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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 526: Parents Want To Talk About Vaccines More Than All Other Topics Combined | Joel Warsh Gator, Between a Shot and a Hard Place
01:02:51
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- [00:01]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
After Zoomies at the dog park, it's time for drive up at Target.
- [00:04]
Ginny Urch
In goes a big bag of kibble.
- [00:06]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
And one squeaky chicken toy for the good boy.
- [00:09]
Ginny Urch
Drive up.
- [00:10]
Unknown
That's ready when you are only in the Target app, just tap Target.
- [00:15]
Ginny Urch
Okay, Joel, I took 15 pages of notes. So are you ready? Can we just jump in?
- [00:21]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Definitely.
- [00:22]
Ginny Urch
All right, here we go. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urch. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I'm so excited because Dr. Joel Gator Warsh is back and we're going to be talking about vaccines. Here we go. Welcome.
- [00:37]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Thank you for having me back on. It's always a pleasure.
- [00:40]
Ginny Urch
So I want you to start us off by giving a little bit of background. You write a book about vaccines, which is obviously a very controversial topic. We're going to be talking about a lot of those types of things today. We've talked about it a little bit on the show. I've got a little bit of my own history there with my own kids. But this book is fantastic. I have 15 pages of notes. You're the person to write the book because you're a board certified pediatrician. You worked with kids for a very long time. You're also an epidemic master's degree in epidemiology. So can you give us a little bit of your background in how that's helped you become the right person to write a book about vaccines?
- [01:13]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah, I'm going back, I guess, a little bit. You know, I've been on, I mean, I've been on my journey, pediatrician, did all the regular stuff. I think it all really started with meeting my wife in residency and she's very holistic minded. So that open up my eyes to a little bit of a different world. And certainly as I went through practice and then opened up my own integrative practice, I started having more and more questions from parents about vaccines. And unfortunately, the conversation was just so censored. It wasn't something that I really ever felt very comfortable talking about on social media or anywhere else. I mean, we've talked a little bit in the past. I've been on many shows, but I never really talked about it. I mean, maybe a little bit, but it was just so tough. And I got so frustrated with that over the years. And certainly when Covid happened, I think that opened up my eyes and a lot of people's eyes to a need to talk about everything and to get rid of this ridiculous censorship on a word like vaccines. It's crazy. We're giving these to our kids and we should be able to talk about it. I'm not against anything. I feel like people should be able to make their own decisions, make the decisions that are best for them. We should be able to talk about it and help people to make the decision that's right for their family. In my office, we get vaccines. You know, we have them. We have people that do the regular schedule. We have some people that go on a slow schedule, some people don't do them. And I just feel like we shouldn't force people to do anything and they should be able to make up their mind based on the best information that we have. Just like everything else in medicine, that's the way the book is, that's the way that I talk about things. And that really led me to write this because I feel like everything in vaccines is so one sided, so polarized. A lot of it was really censored as we mentioned. And I feel like I'm in a unique position because I get to see and talk to parents all the time that have some hesitancy, some concerns. That's why they come to the office, that's why they message me on social media. And I've been talking about this for years, but just not anywhere except in the office. And that's not right. People have these questions and I wanted to get the information out there and take people on my, my journey of reading about this and learning about it. And I also wanted to learn more about vaccines because I get so many questions about it.
- [03:09]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, so let's talk about the fact that we can't really talk about it. Someone the other day said, do you talk about the V word on your podcast? I was like, what is the V word? She says, vaccines. I was like, sure. Well, I mean, we're here for child wellness and kids are sick. Kids are sick. So I think we should be able to talk about all the different types of things. Obviously common sense is these amount of shots has gone up quite a bit over the last decades, so you should be able to talk about it. So you say on a personal basis, you're encountering name calling and judgment. People are saying anti vax, conspiracy theories, snake oil salesman. I mean, we've all seen the types of words and they're kind of repeated over and over again. But we really are in this spot where, where parents are even afraid to ask and in some cases they're getting kicked out of their medical practice. Their doctor, which to me feels kind of nuts. It's like, well, is it better to just not have a doctor at all? Then you know, you give this one letter from this doctor who says, in my practice you will vaccinate and you will vaccinate on time. You know, this type of thing, otherwise you can't come. And I do think that parents are having a harder and harder time finding someone like you who is willing to be open with different types of options, different types of schedules. You say parents want to talk about this more than all other topics combined. Why is it being censored?
- [04:32]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
I think it's been censored for so long because there's just this concern around any sort of risk. I think doctors, it's a religion. It's like vaccines are just the best thing ever. And we had all these diseases before and so we need to make sure that everybody gets their vaccine. So we're protecting kids. And that's just not working anymore. I mean, I think during the pandemic with the safe and effective propaganda, basically people just got so annoyed. What should have been said during the pandemic was we have this new vaccine based on the research that we have so far. The benefits seem to outweigh the risks. We feel like based on the initial research, the amount of death goes down, the amount of hospitalization goes down. The we don't know anything about long term risk. We haven't found any major issues, but this is what we know. We recommend it based on that. You don't take it or don't take it, that's up to you. But we feel like it'll be helpful. That is honest. Obviously you don't know anything long term before it's been long term. So to say something is safe after you've studied it for two months doesn't make any sense. You just don't know and that's okay. Nobody would expect you to know. I mean, you're doing something in a rush to get it out, that's fine. And the individuals who want to take it, that's totally reasonable. And if you don't want to take it, I think that's totally reasonable too. But it just seems like there's this greater and greater push. Just my way or the highway, just do it. And that just does not work anymore. I mean, we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing the statistics. The trust in medicine is gone. It went from like over 70% to now under 40%. There was just a study that came out a couple weeks ago, maybe like a week ago from Harvard that said that now 21% of American parents don't feel like they should be forced to get vaccines or that vaccine should be required for school. It used to be like 5%. It's not that way. So the number is exploding. The amount of exemptions people want are exploding. The amount of people that are not fully vaccinated is exploding. And that's because medicine is not willing to have the conversations and discuss safety. It's more about forcing people. And people are pushing back. And I think medicine is doing the exact opposite of what they want. They want people to be vaccinated and they're actually pushing people away from getting vaccinated. They're creating the hesitancy that they are trying to prevent. I just think we have to take a step back and start to partner back up with families and have these discussions openly and honestly talk about what we do and do not know and try to get the best possible products that are the safest possible and always continue moving forward with that direction. We don't have the best vaccines we're ever going to have in the history of humanity. We can always make them better. We can always make them safer. And if we can't talk about it, then they're never going to be better. And right now it seems like it's about money much more than it is about safety. And that's what at least people feel. And that needs to change.
