← The Tim & April Show
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- [00:02]
Tim
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- [00:30]
April
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- [00:42]
Tim
One of your assistant's assistants switch you.
- [00:44]
April
To Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com.
- [00:48]
Tim
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- [01:30]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
You're listening to a new evangelical production, the Tim and April show, where we unravel faith, politics and culture.
- [01:48]
April
What's up, friends? Hello, April.
- [01:50]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Hello, Tim.
- [01:52]
Tim
It's good to see you today.
- [01:53]
April
How am I? I don't know. The world is crumbling. Every day there's new news that we have to respond to, so no, but honestly, overall, I'm doing good. We are recording this right after Mother's Day, so. Happy Mother's Day to you, April. Was it enjoyable?
- [02:07]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Yeah, it was enjoyable. I feel like it's weird when you also have a mom still alive. Yeah, you know, I, I, I, I have a hard time when I hear Mother's Day. I don't think of, oh, that day's for me. You know, it's for my mom.
- [02:21]
April
Right, right.
- [02:22]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
You know, it's, I don't know. That's weird.
- [02:24]
April
Yeah. No, that's fair. You're Also a mom, though, so.
- [02:27]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
I am also a mom. That's.
- [02:28]
Tim
That's true.
- [02:30]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Yeah. No, it was, it was good. That's fine.
- [02:32]
April
Good.
- [02:32]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
I've never been one to buy into those holidays anyway. No, I feel like it's like a way to, for capitalism to exploit motherhood, you know, when they don't. When, like, government doesn't support mothers the rest of the year.
- [02:46]
April
Well, no, no, April. April, Trump wants to give you $5,000 if you birth another child. So support it ain't gonna happen in this economy, sir. Are you kidding me?
- [02:59]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
That's nothing. That's like saying, like, hey, I'll give you a lollipop out of the quarter machine if you have a baby. Okay. No, thanks.
- [03:06]
April
So you're going to cover my deductible? Thank you, I guess. Well, friends, it's good to be back with you. Welcome to the Tim and April Show. We go live every Thursday at 12 o' clock Eastern and we drop a new episode every Monday. We've been going through, I guess we can call it a series. Man, that sounds so churchy. I grew up evangelical.
- [03:26]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
So this is our sermon series.
- [03:27]
April
Yeah, exactly. We're in the middle of a really intense sermon series at the movies and. Okay, I'll stop doing that. But no, we are doing a series on Christian nationalism and hopefully helping you all understand some of the nuance and some of the details that are going into so much of the ideology and the policy changes that we're seeing happening in culture. So if you, if you've been here for a little bit, thank you for tuning in. Make sure to subscribe to the channel like this video if you're new. Welcome, welcome. There's a nice little library of episodes. I recommend starting with a few episodes back that kind of start with Christian nationalism and then go more and more into the details. And this episode will be, I think, kind of special. I'm not going to say it's a detour necessarily, but it's not going to be a deep dive on a certain Christian nationalist figure. Today we're talking about health, in particular vaccines, autism and rfk. That's what we're talking about today, which actually is, I think, fitting because I think I told you this. April, our oldest, a couple weeks ago received a diagnosis for autism, which to us was no surprise, but it was really affirming that we knew something was up and it was. It was great to get. And. Yeah, so we're navigating that with our oldest. He's wonderful. He's five years old now. And I think seeing some of the rhetoric going on with our current. What's it called? Secretary of Health rfk. A little concerning, to say the least. So, yeah, so we brought in the big guns, friends. I. I brought in someone who I've known now through this world of the Internet and social media for a couple years. And April, is this your first time having Jessica on the show with.
- [05:03]
Tim
With you?
- [05:04]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
No, we brought her on, I think also when we were talking about rfk, it might have been back on the recap like before we started. Tim and April.
- [05:13]
April
Yes, you're right.
- [05:14]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Yeah, for one of those.
- [05:16]
April
Let's bring her in now. Yes. Welcome to the show. Hello, Jessica. Melody Rivera. Great to have you.
- [05:23]
Tim
Hey, Tim and April, thanks for having me. Of course.
- [05:25]
April
It's good to see you again, friend. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself briefly for the audience?
- [05:30]
Tim
Yeah, sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Jessica Melatti Rivera. I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist by training, but I'm also a science communicator. And what I mean by that is I help make science make sense. I translate complex topics in science, public health, infectious diseases, and make it plain so that people can make informed public health choices for themselves and their communities. I've been on the Internet for a few years, but I've been doing this work for about 20, and in the last five years have done most of my science communication on Instagram, where I have a pretty captive audience of folks who want to learn more about science.
- [06:02]
April
I first encountered you. It is helpful. It's super helpful. And that's actually how I first found you, was during COVID I was like, who is this person helping make sense of a lot of things? Because, you know, I'm not. I'm not a science communicator nor an expert. I was homeschooled for nine years, so I had to catch up a little bit in my life. And I found you. Yeah, I think during the pandemic, I was like, wow, this is really helpful stuff. And then as the new evangelicals grew, I think I had you on the podcast and we kept in touch, and here we are today. The first question I want to ask you, because you said that you've been doing this now for two decades, 20 years you've been in this, you know, in this world of health and science. Can you explain from your vantage point is what we're currently experiencing over the past few months with this administration, is it really as unprecedented as people are saying? Because in my mind, you know, I don't want to be a sky is falling kind of person if it's not warranted. And I know that people or news outlets want to make headlines that are clickbaity. So you click and read them and hopefully they get the ad revenue. So from your expertise, from your vantage point, do you think what we're currently experiencing really is something you've never seen before, or is this kind of par for the course with different administrations? There's always turmoil, you know, change of structure and leadership, etc.
- [07:19]
Tim
Okay, so there's a couple ways to answer this question. It's both new and not new in the sense that, you know, science denialism has been a, an issue in the world for quite a while, and it's been acutely so in the United States for a few decades. But you can trace a lot of the origin of these types of anti science science denialism, or however you want to call it, a few hundred years in the past. Right? It goes back to anti germ theory, really, or germ theory denial, or terrain theory, as some people would talk about it. And terrain theory is, you know, unsurprisingly, a deeply racist, deeply white supremacist kind of view of health. It's why tuberculosis is still a disease that kills people, because people just assumed that germs only infected people who were not elite people who were not the fittest to survive, and that if you just had good air and good nutrition and good genes, you'd be fine. Pathogens were not usually to blame for that. And you're seeing that kind of terrain theory creep up again in the wellness world, which has primarily driven the Maha movement and this administration to a very anti science view of health and wellness, kind of completely shifting focus from things like pathogens to nutrition as if they are interchangeable and they're really not. And a denial of germ theory is a deep problem because it shows a desire to kind of undermine years of scientific work to then support an industry that makes a lot more money. People don't want to admit that than the allopathic kind of traditional medicine world. You know, if you compare, there's like this chart going around the Internet talking about, you know, big pharma making like $1 trillion compared to the wellness supplement world making six. Like, we're not talking about equal players here. We're talking about a monster movement, monster industry compared to traditional medicine, specifically on vaccines. You can probably trace that back a few decades, but also probably a few couple hundred years too, because really, the earliest vaccine denialism was about the Smallpox vaccine. I think we talked about this the last time we were on together that the first anti Vax movement was anti smallpox because the way that it was derived was using cowpox. And there were propaganda ads and there were sermons being preached on the pulpit saying that if you took this vaccine derived from cowpox, you'll turn into a cow. And so, you know, it's not new in that sense, but the playbook is what's really kind of the evergreen thing here. And you see a lot of the common themes. It's like, oh, it's going to mess up your genes like the cowpox vaccine. It's going to turn you into another species, it's going to affect your fertility, it's going to, you know, turn you into a religious person. All those things are kind of plug and play in the anti vaccine playbook. And that goes back to the 90s.
