If it wasn’t for my friend Josh, a master of the byways and back alleys of the Twitterverse, I would not have spent a good part of a week and a half with Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Josh was the first to urge me to check out the growing pressure to convince Dr. Peter Hotez to debate Kennedy about vaccines.
And so I found myself transcribing excerpts from their long—very long—Spotify interview. Though Kennedy’s voice is often scratchy and the two of them sometimes talked over each over, I’m pretty sure my quotes are mostly accurate.
In case you don’t know, Dr. Peter Hotex is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and holds the Chair in Tropical Pediatrics at Texas Childrens Hospital. Baylor lists his work developing a long list of critical vaccines to address the following diseases: Coronavirus, Human Hookworm, Schistosomiasis, Chagas and Leishmaniasis, Roundworm and Whipworm, and SARS. Hotez frequently appeared on cable television talking about COVID and advocating for vaccination.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. describes himself this way:
“Rather than enter politics himself, RFK Jr. carried on his family’s legacy of public service by devoting himself to environmental causes and children’s welfare. He is the founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance—the world’s largest clean water advocacy group—and served as its longtime chairman and attorney. He then went on to found Children’s Health Defense, a mass membership organization where he served as chairman and chief litigation counsel in its campaign to address childhood chronic disease and toxic exposures.”
He has, in fact, recently entered politics and has announced his intention to run against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary for president in 2024.
Let’s focus for the moment on the specific remarks Kennedy made that sent me on this exhausting journey in the first place:
“Nobody will debate me—for 18 years nobody will debate me. In fact, I’ve scheduled many, many debates—I’ve asked Hotez many, many times to debate, and I think you’ve asked him here, ‘Why don’t you debate Robert Kennedy?’
“And he said, ‘Because he’s a cunning lawyer or something like that’ …
“But I’ve debated Hotez on the telephone with kind of a referee and you know his science is just made up … He cannot stand by it, he can’t cite studies.” (Emphasis added.)
When Kennedy claimed Dr. Hotez had invented his science, he provoked a raging argument between those who have dedicated their lives to medicine and public health, and those convinced vaccines have brought more illness than health, especially those convinced childhood shots like the Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis vaccine caused autism—and those who believe the COVID-19 vaccines are no safer.
Rogan immediately seized on the debate issue, hoping money would make it impossible for Hotez to refuse his offer to appear with Kennedy:
Peter. Let’s finally have the respectful,congenial,informative debate that the American people deserve.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 17, 2023
On the surface, Rogan and Kennedy’s call for a debate seems very reasonable. And almost immediately many people chimed in urging Hotez to argue the issue of vaccine efficacy with Kennedy. The call reminded me of my early days in public school Civics: ye’ olde marketplace of ideas. Two different ways of looking at things, their advocates discussing critical issues with civility and mutual respect. But that’s a world that, if it ever existed, has now disappeared from view.
As CNN reported, Hotez offered an alternative:
“[H]e would appear on the podcast but would not debate Kennedy, the environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist who declared he was running for president in April. ‘I offered to go on Joe Rogan but not to turn it into the Jerry Springer show with having RFK Jr. on,’ Hotez said on MSNBC Sunday.”
Despite Hotez’s counteroffer, the pressure increased as other influential people, including New York Jets Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and billionaire Elon Musk joined the fray:
I will add $150,000 to @joerogan’s wager so now $250,000 can go to charity and the public can hear an open debate on an important topic. https://t.co/dp3XCiqllS
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) June 18, 2023
Then Elon Musk added a personal attack as he increased the pressure:
He’s afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 17, 2023
Let’s look at some of what Rogan and Kennedy talked about. First, while I appreciate the commitment medical professionals like Peter Hotez and other research scientists make to the scientific method, I understand we’re living in America, where capitalism rules the day. And so, yes, I understand why folks like Rogan and Kennedy raise the issue of the outsized influence of the pharmaceutical industry, an industry often driven by the desire to make as much profit as possible. If ever there was a clear example, you only have to review the history of the Sackler family and their painkiller OxyContin and all the doctors who made money by over-prescribing Oxy despite knowing how addictive it is.
So yes, greed has resulted in Americans unnecessarily paying many times more for drugs than our Canadian and European friends. The medical-pharmaceutical complex, with the help of politicians from both parties who have benefitted from their campaign contributions, has caused us to pay more for health care that often doesn’t compare in quality to the less expensive care available to people living in other nations.
But just because our medical and pharmaceutical needs are shaped by a capitalist system that envelops us all doesn’t mean that all doctors and medical researchers put greed before their patients, or put money above their mission to heal, or that they aren’t trustworthy. The reality that healthcare is bound by market forces certainly ought not lead us to forego our high blood pressure meds or refuse a vaccine to protect us from childhood diseases, influenza, and COVID-19, a disease which, if it doesn’t kill you, can weaken and disable you forever.