- [07:04]
Ginny Urch
There is a lot about money in the book. So the book is called Between a Shot and a Hard Place. It is a fantastic book. I have 15 pages of notes tackling difficult vaccine questions with balance, data and clarity. And what I sort of get from the whole premise is, here you are as a pediatrician, you've got parents coming in and you say, I trust moms. These moms that, you know, they say this reaction happened or something, you know, happened. And I, I think it's related to this shot. So you've got these moms that are coming in. We owe it to these parents to listen. They don't have ulterior motives. And yet you're also talking about the other side of it too, where, you know, disease and things that have gone down over time. So it's almost like this reconciliation between this safe and effective that's been told for decades and also people coming in and, and there being a vaccine compensation program. So obviously there are risks there and billions of dollars have been paid out. So it's a fantastic book because when you say the vaccine hesitancy is coming from the fact that we don't have all the Information, it sort of paints this picture that, well, maybe that's on purpose or, I don't, I don't know. Like if you're paying out billions of dollars in these. Well, that comes from, I know that comes from the tax. But like if they're paying out billions of dollars for different lawsuits or these big companies, or they're paying millions of dollars to political campaigns, or they're paying millions of dollars for television ad spots, you kind of like, well, it seems as though the money would be there to do these long term studies or different types of things. So let's talk about the money. This is, and I think this is sort of what a lot of parents are thinking. This is a product, a vaccine is a product that's manufactured by a for profit company and they are highly profitable. I mean, highly profitable. If they're able to be paying out these huge sums for all sorts of different things, obviously they're making a lot of money. You give this history of when Rockefeller gives money to the medical institution and then all of a sudden they don't have any of these alternative medical institutions. And it almost seems like similar things are still happening.
- [09:04]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah, I mean, I think you just have to look at it very simply. Pharmaceutical companies are not donating to orphans in some country. Right. They're, they're donating to media and they're don. Donating to political campaigns and they're donating to medical schools and they're donating to journals and they fund everything. And they do that for a reason. I mean, it's not necessarily nefarious. I'm sure there are some nefarious people there, but you know, for the most part it's not, it's just people. But what would you do as a company? I mean, your job as a company is to make money. It's not to make people healthy. If that's a byproduct, great. But at the end of the day, your job is to make more money this quarter than last quarter or you get fired as the CEO. So that's what your job is to do. And how would you do that? I mean, if you can fund all the campaigns, you can push things in your favor. You know, you give someone a million dollars, they're obviously more likely to be in your favor later. Or the news is less likely to say something bad about your company if you're funding 75% of their company. So it's just really, that's what it is. We have this system that's been set up over decades where these companies are getting bigger and bigger. They have more and more money, they have more and more influence, and there's nobody really pushing back. And the organizations that are supposed to be policing them are mainly funded by them. So there's just nobody doing anything about it. And when you talk about liability, the main driver in America, especially of companies doing better or making better products or making safer products, is liability. Because if somebody has a problem with your product, if they get killed or they have some sort of harm, then you sue them and you sue them for a lot of money and they don't want to do that or they go out of business. But with vaccines, because there were a bunch of issues in the 1980s to keep the vaccine manufacturers going, they made that the liability act of 1986, which basically gave them immunity. So you can't sue them. If you do have an injury that you think is from a vaccine, you sue the government and the government can pay you, and that's out of a tax from each vaccine. So there's really no reason for the companies to ever make their products better. Why would you, as some big pharmaceutical company say, hey, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to spend a couple billion dollars, we're going to get a whole bunch of people together, we're spend 10 years, we're going to look at long term risks and we're going to see if we can find any problems with our products. So that way we can have our product be found to have a problem and have to take it off the market. They're not going to do that. We have to do it. We have to look into these things. And there's actually really nothing looking at long term issues. And we're at a different time now. We just are. Back a hundred years ago, everyone was dying earlier. We were worried about infectious disease. We're not as worried about that anymore. In part because of vaccines, in part because of many other things. You know, nutrition, sanitation, antibiotics. We have better healthcare, all sorts of things. But we have chronic disease. We have all sorts of chronic disease. We have to figure out how, if and in what way vaccines are related to that. Because two things can be true at once. A vaccine can protect you from a disease, but it can also create harm. It could also have a side effect. And we need to figure out exactly what those two things are and what we should want. What I would want as a parent or a doctor, I want to minimize the diseases for kids. I don't want kids to get sick or die. But I also Want to minimize side effects and chronic disease and long term risks. So both things can be true. And we have to look at both of those things and see can we make vaccines better? Are they related to some of these issues? Instead of just saying, no, they're not, which is not necessarily true. We just don't know.
- [12:17]
Ginny Urch
That's what you say over and over again. I don't know. I don't know. I look at the research myself. It doesn't really seem to conclude what this person says. It's concluding. So the money is going all over the place. Is some of these like Glaxo, Klein, whatever, it's like they make the product and they fund the study to study the product, to study the vaccine. And basically it's similar to what was going on with Rockefeller where you say he's giving all this money to say this is supporting education and innovation and kind of. Right. But also it's like the innovation seems to be in the same path, just more. We had six shots, now we're gonna have more.
- [12:53]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
I mean, when you, when you have the oil and you wanna create the products, it makes a lot of sense that you would fund things in the direction of the stuff that's gonna make you a profit. That doesn't mean it's bad. Like a lot of what we did at medicine is great. I mean, med schools and there's a lot of wonderful things that have come from this. And pharma, there's a lot of great things that come from pharma, but of course you're gonna fund things in the direction that benefits you the most. And that's been drifting for decades now. And now we're at this place where the only thing that we know is pharma, America. Not just vaccines, but I mean, we take medications for everything. We spend the most on health care pretty much of any of the industrialized countries. We have the worst health of most of the countries. So we're obviously not doing everything right. And we have this lobby from pharma that is so strong, we're like the only country that you could see advertisements on tv. You know, coming from Canada when I grew up, it's like you come to America, you see all these ads on, it's so weird. Like you don't see that anywhere else in the world. So there's just a lot that we do very differently and it's not necessarily better. And I think we need some humility. We have no humility in healthcare, no humility in medicine. And we have to say, look, everything we did is bad. We used to live till 40, we're living till 70s. That's good. But life expectancy is going back down and chronic disease rates are going up. So what have we done in the last 30 or 40 years that's changed? And maybe not everything we're doing is great. And let's find some middle ground there.