- [10:23]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
I think it's important too that you just brought up how the church was involved even early on in the anti Vax, because even though this is not, we're not necessarily talking about Christian nationalism in this episode, there's been a lot of religious reasons for being anti vaxx, or at least that's been the excuse of it historically. And I remember, like, even during COVID seeing past, like, renowned pastors refer that the mark of the beast could be, you know, related to the COVID vaccine or there was a rabbi somewhere that said it could turn you gay. And like, there were these, all these conspiracies around the COVID vaccine that were somehow even surprising to me. And then I just realized how deep it goes. Like, like you had mentioned prior to us going live to the, like the HPV vaccine and like, all these reasons that people come up with for just to be anti science. And then this even goes back beyond vaccines. There's people who are flat Earthers now that use biblical justification for being flat Earthers. And even like Galileo was once considered a heretic because he believed the sun was the center of the universe. So there's a lot of ties with Christian nationalism, even if we don't overtly go into it. So I do want to talk about RFK right now. Not that we want to talk about it. I feel like we need to talk about him. One might be a strong word, but. But he's been kind of talking a lot about autism. That's been one of his main kind of points of entry when he talks about vaccines and the dangers of vaccines and saying that it links to autism. And so one reason we Wanted to have you on is to. Because Tim and I are not health experts, but we know RFK is also not a health expert, but he's out there acting as if he is. So I don't know. Should we play a couple clips of him talking about autism and just get Jessica's response?
- [12:16]
April
Yeah, we could. We could definitely do that. I'll queue up. I mean, we could play the most famous one that. That kind of kicked off. It went viral, I would say. I mean, I think that RFK has always had some of these sentiments, but the way he said it, especially as the acting. What's the official term? Is it Director of Secretary of Health? Is that his official term title right now?
- [12:35]
Tim
Health and Human Health and Human Services Secretary or Secretary of Human Health Services?
- [12:40]
April
Yeah. So I think that's important to recognize, too. Right. Is like, this guy is in charge of how the government. I mean. Well, Jessica, why don't you tell me what. That. What he's responsible for, so I don't. I don't say the wrong thing.
- [12:52]
Tim
Yeah. It's an extremely powerful position. It's the single highest position in public health in America. And he's in charge of a massive, massive budget. Under HHS are all the other agencies. Right. There's cdc, nih, et cetera, that all kind of follow HHS guidance. And he is the head of hhs. So his. His role is extremely impactful.
- [13:16]
April
Before we play this clip, when did you first encounter RFK and some of his. His rhetoric, Jessica, because again, you've been around here now for two decades in this space. Has he always kind of been someone that people like yourself have known about, just kind of saying crazy things in the corner? Or is he. Is he kind of new to the scene?
- [13:31]
Tim
He is not new. We have been following RFK Jr and his work, especially with the Children's Health Defense for many, many years. RFK Jr became a savior to the MAHA movement before they were branded as MAHA, he was their champion and for many, many years led a lot of folks to believe that vaccines were harmful, that vaccines needed to be kind of a la carte. You choose your own journey. Because whatever the schedule was was not to be trusted, and whatever the ingredients were needed to be scrutinized by folks who didn't understand how to scrutinize them. And so he has very, for a very long been, very long time, been the kind of champion of that movement. Especially here. Here, when I say here in California, he helped lead a big movement to have alternative vaccine schedules and vaccine exemptions for School admission. So he's. He's not new.
- [14:25]
April
Okay.
- [14:25]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
And for those who may not know, MAHA stands for Make America Healthy Again. Correct Y.
- [14:32]
April
They were all over Turning Point USA's America Fest. The branding was everywhere. So. Okay, let's play this clip, then we'll get your reaction.
- [14:40]
D
This is an individual tragedy as well. Autism destroys families. More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which are children. These are children who should not be. Who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they're two years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children, and we need to put an end to it.
- [15:34]
April
Okay. I'm sure you've seen that clip many times and you've heard it before, but I would love your kind of initial thoughts and when you first heard this, what went through your mind as an expert in the field?
- [15:45]
Tim
So many thoughts. So many thoughts. And I reacted online to this because I found it so wildly offensive, primarily because of the way in which he talks about these human beings. He talks about them as an expendable resource, as a unit that should be able to be taxed by the first thing he lists, saying, they won't pay taxes like a commodity. And it's just so horrifying and so dehumanizing. But that is at the core of a lot of these sentiments. People don't realize that it's not actually altruism that is motivating him to ask these questions. It is a recency bias and a cognitive dissonance that they have about the actual facts. When I say recency bias, I mean they are trying to make trends happen between events that they observe and trying to make a story about it. And this is a very common thing. And I will say, even as somebody who has studied a lot of psychology of science denialism, humans don't do well with events that happen, that they can't connect dots to make them connected. Right. They. They want to understand if A happened and B happen, did A cause B or did B cause A? That's a very natural thing that happens. But when you are doing this and you're just opining outside of the evidence and just doing it as like, we're just asking questions or we're just trying to be heroic and ask questions that nobody's willing to ask. You're essentially inoculating, you know, people with this idea that it's a mystery and I'm a hero intending to solve it. And it's deeply problematic because it ignores decades and decades of very earnest research because it's not like we've not wondered the question of autism. Now he also talks about autism in a way that is just factually and scientifically inaccurate. Autism is not a disease. There's no epidemic because it is not a disease. And what he fails to understand is that the prevalence and the incidence of autism is not increasing because there are more toxins, therefore causing more autism. We are better at seeing autism and better at diagnosing autism. And that creates a bias in people's mind, this recency and this kind of confirmation bias where they're saying, but there's so much more now. Why? Well, we just have the tools to see them. We didn't see them before in the same way that kids were dying previously of diabetes undiagnosed because we didn't know about the insulin problem until much, much later. And so he talks about this, you know, even an epidemic of, of diabetes happening, like, well, think about all the kids who were dead in the 70s and the 60s because they didn't know that they needed insulin. In that same way, you know, it just, it fails to see what is already there. And it's ironic because in this press briefing he was actually mis citing the paper he thought was actually telling him what it was. The paper that he was referring to on the CDC's website on the MMWR, which is the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. That report was essentially saying one of the reasons why we are better at why we have more autism is because we have better diagnostics and better tools. The other thing is it's mostly genetic. And yet again, he deviates from that and says it's got to be environmental toxins. It's got to be something we are doing to the kids and therefore we have to stop doing this to the kids.