I don’t personally know any of these people caught up in this controversy. And so I’m in no position to truly know their motivations or their better and worse qualities. Still, despite valid concerns about underlying financial pressures, it is nonetheless highly unfortunate that both Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. so often veer from a principled political and economic critique to unnecessary personal attacks. To me, it is always revealing who is or is not willing to offer someone else the benefit of the doubt. In this respect, Rogan and Kennedy fail miserably.
Add to that the repeated tendency Rogan and Kennedy have to slip so comfortably into the self-righteous, pompous assumption that they are on a mission to discover and share “The Truth,” while those they oppose are greedy, duplicitous, dangerous, and not to be trusted. You might ask: Do those who so comfortably make these kind of charges really possess the purity of purpose they so readily accuse the others of lacking? And who exactly has healed more people along the way?
Back to the sense of mission and Kennedy’s creation story. As he fought for clean rivers and suing polluters, he was often met by mothers who came to him convinced their children developed unexpected and severe symptoms of autism after their childhood vaccinations.
Seemingly, without any sense of self-awareness, let alone embarrassment, Kennedy reveals he is far less one of us ordinary folk than he is a man of significance and wealth, who doesn’t hesitate to use his connections to talk about vaccines and vaccinations with those at the highest levels of our government:
“I called Marie McCormick who ran the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Science. I called Kathleen Stratton at the National Academy of Science, the chief staffer, and I was asking her about these studies, and I realized during these conversations that none of these people had read any of the science. They were just repeating things that they had been told about the science. And they kept saying to me, ‘Well, I can’t answer that detailed question. You need to talk to Paul Offit.’
“Well, Paul Offit is a vaccine developer who has a $186 million deal with Merck for the rotavirus vaccine. And it was odd to me that government regulators were saying you should talk to somebody in the industry … and when I’m on the phone with Offit and … he said, ‘The mercury is excreted quickly,’ and I said, ‘How do you know that,’ and he said ‘Because of the Pichichero study, the study by Pichichero found it was excreted quickly,’ and I said, ‘But you’re familiar with the Burbacher study that showed it’s gone to the brain,’ and there was dead silence on the phone … and then he said to me—kind of hemmed and hawed and kind of said, ‘Well you’re right, it’s not that study. It’s the whole mosaic of studies,’ and I said, ‘Can you cite any for me,’ and he said he’d send them to me and he never did …
“At that point I knew something was wrong and somebody handed me a transcript of a secret meeting that took place in 1999. It might have been 2000. It’s called the Simpsonwood meeting … and what happened is—the history is in 1986—uh I’ll go back a little further in ’79/’80 when I was a kid, I only had three vaccines. My kids got 72 vaccines …that’s what you need to get through school, 72 doses of 16 vaccines … so it started changing in the ’80s … 1979 they brought out a vaccine called the Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Vaccine … That vaccine was very dangerous and it was killing or giving severe brain damage to one in 300 kids, and it was pulled in the United States. It was pulled in Europe, but Bill Gates still gives it to 161 million African children every year …
“And they went in there and they looked at 30 years of data, and they found that girls who got that vaccine, the DPT Vaccine, had—were over 10 times more likely to die over the next three months than girls—than children who did not, and they weren’t dying of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. They were protected from those by the vaccine. They were dying of anemia and bilharzia and malaria and pulmonary diseases, but mainly dying of pneumonia. And what the researchers said is that the vaccine is almost certainly killing more children than diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis prior to the vaccine, because it was protecting them against the targeted illnesses but it had ruined their immune systems so they couldn’t protect themselves against these other minor infections, and nobody had noticed for 30 years that it was the vaccinated children who were disproportionately dying. And that’s the problem with not doing real placebo controlled trials. None of the vaccines are ever exposed to true placebo controlled trials. It is the only medical product that is exempt prior to licensure …” (Emphasis added.)
Kennedy continued:
“I know a lot about mercury. I’ve been suing people, and when you sue people, you get a PhD in that … or you’re not to going to win your lawsuits … So I know a lot about mercury, and I knew that his argument was not with me but with the periodic tables because there’s no such thing as a good mercury … and I also knew the history of why he was saying that because … mercury was added to vaccines in a form called—in 1932—and Eli Lilly—which was the manufacturer—was because people then knew that mercury was horrendously neurotoxic. Mercury is a thousand times more neurotoxic than lead. You would never shoot lead into your baby …” (Emphasis added.)
Rogan asked, “Why was thimerosal introduced into vaccines?”
