SIO399: Andrew Wakefield's "Study" Was So Much Worse Than You Know

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 399. I'm Thomas. Oh, wow, 399, almost 400. Have to celebrate by doing an episode. I'm very excited to bring you a science thingy. Is a very bad science thing, a very, very incredibly bad science thingy, but that's even more important perhaps to explain than some of the good science thingies. Today's guest is Kelly Burke, and she's going to take us through. Love the sales pitch for the episode, and I you will, too.

Look, we all know the Andrew Wakefield study that led to the whole vaccines cause autism bullshit is but Kelly's pitch for this episode was, yeah, but I don't think, you know, the half of it.

No, I don't know the half of it, I might not even know the tenth of it, and so Kelly's going to take us through some of the surrounding facts, how this happened, and just how unbelievably bad this, I don't even call it a science thingy, we'll call it a thingy that was misused for science, is. So buckle up, as always. If you'd to avoid, the very, annoying ad that, uh, non-patrons are about to hear, go to patreon.com/seriouspod. Super I duper promise that Sam, three Goodwill hunting will be out soon. I, uh, swear times infinity that there's a very good reason why I've been a little delayed. Look forward to that within, the meantime, enjoy this auto ad. Psych! If you're a patron, enjoy the rest of the show. Burke, how you doing today, speak

0:01:38 Kelly: Good, I'm still getting over being a bit sick, but I am happy to be here. I

0:01:42 Thomas: For yourself? Never been sick in my life. That's, I don't want to hear your problems, don't even bring that here, gosh, unprofessional. All right, cut. That.

0:01:50 Kelly: You Say my problems, but you have, have to edit the coughs out. So good luck. Yeah.

0:01:54 Thomas: That's true, it's all of our problem. No, I'm, uh, hopefully, uh, you're feeling better soon. Yeah, I still have fully my voice, you know, the first thing to go is the falsetto register. And that's heartbreaking. You person. You don't realise how much you use that falsetto register, at least I do, for your kids, you know, like just doing the kid, like, you know, all the kid talk you do where it's, like that higher voice. I into that when I'm sick still and no literally sound comes out and I'm like, oh, okay. I just pretend that never happened for me. It was just completely muted, but it was good because it gave me a free undo. It Was like, I didn't say anything. I was like, okay, that didn't work. Switch to normal voice. Anyway. Um, I'm excited.

You, uh, filled out the expert form, which I encourage everyone to do on the, on the website, if you can, or find the link in the show notes, um, because it's really fun now that I have Lydia on board, she's, have ADHD and so is actually going through all the expert submissions that I, there were too many and did a few and then my life took over. So that's awesome having more of a neurotypical assigned to that part of the job. And yours was really cool.

It's so perfect because I you said that it's about the Andrew Wakefield stuff, which I'm sure everybody listening will at least be somewhat familiar with the, know, Andrew Wakefield, bullshit study, said vaccines cause autism, but they don't. And he was, his license. It's like, that's essentially what I know. And your pitch was there's so much more to it. And so I'm really excited to get into it.

0:02:12 Kelly: Oh Yeah, or it's just painful.

0:03:24 Kelly: So, was what I knew about it, and then I did a master's in kind of science communication, and some of my assignments were diving into that study. Um, this is kind of a master class in how not to do science communication on Wakefield's part. Um, and the study was so much worse than I realized.

0:03:42 Thomas: Oh, wow. Down that path.

0:03:44 Kelly: So I was thinking we could kind of take a where there's woke style approach so

0:03:47 Thomas: Never heard of it. You're going to have to tell.

0:03:51 Thomas: We don't all know your obscure podcast interests, Kelly. Come on.

0:03:57 Kelly: If you haven't listened to it, check it out. What I'd like to do is kind of look at the claims that he made at the time about the study and then take a look at it. Take a look. Take a take a take at the study itself, kind of taking it at face value and see if it actually says what he thinks it says. And then kind of digging deeper into that. Fuller story that kind of came out later. Start with, Andrew Wakefield published this paper in 1998 and immediately had a press conference about it.

