RFK Jr. and The Mainstreaming Of The Anti-Vaxx Movement

Summary

Maintenance Phase Podcast Summary

Title: RFK Jr. and The Mainstreaming Of The Anti-Vaxx Movement
Hosts: Aubrey Gordon & Michael Hobbes
Release Date: August 1, 2023

---

Introduction

In this episode of Maintenance Phase, hosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs delve deep into the role of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) in mainstreaming the anti-vaccine movement. Building upon their previous discussions, they explore how RFK Jr.'s actions and affiliations have significantly influenced contemporary vaccine skepticism in the United States.

---

Recap of Previous Discussions (01:08 - 02:09)

Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs begin by summarizing their last episode, highlighting key points about the rise of the anti-vaccine movement and RFK Jr.'s transition from environmental activism to vaccine skepticism. They recount the infamous 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield, deemed one of the shoddiest studies on vaccines and autism, which served as a catalyst for the movement.

---

RFK Jr.'s Descent into Anti-Vaccine Advocacy (02:09 - 07:46)

The hosts trace RFK Jr.'s personal and professional journey that led him into the anti-vaccine realm.

• Personal Motivation: In 1994, RFK Jr.'s son, Connor, was born with severe allergies, prompting him to explore potential links between vaccines and allergic reactions.

  Aubrey Gordon [04:39]: "He found this like food allergy initiative stuff, basically trying to make the link between childhood vaccines and allergies."

• NGO Involvement: By 2000, RFK Jr. was leading an NGO focused on water cleanup. However, his unconventional ideas, such as selling branded bottled water, led to internal conflicts. Despite skepticism from colleagues, his fundraising prowess, bolstered by the Kennedy legacy, kept him in leadership roles.

  Michael Hobbs [05:50]: "At One of the NGOs I used to work at, our high up director guy got obsessed with the idea of J.K. Rowling writing the introduction to our annual report."

• Shift to Conspiracy Theories: After the 2004 election, RFK Jr. became convinced it was rigged for George W. Bush, further distancing himself from mainstream science and leaning into conspiracy narratives.

  Michael Hobbs [07:35]: "He had a nasty tendency to deride or insult anybody he thought was not on his side."

---

The Rolling Stone Article "Deadly Immunity" (07:46 - 16:00)

In a pivotal moment, RFK Jr. authored the Rolling Stone article titled "Deadly Immunity," which claimed a covert CDC meeting was plotting to cover up the dangers of thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in vaccines.

• Key Assertions: The article alleged that government scientists convened in secret to suppress alarming data linking thimerosal to autism and other neurological disorders.

  Michael Hobbs [12:14]: "The title is Deadly Immunity. When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data."

---

Debunking the Claims (16:00 - 25:40)

Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs critically examine the Rolling Stone article, dismantling its claims with scientific evidence and contextual information.

• Mercury in Vaccines Explained: They clarify that thimerosal is an ethylmercury compound, distinct from the more harmful methylmercury. Ethylmercury is metabolized and expelled from the body quickly, posing negligible health risks.

  Michael Hobbs [23:55]: "Immunization safety. But he says, no, no, no, no, no. It's in the flu vaccines. Well, wait, what?"

• Historical Context: Thimerosal was introduced in the 1930s as a preservative to prevent bacterial contamination in multi-dose vaccine vials. Extensive safety testing over decades showed no credible links to autism or other neurological issues.

• Secrecy Misrepresented: The alleged secrecy of the CDC meeting was a result of practical logistics, not a sinister cover-up. Meetings often seek privacy to ensure productive discussions, not to hide information.

  Aubrey Gordon [45:05]: "It's very funny that he keeps, like, mentioning the secrecy of this. The reason it was held at this Methodist retreat center is because it was June and they were planning the meeting at short notice."

---

Thimerosal Removal and Its Consequences (25:40 - 44:34)

The episode explores the aftermath of RFK Jr.'s activism, specifically the removal of thimerosal from most vaccines by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service in 1999.

• Official Statement: The removal was a precautionary measure to further ensure vaccine safety, not a response to any proven dangers.

  Michael Hobbs [34:05]: "So on July 9, 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service issue a statement saying from now on we're going to be removing the thimerosal from all of the vaccines."

• Unintended Consequences: This action unintentionally fueled anti-vaccine sentiments, as misinformation spread that removing thimerosal was an admission of its harmful effects.

  Aubrey Gordon [35:02]: "This is streisand effect times 100."

• International Evidence: Countries like Sweden, Canada, and Denmark had removed thimerosal years earlier without observing any decrease in autism rates, debunking the alleged link.

---

Court Cases and Legal Challenges (44:34 - 63:07)

Maintenance Phase delves into pivotal court cases where parents sought compensation for claiming vaccines caused their children's autism.

• Case Study - Michelle Sedillo (57:17 - 63:07): The Sedillo trial showcased the flawed logic and lack of evidence in anti-vaccine claims. The parents presented a convoluted theory connecting mercury in vaccines to a cascade of health issues leading to autism. The court systematically dismantled each link, emphasizing the absence of credible scientific evidence.

  Michael Hobbs [62:33]: "The entire scientific establishment has done everything they want, and they refuse to take yes for an answer."

• Impact on Public Perception: These trials illuminated the disconnect between anti-vaccine rhetoric and scientific reality, yet RFK Jr. continued to leverage these cases to promote his agenda.

---

RFK Jr.'s Continued Influence and Media Presence (63:07 - 73:22)

The hosts analyze RFK Jr.'s persistent influence in media and his recent book release, "Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak."

• Media Appearances: RFK Jr. has appeared on platforms like Good Day New York, where he vehemently defends his claims despite factual inaccuracies.

  RFK Jr. [65:07]: "Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that is still in some vaccines. It was removed by order of the FDA from all topical medicines after doing a lot of studies that show demonstrated its toxicity."

• Book Misrepresentations: The book continues to propagate outdated and debunked theories about thimerosal, ignoring decades of scientific research demonstrating its safety in vaccines.

  Michael Hobbs [67:34]: "The levels of thimerosal are essentially equal to what they were before they removed it from pediatric vaccines."

• Lack of Accountability: RFK Jr.'s affiliation with Rolling Stone ex-editor Jann Wenner raises questions about biased fact-checking processes that allowed misinformation to flourish.

---

Conclusion

Maintenance Phase successfully deconstructs the narrative spun by RFK Jr. and the anti-vaccine movement, emphasizing the importance of scientific integrity and evidence-based decision-making. By meticulously debunking claims and highlighting the consequences of misinformation, Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbs provide listeners with a clear understanding of how conspiracy theories can hijack legitimate concerns, ultimately undermining public health efforts.

---

Notable Quotes

• Aubrey Gordon [02:10]: "We've been expanding the vaccine schedule for years now and I'm only just finding out that there's 187 micrograms of ethyl mercury in all of the vaccines that kids are getting."

• Michael Hobbs [16:00]: "So, like, we have to actually understand this. Right. So he assigns Tom for Streighton, who's a researcher at the CDC, to look through their database and find out if there's any condition linked to thimerosal."

• Aubrey Gordon [25:21]: "It's also a very weird argument to make about mercury specifically because not only is mercury in like all of the water, but it's also in the air."

• Michael Hobbs [34:05]: "This announcement comes from the scientific establishment being too overzealous in protecting children."

• Aubrey Gordon [44:34]: "You're really trying to think of a joke to end with, but you don't have one because I bummed you out too much."

• Michael Hobbs [67:32]: "Yeah, exactly. So what I think happened is Jan Winter and RFK Jr. were chatting, like at Davos or some shit, and he's like, hey, you should write about this for us."

---

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the Maintenance Phase episode on RFK Jr. and the anti-vaccine movement, providing clarity on a complex and contentious topic.

Transcript

[Aubrey Gordon]

Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that only has 46 pages of notes today.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, you're doxing me. You're calling me out.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm outing you.

[Michael Hobbs]

I was like, I'm sorry, we recorded for three and a half hours last time. I'm gonna try to keep it shorter. I only have 46 pages, which is pretty good for me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That is pretty good for you. We were talking about different notes thresholds.