To which, Kennedy responded:
“It was allegedly introduced as a preservative … It doesn’t kill streptococcus or the other contaminants you would be worried about. In fact it kills brain cells … at one-thirtieth the dose it takes to kill streptococcus or staphylococcus … So it wasn’t a good preservative so why… NIH admitted to me in 2016 the real reason was there as an adjuvant—an adjuvant is a toxic material that they add to dead virus vaccines to amplify the immune response—so your body—I’m kind of getting into the weeds—but a live virus, if they give it to you, it can mutate and spread the disease, but if it’s dead, it can’t spread the disease …That’s why most of the polio today—70 percent of the polio today is vaccine polio that came from the vaccine …
“So the regulators expressed a preference for a dead virus vaccine. A dead virus vaccine, however, will not produce a durable or robust immune response enough to get a license. The way to get a license for a vaccine is showing you get an antibody response for a certain amount of time. There’s a strong antibody response, but the dead virus vaccine won’t produce that—a vaccinologist figured out that if you add something horrendously toxic to the vaccine, that your body confuses that toxic product and you add with the dead antigen which is the viral particle your body confuses that toxin with the viral particle and gets frightened and mounts a huge, humungous immune response. And the next time it sees that virus, the immune response is there … And so at that point, the vaccinologists went around the world searching for the most horrendously toxic materials to add to vaccines, and there’s a mantra in vaccinology that the more toxic the adjuvant the more robust the immune response. And so that is why toxicologists and vaccinologists don’t get along with each other. The toxicologists would say to the vaccinologists, ‘I understand it gave you your immune response, but what is the fate of that in your body? Where is it going? Is it being excreted? Is it being lodged in the brain? Is it penetrated the blood brain barrier?’ And the vaccinologists just couldn’t answer …
“And then in the year 2000, the CDC did a study with Johns Hopkins called Guyer—there was this emerging claim that vaccines had saved tens of millions of lives around the world—I’m not going to tell you that they don’t because nobody should trust my word on this, what I say is irrelevant—what’s relevant is the science—the principle effort by CDC to actually verify that claim and what the Guyer study—and they looked at all the history of each vaccine and health claims and what they were trying to say is there was this huge decline in mortalities from infectious diseases in the 20th century, an 80 percent drop from infectious disease, and what caused that? Was it vaccines? And what they said is no, it had very little—almost nothing to do with vaccines. The real drop happened because—uh—really engineering solutions. Refrigerators. You could store food. Transportation systems, so you could get oranges up from Florida, etc. Roads. Better housing. Sanitation. The invention of chlorine. Sewage treatment. But mainly nutrition. Nutrition is absolutely critical to building immune systems. What was really killing these children was malnutrition. And you know it was infectious disease that was knocking them off at the end. But the real cause of death was malnutrition and the collapsed immune system, and that is what the Guyer study says. And now anybody who is listening to this—you know you can go look at this study, so don’t blame me and don’t say Kennedy’s in denial.” (Emphasis added.)
Quite frankly, this all felt a bit like an intellectual mugging, a near constant bombardment of studies and technicalities and one claim after another. And Kennedy certainly comes off as the smart one, the ethical one. The implications are clear: Folks at the National Academy of Science are stupid, Hotez is a coward, and Offit not only sold his soul to Merck for the money but actually doesn’t really know the science. Offit misconstrued the Pichichero study and seems unaware that the Burbacher study proves that the mercury contained in the thimerosal, a critical component of childhood vaccines he supports, must have lodged in the brains of the injected children.
And one thing he makes crystal clear for us is that, as far as he is concerned, these either incompetent or corrupt officials and vaccinologists have diabolically searched for the most toxic chemicals they can find to use in the vaccines we are giving to our fellow Americans. And that they are hiding from the truth that these very vaccines—and the mercury in them—are destroying our immune systems and killing our children. And you can add to the mix that Bill Gates continues to kill children in foreign lands.
There is no denying that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—and, for that matter, Joe Rogan—is skilled in public debate. They are accomplished storytellers, and their listeners—especially those of us without medical degrees—hardly have time to truly absorb and consider one part of this very complicated story before another even more disturbing chapter is offered.
But during the last many days, I have had a chance to take some time to hunt down some of these studies and break down some of the claims Kennedy made during the interview. Let’s start with Paul Offit. On January 7, 2011, Offit was interviewed by National Public Radio about a new book he had written, “Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.” At that time, he was Chief at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
During the interview, Offit readily acknowledged the fallibilities of science and the possible limitations of vaccines:
“… First of all, vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective. So even if you’re vaccinated, you might not be protected. Secondly, there are many people in this country who can’t be vaccinated. They depend on those around them to be vaccinated. And, you know, what we’re seeing now is there’s clearly been an erosion in immunization rates, as you’re seeing outbreaks, as you said, of measles, mumps, whooping cough, even a particular type of bacterial meningitis, which is protected—which is preventable.