- [14:11]
Ginny Urch
And parents have some common sense. So if between 2020 and 2022, which so much of this is so current, Joel, I mean, just happen. Between 2020 and 2022, pharmaceutical companies paid over a billion dollars to peer reviewers and top medical journals. They're spending X amount of, you know, billions of dollars in 2021, 6.88 billion on direct to consumer advertising for drugs. So money is there. The money could be going maybe towards some of these long term studies. And also money does sway things. So I think that parents like you talk about, they come with concerns and rightfully so. So you've got this in the book. You talk about the National Child Vaccine Injury act. You talk about 1986 and then that really only 1% possibly of adverse events are being reported to the system. And to date $5.3 billion in compensation has been awarded under that program. That's a lot of money. So you say in the same breath, we can't say they're completely safe and effective when we're also awarding billions of dollars for injuries that have been proven in the court of law to be casually related to vaccines. So just interesting to think about the money. Purdue paid out 634 million in 202007. All these companies are paying out money. But I want to move on from there because there are really some major concerns, I guess that I think for people that are concerned and I don't think they are anti vax like you say often they are pro vax and they come up against an injury or they come up against questions and they just want to have those questions answered. And so I'd like to talk about some of the main concerns in the book. So Between A Shot and a Hard Place is the name of the book. It's already out so people can buy it. This is the main concern. There is really no settled science on the number of shots. So the number of shots has grown. Common sense would be like, well, that's more things you're injecting in your body and there isn't really good research on that. The amount that has grown as well as what if you space them out?
- [16:08]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah, I guess first, you know, you made a really good point about calling somebody anti vaxxer or parents who feel like they had a reaction from a vaccine. And yes, some things could be coincidence. You could get a vaccine today and have a heart attack this afternoon and it could be coincidence. You might have had a heart attack either way and has something to do with the vaccine. But if a whole bunch of people have heart attacks the day of getting a vaccine, you damn well should be looking into that and say maybe it has something to do with that. Right. And you have all these parents who have got a vaccine, they feel like it caused some sort of serious reaction in their kids, whether it's a, you know, neurodevelopmental concerns or big changes within the next couple of days and then they're labeled anti vaxx, which makes no sense because it's literally a parent who went in to get vaccines and they were doing what they were told and what they thought was the right thing and they feel like their kid has a reaction. That is not an anti vaxx parent, that's someone who has a concern. We should listen to those concerns and we should take that data and use it to make sure that things are safe. So I think that's really important to say because people feel bad about talking about this and they shouldn't. If you feel like you have a reaction doesn't make you anti vax, that's like a good parent. They're having discussions, they want to figure out why and maybe it's to do with the vaccines, maybe it's not, but that's what research is for. So I think that that's really important. Now, getting back to your question. So, yeah, I mean, we have a rapidly expanding vaccine requirements or vaccine recommendations from the CDC that is majorly expanded since the 80s. Depending on the numbers that you count, you could be getting 40, 50 plus vaccines in the first few years. Some people would say that's good. You know, many people say that's good thing, right? Oh, can protect against more diseases. So that's good. That's kind of the standard way to think about things. And I think there, you know, some truth to that, of course, But I think the biggest concern is there too many? Are we injecting too much into our kids? Does that cause some sort of problem? Does the cumulative effects and risks add up? Should we be concerned about that? And there hasn't really been research on the cumulative schedule. The company studies the vaccine before they put on the market. Sometimes there's other vaccines involved in the trial, sometimes there isn't. And we don't really know how that affects us long term because nothing's studying that. You study the vaccine before it comes on the market. You study it for a couple of weeks, maybe a couple months, maybe a year if you're lucky, and then it goes on the market. And how do we know if it causes some sort of long term issue? Because you're not looking at that. Most of the reporting that we have is self reports. So if you have a vaccine and you get a terrible reaction and anaphylaxis and hives all over your body that next day, you might report that to the system, to vaers vaccine adverse reporting. But if you get cancer five years later or you have asthma seven years later, you're not gonna necessarily think that has anything to do with the vaccine. It may or may not, but you're not gonna report it. So we have no idea. Just anecdotally, so many people that take care of kids that are vaccinated or unvaccinated feel like the kids that are unvaccinated don't have this as often. Some states studies, they're not the best studies because we just haven't really done them. But the few that do exist oftentimes do show differences. So I just think we have so many questions around this that it is time to get the right research to look into these things and to go forward to get vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. You can have it open so that way you can choose which group you're in. You're not going to make people not get vaccines, but you can follow kids that are unvaccinated forward and we can look and see how these things are related. Is it or not? Maybe it won't be. And that is going to be the evidence that are going to make people more confident. But if you do find issues, if you do find, oh, kids that are vaccinated have a 10 times risk of getting asthma, don't we want to know that fact so that we could say, hey, kids have an increased risk of this autoimmune condition or asthma or seizures or whatever. Why? Why? What ingredient? Can we change that ingredient? Can we remove that ingredient? Can we adjust the schedule? Are there things we can do with the schedule to decrease that risk? Again, it doesn't mean we shouldn't vaccinate, but maybe we can vaccinate in a way that decreases your risk for the other thing. And wouldn't you want to do that? Every doctor would. You don't want to give kids asthma, right? Like you don't want to give kids problems. We should be able to ask those questions and see if it is. And if it's not, then parents want that information so they can be more confident when they're doing it. But they don't feel confident right now, I think.
- [20:03]
Ginny Urch
And what you do is you state clearly this has not happened. There has not been research on the cumulative effect. You say to date, no comprehensive study has been conducted to evaluate the cumulative effects of the full vaccination schedule. And additionally, they specifically say this has not been tested for cancer, for mutations and for fertility.
- [20:25]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Right. Almost every, if you look at the inserts for the vaccines, they almost all say that, which, I mean, makes sense because they're not generally studying things in pregnant women. Right. You're not going to study on pregnant women in general for something new. So you don't really know how that affects pregnancy. Certainly before it hits the market, you're not studying for cancer because that's a long term outcome and you'd have to watch people for 10, 20, 30 years. So they mentioned that for liability purposes, I'm sure, but we don't know. So, and I'm not saying that it does, I'm not saying it causes cancer. But the only way to know that is to follow people forward. And when we have this chronic disease explosion, you really should think about the things that are affecting your immune system. And we know that vaccines affect your immune system because that's what it's literally supposed to do. It's supposed to create a response in a positive way, in theory, and create some memory. So when you're exposed to the disease in the future, you have that memory and you can fight it off and not get a sick or not die. I mean, that's all good, but the question is at what cost? What does that do to your immune system? How might it affect it in a negative way? Or how might it affect certain populations, some kids, specific kids, in a negative way. And if we can figure that out, then maybe we can figure out the subpopulation or the genetics or whatever for the kids that are having reactions and we can minimize that. Again, that shouldn't be controversial. You don't want to cause a reaction for any medicine you give a kid. You don't want them to have anaphylaxis. Right. We don't want that. So we should figure out, if we can, how to minimize that.
