? So a lot of these diseases, you had lots of cases and were extremely deadly. And this was also at a time when you didn't have great sanitation, you didn't have great nutrition. lot of other things going on. So somebody got sick and then they were much more likely to die from pneumonia or, or some sort of complication. They didn't have antibiotics either. So there's just a lot of things that were different, you know, a couple hundred years ago.

Right.

Then as you get closer to modern times and closer to when vaccines started, what you see is the death rate from basically all of those diseases plummeted to nearly zero. So almost all diseases had almost a zero death rate. Not that there were no cases, there were still lots of cases of some of the diseases, but they just usually you didn't, you didn't die from it. Might get really sick, but just generally the serious complications were very, very low before vaccines ever hit the market. So that's something that's really important to understand because I think in modern medicine we have this thought that vaccines just saved everybody and everyone would just be dead if we don't have vaccines, which is not true. Most people, most of the deaths were already gone before vaccines hit the market. And you can really think about that with the things that we don't have vaccines for, like let's say tuberculosis or scarlet fever, right? Because those used to kill lots of people too, and now we don't have vaccines. For those who are— we don't have— well, tuberculosis does have a vaccine, but we don't use it here. But most people, we have a very low death rate from those diseases, but we don't have vaccines for them. So you'd wonder if we didn't have vaccines for the other things, whether the death rate would be equally low. But that's not the whole story because still lots of people can get sick from some of these diseases and you can certainly have lots of complications. The best, I think, impression for people, the best, what comes to mind for a lot of parents is chickenpox, right? Because we lived through it, right? All of us had chickenpox. It was very common when we were younger and we don't really see it anymore in kids. So to say that vaccines do nothing is also incorrect because a lot of people got chickenpox. A lot of people get sick from chickenpox. A lot of people miss school from chickenpox. A lot of parents miss work from chickenpox. Some kids do get really sick. It's possible to get meningitis. You can get a bad skin infection. So yeah, usually you get chickenpox, it's not a big deal, but if millions of people get it, a few people get really sick. So there absolutely is some real benefit from, from that vaccine. It's just, you know, again, you're weighing risk versus benefits. So that's where we are today. The risk from a lot of these diseases is quite low. Most of these diseases have very, very few cases. With the exception of maybe measles, which has gone up a little bit the last couple of years, most of the diseases are very uncommon. And you could say that's because of vaccines, or you could say it's just because the diseases aren't as common anymore. It's hard to know, but I think for sure vaccines certainly play a role, no question, in the fact that we don't see a lot of these diseases. But that Isn't the full— that's where medicine stops. They're like, well, without these, we'd have all these diseases and everyone would die. And my counter to that is, okay, I don't disagree that vaccines have a lot of benefit, but the question is at what cost? And if we can ask that, then maybe we could say, okay, well, maybe the cost-benefit analysis for the measles vaccine is there, you know, but maybe not for polio right now. Like maybe we don't have to give kids 4 polio vaccines in the first year or 2 of life. I don't want kids getting polio, but since we haven't had a case in 40 or 50 years, maybe that's something you could give One vaccine when you're older, and that would be good enough. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but we should at least be able to have those discussions and evaluate Haemophilus influenzae. Again, very severe if you get it, but there's a couple cases every year. So does every kid need 3 or 4 of those in the first year? Um, you know, maybe we can prioritize some and deprioritize some other ones. So that, that to me is where the questions should be. And I think if we could have real conversations about this, then we could actually maybe Start to think about how we minimize risk while maximizing benefit.

But how do you explain the findings of that Henry Ford study in that, how do you explain that almost universally, I think there was only one disease, like maybe ADHD, that didn't have more cases in the vaccinated population than in, in the unvaccinated, but everything else seemed to have a negative pull or result or signal— let's, let's use the, the scientific term signal— in the vaccinated population. So how do you explain that?

