Why Vaccine Safety Is So Hard to Talk About — with Dr. Joel Warsh

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Why Vaccine Safety Is So Hard to Talk About" — Featuring Dr. Joel Warsh

Episode Release Date: May 21, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, host Dr. Mark Hyman engages in a profound and thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Joel Gator Warsh, a board-certified pediatrician specializing in parenting, vaccines, wellness, and integrated medicine. The duo delves into the complexities surrounding vaccine safety, the challenges of open dialogue in the medical community, and the urgent need for enhanced research and transparency.

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Key Topics Discussed

1. The Necessity of Honest Conversations About Vaccines

   • Dr. Warsh emphasizes the importance of acknowledging that vaccines, like any medical treatment, come with both benefits and risks. He states, “[v]accines are not allowed to be talked about as any other medical treatment which has benefits and it has risks” (00:02).

   • The discussion pivots to the concept of informed consent, highlighting that patients deserve comprehensive information to make confident healthcare decisions.

2. Historical Context and Evolution of Vaccine Safety

   • Dr. Warsh provides a historical overview of vaccine development, noting past issues such as the use of thimerosal—a mercury-based preservative—in vaccines. He points out that thimerosal is a known neurotoxin and questions why cumulative mercury exposure from vaccines wasn't considered earlier, stating, “it was about 162 times the amount of mercury that the EPA says is safe to have in a baby” (36:06).

   • The conversation also touches on past vaccine-related controversies, including the swine flu vaccine and its association with Guillain-Barré Syndrome (16:49).

3. Current Vaccine Landscape and Pharmaceutical Influence

   • Dr. Warsh critiques the current pharmaceutical framework, particularly the indemnification of vaccine manufacturers, which shields them from liability despite reported adverse effects. He asserts, “We indemnify the pharmaceutical manufacturers who make vaccines so that they can't be sued” (15:11).

   • The influence of pharmaceutical companies on federal policies and medical curricula is discussed, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest and the lack of independent research (17:05).

4. Trust in Medicine and Declining Vaccine Rates

   • The episode underscores a significant decline in public trust towards medical institutions, with vaccine hesitancy on the rise. Dr. Warsh mentions, “Trust in medicine is at the lowest it's ever been. It was 70% before the pandemic. In many studies now it's around 40%” (12:27).

   • The low vaccination rates, especially for COVID-19 vaccines among children and adults, are presented as indicators of this distrust (12:27).

5. The Need for Rigorous and Transparent Research

   • Both hosts advocate for more comprehensive vaccine studies, including randomized controlled trials against inert placebos to establish baseline safety profiles. Dr. Warsh argues, “They should require them to have a third group that's also salt water” (27:03).

   • The conversation highlights the absence of long-term studies tracking vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations over extended periods, which is crucial for understanding potential chronic effects (40:02).

6. Personalized Medicine and Vaccinomics

   • The concept of vaccinomics—tailoring vaccine strategies based on individual genetic profiles—is introduced as a future direction for safer vaccination practices. Dr. Warsh states, “Each of us have different genetics, different immune systems” (00:30).

   • The potential for personalized vaccine schedules to minimize adverse effects and enhance efficacy is discussed (37:55).

7. Ethical Considerations and Vaccine Mandates

   • Ethical dilemmas surrounding vaccine mandates and the use of specific vaccine components, such as aborted fetal tissue and animal-derived ingredients, are explored. Dr. Warsh shares his experience meeting with federal officials to discuss thimerosal, highlighting the ongoing debates (35:58).

   • The tension between public health objectives and individual choice is a recurrent theme, emphasizing the need for balanced policies that respect parental concerns (44:19).

8. Impact of Modern Lifestyle on Immune Health

   • The hosts examine how contemporary factors like increased C-section rates, reduced breastfeeding, overuse of antibiotics, and environmental toxins may contribute to immune system dysregulation, potentially interacting with vaccine effects (46:14).

   • Dr. Hyman and Dr. Warsh propose that these elements compromise immune health, making individuals more susceptible to adverse reactions from vaccines (48:00).

9. Case Studies and Anecdotal Evidence

   • Dr. Warsh shares accounts of patients experiencing adverse reactions post-vaccination, such as severe heart issues and regressive autism, highlighting the emotional and medical challenges faced by concerned parents (50:23).

   • The discussion underscores the importance of listening to these experiences to foster trust and improve vaccine protocols (50:37).

10. Future Directions and Recommendations

    • Both professionals advocate for the establishment of new research agendas and commissions to address the identified gaps in vaccine safety data. They call for collaborative efforts between pro-vaccine and critical researchers to conduct balanced, comprehensive studies (60:38).

    • The importance of maintaining open, evidence-based dialogues in advancing vaccine safety and public health is emphasized as essential for rebuilding trust (80:41).

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Dr. Mark Hyman: “Vaccines. We're not allowed to talk about it as any other medical treatment which has benefits and it has risks.” (00:02)

• Dr. Joel Warsh: “We need honesty. We need to have discussions. Not to stop people from vaccinating, not to stop vaccines, but to hold these companies liable in some way or to hold them accountable.” (00:08)

• Dr. Warsh: “Informed consent... in medicine, there's such a set of dogmas... science is really about asking questions.” (10:16)

• Dr. Hyman: “There's a thing we're supposed to do called informed consent, which is you lay out the risks and the benefits of any treatment.” (10:16)

• Dr. Warsh: “The government's paying out all this money and acknowledging there's a problem, and on one hand, they're like, no, no problem. It's perfect.” (16:50)

• Dr. Warsh: “They have all this pre-licensure testing, but it's very specific… they rigged the deck.” (25:50)

• Dr. Warsh: “There's ligand integrity to a degree... they designed the settings to show the outcomes they want.” (25:32)

• Dr. Warsh: “If you delay certain vaccines, then you decrease your risk of asthma, you decrease your risk of eczema.” (74:04)

• Dr. Warsh: “It's a crisis. There's some studies that show that doctors... don't fully believe that vaccines are safe anymore. That's a huge crisis.” (82:18)

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Conclusions and Insights

The episode serves as a critical examination of the current state of vaccine safety discourse. Dr. Hyman and Dr. Warsh collectively advocate for:

• Enhanced Transparency: Openly discussing both the benefits and risks associated with vaccines to foster informed decision-making among parents and patients.

• Comprehensive Research: Conducting long-term, placebo-controlled studies to establish a more robust safety profile for vaccines, particularly regarding their cumulative effects and interactions with individual genetic factors.

• Rebuilding Trust: Addressing declining trust in medical institutions by encouraging honest dialogue, acknowledging past and present challenges, and prioritizing patient safety over pharmaceutical interests.

• Personalized Medicine: Exploring the potential of vaccinomics to tailor vaccine schedules and formulations based on individual genetic and health profiles, thereby minimizing adverse effects and enhancing efficacy.

• Ethical Considerations: Balancing public health mandates with individual choice and ethical concerns related to vaccine components and administration protocols.

Overall, the conversation underscores the complexity of vaccine safety debates and the imperative for the medical community to engage in open, evidence-based discussions to navigate these challenges effectively.

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Additional Resources

• Book Mentioned: Between a Shot and a Hard Place: Tackling Vaccine Questions with Balanced Data and Clarity by Dr. Joel Warsh. Available on Amazon.

• Dr. Joel Warsh's Website: theshotbook.com

• Dr. Joel Warsh's Social Media:

  • Instagram: @Dr.JoelGator
  • X (Formerly Twitter): @Dr.JoelGator

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This summary is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider for medical concerns.

Transcript

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Vaccines. We're not allowed to talk about it as any other medical treatment which has benefits and it has risks.

[Joel Warsh]

We need honesty. We need to have discussions. Not to stop people from vaccinating, not to stop vaccines, but to hold these companies liable in some way or to hold them accountable. Dr. Joel Wersch is a pediatrician and.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Opening up honest conversations around vaccines, helping.

[Joel Warsh]

People make informed choices with confidence. Every single vaccine before it hits the market is studied against a placebo. The thing is, a lot of those placebos are not inert.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Not everybody is the same. Each of us have different genetics, different immune systems. At Mayo Clinic, they're looking at how different people respond to vaccines.

[Joel Warsh]

Why do the kids that are living an unvaccinated lifestyle have a lower risk of autoimmune disease? Is it the food that they're eating? What is it about their lifestyle that's different?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

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[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand. Well, you if you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for for Real Time Lab Insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, the Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my [e-mail] for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Welcome to the Dr. Hyman Show. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. This is a place for conversations that matter and this one matters more than most. It's about vaccines and it's very controversial. It's very confusing for both parents and even doctors and scientists because when we have a topic like this that has been taboo to talk about, it's hard to get answers. And so I'm really excited for this podcast with Dr. Joel Gator Warsh, who's a board certified Pediatrician in Los Angeles, California. He specializes in parenting, vaccines, wellness, and integrated medicine. He's got a great Instagram @ Dr. Joel Gator. He gives great advice on there. He's he's the author of a new book on vaccines, Between a Shot and a Hard Place Tackling Vaccine Questions with Balanced Data and Clarity. Wow, that's refreshing. He's has a Master's degree in Epidemiology and Community health. He got his medical degree Thomas Jefferson and did his pediatricity at UC Children's Hospital Los Angeles. And he's works in Beverly Hills where he does incredible work to help guide parents on how to navigate a very confusing world. So I'm super excited to Have. Joel, we dive deep into all kinds of things in terms of what do we know, what do we don't know about vaccines. The common trope, which is that they're safe and effective is a problem because nothing in medicine is totally safe or totally effective, even an aspirin. We also dive into the history of vaccines. We dive into some of the questions around the controversies up now, why we need better science and just how to think about this and how do you apply this to your life? If you're a parent or thinking about having kids or grandkids, what do you do? So we talk everything about the problems with our pharmaceutical industry, the problems with our federal policies around science, some of the decline in trust in medicine, and then why more and more people are questioning vaccines, even though they do have a role. And we need to kind of have a dispassionate look at this. So get ready for a very deep and exciting conversation and let's dive in. Joel, welcome to the Dr. Hyman Show. I'm so excited about this conversation because it's a conversation that nobody is allowed to have, which is about vaccines.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah, no, I'm so excited to be here. And before we jump into that, I just wanted to say thank you to you. Back when I was in training, I met my wife and she was very integrative minded, and that kind of set me on the path towards learning integrative medicine. But at that time, there really wasn't a lot of integrative medicine, certainly not for kids. And your work really resonated with me. I was following a lot of what you did. I went to functional medicine courses because of you. And I used to tell people, you know, I want to be the Mark Hyman of pediatrics. So that's probably why I'm sitting here today. So I just want to say thank you for everything that you do, because it makes a huge difference.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Well, that is really appreciate that. And, you know, I've worked really hard to try to spread the word and help people open their minds and think differently about health. And one of the challenges is that, is that, you know, there's such a set of dogmas in medicine, which is very strange. You know, we had all these beliefs that have been overturned by the progress of science, and science is really about asking questions. What really strikes me around the issue around vaccines in your new book, Between a Shot and a Hard Tackling Difficult Vaccine Questions with Balance, data and Clarity. It's a breath of fresh air. It's just, it's extraordinary to me that when you look at the progress of science we've seen historically, we used to think that autism was caused by refrigerator mothers. We used to think that ulcers were caused by stress and not by a bacteria, which we now know. And the guy who'd figured this out won the Nobel Prize and was laughed at for making this hypothesis that a bacteria would cause ulcers. Recently, we used to think that aspirin was the best thing to give to everybody to prevent heart attacks. And that that has been clearly flipped. And it's only good for a certain subset of people who are at high risk, not everybody else, because it's going to cause brain hemorrhaging and intestinal bleeding.

