Anti-Vax America: The Complete Series

New Mexico has reported over sixty, Oklahoma has reported over fifteen, and there are other states that have also reported measles cases that may or may not be linked to this outbreak. It's the first major measles outbreak in a decade, and it's already taken three lives, two unvaccinated children, the first of such deaths in more than twenty years, and one adult.

banned vaccine exemptions for school aged children. This action spurred response and gave a shot in the arm to a nascent coalition of vaccine skeptics and outright anti vaccination groups that had previously struggled to get political traction. By twenty twenty, such groups had gained meaningful amounts of influence in red

states like Texas and Oklahoma. Then came COVID nineteen, and suddenly a disparate set of groups big pharma skeptics, wellness influencers, health freedom libertarians, and conservative religious groups, to name a few, coalesced in a formidable political force under the banner of the Republican Party, whose politicization of the COVID nineteen pandemics served as a sort of ideological cement to unite them.

The logical conclusion of this development is represented in the avatar of RFK Junior, a long time vaccine misinformation peddler who now sits atop the highest federal government health bureaucracy, a perch from which he continues to spread debunked anti vaccination tropes like a proverbial fox.

parties over vaccination. The viral spread of anti vax ideology threatens to pitch us back one hundred years in time, when thousands of children and adults either died or disabled every year from diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox. Research into the side effects of vaccines has repeatedly shown that the risks associated with vaccination are far lower than the risks of an infection, particularly for vulnerable populations like young children,

the elderly, and people with suppressed immune systems. Some people genuinely cannot get vaccines, such as certain new board babies, and thus are at higher risk should an outbreak of a deadly disease occur. When ninety five percent of a population is vaccinated in an area, diseases can be entirely removed from circulation, and that's indeed what happened to smallpox

and for a time measles. But the downward trend in vaccination rates, supercharged by the marriage of right wing politics with anti vaccination beliefs of all stripes, means that our collective immunity is at risk. This week, I will be your host on It Could Happen Here, as I take you through a five episode mini series called Anti vax America, three interviews with public health officials, vaccine scientists, medical professionals,

and historians. I will explore the ongoing measles outbreak and how it serves as a microcosm for where we are, how we got here, and where we could go if anti vaxx beliefs continue to become mainstream in the United States. In the first episode, I will cover the origin of the measles outbreak in Texas, its deadly consequences, the varying responses from public health officials at different levels of government, and the consequence of misinformation being spread at the national

and local level. In the second episode, I will unearth the deep roots of anti vaccination belief in the United States, how it's changed over time, and why it's basically become synonymous with right wing politics in our current day. In the third episode, I will explore the overlap between anti vaxx beliefs and the belief in supernatural healing and miracles that is common among a particular movement of conservative Christianity

that has tied itself closely to President Donald Trump. In the fourth episode, I will untangle the twisted history of eugenics and how it's influenced public health and vaccination attitudes, as well as the historical echo of eugenics that can be found in RFK Junior Make America Healthy Again agenda. And in the last episode, I'll consider what could happen in the United States What could happen here if vaccination rates continue to plummet and vaccine skeptics like RFK Junior

continue to dictate public health policy. But before we get there, a quick ad break. Gaines County, the epicenter of the West Texas outbreak, is a largely rural place home to oil field workers, farmers, ranchers, and several Mennonite communities. Politically, it's very conservative. It sits on the Texas New Mexico border, about three hundred and sixty miles west of Dallas, where I live. The largest city in the region, Lubbock, is

two counties over. Lubbock is home to two hundred and sixty thousand plus people and has the largest hospitals in the area.

in Luppock. And she mentioned that there was two children. The physician thought it might be measles that they were going to send for test. So in public health, measles is so rare that even sending somebody for testing is required to be reported to public health. That physician thought it was measles. We kind of waited over the weekend, and then that Monday and Tuesday, I started hearing some rumors that there were multiple measles cases down on the

ground in Gaines County, which was interesting. People were calling and saying, you know, I heard this rumor have you

heard this? And I'm like nope. And then all of a sudden, those two cases or those two cases both tested positive and then when we went and started talking to the families and learning more, we realized that those rumors about measles circulating and Gaines County was true, and there were reports of you know, multiple individuals that had been sick and measles had probably been there or at

least a little bit of time. And then when we got the confirmed cases, that really just put everything into really you know, moving very quickly trying to really figure out what was going on for measles.

a year. But in my entire career, every time that happened, it had always been negative.

you guys know what you need next? You know, they don't have a communications person, so it was like my staff writing the press release for Gaines County to send out to make the notifications about the first measles cases. So it was just really what can we do to help them immediately and figure out what the next steps would be with that.

cases in Lubbock, that's seventy five miles away. Over the last three weeks, really seen the cases in the Lubbock increase. You know, we originally just had a handful. Now we're up to forty one or forty two, and that number will be updated again tomorrow. So just seeing more and more spread of measles, and the concern is that public health can't necessarily trace those back to a specific case. So people that have got out to the store or gone to a public place have now contracted measles.

in twenty one years here. So just think about how many physicians have been trained over the last twenty one years that never saw a measles case in their residency. So getting them to feel comfortable about what the signs and symptoms are and really making sure that we were notifying or that they were notifying Public Health and getting people tested and then doing that contact tracing, and then the other big ones vaccinations. You know, there's two ways

to prevent measles. One is the vaccination that's going to protect you, and then the other one is avoiding being exposed to measles. So really getting more and more people vaccinated with pop up clinics and then running a measles vaccination clinic here at our health department.

give my child a vaccine if that doesn't exist. Now that measles are circulating in the community, they're changing, you know, that thought process and are coming forward to get vaccinated. Some of the rural clinics have been a lot harder to get people to come in. I mean they've stood up clinics and only a handful of people have come in to that clinic that day. So real mixed response.

But I think is public health, it's important for us to be offering the MMR vaccine with as few barriers as possible.

here with measles. It's a challenge. I think people are paying attention to it because it's really impacting children, whereas we didn't see, you know, that same impact with COVID. It's frustrating because we know what the solution is. When COVID showed up. You know, nobody in public health and the medical community, you know, knew exactly what COVID is. With measles, we know what we're dealing with, and we also have a known solution, which is a vaccine. So

it is frustrating that people are choosing not to vaccinate. Still, the other challenges is during COVID, all of our other work for public health got put on hold. Here with measles, our health Department's still expected to do all of our other jobs and respond to a measles outbreak, which is really stressful on staff.

people that are unvaccinated. And that's what we're seeing here in Lubbott County is you know, measles taking hold and fine little pockets, and public health trying to go put out you know, little fires, trying to make sure that we've figured out who's been exposed and who's at risk.

the outbreak is impacting communities or particular communities. Has it resulted in disruptions in school for children, Has it, you know, caused any other sort of notable breakdowns or sort of pauses in day to day regular activity in Lubbic.

daycare all test positive with measles. So that's meant that you know, children have had to be sent home from daycare, which then impacts parents' ability to work and also impacts you know, you know, daycare along with you know, the number of students there children having to go home that have been exposed working a lot to get additional doses

of vaccine into a daycare. So it both impacts the public health system, our healthcare system, because kids need health, but then it also impacts parents because if your child's not in daycare, a parent can't go to work. Those have been the bigger disruptions and then disruptions in our healthcare system that we're now having to do a lot of screen Like you call to make an appointment for the doctor, and it's kind of like COVID, have you

been exposed to measles? Are you vaccinated? They're asking all those screening questions before people enter our healthcare facilities.

kind of support. And then I meet with the state regularly about what's going on in Lubbock, how Lubbock fits in the context of the rest of this outbreak, and you know, how we're going to work together to move forward. We always thought of measles as an airplane ride away, so we would see, you know, somebody travel to a foreign country, come back to the United States and maybe pass measles. To a couple of people in their household.