- [19:15]
April
Yeah, it's kind of like when, I'm sure you've seen that graph of like when people started recognizing that some folks are just left handed, all of a sudden the number of people who are left handed went shoots, you know, sky high. No one's like, whoa, it's an epidemic. Left handed people. What's causing it? It's like, well, we just had better ways and tools of acknowledging that some people are born left handed and there's nothing wrong with them for being born left handed. It kind of seems like you're saying it's that kind of idea of like, as technology gets better, as we understand the human brain better, as psychology develops, et cetera, and, you know, and, and, and how we understand genes and DNA, et cetera, we can better diagnose and recognize things that are happening in ways that we couldn't before. Is that a fair way to summarize it?
- [19:56]
Tim
Absolutely. It's, I mean, it's the same thing in the, in the talking point of like, you know, people thinking that there's more LGBTQ+ folks now. And you're like, no, there are less closeted folks because it's less homophobic. And there are freedoms now at earlier ages for kids to recognize their sexuality and their sexual, their identity earlier, where most places and most communities would have made it much more difficult in the past to be open and out. And so there isn't this epidemic of either. It's just better freedoms, better tools, better visibility.
- [20:29]
April
That makes sense.
- [20:30]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Yeah.
- [20:37]
E
Hi, my name is Leonard Stevenson. The seeds of my deconstruction go back to 2016, but I started deconstructing in a big way from Christian fundamentalism in 2019. Since then, I've been continually searching for more information and resources to help me understand the Bible and Christianity better. I first discovered the New Evangelicals podcast and Facebook group about a year ago and found it to be a tremendously good resource for both information and for online community. Before encountering the New Evangelicals, my deconstruction journey had been primarily intellectual. It was through the New Evangelicals Facebook group that I began to slowly understand all the pain that so many were feeling coming from fundamentals. This gradually opened my eyes to the systemic problems with fundamentalist theology that had always been there, but that had been nearly invisible to me before. Like others in the community, I'm still devoted to seeking God in the Christian tradition, but doing so in better ways. I continue to find the New Evangelicals to be good resource for doing this. Thank you.
- [21:40]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
One thing that I've been seeing online more lately are Trump supporting parents of autistic children who have very extreme cases of autism, like they're non verbal or the types of cases where that kid probably would not be able to ever have a job. And those people are saying that they get offended by all of this. I don't know what the right word, like the way that they're saying it is that they get offended by people who are trying to normalize autism. And that they find a hero of RFK because they. They feel like they're like, their plights being heard. And I feel. I'm not saying that I agree with this, but, like, in their minds, they're talking about RFK as if he's the first person to come along who's actually hearing the, you know, the hard sides of autism and are finding hope that he's going to find, you know, quote, unquote, cure, which I know I don't think is, like, I don't think there's a cure to autism. It doesn't sound like it's a genetic thing, but, like, what would you say to those people? And then is there. Is there a better wording to describe the autism spectrum when you have the more extreme cases versus, you know, people who live every day with autism and you would never know.
- [22:58]
Tim
Yeah, yeah, and I'm glad you used the word, because that's exactly right. Autism Spectrum Disorder, asd, is exactly that. It is a spectrum of characteristics, and it varies from person to person. It is not a. The experience is not monolithic. The, the diagnosis and. And the journey through life is not monolithic. And, and nobody here, or at least on my side, or at least me personally, because I can only speak for myself, is saying that autism is a walk in the park for every single person. I am very aware that autism in severe cases can be deeply disruptive to families, deeply costly, especially if there aren't resources like IEPs and physical therapy and occupational therapy available to folks who might need that for the person who is autistic in their family. That's not to say, though, that it's okay to call it a disease. You can't just change that. It's not a disease. It is not caused by a pathogen that is infectious. It is not. You just can't use that terminology. Now, the experience should not be downplayed by people who have it really, really hard with this. With this diagnosis. But we're not going to go back to a eugenics type of narrative here and say that it's something we should extract from our communities, because plenty of people with autism live very fruitful lives. Grow up to pay taxes, to be married, to have successful careers, to play baseball, go on dates, you know, do all the things that he is somehow saying are the attributes of a valuable life in America. And I am not going to stand by the kind of rhetoric that says that these people should not exist or that these people somehow should be prevented from existing. I mean, think about that. That's deeply, deeply problematic. And instead of trying to prevent autism, which I'm not saying research can't be done to figure out how it happens more, you know, in most cases, because we think most of it is genetic, but there are probably some environmental factors that can happen in utero that can influence that. Why aren't we thinking about the resources to support people with autism diagnosis, to live fruitful lives, to support the families who need all those resources to make it less burdensome? That, to me, just shows a misunderstanding of, like, what we actually need and what those parents would benefit from.
- [25:21]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Well, and also, I feel like it's very in line with the whole MAGA group where you say all these idealistic things make America great. We're gonna make the economy better than ever. You saying all of these things that sound good on paper while also cutting medical studies and medical research and cutting funding for public schools and, you know, and doing all of the things that could actually help kids with autism. But.
- [25:47]
April
Right.
- [25:47]
Tim
Well, that's my question, too. So, like, make America healthy again. Make America great again. To when? When was it? When was it good?
- [25:54]
April
Right?
- [25:54]
Tim
Because if you think about what he's talking about, he often refers to, well, when I was growing up. Okay, so you're talking about, like, the 60s that you want to go back to the night. Let's talk about the data in the 1960s and the incidence of all kinds of preventable diseases that are no longer happening because of vaccines. Right.
- [26:12]
April
People used to smoke indoors next to infants or on planes all the time.
- [26:17]
Tim
It's truly bewildering. And not to mention the fact that, like, he has this unbelievable bias of, you know, I have never seen an autistic person in my generation walking around the mall and blah, blah, blah, blah, on their tippy toes and not able to use the toilet. And I, first of all, when have you been in a mall in the last couple years, Junior? I would pay to know that. And two, just because you're not seeing it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I mean, that's one of the most basic things I teach my toddlers.
- [26:47]
D
Right.
- [26:47]
Tim
Just because it's not in front of you doesn't mean it's disappeared. That's this, you know, a very, very bizarre way to say I. Because I haven't seen it. It's. It's not a thing. But you have enough people who have that sort of amnesia about all things in public health. And that's why we're seeing measles happen again.
- [27:06]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Right.
- [27:07]
Tim
People don't see the value of public Health, because public health, when it works, is invisible, right? The benefit of vaccination means that people aren't dying in mass, people aren't getting disabled in mass because of these things that exist in our society that help keep the incidence and prevalence of these really horrible things really low.