[Joel Warsh]

Or we used to give arsenic and mercury as medicine.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Well, that was a long time ago.

[Joel Warsh]

Those were the medicines of the day.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

That was a long time ago.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

In fact, one of the things they did for teething for babies back in the 30s and 40s, they give them this powder that actually they would kind of relieve some of the pain and discomfort. And it was full of mercury and it caused a whole syndrome that actually looks like autism, which is crazy. So I wanted to kind of have a far ranging conversation about the history of vaccines, what we know, what we don't know, and open up the question, because this has been one of those areas that is just off limits. When I was at Cleveland Clinic, we started the Functional Medicine center there. It was fun, it was great, and a lot of openness to what we were doing. And there was an article I wrote like maybe a decade before about a patient I had with autism that I just said in the history, this patient had an MMR vaccine. And the mother said that after that the kid had issues. And so I was just sort of recounting the history and I even put in the kind of disclaimer at the beginning. I'm not saying that vaccines cause autism. I'm just noting the historical context of this patient. And I was called out by the pediatric department and said, you're an anti vaxxer. Prove that you're not. We think you're a heretic or you're in trouble. Basically, I was in trouble. So I had to write a letter to the entire pediatric department saying, no, no, I'm not anti vax, but I think they're important and essential and great advances in medicine. And I think it's worth more conversation and discussion.

[Joel Warsh]

It's crazy that you can't talk about it. I mean, you never could. And same thing for me. I mean, I never talked about this outside the office until recently. I was even on RFK's podcast in 2022 and before I went on I said, is it okay if we don't talk about vaccines? And he was totally fine with it. And he said, yeah, I get it. And I mean I should have at that time, but it was just so controversial. It's still so controversial, but I think the times have changed a little bit and people are much more interested and I feel like we need to have that conversation and we need to be open to discussing everything for our kids health because our health is suffering and we're seeing higher rates of chronic disease and we have to be open to looking into everything. Not to say that we shouldn't vaccinate or vaccines are bad or anything like that, but we want the best possible vaccines. We want the most minimal side effects and we shouldn't assume that we have the best vaccines that we're ever going to have in the history of the world. Like we should try to continue improving things.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah.

[Joel Warsh]

And, and there's, there's no reason why that should be controversial. And that's why I wrote the book. I'm not against vaccines at all. I give vaccines in my office. I just don't believe people should be forced to do things. I think we should have discussions and we should have debates and we should provide the best information so people can make the best decisions for, for themselves. And I don't have any motive behind this book in terms of pushing people to vaccinate or pushing people not to vaccinate. Everything that you see on the market when it comes to a book really seems to be one sided. It really seems to be super pro vax or super anti vax and there's nothing in between. That doesn't help. I think the majority of parents who are concerned and want information and want to discuss the pros and the cons, the risks versus the benefits. And I think that's the conversation that we need to be having. And that's what we have about every other topic in medicine.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah, there's a thing we're supposed to do called informed consent, which is you lay out the, the risks and the benefits of any treatment, whether it's surgery. I mean, I had surgery. Okay. You could die from bleeding, from infection, from this, from that. I'm like, okay, you know, like, I mean, I had, I had an ablation for atrial fib years ago. And the doctor is all in, listen, well, you could have perforated your aorta. You could do this, you could do that. I'M like a die. I mean, oh God, you know, this is terrible. And okay, I chose to do it because I didn't want to have this problem anymore. And I had informed consent. But with vaccines, we're not allowed to talk about it as any other medical treatment which has benefits and it has risks. And it's just, it's extraordinary to me that we hear this trope that they're safe and they're effective. They're safe and they're effective.

[Joel Warsh]

Right?

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Well, they're sort of safe and they're sort of effective for a lot of them. Right.

[Joel Warsh]

And I think that phrase over the pandemic is what really shifted things. It certainly did for me as one of the big concerns. I mean, that was something that we all lived through recently and we saw the marketing around vaccines, we saw how that played out. And when you talk about a new vaccine, safe and effective doesn't make any sense. It's just propaganda. What should have been said, what would have been completely reasonable if we were being honest, would be based on the information that we have, the benefits seem to outweigh the known risks. At this time, we don't have any long term data, so we don't know anything about the long term risks from the vaccine. But we do feel like based on what we know, the risks seem minimal. The benefits seem great for decreasing death, decreasing hospitalization. So here's why we're recommending it. We're recommending it to these individuals because they're more high risk for the individuals that are less high risk. Here's our recommendation. What's wrong with that? That's honest. That's what we should have been saying instead of saying safe and effective, safe and effective.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And then people had problem with anything.

[Joel Warsh]

You'Re going to take, there's going to be issues. And if you're not honest, then you see this decrease in trust in medicine because people say, well, they're not being honest with me about that. What else are they not being honest with me about? And I'm seeing that in the office. I mean, we're seeing the vaccine rates decline across the board. Trust in medicine is at the lowest it's ever been. It was 70% before the pandemic. In many studies now it's around 40%.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

That's crazy.

[Joel Warsh]

The vaccination rates. There are more kids than ever that are unvaccinated. There are more kids than ever that are not fully vaccinated. We have to take a hard look as physicians and as a medical establishment and look in the mirror and say, what are we doing? I mean, medicine's trying to stop vaccine hesitancy. They're actually creating it by not having discussions and having debate. And we have to look in the mirror and say, what can we do? How do we bridge that divide? To bring honesty back and trust back in the system and to hear what concerns parents have and not to vilify them or to call them anti vax, but to listen to what their concerns are so that way we can address those concerns, get the research that we need to either disprove what they're saying or to make some changes to make the vaccine safer, whatever it is. But we're, we're vilifying people for talking about it. And that creates this system where, where people don't want to do anything with medicine anymore. They don't want to go to doctors, they don't trust anything. And that is bad. Yeah, look at the COVID vaccine rates right now. I mean, you're talking like 10% for kids getting the vaccine this year with a recommendation from the cdc. That means that people don't trust the CDC anymore. If half of kids are getting flu shots and 10% are getting Covid shots and 20% of adults are getting Covid shots, then there's this distrust of the things that the CDC are recommending, and that is very bad. We need to have our establishments there to protect us and to provide us information. And if we don't trust what they're saying, it's like the boy who cried wolf. What happens next year or the year after where something does come out that we need to be listening to and everybody decides, I don't trust the cdc. They don't know what they're talking about. And then we don't do the things that we need to do. So that's very concerning to me. And we have to take that seriously.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

I think what you're saying is so, is so important. The public trust in medicine has gone down. The questioning of vaccines has gone way up. And one of the things I find very disturbing is that when you hear people in government saying it's a waste of money to do any further studies on vaccines because we know they're perfect. And I'm like, what is this? Is this medicine? Is this science? There's nothing else that I can think of in medicine that's like that. It's propagating science fundamentally is based on hypothesis generation, which is questioning an assumption and then trying to prove your hypothesis correct. And it's always about the question. It's never about the answer. And yet to say we don't need any more research and a waste of federal dollars to actually look at this. Well, I want to sort of go back a little bit, Joel, because I think people need to understand how we got here. You know, when I was in medical school, we had just dtap, which was diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, and we had mmr, which is measles, mumps and rubella, and we had polio vaccines. That was it.

[Joel Warsh]

Correct.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

That's what I got. That's what my kids got.

[Joel Warsh]

That's what I got when I was little.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And, you know, when I was in medical school, I got hepatitis vaccines because, you know, you were at risk of, you know, getting hepatitis B or A or what? From, from, from traveling or from, from the, from the medical work we do. And I think that's fine for certain high risk populations. But now, you know, instead of getting like, you know, eight jabs or whatever, we get like 72 jabs that are from a whole host of different vaccines. There was a problem with the swine flu vaccine, where it was a problem and it caused a lot of side effects and complications and deaths, and Guillain Barre syndrome, which is paralysis, it was, it was not a good situation. And that was in the 80s. And then the vaccine maker says, we're not going to kind of invest any more money in vaccines unless you, the government, protect us. So rather than us being liable for any complications or problems or side effects, the government is going to take that on. And it's called indemnification. We indemnify the pharmaceutical manufacturers who make vaccines so that they can't be sued. And since that time, there's a vaccine adverse reporting event reporting system called VAERS, which has received over 2.6 million adverse effects. Now, not all of them are causal. So it doesn't mean, you know, if you've got a vaccine and you got a fever, it didn't mean the fever was caused by the vaccine. But they report this and there's. More Importantly, there's been $5 billion of federal money that's been spent to pay people who've been injured by vaccines. So on one hand, the government's paying out all this money and acknowledging there's a problem, and on the other hand, they're like, no, no problem. It's perfect. Don't study it anymore.