[Michael Hobbs]

Mine is 40 pages, so I'm already. I'm already exceeding it. And we're doing a third part of this fucking episode. So I don't know if my restraint can really be admired at this point.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Restraint is for tourists. I'm Aubrey Gordon.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm Michael Hobbs.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If you would like to support the show, you can do [e-mail] maintenancephase you can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts subscriptions. It's the same audio content. And today, Michael Mobry, we are continuing our journey, continuing with RFK Jr. No.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes. We didn't put part one in the title of the last episode because nobody downloads them if they say part one. But that was a part one.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're manipulating Bowery.

[Michael Hobbs]

We're clickbaiting you into downloading a part one of a now three part episode. God damn it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think your idea of clickbait and the rest of the Internet's idea of clickbait are different because you're like, we clickbait. I made you into the Brian Wansink story and I'm like one of the best, most interesting stories we've told.

[Michael Hobbs]

So, Aubrey, why don't you recap us? What did we learn about RFK Jr and anti vaxxers last time?

[Aubrey Gordon]

We learned about sort of the rise of the anti vax movement starting pretty much as soon as there were vaccines. We learned that those arguments have not substantively changed. We learned that RFK Jr started out working on really consequential stuff like climate change and doing really good work, and then just kind of gradually slid into weird anti vax world.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And we learned about sort of the source code for a lot of contemporary American anti vax stuff, which is a paper written by a researcher named Andrew Wakefield that is like one of the shoddiest pieces of research we have discussed on this show, which is really huge.

[Michael Hobbs]

For us to reach new depths of bad methodology.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The show that talked to you about celery juice and the future ghost is like, no, this one's really bad.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. We're like, that's 0.5 of a Wakefield we're now measuring this in Wakefields. Yes, this is where we're basically starting this episode. It is 1998. The paper by Wakefield making the link between the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine and autism has been released to great fanfare and a lot of consternation. And we get this whole fucking machine going into overdrive where the media is like, there's questions, there's a tricky debate about vaccines. In 2002, we get a BBC special called MMR. Every Parent's Choice.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's clickbait. Yeah, yeah, there's your clickbait.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're already defending us from, from charges of clickbait. Like, no, no, we're. We're doing the okay kind of clickbait. We're tricking you into learning about anti vaxxers.

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, I just mean, like, that is actually like pretty deceptive coverage of like, there's a debate happening and there's. Without situating that in, like, this is a very small number of people making a very fringe argument on very flimsy data.

[Michael Hobbs]

So alongside all of this, like, question begging news coverage, there's of course one side of the debate becoming increasingly radicalized and increasingly drifting further and further from reality. Right. And as this is happening sort of in the culture at large, it is also happening to RFK Jr. So as we discussed last episode, in 1994, his son Connor is born and has very severe allergies. He says that he has 29er visits in his first three years of life. So this is obviously causing a huge amount of anxiety. RFK Jr. In 1998 founds this like food allergy initiative thing, which is basically trying to make the link between childhood vaccines and allergies. He also has an episode that I think also contributes to his radicalization. We actually talked about this last episode, but we cut it out for space. So pretend that I'm telling you this for the first time.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Pretend that this is new.

[Michael Hobbs]

Just say, mike, that's new information every time I explain.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, Michael, I've never heard anything like this before.

[Michael Hobbs]

New stuff. So the reason we cut this out is because we talk for like 45 minutes. Because this is like such fucking typical NGO drama. So as we mentioned last episode, he gets pulled into this water cleanup NGO that sues governments over, like following EPA regulations in the 1980s. He eventually moves his way up the ranks and in 2000 he forces out the guy who brought him into the organization in the first place. He has this weird idea to sell branded bottled water from this like, river keeper organization. Like NGO approved water.

[Aubrey Gordon]

What are we doing?

[Michael Hobbs]

You can just say that's new.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's new information. I've never heard anything like it before.

[Michael Hobbs]

Thank you. Incredible stuff. So this causes a lot of consternation among the board and the people who actually work at the ngo. Like, I don't know if we want to become, like, a private company selling bottles of water.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You said it's typical. It's so damn typical. Like, the number of organizations where, like, an executive director will get an idea into their head where they're like, we'll make T shirts and then we'll sell the T shirts. And you're like, I don't know, man.

[Michael Hobbs]

At One of the NGOs I used to work at, our high up director guy got obsessed with the idea of J.K. rowling writing the introduction to our annual report.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Boy, that's an idea that did not age well.

[Michael Hobbs]

Did not age well. This was before her whole thing, but it's like, sure, I'll spend weeks, like, trying to get this, like, massive billionaire author to write the introduction to our, like, unbelievably boring PDF that, like, four people are going to read.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Beyonce definitely will play at our gala.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly. This eventually culminates in, like, him sort of taking over the organization. He also hires some guy who was, like, had been arrested for selling rare birds.

[Aubrey Gordon]

What a weird, specific kind of shady criminal.

[Michael Hobbs]

So basically, in, like, the most NGO drama way possible, everyone kind of agrees that he's wrong on the merits, but they keep him around because his last name is Kennedy and he's really good at fundraising.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think a lot of successful fundraising from large dollar donors is knowing how to be around rich people.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Like, there is just, like, a great deal of, like. It's fine. Yeah, it's fine. Keep them.

[Michael Hobbs]

So there's a New York Times article about the drama in 2000 where employees of the NGO are quoted. One guy talking about RFK Jr says, I think he separates himself from good science at times in order to aggressively pursue an issue and win.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Boy, this is really Chekhov's Times quote.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think that was my joke last time. I think you just made it from last time.

[Aubrey Gordon]

God damn it.

[Michael Hobbs]

No, I'm kidding.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm kidding.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, God.

[Michael Hobbs]

And then the other quote is, he had a nasty tendency to deride or insult anybody he thought was not on his side.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Ooh.

[Michael Hobbs]

So we're already seeing this kind of black and white thinking and this, like, weird crusader mentality where he just Becomes completely immune to facts.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

And it seems this is also when he starts falling down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Shortly after the 2004 election, he becomes convinced that it was rigged in favor of George W. Bush. Do you remember this?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, I mean, like, people still sort of grouse about that today.

[Michael Hobbs]

It appears he got the idea from Larry David. What? Which is a very weird cameo. So he and Larry David, the guy who is the co creator of Seinfeld and the creator and star of Curb youb Enthusiasm, invited him to like, Aspen or something. This is also where he met his current wife, Sheryl Hines.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So this was my question is like, is this pre or post Sheryl Hines?

[Michael Hobbs]

I think this is Sheryl Hines. Like this is mid Sheryl Hines. Like, that's, that's how he met her. And there's a New York Times article where they describe Larry David, like urging RFK Jr. To read some crank book on like, how the election was stolen in 2004. And there's a pretty good follow up New York Times story Now that like, RFK Jr. Is much more sort of like out as like an anti vax crank, where they look into the question of, like, what does Larry David, like, actually think about this stuff? And so they talk about how RFK Jr. Basically says, like, oh, yeah, he supports me. Like all my friends support me in my endeavors. And then they reach out to Larry David. And the article says, this might lead you to believe that Larry David is backing Kennedy's candidacy, but the Curb creator would like to disabuse people of that notion. In a text to the New York Times, he wrote, yes, love and support, but I'm not supporting him. And supporting is in quotes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is the relationship that I imagine exists between Laura Dern and Marianne Williamson at this point. It's also making me very grateful that none of my former roommates are running for president.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is like when we hang out, how we avoid talking about tar. Our greatest. Our greatest disagreement, the greatest issue of tension between us.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, I listen. I take my Blanchett very seriously. You know this about me.