I mean, you can't because you'd have to look at the data and to understand it, right? Because the explanations could be the data could be bad, the data could be wrong, um, you know, or it could be right, right? I mean, that could be what it actually is, or either could be a biased sample data. So one way to look at it would be, well, you know, maybe The people who are unvaccinated don't ever go to the doctor. So they actually did have some of those diseases, but it was never recorded. So imagine if a bunch of your patients that you say are unvaccinated were only seen till they were 4 months old, and then they were never seen again in that system. They went, they moved out of Detroit. So each of those kids, if you don't account for that, I'm not saying they didn't account for them. I'm just saying if you didn't account for it, you could be like, all right, there are 1,000 kids in this study and they're all unvaccinated, but they're only 4 months. And and so you you count that against kids that are vaccinated, but the kids that are vaccinated, you have them till they're twenty. Kids aren't vaccinated until four months. Well, all those kids don't have any diseases. Well, that's not true. They might. You just don't have the data on it because you don't have it after that. So that that's where the it's important to have people look at it and kind of look at the data and look how it was looked at and have a fair, reasonable sample because there are ways where a sample could be biased, and then you don't actually get the results that are true. You just get a result that you. Be fine, but if you adjust for it, if you adjust for the problems in your data, you can actually find the true result. So it is absolutely possible. There certainly are many ways that you could explain why that data would have found what it found. But that, but that's the point of science, right? That is the point of research. The answer to your question is, well, we don't know. That's the point of peer review. Like they're supposed to review it. You're supposed to publish it. You're supposed to look at it. You're supposed to have a bunch of people dig into it and say, okay, well, we disagree with it. Here's why. Let's redo it. Let's redo it with that data. Maybe we can do it again, but we can do it with different data and we see if we find the same thing. You don't dismiss it. You don't say, well, this person's a crazy crackpot. The data is all bad. We're just going to throw it away and never look at it because we didn't find what we wanted to find. You say, that's not what I expected. Is that true? That's how we get to somewhere better. And that's not what happened here. And so again, you have this, I would say, very good study, very important study that we don't push through the literature.

That literally I mean, the intention and the aim was to prove that vaccines were beneficial.

Correct.

That was, that was what he set out on.

Right? That's why that's important. Because when you find what you don't expect to find, that is where you're going to oftentimes find the best research. A lot of the major academic breakthroughs or scientific breakthroughs were from somebody who did something by accident, right? Like that, that's what happens. You find something you didn't expect to find, you're like, Penicillin, it kills bacteria. Great, right? It's like that, that, that's how it goes. And, and so you're not supposed to dismiss it because pharma doesn't want it or doesn't like the results. You're supposed to say, that's interesting. Okay, well let's, let's repeat that. And, and we don't get that with vaccines. We just don't. There's just such a push to never talk about anything that's a problem and to tear down anybody who talks about it in any sort of a negative way because the establishment's so ingrained everywhere. And, and, and People don't realize that. They think, oh, it's not a conspiracy. It just is. That is how it is. I mean, they own everything. So they are obviously going to work to keep a narrative that promotes their product as opposed to having it torn down. Why wouldn't they want that? Why are they going to study their products for problems? They can't get sued. So what would be the reason to find a problem with your product? Somebody else has to, but who is doing that? Who is looking for a problem? And if they do look for the problem, they lose their job or career. So how do we expect it to change if that's the way things go?

And I think that that was RFK's platform, not necessarily, you know, we should get rid of vaccines, is that we should have transparency around them and the vaccine producers should be held accountable. So, you know, if they harm someone, They they should take responsibility, and he's you know been ostracized for for even daring to bring that up.