[Joel Warsh]

Right.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

So that kind of led to this plethora of vaccines on the market where like, oh, b, it's kind of open field day and we can Just make vaccines. No one's ever going to sue us. And we can make a ton of money. And the RSV vaccine, which is an important, you know, disease that kids get. Respiratory syncytial virus.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It's a respiratory disease.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And, you know, the company made $100 billion off this vaccine. Why are we protecting them? You know, so can you talk about a little bit about that? Why? What's wrong with it and what we need to do to sort of think about it differently?

[Joel Warsh]

It's such a problematic setup for safety and research. It's great that we have more vaccines. I mean, that's a good thing. We want to protect against diseases that we can protect against. But the issue is we have this system now that protects the companies. They were going out of business in the 1980s. They were threatening to go out of business, especially around what you were saying, and also the DTP vaccine. There were a lot of lawsuits around that. They had to stabilize the market in some way, and that's what they decided to do, to take their liability away. But the problem with that is if you take away the liability, they have no incentive to make them better. And they have every incentive to get a vaccine on the market. They have every incentive to get something on the schedule. And they have so much money and so much power, and that has grown over the last 40 years to the point where they're bigger than many countries. I mean, they have just so much money. They know what they're doing, and they know how to lobby everything and push things forward. And so we're at this point now where we are hearing from doctors. I mean, we're trained. We're not talk. We're not talking about safety when we're learning in med school. Right. We're talking about, here's the schedule, here are the diseases that you protect against. Go do it. And you don't think anything differently. And I didn't. I didn't think anything differently when I was going through school. Until you start learning about it, your.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Mammogram, get your colonoscopy, just do it. Those are fine. Yeah, but like, it's sort of in the same bucket of, like, this is just general safe thing to do.

[Joel Warsh]

Exactly. And anybody that says anything about vaccines, you're crazy. You're a crackpot. You're vilified. Parent whose child has a reaction to a vaccine, or at least that they think had a reaction to a vaccine, they're vilified. They're called anti vaxx, which makes no sense. This is a parent who took their child to get a vaccine. They believed in vaccines and they had what they think is a reaction. And then they're vilified for being a crazy crackpot, tinfoil hat wearing individual and vilified for talking about it. And yes, sometimes it's correlation. Sometimes you could get a vaccine today, have a heart attack this afternoon and die. And that might have nothing to do with the vaccine, but certainly it's reasonable if that happens, that you should consider that it could be related. And just asking the question should not be something that we're unable to do. But it has seemed like that's the case for the last, certainly last few years, to the point where the censorship was so great that things were labeled as misinformation or taken down even when they were true. Mark Zuckerberg said it recently that the government was pressuring them to take down true information about vaccines because it would lead to hesitancy. And that's the opposite of what we need to be doing. That's not honest. We need honesty. We need to have discussions. Not to stop people from vaccinating, not to stop vaccines, but to hold these companies liable in some way or to hold them accountable. Right now we're seeing this back and forth between the pharmaceutical companies and government. They fund all the politicians, they fund the news, they fund everything. And they do it on purpose. It's not, you know, philanthropic. They know what they're doing. They are, you know, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And that's what we're seeing. And it's to the point where doctors just don't even realize how much we're being fed a pharmaceutical curriculum. I mean, there's no the joke in the book. There's no why do we not trust Pharma 101 in med school? Right? It's here are the things that you should do. And they're funding the med school, they're funding the journals, they're funding the studies, they're doing the research. They know what they're doing. And that doesn't mean that the vaccine is unsafe or a medical product is unsafe. We need medicines, they're fantastic. We have a lot of amazing medications and things that are fantastic. But who is watching over the pharmaceutical companies? Who is pushing back? Who is making sure they're safer tomorrow than they are today? And who is doing the research to look at things that they don't do? They look at the products before they go on the market. They're not going to look at their products again to find problems with them. If You're a CEO of a company, you're not funding a study to say, hey, let me check my medication again to see if it's causing allergies. Let me see if it's causing asthma five years from now. Why would they do that? Who was doing that? Nobody's doing it.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And then there are, you know, in medicine, there are cases where there have been scientists who've questioned or doctors who question things like Vioxx, which is one of the most powerful anti inflammatory drugs we've ever had. And Steve Nissan at Cleveland Clinic, actually, who I know very well is a brilliant guy. And he's like, gee, it seems like there may be, you know, some connection between increased heart attacks and taking Vioxx. And so he, he did the research and he showed that there was a problem and it was taken off the market. But you can't do that with vaccines.

[Joel Warsh]

You certainly can't do it anymore. I mean, you're almost everybody who does it study on vaccines, if they show any sort of problem, they get vilified. And so I think there's this huge incentive or disincentive to even do research on vaccines. People just don't, we just don't see a lot of it these days. I mean, there certainly is a little bit, but most of what you see is individuals who are very pro vaccine doing pro vaccine studies looking for an outcome that's funded by a pharmaceutical agency in the first place. And so that is what we're seeing. And you can't say that we don't ever have problems with vaccines. We took the original DTP off the market because it could theoretically causing a lot of encephalitis and neurologic issues. We took a rotavirus vaccine off the market because it was causing a deception. That's what we should be thinking about. Not that we don't want the rotavirus vaccine, but hey, is there an issue with the vaccine that we have now? Maybe we can figure out why that we have that issue and make it better, wouldn't we want to do that? Doctors don't want to harm patients. No, doctors are good people. And if there was good research and good studies to say, hey, this ingredient in vaccines is increasing your risk for asthma, or this, this ingredient or this combination of vaccines increases your risk for eczema. Doctors would want to know that. We'd want to look at the schedule, adjust the schedule and figure out how do we provide the most benefit from vaccines while minimizing the risk. While there isn't a lot of research out there on long term vaccination risks. There is some. And if you look at a very pro science book, they just say, oh, vaccines have nothing to do with allergies, vaccines have nothing to do with eczema. There is no research on that. But if you look at a different book, you look at Neil Miller's book or something like that, there are good studies out there that, that show that there are some connections potentially between eczema and vaccines. There are some connections between allergies and autoimmune conditions. And the majority of research still says that there isn't. But there certainly is some. There certainly are some good studies that show that there might be some relation or if you change up the schedule a little bit or you delay things a little bit, that you can see a difference. And that's the kind of research we should have more of. There's nothing controversial with saying, hey, let's study the schedule that we have. Maybe we can try some alternate schedules, see if some of these rates go down. If they don't, great. That's the research that parents want.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

That's right. And I think the other problem with this is that when we look at studies on vaccines, when they're done, they're basically done with a single vaccine. Most of them aren't even tested against placebos.

[Joel Warsh]

I want to talk because I think that's super important because it's really, really important to be very specific because I've even heard RFK say this incorrectly. I know he knows, but he doesn't always say it very specifically. And it's really important. So every single vaccine, before it hits the market, it's studied against a placebo. The thing is, a lot of those placebos are not inert.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

That's right.

[Joel Warsh]

And that's the right.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Right. It's like when you're giving a.

[Joel Warsh]

But they say the word placebo, they can say, no, no, it was placebo control. And they were. But it was studied against another vaccine or an earlier version of the vaccine. Basically all the vaccines on the market that are the children vaccines were never studied against an inert placebo, like a water, like saline. They were never studied against saline. And so when somebody says they weren't studied against a placebo, then another person listening who's very pro vaccine says, oh no, no, they were. What are you talking about? They have all this pre licensure testing, but it's very specific. They rigged the deck. They studied against another vaccine. They study it in the setting of doing other vaccines. Most studies are looking at one Vaccine versus another vaccine in the setting of getting all your the rest of your vaccines. So you're not studying vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. So you don't have a true baseline of safety. And there's a huge difference in a vaccine study between saying the old DTP versus the new DTP is safe versus DTP is safe versus nothing. That doesn't mean that there's a safety issue, but they're all studied in that way. And if you go back through with.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

History, there's a set of a lack of integrity in science.

[Joel Warsh]

It is a lack of integrity to a degree. So I think they designed the settings.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

To show the outcomes they want.

[Joel Warsh]

They certainly want to minimize their chance for having a problem. They rigged the deck, in a sense, because if you're doing a blinded study, unless you're lying, then you don't really know who's getting what. So the best way to rig the deck is to put it against something that's going to have a similar profile and then you minimize your chance to have a problem.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

So like testing Advil against the leave. Correct.

[Joel Warsh]

Exactly. And then when they both have the same profile of. So let's say you test Advil vs.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Aleve, you're not going to see any increase in problems.

[Joel Warsh]

Right. Let's say that you get three seizures in that study. Okay. They say, well, there are three seizures in both groups, so there's no concerns. But if you studied against water, you had zero seizures. There would be a difference there. And that's not the way things are done. And we're in this weird place now because of ethics, where it's hard to do a study against unvaccinated kids when you have a vaccine that's already on the market. Because there's an ethics there around not giving the standard of care. And so we're. Because they weren't done correctly or the best way in the beginning. Now we're in this catch because we have all these vaccines on the market. If we want to restudy them, how do we do that in a way where we can get a baseline? Makes it really tough.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

It's tough. You got to go to populations that are unvaccinated, like the Amish or Mennonites, urban groups like that.

[Joel Warsh]

But we should acknowledge this. So if we do bring something new on the market, then we can increase those standards. Say we need you to do a study against an inert placebo for a new product like the Prevnar vaccine. The original study, there were no other Prevnars on the Market. They studied against the meningitis vaccine. That makes no sense. They can set it against free solution water, but they studied against meningitis.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah, that's, that's sort of shady science. And it's, it's amazing the FDA allows that and then would approve it.