[Michael Hobbs]

I do know this about you. So last episode we talked about the things that conspiracy theorists do, right? They lie. They remove context. Today we are going to talk about how the anti vax movement kind of came to America and how RFK Jr. Himself helped to spread it. Like, added a ton of fuel to the fire. He is like, in this episode a lot more than the last RFK junior Episode we did. But the tendency of conspiracy theorists that all of this demonstrates, and I really want to, like, tediously hammer home in this episode is how conspiracy theorists constantly move the goalposts. So in this moment in 1998, post Wakefield, right? If you look at the history of everything the anti vax movement has been through so far, in the 1980s, we had this documentary about the pertussis vaccine, right? Where they were saying, ah, the pertussis vaccine causes basically everything. Right. It was like kids with seizures. They showed footage of kids with down syndrome. It was just kind of all over the place. But it was all linked to the pertussis vaccine. Right. In the early 1990s, they then move over to food allergies. Right? Vaccines cause food allergies, sure. Then in 1998, they shift to the measles vaccine causes stomach problems, and the stomach problems cause autism. So in 2005, RFK Jr. S conspiracy mindset thing culminates with the publication of an article called Deadly Immunity. It's like a major feature story. He describes it as a cover story in Salon, but Salon was a website, so I don't know how it could.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Be a cover story.

[Michael Hobbs]

But it's published on Salon and in the print edition of Rolling Stone. And this, this article marks the mainstreaming of the anti vax movement. So I am going to send you a JPEG of what this looks like on salon.com.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Wow, I forgot how hideous websites in this era were.

[Michael Hobbs]

It looks like Craigslist.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You know what it looks like? It looks like it should have those blinky gifs of. Or like the dancing hamsters gifs.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the kind of layout of a website now, if a restaurant has it, you know the thing. Food is good. This is ugly enough. People are not going there for the aesthetics.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So this is listed in the news and politics section as a Salon slash Rolling Stone joint investigation. There is a picture of a kid facing a window with their hands behind their back. And the title is Deadly Immunity. When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

[Michael Hobbs]

Note the moving of the goalposts again. Right now we're onto mercury.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, totally.

[Michael Hobbs]

But then. Okay, so I am going to send you a very long excerpt. This is like the first sort of six paragraphs of the story. We are going to read this and then we are going to circle back to it once we learn a little bit more about the background in context.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Uh oh, are we just. Are we doing like a close text debunking?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, we're gonna read this, like seven times. We're just gonna keep going over and over again. We're gonna do it sentence by sentence.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Eventually, but for now, okay, I love it.

[Michael Hobbs]

We're gonna learn about the evil, dastardly deeds of the CDC.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay. In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood Conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the cdc, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center to ensure complete secrecy.

[Michael Hobbs]

So we've got a secret.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. A CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraten had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children. He found that a mercury based preservative in the vaccines, thimerozole, appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. I will say I'm just. This is commentary time. Hello, commentary. It is a real red flag if someone is saying, hey, we took an existing giant data set and looked at it, and we found an association, and we've decided that that means it's a caus relationship.

[Michael Hobbs]

Aubrey, you're going to love. You're going to love the debunking of this so much.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You're going to be like, there was no data set, no spoilies.

[Michael Hobbs]

But we're going to add some context, pretty much a little bit of extra context to this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay, Quote, I was actually stunned by what I saw first street and told those assembled at Simpson Wood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerazole and speech delays, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and autism. But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerazole, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data.

[Michael Hobbs]

How to cover it up.

[Aubrey Gordon]

According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerozole would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

[Michael Hobbs]

Big Pharma.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study, quote, should not have been done at all and warned that the results, quote, will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled.

[Michael Hobbs]

Worrying stuff. I mean, worrying stuff.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's framing this in a way to make it sound sinister. That's like we won't have complete control anymore. But like a more neutral way of saying that thing in different framing is essentially like, look, a bunch of people without any training are gonna get a hold of these numbers and are gonna take that as proof positive that they shouldn't vaccinate their kids. And that's like exactly what happened.

[Michael Hobbs]

I should have known that you would immediately spoil the rest of this episode. I wanted, I wanted you to read this and be like, damn, Mike, there was a secret, secret meeting of the CDC and they were going to cover things up. And I was like, well, actually, Aubrey, we're going to rewind.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm so sorry that I have listened to our show.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is what's so savvy about what he's doing here, right? He says like, oh, there's a transcript and we had to do a FOIA request to get this secret transcript of this secret meeting. Right. But then the actual quote from this guy at the World Health Organization, he's saying the results will be taken by others and used in ways beyond the control of this group. I mean, that's just fucking true. Yeah, Sometimes you publish things and bad faith actors are going to do fucked up shit with them. And like, we should talk about that before we publish them.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's also like a real misunderstanding of FOIA requests. The implication here is that if you have to FOIA something, that it must be part of a cover up. Yeah, but like people like all day long in like state and municipal and federal government get like all of their emails FOIA'd on a particular topic or whatever. That's not the same as like someone is facing charges. We've built the case and we know.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also what's wild about FOIA ing the transcript of this is that if it's so fucking secret, why did the CDC keep a transcript? Why did they invite a transcriber?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Number one rule in a cover up, create a paper trail.

[Michael Hobbs]

So it's like he's doing something that we see in conspiratorial media a lot where it's like, I found these secret documents, but it's like, well, were they really meaningfully secret? Was anyone really trying to cover this up or was it just a hassle for you to get this? There's actually a huge difference between those two things. Yeah, so the thing is like, we're sort of joking around because like both of our brains are completely fucking broken by hosting the show. But what this article is Alleging and I think quite effectively, if you sort of zoom out, is basically that, like, there's mercury in the vaccines. Right. Which is like, really freaky to people. Right. We're literally injecting kids with mercury. And the CDC knew about it. There's all these studies showing that mercury is really toxic to kids. Like, of course it is. Everybody, like, that's the one thing we all know about mercury, is that it's fucking poisonous, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

And the CDC has like a secret fucking meeting to be like, make sure we don't tell anybody about this. Like, let's, let's massage this a little bit. Like, for people at the time that did not host health and wellness podcasts, a lot of people looked at this and were like, jesus fucking Christ, this is like really worrying.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, and the, like, tacit endorsement of publishing this in Salon and Rolling Stone. Totally, man. Rolling Stone has some stuff to answer for.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude, I know this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And Taibi, I know.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think they also gave like Led Zeppelin 4, like a negative review.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Wow.

[Michael Hobbs]

Mostly mad about their lists canceled. So we are now going to rewind and we're going to learn a little bit more context. And later we will read the same excerpt and we will, we will understand more about it with more layers. The first thing that we need to talk about is, is there mercury in the vaccines?

[Aubrey Gordon]

So that's another thing that sort of bumped me about this little passage was the opening says, mercury in childhood vaccines. And then down a little ways into the piece, he says something about, oh, mercury based preservative. And I was like, does that mean that it has mercury in it? Does that mean that mercury is used in the processing of it? Like, what's happening?

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm about to tell you what's happening.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Tell me what's happening, Michael, Tell me everything.

[Michael Hobbs]

What's happening? I'm confused.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Tell me what's happening.

[Michael Hobbs]

So this just as a thing to start out with, I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that mercury is in literally everything because mercury is in the earth's crust. And when water, like bubbles up to the surface of the earth and we drink it, it has a couple of particles of mercury in it. It has a couple particles of everything. They can test water and find micrograms which are 1,000,000th of a gram of all kinds of shit. And this is not because, like dupont is pouring chemicals in the water or like Industrial Revolution, whatever. Like, you can take a teaspoon of the freshest, cleanest spring water from like the Swiss fucking Alps and you will find Trace elements of. I found a list of like various publications that I read. It will have lead, iron, arsenic, radium, radon, lithium, chromium, uranium, zinc, copper, silicone, phosphorus and mercury. We live on Earth. This is the earth.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I mean. But listen, as you were talking about that, I was thinking about how much that sounds like I was an anxious kid. And if you made a dessert like Bananas Foster or something, something with alcohol in it, like a brandy fruitcake or something, I would get worried about getting drunk.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Off the alcohol in the desser. And I feel like this is a. Like, am I going to get drunk off the alcohol in the dessert? Yeah. Sort of level of analysis here.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is something that like we've said on the show before, but we should probably say like at the top of every show and like at the beginning of every conversation with every human being for all time, is that the dose makes the poison.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes.

[Michael Hobbs]

There are very few substances that are poisonous, regardless of how much of it or in what form of it you are ingesting. The obvious one is water. Right. If you don't drink enough water, you die. But then also if you drink too much water, you die. You can like drown from the inside out. There's all kinds of other compounds that are totally fine in like a couple of millionths of a gram a day.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You know, there's all of this sort of like ambient freak out about like chemicals in the water. Yeah, I would say a couple of things. One, water is chemical. You know what I mean? Like inherently already chemical. Sorry.