0:04:12 Thomas: Love it, cool, oh,

0:04:27 Kelly: No, that's not usually how we do Science. In the press conference, conference he he kind of hinted that the relationship between vaccines and autism that was talked about and suspected, I couldn't get a ton of quotes from this because this press conference is incredibly hard to find on the internet, I can find a bunch of clips, probably a good thing so that anti-vaxxers aren't using it and promoting it and things like that, but very frustrating for me.

0:04:25 Thomas: Wow, that's not normal, that oh wow, that is surprising, was 1998, so it is not like you could get, that you recorded on your Nokia, I don't even know if that phone was there yet, yeah,

0:05:00 Kelly: But it wasn't all over YouTube at the time. I was able to pull a few quotes from some of the reporting about the press conference and find a couple of clips. And so he said some things like, with the debate over MMR that has started, I cannot support the continued use of three vaccines given together. That's the three vaccines, measles, mumps, and rubella that are included in the MMR vaccine. He said, we we need needs to know what the roleof gut inflammation is in autism. Said, my concerns are that one more case of this is too many, and that we put children at no greater risk if we dissociated those vaccines into three. He's talking about separating out that measles mumps and rubella. And sufficient anxiety in my own mind for the long term safety of the polyvalent vaccine. That is the MMR vaccination in combination that I think it should be suspended in favor of the single vaccines.

0:05:27 Thomas: Hmm, wow okay, so step back, the year is 1998, the is still together, other, I think. I don't know. I never listened to them. Tried to set the scene. X is still on TV, by the way. Good times. How old is this MMR vaccine at that point? Why now? Why do you think in 1998 was he decided to do this?

0:05:55 Kelly: Yes. Oh, vaccine has been around for a few decades by this point. It's not a brand new vaccine like we saw with like the COVID vaccine and all of that hubbub around it. The vaccine was already in use for decades and at this point in time was pretty standard for childhood vaccinations.

0:06:30 Thomas: I presume also in that that horrific borderline eugenics sounding quote where he said, one more is too many. He was referring to one more case of autism or one more, you know, measles, mumps, and rubella.

0:06:43 Kelly: Definitely not the measles, mumps and rubella part. So he talks a lot about autism and its relationship with gastrointestinal issues. Um, so he kind of this paper talks about like a combined disease that includes the two of them, which autism is associated with gastrointestinal issues. But I'm getting at is in that particular quote, it's not super clear which one he's talking about, because in general, he's talking about autism and gastrointestinal issues throughout the press conference.

0:07:13 Thomas: So he could have been saying like case of like diarrhea, too many, and I agree. You know what? I totally agree, but I feel like there's a lot better ways to, yeah, exactly.

0:07:18 Kelly: Yep. Well, you agree. So we should just stop vaccinating everyone now.

0:07:24 Thomas: No, there's a lot of sources of that.

0:07:27 Kelly: Take a step back and take a look at the study and see what it actually says about all of this. First, knowing what you know about those claims, I want you to imagine a study that would support the claims that he just made in the press conference. Think about what it might look like. Keeping in mind, he didn't flat out say, like, vaccines cause autism. He said he's concerned enough to recommend that we don't use this vaccine. Your minds, like, would a study look like that could demonstrate that? That

0:07:42 Thomas: Hmm.

0:07:55 Thomas: Right. Well, first off, as a fellow, you haver of ADHD, hopefully you'll excuse the fact that right now I can't get over something, which is who the fuck asked this guy? Like having a a press press conference like I mean, short of NASA discovering aliens, there's not a lot of like studies where a press confidence is like norm. Right? Right. I no like reason anyone prior, cause like, I've never heard of this guy from anything else. Was know, was there any reason he should have been listened to at this point or this, some idiot is just putting on a press conference. Cause I guess another reason I'm asking is if I put out a press conference right now that you you wouldn't know, like nobody cares. No, you don't like, was did people see this or was this just in his mom's Basement.