[Joel Warsh]

There's no reason that you should approve that. They, they should require them to have a third group that's also salt water. There's no logical reason you wouldn't do it unless you don't want to take the chance to show what the difference is between that and salt water. And you may find the exact same thing. But we should require that.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And you know, Peter Marks just resigned from the fda. He was sort of the head of vaccine program. Do you think it was because of some of these reasons that he didn't want to look at or why do you think he left?

[Joel Warsh]

I think he left in part because he knows there's going to be a greater lens on vaccines. And I think that for anybody who has lived in that world for a long time that's been extraordinarily pro vaccine that doesn't want this discussion or debate, then I think it's going to be really tough for them moving forward because there's a lot of people moving in that do seem to want to have the discussion a little bit more. For individuals who've had a long career, they don't want to necessarily be in a battle again. These are people that are. Love what they do, love helping patients. And most doctors, I mean, almost all doctors firmly believe in vaccines and they don't want to have that discussion. They're not even aware that they should or should look into it. I really think that people should look into it. You don't have to take my word for it. Go look at the research yourself. I didn't know any of this 10 years ago. I didn't even know most of this two years ago. Until you really dive into it, you don't know. And I feel like with presenting this information, I've showed it to a few doctors who are conventionally trained thus far, and all of them are still my friends and they're still talking to me, which is great because I don't know how this is going to be taken.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And are they open to it when you share the data?

[Joel Warsh]

They were open to it. The discussion comes very quickly when, you know, they say, but what do you, what do you, what do you think? Do you don't want people to get vaccines? I'm like, no, no, I do want to get people to have vaccines. I just want people to have information. And I think that we could always have better research and here's the information and that seems to calm people down a little bit and then they're a little more open to having the conversation. I think right now a lot of people think that individuals like RFK or other people are going to push a narrative of we don't want any more vaccines, we don't want people to get vaccinated. And that, as far as I know, is not the truth in any way and certainly not what I'm aiming for. And I think that doctors want to know that we're moving forward in a way that is still going to promote vaccination, but maybe do it in a safer way. But they have to at least be open to the discussion first. And I think if you come at it from that angle, then there isn't any doctor out there that doesn't want safety for their patients. And better science, and better science, they want that. And I just don't think that they know because I didn't know.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And we sort of take it for granted. It's like there's all these vaccines now in the market. The schedule has how many vaccines now.

[Joel Warsh]

I don't need a lot. I mean, it depends what you know, how many. Depends on how many combos you take. But you're talking like 30 to 40 actual pokes if you're doing combination shots.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

You know, when we talk about evidence based medicine, it's sort of a trope that's used to discredit people who question science. To my knowledge, maybe I'm wrong, but there's no studies that look at what is the combination of all these vaccines at these ages. Each one is studied signally. So if you do 30 different jobs with combos of, so maybe dozens of vaccines, what is the cumulative effect? No one's really looked at that.

[Joel Warsh]

There's nothing even close to that. How many vaccines are new in the last few years? You have to do vaccinated versus unvaccinated studies and you have to look at them together. And it's not unreasonable to do that. There are so many parents that are concerned about too many vaccines. That is one of the biggest concerns that I hear over and over again. That is a reasonable thing to discuss. When you have more and more vaccines, even if there is a small risk that risk compounds. And when you're doing four vaccines on a day, when you're doing vaccines at birth and two months and four months and six months and one year and 15 months and you're just getting more and more vaccines. Logic would state that at some point there's going to be a breaking point, that there are going to be too many. And so we need to be thinking about where is that breaking point? When do the risks increase to the point where we don't appreciate or we don't proof of that level of risk and where we would need to bring it back to some degree. But the issue still right now is if you [e-mail], you look at, you know, Paul Offit's information and I love Paul Offit's book. I think he's a really bright guy. He says things like, oh, you could have 10,000 vaccines, you could have as many antigens as you want. I don't think how does that interact.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

With the immune system?

[Joel Warsh]

Totally correct. I understand the general thought that, okay, we're exposed to a lot of antigens. On any given day, you eat an apple, you're eating all sorts of bacteria and all sorts of stuff that's on.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

There, but you're not getting adjuvants.

[Joel Warsh]

You're not getting adjuvants, but even still you're not getting injected with that. It's going through the regular pathways that our body has always developed to deal with these pathogens, not injecting it into your body. So that's a different pathway. And on top of that you have all the other things in the vaccines, you have all sorts of adjuvants and all sorts of other ingredients and we don't 100% know how those interact. And so there has to be some upper limit of safety for the adjuvants. I mean, it's not woo woo or anti science say there's, there's gotta be some upper limit to the amount of aluminum that you could safely take from a vaccine. We have upper limits for it in every other aspect of our life, like drinking water and the amount that we breathe. Giving yourself 10,000 vaccines with aluminum, that doesn't sound like a great idea.

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[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

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[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And historically it's interesting, you look at the vaccines and this happened very quietly where there was a preservative that was used in most vaccines called thimerosal, which is ethylmercury. And it's been used, you know, for like a hundred years. And it, it, it, you know, mercury is the most potent neurotoxin, second most potent toxin after plutonium on the planet. And you could argue that this form is better than that form, but at the end of the day it's mercury. And what happened was no one had ever added up all the amount of mercury in the vaccines that the kids were getting.

[Joel Warsh]

But isn't that crazy? Before you go on, isn't that crazy that no one ever added it up and no one thought about that before they put it in a vaccine and injected it into their kids?

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

No, it's crazy but you would think.

[Joel Warsh]

That they talked about that and there.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Were, it was like oops.

[Joel Warsh]

But how could you inject something like that without at least having the discussion?

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah, that.

[Joel Warsh]

Is it safe or not? Is it okay to put this in here?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And by the weight of a kid.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

It'S about 162 times the amount of mercury that the EPA says is safe to have in a baby.

[Joel Warsh]

Right.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And then quietly around 2000 they took it out of most vaccines except the multi dose flu vaccine and a few other vaccines. So it's still out there, but it's, you know, I actually went to the federal government, met with the head of vaccines for every single department, cdc, nih, hhs, fda. And I said look, here's the data and we present over 900 studies on the effect of thimerosal in human health. And as a sort of cumulative amount of data, it was pretty compelling. Not any one study will tell you what is good or bad, but you kind of look at the gestalt of Everything. It's like, okay, this is probably not a good idea. And they kind of all agreed. And one of them said, well, oh, maybe it's an adjuvant. I'm like, well, it's not approved as an adjuvant. Adjuvant for everybody listening is basically something that pisses off your immune system. So the vaccine will work better. So you give something irritating like aluminum or mercury. Is that a good thing? And one, it's not approved for that. And then, and then I also said, hey, any of you, would you willingly inject your grandkid or your kid with mercury if there was a better alternative? And there is. And there was. And they're like, no. So why is it still in the market? And why is the FDA still approve it as a. As a preservative, which is in vaccines? It's kind of crazy to me.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I mean, I've read what you've. You've written on it, and I totally agree with your perspective. I always have. And it's. The research still to this date is not clear that thimerosal is, is damaging to the human body. I mean, that's what you hear people say back all the time. Oh, the research still doesn't show that. That it is damaging. It's a different form of mercury, and it's a very small dose, and it's safe. But at the same time, you could just walk by a whiff of a peanut if you have a bad allergy, and it can cause some sort of serious reaction. So even a small amount can cause harm for some people.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah, it's heterogeneous. And I think, I think this is a really important point. Not everybody is the same. And each of us have different genetics, different immune systems. And there's a whole field of vaccinomics, which is at Mayo Clinic. They're leading this field where they're looking at how different people respond to vaccines, which is great, right? But that means it should be personalized.

[Joel Warsh]

Where is that, though? Like, we're putting 50 vaccines in kids. Where is the research to say, all right, Here are the 10 things that you should do to minimize your risk of having a reaction from a vaccine. What is controversial about that? What are the genetic markers? What are the lifestyle factors that you could do? How could you decrease your risk to have a reaction that's going to give parents more confidence to give their kids vaccines because they're decreasing their risk and it's going to decrease the side effects for kids? Why wouldn't we want that? But where is that research, where are the studies? But I think it's because you have to admit that there's a potential problem. Nobody wants to do that then. Nobody wants you. Nobody wants to say you could have a side effect. Even though we know that we have A and IO we have IOM reports, we have individuals that get encephalitis and Guillain Barre and febrile seizures. And again, these are fairly rare, but they happen. And if those things happen, then I don't know why other things couldn't happen too in certain kids. If we would study it, you probably would see that some of these things have at least a slight correlation for some people. Because everybody's different.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah, we're moving into precision medicine or.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Personalized medicine and the size is going.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

There and we're going to be able to map your whole genome for a few hundred bucks and be able to understand what's going on with you and how to personalize medicine. And this is happening already. I mean, I do this if someone, you know, has a lipid issue and I want to prescribe a statin, which I don't do that often, but if I do, I'll check their genetics. Are they going to get statinmyopathy, are going to get muscle damage from statin or there's genetic tests. You can see people might not tolerate aspirin or other things. So we're already doing this in medicine, what's called pharmacogenomics and it's a whole field of understanding the differences in each individual and how they'll respond to different treatments. This should be also the case for vaccines. And we just have this kind of knee jerk reaction that they're just safe and effective and if you question it, you're a kook. And I'm not a kook. You're not a kook. We look hard at the science and the reality is we need more because we don't really have all the answers. It's still confusing even to me. I'm like, I don't know.