[Michael Hobbs]

No, tell em, tell em, tell em. Not Aubrey telling you about chemicals, but.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Also a partner of my. One of my good friends used to work for a water treatment here in Portland. And she would always just be like, people are always talking about we don't want chemicals in the water. And she was like, I guess you don't want us purifying water because I don't know what you think that process is. If you've got an open air reservoir, that means at some point an animal is going to poop in that reservoir and you're going to have to do something, something chemical to like counteract the poop or get the poop out of there or whatever. Just because you're adding chemicals, quote unquote. Right. Like adding baking soda to your cake, that creates a chemical reaction. That doesn't mean that it's sinister.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's really weird to me.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also a very weird argument to make about mercury specifically because not only is mercury in like all of the water. But mercury is also in the air because mercury comes out of volcanoes. So the air that we breathe will also contain a few micrograms of mercury. So the average baby ingests around 360 millionths of a gram of mercury in the first six months of its life. So the average vaccine dose does in fact, contain about 25 micrograms of mercury. So 25 millionths of a gram. However, not only is that a really, really, really small dose of mercury, but it's not mercury as we think of mercury. When ordinary people talk about mercury, what they actually mean is methylmercury, which is like a naturally occurring kind of mercury. There's sort of elemental mercury, and then it interacts with bacteria and then it becomes like the metal liquid T1000 thing that we're all used to. You're right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I do love this debunking.

[Michael Hobbs]

Isn't it fun?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's so fun. T1000, let's go.

[Michael Hobbs]

So mercury's not like iron. There's no, like, minimum recommended amount of mercury that you're supposed to get. Methylmercury is, like, really nasty stuff. But one of the principles of mercury is that it's actually a very good antiseptic. So before we knew how poisonous it was, there was a thing that you would put on your wounds called mercurochrome, which would prevent them from getting infected, like this bright orange thing. So, like, it's actually a very good antiseptic. It's just not worth it because it's also really poisonous.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I love this idea of, like, thinking about potentially harmful substances as, like, is it worth it?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I love the bitter almond flavor that comes with arsenic, but the side effects are a real bear.

[Michael Hobbs]

So in the 1920s, the Eli Lilly company comes up with something called ethylmercury, which is different from methylmercury. It's a substance that has the same antiseptic properties as the bad kind of mercury, but it clears your body much quicker.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay.

[Michael Hobbs]

So the problem with, like, mercury, mercury, like the type in tuna and shit, is that it builds up in your system. You don't clear it, it stays inside of you. So you have, like, this little ball of metal that is just, like, accumulating for years inside of your body, which is really bad for you. But ethylmercury doesn't do that. It only has a half life of three to seven days, and you clear it quite quickly. Okay. So, like, things can be chemically very similar and have very different properties.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Interesting.

[Michael Hobbs]

And so in the 1920s, the Eli Lilly Company. After they invent this inorganic form of mercury, they mix it with something called thiosalicylate and that becomes thimerosal, which is what is up for debate here. This is the thing that RFK Jr. Is talking about. There's thimerosal all in the vaccines, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yep.

[Michael Hobbs]

So the way that they ship out vaccines still now, but much more then is they would ship vaccines in 10 dose vials. So on TV, when you see that thing of like a nurse holds up a vial and she puts in a syringe and like sucks a little bit out.

[Aubrey Gordon]

She does that 10 times?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, with different needles. But like, yes, that's typically the way that they do this to make it easier. Because shipping a bunch of glass vials for every single dose is just like wildly expensive. And it's much easier to do this with 10 doses. But in the 1910s and 1920s, there's a couple of cases where the vaccines get bacteria in them. Like somehow a needle got put in twice. It only takes a little bit of bacteria to get in that bottle because it often sits on the shelf for a long time. So vaccines can get infected. So there's a case where they basically inject a bunch of kids with like the staphylococcus bacteria and, like, kids fucking die.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's awful.

[Michael Hobbs]

So, like, this is a real danger. You have to have some sort of preservative in the vaccine, something that will kill bacteria in case a couple of little tiny particles of bacteria get into the vaccines, because it will grow and spread and you won't know that it's in there until it's too late.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Gotcha.

[Michael Hobbs]

So in the 1920s, they realized that this thimerosal thing is a very effective antiseptic. You put a tiny little bit into one of these 10 dose vials and no matter what, it can't get infected. Another thing that RFK Jr doesn't like to admit is that there was actually like a lot of safety testing of thimerosal before they started putting it into the vaccines. There's these animal studies where they inject 2000 micrograms into rabbits.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Whoa.

[Michael Hobbs]

They do this. There's no effect of it. There's a meningitis outbreak in the late 1920s, and there's a time when they think thimerosal could be like a antibiotic. This is before the invention of penicillin. They're like, oh, my God, maybe this will help cure meningitis. So there's a whole hospital ward of people with meningitis they inject them with 2 million micrograms of thimerosal, hoping that it will cure the meningitis. It does not cure the meningitis. But they find out that it doesn't have any safety effects. They don't, you know, they don't puke, they don't pass out. They don't have any health effects of the actual vaccine itself. So people are like, okay, well, this doesn't, like, cure diseases on its own, but it's also not, like, dangerous to give people.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So I feel like what I'm hearing from you is that there are different forms that mercury can take, and only some of those forms will cause harmful health effects in a big way. And others will just sort of pass through you. They're like, vaccine olestra. Just pass right through.

[Michael Hobbs]

So in the 1930s, they start adding it to vaccines. This is completely non controversial, boring. Like, nobody notices this stuff stuff until the late 1990s. So in 1997, there's kind of an ongoing thing where people are concerned about mercury in fish. Like, mercury is just getting more of a profile as, like, something that we should be worried about. And so in the 1997 FDA Modernization Act, a senator includes like, a little amendment to just be like, hey, let's make sure we're being transparent about where Americans are being exposed to mercury. This is like the bad mercury.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's a study bill. Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

They're just like, give us a kind of baseline.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

And so as a result of this transparency bill, people at the FDA look around and they're like, well, there is ethylmercury in the vaccines. So, like, we should sort of publish that. Like, we should. We should tell people that there's ethyl mercury in the vaccines. So they look at the whole vaccine schedule, the amounts of ethylmercury, and all the different vaccine doses, and they show that there are 187 micrograms of ethylmercury. Four children in their first. I believe it's one year of life, which is very small. I mean, keep in mind, just being alive, you get 360 micrograms.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

The next chapter of the story is extremely bizarre. This comes from Paul Offit's book, Autism's False Prophets, which is extremely good. There's basically one guy named Neil Halsey who's a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins, and he's sort of on the committees, like the vaccine committees. Paul Offit describes him as a vaccine insider. And so in 1999, Neal Halsey sees the reports that kids are getting 187 micrograms of ethylmercury and he starts to get concerned. He was one of the people who wanted to expand the vaccine schedule for kids. He's somebody who's always been pushing for like, kids should get all the vaccines that are available to them. I do think that like, because there's so much fucking bad faith, like question asking around this issue, it is important to say that like he's not an anti vaxxer. He's not doing this in bad faith. This is a guy who's like genuinely concerned about children and like genuinely supportive of vaccine safety. But he feels misled. He's like, we've been expanding the vaccine schedule for years now and I'm only just finding out that there's 187 micrograms of ethyl mercury in all of the vaccines that kids are getting. He starts looking around, he's like, well, what are the limits? What's the sort of daily maximum for ethyl mercury? Right? And he goes to all of the different agencies and like no one really has one. Like the EPA has one, but that's like, you know, living near water, kind of prolonged exposure. The FDA has a limit for mercury, but that's in like food, like food that you're eating regularly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, totally.

[Michael Hobbs]

Nothing is set up for these like very deliberate injections of vaccines. And there's really no data on ethylmercury. All of the limits are about methylmercury, which is like the bad kind. So this basically becomes a crusade for this one guy to be like, hey, we should actually like do way more studies on this and like, we might want to take thimerosal out of the vaccines.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And there's like an optics part of this as well, right? Which is like people are going to freak out about this and I would like to be able to tell them with certainty that their kid is completely safe and they have nothing to worry about. And we know this for a fact.