- [21:45]
Unknown
Right.
- [21:46]
Ginny Urch
And if we don't have the data, then there's nothing that you can go off of. So it's a really tricky situation. You wrote when Parents don't know or can't predict the risk of side effects 10 years from now, let alone over a lifetime. They can't make truly informed decisions. And that really is what the problem is.
- [22:01]
Unknown
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- [25:50]
Ginny Urch
People just want to make informed decisions. Actually, you talk about how these parents who are often labeled anti vaxx, you're like no, no, they want more science. Like please study more, put more money into the studies so that we can actually know what's happening. You say it's woefully apparent to me that most trials are rigged and to hide the true rate of adverse effects. So we are entitled to rudimentary information before making decisions that could have serious repercussions, both good and bad, for our children's health. So what's happening Is there are a lot of vaccines. You talk about the antigens, and there's not really been any studies on the total amount of shots that kids are getting throughout their childhood. Additionally, some were saying there's no upper limit on the number of vaccines that can be administered during one visit. Each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time. It's literally a raindrop in the ocean. So people are saying this, but then there's no studies to back that up at all.
- [26:52]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Right. Well, I mean, so many prominent physicians, vaccinologists, think that way. And their basic theory, for best that I can tell, is we're exposed to all sorts of things all the time. You eat an apple, there's all sorts of stuff on it. There's all sorts of bacteria, fungus, everything on our skin at all times. And so there's no reason why you couldn't get a thousand vaccines, 10,000 vaccines, because it's just such a small amount of antigens that you're being exposed to compared to what you're exposed to every day. So therefore, it shouldn't really matter. You get five vaccines a day, it's fine because you're exposed to a million things when you bite into an apple. So that's the general mentality, which to me is just an oversimplification. It doesn't make a lot of sense, number one, because we've evolved to be exposed to things in certain ways. Like if you're eating something, it goes into your gut. Your immune system has evolved that way. It's not the same thing as injecting it into your body. And again, that doesn't mean that our body can't handle it. I don't know. But I don't think that injecting is the same thing as being exposed in the natural ways that we're supposed to. And that also doesn't take into account all the other stuff in a vaccine. Natural exposures are natural. Just like there's real bacteria, real fungus, real viruses versus something that's synthesized artificial. Might be similar, but it's not necessarily the same. But of course, it's not the same thing as an injection with aluminum or formaldehyde or other ingredients. And so there's obviously some upper limit to the amount of aluminum you could inject into your body. And so it's a silly statement to me that you could just inject 10,000 vaccines and that's just totally fine. You might be able to inject 10,000 antigens. That might be true. I don't know, probably not. But you know, you could probably inject more antigens, but we're not just injecting antigens. There's a lot of stuff in vaccines, chemicals to help it work, to make the vaccines work more efficiently. You don't want bacteria to grow. And so not that it's not there necessarily nefariously again in there, but you can't just inject an unlimited amount of aluminum. So there has to be some upper limit there. And it's really, I think demoralizing and just, you know, really gaslighting to parents to say like, oh, you can just vaccinate forever and it's totally safe and you're never going to have a problem. Even if it's one in a million risk of severe side effects, which is kind of the number that is quoted. I don't think that number is true. I think it's more than that. But even if that's true, when you're doing 20, 30, 40, you're adding up a risk each time and that risk increases and then it might be 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 5,000, but if that risk starts to get down, if we're doing 100 vaccines or 300 vaccines and now you have a 1 in 100 risk of having a severe side effect when you only have a one in a million risk of getting some of these diseases. I mean, these are the things that we have to talk about because it's risk versus benefits and you can't just vaccinate for everything. Just because we have a vaccine doesn't mean we should. You know, we could vaccinate everyone for smallpox even there isn't any more smallpox anymore in 50 years. But we don't because we don't have it anymore. So I think we have to talk about it in that way, I think, because then you can prioritize. Like okay, maybe we say, oh well, the measles vaccine, that's the most important one. So let's make sure that people get that one. That's the one we prioritize. And maybe there hasn't been polio in 40 years in America, so maybe we don't have to give that one to a two month old. Obviously we don't want polio to come back. If it starts coming back, maybe we do it again, but maybe that's one of the things we can move later or we don't do. Or hepatitis B. Well, you know what, the risk for a baby is almost zero if parents don't have hepatitis B. So maybe we don't have to give that one on day one anymore since we have all these other vaccines. Let's do it later if you want to. Like, these are the questions we could ask and we could discuss. And I think if parents saw that, I think if parents saw these discussions, we're talking about safety, we're minimizing things, we're taking some away, we're decreasing a few, we're prioritizing the things that are more important. That's going to make people more confident as opposed to. All right, well, here's another one. Do another couple. Like, we added a COVID vaccine and flu shots every year and an RSV vaccine and you know, we're going to have six or 10 more in the next couple of years. Like, at what point is it going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is just too many. I don't want to give 10 shots to my kid today. You can have six vaccines in one day. Now that's standard on a six month old visit. So I understand the concerns. I think the concerns are reasonable and I think we're not reasonably answering those questions. And if we do not, then hesitancy is going to continue to rise and that's what's happening.
- [30:50]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, there's no safety studies on that. There's no safety studies on this large amount. It's a robust vaccine schedule. You say it's recommended and then you talk about in the book, how is it really recommended if you can't even get a doctor? You know, like you're kicked out of your practice. Is that really the word that we should be using, recommended? I mean, in some places it is required. Or you're, I mean, I, I see it all the time in the mom boards. I'm trying to find someone, I'm trying to find a pediatrician. Can't find anyone. This person is booked. There's only one in your whole area and they're full. They, they have a full patient list. So is it really recommended? And you write how the slower schedules are not recommended and because they're not recommended, they haven't been studied at all. So you're just, you're stuck, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. You're like, well, maybe I want to slow it down. Maybe I'm not anti vaxx. I want to do some, but I want to go in at a slower pace. But it also seems like the fast schedules have also not been studied for safety or efficacy either, cumulatively. So that's a main concern. What you do in the book wonderfully, Joel, is you just, you bring it up and you let people know that there is not robust science on the number of shots that kids are getting and the number of vaccines and the number of antigens and the number of things that are added in. It just doesn't exist. Things are mostly tested one at a time. The second thing is that when they are tested, so this is another main concern. They're testing based off of another shot. So, okay, so like the best one, there were so many good examples, but it was like Prevnar 14. Well, we're going to compare that to the Prevnar 7. And we're going to compare that to, you know, and it just keeps going back and back. It's never really been compared to a placebo. And so then they're going to be like, oh, there's no reactions. MMR2 is basically the same as MMR1. Well, you're like, but what was MMR1 tested off of? And you say, look, it would be cheaper for them to test it off of a placebo, but it's not happening. And there's all these ethical concerns, like, this is the standard of care, so we don't want anyone to not get the vaccines, so we can't do anything about it. And I didn't realize that that's what's happening. The testing is based off of the previous shot, and we don't know if the previous shots testing was done to today's standard. And also it doesn't really make sense to compare it to another shot.