[Joel Warsh]

Right. Because we don't know anybody that says the science is settled on long term issues. How can you say that? Where is the research for that? Who is following kids for five or 10 years? How do we have any idea? I mean, you talked about vaers before the adverse reporting that we have. But that's personal report. You do it, the company does it, the doctor does it if they decide to do it. But you have to associate the issue with a vaccine. If you get hepatitis B vaccine today and you get some sort of cancer. Ten years from now, you're not going to be thinking, oh, well, my kid probably got cancer because of the vaccine they got when they were two months old, so let me go report that to theirs. There's no way to see those things unless you follow kids prospectively. You follow them for 10 or 15 or 20 years and you say, hey, how come the kids that are getting more vaccines have more of this kind of cancer? How come those kids have more asthma or allergies? You don't know that unless you follow it prospectively. People can do research on that topic, but nobody wants to do research on vaccines. You have to follow people for a long time. You'd have to have that association in mind beforehand and have 10 years of time to follow those kids. It hasn't been done, but we could do it. We could do something like the framing hand study. We can start following kids for 10 or 15 years. Yes, the ethics are difficult around it, but you can certainly have people self select which group they're going to be in. There are plenty of people that are going to choose not to vaccinate. It's not going to be the perfect study because there's going to be some bias there, but at least you can get some good information. Wouldn't it be really useful to know 10 years from now that the kids that live an unvaccinated lifestyle have a lower rate of asthma than the kids that get vaccines? And then you can say, okay, autoimmune disease or autism. Autism or whatever comes up, all the A's? Yeah. Then you say, well, why, why do the kids that are living an unvaccinated lifestyle have a lower risk of autoimmune disease? Is it the food that they're eating? What is it about their lifestyle that's different? There's nothing wrong with that. That would be super useful information. And if, if we found that there are no differences, that is the information that parents want that will make them be more confident to get vaccines. That's what they want. And if we have that research and we show those things, then you're going to improve confidence in the vaccine program. And if you do find problems, you're going to improve the confidence because you're going to fix those problems.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And I think that's right. I mean, it's just really about up, leveling the science. And that's really, I think what, what is happening now and I'm glad that that's the case. And yes, it's going to cost money and it's going to Take time. But we have to ask the questions and we can't just fall into this. There's no evidence that it's been settled that the science, I mean, these are things I hear all the time in the news. I'm like, what? First of all, you're a reporter, you shouldn't be talking about that. Second of all, this is just anti science. So it's truly anti science to say the science is settled.

[Joel Warsh]

It doesn't make any sense. You never say that in science. You're always looking forward and the science is definitely not settled on any of these topics. I mean, there's no way that you could say that going through it at this point. I have no reason to say anything other than I'm not against vaccines. But there are so many aspects of the science that it's just not settled on. And the foundation of a lot of this research is quite flawed and not great. And you go back to the research on some of these original vaccines like DTP and polio. Those studies were not done in the way we do studies today. And so you're basing the safety profile on some of the things that we used to do.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

We didn't have randomized controls, we didn't.

[Joel Warsh]

Have randomized controlled trials back then. So other than the polio, the polio, the original one, which was an amazing study, still wasn't quite to the degree of the things that we do today. But it was like 2 million people in that, in that original polio study because people were really invested. Can you imagine if we had studies today that had 2 million people in them? That is the kind of research that we should require to give a new vaccine to our kids, especially to a baby. We have a hepatitis B vaccine on the market that the original studies in the package insert say the safety was study for four or five days. And there are all sorts of requests to look, where is other research? Where is the data that it's safe? How can we give something to babies that we don't have the most strict evidence that it's safe and the most benefit. That's why. Again, so people question the vaccine program because they say giving hepatitis B to a one day old baby, it doesn't make sense to me. So why are we doing this?

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

It's disease that's only acquired by sex or intravenous drug use. So no baby is doing those two things. And the theory is, well, they're here in the hospital, we got them, let's just do it because they're going to leave and we don't know it's going to be a problem.

[Joel Warsh]

Right. But now we have.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Other countries actually don't mandate that.

[Joel Warsh]

Most countries don't mandate it. Certainly in the first couple of days. I understand. I mean, it certainly has worked. The program to give vaccines for hepatitis B has decreased the risk of hepatitis B. You're basically making the notion that vaccines don't have any potential harm or issue when you're giving to one day old baby. And we have to be reasonable. Now we're doing a hepatitis B, a vitamin K and an RSV potentially in those first couple of days. There has to be a point where you say, how many things do you want to give to a newborn baby that is one day old? Okay, let's look at hepatitis B. Do we truly need to give that to a one day old baby? Or if the parent's been tested, if they don't have hepatitis B? Is this something that we could say, if you want to get it now, go for it, but if you want to move it back a few months or you want to do it later in life when you're going to get your other vaccines, maybe your teen vaccines, like, can we have that discussion? Because you're throwing a lot of patients off of vaccines in general because they say this doesn't make sense. My baby's not having sex, I'm giving them. You telling me that I have to do a vaccine on the first day of life now I don't trust you?

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Well, I think, I think that's an important thing. And I kind of want to sort of zoom out a little bit and kind of ask you about a theory I have, which is that there's been a real change in our overall immune health as a population. We've seen a dramatic decrease in infectious disease, which I think we can talk about why that is. And I think it has a lot to do with sanitation and hygiene.

[Joel Warsh]

I agree.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And not necessarily the vaccines. And we can talk about that. Like for example, vaccines, Measles just decreased by over 90% in 1968 when the measles vaccine came out and it already had decreased by 90% of the population. And yeah, and measles vaccines do work and they help reduce the risk, especially in, you know, developing nations where these kids are susceptible. And that's. That was what was going on in, in the, in the early 1900s and 1800s was the sanitation and the lack of hygiene and flush toilets. And I mean, it was just like a disaster. So, yeah, people were getting really sick, they were malnourished, they didn't have vitamins and minerals. They were. And there was so many reasons why they were so susceptible and died from these. And when you look at the developing world, that's, that's.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Those are the kids that die.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

The kids are malnourished, don't have nutrients in their system, be able to fight these things. The same thing with COVID You know, Covid only killed the people who are susceptible, which was those chronically ill and obese. And that's why we had, you know, four times the rate of other countries in terms of the number of deaths per population. We had 16% of the global deaths and 4% of the population of the world. So how did that kind of sink? But the theory I kind of have is that our immune systems have been just screwed up because there's been increase in C section rates, there's been a lack of breastfeeding, there's been early use of antibiotics. There's other stresses that the baby has, environmental toxins, all of which dysregulate the immune system. And you give a vaccine on the top of that. And there's a problem. And I don't know if you were trained like this, but I was trained when, when I was trained in, and I did family medicine, so I did a lot of pediatrics, that if, if a kid came in and they were sick, had a cold, the tuming, you cannot give them a vaccine. Like, just don't do it because it's going to mess them up and it's going to be bad. And so that was what I learned. But then what's happened is that doctors will say, oh, God, I don't know if the kid's going to come back in the office, so I'm just going to give to him anyway. And that, that kind of seems odd to me, and I'd love you to sort of comment on my theory and this, this whole sort of sense of, well, we got him in the office, we got him in the hospital, let's just give him vaccine, even if it's a bad idea.

[Joel Warsh]

Well, I totally agree, going back to the first point. So it is really important. Physicians, everybody needs to go look back at the history. There are some good books on it. I didn't know any of this even a couple of years ago, but the reality is that sanitation and nutrition had a huge role in our immune systems. Before the vaccines came out, all of the diseases were way on the downswing. So most of the diseases had almost no death anymore or very, very little death. I mean, you're Talking, even measles. Before the vaccine, you had a couple hundred deaths a year. Lots of cases, but still not as many deaths. So because we had antibiotics, because we had hospitals, because we understood medicine better, we knew what a virus was and a bacteria was, we knew how to treat things, we were eating better, we had vitamin C, you know, people didn't have scurvy anymore. I mean, all these things that make a huge difference for your immune system. We saw the death rates plummet, and there were still lots of cases of some of these diseases. And so you look at when the vaccines came out, and a lot of the vaccine preventable diseases did decrease to almost zero after those vaccines come out. So they certainly had an impact. I mean, the most, I guess, memorable for a lot of young adults would be chickenpox, right? We all had chickenpox when we were young.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

I got a little chickenpox growing. We used to have chickenpox parties, right?

[Joel Warsh]

And we did, but there were still lots of chickenpox around, right? And then the vaccine came out, and then we don't see chickenpox almost at all anymore. So you can't say that the vaccines don't do anything. I mean, you can see that they clearly drop the morbidity. And some kids from chickenpox, I hear it too, from parents, where it's like, oh, chickenpox, I had it, it was nothing. But when you have an entire population of kids getting chickenpox and millions of people, some kids get a really bad infection, it puts them in the hospital. Some kids get a meningitis, some kids get a pneumonia. So things do happen at a population level. There is some benefit, certainly from public health initiatives, and that's where the vaccines certainly come into play, to say that our health is better because of vaccines, or that's the thing that's doing it. I think that's an overstatement. I think it's a problem. Part of everything that we've done that has brought us to where we are today. We certainly are better than we used to be in terms of our health. We used to live till 40, we lived till our 70s. Now that's good. So not all of medicine is bad, but we're seeing our life expectancy go back down. We're seeing chronic disease rates skyrocket, and we need a little humility in medicine to say, hey, maybe some of the things we've done in the last 20 or 30 years aren't all the best. Maybe we're not doing everything perfectly, and maybe there's some sort of Middle ground here that can get our life expectancy to 90 or 100 or 120. And maybe all the toxins that we're being exposed to in the chemicals that we're being exposed to and the food that we're eating, that's not the best anymore. And most kids are eating just mostly ultra processed foods. Maybe that has something to do with what we're seeing. And maybe, just maybe, vaccines have some part in that for some kids. Maybe there's a certain genetics where it throws you over the edge. Or maybe for kids that are already so depleted, don't have the right nutrients, have a toxic load, it throws them over the edge.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

That's right.

[Joel Warsh]

And most kids do fine with vaccines. I mean, I've given vaccines in my office and I've never seen the horrible things that are written. I've taken care of patients after that, swear by it. And there are way too many stories not to believe it. And there are certainly people that have gone to court and won in their cases for it.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

So there's a lot of, in your practice, adverse effects. I mean, we see a lot of benefit. I'm acknowledging that and I think I'm, you know, I've seen that as well and I definitely recommend vaccinations. The question is, you know, what kinds of things have you seen? Because I personally have seen a lot of things that I've like this is interesting, it's supposed to be okay. But I'm seeing these, these problems in the short term.