This outbreak is not that we're seeing transmission within a community, and it's making measles more of a car ride away. And that's concerning because we have individuals that are susceptible to measles, either through too young to be vaccinated, not vaccinated,

or some other immune compromised state. So just concerning that we're going to see more outbreaks spreading out into the United States, especially as we're moving into spring and summer, where people are traveling and driving through communities that we could just see kind of explode everywhere, which is my biggest fear.

to do the right thing. And luckily we have you know, twenty five hundred health departments across the US, and that is their goals, and hopefully people will continue to trust their local directors.

like Lubbock, that there's pretty low vaccination rates. Several counties are below the I guess what was it ninety five percent threshold that really helps bring diesls out of circulation. And so, you know, I'm kind of curious. You've been there for over a decade, do you have a sense sort of what the key drivers of vaccine hesitancy are and why so many West Texans choose not to get

their children vaccinated. You already mentioned, you know, the fact that it hasn't been seen for so long, so sort of out of sight, out of mind, be But are there are there other drivers that come to mind for you?

has some type you know of risk. But vaccines have been long studied, and especially when you're looking at the MMR vaccine, we've been using this for fifty years and that's why we don't have measles cases or hadn't had measles cases. But people have really bought into a lot of that information out there, and it's really hard to

combat that. I've gone and read the stories and I can see how people feel miss and pick up on this, but I just don't know from public health standpoint how we combat it right.

or whatever we call them. We're just seeing that more and more, and that hesitancy, you know, to come through and trust both government, trust the medical system, or all concerns, and that all contributes to these lower vaccination rates.

the proven science around vaccines. Much of this misinformation comes from places far from West Texas, like the anti vaccination group Children's Health Defense, which RFK Junior previously led. It is widely recognized as a major source of online vaccine misinformation, including the debunked allegation that vaccines cause autism. After the

death of a six year old child of measles. In March, Children's Health Defense released a video interview with the parents who said they still would not take the vaccine and wouldn't recommend it.

diagnosed with measles in West Texas. During their interview with Children's Health Defense, the Mennonite parents of the first child to die of measles actually said they were working with doctor Ben Edwards for their treatment. One video that went viral online showed Edwards visibly infected with measles at the time, treating patients with measles and inhabiting spaces where individuals who were not infected with measles were present, and this elicited

widespread condemnation from the medical community, quite unsurprisingly. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the sort of attitude of certain medical professionals in the area who have used their platforms and their credentials to sow doubt about the importance of the vaccine, making matters worse. RFKA Junior praised doctor Edwards as a quote extra extraordinary healer just one week after Edwards was seen in that video treating patients while himself infected with measles.

While anti vaccination beliefs have certainly gone viral in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, they are by no means new Practitioners like Edwards and advocacy groups like Children's Health Defense have been peddling their snake oil for decades. But the roots of anti vaccination belief around even deeper than that.

In the next episode of Anti vaxx America, I'll do a deep dive into the history of anti vaccination beliefs to understand the origins of them, how they've changed over time, and why they've become embraced in mainstream right wing politics, which is a change from the sort of bipartisan and even sometimes progressive nature of some anti vaccination skepticism. But until then, thanks for listening. I'm Stephen Monchelli for Cool

Zone Media and this is Anti vax America. Welcome back to it could happen here and to episode two of Anti vax America. I'm Stephen mon and Shelley. Last episode I explored the ongoing measles outbreak that started in West Texas and has since spread to several states across the nation.

A big part of that story is the underlying anti vax beliefs that are fueling a decline in vaccination rates across the country, and how the leader of our federal health bureaucracy, a arth K Junior, has helped seed, spread and embed those beliefs into policy. But behind all that is a deeper history of anti vaccination beliefs in America. And while it is undoubtedly the case that the COVID nineteen pandemic brought anti vaccination beliefs to the forefront of

American politics, opposition to vaccines is not new. It's about as old as the technology itself.

diseases of poverty. We've made a low cost COVID vaccine that reached technology, reached one hundred million people in India and Indonesia during the pandemic, and now vaccines for parasitic diseases that occur only among the world's poor. And that's a lifelong passion of mine.

Resistance to these laws began in eighteen fifty three with a few riots in towns across England, and this eventually formalized into the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League, which distributed literature likening vaccination to a monster and lobbied the British government

to change the laws. Their efforts actually proved successful, and a new law was passed in eighteen ninety eight to remove cumulative penalties and create an exemption for what they termed conscientious objectors, which is the first time that term had ever been used in British law. Parallel anti vaccination movement made similar strides in the United States, and one of the leaders of the British anti vaccination movement even came to the United States to help co found one

of the anti vaccination leagues in America. Several states also passed compulsory vaccination laws in the United States, spurring the American anti vaccination leagues to fight in the legal courts, in the court of public opinion, and the legislatures across the country, and they successfully repealed compulsory vaccination laws in California, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Utah,

West Virginia, and Wisconsin. But opposing compulsory vaccinations was only one part of the strategy of these early anti vaccine organizations. Another key plank, which may sound familiar to those of you who follow the news, was the promotion of alternative remedies such as homeopathy, which were quite popular at the time among certain sects of medicine. Now, these movements didn't neatly fall across political lines in.

promoting vaccination to healthy people. These are all tropes that live on to this day and that someone like doctor Hotez knows.

medicines were being promoted and embraced in the West. Most of the anti vaxxors of that variety today have largely been drawn towards more right winging values and have been subsumed by the sort of politics that defines the larger

Make America Healthy Again agenda. The way doctor Hotess sees it, there's a direct line between these old anti vaccine movements and the modern day Maha movement, which combines anti vaccine beliefs with alternative medicine and libertarian mindsets around health freedom into a sort of single bundle of sticks.

sometimes called health freedom medical freedom. Hey, you can't tell us what to do about our kids, and now we see that today, right, you know, And this is coming partly out of the health and wellness and influencer industry, and that's why you get you know, ivermectin, which does absolutely nothing for covid or hydroxychloroquin nothing for covid or when you heard mister Kennedy talk about vitamin A or as a preventative, or budesini as steroid which does nothing,

or clarithromycin and antibiotic does nothing.

and autism, they needed a new thing. And and this is when you saw here in Texas, this rise in parents requesting vaccine exemptions around the banner of health freedom, medical freedom. And here's where it became really tough to talk about because it got adopted by the Republican Tea

Party in Texas. And so anti vaccine groups started getting pack money, political action committee money to lobby the or educate the state legislature about health freedom, medical freedom, and even provide money for candidates to run on anti vaccine platforms.

employers for their workers. By nineteen sixty three, twenty states require children to be vaccinated before going to school, and by nineteen eighty, every state in the nation had a similar law on the books, And as the decades went on,

the incident's rates of several diseases dramatically plummeted. By nineteen eighty, smallpox had been eradicated, but along the way there were things done in the name of medical science that would undercut the great strides made during that period of time, things that ultimately showed the seeds for some of today's vaccination skepticism.

we're very concerned about this issue. Marion Simms at some point discovers that if you use silver thread, silver sutures when you operate on women who have had these vaginal terrors, that the infection doesn't happen. Now, he wanted to prove this, He wanted to perfect his technique, so he did it on enslaved women.

atrocity and it was called the Tuskegee experiment. What actually happened is that African American men who got sexually transmitted diseases would go to this medical clinic that had been established, and the doctors with this grant wanted to see what the trajectory of syphilis would be if it was untreated. So these were people who already had STDs and they were given a placebo. They were given basically a sugar

pill rather than penicillin or any other ameliative care. And the doctor's mission in their minds was that's find out if syphilis progresses in the same way with African American men as it does with white men. And so they wanted to see because they knew that syphilis will untreated eventually attack the central nervous systimuli, seizures, blindness, any number

of terrible side effects. So they would go to the doctor, they would get the placebo, and syphilis will go into remission, and so the patient wouldn't have the benefit of medical knowledge about how syphilis progresses, would think the pill made it better, and then they would ask them to return and the doctor would come and then he'd record the damage that was happening to the patient's body as the

disease progressed. And this went on until the nineteen sixties, and they published results with no professional repercussions.

we've got it to another ad break. Black Americans aren't the only population group that organizations like Children's Health Defense have targeted in recent years. For decades, the anti vax movement has sought to recruit the parents of autistic children to their cause by way of the argument that vaccines

directly cause autism. Incidentally, one such parent of an autistic child is doctor Hotes, whose twenty thirteen book Vaccines did Not Cause Rachel's Autism directly targets RFK Junior's long held belief about the link between autism and vaccines.

disabilities and now she's an adult. And essentially there's two major threads in the book other than telling the story about Rachel and our family, and one is the overwhelming evidence showing there's no link between vaccines and autism, and even within that, there's a lot of subcategories because what happens is anti vaccine groups keeps switching up the concern about a specific vaccine, and when it gets debunked and

they just switch it up to something else. I call it biomedical whack a mole or moving the goalposts of The original assertion came out of the late nineteen nineties of the false claims that it was the MMR vaccine the measles, mumps rubella vaccine, and that was actually published in a biomedical journal called The Lancet in the UK.