- [33:04]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah, and that's something that I certainly. I mean, I learned a lot. Obviously, I probably know more about vaccines than most over the last decade, because I've been asked so many questions. But even until I did the research on the book, there was just so much that I learned that shocked me going back, because you really do need to do a deep dive. And I think it's really important for people to know that we don't learn any of this in med school. Like, we're not taught any of this in residency. You know, we learn about the vaccines, we learn about the horrible diseases, we learn about what happened before, and now we don't see these things anymore. So vaccines are the best. Here's your schedule. Good luck. Go do it. Promote.
- [33:36]
Ginny Urch
And that's. That's funded. Some of that funding is possibly coming from big pharma.
- [33:41]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Sure. And we're never, we're never taught, like, why don't you trust Pharma 101? You know, I made that joke in the book. It's like, you know, we're not taught anybody. So it's like, here are the vaccines, they're great. We don't have the diseases, so go do it. And that's all you really know unless you go look at it yourself. And when you look at the research on vaccines, especially the ones on the schedule that kids are getting today, it is really interesting to look at how it's done because you would think, I mean, I was always taught placebo is supposed to be an inert substance. So you would think a placebo is salt water or saline. And that's how everything was studied. And when you look very quickly at the research, you're like, oh, they are placebo controlled, studied. They all have that. They've all been studied before. They hit the market with a placebo and you're like, okay, cool. And the companies very intelligently call a placebo not something that's really a placebo. They say, oh, it's been placebo study. But yes, it's studied against another vaccine or a vaccine with the antigen taking out. And that's the way that pretty much all of the vaccine trials have been. And that's how they go back. The original studies, if the vaccines are old many, many years ago, were never studied in that way. They weren't studied in a blinded study like you would do today. And then it kind of moves forward. So you study the new one versus the old one, and then the old one wasn't studied in the most appropriate way. A great example. So you said. So the, the prevnar, the original prevnar was studied against meningococcus vaccine, so it wasn't studied against saltwater. There was nothing else on the market that they couldn't just study against saltwater. They studied against meningococcus. So DTAP vaccine, diphtheria, tennis pertussis. So the new one, the DT AP seller pertussis was studied against the whole cell dtp. The DTP was taken off the market for safety concerns. So you're saying, well, dtap is not more unsafe than dtp, and that's how we studied it, so therefore it's safe. But then DTP was taken off the market for safety concerns. So we don't have a baseline of safety, which is key. And not to say that the vaccines on the market are unsafe, but we don't have that baseline versus saltwater. And the reason why that's super important is if you're doing a study in the way that they do it, now it's to minimize what might look as a problem. So vaccine A versus vaccine B, both groups get 10 seizures. So in the study you report, well, there's no increased risk of seizures in this study and therefore it's deemed safe because we have the same risk of seizures in both groups versus the best kind of study. Vaccine A versus vaccine B versus saline, 10 seizures versus 10 seizure versus one seizure. That's a very different study. You can see why it matters. It might be that the saline group has 10 seizures and that's the normal rate, or it might be that it's not. And both vaccines have a safety concern. So they know what they're doing, they're doing it on purpose. And that shouldn't be the case. We shouldn't allow that. That's not anti science. When we're talking about going forward and doing new trials, we need to require them to do it against a saline saltwater placebo for any new vaccine, that there's nothing else on the market. Yes, there are ethical concerns. It's very difficult once something is on the market because then you say, well, we can't not give a kid the whooping cough vaccine because it's been proven safe. So we have this now ethical dilemma where we can't study it against saltwater, but it never was in the first place. So you have this ethical circular dilemma. But that's something we're just going to have to deal with, I think. But at least for new vaccines, we can say, hey, you should not allow fda, cdc, don't allow the vaccine on the market, don't give it to kids until you can show me that it's safe against salt water. How is that anti science? I don't want to inject my baby with something that hasn't been shown, at least against saltwater to be safe. That's not anti anything. That's not saying you shouldn't have it. Just I want the best possible research. And if we don't require it, and obviously the CDC never has required it before for these vaccines because they're on the market without them, we need to say we're not going to accept that anymore. Make it standard, make them do that study, study it against saltwater. We want that data too. And at least if we have that, we can feel a little more comfortable with the product.
- [37:18]
Ginny Urch
That's a big deal. It's a big deal. MMR 2 tested against MMR, which was tested against individual measles or rubella. That was tested and when they did that, the kids were getting all sorts of other shots at the same time too, so the results are convoluted.
- [37:33]
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- [40:31]
Ginny Urch
And interestingly enough, you talk about how in Harvard has done like long term studies. You know, they talk about the happiness study or whatever that one is. And it's like there are longitudinal studies out there and there are people who have not been vaccinated like the Amish or like a lot of American kids. There are some that have not been. And so it seems like you'd be able to take the data points, especially now with AI, dump them into a computer and it will be able to spit you out stuff. So it appears that when they say things like, well there's ethical concerns here and we're stuck, it doesn't seem like it because there should be some data points at least, at least that would give some sort of a picture. And when they say we're stuck, who wins? Who wins?