- [27:26]
April
Yeah, it is, it is really shocking to me. And in a lot of ways I have empathy for someone who, let's say, you know, has a child with autism. And it's on the more extreme side. And those things are all true, right? And then somehow they're convinced by Trump, by his base, by right wing media pundits, that if they vote for Trump, somehow he'll solve that problem, when in reality he's just, he's just making it worse. I mean, in my case, you know, we're really grateful that we have a good public school system where we're at, and our oldest, who, you know is autistic, he had an iep, he was an early intervention in public school. He had a speech therapist, he had an occupational therapist. And these were all free for us. They were provided to us by the big bad public education system because our taxes paid for it. And without that, he wouldn't be where he is today. Right? And so the answer isn't selling people a snake oil, you know, a kind of remedy where, oh, well, if we could just find the right research or the right pill, you just take it and boom, you're, you're fixed, as if there's something to fix in the first place. But when we are less individualistic and more collective in this sense of like, hey, maybe government and the private sector can work together to find better ways to support families. Maybe the government offers tax breaks or maybe income or maybe a home health aid, right? To help out families who need the extra help. There are ways to do this. But all of those kinds of options by the Trump base are seen as Marxists or socialists or a nanny state. And we can't trust these people. And so they're actually harming themselves, but they're also desperately in need for help. Right? And that's what's so tragic about this, is like, we want to help, we want a society that is more humane. But if you're voting for people that are literally kidnapping citizens and deporting them in the name of, you know, stopping crime or, or stopping funding the cancer research in the name of, you know, the big bad government or big bad pharmaceuticals, this is the result. And it's very frustrating to watch.
- [29:24]
Tim
I mean, let's not forget that they called Michelle Obama a communist for trying to do so many of the things that Maha is talking about when it comes to nutrition in kids schools in their lunches and what was available. And now you've got a bunch of Maha Maga folks trying to do the same thing. But somehow call it a conservative value sometimes somehow calling it a, you know, going back to natural things and it, you can't make it make sense because it's honestly, it's laughable.
- [29:57]
April
Does it really concern you? I mean. Well, let me ask you, let me ask the question this way. How much does it concern you that RFK is in the position of power that he's in, given the views that he has as a science educator?
- [30:09]
Tim
I am, I am so concerned, Tim, because I don't think he's dumb. That's, that's where it comes down to my concern. I, he is a very, very smart person and he is strategic. He came in hot with an agenda and he is plowing through that agenda. That's why all of us were screaming prior to the confirmation hearings, begging Bill Cassidy to do the right thing, to stand behind your Hippocratic oath to do no harm and to prevent a person with no credentials to be in this position. And people love to say like oh well, Xavier Becerra was not, I'm not here evangelizing how great he was either. I'm talking about the senior most public health position in the country should not be a person who has a history, a known history of science denialism and vaccine antagonism. There is no appropriateness here. And so when he came in with what he promised and here is in his own agenda with a running mate like Nicole Shanahan, who is a very known anti vaccine person, we expected this. So it is deeply problematic because he's, he's now in the role, he's doing everything he air quote promised Bill Cassidy he wouldn't do. Bill Cassidy said he met with him and said that he wouldn't go after the pediatric vaccine schedule. What are they doing right now? They want to re litigate how we do vaccine safety trials saying that it's a departure from the past. We need to do all new placebo controlled trials. What is that going to do? That's going to delay things like flu vaccines every year and Covid vaccines every year and potentially God forbid, delay other vaccines because they want to put them through new RCT is a randomized control trials with placebos. So he, he's, he's a strategist, Tim and April, like I can't emphasize this enough that he is coming in hot, checking off things off of this to do list that he's had since the beginning. He's had his eyes on this position for a while and he is loving the power that he has now.
- [31:59]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Do you think he really believes what he's saying?
- [32:03]
Tim
That's a great question. Because his kids are vaccinated. Right. People love to remind folks that, like his, he didn't withhold vaccines from his kids. Now some people would say, oh, but he's gone on the record and said he regrets it. He wouldn't have done it. Yeah, I don't believe that. I think sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. Right. I do think he is a fully indoctrinated Maha person that believes things like beef tallow is the way and seed oils are the devil and that vaccines have things like aborted fetal tissue and heavy metals in them that will cause toxicity and harm to people and. And that chemtrails are coming out outside of airplanes. Sometimes I do believe he believes those things, but then sometimes I also know that the guy has made millions off of this grift and it becomes a drug of its own where he is addicted to both the power and the funding that comes from this position. He has been sweetheart of this movement for a long time. Why would you deviate from the script? Keeps you rich. It keeps you involved.
- [33:11]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
And he's being loved by a lot of people right now who think he's doing something great for their children. When I. It does seem like he's just kind of downright lying about a lot of things. I mean, you want to bring up that clip? He also, he recently said that they would, I think, find the cause of autism by September.
- [33:34]
Tim
Let me tell you, as somebody who has spent many years doing research even in a bench lab, I have never once been able to say, you know what? I'm going to have the results to my research question to my hypothesis in my lab by October, and I am able to then just match that timeline because I said it, I willed it into reality. That's so not scientific. Science is a very grueling and tedious and slow process. And it's a lot of error and a lot of trial and it's a lot of repeating what you're doing. It's honestly terrifying that somebody could say that and that we are all just accepting it because research has existed. That took a very, very long time to get to research from a Danish study of 600,000 kids, another study that did a comparison of vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. But that involved, I think, 1.23 million kids. I've got a list of all of them, and I can share them with you. But so much comparative analysis has happened comparing autism incidence and prevalence in vaccinated populations and unvaccinated populations. It separated the data based on gender, based on geographic location, and in every single data set, it has never showed a causal link between vaccines and autism. But somehow you can say that in six months, and we're talking. This is years long data analysis, right? Somehow in six months, you're going to get the answer to the question that we've already asked and already answered. It's. It's just awful. And Nicole kind of gave us a little hint of this. Nicole Shanahan, his former running mate, put out a tweet shortly after he was confirmed, essentially offering to pay for papers that showed this causal link. Not pay for research, not pay for studies. She said she was going to offer from her foundation money to people who would write papers to show the neurodegenerative harm of vaccines in the event of an ASD diagnosis. And she wants that because she has come out and said that her kid is vaccine injured and has autism because of the vaccine. And so tell me that there's no conflict of interest.
- [35:47]
April
Why don't we play this clip of RFK saying that some of these studies are invalid? We'll get your response to it. I mean, Jessica, one of the things about you that's so amazing is you're so knowledgeable and all the things that you're saying. I want to pick apart everyone to go down every rabbit hole. I'm like, oh, wait, how do placebo studies work? Okay, that's the whole conversation. So we'll try and get to as many as we can. That makes sense for this episode. But let's start with this clip from RFK and get your. Get your thoughts.
- [36:13]
Tim
I'm sorry. There was a thought that vaccines might be related to this. Then they did several studies that. That said that there was no connection between vaccines and autism. So what. What are you seeing in this data that you're looking at? Or is it all going to be brand new?
- [36:28]
D
The studies that they did were very, very narrow. And There were about 17 studies. The institute of Medicine, which is part of the National Academy of sciences, says that 14 of those studies are invalid. And the biggest weakness in those studies is they never studied vaccinated versus unvaccinated group, which is the only way that you can really make this determination.
- [36:53]
April
Okay, so the claim is that several of the studies were too narrow, that, that, that, that, that they didn't test vaccinated versus unvaccinated to see if this was, there was a link with autism. What's your response to this?