The paper was retracted eventually because it was known to be false, and also the scientific community responded with large epidemiologic studies showing that kids who got the MMR vaccine were no more likely to acquire autism than kids who didn't, and similarly, kids on the autism spectrum were no more likely to have gotten MMR the kids not on the

autism spectrum. That should have been the end of it, but then our friend Robert F. Kennedy Junior came on the scene in two thousand and five and wrote an article in Rolling Stone magazine claiming, okay, if it's not MMR, it must be the thimerosol preservative that's in vaccine, and that was also retracted and thoroughly debunked through large epidemiologic studies, even nonhuman primate studies. And it switched up again to spacing vaccines too close together. We have to green our

vaccine ecosystem. And you saw celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, your husband, Jim Carrey walking around in green T shirts. It was all phony boloni and that was debunked, and then it was alum in vaccine. So it became this kind of exhaust exercise and each time we were able to successfully refute it.

America a Marxist. The idea that vaccines cause autism is a part of a larger claim that vaccines can cause injuries among those who receive them, and that our understanding of these injuries is far less than what the science shows. This notion gained traction in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, when controversy erupted regarding the DPT vaccine for diphtheria, pertussis,

and tetanus. A sensational film called DPT Vaccine Roulette drew an erroneous link between the vaccine and illnesses of some children who received it. Two parents of children who received the vaccine formed the National Vaccine Information Center, which exists to this day and was a major source of COVID

nineteen misinformation. The controversy around the DPT vaccine led to lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, leading many of those manufacturers to stop producing the vaccine by the end of nineteen eighty five. Because of this, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in nineteen eighty six, establishing a no fault system to alleviate pressure on vaccine manufacturers and provide an avenue for victims of a vaccine injury to be compensated. As

doctor Hotez describes it, a lot of this is overblown. Yes, there are individuals who can have reactions two vaccines that can cause issues, but the studies around DPT and the notions that it caused these illnesses that these parents were concerned about, it actually showed that there was no connection. Nevertheless, it is a reality that some people may face some

sort of complications, and we can't dismiss that. But when we stack it up against the side effects of disease and one of those being death, well it's a pretty easy comparison to make.

side to side. One box is what happens if ten thousand kids get save, for instance, the MMR vaccine versus is the other box. Ten thousand kids getting measles and you know, the ones getting the MMR vaccine. You see these tiny little pin pricks of very rare side effects like allergic reaction or febril seizures, one in three thousand,

that sort of thing. So maybe there's a tiny little pin prick representing you know, three year thirty kids as opposed to measles, which you know twenty percent of kids hospitalized and measles deaths, and these are large red and black boxes. I think those kinds of things are helpful because I think one of the problems is the anti vaccine guys. What they'll do is they will exaggerate the frequency of rare, rare side effects and in simultaneously downplay

the severity of the illness. And we even heard that before the two deaths. You know, you heard all this rhetorical measles is just like a benign illness. And now we've got two deaths right here in Texas of nice school age kids that never had to lose their lives because the parents were taken in by the disinformation machine.

with broader libertarian and some conservative ideologies. The idea that the government should not mandate personal medical choices further gain traction with the election of President Barack Obama in two thousand and eight, adding fuel to the anti vaccination fire, and the anti vact movement began to dovetail with the booming alternative health and wellness industry that excused Western medicine in favor of natural medicines and holistic approaches, and often

this includes some sort of spiritual element. This convergence is crystallized in modern figures like Vo Hare, also known as the food Babe, who is a conservative wellness influencer. She's aligned herself with RFK Junior's Maha agenda and promotes the standard goop like fair but with a right wing edge. The American food industry, for example, or Big Pharma for example, are poisoning us, but also you shouldn't get the flu vaccine.

Despite the best efforts of scientists like doctor Hotes to debunk he claims that motivate the modern anti vaccination movement, it has only gathered steam in the last few decades. In recent years, a number of states have passed new laws allowing for personal exemptions from vaccines, and because of doctor Hotes's public involvement, he's had a front row seat as anti vaccination beliefs have become part and parcel of Republican politics.

You started to get these steep rise in parents requesting non medical exemptions that their kids could get out of being vaccinated for school. And it was particularly strong in the same places where people were refusing COVID vaccine years later, especially in conservative rural areas. Of West Texas, East Texas. The vaccination rates continue to be strong in our cities of the Texas Triangle, Dallas, where you are, in Houston

where I am, and San Antonio and Austin. But you know, in the more conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas, that's where you saw big declines in kids getting vaccines. And once you go below a certain threshold, roughly below ninety percent, and bam that you start to see break through childhood infections. And usually the first one you see is measles. You can ultimately get all of them, but measles is the first one you see because it's so highly transmissible.

embrace of anti vaccine politics. This was a particular viral outbreak of measles in California, one that ultimately spurred policy changes that reverberated across the country.

That solved the measles problem, but then it produced this health freedom backlash in states like Texas, also Oklahoma, and very much a red state phenomenon read being Republican, blue being a Democrat, and that's where you saw these this Rizon vaccine exemptions. You started getting anti vaccine groups forming.

They were getting pack money, political Action committee money, and I saw that as really dangerous because now rather than being sort of small, underfunded groups, they now had the backing of a major political party and everything that goes along with it in terms of influence and PAC money, and this gives them a lot of bandwidth and a lot of political clout, and it's so self defeating, but there you are. And so now we're at the point in Texas where we have over one hundred thousand non

medical exemption requests of various sorts. So that's a lot of kids. And this doesn't say anything about the homeschooled kids in Texas. I'm told that we may have as many as seven hundred thousand homeschooled kids, but you might want to document that. And I don't think we have any idea of the percentage of those kids that are not getting their vaccines because they're homeschools.

The prevalence of homeschooling among left leaning, crunchy alternative types has also contributed to the shift towards right wing politics, as the homeschool movement has deliberately tried to recruit those families and pushed them towards right wing politics. The complete partisan politicization of vaccinations has made communicating the risks of low vaccination rates far more difficult for people like doctor Hotez.

the health of your kids. But it's a tough needle to thread, and as a result, I, you know, will often, even though I try to bend over backwards explaining I don't care about your politics, for their convenient purposes, I'm treated as a political figure and portrayed as a cartoon villain or you know, a scientist and white coat plotting nefarious things. You know, they have this crazy concept out

there they call plandemic. Now that it's not a pandemic, it's a plandemic that somehow I've been involved with, or that I'm profiting from vaccines and secretly working for or pharma companies even though it's the opposite right and make load cost vaccines that actually showed me could bypass the big pharma companies and and some of it gets outright absurd.

I mean, there's this whole thread on the Internet that says that I'm not even a real person, that I'm I'm actually being played by Jack Black, and that he's paid for by the CIA, and and it's got these amazing, you know, forensic analysis of close ups of my teeth with Jack Black's teeth and all this profiles and things. I mean, the funny thing is the said thing is the crazier the conspiracy the faster it seems to travel.