“So it’s been hard to watch this erosion … There was a study done, actually, in the Netherlands that looked at a measles outbreak between 1999 and 2000. It involved about 4,000 people. And what they found, and this may be counterintuitive, but when you think about it, it’s not, you were actually better off having not received the measles vaccine and living in a highly vaccinated community than having received the measles vaccine and living in a relatively unvaccinated community, because no vaccine is 100 percent effective, and if you’re more likely to be exposed, you’re more likely to get sick.”
Offit added:
“I participated with a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to develop the rotavirus vaccine. It’s the thing, at least professionally, of which I’m most proud. I mean, this is a vaccine that we, you know, we were able to construct at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that has the capacity to save 2,000 lives a day and is doing that.”
There has always been an ongoing debate about the role the pharmaceutical industry plays in the research and development of the very medicines that they market but we require. And because of the great reluctance of many to limit governmental investment in, and ownership of, these resources (many call it socialism), academic and cultural institutions have little choice but to rely on corporate sponsorship. So not surprisingly in this very complicated story, questions were raised in 2008 by CBS News:
“They’re some of the most trusted voices in the defense of vaccine safety: the American Academy of Pediatrics, Every Child By Two, and pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit.
“But CBS News has found these three have something more in common — strong financial ties to the industry whose products they promote and defend. The vaccine industry gives millions to the Academy of Pediatrics for conferences, grants, medical education classes and even helped build their headquarters. The totals are kept secret, but public documents reveal bits and pieces.
“A $342,000 payment from Wyeth, maker of the pneumococcal vaccine — which makes $2 billion a year in sales. A $433,000 contribution from Merck, the same year the academy endorsed Merck’s HPV vaccine — which made $1.5 billion a year in sales. Another top donor: Sanofi Aventis, maker of 17 vaccines and a new five-in-one combo shot just added to the childhood vaccine schedule last month.
“Every Child By Two, a group that promotes early immunization for all children, admits the group takes money from the vaccine industry, too — but wouldn’t tell us how much. A spokesman told CBS News: ‘There are simply no conflicts to be unearthed.’ But guess who’s listed as the group’s treasurers? Officials from Wyeth and a paid advisor to big pharmaceutical clients.
“Then there’s Paul Offit, perhaps the most widely-quoted defender of vaccine safety … Offit was not willing to be interviewed on this subject but like others in this CBS News investigation, he has strong industry ties. In fact, he’s a vaccine industry insider. Offit holds a $1.5 million dollar research chair at Children’s Hospital, funded by Merck. He holds the patent on an anti-diarrhea vaccine he developed with Merck, Rotateq, which has prevented thousands of hospitalizations. And future royalties for the vaccine were just sold for $182 million cash. Dr. Offit’s share of vaccine profits? Unknown.”
Some historical perspective: As many of us discovered in the 1960s, despite our best intentions to craft a counter-culture, beyond greed and self-interest, an alternate way of living, communes sometimes transposed themselves into cults, the more militant amongst us veered into a kind of madness, MLK’s patient nonviolence replaced by the self-deluded violence of the Weathermen, then former Yippie and Chicago Eight defendant Jerry Rubin went to Wall Street, and once Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver took to designing and selling pants. In the end, no matter how many loaves of Tassajara sourdough bread you baked on wood stoves with wood you split yourself, there was really no way to successfully live outside of American capitalism.
So you will have to decide for yourself whether making a profit—even what you regard as an obscene profit—cancels out any potential good of creating a vaccine in America. A lifelong fan of basketball, I have somehow gotten used to NBA players making $40 million a year to dribble, pass, and dunk. And having been poor my entire life, I find it slightly galling that, in this case, it is multi-millionaires Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. throwing the stones of those who are paid to work in government or academia or medical centers to help and cure the sick. Kennedy makes a small fortune fighting vaccines. The New York Times writes that Kennedy “reported an income of $7.8 million in the year.” Kennedy pays himself more than half a million dollars a year—though he’s taking a break as he runs for president—as the Chairman of the Board and Chief Legal Counsel of the Children’s Health Defense also known as the World Mercury Project, an organization he created. And he makes a fortune as an attorney and, as the Times puts it, “consulting work for a personal injury law firm known for litigation against pharmaceutical companies.” This year, according to his candidate finance form, he made $5,019,055 from just one of several firms he is involved with, Kennedy & Madonna LLP.
Back to Offit, who remembers his interaction with Kennedy quite differently:
“Twenty years ago, I had a one-hour conversation with RFK Jr. In his current campaign for president, he has referred to that conversation during public appearances. It’s time to set the record straight … RFK Jr. explained that several mothers had come to him, concerned about vaccine safety. Would I help him understand the science behind their fears? We spent about an hour talking mostly about thimerosal, an ethylmercury-containing preservative that had been removed from childhood vaccines in 2001. I thought the call went well …
“Soon after our conversation, on July 14, 2005, RFK Jr. published an article in Rolling Stone … titled ‘Deadly Immunity.’ Kennedy had sandbagged me. According to the article, I was part of a group of government agents and industry insiders that had ‘colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public.’