[Michael Hobbs]

There's also something really interesting here too about the weird circularity of. Once the anti vax movement is as empowered as it is in the late 1990s, people keep trying to come up with ways of like placating the anti vax movement. So part of the argument for making such a big deal about mercury in the vaccines, it's like, well, these anti vaxxers are going to yell at us if they find out about this and they're inevitably going to find out about this. So like this becomes the debate behind the scenes and this is very weird. So it all happens in two weeks. This one guy, Neil Halsey, starts pushing. We gotta do something about this. We gotta do something about this. It's like summer, a lot of people are on vacation. But there's the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics coming up. And he's like, before this meeting, we need to know what the deal is with mercury. We can't have this meeting without having a clear statement on this and knowing what our policy is going forward. So he starts holding all these teleconferences with all the various agencies. There's all these safety committees of vaccines. Basically this one guy just keeps pushing and pushing and pushing. Apparently everyone else in the entire vaccine safety sector is like, Neil, there's no reason to be worried. There's literally no evidence that this is dangerous. And we're talking about 187 micrograms, which is like way fucking less than like the environmental exposure to mercury. People like you get mercury in like apples and bananas and shit. Yes, this is an issue. Yes, we should study it further. But I really don't understand the urgency to move on this, right? This has been in the vaccines for 60 years. And according to Paul Offit's book, Neal Halsey sort of sees other people stonewalling and he threatens to go to the press.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Wow.

[Michael Hobbs]

He's like, if you guys don't do something on this, I am going to release a press statement saying I'm concerned about the amount of ethylmercury in the vaccines. And so again, everything gets so much fucking harder when there's these conspiracy movements around, right? Because everyone's like, imagine what the anti vaxxers would do with this, right? Someone within the vaccine safety system is like, I'm worried about this trace element in the vaccines. So basically as a way of appeasing him and trying to get to like the least bad option, they agree to put out a statement saying that thimerosal will be removed from the vaccines.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay?

[Michael Hobbs]

So on July 9, 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service issue a statement saying from now on we're going to be removing the thimerosal from all of the vaccines. It's going to take like a year or two to sort of work its way out because a lot of the vaccines have already been produced. But like from now on we're not going to have it in the vaccines anymore. And there's no evidence that it's unsafe. There's really nothing to worry about. This shouldn't affect your decision to vaccinate your kids at all. But out of an abundance, like an absurd abundance of caution, we're going to do this to make, you know, to go from like 99.999% safe to 100% safe. This is a fucking huge mistake. Like a historical blunder, right? Because of course, when this statement comes out, every single person in America is like, holy fuck, there's mercury in the vaccines. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna get a vaccinated my fucking kid. What? I didn't know there was mercury in the vaccines.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is streisand effect times 100.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's this totally fascinating thing to me because of course RFK Jr has made this like mercury in the vaccines thing his mission for the next 20 years after this announcement. But like, this announcement comes from the scientific establishment being like too overzealous in protecting children, right? Everything that he says in this article, everything that he says throughout all of his public statements is kind of like, oh, the scientific establishment, they don't care that this is harming kids. But actually this is the entire system being like too hardcore about ensuring that vaccines are safe.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We used to do polling around this stuff and you'd ask people like, hey, do you support an increase in taxes? And people would be like, no. And they'll be like, change the question to do you support an increase in education funding, senior services and healthcare? And the ratios flip, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Based on how you ask the question really, really matters. And this seems like a core case of folks asking the question in a way that raised people's hackles more than it calmed them down.

[Michael Hobbs]

And so what's wild is this announcement that safe vaccines are about to become even safer ends up emboldening another wave of anti vax organizing. And this is really the arrival of the anti vax movement to the United States. I mean, the Wakefield stuff was kind of centered in the uk, but this then sparks a wave of media coverage around like, oh, there's a debate about the safety of vaccine. Did you hear about this mercury thing?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right? This is like if you got a notification, if there was a big announcement from NASA that was like, hey everybody, not to worry, there's a 99% chance that we're not about to be destroyed by an asteroid.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is also the period when the anti vax moms find RFK Jr he has been working on mercury that's getting dumped from coal plants as part of his cleaning up waterways work. These moms start showing up at his talks and they're like, well, if you're really concerned about mercury. Wait till you hear about the vaccines.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Anti vax moms going around politicizing Kennedys in a constructive direction is like bizarro world. P Flag.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

What if P. Flag was evil?

[Michael Hobbs]

What if I was an ally but for misinformation? What if I was an ally for lying? An ally for weirdos?

[Aubrey Gordon]

I love my disinformation, son.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, so this finally brings us to the secret CDC meeting. So just after this happens in early 2000. This is really funny. The head of the CDC's immunization program was on vacation when all this stuff was going on. And this was before zoom and shit. So I guess he just comes back from vacation and he's like, wait, we announced what?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's got the flip flop tan line.

[Michael Hobbs]

He's got his bag of macadamia nuts.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's like, hey, man, I'm still on island time.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He comes back and he's like, what the mars roving fuck did we just do? We just made this, like, pretty big decision and put out this big statement, but we still don't actually have any information. Right. There is no evidence.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

That thimerosal is bad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

And all evidence indicates that it's not and that it has nothing to do with any of these things that people are linking it to. So, like, we have to actually understand this. Right. So he assigns Tom for Streighton, who's a researcher at the cdc, to look through their database. They have a database of children's health records, couple hundred thousand kids. Separate the kids into vaccinated kids, unvaccinated kids, and just try to figure out, is there anything to this? Is there any condition that is linked to thimerosal in the vaccines? And so Tom for Streighton looks through the database and. And he finds that children who received vaccines are more likely to have attention deficit disorder, more likely to have speech and language delays, and more likely to have tics, these sort of twitches that are sometimes a symptom of autism, sometimes not. Importantly, he does not find an association with autism. So this head of the immunology of the cdc, the guy crunching on macadamia nuts, does something that, like, you and me are constantly saying that we wish scientific institutions would do and which basically like Phil fucking Lancet should have done in 1998, they're like, look, we have this, like, really incendiary finding. Before we publish this into what we know is the social and political environment around this issue, let's stress test it A little bit. Let's talk about it. Let's make sure that it's correct before we put it into the public bloodstream.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is classic big, if true territory.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly, exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And it's your job to make sure that it's true.

[Michael Hobbs]

And so they gather together. It's roughly 50 people. It's people from different fields of epidemiology. It's people from various departments of the cdc. It's different agencies. I think there's like, FDA people there. It's like, let's get everybody together and just, like, talk about this. So they do, in fact, rent space at this, like, Methodist retreat center thing outside of Atlanta. They all meet, and Tom for Straighten, you can, you know, you can read the transcript. Tom for Strayton presents the data to everybody. He's like, here's what we did. Here's the methodology. Here's what we found. After he presents his data, people point out the massive flaws in the data. So the first is the thing that you pointed out earlier, that this is all completely correlational.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, totally.