French Canadian community due to nationalistic conflicts. If you were not in a coma during the COVID nineteen pandemic, these ideas should sound familiar, and in nineteen twenty, at the tail end of the deadly Spanish flu pandemic that killed somewhere between seventeen and fifty million people worldwide. The Commissioner of Public Health in Seattle, doctor Hiram Reid, was dealing

with the nasty outbreak of smallpox the year prior. The Washington state legislature, facing pressure from anti vaccination activists, allowed for students to avoid vaccination requirements if their parents objected,

effectively ending mandatory vaccination. Hiram, frustrated with the ongoing resistance to his attempts to vaccinate the public in Seattle, vented in a nineteen twenty annual health report quote, the number of unvaccinated persons in this city is large, the city being a hotbed for anti vaccination, Christian Science and various anti medical cults, and it is difficult to enforce vaccination really,

wrote for those who are unfamiliar. Christian Science is an offshoot of Christianity that was formed in eighteen seventy nine in New England and by nineteen thirty six was the fastest growing religion in the nation. Christian scientists typically avoid medical care and rely instead on their belief in the

healing power of prayer. On the next episode of Anti Vaxxs America, I'll explore the intersection of conservative Christianity, its belief in spiritual healing miracles, anti vaccination beliefs, and vaccination hesitancy. We'll talk about how a very influential strain of conservative Christianity that is highly political and has tied itself with Donald Trump is also influencing people's attitudes about vaccination. Until then, I'm Stephen Mamicelli and this is Anti vaxx America for COOLS Media.

in West Texas. For Peter, the death of his child was basically God's will. He did an interview in which he discrib that if it's God's plan, you know, that is basically what he has to accept, but he also continued to oppose vaccines, and his wife said that they

wouldn't recommend them to other parents. Now, Mennonites have been singled out in a lot of the coverage about this Measle's outbreak, given that the outbreak has centered in their community in West Texas, and there's been a lot of pushback with regard to the idea that Mennonites broadly speaking are opposed to vaccinations. There's nothing explicit in their theology

or worldview that opposes vaccinations on principle. But these are individuals who hold strongly held beliefs regarding their religion, regarding their theology, and what they believe is right for them to do for their families and for their communities. It's not merely a few sectarian Mennonite communities in the United States that are hesitant to vaccinate their children in this way. It's actually a much bigger problem among what we could call,

you know, some people might say mainstream evangelical Christians. Others might specifically refer to it as non denominational charismatic Christianity. But no matter which way you cut it, there is a clear and observable relationship between conservative Christianity and anti

vaccination beliefs. Now, as a journalist in Texas, I've done my fair share of reporting on conservative Christianity, particularly the highly politicized strains of it that are popular in the Lone Star State and in North Texas where I live. I didn't grow up in one of these communities. I'm an outsider. So to help me unpack how conservative Christianity became so intertwined with this sort of anti vaccination movement, I brought in a special guest with whom you may be familiar.

a relatively medium sized city, I guess in Saskatchewan. Definitely an interesting mix of like Canadian customs matched with the whole Texas vibe, but definitely the type of like Bible belts, post fire and brimstone Christianity that came out of Texas was like the dominant form of Christianity, which was like preached from the pulpit and like influenced all other life voices beyond just your Sunday morning service or your Saturday night service, or your Wednesday night service or your Tuesday

morning service, etc.

like prosperity, gospel. Others hu maybe towards more Southern Baptist esque style of preaching and theology, and some really lean into maybe more like Pentecostal style belief in miracles and supernatural power of God to directly intervene in people's lives

and things like that. So, you know, how would you characterize your church and the community that you were part of, Like, you know, was it was it common for people to talk about spiritual healing or sort of those miraculous interventions totally?

They would like bring in preachers from the states who would go go on these big like tours where you're you know, both trying to like recruit people and then also like offer these like miraculous healing services during these like you know, five hour long sermons. So yeah, certainly a Pentecostal element was pretty dominant combined with like you know, focus on the family type stuff, some Southern Baptist stuff.

dad worked for the church. And yeah, so no, very very Kenneth Copeland vibes.

talking about. Then it also illustrates the vast reach of someone like Kenneth Copeland for it to be all the way up in Saskatchewan.

first campaign in twenty sixteen. Three years before that, in twenty thirteen, the church led by his daughter Terry, which is called Eagle Mountain International, was at the center of

a measles outbreak. At the time, the church and its leaders were criticized for preaching against vaccinations, and even as they set up vaccine clinics at the back of the church when things got really bad, they continued to speak out against vaccinations in this way and implying to their flock that they need to place their faith not in medicine,

but in prayer and in God. And when the COVID nineteen pandemic was first kicking off in America, Kenneth Copeland spoke of the disease as a sort of tool of Satan, but he actually called for vaccinations.

annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas. In August of twenty twenty, a television news report showed that no one at the conference was wearing a mask, and in September twenty twenty one, Copeland begged his viewers to help him fund the purchase of a new private jet that would allow him to avoid travel restrictions that were still in place around COVID nineteen and requiring vaccinations. He compared those vaccination requirements for

flying to the satanic quote mark of the beasts. By the time that I attended Copeland's annual convention in twenty twenty three, he had embraced the likes of Mike Lindell, the election conspiracist who has promoted junkiers for COVID while sewing doubts without vaccines. So you know, I didn't grow up in one of these communities. I had been to

some megachurch sermons and services in the past. I knew people who went to places like Gateway Church, which is a huge one here in North Texas, very politically involved in there. Founding pastor was just implicated in you know, child.

God more than the science. It's that like even electing to do that demonstrates this deeper, like more core belief that you do not have the faith in God that is adequate in order to like take care of you, your body and whatever He may have planned for you. Perhaps that includes getting measles and you'll you'll work through that maybe or not, you know, as we're seeing now in Texas a lot. But yeah, like it's it's not

just about like medical skepticism, science skepticism. It is this deeper aspect that that more relates to someone's like individual relationship and faith in God.

have to also send your kids to the school. You are raised in this and like you have no choice in the matter, and that that just becomes like what is real? Like that just is reality? Like it's it's not it's not that there's like an alternative to that. It's like like a nine year old kid, like that just is what the world is. So like what you're

reading those textbooks that just is truth. It's very isolated environments, like you're you you aren't really fully aware that there's like an alternative to that, and if there is, it's like what's the word? We didn't even use words like like like atheist. I think secular was was maybe the word.

That was maybe the word that they use. Like you can't you can't like listen to like secular music or like be aware of like you know, likee like secular culture because that's satanic or it can lead you away from God or it's a distraction from God. You know that that sort of thing. But no, like yeah, it's this is built in and like, yeah, you know, very basic creationist stuff like answers in genesis being like the highest basting of science, which is like a fake science

website touted by creationists and evangelicals. But this also extends to medical science as well. The same way you believe they are to six thousand years old, you maybe also don't believe in like cancer treatment, right.

you still have to like mentally detalked. You have to realize that you were kind of in a cult, and then you have to like deep yourself, and that like takes years. So like I didn't like fully disconnect from this style of Christianity and like, you know, Christianity in general intil like a few years after. So by the time I was like a you know, middle to older teenager is when I started to like sort this type of stuff out, and uh eventually got caught up on

those vaccines. Luckily I never got chicken pox, although people did throw chicken pox parties when I was a kid, which I can recall the concept of, especially if like a baby or a toddler or even like you know, like a like like like a ten year old has chicken pox. No one else's of course is vaccinated for

this in this whole community. So if someone has chicken pox, you will not just isolate them, You will actually encourage other people to like hang out and play together with the express intent of getting sick yourself as a form of like natural immunization. And I think I was offered to go to one of these chicken pox parties quote unquote, I think as like a ten year old or something declined.

I mean, was just because were you in a private school, you were kind of outside of any sort of regime of accountability.

tuberculosis when you immigrate to a new country. But even even for those, there is like religious exemptions that if you have enough money you can pay.

procedures because of your faith in God. But on the other hand, kind of around like twenty ten, and like you know, a few years before and after, we started to really see kind of that aspect along with like the hippie mom Facebook group aspect kind of collide, right, and like this healthy you know, like organic natural like hippie mom thing used to be more associated with like you know, people on the left, especially in the nineties, and you started to see these two kind of poles

converge around twenty ten. Because this is like what happened with like my two parents at the time, where like my dad was more in the theological side than my mom was kind of more on like the the kind of like crunchy side of things, and these things like combined this new breed of evangelical Christianity that you see is like very popular right now with like the tradwife angle combined with like you know, crunchy like naturalistic organic stuff that used to be left wing and is now

like very very right wing. You had a very very like conservative like family values coded which which did not really used to be the case as much, and that's kind of like strengthened the anti vacs hold on this like section of the population.

is this is two thousand and eight. The Antichrist has just been elected president of the United States, possibly literally and even though they're up in Canada, this is still like concern number one on the like the transnational like Christian Christian world. So no, like extremely openly conservative to the point where it is it is being preached alongside the words of Jesus and Paul.