Yeah, he I mean you know it's easy to forget that he was doing all sorts of environmental law for a very long time, and was you know very highly regarded and and very popular you know for a long time. And then he took up the vaccine issue, and then you know was called the crazy crackpot loon, and and has been. Focused on that to some degree ever, ever since. And, you know, I've never heard him once say that he doesn't believe in, you know, vaccines or doesn't think that people should be allowed to get vaccines. He just has studied the literature extensively and, and has been dealing and working in, in the world of vaccine injury for a very long time. And he, he has his opinions and beliefs based on what he's seen. And he has, I think, strongly believes that there needs to be reform in the vaccine space. And he also understands very acutely what the true research actually is versus what people say that it is. And I mean, nothing is more clear than when you look at the vaccine autism research, because you hear it over and over again. Um, you know, vaccines are safe and effective, and vaccines don't cause autism, and vaccines are proven not to cause autism. And, you know, when I went in to write my book, I have obviously been in that space where I was aware of You know, some of the other opinions, especially when it comes to autism being an integrative space. And so what I thought I was going to find was a very strong, robust literature on vaccines and autism that show that vaccines don't cause autism. And then there'd be some other studies that were like, you know, it's not all vaccines don't cause autism. There's some other things that are a little more fringe, but they'd be there. I have never been more shocked in my life when I actually looked at the research and realized that we really don't have almost any research on All vaccines and autism. It's just not been studied. We have studies on MMR and autism. We have studies on thimerosal, the mercury component. But we haven't studied all vaccines and autism. So to say categorically that the science is settled, it's so crazy. Like, I have a master's in epidemiology. I could not believe it. I thought I was wrong. I read as many things as I could. I had to stop, go back. I read Paul Offit's book, who's a major pro-vaccine individual. Peter Hotez. All these people that were like super, super pro-vaccine. Read their vaccines and autism. Some sections. Like, I have to be missing this. Like, I have to be missing this research. We don't have research on the vaccines in the first year and whether they cause autism. Like, that's not been studied. We've done hep B, pneumococcus, whooping cough, hep B. I mean, it's barely been studied. Even the studies that have been, you know, maybe show there's some association there. They're not very good studies, but we haven't studied it. Like, we haven't studied vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. The only things we studied are MMR. So how could you say that we've categorically known that? All you can say is we don't know. The studies we have so far don't show that vaccines cause autism. That's reasonable, right? There was a lot of concern on MMR, and they did some studies on MMR, and those studies haven't shown vaccines that MMR cause autism. But to say all vaccines don't cause autism, you should just be saying we don't know, we want to get it. Like, how can you say that without actually getting that research? How could we not go and get that research? It's so important. We have all these parents that blame vaccines for their kids' autism. That's really important information to say, hey, you know, they're not blaming chocolate. They think it might be the vaccine that kid got. Shouldn't we study that?

And I mean, is anyone getting MMR alone that we can, that we can say, well, it's not vaccines? Because I think that most kids are not getting just one vaccine. They're getting a number of them.

And you get, and you would, I would think that if something were to cause autism, it would be a cumulative effect, not generally just one, right? And, and you get a lot of vaccines in the first year. So to say, oh, we studied MMR and therefore that doesn't increase your risk. Well, what about the other 10 vaccines that you got in the first year? Like, yeah. And again, that doesn't mean that it does. I'm not saying that it does. I'm saying it should be on the table with everything else as a possible risk factor for increasing autism. There's certainly a genetic component. There's absolutely no question about it. But autism's not one thing. There are many things that can cause autism, and especially when we're talking about severe regressive autism kids that were developing You know, quote unquote normally, and then lose their milestones. And, and depending on which study you look at, somewhere between 15 and 50, 60% of parents who have kids with severe regressive autism blame vaccines. They got a vaccine right before, they feel like it, they regress right after. Now, could that be correlation? Could it just have happened? They just got a vaccine. Sure, that's possible, but that's what they think. And they have no reason to lie. And you know, crazy anti-vaxxer. They're an anti— they literally went to get a vaccine. They're not anti-vaxxers.

Right.

That's just what they believe. And, and, and, you know, if you got a medication, you gave your kid, I don't know, Motrin, and then they died that day, you'd be like, should we look at this? Like, you would never call them anti, you know, ibuprofen, right? You'd be like, that's what they think. Let's look at it. Let's study it. Let's see if there's something wrong with that batch. You know, but when it comes to vaccines, you can't do that. And that's just nutty. Like, we should study it. And, and I think given that public health thinks that vaccines are just that important, They should be the first thing that we should be studying and say, look, we studied a million kids. We looked at 300,000 kids who were unvaccinated totally and 700,000 kids that are vaccinated, and there's no difference on autism rates between the two groups. Here you go, RFK. Like, you would think that would be front page news that you would do it. You— we have how many huge data sets across the country that look at kids that are vaccinated, unvaccinated, and yet there are zero studies that have ever been published on millions of kids that look at kids that have zero vaccines versus all their vaccines. That could be done tomorrow. Yeah. So the only, the only thing I can think of is they looked and they didn't like what they found. That's all I can think.