- [37:04]
Tim
It's literally not true. Right. So I'm going to go through this list that I have that completely negates what he's saying. The Denmark study that I was talking about, that happened in 2019, it literally tracked MMR vaccinated and unvaccinated children. It tested 657,000 children to compare those two populations against each other, an unvaccinated and a vaccinated population. They showed that there was no increased autism risk among vaccinated children, even within those with autism risk factors and siblings with autism. Right. Another study that happened was a meta analysis that examined 10 studies that was involving 1.26 million children comparing vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Because again, we agree RFK, that's the two populations you need to be comparing. The conclusion, vaccinations are not associated with the development of autism or ASD. Another study in JAMA in 2015 focused on high risk children with siblings who had autism. They showed that those who got the vaccine did not have an increased risk. No association between the risk and high risk population. Another analysis In Cochrane in 2021, that one was a review of 138 studies involving 23 million children. It compared, guess what, vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations, concluding that there's no evidence supporting an association between MMR immunization and autism. So I don't know what he's talking about, but this is a common theme where he just says things and because he says them with emphasis and with, with enthusiasm, people just believe him. But he's lying. The data don't support what he's saying. And, and the, and the critiques of the data are not true because we've got the receipts. This is all publicly available. This is not hidden behind some paywall or some shroud of mystery. It's all here and he's just ignoring it.
- [38:52]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Can I ask, this is something that I've wondered. So obviously I'm not talking about all anti vax community because I do think the majority of people who are anti vax genuinely believe that the government is lying to them about what's in the vaccine and that there's some giant conspiracy. But for someone like RFK Jr who has access to all the studies that you just mentioned, it would not be hard for him to find, given his power and his network, what is the point? Like, what does he get out of doing this war against vaccines? What is the end goal? To what end is the point of all of this?
- [39:32]
Tim
Yeah, I wish I could answer that question because we're asking it too. I, I don't understand the what behind this. It feels so futile to do this. But at the end of the day, RFK Jr. Is in my opinion, addicted to power. And he has been powerful for a very long time. And now he is validated. He will forever be a former Health and Human Services secretary in the United States. And that is a, a badge that only a select few will ever, ever wear. Even if his stint is one term or, I mean, I'm hoping that short term, even he has forever been minted as that. And so the long game is the why. And if I have to speculate, the long game of we're not dealing with a movement, we're dealing with an industry. And this is a well funded, well resourced, very, very well connected and uniform group of folks who get really rich off of this grift. I have to believe that. I think RFK Jr. Is probably right now deferring a paycheck while he's getting a.gov salary, right? And I think he'll get right back to it in 2028.
- [40:49]
April
You know what's interesting? You said something at the very beginning of this episode that honestly blew my mind. And that is the, the difference in terms of economic size between the pharmaceutical industry and the wellness industry. Because even someone like me, and again, I'm no expert, but like, I just assume that, that that big pharma is big pharma and they're raking in all the dough in the health and wellness section. While certainly a, a big, a big industry. I didn't know it was so much larger though, because all you hear from these spaces is big pharma, right? Big pharma, they're holding back the cure. They want to keep you sick. They want to keep you sick because it makes them so much money. The COVID vaccine, all these big companies that's so rich, which you know, could be partially true, that, that, that can happen. But all the, but, but the me meanwhile, these industries that these people point you towards are the ones who are really profiting the most by a rate of almost five to one. And as far as I understand, they're very unregulated. They don't need to be FDA approved. They, they, they, they can make claims that, that they don't necessarily necessarily have to back up. I've even read things, and again, I'm not an expert, so correct me if I'm wrong, where like, even things like, like, like protein shake mix has been found to have all kinds of fillers that don't even match up with the ingredient list that they claim to have on the label. And so that industry is way less regulated, way more problematic, making way more money. But they want you to think that Big Pharma is the issue in America. That's wild to me.
- [42:14]
Tim
It's wild too, because it's like, which one is it? You want more regulations and stricter regulations on vaccines. There's not a thing in this country that is more regulated. Nothing. In fact, I would argue that the COVID 19 vaccine is probably the most scrutinized vaccine in vaccine history because of the stakes, because of the unprecedented scenario that we were in a global pandemic. And yet they're saying leave. Our unregulated detox cleanses our juice, our parasite detox, whatever it is, our supplements, our vitamins, our, you know, things that we're telling you to buy from our websites that we're luring you into through this public health misinformation and then sending you to a place where, like, all you have to do is spend hundreds of dollars on anything from continuous glucose monitoring that you don't need unless you're diabetic or this supplement that you don't need is just going to make your. Your pee expensive. There's no regulation there. There's no regulation there. But again, it's the mental gymnastics of saying, but this is better. This is. They appeal to a lot of fallacies. One of them is nature, right? So they're going to say, oh, but this is natural. This is organic, and natural is better. Well, I hate to break it to you, but nature at all times is trying to kill you, right? There's formaldehyde, there's cyanide, there's all kinds of environmental toxins that are trying to kill you. And they're natural. Water can kill you in toxic doses, right? Anything can kill you. But this, this, they've created a chemophobia, a fear of chemicals that allows them to say, oh, well, this ingredient list is really small. And because I can read everything, because I can pronounce everything, and it's got turmeric and ginger and all these things that I know are delicious and healthy for me, it's going to be fine. It's not going to cause me to have harm. Meanwhile, these ingredients That I can't read these in these lists that are super long, which are long because of our regulatory bodies require them to be long, are dangerous. I don't understand how that can be true. Right. You've got people who are saying, oh, these ingredients are banned in Europe. I again hate to break it to you. The European reporting requirements for ingredients is different. And it's. No, when you say ingredients that are banned there, the list that they have, that we've banned is just as long. Like it's. You don't tell people the full story because the full story makes them informed. And I don't think people want them to be informed. I think they want them to be consumers of what they're selling.
- [44:43]
April
I do think that first of, I think you're right, Jessica. And I also can understand how the average consumer can be very spooked by everything being so processed. Right. We live in a very processed society. Our food is overly processed. You know, we're all worried about what our kids are eating. I watched Food Inc. A long time ago. I was like, what? You know, stuff on our shelves is like rearranged corn syrup, like sugar everywhere. Okay, I understand that. And also I think that to be fair, a lot of big companies do hide sometimes, right? Like what they're putting into maybe body washes, things like this. Like, like, like my point is that is that is that there could be precedent, right, for why people get spooked by this, you know, chemical everything society that some people think that we're in. And it seems like people like RFK are swooping in to grift off of that ignorance. Right? Because like you said, I always heard from many different people. In fact, I have a confession. I used to be part of a multi level marketing network that I will just say its slogan was pure, safe and beneficial. It was one of these like help the modest types. Okay. And one of the big points you were told to talk about was how, you know, our government doesn't ban nearly as many ingredients or chemicals as Europe does. Right. So I was given that same kind of talking point as well. So I'm trying to kind of find like maybe not the balance, but I understand why, why, why folks can, can be primed to under to believe things that maybe aren't true even if there's a hint of truth in some of the claims made. Does that make sense?