They answer to no higher power other than God, you know, so their interpretation of God is basically the rule or or it is the authority.

lot of back pain gets faith yield. Of course, there might be the odd person who's able to claim that, like you know, a faith healing cured their cancer, who then probably died three years later of cancer. But you also get faith held for a bunch of like smaller ailments, right and so. And someone will walk up to you, put hands on you. You might start convulsing like this like psychosomatic thing. Sometimes you'll pass out. A lot of

people pass out. It becomes like this performative thing, like subconsciously. I remember there was there was people they were stationed where people would pass out with with little I think they're called modesty blankets, so that when they pass out, maybe your shirt will come up a little bit and someone will see a little bit of tummy you can walk over and put the blanket over as you're recovering from your from your healing session. All this is happening

during like essentially like an acoustic concert. So it creates a very peculiar vibe of people kind of poorly play musical instruments as other people like walk through like an auditorium and just start like passing out, and you just get this pile of bodies, and as as a ten year old, do you think this is totally normal and fine? And then you later realize why you're into so much weird shit. Oops.

feet away from like rust. If you see rust on anything, like, you have to be on high alert because even though God should protect you, he might not if you get

a rusty nail, like poking your finger. So rust is still something I'm like really afraid of despite being vaccinated now, just because this was ingrained so young, which just kind of shows the kind of like a paradoxical thought press behind some of this sort of thing where it's okay if your kids aren't vaccinated, but you also have to teach them to like never get close to anything rusty because that could send them to the hospital.

of you know, converged with this evangelical side. But at that time it's interesting going from you know, one of these worlds to another. And in some ways the medical reality did not change that drastically.

braids or beads in her hair like that. That's that is definitely less less likely to have that person beholding like anti vax beliefs now than it was twenty ten years ago.

vax dude. And you know, another thing about growing up in these communities is like beyond vaccine hesitancy or anti vax beliefs, is also this like anti psychological beliefs, like like like therapy or like or like psychoanalysis or like mental diagnosis are framed the same way, like you shouldn't need real therapy. You can talk to like a Christian counselor and you can pray and that should be all you really need. You don't need to go to like

a therapist or a psychologist. Like that delayed my understanding of like being autistic by like maybe fifteen years, which you know didn't serve younger gear very well in trying to unpack like social interactions as a as like a teenager or even like a preteen, because like I, you know, wasn't even aware of like the concept of like what autism actually is until so much later.

Culture Preparatory, a private Christian school in Fort Worth. After the Musles outbreak became national news or a port in the Dallas Morning News highlighted that the school had the lowest vaccination rate out of any private school in the state of Texas. And unlike the Copelands, who at the very least have facilitated vaccinations among their flock even as they've given contradictory messages from the pulpit, the leader of Mercy Culture was unapologetically thrilled at the news.

your life. I know the tire world was shut down with insanity and people were fired from their job for forced vaccinations, and freedom is something that we take seriously, religious freedom, freedom of our health. And so shout out to MC Prep for being the least vaccinated.

people face when diseases like measles spread unchecked. And when infused with this hardened belief that God can miraculously heal them and also that God makes no mistakes, it can lead some people like Peter, the Mennonite father of the first child to die from measles in over two decades, to believe that getting measles can actually make their communities stronger. This is basically survival of the fittest style quasi eugenic

thinking with the veneer of religion. In the next episode, we will explore why anti VAXX beliefs and the policies now being pushed by the leading vaccine denial or RFGA Junior are effectively eugenic in nature and now the twisted history of eugenics and racist public health abuses in the United States has unfortunately buttressed the viral anti vax ideology we are dealing with today. Thanks for listening to episode three of Anti vax America for It Could Happen Here.

Until next time, I'm Steven Monicelli.

and where we could be going. Today's episode we'll focus on the twisted history of eugenics as it relates to vaccinations and how the current MAHA agenda, as pushed by RFK Junior, is a sort of echo of eugenic beliefs of the past. Vaccination hesitancy historically has been framed by opponents to vaccines as a matter of medical freedom, about the ability to decide what one wants to do with

their own body. It's an argument that we've discussed can appeal to crunchy granola types and religious zellets.

anti vaccination beliefs to untangle this mess. As we previously discussed in episode two, vaccinations took off in the eighteen hundred, shortly after the creation of the first smallpox vaccine in seventeen ninety six, and so did anti vaccination rhetoric and movements. In parallel, there were a lot of scientific developments going on. The eighteen hundreds were a heady time in Western science.

There was Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which was presented in Darwin's eighteen fifty nine book on the Origin

of Species. Five years later, sociologist Herbert Spencer mixed concepts from Thomas Malthus, the economists who proposed that population growth withul outpaced food production, with Darwin's theory to coin the term survival of the fittest and apply it to industrial capitalism, with the end conclusion that basically those who were on top were deserving of all of the privileges that they have, and that those at the bottom were also deserving of

their position in society. In eighteen eighty three, Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, coined to term eugenics in his book Inquiries into Human Fertility. In its developments, the book proposed to give, to quote, more suitable races a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable. To understand a bit more about Galton's thinking, I spoke with doctor Michael Phillips, who we heard from in a previous episode.

they're going to have more children. And he believed that because they are less gifted with intelligence, you know, because you know, he said history is driven by genius. And he actually did the first major study on intelligence where he traced the family histories of what he said were the gifted men. And he claimed all of this was

biological inheritance, you know, everything was biology. And not only that, but all traits, all traits, were biological work ethic, honesty, fidelity to your partner, alcoholism, every single trait a human might have he tied to biology. And he said that the people with the worst traits that it's called dysgenic people who were dishenic, people had the worst traits, were now producing large families. And because they were less intelligent,

they gave into their sexual urges more often. They didn't plan families based on their economic circumstances. They were impulsive, while we have eight children, let's have sex, and you know if we have a ninth child, well we have a ninth child. And that meant that those families were growing exponentially. But the fit who plan their families more carefully, and you know, the partners are busier. Job creators is

innovators and science and education. The women want to have a life outside of the home.

How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an dangered species.

of Theodore Roosevelt's, and Walthorpe Stoddard. Stoddard in particular warned that this was fueling radical politics, that the unfit essentially were demanding the riches created by the geniuses in the world, and they were expropriating the wealth they created, and they were they were just milking the fit for every advance, and that as that became more difficult, that would breed revolution and sodder. In particular thought there was a link

to communist revolution. As advancements in sanitation and modern medicine continued in parallel with the spread of leftist thought, eugenicists were consumed with nightmares of a Malthusian crisis and were increasingly worried about their position in society. Something in their minds had to be done to stem the growing tide of unfit masses. Because natural selection in the minds of the genesis had basically been suspended the force sterilizations were

the substitute for that. Eugenicists were in despair about vaccines, but there was an organized campaign to ban them on eugenics reasons, because I think they knew politically that would be unpopular, because there were enough people who realize they could see the benefits as vaccinations became more common.

were inherently opposed to vaccinations. The Nazi regime, which exterminated millions of Jews and other people deemed undesirable, also embraced widespread vaccination against diseases like typhus, even if they actually rolled back mandatory vaccination laws that had been put in place prior to the rise of the Nazis. Nevertheless, the relationship between eugenic thinking and anti vax beliefs goes deep,

and it reveals it helpful heuristic for thinking about eugenics. So, on the one hand, there's a sort of active or hard eugenics, in which medical authorities or the state forcefully sterilize and exterminate people who are deemed unfit. And then on the other hand, there's a sort of passive or soft eugenics, in which potentially preventable deaths are written off as a product of a process in which the fittest

survive and go on to improve the overall gene pool. Now, before we go any further, it is important to note that eugenics has been morally and scientifically discredited so thoroughly that it shouldn't even be necessary to mention it. But unfortunately, eugenicis thinking is in resurgence. President Donald Trump himself, I said there are a lot of bad genes in our country right now, and that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.