Yeah. So you think that that information is there and it's just not being shared with us?

It's there. I mean, the data is there. There are massive, huge datasets that definitely record who's gotten vaccines and who hasn't. And you can certainly look at different diseases that would be recorded in your patient records over time. And, you know, Kaiser has that. All sorts of places have massive datasets and vaccine safety data link, and there are many different, and just not in America, but also around the world. And you could take it, you could do easy studies to look at. Okay, here are the kids with zero vaccines. Here are the kids with some vaccines. What are their rates of asthma? You know, and you can do that in a few days, and you can pan out. And if you found no problems, that would be front page news, and that would be the first thing that I would do when someone like Secretary Kenny says, "Oh, I think vaccines cause autism." Well, look at this study with 10 million people with zero vaccines. They have the exact same rates of autism. It's not that hard to do. It's harder to do a prospective study. They should still do it going forward, but that's harder. But at least from datasets, we have them all over the world. So the question has to be, why isn't it done? I thought it was done. You know, I'm someone who went through, I assumed because we get told over and over again, we have this robust data. So I assumed it was done. And then you go look and you're like, where is it? It's never been done. No researcher has ever taken the dataset and said, let's look at vaccinated versus unvaccinated and publish that in New England Journal of Medicine. That's weird. I'm sorry. That's weird. That's all I can say.

It is. Is that the thing that surprised you the most when you did the research for Between a Shot and a Hard Place?

Yeah, by far. I mean, I, I thought that that research would have been done because of the strength of the way that we're told that we know that these things are not related. Especially someone who's done a master's in epidemiology. It's like, I know how research is done. I've done literature reviews. It's really hard to make strong claims regardless of how strong the research is. But when you have research that weak, you would never make those kind of strong claims. You just say, this is the best research that we have. Here's what we think. And that's totally fine. But when you realize that we really haven't studied it that strongly and we definitely haven't studied cumulative effects of vaccine, I think that's very surprising to me because we're giving these to healthy kids and we should be really sure that we're not causing issues. And especially in the setting now where we have this chronic disease epidemic and explosion, And most of these diseases are super rare. I think it's very reasonable to reevaluate that and say, okay, what are the risks from these? And, and, and do we need to do them all? And if more of these create some issues, then is that a problem? And can we decrease that? Like, do we need to give hepatitis B to every newborn? Does every kid need to get polio vaccine when they're 2 months? Like, those are things that can be reevaluated because right now what you hear is serious complications are rare. You know, one in a million. One in a million kids get anaphylaxis. But there are a lot of things that are rare, right? A lot of things. And if a vaccine increases your risk even one in a million, you know, increases one in a risk million of breast cancer and one in a million of thyroid cancer and one in a million of anaphylaxis and one in a million of a seizure, and list out a thousand different things or two thousand different things. Each one of those is rare. But if you add those together, and then you do that twenty times over twenty different vaccines, one in a million. becomes, well, I get a 1 in 1,000 risk of some serious complication, or 1 in 100, or whatever it is. I don't know what the number is because, you know, it obviously depends on what that is. And that's assuming that every reaction is 1 in a million. But parent wants to know, if I give my kid vaccines, what is the risk that's going to increase them of having a problem? So yes, it might be 1 in a million risk of anaphylaxis, but it might be 1 in 1,000 of having a serious complication, or 1 in 100, or 1 in 20. I don't know what that number is. It could be, it could be 1 in a million. But that is the question. And if we had that information, then parents can make an informed decision because they would say, well, you know, my risk of getting measles is this. I don't want my kid to get measles and the risk of them dying is this. But if I get the measles vaccine, the risk of having complication is 1 in 100,000. I like those odds. I'm going to give— I know there's a little risk, but I don't want my kid to get measles, so I'm going to give them the vaccine. That's how you do science. That's how you make an educated decision for your child. And that's how we get it to a better place. Where people trust doctors because they have the pros and the cons, and they can make a decision that they feel like is right for them. And ultimately, the doctor's probably going to say, "Well, I think your risk of having a complication is lower than the risk from the actual disease, so I recommend the vaccine." Great.