- [46:13]
Tim
Yes. And I'm not here defending ultra processed foods. And this is again where I feel like nuance is non existent in these conversations. I get accused of being a Shill all the time. I've never worked for pharmaceutical companies. I've never been paid by pharmaceutical companies. I get accused for being a ultra processed food evangelist. What are you talking about? I don't like ultra processed foods either. But also all food is processed, right? In some way. And so this, this idea that it's all or nothing, we can't live in that reality. Right. And do we need healthier food? Sure. But you know what else we need? We need food security for people who don't have it. Because a lot of times the worst outcomes that are happening for not having nutrient dense diets are happening because of racism, because of structural injustice. That is keeping people in food deserts, that's keeping food cost too high. People are not having enough wage security or paid leave or parental leave. Those are all the determinants of people's health. Right. It is not just. If you can read this ingredient list because at the same time you're telling people to buy $50 olive oil instead of having the regular canola oil that is just fine for them to be cooking with. It just. It's so disingenuous. And again goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. It's racism. It's white privilege. It's the systems that continue to show that there are people who just don't value life equally. I mean, COVID 19 was not the great equalizer and a lot of people like to say that it was and it wasn't. Because look at the outcomes and you can take this data and extrapolate it on more things than just Covid. Outcomes in black and brown communities are always exponentially worse. Why? Because they live in communities that don't have systems that are intended for their well being. Everything from the quality of their air to the access that they have and the proximity they have to places like Urgent Cares and pediatrician offices and dental offices. All of those things are why you have outcomes that are worse in some communities. And then you're telling them to be ashamed of buying frozen vegetables or buying these foods for their kids because it's what they can afford to get real. It's. It doesn't actually care about the health of Americans. It cares about the wealth and the health status and the elite status of some.
- [48:40]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
What do you think about one another? He RFK also made headlines recently because he talked about wanting to create this registry for. Yeah, for autistic people. I think I sent you a clip about that, Tim. But I also saw too that the health agency that they contradicted him where they said they're not actually creating an autism registry. The quote is, we are not creating an autism registry. The Real World data platform will link existing data sets to support research into causes of autism and insights into improved treatment strategies. But RFK has said he was on Laurel Ingram too, where she asked about it and he was talking about how such things are important. What, what do you, what's your take on, on all of that? I mean, because to me that feels very dangerous and scary.
- [49:30]
Tim
It is very dangerous and scary. And I still don't understand how they're going to do this in an ethical and legal way. Because there was outcry when Jay Bhattachara said that was going to happen. And then they seemed like there was a backtrack. But then a few days ago it said it's going to be back on and it's, they're going to be working with cms, which is, you know, the center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to create this database using insurance claims and EMS or emr, the electronic medical records from wearable devices and health sensors like smartwatches. This, this is like the kind of conspiratorial stuff that we were all worried about years ago about like who's buying this data. Where is this data going to go? Look where it's going.
- [50:08]
April
Yep.
- [50:08]
Tim
And it's not going to be used for public good. It's going to be used to confirm biases for people who, who deny science. They're going to be cherry picking data in the same way that people go dumpster diving into vaers. VAERS is the vaccine adverse event reporting system where you, anybody can be reporting on there now. In fact, I would actually encourage you to go peruse there. You'll get a chuckle out of it because some people will go in and just be clowns and just be like, oh yeah, I took this vaccine and I turned into the Hulk. Or oh yeah, I took this vaccine and I grew like 2 inches. And then you've got people who are talking about real vaccine adverse events. Then you've got people who've talked about ones that are not true. A lot of people, a lot of people will go there and say, oh, look at all these people who died because it was reported on vaers. They're going to do the same thing. They're going to be taking this data, which I don't know if anybody's consented to, potentially not de identifying it, which is extremely problematic according to hipaa, and then using wearable data from devices like it and how is that going to be connected to ASD data? I don't understand that at all. Again, but this is the, the weird pathologizing that they're doing about autism and saying that it's a disease and, and I don't know how they're going to be doing this in an ethical way. I, I really can't understand how it can be done.
- [51:29]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
It's wild to me that a lot of the same people that have not said a word or are celebrating this idea of having this registry because they really just want to get rid of autism altogether. We're the same people though, that were screaming about big government when it came to the COVID vaccine, that, that the government was like giving us some kind of tracking device through the vaccine or it was about population control. And it's weird to hear them scream about they want less government, they don't want gover government overreach while literally championing both, not, not just RFK Jr. But even Trump and the huge amounts of government overreach that is happening in real time. But there's just this mental disconnect where they cannot connect the fact that they are actually celebrating the thing that they have been against.
- [52:20]
Tim
If we have a database like this, would, this would be a huge overreach because you can identify people using some of the metrics, some of the metadata that is in CMS you can find, especially if you're talking about demographics or communities that are small. This was a concern even with COVID 19. There were some jurisdictions that were reluctant to put race and ethnicity data on their dashboards because they were worried that if they did, because that population was really small in this jurisdiction, that you could potentially identify who that case was. And they didn't want that to happen. You can do the same thing with this. If you have age, sex, ethnicity, geographic location, and you're talking about an autism incidence that is already low, it's very easy to figure out who these people are and where they live. And that is not okay. And I cannot believe people who are so anti big government are just willfully saying we need this database. Who signed up for this?
- [53:13]
April
Yeah, you know, April and I always talk about how for Christian nationalists, it's not about big or small government, it's who gets to wield the power of the government. I mean, Ali Stucky, a right wing commentator, she reposted an article several years ago making this exact point and she, she reshared it in, in support of the article. And the whole point was who gets to w sword of the government, essentially. Right? And that's what this is. Because we all know, we all know on, on, on this interview, on this video, that if, if this was President Harris's administration and they were going to make a database to try and track any of this stuff. First off, of course, we would be outraged as well. But also it'd be all over Right wing talking points all day on Right Wing News, Fox News. Oan Charlie Kirk, oh, big government, they're coming for you. They want to make a database. First it's people with autism. Next it's you, the Christian, you know that that's how they would be spinning this. And it is, it's insufferable to watch that. It was never about small government or accountability. Like you said earlier, Michelle Obama tried the Healthy Kids initiative. I remember specifically Glenn Beck on the air mocking her incessantly about, about how this was big government overreach. I mean, Fox News had a guy on, he was like, watch the, yeah, yeah, the nanny say government. But now it's, oh, no, we have to get these foods, you know, out of our ecosystems. We have to make sure kids are eating healthy. We have to use the government to make sure that, you know, we do these things. It's very obvious what this is about, right? It's not really about the kids. It's not about trying to solve these problems. It's about maintaining cultural power and control where a certain group of people get the most benefits and everyone else gets to suffer underneath of them. Foreign before we kind of, you know, wrap up a little bit, I do want to hit a little more of the vaccine conversation. I do have this clip from RFK I want to play. It's a short one. Him talking about what's inside vaccines. I want to talk about that, about, about vaccine efficacy, about its safety and get your thoughts on that. So here's RFK talking about what's inside your vaccines.
- [55:22]
D
The MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and, and DNA particles. So they don't want to take it. So we ought to be able to take care of those populations when they get sick.
- [55:38]
April
So he's talking about with the measles outbreak, he's talking about people who might not want to take the vaccine because in his opinion or in his statement that this vaccine contains aborted fetal parts, essentially. Is that true? What's, what's, what's the conversation here?