nineteenth early twenties century. Galveston, a medical doctor who was inspecting people coming into the Port of Galveston who were Jewish immigrants, and he was rejecting them because he saying they're carrying infectious eye diseases, tuberculosis, all of that, and Jewish civil Rights scripts had to intervene to stop that.

was quote ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi, Jews and Chinese people. Now, his make America Healthy Again agenda is absolutely dripping with soft eugenic thinking. And to unravel all that, I spoke with doctor David Gorski, a doctor who regularly writes in a blog called Science Based Medicine.

with some you know, semi reasonable stuff like you know, yeah, sure, diet, exercise, it's good for you. I think Measles really epitomizes what they called the quote unquote soft eugenics, which was basically, instead of you know, like actively trying to kill children or people that you know whose genes you don't want

passed on, you're basically letting nature do it. And you hear this a lot when they talk about For example, one of the most common arguments you'll hear from anti vaxers about measles is that, you know, if someone gets really sick from measles or dies of measles, they must have had something wrong with them, They must not have been healthy. Like that, Measles is harmless if you are healthy. And of course, you know, there's a whole lot of

appeal to virtu you as far as health goes. In other words, there's this this belief system that's kind of embedded in Maha, and it's been around for ages and ages in the alternative medicine crowd, that you know, you have basically total control over your health. In other words, if you do the right things, eat the right diet, you know, take the right supplements, you know, do the

exercise appropriately, you know, you can keep yourself healthy. And it's even as good as vaccines or better to prevent vaccine preventable diseases, infectious diseases. Right.

who are in the pro natalist movement. And then there's this overlap with people who are kind of dabbling in race science or trying to resuscitate old ideas that are basically you know, eugenic in nature with regard to some people, you know, being smarter by genetic basis.

to control COVID are like destroying the economy. So what we should really do, supposedly based on science but not really, as I'll get into, is to let the virus spread among quote unquote young and healthy, you know, those who are not at high risk, so not the elderly, not those with pre existing conditions that make them high risk

for severe disease complications and death from COVID. Just let it spread to reach what they call, you know, quote unquote natural herd immunity heard immunity for those not familiar with it, is when a pathogen is so prevalent in the population and that so many people have developed what they call natural immunity, but the more appropriate term is

post infection immunity. You know, immunity after having been infected to the point where you know a sufficient proportion of the population is immune and the virus doesn't spread much like if you have a sufficient proportion of the population vaccinated the virus, you know, you might get sporadic cases in small outbreaks, but it just can't spread further. If you don't know much about infectious diseases, including COVID, it sounds like not unreasonable given that there wasn't a vaccine

back then. The other part of it is what they

call quote unquote focus protection. So the idea is supposedly that you could protect those at high risk while letting the virus circulate, which are pretty incompatible because how are you going to you know, how are you going to keep these high risk people from coming into contact with people who could have the virus, unless you like quarantine them all or something like that, which again would be impractical because you know, it's what twenty percent of the

population at least. The other problem with this idea is for there to be natural herd immunity. I hate that term, but I'll use it just because it's what they use. A couple of conditions are necessary. First, post infection immunity has to be life long or at least very long lasting. The second is, in other words, that the virus can't be mutating to avoid immunity, which we all know now and even new then that coronaviruses are very good at doing.

So that it was expected that you know, new variants would come up and they could evade even post infection

immunity in terms of like influenza. That's why the flu vaccine has to be updated, you know, every year, because the strains mutate, and the rise of the delta wave, the omicron wave, et cetera kind of showed that people getting infected again and again that you know, post infection immunity for COVID was not long lasting, so basically maybe Barrington Declaration was, you know, giving up more than anything

else in order to let people make money again. And it never would have worked because even back then, we had every reason to expect that post infection immunity after COVID infection would not be long lasting, and that the virus would mutate and you know, come up with new

strains that could bypass pre existing immunity from previous infections. However, this idea was very influential, and in fact, the Great Barrington Declaration was kind of late in the game because the idea of just letting the virus spread to achieve natural herd immunity was being pushed as early as March and April in twenty twenty. And one of the writers are the scientists who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration is now our director of the NIH, doctor J. Bodichario. The

other was doctor Senatragupta in England. And then there was of course Martin Cauldorf, who I now hear is involved in the autism you know vaccine study that RFK Junior is supposedly organizing. So basically, you know, these these the idea behind the Great Barrington Declaration, far from being censored and canceled, et cetera, actually found purchase at the highest levels of government in the US and the UK, the

Boris Johnson government and Donald Trump administration both. You know, listen to these scientists and I mean Great Barrington Declaration writers you know, actually got to meet with Trump at one point, I believe in July, and it was unfortunately very influential and discouraged stronger public health measures. I did call this idea eugenicist at the time, although maybe you

can argue if it's soft eugenics or social Darwinist. I mean, maybe more social Darwinists, given that, oh well, it's kind of like screw the old people who will die of this, you know, seem to be part of the attitude behind it. You know, we throw up this focused protection kind of as an afterthought, you know, where the main idea is just to you know, let the virus spread and most

people will be okay. And this is the same sort of idea that we that I heard again and again years and years before with the measles, you know, and in fact, if you go back to twenty fifteen, which was you know, after the Disneyland measles outbreak, and during the holidays of twenty fourteen that you know took part.

In the early part of twenty fifteen, you would see a lot of anti vaccine activists going on and on about how if you just keep yourself healthy, measles is not a danger, that natural immunity to measles is far greater than vaccine induced immunity. What they always fail to mention is that the price of getting post infection immunity can be besides just being sick. Could it involve the risk of you know, complications, neurologic damage, or even.

tsunami and likened it to an epidemic. He claimed that the increasing statistical prevalence of autism is due to environmental risk factors and is something that is sort of induced by human behavior, as opposed to that statistical prevalence being a result of improvements and diagnostic tools that more accurately

measure a phenomenon. And he also portrayed autistic people as a sort of burden on society in you know, or people who will never be able to do things like fall in love or get a job, despite the fact that there are countless examples of people with autism or under the umbrella of what we call autism, doing exactly those things. And there's this undercurrent of rhetoric that you

sort of describe it as an echo of something. I hadn't heard this term before, but I'm familiar with the idea of it, or rather the way in which it was deployed, the idea of quote unquote useless eaters. And so, can you just walk us through sort of what your reaction to RFK Junior's speech was in you know, how you made that connection.

This is straight up useless eaters rhetoric and useless eaters was basically a term that the Nazis used, you know, for people with you know, severe you know, neurologic conditions or diseases that made it such that they would require lifetime care and would never contribute to society. So that was the echo. I think that echo was pretty clear

describing them that way. Now, the other interesting thing about the eugenics angle, there's a very strong denial of what we know thus far about autism, which is that it's like roughly eighty percent genetic. You know, you can argue over the exact figures, but it's predominantly genetic. I think

there's little doubt about that. So parents who have an autistic child, they often blame themselves or they think, way, if it's genetic, that means it must be me and or my partner, you know, which if you're thinking in terms of the whole health is virtue thing, you know, if there is something about you that is not changeable, mainly your genetics, and that you know, no amount of exercise or you know, living right is going to change. It's easy to fall into denial of that and seek

to blame something else. So there's that, And you know, one of the things I'm kind of afraid of is that if it becomes undeniable, you know, if they keep doing all this stuff and failing to find, you know, any real evidence that an external exposure is causing autism, and they're forced to reckon with autism being primarily but not exclusively, but primarily genetic, where does that lead you

in terms of what do you do about autism? And my mind has gone in some fairly dark directions thinking about that, right.

was stolen from them? In other words, is if this autistic child is not their child, rather their idealized version of what their child should be is their real child

or their quote unquote normal child. This is some really ancient stuff in that, you know, I don't know if you there's the whole idea of the changeling myth, in which you know, the idea being, you know, children with mental illness, you know, have been taken over or their changelings, they are no longer what they were before it's almost

as if they are no long longer human. I mean, the dehumanization that you hear from the anti vaccine movement about autism has long been horrific, and it's just that up until now, most people have not heard that rhetoric, and now they're hearing it from a high government official, and it is becoming federal health policy.