- [41:08]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Right? And I mean not even, even before that, which I mean, I think we have to do it. We have to do the prospective forward studies. It's something we got to do this point. But even they haven't done studies vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids on the databases that we have. We have databases, we have Kaiser, we have the vaccine safety data link. No studies I haven't seen anywhere that show, okay, here's the vaccinated versus unvaccinated against all these things like autism and ADHD and asthma and allergies, that would take a few minutes for an amazing statistician to pop that data out. And I can tell you for sure, if you were to get some big like all of Kaiser data for the last 30 years and vaccinated versus unvaccinated and the rates were the same in both groups, that would be front page of the New York Times. People are either choosing not to do it or they have run that data and it's not showing what they want to show. So they just kind of abandon it. And let, and let it be. It doesn't make any sense. Like why wouldn't you want to have that research with all this stuff? People are like, oh, it's about Secretary Kennedy. He's saying this, he's saying that he's anti vax. The best way to shut him up or to shut people up would be, look, here are 10 million people. We followed them over 20 years. Look at the results. Between vaccinated, unvaccinated, there's no difference. So what are you talking about? That would be the first thing anybody that did epidemiology would do. And it's not hard to do. So it's pretty shocking that stuff doesn't exist. I thought it existed. I thought a lot of that stuff existed. It does not exist. No one's ever done those studies or at least published them.
- [42:28]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, so that's what you're going to learn in the book. What is actually going on. You're going to learn about this placebo thing. You're going to learn about there are no long term studies of vaccinated children versus unvaccinated children. It's not there. If long term studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals have not been performed, how can we emphatically conclude anything? And therein lies the disconnect. So we've got this placebo issue. We've got the fact that there's no long term studies. We've got the fact that we're not studying slower schedules, we're not studying the amount of shots, we're not really studying cancer, fertility, these long term things. There's a lot going on there. You learn that from the book. You also talk about how some of the studies are very short. The Hep B vaccine, Energix B, all subjects were monitored for four days. Four days, you say? Perhaps I'm missing something. One would presume that prior to deeming a vaccine sufficiently safe to administer to fragile newborn babies, it would have undergone robust pre license and post license studies. They recommend this for babies. So I mean, shouldn't it be longer than four days? Don't our babies deserve that level of scrutiny? And some of the longer ones are 14 days or 42 days. But then there, sometimes they're even, they're only studying one dose, but the recommendation schedule shows two doses. So lots to learn in this book that you may not already know. And you always say this may prove or may not prove, but we just don't know. You say that over and over again. We just don't know. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about autism. So I have certainly read the studies, the headlines that emphatically say, definitively say that vaccines are not associated with autism. And over and over again that has been said. This chapter was shocking. You said it was going to be shocking, and it was shocking. My mouth was dropped. I was like, on page eight. I was like, that one chapter, it was shocking to me. So can you explain why the science isn't settled and how they're really only talking about thimerosal and mmr?
- [44:24]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah, I mean, vaccines and autism, obviously the most controversial topic in all of the controversial topics of vaccines and of all the things I was shocked by, the vaccine autism literature is the most shocking thing I've ever seen in my entire life. That's not hyperbolic. It really is. When I went to write this book, what I thought I was going to do was provide a large, robust information about vaccines and autism and all the great studies that show that vaccines don't cause autism. Now, being involved in integrative space, I'm aware of some of the other stuff. I'm aware of some of the other opinions, and I'm certainly aware of some of the other research that isn't so great, but kind of maybe alludes that there could be some sort of link or there are some concerns around it. And so I was going to. Hopefully, what I thought I was going to show was here's all the research and why we say that it's so settled and that it's been debunked. But here's the other stuff too. So maybe it's not totally settled, maybe it's not totally debunked. Maybe there's something here and, you know, we should look at both sides of the research. But, you know, in general, we have solid research. This is why we see it. When you actually look at the research, it just doesn't exist. And that is the most insane thing I have ever seen in my entire life. The only thing that we've studied on vaccines and autism is mmr, measles, mouse, rubella, and thimerosal, which is the mercury component of vaccines that was taken out of pretty much all the vaccines 20 years ago. So really, the only research on anything that's relevant right now is mmr. And even those studies are kids that get MMR versus kids that don't get MMR in the setting of getting all their other vaccines. There isn't research on all the other vaccines, which you get a ton of them in the first year. Hepatitis B dtap, polio, rotavirus, chickenpox, all of these vaccines and you're saying vaccines have been debunked. It's been studied. We know for sure. That's the most ridiculous thing. Anyone that looks at the research themselves would say. There's no possible way you should ever say that. It doesn't mean that vaccines cause autism. But there's no way we could say emphatically it's been debunked or that vaccines don't cause autism. We have no idea. The only thing, and this is what people are doing is they're using this circular weird thinking of vaccines haven't been proven to cause autism, therefore vaccines don't cause autism. But you haven't studied in the first place. So you're just saying we don't have research to show that it causes autism because we've not proven that. But you haven't actually studied it in the first place. So how can you say it when there's all these other vaccines and you haven't studied it? And there is even some research out there that shows there might be some correlation in some of the studies and these are good studies that are published in reviews in other places. So for the most part, we just don't know, I think for sure we don't know. We should not be saying in any way that vaccines have been proven not to cause autism. And any doctor, anybody that actually looked at the research would never say it again. And I'm shocked by that because that's the opposite of what I thought I would say. And that's obviously against the mainstream, but it just is what it is. And I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it. I had to stop, go read books. I read the most pro vaccine books I could possibly find, like Paul Offit, Peter Hotez, these super pro vaccine individuals that are highly intelligent and they didn't have any different studies in there. And again, if there was a study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids, big studies that would be front page news of the New York Times. You've never seen it because it just doesn't exist. And that was so crazy to me, I could not believe it.
- [47:28]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, I was jaw dropping.
- [47:29]
Unknown
It was a very, very, very, very jaw dropping.
- [47:32]
Ginny Urch
Vaccines should not be categorically ruled out because the science is not settled. To truly answer a question, one must thoroughly investigate it. And so you say they're only really looking at this mmr and then you go through some different specific things like this study from 2014. So we're, you know, within the last decade here. And this study shows there's strong evidence that MMR vaccine is not associated with autism. And then it also says that Hep B, it showed that Hep B showed a three times odds ratio of increased autism.
- [48:04]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah, there was. So there was one review that was published in Pediatrics in 2014 looking at vaccines safety and usually reviewed so that the reviewers were very pro vax. Clearly they choose what studies they think are best. So they're doing the quality control. The journal's also doing that. And even within that one study, there was one that they chose that they thought was pretty good that showed that maybe there was some increase with it. And there are other things that have hinted at that or alluded to that over time. Generally. Again, the research thus far for the most part says vaccines don't cause autism. And that's with the MMR and thyme aerosol research that we have.
- [48:36]
Ginny Urch
But we just don't have research on anything else.
- [48:39]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
We haven't done the rest of it.