[Michael Hobbs]

The problem with this vaccinated versus unvaccinated grouping is that vaccinated kids and unvaccinated kids are not identical in other ways. There's numerous vaccines that you have to get in the first two years of life. If you're getting all those vaccines, what that basically means that you're going to the fucking doctor a lot. Right. You're going to the doctor 15, 20 times, which means you're way more likely to get diagnosed with things like speech and learning delays, with things like tics, with all kinds of other things that when you're at the doctor, the doctor be like, oh, is there anything else? Oh, you know, my son, he's not talking as much as other kids his age.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. And in the US that's also gonna be correlated with, like, access to care, period.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So it pulls in social factors. It pulls in, like, all kinds of other influences that are really complex and that you would need to account for in some way in doing this kind of research. Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

The other thing that people point out is that a huge amount of their data is just garbage. So a lot of what they think of as, like, this kid was diagnosed with this, or like, this kid has speech and learning delays. A lot of that is just stuff that, like, people might mention in a doctor's visit and gets written down on their chart but isn't, like, a formal diagnosis. So oftentimes, parents will come in and they'll be like, oh, yeah, his language is like, a little Bit delayed, you know, it's not where we think it should be. But then he comes in a month later and they're like, oh yeah, it's totally fine. He caught up.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, I mean, like, listen, this is one of the core lessons of early childhood brain development is like, kids move at different rates, they're just all over the place. Yeah. This is like, like, of course he would flag these little things along the way. Those are snapshots of moments. They're not necessarily like a holistic sort of like we've evaluated this whole situation and here's what we think is going on.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, this is why I think this kind of process is so important and ultimately why this meeting is really good that it happened. We found this data, there's some incendiary findings. Let's talk about it with people who are experts in other fields and people who have more familiarity with this data. This to me is like science working as intended. And so people at this meeting are like, you might want to actually go back and like, I know it's boring, but you have to actually cross check the kids medical charts with formal diagnoses and figure out whether that's their actual condition because like the data is just kind of noisy like that. RFK Jr describes this as some sort of like secret meeting where like scientists put pharma profits over the health of children. And actually what really happened is just like a bunch of scientists sat in a room. Like, I've also read the fucking transcripts of this meeting. They're unbelievably boring. It's like really technical, methodological stuff.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Think about how boring your meetings are if you go to meetings regularly and then imagine reading transcripts of someone else's two day meeting.

[Michael Hobbs]

Again, it's like, it's so funny that he cast this in Rolling Stone as like so nefarious when like what actually happens is after this meeting, Tom Frustrate, he's like, these are really useful comments. He goes back, they rerun the numbers and they find ways of like controlling for health access so they can actually compare vaccinated and unvaccinated kids. And they eventually, in 2003 publish the data. And so there are some differences in health conditions between vaccinated and unvaccinated kids. But like autism is not on there and the magnitudes are so small. It says in the conclusion of the paper, they're like, we don't really think this means anything. Like tics, for example. These like twitches was actually more common among vaccinated kids than unvaccinated kids. But, like, it doesn't make sense that a symptom of autism would be more common. But autism itself is not more common. We think this is probably just like some kind of weird coincidence, random thing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

So, you know, he alleges this huge cover up, but, like, the data was published.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

You can go read the paper two.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Full years before this article came out. No.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So this paper had been published for two years by the time he writes his Rolling stone article.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Speaking of which, we are now going to reread the section of the Rolling stone article that we read earlier.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're returning to the scene of the article of the.

[Michael Hobbs]

Nonsense. Bullshit. Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the centers for disease control and prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center to ensure complete secrecy.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's very funny that he keeps, like, mentioning the secrecy of this. The reason it was held at this Methodist retreat center is because it was June and they were planning the meeting at short notice. Right. Because they didn't know this was gonna happen. And it's fucking Atlanta in the summer and all the hotels are booked, so it's not like we need to be out in the woods.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You guys like, God damn it. This is so.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also funny to me because, like, you can have secret meetings in Atlanta. He's like, oh, it has to be at the Methodist retreat center. It's like you just go to the Marriott and have a secret meeting.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is like big Bahamian Grove energy.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes, exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Where you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[Michael Hobbs]

All right, here is the next couple paragraphs.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. A CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraten had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children. He found that a mercury based preservative in the vaccines, thimerozole, appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children.

[Michael Hobbs]

Remember, autism wasn't on there. This is a straightforward lie. The data, even the preliminary data, did not show an increase in autism.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Quote, I was actually stunned by what I saw, Verstraten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerozole and speech delays, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and autism.

[Michael Hobbs]

The other lie here is that there's no staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link. This was the whole controversy over whether or not to remove thimerozole from the vaccines. There's no fucking evidence that thimerozole has any link to anything except the tens.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Of thousands of studies. Michael. I remember some things from last time.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also. There's also a very conspiratorial thing here, too, because he's saying that there's a staggering number of studies showing that thimerozole is poisonous, Right? But then why the fuck are the scientists moving to cover it up? Like, this is what always just like, doesn't compute in my brain of, like, if it's so fucking obvious that the vaccines are bad for kids, why would hundreds and thousands of scientists not give a shit, man?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Come on, dude. People are writing it down. Like, I just don't. I'm getting to the point of exasperation.

[Michael Hobbs]

I know we're only, like, halfway done. Aubry. Save your. Save your ulcer. Get an ulcer.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I love that you're like, we're not going to record for three and a half hours today. I know we are one hour and 45 minutes in, which is exactly half of three and a half hours, but.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm gonna pack as much stress into that. All right, here is the next one.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of Thimerozole, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerozole would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

[Michael Hobbs]

So what's amazing about this passage is he doesn't mention that Thimerozole had actually been removed from the vaccines at this point, these same fucking people decided to remove it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Also, did anybody say anything about profits for vaccine makers? Did that come up in the transcripts at all?

[Michael Hobbs]

This is a missing context thing, because when you remove thimerozole, which they now have, you have to ship all of the vaccines in single dose vials, which is much more expensive than shipping them 10 doses at a time. So one way to put that is, oh, they're worried about big pharma's bottom line. Another way to put that is, we want to get vaccines to people as cheaply as possible. Yeah, that's a. That's a real conversation to have. That's not some, like, conspiracy thing. It's like, yeah, if you're operating in good faith for the safety of kids, you would. You would talk about, like, well, what's the most cost effective way of doing this?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. And listen, they're a government agency. That means that their budgets are a matter of public record. That means that they're going to have to ask for allocations and have an externally defensible answer. And they've got to think about how to move people who may not be in that room. Yeah. There are mechanics that they need to mind, and some of those mechanics are around cost.

[Michael Hobbs]

And also, also note the phrase here is that he says they spent two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. That's not what happened. No one was talking about how to cover it up. Everyone was operating under the assumption that this would be published. And it was. They were trying to make sure it's fucking true.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

And then here's the last paragraph that we read.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Dr. John Clements, vaccine advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study should not have been done at all and warned that the results will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled.

[Michael Hobbs]

So we've kind of already covered this, but it's like. Yeah, he's just straightforwardly right. Yeah, they do have to be handled. But we are going to read his quote in full from the transcript. This is what he actually said.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Interesting that they didn't put the entire quote in.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, it's interesting how it goes kind of in and out of quotes and it's like paraphrasing in between. Yeah, just a couple quoting a couple words at a time quote.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm really concerned that we have taken off like a boat going down one arm of the mangrove swamp at high speed, when in fact there was not enough discussion really early on about which way the boat should go at all. And I really don't want to risk offending everyone in the room by saying that perhaps this study should not have been done at all because the outcome of it could have to some extent been predicted. We've all reached this point now where we are left hanging, even though I hear the majority of the consultants say to the board that they are not convinced there is a direct link between thimerozole and neurological outcomes. Jesus. That's a different quote.

[Michael Hobbs]

So, yeah, this is part of a much longer kind of monologue that he gives about this. But when he's saying this shouldn't have been done, he's not saying, like, the truth cannot reach the American people. That's not what he's saying at all. What he's saying is something that we say on this show all the fucking time. It's like if you comb through data looking for associations, hundreds of associations, right? This Tom Verstraten guy was looking through this data looking for anything that was biologically plausible that could be linked to vaccines, you're gonna find something, right? This is the way these big correlational cohorts work. You're going to find something and when you publish, the anti vaxxers are going to latch onto it with their little talons and they're never going to let it go. He's not saying the data should be suppressed because it's true. He's saying it's probably not true. It's probably just random chance.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Not only does he think it's not true, but he's saying, I hear the majority of the consultants say to the board that they are not convinced that there is a direct link. Right? Like, not only do I not think this is true, most people here don't seem to think this is true.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is another thing that I cannot believe. This was not mentioned in his entire 5,000 word article in Rolling Stone. Thimerozole was removed from vaccines in Sweden, Canada and Denmark in 1992, eight years before. It had no effect on autism rates or ADHD or tics or anything else. If it was causing autism, we should see a huge reduction in autism in Canada, Sweden and Denmark since 1992. We don't see that. We still see the same rises that we do here. The trajectory of autism and these other conditions is still happening perfectly in parallel, regardless of whether they have thimerozole in the vaccines or not. So, like, there's no biologically plausible mechanism by which ethylmercury would be causing these disorders. Because there's now millions of children who didn't get thimerozole.