When he said, basically, it is your patriotic duty to take care of yourself, you know it, to be healthy. And then he goes, oh, and it feels better as well. But he said, it's your patriotic duty to take care of yourself and be healthy because then you you know, draw less. I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly what he said, but because you pull less from the pool, you know, which interestingly echoes exactly almost exactly, other than

the patriotic duty part what RFK Junior said. When Bernie Sanders asked if healthcare was a human right, as you recall, RFKA Junior did his best not to answer, you know, he dodged and weaved around the question, and then he brought up the example of a someone who smokes cigarettes for decades and then develops lung cancer and is now

drawing from the pool. He was like, very you know, emphasized drawing from the pool as if that person does not deserve healthcare basically because an addiction gave you cancer. Because you know, what he neglects to mention is just how addictives, you know, tobacco and nicotine are. And as a former addict himself, you know, I found that striking. But coming back to the whole patriotic duty thing, you know,

the whole idea is, again, health is virtue. You control your health, and if you don't do the right things and become ill, that you're somehow less worthy of healthcare.

a while. And the idea that, you know, there's this national body that we all have a duty to sort of be healthy cells of is something that there's a long history of that sort of thinking and policy.

on between autism and vaccines. But I think those who know their history could easily imagine such a tool being used for other more nefarious purposes, because similar policies were passed in Germany in the nineteen thirties to sort of, you know, identify these people and categorize them and then

eventually do what they did with them. So, you know, for all those sorts of reasons, and you know also the fact that we're living at a time in which American citizens and legal residents are being sent to a foreign prison colony as is certainly you know something that I think people are picking up on and maybe making connections with.

they have to concede reality. But here's the idea. So it's true that some of the vaccines have not been tested against the strict saline placebo control that they want, but there are a number of reasons for that. The primary reason is ethics. So let's go back. So, if you have a new vaccine that is for a disease that has never had an approved vaccine before, yes, it's tested against a placebo control. This has been the case

for a very long time. However, if you have a new vaccine for a disease that already has a vaccine that's been approved as safe and effective and is the standard of care, it is completely unethical to do a randomized study where you know one third to half of the participants will be randomized to a group that does not get the standard of care treatment as in, you know,

the vaccine or the standard of care preventative. In that case, the only ethical way to test the new vaccine against the disease for which there's already a vaccine is to test it against an existing vaccine and then make sure

that it is at least not inferior or preferably better. So, if you trace back the lineage of all the vaccines on the childhood vaccine schedule, if you go back to the first vaccine against the disease that was approved, it was tested against you know, placebo when it was a new vaccine against a disease that didn't have a vaccine.

soft eugenics. While it was not a forced sterilization program, the intent of the experiment was to test the eugenic hypothesis that racial groups were differently susceptible to infectious diseases, and that's because they basically believed that black people had different nervous systems than white people and that they were not the same. And they also allowed black men who could have otherwise been treated for syphilis, which there were treatments for it at the time, to instead suffer and

die after being given placebo treatments without their knowledge. Children's health defense while under the leadership of RFK, Junior invoked the Tuskegee syphilist experiment in a recent anti vaccine film that they specifically promoted to Black Americans to encourage vaccine skepticism, and now the former leader of that organization is proposing an approach to vaccines that is eerily reminiscent of the

sordid Tuskegee experiment. In the post COVID world, vaccination rates are on the decline, and anti vaccination beliefs are spreading in tandem with eugenesis thinking. The rhetoric of the leaders of our top health bureaucracies recall chilling episodes in recent history,

ones that we would rather not repeat. But because we have history as a guide, it is not impossible for us to imagine what could happen if things continue to trend in the direction we are already headed, so on the next episode of Anti vax America, I'll explore some of the worst case scenarios that could unfold if the proponents of the Maha agenda get their way. I'm Stephen Monchelli.

Cool Zone Media. Over the past episodes, we've explored the origins of the current measles outbreak, the historical roots of the anti vaccination movement, the overlap between vaccine hesitancy and conservative Christianity that upholds a strong belief in spiritual healing, and the eugenic implications of contemporary anti vaxx ideology and the MAHA movement. In this episode, we'll explore the future.

Could the United States see a massive return of viral outbreaks, How would a nationwide collapse and vaccination rates impact our public health? And what are we to make of the rise of alt medicine and whether that could continue to spread if people like RFK Junior elevate these hucksters into national figures. These are not just academic questions. If vaccination rates continue to decline, we could see the return of diseases like polio, which had been eradicated in the United

States for decades. In recent years, there have been cases of polio found in waste water and one confirmed case of a man with polio in an unvaccinated.

of communicable, deadly diseases. Without widespread vaccination, we face the very real possibility of devastating public health crises, and the resurgence of diseases like measles in polio and smallpox and more would put our most vulnerable populations at risk, especially the elderly, the immunal compromised, and others who cannot be vaccinated.

We don't have a crystal ball that will allow us to see into the future, but as the anti vaccination movement grows, it is clear that the risk of large scale outbreaks is increasing, and if we don't correct the course soon, we could see a public health disaster unlike any we've seen in recent history, perhaps even worse than COVID, which took more than one point one million American lives.

In this episode, we will explore what could happen here in the United States if the anti vaccination movement continues to get their way. As I conducted interviews with medical doctors and public health experts featured in this series, I asked them all the same question, where do you see this going? Each had their own answer, and all of

their answers pointed in the same direction. Here's Catherine Wells, the head of public health in Lubbock, the largest county in West Texas where the measles out break began.

were refusing COVID vaccine. Years later, especially in conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas, the vaccination rates continue to be strong in our cities of the Texas Triangle, Dallas where you are, in Houston where I am, and San Antonio and Austin. But you know, in the more conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas, that's where

you saw big declines in kids getting vaccines. And once you go below a certain threshold, roughly below ninety percent, and bam, that you start to see break through childhood infections, and usually the first one you see is measles. You can ultimately get all of them, but measles is the first one you see because it's so highly transmissible. It's the most transmissible virus we know about. So measles is kind of the whatever you want to call it, the

early biomarker of a problem with your vaccination system. And unfortunately, it's just tearing through West Texas in the Panhandle, and now it's in four states, all more or less in the Great Plains area of the country. Right it's the Panhandle in West Texas at the southern end of the Plain's been into joining areas in Mexico, then going up into Oklahoma and now Kansas. And in my worry is that this is a very large probably much larger than is actually being reported. I mean, I don't see this

thing wearing down anytime soon. And I'm worried about really prolonged measles epidemic to the point where we could even lose measles elimination status in the US if it goes on a full year. Between twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, we've had a fourfold rise in measles epidemics outbreaks. We've had a sixfold rise in whooping cough for Tessa's cases.

We've had polio up here in the wastewater in New York State, already trending in the wrong direction even before this current administration because of all the anti vaccine sentiment rhetoric out there. Now you throw on top of it efforts to actively dismantle our vaccine ecosystem, and I can only imagine what's going to happen. I really worry about the widespread return of all these childhood illnesses, just like

we're seeing now with measles. I mean, we're looking at the potential of sustained transmission going on for months and months to the point where we could lose our measles elimination status, and then it goes on from there. Because measles is the most highly transmissible I worry about the same with whooping cough ptossis. I worry about even potentially polio returning, and not only in the US, because you know, as we both know, the US is very good at

exporting its culture. We export our music, we export our movies. I worry about exporting this stuff, and I worry about the impact on Latin American countries, on low and middle income countries in Asia and Africa, and in Europe as well. So a complete unraveling of our vaccine ecosystem and global goals and that really gives me a lot of pause for concern.

in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties. Polio killed nearly half a million people world wide annually and paralyzed hundreds of thousands, but both of those diseases were effectively eradicated decades ago. The last person living in an iron lung, the medical device that keeps people who were paralyzed from polio alive, died in March of twenty twenty four, and even measles which is considered a relatively less dangerous illness,

was routinely deadly before vaccination was widespread. There was a time when thousands of Americans died from the disease every year. All that was due to the creation of vaccine policy and infrastructure over time. But now RFK Junior and the MAHA movement threatened to tear all that down and send us back in time. Here's doctor David Gorsky.

is out of office. If they define it as just new vaccines for diseases that don't have vaccines, it might be less of an issue either way, though, contrary to what they claim they want to do, which is, you know, increase public confidence in vaccines, it will almost certainly have the opposite effect. I recently wrote I think, yeah, it was.