[Joel Warsh]

I wouldn't say that I've seen all the horrible things that are out there. I've seen really bad rashes, I've seen fevers. I've seen kids crying for a long time and being super fussy. I've seen all the minor or moderate things. I've never personally yet see in any of the super severe things that the people have had. But they've come to me after the fact and sworn by it. So I've seen lots of kids that have stated it as well as I've seen, you know, certainly lots of kids.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

So you've seen, you've seen kids who were ill, who had been vaccinated, who.

[Joel Warsh]

Had been vaccinated, who swear by it. Like one patient who they had a newborn and they got vaccines and then they had a super heart fat, super fast heart rate in the 2000s and they had super SVT and they had to go to the hospital. It was just right after a couple hours and then everybody said, oh no, it's not because of the vaccines. It's probably not to do with it. And then they ended up getting more vaccines in a couple months later, after being convinced because they were going to kick them out of the office if they didn't, the exact same thing happened. The doctors still didn't relate it in the hospital to the vaccines. The doctor they had still didn't relate it to the vaccines. And the mom was crying because she was like, I don't want to give my kid vaccines anymore. She had another kid that was fully vaccinated, that was older. She wasn't against vaccines. But this kid was having a clear reaction an hour or two hours after getting vaccines was affecting this child's heart. And the doctors at the hospital wouldn't call it a vaccine reaction. The their doctor wouldn't call it a vaccine reaction. When they wanted to stop doing vaccines at that point for that child, the doctor kicked them out of the office or told them they couldn't come back if they didn't continue vaccinating. So that's when they came to me, and I was heartbroken because it's like we're at this point where doctors are so afraid to call something a vaccine reaction that we're doing our patients a disservice. Like, in my state, it's like impossible to do an exemption at this point unless the child is like basically on their deathbed. And that's doing a disservice to kids that have all sorts of concerns and taking ability. For parents who have a reasonable concern around a vaccine or a reaction or a previous reaction or a family history of something, you can't take that into consideration as a doctor, which I think is unfortunate, because people are scared.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

It's interesting, you know, it's interesting this moment because, you know, RFK Jr. Is now health and Human Services secretary, and he's been labeled as an anti vaxx conspiracy theorist. And I know him personally and I've who's been on my podcast a number of times, and, you know, I've had deep conversations with him about this, and he's all about questioning the data, which is something that should be just a natural part of the evolution of our scientific inquiry about anything, vaccines or anything, drugs, surgery, anything. When he gets labeled in that way and he's just calling for better science and to actually ask the questions, is there a problem? You know, he was an environmental lawyer and he was giving talks about mercury in the rivers and the pollution from the coal burning that we had in this country in cement plants and how it was really causing huge pollution that was contaminating all the fish. If you look at the EPA recommendations, you shouldn't eat fish from any lake or river in America, period, ever. Like they're just a poison mercury. And when he was giving these talks about this, women would come up to him and say, hey, my kid got these vaccines with mercury in them. Maybe you should look at that because the kid got sick after or they got autism and maybe there's something there. And so he went down that rabbit hole and you know, he's a smart guy and he saw there was some signal there. Now do we know? Absolutely, it's true. No, but there's some, there's some noise there. And I can tell you there is a, there's a medicine. There's something called the doctor years of a disease. In other words, how many years you have to be practicing medicine in order to see a certain condition. So like I've never seen a pheochromocytoma, which is a rare tumor of your adrenal glands. Like, I just never seen it and I'm probably never going to see it. And you've never seen it.

[Joel Warsh]

I've never seen it.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Right. You could probably ask 30 doctors and they've never seen it. And they collectively practice hundreds of years of medicine. Personally, I have seen many, many cases where parents say, look, my kid got vaccinated and then afterwards they got sick or they got autism. And I could, I've literally seen dozens in my small kind of cohort of patients who've, who've had autism. It's not uncommon. And so it calls in the question of like, what's happening with these kids, are they just susceptible to it? And I always hear the same story. That's why I sort of mentioned this susceptibility. C section, bottle fed colic, lots of antibiotics, ear infections, strep throat, whatever, boom, they get the vaccine at 15 months and then, wow, they're off to the races where they have regressive autism. Regressive autism is where you're developing fine, you're talking, you're walking, you're doing all the normal things and then you stop and you go backwards. And then it's like, well, they weren't born with this. What happened? And so nobody wants to ask that question. And when I sort of dug deep into these kids health, they had terrible gut issues. They had tons of heavy metals in their system, they had lots of nutritional deficiencies. It sort of had a susceptibility. When you start to look at it. And when you correct these things, these Kids often would improve or get better, which was amazing to me. So somebody able to undo the harmful effects by actually treating it.

[Joel Warsh]

People would say, almost everybody would say, no, the science has been done. They would say that. And that's what I would have said 10 years ago. And I think that's why it's so important to talk about it. Because when you say something like, oh, well, you know, this child had this, this thing happen after they got a vaccine, then the knee jerk reaction is saying, no, no, what are you talking about? The science is settled, it's been debunked. We have so much research on all the vaccines and we know that vaccines don't have anything to do with autism. Nothing shocked me more when doing this book than looking at the autism research.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah. Now let me clear. I don't think vaccines cause autism.

[Joel Warsh]

Correct. There's nothing to say that.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

But they can be a trigger in a susceptible kid for dysregulation of their immune system. And autism is a neuroinflammatory disease. When you look at kids brains with autism who've maybe died in a car accident, their brains are just full of inflammation. The glial cells are litten up. In fact, on MRI scans, their brains are literally larger because they're swollen.

[Joel Warsh]

Right. And your point is the same point that I have, which is there are so many parents that are saying this, so many stories, Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. It's information, it's data, it's parents. We have to listen to them, we have to take that into account and we have to have these discussions. You can't just dismiss these parents who so believe in science and so believe in vaccines that they took their kid to get vaccines and then they swear that something happened. And then you call that person anti vax crazy for saying, look, I think my kid was normal today. And then the next day they had issues after getting a vaccine. This is my experience, those people are the information that we need to figure out what's going on.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

It's true.

[Joel Warsh]

Funny.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Like one of the kids, I saw their mother was a top executive at Pfizer, which does. She was like, this has happened.

[Joel Warsh]

The research doesn't show that vaccines cause autism. It doesn't really show anything. I mean, there is research on MMR and there's research on thimerosal and that's the majority of the research. So we have some data on that. But when people say, oh, it's been debunked or oh, it's been studied, I looked through everything, I went in to, you know, ride in on a white horse and say, look, here's all the research that shows that vaccines don't cause autism. Like this is why people say it's. And when you look at what's actually out there, most of the researchers from a long time ago, it's on those two specific things and it's not on all vaccines. It's certainly not on vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. So when somebody says we should get more research and then everybody rushes to yell at them and call them anti science, say that the science is settled, that makes no sense. There's nothing wrong with getting more research. It's certainly not settled in terms of we have all these prospective great clinical trials to show this. We don't have that at all. And that is really important that when we're talking about moving forward, we should do more research, we should listen these parents, there's nothing wrong with that. Let's do more studies and we'll see what it finds and then we'll go from there.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

You know, as someone who's practiced medicine for 30 years and seen a lot of these kids, but very various things, you know, kids even for example, who the vaccine I don't think was a problem. There are things that cause issues. We learned from Phil Landrigan and others that lead, which was measured in kids teeth, was causing severe behavioral issues, aggression, violence, add. And so they made the conclusion, gee, lead's bad. Let's get lead out of gasoline, let's get lead out of paint.

[Joel Warsh]

But we didn't stop using gas. No, we didn't stop using paint. We just stopped having lead in there. So that way when kids were living in their house, they weren't ingesting lead, but it started with somebody recognizing it started with somebody talking about it. And I hope if RFK is listening or someone's passing this long to them, like we do need more information and we do need more research. But what I think needs to be done first is we need to get actual data and information of what vaccine information exists to the doctors. That's one of the things that I hope that my book can help with. But I think we need some sort of either a new commission or a new IOM or some sort of literature review done by the most pro vaccine people mixed with other individuals. And we need to go through the research and we need to show what actually does exist so that doctors can see it and read it and put it in the New England Journal of Medicine or Journal of American Medical association or whatever. Some sort of major body that doctors are going to respect. I think if we can get the information out there of what actually exists, what research has been done, what we have and what we don't have, that's going to be a really good first step because just to go to a bunch of studies which is good, we need them. But I think if you get a study here or there that shows vaccines are related to X, Y or Z, people are just going to trash it. They're not going to be even willing to listen to it. And I think we need to first get the doctor's information on what the research actually shows because I'm 99% positive that most people don't know.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah. When you say that, you mean a dispassionate look at the data.

[Joel Warsh]

Correct.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And not just some of the data, but all of the data.

[Joel Warsh]

All of the data in a report.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Presented in a way that is digestible and easy to understand for both practitioners and even lay people. Yeah, because I think that that would not increase what the people call vaccine hesitancy, but it would actually decrease it.

[Joel Warsh]

It would and it hasn't. Not come from someone like rfk. I mean, he could push it to happen, but it needs to be someone that the doctors are not just going to say, hey, you know, this is an anti vax kook. We're not going to listen to it. Get somebody who doctors love, I don't know, get palafa headed, I don't care, whoever wants to do it and get a group of people together and go through and show here's what the research shows, here's what it shows on autism, here's what it shows on asthma, here's what it shows. List it all out, let people read it, let people digest it and then they're going to have an understanding. But it has to be dispassionate and it can't be pro vax. It has to be balanced and it has to show both sides. Nothing thus far does that. I hope I did it in some way. In my book that was the goal. But it's still just a book. It's not, it's not fully comprehensive of everything. There's only so much you can go through. It would help doctors. I think doctors would be willing to listen if, if they receive the information in a way that they would respect. And right now I think there's this concern on everything that's talked about when it comes to vaccines that there's this push to stop people from vaccinating or take away their polio vaccines, which is not the case, but that's what they hear and they never hear past the headline. And we have to get past that headline, have to get the information to doctors. That way we can come together to say, hmm, that's what the autism research shows. Interesting. Okay, well then I'm not super against getting more research because I thought there was a lot more research than that. Like that. That's what would actually, I think, move the needle in the first part.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

So when you started digging into this, Joel, and talking about the research, what were the things that were the most surprising that you learned both in terms of things that were in support of the vaccination approach to managing disease risk and also things that sort of challenged that. What were the things that you found in your discovery of these things? By just having a pediatric kind of open minded view, like I'm just going to look at what does the science say, what does the data say?