[Aubrey Gordon]

There's 10 years of real world data.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Being like, no, it's fine. It would be like if, you know, five years ago or so you tried to trot out the old argument that was used in like mostly Massachusetts, around like, same gender marriage.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If you tried to make that claim today, there would be many, many, many, many, many parts of the country that you could point to and be like.

[Michael Hobbs]

Hey, yeah, we have it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Look what didn't happen.

[Michael Hobbs]

Although the funny thing is they did Actually make those arguments in the 1990s, even though, like, the Netherlands and Denmark had already had gay marriage for, like, two decades by that point. But it doesn't matter because other countries are not real. Other countries are not real.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. Again, not talking about facts and information. Talking about feelings.

[Michael Hobbs]

We could go through the whole fucking article. It's like, you can't go a paragraph through this article without, like, losing your fucking mind. I'm sure it's like the entire. The entire article. There's the most egregious one is he's talking about, like, the dangers of thimerozole. And he's like, people in the 1920s, like, this war full of people with meningitis, were given injections of thimerozole and they all died. And it's like. Right, because they had terminal meningitis. They died of meningitis. They didn't die of the fucking shot. What the fuck are you talking about? They're terminal. You just said that they're terminal, man.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is the brain rot of, like, cancer doesn't really exist. It's the chemo that's doing it. And you're like, completely okay the whole fucking thing.

[Michael Hobbs]

So this whole episode, the fact that this article was published at all is, like, so embarrassing. It's not totally clear to me how this article even got published, but you and I have both been through formal fact checking processes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes.

[Michael Hobbs]

I have no direct evidence of this, but it is very obvious to me that this did not go through a formal fact checking process.

[Aubrey Gordon]

A good fact checking process, like a really thorough one. Makes you so mad at the fact checker.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's an insufferable process process. And it is essential. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

You're Googling, like, how to murder someone through zoom. Like, you're so fucking mad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Not because they're calling you out on stuff you don't want to be called out on, not because they're telling you you're wrong, but because they're like, you know, you go, oh, this new toy markets for, you know, like, sells for 1999. And they'll be like, source.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my fuck. I was just about to say that. You're like, oh, the sky is blue. They're like, how do you know?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Can we prove?

[Michael Hobbs]

How do you know?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Can we prove it?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. The thing I kept thinking of throughout this article, I mean, we only covered the first whatever, 6% of it or something, but, like, the staggering number of studies finding a link between fimerozole and autism, there's no fucking way that would have gone through a formal fact checking process.

[Aubrey Gordon]

None. Zero is a staggering number.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly. Define staggering, Robert. Whoa.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Not one.

[Michael Hobbs]

Not even one. So I do not know how this article got published. I do know that RFK Jr. And Jan Winner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, are close personal friends and go hunting together.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They go hang out with Larry David.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly. In Aspen and shit. So what I think happened is jan Winter and RFK Jr were chatting, like at Davos or some shit, and he's like, hey, you should write about this for us. And then he wrote about it and Jan Wenner like, pushed it through the fact checking process. And so, I mean, in the same way the Lancet really did not cover themselves in glory with the Wakefield stuff. Both Salon and Rolling Stone did not retract this article until 2011.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Wow.

[Michael Hobbs]

So it took six years and they appended a couple corrections, but the corrections are all, like, dumb corrections. It's like, oh, this guy's like, job title was wrong. You're like, sorry, the basic factual error. Like, they didn't find a link with autism. You're not gonna fucking add that.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Part of what I find so frustrating about this is this is what. This is what many editors have thought that I was trying to do. I feel like I get the fact checking that JFK Jr. Should be getting. Yeah, right. Like, I absolutely remember, like, an extended conversation with a fact checker at one point where I had written at one point that there were no fewer fat children after X, Y and Z policy interventions. And the fact checker wrote back and was like, well, the rates did plateau for a little bit, so it didn't increase. And I was like, yeah, there are no fewer. Like, I don't think that's an inaccurate thing to say. Right? But like, boy, I'm getting. The rates plateaued a little bit. And they're like, yeah, yeah, secret meeting, total government cover up seems fine, but.

[Michael Hobbs]

So one thing I didn't know until I started researching this episode was how this article and RFK Jr. In general kicked off, like, a real glory day period for the anti vax movement. Immediately after this article comes out, he's on the Daily Show. He is on Oprah in 2007. She doesn't actually ask him about the vaccine stuff, which is interesting. And I feel like they probably just cut it out of the broadcast. But, like, she's still adding to the idea that this is like, a prominent figure worth listening to. Right? She does this, like, very softball interview with him. He goes on Don Imus a bunch. Don Imus has an autistic kid and really, like, went for it. Boy, it's actually really bleak. The guest list on Don Imus, he had Joe Lieberman, Chris Dodd, and John Kerry all on to talk about vaccines causing autism. It's really bad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Joe Lieberman is, like, from a cursed, nonpartisan underworld or something.

[Michael Hobbs]

These are people who I've been trying to forget and this book made me remember, and I'm really mad about it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

These are all the names of people who are, like, referenced in 30 Rock episodes. The reason your kids don't get 30 Rock. Yeah, too many Scooter Libby jokes.

[Michael Hobbs]

And then, you know, by 2010, one in four parents thought that vaccines cause autism. One in four, it's bad. This period was not a time of huge pushback.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That is bleak as dark.

[Michael Hobbs]

Since 2010, the pendulum has kind of swung back a little bit. So I got very interested in this because I think the sort of we must ask questions about vaccines kind of wave has ebbed, thank God. And it's much more, like, stigmatized to be an anti vaxxer now. Like, I think the establishment institutions are much more comfortable just being like, fuck off with this stuff. Now. The beginning of it was there were a bunch of measles outbreaks starting in 2008. And then in 2010, we get Andrew Wakefield losing his medical license. And then fascinatingly, in 2010 or between 2009 and 2011, we get a bunch of court cases where parents tried to get compensation from this vaccine injury compensation board for their kids having autism. So we talked last time about how there's this vaccine injury process where if you believe that your kids were harmed by a vaccine, you can take their case to this board and you can get compensation. We also talked about how the standards of evidence are way lower. You don't have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. All you have to prove is that it's more likely than not that a vaccine caused the injury, which is actually a really low standard when you think about it. And even under this lower standard, people cannot prove that vaccines cause autism. All of these court decisions are public. It was so cathartic to read the decisions, Aubrey, because it's like the court cases force the anti vaxxers to, like, sit down and present evidence and like, respond to criticisms. Right? They can't change the subject. They can't, like, do the conspiracy Gish Gallop just flood you with bullshit thing in a court process. It's like, okay, evidence piece one, evidence piece two.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

And then the other side can actually challenge that evidence. In 2010, there's a trial where the parents of a girl named Michelle Sedillo try to get compensation for their daughter having autism. And, like, you can see how much the goalposts have moved over the decades where they have this bizarre theory where mercury in the vaccines harmed her immune system, which gave her measles, and then measles gave her tummy stuff, and then the tummy stuff gave her autism. Basically, the other side in this trial, like, dismantle every single step along the way. There's no evidence that mercury affects immune systems. Like, that's not. That's like, mercury has many very bad effects, but it doesn't actually weaken your immune system. There's no evidence of this girl has measles or had measles, and there's no evidence that measles causes stomach stuff, and there's no evidence that stomach stuff causes autism. Like, this whole thing is just complete nonsense. And RFK Jr. Still references these trials now. He's like, we presented 700 studies showing how bad the mercury is in the vaccines. And that is true that they presented a ton of evidence, but all of the evidence was just about how bad mercury is. So it's like there was this mercury spill and then, like, a bunch of kids had these horrible symptoms and it's.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Like, yeah, yes, correct. Agree.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

A different substance is harmful.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly. And in very, very high doses. At one point, they talk about a situation where kids were exposed to 500,000 micrograms of methylmercury. And the judge is like, oh, we're talking about children being exposed to 2 micrograms of ethyl mercury. So that just isn't relevant to this case.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This all feels like the same kind of class of health misinformation and sort of misleading health information that is like this, you know, supplement includes heavy metals. And you find out that they're just talking about iron.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And you're like, oh, yeah, no, but we need that. That's like an important one.