Last week's post, I wrote about a study that modeled what would happen with certain percentage declines in vaccine uptake for four different vaccines, including the measles vaccine, of course, and it estimated, you know, some pretty catastrophic numbers if, for instance, vaccine uptake declined even ten percent or fifty percent over the next twenty five years, you know, millions of cases, thousands of deaths, you know, in other words, going back to basically the way it was before the

measles vaccine was licensed in the early nineteen sixties. You know, you sure you can complain that, you know, the model was somewhat simplistic, but if anything, I think it was probably conservative because they used a lot of conservative assumptions.

We could well be heading for that sort of future, although it takes a while for things to change, even with this sort of radical action that RFK Junior is taking, and likely we would not see the worst effects really take off until after Trump's out of office, assuming he leaves office in twenty twenty nine, so you know, it'll be left to his successors to deal with the mess. And it's always easier to destroy than it is to

rebuild out. Obviously. Now the interesting counterpoint to you know, maha saying, oh, we must increase the gold standard science applied to vaccines and make the standards for approval and licensure you know, much more stringent. The exact opposite is what they're talking about. For things like stem cell therapies, you know, they're on the vast majority of which are unproven and often very expensive. A lot of other you know,

wellness treatments and that sort of a thing. So we could be seeing a lot less novel pharmaceuticals and vaccines being approved because the anti pharma you know, suspicion will be such that the bar for approval will be higher,

arguably too high. I realized that in the past I once argued that that maybe our bar for approving some drugs was too low, but that was more based on the various accelerated approval programs that had come into being in the years before that, where I thought that perhaps the follow allow up after the initial accelerated approval was not adequate. At the same time, it could become more and more like the Wild West when it comes to

everything else. We could very well have the equivalent of you know, the traveling snake oil salesmen going across you know, the planes in their cart, you know, selling There are various lineaments. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like. I do know that, for instance, it's already pretty much like that for a lot of quote unquote stem cell therapies that have never really been demonstrated to be effective and safe, and you know, the same randomized clinical controlled

trials that they demand, you know, for vaccines. One thing I have little doubt of is that public health is going to be degraded significantly over the next four years. And how we recover from that, I don't know. I'm struggling with the of what can be done to resist it or slow it down that you know, the entire Republican Party doesn't seem to want to put any sort of checks on this administration.

public health and vaccination. You know, the outcome of COVID was, you know, it's it's quite clear that COVID was sort of an accelerant for a lot of the anti vaccination beliefs that had long been incubating. And you know, our public discourse and broad distrust of public health entities in general. And you know, like you said, you know, Trump's successor will be left to clean up whatever mess is made.

And it's possible that Trump's successor could be someone like JD. Van's, Yes, it could, or someone who shares this affinity for you know, quasi eugenic statements or beliefs, or this general disregard for the consequences of a sort of social Diarwinist approach to public health. And so, you know, we don't want to overstate the risks and be doomsayers. But on the other hand, there's this real potential for the return of you know, God forbid something like polio or a breakthrough Avian flu.

or watch films or even in television. You know, there would be examples of something like that, someone who had been impacted by polio and whether they were left disabled, you know, and had less use of their limbs, or you know, if they ended up in an iron lung. You know, that was something at least people were aware

of the risk. And it's it's kind of parallel to something another public health official I spoke with talked about how there's you know, been like two decades of doctors who went through their residencies never even seeing a case of measles, and so now we're having to sort of re educate not just our doctors, but really the whole population. And that's a massive undertaking. We'll hear a bit more from Doctor Gorsky right after the sad Break.

being home from school and they're not very sick. They just have little thoughts painted all over them because I guess that's how they showed them having the measles.

they did. And you know, there were hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases a year, maybe millions of cases a year, and at least averaging about four or five hundred deaths a year, which doesn't sound like a lot, but in anything having to do with children, that's a lot of death because we don't expect children to die. Children should

not die. They usually you know, it's not like elderly people where you know, it's expected that that's when you know, the body starts giving out and people are reaching the end of their lives. Children's death rates should be Oh that's why. That's why we look at you know, childhood cancer, and there was such an effort made, you know, over from like the fifties on to try to decrease the rate of death from childhood cancer. And you know the

results have been pretty spectacular. About eighty five percent of children with you know, cancer live, which you know before it was you know, a pretty small number. And the funny thing is the number of childhood cancers is very small compared to a lot of other things that cause death. We viewed it as sufficiently important to try to do

something about it. At least we did the question of whether we will continue to because you know, anti chemotherapy and various cancer nonsense tends to go right along with MAHA and the other thing.

kids vaccinated. Instead, what he sort of said is, yes, the vaccine, you know, vaccination is good, you know, the best way to stop the outbreak. But then he buries it instead of baffling with bullshit, it's more like burying it in bullshit. He talks about, you know, vitamin A

supposedly to treat measles. He talks about how children die with measles, rather than of measles, which should sound very familiar because they pulled the same rhetoric out for COVID, and the idea being that only the children who were already sick were harmed by measles, and that you know, your middle class, healthy children are not in any danger. You know. One way to look at the anti vaccine movement, besides the eugenesis undertones, sometimes not even undertones, one way

to look at it is as a purity cult. You may remember the whole pure blood thing from a few years ago, like those that were not vaccinated refusing to mingle with those who are. Who are you know whose blood has somehow been contaminated by the vaccine. It's the same as all. And think of how much of alternative medicine involves quote unquote detoxification. I like to call it ritual purification because it's like more of a religious concept

than it is actually a medical concept. And look at how treatment of quote unquote vaccine injury involves something like elation therapy to pull the evil heavy metals that are supposedly causing autism out of you. So the idea that you have control of your health if you only make your terrain in your body hostile to microbes through your superior lifestyle. The one example of this that I like to point out, and the best retort to it that I like to point out, comes from about two thousand

and nine. If I recall, right, it was Bill Maher on his HBO show and Bob Costas was the guest, and he was going on about how, you know, this was around the time of the EAH one N one flu pandemic, and he was going you knowing, he was going on about how he didn't need the flu vaccine because you know, his terrain was so hostile to the flu, because you know, of his superior lifestyle. Caused me to roll my eyes. But and that if he were on an airplane with people coughing with the flu, he would

not get the flu. What did Pastas say to him? I love I love this retort? He said, Oh, come on, superman.

the expense of the week. Diseases long thought defeated could return in Our ability to address new viruses will be diminished if RFK Junior successfully dismantles what remains of our public health bureaucracy, and he's doing it as a steady clip. In other words, the future may end up looking a lot like the past, more than it already does.

Despite more than one million Americans dying of COVID, the reaction to pandemic restrictions, combined with the anti vaccination movements convincing misinformation around vaccines, radicalized many people against vaccines and public health measures in general. Before I recorded this final statement, the Texas State House voted to advance a bill that will expand the ability for parents to seek exemptions for

trial vaccination requirements for school. And this is happening as a measles outbreak is ongoing, and things aren't looking good, But there is at least one sliver of hope that I've found. As my conversation with Gear illustrates, it's possible for people who grow up in communities where vaccinations are avoided or where there is no belief in them to get out of those communities and to get themselves vaccinated.

And as my conversation with Catherine Wells illustrated, it is also possible for people who have been hesitant to get their children vaccinated for something like measles to be spurred into action given reporting around an outbreak. But the question that ultimately remains is whether enough people will have their minds changed and embrace what the science tells us we

should do. Given doctor Gorskey's astute observation that the anti vaccine movement is someone like a purity cult and Gear's comment that escaping their anti VACS upbringing was sort of like escaping a cult, unfortunately, I think we will have to temper our expectations for how quickly we can extricate our nation from this deep dark place that.