0:08:16 Kelly: And get deeper into the who the fuck asked this guy, because that is a fantastic question. Yeah. Yeah.

0:08:38 Kelly: So, People did. So the study was published, there was an anti-vaccine movement at the time, it was definitely way way way more fringe than it is now. Um, there were, were concerned once this study was published, um, people would get the wrong idea from it. Um, so the Royal Free Hospital, which was where he did the research, set up the press conference. It was him and four other doctors.

0:09:04 Thomas: Oh, is he from the UK? Oh, I forgot that. I didn't know these basics. Sorry.

0:09:06 Kelly: He is. Um. And he's a gastroenterologist. So he was in a good place to be doing a study about vaccines and gastrointestinal issues. Shoes.

0:09:10 Thomas: Okay. Gotcha.

0:09:15 Kelly: Like was a completely reasonable thing for him to have done. Study itself was not quite so reasonable.

0:09:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, We know. Yeah, but thanks for establishing, some of those things just are important to my brain because, so it's not like he individually was like a famous doctor, but he's like kind of taking advantage of a bit of a movement and a bit, probably, fear and energy around this issue, and so enough people were interested that, you he was able to kind to get some attention with this, it sounds like. Okay.

0:09:40 Kelly: Exactly.

0:09:40 Thomas: So back to your question, a study that would show that - now, you already told me that this, this vaccine's been in use for decades, so if we live in a different world and I'm just thinking like, okay, if this was a real - it'd be like, well, maybe there's something that showed, um, when we started doing it, maybe you couldn't tell there were consequences, you know, and maybe this is something that was a longitudinal study, if that's the right word, that actually looked at, like, Oh no, once you take this, then 10, 20 years down the road, people are starting to have these consequences that are so bad that they're actually worse than, like, you actually getting measles and mumps and all those things that I I'd don't even know exactly what those are because we have a fucking vaccine for them. So I would imagine it'd be something pretty be pretty comprehensive. I think it would have to include a lot of data, probably longitudinally, from a lot of time, a lot, a lot, sample size. Right.

0:10:03 Kelly: Yeah.

0:10:30 Kelly: Mean, that makes sense. You So were to title that study that you just described and designed for us, what would be a reasonable title for it?

0:10:37 Thomas: Don't title studies, so don''t I know if I could come up with that for anything, but I would say like, oh, concerning fucking term outcomes with the use of this vaccine. I don ''t know.

0:10:47 Kelly: Yeah, so it would say something about the type of study and that it's about vaccines and autism or developmental disorders. So this is the title of the actual study. I apologize for any mispronunciations because gastrointestinal stuff is not my area of expertise. But it is allele lymphoid nodular hyperplasia, nonspecific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. So all of those words that I may have mispronounced are are all related to gastrointestinal stuff. And then pervasive developmental disorder is related to autism. It used to be a separate diagnosis that was pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified, which was used as a diagnosis when a clearly had a developmental disorder but they weren't specifically classified as autism.

0:10:51 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. OK. All right.

0:11:34 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:11:35 Kelly: A lot going on with this. He also uses a other terms within the study. He talks about regressive autism and things like that, which I think would be maybe some great regressive autism, which

0:11:43 Thomas: Progressive autism. Oh, OK. OK. Wait, that's what's that? That also doesn't make sense.

0:11:49 Kelly: Question. Yeah. So this is a whole other rabbit hole. Autism, he talks about throughout the study, refers to a case where a child is supposedly developing normally and then regresses very suddenly. Originally.

0:12:03 Thomas: That actually is kind of the same as what, quote unquote, progressive autism would be, which is like, oh, when it started, he didn't have any of it. And then it just he got bit by something and it got worse and worse. So that's not real that I know of. So, it sounds kind of bullshitty.