- [55:55]
Tim
The conversation is, again, not new. This came up with a lot of vaccines, including COVID 19 vaccines. And it is something that has been debunked many, many times. But the truth behind, and this is, this is the problem with a lot of healthcare misinformation is that there's like a little nugget of truth, but it's been either completely misinterpreted or intentionally distorted to make a claim. Mind you, there are people who are objectors to the use of cell lines, human cell lines, because they believe that it is a, somehow a, an acceptance of how that cell line was, was collected. There are a few cell lines that were taken from elective abortions in the 1960s. And when I say the 1960s, what I'm trying to communicate here is that it is not a pipeline of abortions in which abortions are how we are able to do this. I'm talking about a couple abortions in the 1960s in which these cells were extracted. And because of those cells, they have been replicated so, so, so, so so many times as the baseline to essentially grow the virus that you are trying to create a vaccine against. You need human cells to do that. And that happened as the baseline of a lot of vaccines and a lot of over the counter drugs. Like I don't think anybody on this planet is probably could ever say that they are alive today and have never taken a drug that didn't have that kind of, in its origin story of, you know, early, early bench research, mind you, in the process of doing that, you are required to purify the vaccine and purify that process in which all of that is taken out. So it is factually not true that there's any fetal tissue or DNA in there. Now there are requirements in our regulatory body as per the FDA and even the WHO that say you cannot because it has to be purified out. But it's the conscientious objector to the origin. The origin, right? It's to the, they're objecting to the abortions of the 1960s and they're extrapolating that and saying it is condoning abortion and it is kind of allowing for a pipeline of abortions to allow this to happen. And it's just not true because of how these cells were replicated and cloned multiple, multiple times that we've not needed to have multiple sources of this. We have like three that are probably the primary source of all of them and they're used around the world. And this was such an issue that it actually came up in, in during COVID and was brought all the way up to the Pope. And the Pope even put out a comment saying despite this, it is still morally acceptable to use these things that have been created by modern science. It is not a problem. Even if the church stands against the abortion to begin with by using these products like vaccines, it's not an issue. It was brought to Muslim scholars. It was brought to other religious leaders and rabbis. And universally, they've said that there's not a, you know, what's actually really ironic here is that there's actually not a single religion, Mennonites included, that are prohibited from taking vaccines, not even Christian Scientists. Christian Scientists have been like, historically, you know, assumes that they can't do any type of medicine. It's not written anywhere that they are not allowed to take vaccines. It is personal choice. And again, if somebody wants to have that personal conviction, I'm not going to argue with them. But it is not true to say that there is any DNA or fetal fragments or fetal tissue or any of that. It's just, it's intentionally grotesque. He's trying to paint a really gross picture that would make any person be like, I don't want that in my body. If that was in there, I would want, nobody would want that. But it's intentionally grotesque and it's not true.
- [59:43]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
And it's so harmful because he is spreading this misinformation while there is an active measles outbreak happening, like right now in real time.
- [59:55]
Tim
And it's not the first time. April, this is, he has multiple times talked out of both sides of his mouth in the midst of a measles outbreak. The first after the first kid died. And mind you, this is the first time in 22 years that children have died of measles. The first time in 10 that anybody died and the first time in 20 years that two kids have died. After the first kid died, he wrote that famous Fox commentary in which he said the MMR vaccine is the only way to prevent vaccines. But then a paragraph later he said, I'll be thinking about nutrition and vitamin A and cod liver oil. He did the same thing while on Bill O'Reilly talking about, oh, the MMR vaccine does prevent measles, but the MMR vaccine also kills people every year. No, it doesn't. And then he did it again in another interview where he said the MMR vaccine prevents its effective, but we don't know what's in the vaccine. It's how he's able to be Teflon. Right? It's how, it's how he just skirt off the anti vax label and say, but I'm talking about the value of Vaccination. I'm still saying MMR is safe and effective, or I'm still saying it's effective, it does prevent measles. But I'm also going to still have the talking point to, to appease the people who have followed my grift for so long.
- [61:06]
April
Every, every time we talk about vaccines, either on the New Evangelicals podcast or on this show, there are always some people who will DM us or leave a comment, they'll say something like this, hey, Tim in April. Love your show. Look, I'm very progressive. I'm anti Trump. I don't, I don't like rfk. And also either maybe I was injured by a vaccine. My child was vaccine injured. Someone I know was. Was injured by a vaccine. And, and then they'll usually say like, you know, that they feel like this all or nothing take that we might be pushing of like, hey, vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. You should take them is also doing harm. And they'll say that, that maybe they don't feel as heard by us because of this and that, you know, they're really concerned because all they want is more testing and more safety and we should all want that. I'm sure you met those people as well, I'm sure, in your own dms, right? People who are like, hey, look, look, I'm not a maga. I'm not a MAGA person, okay? Like, it's all bad. But on this issue, I understand what they're saying. What is your response to someone like that, who maybe is. Is listening to the show is like, oh, I'm with you guys. But also, like, this did happen to me.
- [62:08]
Tim
I also appreciate that. And I feel like a lot of times I will. That's one of the first comments that I'll address whenever I get any sort of, like, heavy pushback. And that's happened a lot because I've been posting a lot about this topic recently is that you will never hear me deny the reality of adverse events. And I don't like to use the term vaccine injury because it's not a very honest term. Right? It's. We don't use that for other things. Right? We don't say like, you know, drug injured, right? We talk about adverse events because it's an adverse event and severe adverse events happen, but they're extremely rare. And so I will never say that vaccines are without risk. I will never say that because there is risk. There's actually risk in literally everything. There's risk in me sitting in my office right now, there's risk in me going outside and running an errand in my car, we are all making risk assessments in every single thing. In drinking my water, there's risk, right? Some risks though, are not as strong as the benefits. And when the benefits outweigh the risk, I'm going to say for most people, in most contexts, the vaccines are beneficial and will outweigh the risks because the risks are potentially death from this disease, etc. Etc. Etc. But that's not to say that adverse events don't happen and they can't. And they, and when they're severe, they're awful. But they are so statistically low in the spectrum of what could happen. If you don't like the risk, the outcomes, the bad outcomes, that what could you compare them to that? I'm not going to lie either about the benefits. So I can hold space for somebody who is saying, look, I had an adverse event, it was scary. My kid had an adverse event, it was scary. And I'm going to say, yeah, and I'm really sorry that that happened. That's still not going to tell me that. I'm going to tell most people that they shouldn't. I'm going to say this can happen. And in fact, it's in the vaccine inserts, it's in the vaccine information statements, the VIS form that you're given at every single vaccine appointment, regardless of what Maha folks will tell you. They say they're all, they're never given, they're always given, they're required by law to be given. It's all there. And CDC cares so much about this. I don't know if people folks remember, but I'm still getting text messages sometimes from CDC being like, hey, can you report on V safe? How has your experience been post vaccination? Are you experiencing any side effects? If you are, please report them here. This is data, this is observational data that we're getting post market data that we want to know about because we want to be able to say, look, does this drug or vaccine need a black label warning? Do we need to pull it? We were so sensitive to adverse events that we pulled the J and J vaccine because of the very rare incidence of blood clotting. It's a very reactive space because they want to be only providing safe and effective things. Now again, people will hear this and say, well, they didn't do that with the opioid crisis. And again, you will not find me defending pharma. I'm not here saying that they are completely motivated by altruism, but I also know, vaccines are not the money maker for them. I think Covid was an exception because of the circumstances. And I think that what the profits that were made by these companies was abhorrent, especially because of the patents and license restrictions. That's another topic for another episode. But all that to say it's the drugs that are the cash cow and the ethics behind that are really, really messed up. But I'm not, I'm never going to say to a person that that didn't happen and that they should be quiet.