[Michael Hobbs]

But then the other thing that these court processes do is they reveal to what extent there's. There's just no biologically plausible mechanism for this anymore. So one of the things that comes up in the Cedillo trial quite a bit is that mercury poisoning is a real thing and mercury poisoning has real measurable effects. Kids typically lose their hearing, they have growth impairments. They oftentimes have a small head compared to their body. It results in uneven growth. One of the things that the anti vaxxers are doing is they're just shouting mercury and vaccines. But like, people who actually know this stuff are like, no, we can measure mercury in kids. We can take their blood and measure how much mercury they have and we can measure their hair and their urine to see how much mercury they're excreting. So if there was a problem with mercury exposure for these kids through vaccines, we would find it. And like, they've done tests where they've taken kids blood the day after they get vaccinated. And like, is there a shitload of mercury in their blood? No. And so it's just like, no. If there was large scale mercury poisoning of the population that would have specific effects. It wouldn't just be like, oh, there's more kids with ADHD now, and like a bunch of other random shit. So the final chapter of this story is about where the anti vax movement is now. And to talk about that, we are going to watch a clip of RFK Jr. On a morning show.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's got a new book. It's called Thymerosal. Let the science Speak. Rosanna, keep going. There's a mouthful here. Big, big title. Let the Science Speak.

[Michael Hobbs]

The evidence supporting the immediate removal of.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Mercury, a known neurotoxin from vaccines.

[Michael Hobbs]

Robert Kennedy, Jr. Nice to have you.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Here on Good Day New York.

[Michael Hobbs]

So obviously the book is out now.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And you know that the critics are.

[Michael Hobbs]

Gunning for you this morning, right? I mean, they are really, they've really had a lot of terrible things to say about the book and some of your research.

[C]

Well, nobody who's had anything to say about the book has actually read the book.

[Aubrey Gordon]

How do you know that?

[C]

Well, because there were 12 reviews of the book that came out before the book was published. They attacked me for what they thought was going to believe, what was going to be in the book, which was basically a discussion of autism, which is not part of this book.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, tell us, do us a favor, set it up for us. Thymerosol. A lot of our viewers are not familiar with it. What is it?

[C]

Okay. Thimerosal is a mercury based preservative that is still in some vaccines. It was removed from by order of the FDA from all topical medicines after doing a lot of studies that show demonstrated its toxicity. CDC at the same time was recommending higher and higher doses of vaccines and there was thimerosal in those vaccines. And we started to see a giant rise in neurological disorders among our children, like autism. Well, add, we don't discuss autism because it's such a radioactive issue. So we just looked at the other neurological disorders. ADD adhd, speech delay, language delay, tics, misery index. Things that we didn't know as a kid. But this generation, it's part of who they are.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I gotta go run this by from Time magazine. The editor at large. Error. The problem is Kennedy. He's wrong. Utterly wrong. So wrong it's hard to even know what the biggest piece of that wrongness is. He says, as the levels of thimerosal have decreased, we've seen this autism increase. So the cause and effect are not there. Thimerosal is going away.

[C]

Again, he's wrong on all of his science. First of all, the levels of thimerosal are essentially equal. Equal to what they were before they removed it from pediatric vaccines. And here's why. It was removed from pediatric vaccines in 2003. But that same year, CDC recommended the flu vaccine for all Americans, and the flu vaccine contained very, very high levels of thimerosal.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I absolutely love when he's, like, yammering on the anchor, going, okay, all righty. All right. Like, I appreciate the anchors of Good Day New York for kind of holding his feet to the fire in a way that, like, other media does not appear to do. And, like, I hear him about reviews before books come out.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're on his side?

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, I'm just like, this is, like, a legit thing. There's been some press coverage recently about, like, oh, yeah, when my first book was released, it had an average of 1.1 stars on Goodreads. I agree with him that people should not review a book before they have read a book. But, like, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, that doesn't make him right.

[Michael Hobbs]

The theme of this entire episode is the way that conspiracy theorists move the goalposts, right? So we went from the pertussis vaccine to the measles vaccine to mercury in the vaccines, right? And we went from, like, sort of every developmental issue to food allergies to autism. And then what does he say in this clip? Twice? He's like, oh, we don't do autism anymore. We're back to, it causes everything. And you'll also notice they mention it's sort of so fast that you can't really, like, latch onto it. But they're like, in Time magazine, this guy says that thimerozole was removed from the vaccines in 2001. So if it causes autism, autism should be falling. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's in the flu vaccines. Well, wait, what? Wait a minute. No, I mean, it is, but most kids, or, like, roughly 45% of kids do not get flu vaccines.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

And only around somewhere between 10% to 30% of the flu vaccines have thimerosal because they're multi dose bottles. Most of them are single dose bottles which don't have fimerazole anymore.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

The fucking balls of this man to write a book in 2015 saying we demand the immediate removal of thimerozole when it was removed in fucking 2001.

[Aubrey Gordon]

His approach is like, there's like an old Mr. Show sketch where they're sort of talking about two competing grocery stores and one of them is like a big store that moves in from out of town and keeps running ads that are like. Like, unlike some stores, we don't have any rats.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Unlike this other store, you'll enter with your kid and you'll leave with your kid. Your kid won't get kidnapped in our store. Right. Like, that's. The level that he's operating at is sort of this like continued assertion kind of level.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, that's, that's what's so kind of striking to me about this clip and about other interviews that I've seen with him is like, if you watch this clip, you. You can easily walk away from it thinking he like won the exchange.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right. Like, he seems very confident. He's like, well, they haven't even read the book. Which is like a pretty good argument.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

The sort of. The fundamental flaw in what he's saying isn't ever really pointed out to you with like the gravity that it needs to be. This guy is telling us to remove something that hasn't been in the vaccines for 20 years. Like, that's like kind of a joke. Like it's a joke thing to come on TV and fucking say.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's a premise for us guys.

[Michael Hobbs]

But I don't think the hosts kind of know well enough to be like, bro, what are you even fucking doing with your career at this point? People don't have the sort of the context or the confidence potentially to just point this out very clearly. But he seems very confident and he has this kind of scoffing, like, well, every single thing that he says is wrong. And it's like that sort of rich guy legacy admission confidence that I think has carried him so far.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. What he needs from like a media perspective is like he needs like Jake Tapper on a bad day. Yeah. That guy will sometimes get like a dog with a bone and be like, no, I asked you this.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Someone who has to be willing to make it weird and uncomfortable or Katie.

[Michael Hobbs]

Couric being like, sorry, what magazines do you read?

[Aubrey Gordon]

What newspaper?

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the fourth time.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Name a newspaper.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's so fucking funny to me that that's what did it with Sarah Palin.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's.

[Michael Hobbs]

What are you?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Hilarious? To me, it feels like it's the Billy on the street approach to journalism.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

She just ran up to her and was like, name a woman.

[Michael Hobbs]

She's like, so this marks the end of our journey into anti vax bullshit. I did not want to do this, but we're going to do another part of this, specifically on Covid stuff where we're finally gonna get to the vitamin D truth. And, like, the weird hydroxychloroquine stuff.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I am so desperate to know what the fuck that means.

[Michael Hobbs]

Still, you can't. You still can't Google you still.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm not. I'm not gonna Google. But, like, I want show rules to.

[Michael Hobbs]

Know, but I want to end with a quote from Jonathan Berman's book where he's talking about the anti vaxx movement of the 1800s. And this continues to be very useful today. He says they started with a complex network of personal reasons for objecting to vaccination and approached the science as a source of prestige that could be borrowed for their arguments. From this viewpoint, no experiment can be well enough designed, no controls adequate, and no evidence convincing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

And that is where we are with this. Right? They've literally had their day in court.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

The entire scientific establishment has done everything they want, and they refuse to take yes for an answer.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I don't know, man. This feels like a real. I'm trying to think of a. Sorry.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're trying to think of a joke to end with, but you don't have one because I bummed you out too much.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's right. I'm just going to type in vitamin D truth.

[Michael Hobbs]

All right, all right, all right, all right. Now you're holding me. All right, fine, fine. We'll end. We'll end. We'll end sa.