[Joel Warsh]

The first thing that I was most surprised at was that everything is super one sided. So you read one book and you get one view of a product and you read another book and you get a completely different view and they never talk about the information on both. That's number one. Number two, it's like a tennis match. You kind of go back and forth and you're like, that's pretty bad about vaccines. Oh, well, that's really good. So you have to be willing to do that and kind of go back and forth and look at, okay, here's what the diseases were. Oh, I don't want that disease. I don't want my kid to have this disease. This is what the vaccine's actually done. That's good. You have to be willing to go back and forth. Next, the way that research was done, I was very surprised at how things haven't been inert. Placebo, controlled trial. And going back through the research and going back through the history and the data, how we really didn't have the best trials a long time ago and we're basing a lot on that.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

They're kind of rigged in some way.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah, they're some rigged. They're rigged or they're just done in the way that they were done back then and they weren't as rigorous as that. I found listening to Aaron Series, his lawyer, some of his trials and some of the depositions of different individuals like Stanley Plotkin and Kathleen Edwards, just very eye opening in terms of just asking them questions and getting their honest opinions on vaccines and how the research was done in the past. I think that was really interesting because.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Unpack that because Aaron C. Is a lawyer who was involved in some of these vaccine cases. And who are these other people you're talking about and what were they?

[Joel Warsh]

So Stanley Plotkin is one of the founders of vaccines, you know, brilliant guy, one of the founders of the rubella vaccine. And he's been involved in multiple trials. And I listened to his trial with Aaron Seri on it was a religious exemption case. And it's just really interesting to hear him discuss the use of aborted fetal tissue back when they were doing the research and how they were doing the research many years ago and how many fetuses they were using. And just the way that they were studying things back, you know, 50 or 60 years ago is really interesting.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

It wouldn't pass an ethical review at this time.

[Joel Warsh]

It wouldn't pass ethical view. And there is still an ongoing debate about religious freedom and religious exemptions with vaccines and whether, you know, the use of aborted tissue should be considered in that. As of right now, all religions technically state that you can get vaccines. And there's nothing that's problematic about it. But when you look at the way that things were done originally and using aborted fetal tissue, then it does at least bring up that discussion. And I think that whether your church says that it's okay to get vaccines, that you still might personally feel like that's unethical to you. And I just thought that was interesting because I never considered any of that before. I mean, I really didn't even know that abortive fetal tissue was in there until you start learning about vaccines. I mean, these are just things that they're not aborting fetuses now. They're using old, old aborted fetal tissue. But it just brings into question when, when people are called anti vax kooks. Well, maybe they have a reason why they're, they're concerned or maybe they're, they're vegan and they don't want to inject something that has pork, you know, pork products in there, which gelatin does. I mean, they're, they're taken from, from, from pigs. So some of the vaccines have that in there. So these are just things that as someone who's open minded, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. But I think it's reasonable if you understand those reasons why somebody might be hesitant, that can help build bridges. And I think we need to build bridges as an understanding to why people might be more hesitant that we give them credit for as opposed to Calling them some sort of crazy, crazy mom, crazy dad, they're crazy anti vaxxer. Well, maybe they have personal beliefs that are different than mine and not everyone has to have the same beliefs or the same understanding of everything. So that was really interesting. Long term studies that we don't have any, we really don't have any vaccinated versus unvaccinated trials. That's crazy to me. And autism research, I mean it's interesting.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

You know, I've heard RFK Jr talk about this in Del Big Tree also who worked with him on this issue. He said they actually met with Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins. They went to the nih, they sat with them and they asked them, can you please show us the data on which this is sort of, this whole program is based and the randomized controlled trials and, and they said we have them. And then they push, they push, they push and then ultimately they don't have them. Can you kind of speak to that? Is that legit or.

[Joel Warsh]

That is legit. That's in there. You know, I read all those, those transcripts and I read the foia, the Freedom of Information act requests and they, they were, I mean they've put in many freedom Information acts over the years now, but they were basically saying like, show us the research and the data. Show us the placebo controlled trials. Show us the data that shows that all vaccines don't cause autism. Like provide it to us, please. We're not saying that it doesn't exist, but for example, with the Hepatitis B vaccine like we were talking about, please show us the information and the safety trials that were more than four or five days, please show us the polio studies that were done. That's what those, when we're talking about like the Aaron, Ciri and RFK not wanting the polio vaccine, that's what they're talking about. They were asking for more information and more data. And what data exists because they couldn't find it. And that's the same thing. I couldn't find this stuff. You're really trying to look for it. And so it either doesn't exist or it's not readily accessible. And I would hypothesize that if you had some amazing study, then it would be front page news of the New York Times. So it doesn't exist probably. And I've read multiple of Paul Offit's books.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Paul Offit is a vaccine researcher, vaccine.

[Joel Warsh]

Researcher, like one of the most prominent individuals.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Many vaccines.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah. And he's part of all the committees and if There was more. I would think he would have it in his books. Peter Hotez, another prominent vaccine doctor. It would be in his books. The research that I found is the same research that they had. And I went through all these books before and after because I didn't believe what I was finding, because I was thinking there had any more.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

You had to read the other side and there was nothing there.

[Joel Warsh]

It just didn't exist that I could find in any way. And so the research that I could find was what they reported on. And I think that's shocking. And that's why I think doctors don't know, because I didn't know. I'm an integrative doctor. I get asked about vaccines all the time. The reason why I'm doing a vaccine book is because I didn't have the answers to some of these questions. People ask me about vaccines every single day. It's why most people come to my office or what they ask me on social media. And I wanted to look at the research and figure out what is out there. Not to convince people to do it or to tell them not to, but to say, okay, here's what's out there, here's what we have, here's what we can move forward. And I was shocked at what we didn't have. And the people that were calling anti vax conspiracy theorists back in the day, like Del Big Tree and RFK who are pushing for these things. And I found the very same things that they're asking for. When you get the sound bites of these people, well, maybe we need to look at ourselves and say we got to get past the headlines to look at the actual research. And we have to care about kids. And we have to care about kids more than what pharma is pushing for us and what we were trained originally, we have to get past that and say, well, what is the research actually show and what do we need to do next? Let's not call names of people come.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Together, have the NIH actually build a research agenda that asks the right questions.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah. Or just move forward. It's not about blaming anybody. There's no shame in this. We know what we know and then we know more in the future. And nobody's taking away vaccines. But we want safer vaccines, we want better vaccines, we want more research on vaccines. So that way in a decade or two decades, we have have better vaccines than we have today. We have lower risk of side effects, whatever those might be, and we have more data.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Yeah, I think, you know, it's important. I mean, I As a physician, I've seen vaccine, preventable disease, and working in the developing world. In Haiti, I saw tetanus, which I'd never seen before. And it was horrifying to see someone with a disease that was just so awful, that was hard to treat, that they could die from just. It could be prevented by a simple vaccine or. My stepfather had mumps when he was a kid. He was born in the 20s and ended up getting infertility and sterile because of that. So these vaccines do have a role in medicine. The question is, how do we best apply them? So this has been quite enlightening, and we've uncovered a lot of the problems in medicine and science. We clearly need more and better science, and the trope is all safe and effective. I think we need to just kind of get past that and say, look, this is like anything else in medicine. There's risks and there's benefits. So when a parent comes into your office and says, Dr. Gator, which is your kind of nickname, what should I do? Like, I want to protect my kid. What's the best way to vaccinate my kid? Because the CDC center for Disease Control and Prevention, which they don't really focus on much, is telling me I should do this whole list of dozens of vaccines. And this is the schedule they've given. I mean, when I was doing my board certification, reappping my board certification, I went to a review course, and the pediatrician from UCSF was like, here's the vaccine schedule. And like, boy, this is what we're told to tell you, but it's a lot. Even he was like, it's a lot. And then he was a regular pediatrician from ucsf. So when a parent comes in and wants to know, how do they proceed? Which vaccine should I give, in what order, which one's together, at what time? How do I navigate that? So what do you advise your patients for that?

[Joel Warsh]

It really goes back to my philosophy on vaccines or everything, which is informed consent. And as I said, I don't tell people what to do. I never do. I don't tell people what to do in the book. I don't think that we should. I don't think that's reasonable. I think it's a doctor's job to inform and to discuss and let parents make the best decision that they for them. The only thing that a doctor can recommend currently is the CDC schedule. And so if individuals want to follow the CDC schedule, I think that's fine and reasonable for them to do. I think that it would be Extremely arrogant of me to say that I know better than the CDC or I should tell them to do something different than the CDC should do based on my own, you know, personal knowledge. But I don't feel that people should be forced to do anything. And we should have discussions, and parents should be able to do whatever they feel is right for them. I have patients in my office that follow the CDC schedule. I have lots of patients that go on a slower schedule, and I have some patients that don't do any vaccines. Most people that come do want to vaccinate. Most people do end up vaccinating, and many do some sort of a slower schedule. And so we can certainly talk about that. But there is no studied or researched or specific slow schedule. It's really just personal choice of how quickly you want to go, how many you want to do, and how you weigh the risks and the benefits of any given vaccine. And that is how people go about things.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And vaccine schedules are different in different countries.