But what? But what is happening now, and how do people make an educated decision now? Because they're not given the education; they're not given the information to make that decision. I mean, this is why I wrote my book, *The Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer*, because women were going for breast cancer treatment. And allegedly being given the opportunity to make an educated decision, but they were never being educated. So those informed decisions were not being given information.

Correct. So the best way at this point, unfortunately, is you have to read yourself. You got to learn as best as you can, and then you have to make a decision based on the best information that we have. I mean, there's no magic to it. We don't have all the information, so I don't think we have every detail that we need about long-term complications. But you still have to make a decision based on what we do know today. And that's what at least I help parents to understand. And there are lots of great books and resources out there. You can kind of read both sides and you can get an understanding of the landscape. And then you make a decision that you feel like is best for your kid. And it may be right, it may be wrong, but that's what parenting is. I mean, we are always gonna learn new things. So I just think that what's important is to understand that, you know, if you have questions and your doctor's not answering those questions, find a doctor that is. You can certainly go somewhere where you can differ on opinions to some degree, but you should at least be able to have those conversations. You shouldn't be kicked out if you have questions. And I do think you need to read a little bit and get educated if you want to ask educated questions. Then you can have a discussion with your practitioner and you can try to come to some decision. You also have to see how your kid is doing. I mean, every kid is different. You got to weigh their personal risk and how they do with vaccines and how they do with everything else. And then you can hopefully come to a decision that makes sense for you and you reevaluate as you go. That, that, that's the best way to do it. I don't think there is one easy answer, and that's why I think it's so difficult, because I always talk to parents and I say, well, I think we're missing one big piece of the puzzle. And, and the CDC recommendations, you know, if you're in America, are what they are. So that's the recommendation, and anything outside of that is a personal choice. And if you deem the risk from vaccines higher than the risk from the disease, that's your personal choice. You might be wrong. Your kid might die of whooping cough. That's part of the deal. You have to understand what that risk is. And decide whether you're comfortable with that, because we do know that these vaccines do stimulate antibodies, do tend to decrease your risk from some of these diseases, and do tend to decrease your risk of serious complications. So that's what the research that we have shows. And that's not woo-woo, that's not out there. Like, we have good data on that. So then you have to decide whether you're comfortable with whatever the known risk and unknown risk are from the vaccine. And most people are comfortable with that. They're like, well, you know, I don't know what the risk is, but I This is the best that we got and the recommendations are what they are and they go do it. But some people don't. Some people choose not to get vaccines. Some people choose to do a slower schedule and that's, that's going to be up to them. And I would say the more people read, the more they tend to become a little bit more skeptical. But it doesn't mean they don't vaccinate. And a lot of people do vaccinate because they're kind of forced to, which is unfortunate.

Yeah. Well, and I think that there are complicating factors, like a lot of children get their first hep B vaccine when they're in the hospital.

That's correct.

Yeah, that, that's a problem because most of the time the parents aren't given any information about that, and it, it kind of happens before they know it.

Yeah, I think, you know, for those that are at least aware, I think that's very helpful because then you can read up a little before, you can understand what's going to be offered to you, and then you can decide whether you want that or not. I mean, it's generally Not forced upon you in the, in the hospital, but it's, you know, strongly, strongly, strongly encouraged. They keep bothering you to do it.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I think that you, you know, you have to—

'Cause they keep trying to check that box.

Yeah, exactly. So you have to have your understanding of why you do it and don't wanna do it. And then you have to very confidently kind of state your opinion and, and just keep stating it and just do what you gotta do while you're there. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, Hep B is, is, I would say maybe one of the most controversial vaccines for newborns just because Yes, it does decrease the risk of hepatitis B, but the risk of actually getting hepatitis B for a healthy child is extraordinarily small, almost zero in the first few years. So that's just something that parents have to understand. I mean, if you have hepatitis B as a mom and you're giving a, you know, having a vaginal birth, your kid has a huge risk of getting hepatitis B. So you should probably consider that. But if you don't have hepatitis B, then, then while, you know, someone might walk over your baby and bleed on them, it's pretty unlikely and they're probably not having a wild baby party. So it's, it's very unlikely they're gonna get hepatitis B in the first couple of years.