- [65:24]
April
Yeah, that's really helpful. You know, I think it's important that as we navigate the next couple years that we find wisdom and we find ways of navigating complicated things. I mean, look, there's a reason why we brought you on and why we didn't want to tackle this topic on our own because it's just not our lane. Like, I am not someone who feels qualified, nor am I qualified to talk about this in any kind of authoritative way. Right. And I think one of the big takeaways, I'll say from this conversation is a reminder that, you know, I think a lot of us who grew up in, in like this evangelical now MAGA world, we're kind of given this binary of good and evil, right? We're on the good guy side and everyone out on the other side is bad and evil. They just want to do harm. They want to destroy America. They, they hate America. They hate Christianity and, and listen to these voices because they care about you. I think what, I think the reason why rfk, many others in that space are believed despite data and evidence is because they're trusted. They're seen as people on their team and pharmaceuticals or the government, especially when they're not in power or whatever, they're seen as always the bad guys. But the reality is like anything, it's a, it can be both. And there are, I'm sure there are a lot of good people in the pharmaceutical space who are, care about, you know, advancing human flourishing, right? They care about vaccines and making effective and safe treatments. And I'm sure there are people in those companies that have selfish motive who have done bad things. Right? But I think what's important to recognize is that unlike how RFK is talking about this, where, oh, there's no safety nets and we don't know what's going on, there have been decades and decades of research and, and studies with parameters and with checks and balances and with peer reviewed, you know, notes and critiques to get us to where we are today. And Is it perfect? No, of course not. But is it like we have no clue what we're doing and RFK is going to come along and save us? Not by a long shot. I think that's what's so frustrating, right, is watching people like RFK and Charlie Kirk and all of these, these, these influencers online in the, in this health and wellness space talk about things out of the other end of their body. Like somehow they're an authority, authority on these topics. And then they bring in maybe pseudo doctors or scientists to kind of back up their claims. And a lot of people who are just trying to survive believe it and end up getting hurt in the process. And that, for me, is incredibly difficult to watch.
- [67:40]
Tim
It is very difficult to watch. And I think that it's. It's so sad because I do believe that even folks who are fully indoctrinated in MAHA and even anti vaccine love their children and want to be making the best choices for their children and want to be making the best health choices for their children. I would never deny that. I would never say that. That mom doesn't love her kid as much as I love mine. We're just being fed different information. And I think that one set of information is really predatory and people into very, very harmful decision making. I have no gain except for what brought me into public health, which is harm reduction, health promotion, disease prevention. Those are. That's what I'm motivated by. Thriving communities, right? Getting back to the basics of people not dying from completely preventable diseases. I have no thing that I'm selling out of my office. Not a thing. And so what I want folks to know is, and that's why I speak with that hat honestly a lot. I speak often as a mom because I want folks to be like, look, I'm trying to lead by example. I'm not just here telling you how to live your life and what to do with your kids. I'm showing you why I'm making these choices for my own children. And I'm walking you through that because I think leading by example is the way to do it. And I also want to say we're in this together. I often talk during the COVID 19 pandemic about how hard I found it was to be at home with the kids, how hard it was on them, how hard it was on me, how hard it was on my parents. And I wanted to share that humanity with them. To say, like, look, it's not just all a bunch of us scientists out behind these doors, like, kind of laughing like Ooh, we got everybody at home now. Like no, we were all destabilized, disoriented, completely disrupted by this, by this pandemic. And so I want folks to hear from me as somebody who is just as loving and just as concerned about their kids health as they are, I just want them to have better information for this choice making.
- [69:43]
April
Yeah.
- [69:44]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Can I ask one final question?
- [69:46]
Tim
Yeah.
- [69:47]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
On one thing that I've heard too, I know a lot of people who have autism or some kind of are disabled in some way are really scared right now by the, not just the, the anti vax rhetoric, but just the, the way that RFK and a lot of people in the MAHA movement talk about disabled people almost like in this infantilized, inhumane way. And now when you have this autism registry that RFK has talked about, there's this real fear of kind of like an ethnic cleansing of sorts. And we try not to be conspiracy theorists. But do you think like these fears because it is scary like for you, do you think there's a valid fear there?
- [70:33]
Tim
Look, I think that at the end of the day what he was saying when he was talking about autism being a disease, that it was an epidemic, that it needed to be prevented, that is ableism, that is eugenics. And I don't think that you can argue otherwise because he is making it sound like it was some stain on America that we needed to get rid of. And what's ironic is that a lot of the anti choice people will often bring up Iceland and say Iceland has aborted their way out of the incidence of down syndrome. They don't have any people with down syndrome there because when that trisomy is identified in utero, they, most people are electively aborting, if not all people are. And so they've completely aborted their way out of that disease out of that chromosomal abnormality. And you're talking about somebody who's using very similar language. Right. And so it feels very conflicted to me where you're saying, which is it? Do you want to abort your way out of it if it is actually something that is identified in utero? Because that's what the data show. The data show that it is hereditary. The data show that these markers are showing up as the fetus is developing in utero. I don't understand what you actually want with that information because you're also telling me that you don't believe in abortion. And so I'm concerned that they're getting themselves into a situation that they themselves can't even answer when they have the answers that they want. And at the end of the day they're going to be showing their bias that some people are worthy and some people are not and that the people who are worthy are able bodied that are more cognitive, cognitively able or astute and capable and worthy of things like marriage and tax paying and jobs and homeownership and all the things that we think are the American dream.
- [72:22]
April
Wow. Well, Jessica, it's great having you on the show as always. I appreciate your work and coming on and kind of explaining so much of this in ways that make sense and that is backed by data and evidence. Where can folks find you if they want to keep following along and listen to more?
- [72:37]
Tim
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I do probably most of my work on Instagram. You can find me at my name, Jessica Melatti Rivera. I'm also a little delinquent, but I've started a substack called Making Science Makes Sense. I'm about three posts behind on that one, but that's where you'll find a little bit more longer form content that I'm hoping to do on a weekly basis.
- [72:56]
April
Awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much for being here. It means the world.
- [72:59]
Tim
Thanks for having me, guys.
- [73:00]
April
Absolutely. Anyway, friends, thank you so much for being here. That was truly a fantastic show. April, we'll have to get more people like Jessica on as we unpack some of these topics that are just way beyond our pay grade. So yeah.
- [73:12]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Oh my gosh. I want to. I want to see Jessica go head to head with RFK Jr.
- [73:16]
April
I agree. Friends, thank you for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe to the channel. We go live every Thursday at 12, so we'll see you all soon. See ya.
- [73:24]
Jessica Melatti Rivera
Bye.
- [73:31]
April
Sa.