“The article was full of misstatements. RFK Jr. claimed that the amount of ethylmercury in vaccines was 187 times greater than the recommended limit, when it was only 1.4 times greater. He claimed that thimerosal in vaccines had caused autism, when several studies had shown that it hadn’t. Kennedy wrote that I had defended mercury in vaccines because the rotavirus vaccine on which I was a co-inventor was ‘laced with thimerosal.’ But the rotavirus vaccine, which was licensed one year later, never contained a preservative …
“RFK Jr.’s most recent rant against me was delivered in a three-hour episode on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience,’ the most popular podcast in the world. Kennedy recounted his conversation with me. He told Rogan that to help him interpret studies evaluating the safety of mercury in vaccines, he had first called senior officials at the National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences. ‘And they kept saying to me I can’t answer that detailed question,’ said Kennedy. ‘You need to talk to Paul Offit. Paul Offit made a $186 million deal with Merck. Odd to me that government regulators said that you should talk to someone in the industry.’
“First, I have never worked for a pharmaceutical company. At the time of the interview, our rotavirus vaccine wasn’t a licensed product. Second, although Fred Clark, Stanley Plotkin, and I are co-inventors and co-patent holders of the rotavirus vaccine, we are the intellectual property of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Wistar Institute. For all practical purposes, those institutions owned the patent, which they later sold to asset acquisition companies. I didn’t make a deal with anybody. And companies don’t pay $186 million for a product that isn’t a product yet. RFK Jr.’s statement about my $186 million dollar deal with Merck was a complete and utter lie. And it’s resulted in hate mail, physical altercations with anti-vaccine activists, and three death threats. One caller threatened my children. By falsely labelling me as someone willing to line my pockets at the expense of children’s health, RFK Jr. put both me and my family at risk.” (Emphasis added.)
Offit writes:
“RFK Jr. wasn’t finished: ‘It was weird to me that the top regulators in the country were telling me to go talk to an industry insider because we don’t understand the science. I talked to him, and I caught him in a lie. And both of us knew that he was lying.’
“‘What was the lie?’ asked Rogan.
“‘I asked him why is it that the CDC and every state regulator recommends that pregnant women do not eat tuna fish to avoid the mercury but that the CDC is recommending mercury containing flu shots with huge boluses of mercury …
“’And he said, “Well, Bobby, there are two kinds of mercury. There’s the good mercury and the bad mercury.” [But] there is no such thing as the good mercury. I know a lot about mercury… Mercury was really an adjuvant that stimulates the immune system. Worse, mercury doesn’t kill bacteria like streptococcus or staph.’
“Again, RFK Jr. was wrong. First, thimerosal isn’t an adjuvant, it’s a preservative. Second, thimerosal is bacteriostatic not bactericidal. It doesn’t kill bacteria; it prevents bacteria from growing. Finally, mercury is part of the earth’s crust, where it exists harmlessly in an inorganic state. However, due to rock erosion and volcanos, mercury is released onto the earth’s surface where it is picked up by bacteria and converted to an organic form: methylmercury. Unlike inorganic mercury, methylmercury can cross cell membranes and do harm. Indeed, methylmercury poisonings caused by industrial accidents in Japan and Iraq caused neurological damage in both adults and unborn children. But because mercury is in the earth’s crust, everyone has mercury in their bodies at levels well below those that are harmful. In the words of Paracelsus, a 16th-century physician, ‘The dose makes the poison.’
“Ethylmercury (thimerosal), however, is not methylmercury. While methylmercury has a half-life in the bloodstream of about 70 days, ethylmercury has a half-life of seven days. So, it’s much less likely to accumulate and do harm. During the Rogan interview, RFK Jr. explained how he first came to believe that thimerosal was harmful. ‘In 2003, a CDC researcher named Pichichero did a study where he gave tuna sandwiches that were mercury-contaminated to children and then measured their blood …Then he injected the children with mercury from a vaccine and the mercury disappeared in a week. But where did it go?’
Kennedy then referred to a study by Thomas Burbacher, who found that after injecting infant monkeys with thimerosal, mercury was detected in the brain where, according to RFK Jr. it ‘caused severe inflammation.’ ‘And I told Offit about that study, and he was quiet and said there was a mosaic of other studies. I asked him to send them to me. But he never did and that’s the last I heard from him.’” (Emphasis added.)