Wild baby.

But, but it's, it is humanly possible. So you need to know there's a 1 in, you know, 7 million risk or whatever it is of your baby getting hep B. And if you're comfortable with that risk, then, you know, I don't think you should be forced to get something that probably has some side effects. Everything has side effects. You give a 1-day-old newborn a vaccine, there's probably some potential side effects from that vaccine. So you better be having really, really, really good Potential benefit from something you're giving a newborn baby that's 1 day old. And to me personally, I don't think that that calculation makes sense for a newborn, for most people. So I, I don't, you know, I, I think that's the one that people do decide to decline frequently, but that's, you have to know to even do that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I do wanna shift to the not so classic vaccines, the mRNA vaccines.

Mm-hmm.

I think there was a recent settlement for the Gardasil vaccine. Can you just explain the difference between what we traditionally think of as vaccines and the mRNA vaccine?

Yeah, I mean, there are a few different kinds of vaccines that all get kind of lumped together. So, I mean, vaccine basically means you're injecting something or you're giving something to the body, you're putting something in, whether it's in drink or injection, and it's creating an antibody response. And that's gonna hopefully protect you later from, from that disease. And so we have, you know, even before mRNA, we have the live vaccines, which are basically a killed version of the whole disease. And then you have the protein version. So it's just like a small piece of the disease that you're giving so that way your body has a reaction to that piece. So that way if you see the whole disease later, it can, can recognize it. And then you have the mRNA newer vaccines, which are basically in a sense creating, using your own body to create The mRNA create the proteins in your body so that way your body can recognize it. So it's a little bit different. Instead of injecting it, you're having it kind of reverse engineered so that your body's creating the proteins. That way you can mount a response against that. And then you have vitamin K and RSV, which are not technically vaccines, but they're all kind of lumped together because you're injecting them. So those are the kind of the different categories. But you know, asking specifically about mRNA, it's a little bit different because the other diseases are not necessarily using. Your machinery to create the proteins. We're kind of putting in the proteins in general, and then your body's mounting response. So it's a little bit different of a mechanism.

Yeah, so the mRNA vaccines are essentially turning your body into the protein factory. So it's making you create, for instance, with COVID that you were creating the spike protein.

Correct. You're given the genetic code, and then you're creating the proteins so that way your body mounts response to those proteins, as opposed to putting the the disease protein in your body so your body fights. This is, you know, similar but different.

Yeah. So there was a recent lawsuit settled for the Gardasil vaccine, right?

There was. So the Gardasil— so it's the HPV vaccine— there were a bunch of lawsuits for mostly teenagers having serious reaction after the Gardasil vaccine. They basically settled out of court. I think it was $50 million or Something like that. And they didn't really want to go to trial. So I think it's interesting because, you know, on one hand they say, well, they, you know, the lawsuits are going to be really expensive and so we're just better off settling. But then on the other hand, you're like, well, now everyone has a reaction, thinks they could win. So maybe there's going to be a lot more lawsuits in the future. So I don't know. It's a weird strategy, but I guess, you know, they know what they're doing and they probably weighed the calculation of the actual court case.

I mean, that's like nothing.

The PR, it's nothing to them, but it could be a lot if people keep suing and they keep paying everybody off. Uh, in the long run. So I, I think it's a weighted calculation that they make. And, and so it doesn't prove that there was a problem, but I mean, it proves that they're concerned enough that they don't think they could win or don't think they could easily win.

So what do you think of the mRNA vaccines in the pediatric population?