[Joel Warsh]

They're very different in different countries. So I talked about that at the end of the book a little bit. Most of the countries have a fairly similar schedule. I mean, most of the vaccines are the same, but they're done in a different order. Not everything is required that we require here. So a lot of countries don't require hep B or hep A. A lot of countries don't require chickenpox. A lot of countries have measles, the MMR vaccine, and different schedules. So a lot of them do it later. And actually, our country is one of the few that doesn't do the meningitis shot early. A lot of countries actually do the meningitis shot earlier, the meningococcus. So there is and are different schedules out there, but they are fairly similar. But when you're talking about a slow schedule, I think the way that I talk to parents about it is really weighing risks versus benefits of each vaccine. So what are you more likely to get? What is more likely to kill you or cause serious harm? What's going on in the community right now versus, you know, what we know about any specific risks. And that is usually how people go about things. And they're certainly whooping cough all the time. We see it in our communities. Haemophilus influenza is still around. Whooping cough with pertussis. Yeah, so the pertussis part's probably the biggest part of that. I mean, there is still a little bit of tetanus, but that's pretty rare. Diphtheria is extremely rare these days. But we wouldn't want diphtheria to come back. Haemophilus is not common anymore, but certainly very concerning. So that is around still, and that's something that people do tend to choose to do. Polio. Obviously, nobody wants polio, but we haven't had polio in a very long time in this country. So sometimes people choose to push that one back.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

There's live versus, you know, inactive virus, right?

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah, well, we. Yeah, we don't do the. The live one anymore just because we realize that we're causing more polio with the live virus that you actually have. And we haven't had a case in a very long time from wild, wild polio. So people sometimes push that back. I think it's important. We don't want polio to come back, obviously. And if you're traveling somewhere where there is polio, then that makes a lot of sense. But there isn't a lot of polio in our country, so sometimes people push that back. Rotavirus is a common one that we give to children, but in our country, we have IV fluids. So a lot of people do tend to choose to push that one back.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Rotavirus gives you bad diarrhea.

[Joel Warsh]

Bad diarrhea. Pneumococcus can cause meningitis and pneumonia. So that's one that people tend to prioritize in that first year. And then the measles, mumps, rubella, certainly the measles part, people prioritize that and certainly are prioritizing that a lot more in the last few months. And chickenpox, they tend to prioritize less. That's the way that people think about it. If they want to do the regular schedule, go for it. If they want to do a slow.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Schedule, a la carte, they can do a la carte.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah. Then they can do. They could do what? A lot of times people still do all the vaccines and they still get them on the same general timeframe, but they just might come in a little bit more and do one at a time, and that makes them feel more comfortable. So that's fine by me. Sometimes they'll do it every couple of months.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And is there a rationale for giving like one at a time as opposed to just loading them all up?

[Joel Warsh]

That goes to a little bit more on common sense, I would say, because there's no research to show that if you do a slower schedule or you do one at a time, it's going to decrease your risk. So we don't. We don't know and we don't have.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Science on the current schedule either.

[Joel Warsh]

Right. So it's the truth. So, I mean, I don't know that it decreases your risk at all, but. But the theory that a parent would have is, I don't want to give my kid 4 vaccines on a day. There's more toxic load, there's more that the body has to deal with, and therefore it potentially increases their risk to have a reaction. So I feel more comfortable giving one at a time. Instead of doing two vaccines today, I'll do one today and I'll come back in a month and do the other one. They're still doing them. They're just doing them one at a time. And that, yes, it means more visits, but they're still at the end of the day doing all the vaccines. So I don't have the research to say that that's better. But we should have that research. We should be studying that. We should be looking. Hey, if we space it out, does that decrease your risk of anything? That would be good to know.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

And the other question is, vaccines are a really big immune irritant, and babies don't have a fully developed immune system until they're over a year old, just like they don't have a developed neurological system. When you look at a baby, their motions are jerky. They look like they have cerebral palsy or some spastic movements, but that's because their neurologic system's not developed and their immune system not developed and their gut and their oral tolerance not developed. So. So is there a rationale for waiting a little longer when a kid's not so immune, sort of underdeveloped in terms of their immune response, or do we still want to give it to little kids and babies before a year old?

[Joel Warsh]

There's two sides to that question. The first part of that would say, and this is what the general consensus is, we want to give the vaccines early because you get the protection and you want to protect before you get the disease. So that's the general body of science. The concern around giving vaccines early is, like you said, the immune system system is developing, the baby's developing, they're still small. So any sort of toxic load or any chemicals or any sort of stimulation is going to most likely have more of effect on them than it would for an adult or somebody older. And so that's the concern. There certainly are some studies that say if you delay certain vaccines, then you decrease your risk of asthma, you decrease your risk of eczema. I mean, these studies exist. They're not the majority, but they're out there. And there are some actually very good studies and good journals that show this. So it's not an unreasonable hypothesis to have. And again, it goes back to the research we should be getting. We should be asking, hey, if we move the hepatitis B vaccine back, does that decrease your risk of anything? I mean, just in basic common sense, if you give a vaccine to anybody, the biggest risk you have is having a fever, right? Having a fever, not feeling good. If a baby in the first week gets a fever, what happens? Right? If you give a hepatitis B vaccine and they have a normal side effect from a vaccine of getting a fever, what happens to a baby? They're going to the hospital, they're getting a lumbar puncture, they're getting a full workup, they're being exposed to all these potential diseases in the hospital that maybe they got that fever just from the reaction from the vaccine. But we don't know that in a newborn baby. So we're going to do the full workup anyways because we want to protect them, but we don't talk about that. Risk versus benefit. Do those babies need that risk? They need the risk to go to the hospital. They need the risk to get the fever. Could they wait till 2 months old or 4 months old and take away that risk? I mean, those are the questions that smart people need to have. They need to sit on stage, they need to debate. They need to go to Harvard and Hopkins and on tv on full cameras, sit there and debate these questions. They need to talk about that. They need to talk about all of these ethics so people can watch it and say, well, maybe you're right. Maybe we should rethink our hepatitis B. Or maybe somebody smarter than me is gonna say, no, no, no, here's why we do it. Here's what the reason is, here's why the risks, the benefits outweigh the risks. And I'll say, okay, well, that makes sense, you know, like, that's what we need. But we can't shut down the discussion, which is what's happened for the last decade. How are we going to move forward unless we can have these conversations? And it has to be someone who's pro versus someone who's anti. Whatever labels you want, somebody who is. Who knows this research and understands it really well and can debate and discuss it publicly. So that way we can. I don't have any skin in the game. Whatever the research is is fine by me. I want kids to be the healthiest.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

I agree.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Me too. And I think what I would love to see is a catalog of the key questions that need to be answered. Here's what we know, here's what we don't know. Let's fund research that helps us understand what we don't know and have better answers and be able to actually show population, show doctors and healthcare system what actually we should be doing. Because right now there's so many questions, because there's a lot of unanswered questions.

[Joel Warsh]

But those questions won't even be asked until the literature is written down and we're allowed to ask the questions. You have to be allowed to ask the questions. And no one's going to allow that to happen until they realize that there are holes in the research. And so I think it starts with putting that all down, having open discussions about what exists, getting doctors on board with the research that is. That actually is present right now, today. And then we move forward from there with debate and discussion on the open topics. And then people will say, hey, okay, well, hepatitis B is a reasonable discussion to have. Let's get the committees together and let's talk about, okay, here's what we have. Here's what we don't have. Here's what the smart people say. Maybe we move hepatitis B back, or maybe we just make it a general recommendation for those that test positive for hepatitis B or don't know their hepatitis B risk. Let's start to focus on safety. Because what I think is happening most right now, and especially when you're talking about the people that are hesitant, and I hear this over and over again, they don't feel like anybody cares about their kids. They feel like right now everything is about money and about pushing more medications and drugs, and nobody actually cares about safety. And everybody understands that there is some safety risk with any medication that we have or any vaccines, and they'll be okay with some risk. But they want to know that we're acknowledging the risk, that we're studying the risk, that we're figuring out what that actual risk is, and that we're moving to make things safer and better over time. And until those discussions are had publicly, more and more people and more and more parents are going to be hesitant about vaccines. And that is what we're seeing. The rates are plummeting. People don't believe in medicine anymore, even doctors.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

It's a crisis.

[Joel Warsh]

There's some studies that show that doctors. There's like 5 to 10% of doctors don't fully believe that vaccines are safe anymore. That's a huge crisis.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It is.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

I agree, and I think These questions need to be answered. And I got to thank you for having the courage to step out in this field because I know for me personally it's been an area that I often avoid because all of a sudden you get labeled as a quack and all the rest of the work you want to try to do in the world is compromised. But all we're asking for is better science. We can have safer vaccines. Bobby always says. He says, I was calling out the fact that fish were poisoned with mercury in our rivers. I'm not anti fish, I just want safer fish. If you want safe planes to fly on doesn't mean you're anti flying. And I think it's the same thing with vaccines. So Between A Shot and a Hard Place is a great book tackling difficult vaccine questions with balance, data and clarity. Everybody should definitely get a copy if you're interested in this topic. If you have a kid or thinking of having a kid or a grandkid, I think this is such an important conversation and I encourage doctors out there listening, I encourage scientists out there listening to ask these questions, to not kind of lean into the propaganda that the science is settled, they're safe and effective. That's just a nonsense statement. When you think about everything else in medicine that doesn't apply to. So, Joel, thank you for writing this book. Thank you for the courage and hope you all love this. Make sure you check out Joel's work. You can find him online. Tell us how to find you where we can get more information about you and your social media.

[Joel Warsh]

Yeah, the best places are probably at Dr. Joel Gator on Instagram or X. Or you can find the book Between A Shot and a Hard Place on Amazon or anywhere books are sold. Or you can go to theshotbook.com you've.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Also written another book, parenting your children at your child's pace. The integrated Pediatrician's guide to the first three years came out last year. So you're prolific. I don't know if you're going to follow my pace. I hope you're not. It's almost killed me.

[Joel Warsh]

But yeah, the last one, not as controversial I guess, but this one, in this one I have worked. I've had it for a while and been working on it, but this is the time to get it out there. So I've been working super hard to get it out and that's why it's kind of two in a row.

[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

Well, thanks Joel and thanks for having the courage doing this. And we all going to keep looking at what you're doing and taking guidance from your thinking. And hopefully the people listening will, in the right places will advance the science so we can all get our answers to these difficult questions.

[Joel Warsh]

Thank you.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

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[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

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[Dr. Joel Gator Warsh]

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[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Your health with a community that truly gets it, join us at Dr. Hyman.com hive. That's Dr. Hyman.com hive hive if you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Drmark Hyman for video versions of the subscriber podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.