Offit continues:
“Once again, RFK Jr. had misrepresented the facts … RFK Jr. has said that he has taped our conversation. Great. Release the tape. Let’s hear what really happened. Second, Michael Pichichero studied infants as young as two months of age; he never fed them tuna fish sandwiches. Third, Pichichero concluded, ‘Administration of vaccines containing thimerosal does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in infants.’ Finally, it was not surprising that Thomas Burbacher found trace quantities of ethylmercury in the brain of infant monkeys injected with thimerosal, which can cross cell membranes. But RFK Jr. lied when he said that the mercury had caused ‘severe inflammation.’ Burbacher didn’t report any evidence of inflammation, writing, ‘no serious medical complications were observed in any of the monkeys.’” (Emphasis added.)
Since I had heard this story from Kennedy then from Paul Offit, I went checked out both studies. While quickly confronting my limited understanding of biology, chemistry, medicine, and toxicology, I did make it through, and you can see read for yourself what Prof. Michael Pichichero, MD and others actually found in their Lancet November 2002 study “Mercury concentrations and metabolism in infants receiving vaccines containing thimerosal: a descriptive study.”
And you can find the Burbacher study, “Comparison of Blood and Brain Mercury Levels in Infant Monkeys Exposed to Methylmercury or Vaccines Containing Thimerosal,” here.
Offit makes an important point about the differences between the forms of mercury and the important issue of dose. Burbacher and his team used macaques monkeys who were exposed to the different forms of mercury, methylmercury (MeHg) introduced via feeding tubes, or ethyl mercury via injection in a vaccine containing thimerosal. Burbacher explains:
“Public perception of the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines has a direct impact on immunization rates (Biroscak et al. 2003; Thomas et al. 2004). The current debate linking the use of thimerosal in vaccines to autism and other developmental disorders [Institute of Medicine (IOM) 2001, 2004] has led many families to question whether the potential risks associated with early childhood immunizations may outweigh the benefits (Blaxill et al.2004; SafeMinds 2005).
“Thimerosal is an effective preservative that has been used in the manufacturing of vaccines since the 1930s. Thimerosal consists of 49.6 [percent] mercury by weight and breaks down in the body to ethyl-mercury and thiosalicylate (Tan and Parkin 2000). Recent reports have indicated that some infants can receive ethylmercury (in the form of thimerosal) at or above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines for methylmercury exposure (U.S. EPA 2005), depending on the exact vaccinations …
“Recent publications have proposed a direct link between the use of thimerosal-containing vaccines and the significant rise in the number of children being diagnosed with autism, a serious and prevalent developmental disorder (for review, see IOM 2001). Results from an initial IOM review of the safety of vaccines found that there was not sufficient evidence to render an opinion on the relationship between ethylmercury exposure and developmental disorders in children (IOM 2001). The IOM review did, however, note the possibility of such a relationship and recommended further studies be conducted …” (Emphasis added.)
While Burbacher declared that “no serious medical complications were observed in any of the monkeys,” further study of “the neurotoxic potential of intact thimerosal and its various biotransformation products, including ethylmercury, is urgently needed to afford a meaningful interpretation of the potential developmental effects of immunization with thimerosal-containing vaccines in newborns and infants. This information is critical if we are to respond to public concerns regarding the safety of childhood immunizations.” (Emphasis added.)
Contrary to Kennedy’s claim that Burbacher found “it’s gone to the brain,” Burbacher actually “found no serious medical complications were observed in any of the monkeys.” And because ethyl mercury levels found in the environment don’t adequately or accurately translate to levels of thimerosal-delivered methyl mercury, Burbacher responsibly acknowledged more research was needed.
Had Kennedy carefully read the proceedings of the Simpsonwood meeting—a meeting he claimed was a clear example of the conspiracy between those working for the pharmaceutical industry, medical practitioners, and those working for the CDC—he might have learned how seriously they took their responsibility to get things right. The meeting—technically referred to as the Scientific Review of Information—was called to use public health data to better understand any possible link between mercury in thimerosal and a range of developmental effects, including autism.
Pichichero, Burbacher, and the participants at Simpsonwood all approached the concern that mercury might present a danger to young children with an open mind. Their experiments and their discussions were designed to isolate potential factors and learn more in service of making vaccines as safe as possible.
And, by the way, the Mogensen Guinea-Bissau study Kennedy refers to, “And what the researchers said is that the vaccine is almost certainly killing more children than diphtheria tetanus and pertussis,” was published in 2017 and based on a very small sample (1057 children were included in the study cohort), and where statistics from 1981 were hand-written on cards then hand-transferred to computer in 1990 and 1991. Meanwhile, the mothers of the children were still breastfeeding—a likely source of ethylmercury which could confound the results. And while the study concluded, “All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis. Though a vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections,” the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted additional studies that contradicted Mogensen. They found: “Members were unanimous that the totality of evidence provided in all the material before the task force did not support a deleterious effect of DTP vaccination on child survival; indeed, the papers provide substantial evidence against such a conclusion.”