I mean, I, I was never a fan of it for kids especially. I, I think, you know, well, first of all, for me, I mean, when you're in the middle of a pandemic, when you're in the middle of a serious situation, I think it's totally reasonable to offer whatever you can find that seems to be working. And I think if you were to say something like, this is the best that we have, we studied it, it seems like it's effective, it seems like it's decreasing your risk of death and serious disease, and we haven't found any serious complications yet, that's totally reasonable. When you force people to get it, that's where it's unreasonable. I, I think you can't know the long-term safety of something when it's not been long-term. So I don't think that's unreasonable to bring something out when you're worried about disease. So that part is fine, but the— to me, but to me, the line was crossed when anybody was forced to do it. And certainly, I think it was very unreasonable to, at a minimum, to say to force any kids to get it, because for the most part, kids had very minimal serious disease, almost none. It was just— didn't seem like it was super severe, at least from what I personally saw. I know you could get really sick, but that just was not very common. And so to inject Anything that was new without long-term safety data, it just seems like a bad risk calculation to me because you have obviously some risks and then you have any of the risks that you don't even know. Like you could grow a third arm in 10 years. Like who knows, right? You just don't know. Obviously it's not likely, but to give something to a young kid when the risk is pretty low, to me it seems like a bad idea. And that has continued. And certainly now with COVID it seems much less severe than even was originally. So the benefits just don't seem to outweigh the risks. To me, given the increasing risks that we see, and and it's hard because with the COVID vaccine, there is nothing more disparate in two worlds. You have like the people are like this is the best vaccine ever, and it saves so many lives, and you know decreased death and disease, and everybody should still get it. And then you have other people are like this is the worst thing ever, and it kills everybody, and it's most horrible vaccine. And and you barely ever see them having debates because that would be nice, and actually have conversations about what's true and what's not true. But either way, I think there's no question that that vaccine can cause harms. I think that most people know people that have had. Reactions to that vaccine and many people and, you know, whether it's heart attacks, stroke, cardiomyopathy, sudden cardiac death, whatever, all sorts of things.

Yeah.

And what's very surprising to me as someone who's been in this space for a while is you look at the vaccines that were pulled from the market, like rotavirus, the first original one, polio vaccine, oral polio vaccine, DTaP, the original one, DTP. And it didn't take a lot to pull those vaccines. You can still say they were very beneficial, but it did not take a lot of cases to To pull those vaccines. Like rotavirus, just a couple, couple hundred cases of intussusception, or I think it was a couple dozen cases and they pulled it. But you have so many people reporting complaints, you know, millions at this point of people that have put VAERS reports. And, you know, obviously everything to VAERS is not necessarily true, but there, there are so many cases. So even if, you know, 0.1% of those are true and of the things that we know, you have this very disparate, like, yes, like maybe it does benefit people in some way, but there's also a lot of harms that have come from this, and we didn't pull this vaccine and didn't try to make it better. So I think that's just very different than what we ever saw before in the past, and especially before we had this Vaccine Act where they used to pull things. Like, they were causing problems, they pulled, and they tried to make a better version. And they did. They made a safer version of DTP vaccine and a safer version of rotavirus vaccine, and we had a safer version of the polio vaccine. And you can, you know, argue whether it's safe or not, but they're safer. So, you know, maybe if we didn't have immunity that we would be like, well, We like what it's doing, but we don't like what the problems are. So maybe we make a new version or a different version, but that's not what's happened. So I don't know. I just, there's no reason for anybody to do anything anymore, to pull it, to focus on safety.

And there's no accountability. We've removed accountability, which is a huge issue, a huge issue. And, you know, I really believe that until they reinstate accountability, I don't think any of us should be doing any of it. Because where is the assurance on the manufacturer's part that they're even quality controlled, they're using safe ingredients, they're committed to making a better product? Like, where is that? There's none of that. Yeah.