- [48:40]
Ginny Urch
And so if that's what people said, that MMR and thimerosal, which isn't in the vaccines or a lot of them anymore, whatever that situation is, if mmr, okay, then that's the statement. But instead the statements are vaccines don't cause autism. You even said you had gotten something fact checked online. You know, you post something, it gets fact checked, like how everything does on social media. And it said the health whatever. Would like you to know that the popular claim of unvaccinated children have lower rates of autism than unvaccinated children is untrue. It's like these very definitive statements. And what you go through is you go through and say, where are the studies? Where are they? Where are the studies on all the other vaccines? Where are the studies on the new vaccines in autism? Where are the studies on the adjuvants we currently use as opposed to the ones that have mostly been phased out?
- [49:28]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah. And so that the antigens and the adjuvants would be like aluminum.
- [49:31]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. Where are the studies? You say we do not have any randomized control studies even on MMR and autism. But there are no other studies about any of the other stuff. You say, unless there is a secret stash of vaccine research hidden away somewhere. And you went through, you like, I looked it up on PubMed, you can look it up on PubMed and you like go through, there's this one, there's this one, there's this one. Where's the rest? It's narrow in scope. I mean, that's jaw dropping, Joel.
- [49:57]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
It is. And that's why, like, and. And that's where I go back to, like, I think my master's in epidemiology. I don't even know necessarily why I did it. At the time, I liked the research, but now I know why it was for this chapter. I mean, I did a basic literature review. I've done it before. I put everything. I wrote it out exactly as I did it because it's so opposite of what I thought it was going to be when I started the book, that the only possible way that I felt that I could reasonably do this was to write it out exactly what I did so somebody could see it, see what I did, see the research, go look it up themselves and replicate what I did. And I have said this many times. I said on their shows, I said in the book, like, if you think I'm wrong and you find something different, send it to me. I'm happy to change my mind. The point of this book is not to convince anyone to get vaccines or to not get vaccines. It's really just to open up discussion and open up debate. That was the point of the book. And I'm happy to change my mind. I'm happy to update what I'm saying. I'm happy to adjust the book. I'm happy to do anything if there's updated research or information. It's not about pushing people to do anything. It's trying to answer the questions that I get from parents all the time. And I just didn't know the answer to some of these questions, so I had to look it up myself. And with something like autism and vaccines, I didn't ever think to look it up, but I don't think anyone ever did because we're told so definitively that the science is settled. And so you're like, okay, the science is settled. We must have some really good research and data. And you don't think to go past that. And you just. You just don't. Like, I don't know, I should have. But why? You just only have so much time and you don't think, oh, I should go to PubMed and do a literature review for this topic that the CDC and everybody says is so studied and debunked and the science is settled that that is how you think. And I think that's where we are right now, and that's why people think it's so settled. I am very positive that if doctors would actually go look at this, they would say, oh, actually, yeah, it's not settled. There's just no way that you could say that based on the research.
- [51:40]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. You write the research on the link between vaccines and autism is relatively narrow in scope. You talk about this study called the Madsen Study, where it seems like it's this big, robust study. Right. 500,000 children. So here we go. We've got a half million children. Here's the study, you know, discrediting claims of the link between all vaccines and autism. But the study was actually only about MMR anyway. But, okay, so of these 500,000 children for this Madsen study, they only looked at 263 vaccinated kids and 53 unvaccinated kids. They talk about the 500,000 kids, right, exactly. They only really looked at 300 of them.
- [52:19]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
And that was a good study. Yeah, it's a good study. I mean, it's a really important one, and it's a very good one. It was in the New England Journal. So there's nothing wrong with the study. It's just that they say, oh, 500,000 kids, but then there's really only a couple hundred kids with autism in it. It's not the same thing as saying, we studied 500,000 kids with autism. Half of them were vaccinated, half of them were unvaccinated. There's no difference. It's just the way that the wording is used. So you're like, oh, we looked at 500,000 kids, and there's no difference. But the reality is there are only a few in that group that have autism. So you're looking at the vaccinated versus unvaccinated. So it just. We're making claims on things that are not really following the research and the data. And again, that's a great study. It's a landmark study. It's one of the best studies. But you should make your claims based on the actual thing that you found, which is based on this study, it's pretty good evidence that the MMR vaccine and the study of getting your other vaccines doesn't increase your risk of autism. That's a reasonable claim. There's good research on that. I think there's of anything. We do have some pretty decent research on MMR that in the setting of getting your other vaccines, it doesn't increase your risk. So I think that's what we have. But that's what the claim should be. It shouldn't be. Vaccines don't cause autism. We don't know that. That's not what you studied.
- [53:26]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. And Even the Madsen study, you said it wasn't controlled. One of the co authors is like a criminal or whatever.
- [53:33]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
I found that after. That's a fun fact. Yeah. He's on the. He's still on the run.
- [53:36]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, he's like a fugitive. And two thirds of the author were employees of the cdc.
- [53:41]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah. And not even a fugitive on some other thing. On stealing money from the CDC for vaccine autism research and forging data and information. Allegedly. But, you know, this was like 20 years ago and they still have never caught him. But forging information and stealing money for the research. And then that's one of the authors on the study that we use as one of our landmarks. And again, there was a lot of other authors, so maybe has nothing to do with it, but yeah, there was a little bit of, A little bit of a wrench in the, in the, in the thing there.
- [54:07]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. Medical doctors are government and vaccine manufacturers have repeatedly and emphatically reassured us that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. To suggest otherwise would automatically classify one as a conspiracy theorist. And yet you say there's no studies that explore the relationship between autism and all the vaccines or even maybe a combination of some of the vaccines. So it's worth reading. It was shocking. I was shocked, honestly. You're like, this is going to be a shocking chapter. I was like, okay. Then I was like, no, I'm really shocked. Like, I'm so shocked. I'm like writing it on my pages that you say similar things about allergies, eczema, and asthma. There was a really interesting study. Okay, like, what is this? Okay, so they do this study and what they show is that these vaccinated kids have more of those things. So this one, 14 times more likely to develop asthma after the DPP with D. Whatever. 9 times more likely to be diagnosed with eczema after MMR. 3.5 times more likely to develop asthma, 4.6 times more likely to develop eczema. So they do this study that's from 2004. So we're 20 years ago. And then what they said was, okay, but the unvaccinated kids, they're not coming into the doctor as much, so they probably have these things too. And so basically it's a wash. So they. That's what the study says. That's what I got out of it. Theoretically, fewer opportunities to be diagnosed. So they conclude that vaccines are not a risk factor.