In another example of misinformation, this is how Kennedy refers to the Guyer study:
“And then in the year 2000 CDC did a study with Johns Hopkins called Guyer—there was this emerging claim that vaccines had saved tens of millions of lives around the world—I’m not going to tell you that they don’t because nobody should trust my word on this what I say is irrelevant—what’s relevant is the science—the principle effort by CDC to actually verify that claim and what the Guyer study and they looked at all the history of each vaccine and health claims and what they were trying to say is there was this huge decline, mortalities from infectious diseases in the twentieth century a 80 [percent] drop from infectious disease and what caused that? Was it vaccines? And what they said is no, it had very little almost nothing to do with vaccines.”
While acknowledging the importance of great advances in sanitation and refrigeration and public health improvements, this is what Guyer actually says about the vital role of vaccination and immunization:
Having gone after Offit, it was Peter Hotez’s time. Rogan began:
ROGAN: “You know, I had a maddening conversation with Peter Hotez …”
KENNEDY: “Well, he’s that guy is he’s—I mean it’s hard just watching a guy sit there and tell things he’s got to know are not true …”
JOE ROGAN: “I don’t know that he knows they’re not true, but he’s a strange example because when I’m talking to him he’s overweight and I asked him does he eat well and he doesn’t. He’s saying he eats junk food, he likes junk food too much. He doesn’t exercise, walks a little he’s saying he doesn’t take vitamins. This is a crazy conversation. You’re advocating for this experimental [MRNA] vaccine technology and don’t even do anything else to improve your immune system. There’s all these studies on vitamins whether it’s vitamin C, vitamin D, exposure to sunlight, increases your vitamin D as well, it’s very good for your immune system … and there are all these studies about people who got administered [sic] to the ICU on COVID and somewhere above 70 percent were deficient in Vitamin D.”
KENNEDY: “I think it was over 90 percent …”
(Emphasis added.)
It doesn’t take much for Kennedy to slip into paranoia:
“They had to discredit ivermectin because there’s a federal law: the Emergency Use Authorization. The statute says that you cannot issue an Emergency Use Authorization to a vaccine if there is an existing medication that has been approved for any purpose that is demonstrated effective against the target illness. So they had to destroy ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and discredit it, and they had to tell everybody it’s not effective cause if they had acknowledged it is effective in anybody, the whole $200 billion vaccine enterprise would have collapsed …We’ve looked at all the studies and—uh—there are over 100 studies on ivermectin, and I think they’re on our website, CHC’s website, and then there were a series of studies and this is what they always do—this is what they do with autism: They design studies to fail—in fact they design studies, and the way they design them to fail is by giving people lethal doses of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.”
I have previously written about ivermectin in “THE OTHER SIDE: You Are Not A Horse,” and it seems clear to me that the more reasonable version is that the CDC and medical professionals were legitimately concerned that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine didn’t offer a safe treatment but would also discourage people from getting vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the pressure campaign for Hotez to debate escalated. You only have to look at what happened next to better appreciate how dangerous Rogan and Kennedy’s rhetoric was. CNN notes:
“A prominent vaccine scientist said he was accosted outside of his home after a Twitter exchange with podcaster Joe Rogan, who challenged him to debate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. over the weekend. ‘I just was stalked in front of my home by a couple of antivaxers taunting me to debate RFKJr.,’ Houston-based scientist Peter Hotez tweeted Sunday.”
I could go on and on about the multiple misstatements and distortions offered by Rogan and Kennedy, but why don’t you check out some other experts who have weighed in on these issues: Dr. Marc Siegel, June 5, 2023, USA Today, “Sorry RFK Jr.: COVID vaccines work. What is there to debate?” There’s David Gorski of Science-Based Medicine on July 3, 2023. Reuters addresses another of Kennedy’s claims about the 1918 influenza pandemic in “Fact Check-A meningitis vaccine trial at a U.S. military camp did not cause the 1918 Spanish Flu.” The CDC offers its version, “Reconstruction of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.” You can check out factcheck.org’s 2021 article: “RFK Jr. Video Pushes Known Vaccine Misrepresentations.” And lastly, here is what the CDC has to say in: “What’s in Vaccines?” and “Thimerosal and Vaccines.”
If you want some other opinions about whether Dr. Hotez should debate Kennedy, here’s Dr. Keren Landman at VOX, “Joe Rogan wants a ‘debate’ on vaccine science. Don’t give it to him.” Here’s Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times: “Sorry, Joe Rogan: Scientists should never ‘debate’ anti-vaccine quacks. Here’s why.”