I mean, I think that's what would need to change for us to get a better vaccine program in the future. I think that we need to have some sort of accountability where they're pushed to study safety, to make their products better, to improve their products. There's none of that right now. So, you know, whether you choose to get a vaccine or not, that's up to you. But that is, that is not there. So I think you need to factor that in as an individual when you're making those decisions to get a vaccine. And again, it doesn't mean you shouldn't. Like, again, you can, that can all be true and you can have hepatitis B and you want to protect your baby from hepatitis B. You know, the, the, probably the, still the risk calculation's going to be there. You might be around someone who has polio. You might not wanna get polio, you know, like there, there are gonna be certain calculations where it's gonna make sense that maybe you should still do it regardless of how unsafe it might be. But ultimately, if we don't push back as a community, as you know, as the CDC, as HHS, whatever it is, over the long run, we're, we're gonna have 300 vaccines or 500 vaccines. There's gonna be 100 more mRNA vaccines. We're gonna be getting vaccinated for everything. We're in trouble. Like, I, I think it's a big problem if, if we don't push back because the mRNA platform is really easy to change. And update and do new vaccines and make more. And there might be 50 vaccines, and then they can say, oh well, you got to get— you got to get your 50 vaccines or you can't go to work. Like, they could do that if they want to. And, and, and, and we are there right now. Like, we're at a point where we can't say no. Like, they can just say, well, this is a public health emergency, you got to do it. Um, and, and we're— we still haven't gotten to the point where, you know, many countries have any sort of ability to stop that if the government says this is enough of an emergency. So That's where, you know, to me, I guess, speaking of the inmates running the asylum. Yeah, yeah. And that's why I think it's like, you know, maybe a good place to finish is if we don't have medical freedom, then, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna have trouble in the future. Like, you can, you can agree that the vaccines we have are the best things ever and every kid should do it. But if you don't push for medical freedom, at some point there's going to be a product or a vaccine or something that you're not going to want to do that you're going to be forced to do. Maybe it's going to be, oh, you've got to attach your brain to this thing because That's what's best for everybody. That's what's best for public health. Or, oh, we just came out with this new vaccine for, you know, blah, blah, blah disease. You gotta do it or you can't go to work. Like, and then you're like, well, no, I don't wanna do that. Or maybe you gotta get 3 of them. And the first time you, you had a serious problem, but they're like, well, no, it's not that serious. You still gotta do it, you know, to go to work.

Mm-hmm.

That's what happened in COVID. People had bad reactions and they're still forced to do boosters or they lost their jobs. So ideally you just make a rule that you can't be forced to do anything. And that would decrease the temperature and, and then people could just choose based on the best information.

Yeah, I agree. It was such a pleasure spending time with you today.

Well, thank you for having me on.

Where can people find Between a Shot and a Hard Place?

So you can find me, the best place is Instagram or X @DrJoelGater, or, you know, you can on Amazon or anywhere you can get books, Between a Shot and a Hard Place, or, uh, my Substack, also called Between a Shot and a Hard Place, which has been really wonderful to kind of continue the discussion, especially around vaccines and, and parenting and health. And it's been great. I mean, it's one of the top You know, 20 substacks consistently for health, which has been very cool to see people are so interested in that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you're doing a great service, and at the end of the day, it has to be about giving people the information because you can't make an informed decision without it. And that's really what we want. It's not—we don't want to tell people what to do. I think the days of paternalistic medicine should be long gone. I do think that people should be able to make their own decisions. decisions and have autonomy, but they need the information and they need trusted guides, and it's people like you that are allowing them to do that. So thank you. Thank you for the work that you do.

Thank you, Reverend Mia.

I'm proud as another fellow Jeff grad.

Yeah, Jeff is great. I mean, there's some things I don't love about Philly, but there are some things I loved, and Jeff was awesome.

Yeah, join the club. Join the club. As a, as a native Philadelphian, I agree with you. There are some things that I don't love about Philly and other that I do. But like most Philadelphians, we just don't leave. We just— we're born here, we stay here, and we die here for whatever the reason. As my husband would say, good, bad, or indifferent.

Well, thank you.

Well, I am, I am not indifferent about all of you. So thank you so much for joining us today and share this conversation with someone that you need. That needs to hear it, and I think at this point we all need to hear it because we need to be able to make these educated decisions for our health, for our children. We need to help our parents, our friends, our neighbors, and the only way that we're going to do that is if we get the information to help us to make them. So definitely grab a copy of Between a Shot and Hard Place. Grab a copy of The Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer because that is your ability to make educated decisions about screening, about treatment. About recovery and about survivorship, and know that I will be back next week. Same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping a Breast Podcast with Dr. Jen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, breast health is health. So by staying informed and taking proactive steps, you have the power to optimize your well-being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these. conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates, and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube @DrJennSimmons. And remember, my Jenn has 2 N's. So until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed, and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.