- [55:36]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah. So that gets back to the chronic disease and the way that I looked at it, because again, medicine so emphatically says, no, it's not related to chronic disease. And they have the research, and you look at the books and it's like, no. But they only show one side of the research. And they say there's no studies that show that there's any sort of link. And there is good studies on a lot of these things that show, no, there isn't a link. But then there also are good studies that show that there might be a link. And you have to show both. You have to be open to both information. And one of the statistical tools that they use very frequently, which I find very interesting, for better or worse, is that they adjust for the amount of visits in a lot of these studies. And so a lot of studies will show a much higher risk of some of these conditions before they adjust. And then they go and adjust for the amount of visits, and then it gets rid of it because they say, well, the kids that are getting these diagnosis, they come in more, so they're more likely to be diagnosed. So therefore, we have to adjust for that. And that may be true or not. That's what they do. But my theory on some of those studies is like, well, but what if the other kids are just healthier, so they're not coming in more? And so when you're talking about autism, you're talking about allergies or asthma. Well, maybe they didn't come in as much because they're just. They're just healthier and they don't. They don't need to be seen. And maybe if they had asthma, they would have come in.
- [56:45]
Ginny Urch
Yeah.
- [56:46]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
And you would have cut that.
- [56:47]
Ginny Urch
I think they would.
- [56:48]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
It's just questionable. It's not wrong to adjust for things that's appropriate in epidemiology, but you can adjust things in certain ways that can mask things for the results that you want. So if you want a result that says vaccines don't cause a problem, you can adjust many different things until you find what you're looking for if you're not doing things ethically. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know these people. I don't know what their motives are. I don't know if it was correct or incorrect. But there are many studies that do this where they adjust for amount of visits, and they're assuming that just because somebody comes in more, that's the reason why they have more chance to get diagnosed. But I would say, at least in my experience, the kids that don't come in as much because they're healthier, not because they are not coming in. They have asthma. And I just never saw it. So I don't know. I mean, maybe that's true to some degree, but I think it's. It's a little bit of a stretch.
- [57:30]
Ginny Urch
I definitely think it's bizarre because those are pretty serious things. Asthma, allergies and eczema are fairly serious. If you had kids that have struggle with those things, you go to the doctor because you're trying to get it fixed. And so to conclude, to say like 14 times more likely or 4.6 times more likely or 9 times more likely, and then to just say, oh, but they just come in more because they do their, well, visits and they come in and get their vaccines. So they can conclude that vaccines are not a risk factor. That's a wild leap. And I get what you're saying. You're saying it happens in research at times, but I guess at the very least you would hope to know that because you say for now, the scientific community agrees vaccines are not associated with allergies, eczema or asthma. So that's what you're thinking, right? You're a parent, you talk about how in these newborn years, oh, my goodness, you're exhausted, like you can hardly function, then you've got to make these really big decisions. And so if there's huge headlines that say these aren't related, they're not related to asthma, allergies or eczema, this isn't related to autism, then that's what you're going to take. You don't have time to research, you're hardly sleeping. So then if you see, though, that there's a study that literally says 14 times more likely to develop asthma or 9 times more likely to be diagnosed with eczema, and they ruled it out because they theoretically would have had fewer opportunities to be diagnosed, at least you know that that's what's happening.
- [58:52]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Yeah, I mean, and that's what I want. I just want to present the research. And I think it's not presented fairly at all, I think, and what I've seen, because people ask me all the time like, okay, what resources should I, should I read? What book should I read? And I always had to tell people two different books, like, you need to, you have to read both or many things because you get this picture of vaccines are the best thing ever and they never cause a problem and they don't show you any of the issues potentially. Or you get a book that's very anti vax and shows vaccines being the most horrible thing and you should never do a vaccine. And they don't do any good, and they kill more people than they help. And those are the two books, are the two things that are out there on the Internet. And that's not helpful to 99% of parents who are in the middle, who are not extreme and do want to protect their kids against infectious disease, but also don't want to increase their risk of chronic disease. And they heard their friend's kid has autism and their other friend's kid has asthma, and their other friend's kid had a horrible reaction to a vaccine and they got the COVID vaccine, had a bad reaction, and now they're like, I don't know. I. When I was growing up, I just did vaccines. I didn't even think about it. And now I, you know, I'm not. Not so sure after my COVID vaccine, but that's what people are thinking now. And if you just present things as completely rosy and perfect, then that's just not realistic. And also if you just present things as perfect and you don't actually show the other research, it's never going to push us to get the proper research, which is what we actually need, which is prospective studies, because that's what will answer, I don't know if these things have anything to do with asthma or allergies or autism or anything else. You will not know that until you study it prospectively. All retrospective studies are going to have a lot of bias. They tend to find the answer that the researchers were looking for in the first place. So we can't go with that anymore. We need prospective studies that actually will show over time what is happening for our kids when they get vaccinated or not. And that will be very helpful to us to do more research. That's the. That's the next step. And we have to do it.
- [60:40]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. And that is the pro science step. The fact that nobody knows and these things have been around for. You go through the history like over a hundred years, and there's billions and billions and billions of dollars in this space. It is pretty wild. And you have to think, who I. That's what I think. I'm like, who does it benefit? That nobody really knows. Way to go for writing the book, Joel. You had this. Someone had said about you, you are the next in a growing list of fringe wayward pediatricians who peddle poorly supported opinions upon unsuspecting patients and families, putting patients at risk and eroding the credibility of the field of pediatrics. In the era of fake news, I mean, this is. This is what you've come up against. But you still wrote the book.
- [61:21]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
You still wrote the book. I put that in there because I feel like people should see it. I think it's funny. Yeah. And it doesn't bother me. I mean, I get it, you know, I knew what I was going to be up against, but I have to say, you know, very pleasantly surprised. Thus far, I haven't seen any of that, like what you read. That's from before. You know, I put that in the book, but. But since the books come out, people have almost unanimously got behind it. I am so happy that people are open to having the discussion. There's really no hate coming my way, which is great. I mean, that still could happen. But thus far people have been pretty positive and not. I haven't been called too much in the way of a conspiracy theorist or a tiny foil hat wearing dude yet, though. That's fine if you want to go for it.
- [62:01]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [62:01]
Ginny Urch
But the premise of the book is we don't know. A lot of the things that we state definitively, we don't actually know. And so it's really just opening up the conversation for a majorly off limit subject. So. Joel, thanks. Thanks. I loved it. I love the book. Took 15 pages of notes between a shot and a hard place, tackling difficult vaccine questions with balance, data and clarity. Thank you for being here.
- [62:20]
Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
Thank you.