And I urge you to read someone I reliably consult about matters of public health, Katelyn Jetelina, MPH, PhD, Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE). She and a colleague weigh in on the issue here.
Some final thoughts. As I listened the first time around and then subsequent times, I was struck by the enormous energy both Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy place on the issues of vaccines and how seldom they actually talked about the devastating reality of the COVID-19 epidemic. Even if you accept Kennedy’s claim that the vaccine killed 17,000 people (a claim I doubt), that number pales in comparison to the 1,134,300 Americans the CDC tells us have died so far, and the 6,202,800 who have been hospitalized. Again, we have somehow gotten out of the habit of emphatically and repeatedly thanking all the medical professionals and hospital staff who continue at great personal risk to confront COVID.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t emphasize the real-world consequences of the constant barrage of misinformation that folks like Joe Rogan and Kennedy perpetuate. In April 2022, the folks at the Kaiser Family Foundation published “COVID-19 mortality preventable by vaccines,” their analysis of COVID deaths up until then: “In this analysis, we estimate the number of adult deaths that could have been prevented by timely vaccination. We find that approximately 234,000 deaths since June 2021 could have been prevented with primary series vaccination. These vaccine-preventable deaths represent 60 [percent] of all adult COVID-19 deaths since June 2021, and a quarter (24 [percent]) of the nearly 1 million COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began.”
More specifically, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccination theories had a direct and disastrous influence on the people of Samoa during a 2019 severe outbreak of measles. ABC News reported:
“In June, just months before the outbreak, two well-known and well-established anti-vaccine advocates, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Taylor Winterstein, the wife of an Australian rugby player, met in Samoa. While it’s not known what the two discussed, Winterstein, who posted an Instagram photo of herself with Kennedy at the time, has been spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories related to Samoa throughout the outbreak.”
ABC noted:
“The measles outbreak in Samoa didn’t come out of nowhere. Prior to the outbreak, Samoa had notoriously low vaccination rates, with data from the WHO and UNICEF estimating that the country’s national immunization coverage fell from 74 [percent] to 34 [percent] between 2017 and 2018. At that time, the country was embroiled in a medical scandal involving the deaths of two Samoan infants, who received improperly prepared MMR vaccines, which were administered by local nurses.”
The results:
“Samoa’s measles outbreak rages on, with the ministry of health reporting 32 deaths as of Tuesday, almost all of which have been among children aged 4 and younger. The island nation of fewer than 200,000 has tallied 2,427 measles cases in the outbreak thus far, with more than 10 [percent] of those recently reported over a single 24-hour period, according to the ministry of health.”
There are severe consequences to the myths and conspiracy theories perpetrated by folks like Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I doubt many of us are fully aware of how often doctors and nurses and medical researchers are attacked as they attempt to do their jobs, whether it’s suggesting or administering vaccine injections or wearing a mask to protect themselves or their immuno-compromised patients. On June 14, 2023, the Journal of American Medicine published “Physician and Biomedical Scientist Harassment on Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which stated:
“Of 359 respondents, 228 (64 [percent]) reported harassment related to comments made about the COVID-19 pandemic, 111 (31 [percent]) reported being sexually harassed, and 66 (18 [percent]) reported their private information had been shared (ie, doxxing). One hundred forty-four respondents provided open-ended responses … A total of 228 of 359 participants (64 [percent]) reporting any online harassment reported the pandemic changed the way that they use social media …”
Katelyn Jetelina added even more data. Referring to a poll taken by the journal Nature, Jetelina noted that of 321 of the scientists who were asked if they had experienced any negative impacts after speaking about COVID-19 to the media, “15 [percent] reported receiving death threats. Almost 60 [percent] had their credibility attacked; more than 40 [percent] suffered emotional or psychological distress, 30 [percent] suffered damage to their reputations, more than 20 [percent] were threatened with physical or sexual violence, and some endured physical attacks.”
But disease continues to mock the ignorant. Viruses like COVID-19 multiply and mutate while the stupid insist on making it ever more difficult to receive life-saving vaccines. Their incessant rants and protests, their shrill mockeries have emboldened the politicians to substitute convenience for the precautionary principle, to abandon the more conservative impulse to protect public health as we reduce efforts to collect accurate statistics, improve ventilation in our public spaces, and monitor wastewater.
It is yet another grand irony. The ignorant imagine they know better than those who labor for years to better understand, who read and study and hypothesize, make mistakes and correct them, who appreciate that, while perfection is impossible, trying to get it right is essential.
As for those who refuse vaccination, a doctor friend of mine recently told me: “I have great respect for people willing to die for their beliefs.”
Each day, like lemmings, we plunge further from the light to the darkness, to the cliff and the abyss waiting up ahead.