0:12:11 Kelly: Yeah, yeah. So what I was able to find of it, it like, seems like it used to be a diagnosis that was used. There was also a diagnosis called child disintegrative disorder, which is used in the study as well, which has that same type of thing, like normal development and then a sudden regression. Although some sources say it's a type of autism, some say it's not related and that there are different causes for the two of them. It's no longer a diagnosis. Neither is pervasive developmental disorder. All of that has been folded into autism spectrum disorder in the DSM -5.

0:12:33 Thomas: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Learned more about how this shit works, it sounds like.

0:12:53 Kelly: I think these would be great questions for Dr. Stormy to go a little deeper on. I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole because I've got a lot of rabbit holes. Basically, the title of the study talked about all these gastrointestinal issues and developmental disorders and says nothing about vaccines at all. Doesn't seem like they're talking about it and looking just at the title, um, this, this beautiful study that you designed, how many children do you think you would need for a study like that?

0:12:57 Thomas: Sure. Oh, really? Huh. That's weird. Want to point out that I already, my brain can't even accept the premise that autism is like a bad outcome. So, I was already going down the road of like, well, maybe in 20 years, you know, your blood boiled or something. I don't know. I wasn't. And that. Matt, I don't even fucking, I got no idea. You if this were scientifically accurate, you would have to see a sample size. You know, I would say it's got to be fucking at least hundreds, if not thousands. I mean I know, you could do some cool stuff with stats, so the sample never has to be like as big as you think. But it's gotta be hundreds, like minimum, bare minimum. And it would have to develop a very strong link between having received this vaccine or not and diagnoses of autism, that's fundamentally is, would to make this claim that seems like what would have to be going on, right? Well,

0:13:41 Kelly: Yeah.

0:14:07 Kelly: But so that, that sounds like a good idea, but 12 is fine too, right? 12. Yeah. So this study that made him confident enough to say in a press conference that he was no longer comfortable with the MMR vaccine included 12 children. No, not even a little bit. Um, just looking at their abstract, which is the part of the study that most people read, and then stop.

0:14:12 Thomas: Wow.

0:14:25 Thomas: That's not enough, uh, -huh, yep. Yep. It's a safe space here, can we all admit that? Okay.

0:14:36 Kelly: Um, um, talked about their methodology, uh, children, uh, age of six years old were referred to the gastroenterology unit to Wakefield, um, a history of normal development, followed by loss of acquired skills, et cetera, et cetera, and gastrointestinal issues. Underwent gastroentestinal, neurological, and developmental assessments and through medical histories, and he goes into detail about all the different gastrontestinal tests that were run.

0:15:01 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:15:10 Kelly: Is their summary of their methodology in their abstract, which again says nothing about vaccines, so just reading this part you wouldn't even know that this study has anything to do with vaccines at all.

0:15:17 Thomas: Like at all. Well, not, not only that, I, I got to imagine the vaccination rate for this vaccine has got to be pretty high, right? Like at this time, you, right. I mean, isn't it required? Well, I don't know the UK, but like isn't this one of the required ones for public school usually?

0:15:37 Kelly: Definitely is in the U.S. It's typically required, I don't know about the laws in the UK, but their uptake was pretty high, I want to say it was around 90 at the time. The anti-vax movement was super fringe at the time.

0:15:49 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's unfortunately it's probably worse now, which is just so backwards, but, but got 12 kids with maybe some issues, you Well, I guess I'll grant the argument that they're having some whatever digestive something. And it. I mean, something with like vaccination, especially with this one vaccine, where the vast majority of the population has it. How did you even pick choosing that as a variable? Like, you know what I mean? Like there's of stuff going on that, you going to be a lot of other possible factors, even if we're granting that you discovered something's wrong with these 12 children.

0:15:54 Kelly: Yep. Yeah, you would think so. But the vaccine seems to be the only factor that they pulled out of the kids medical histories in the study.

0:16:31 Thomas: Oh, so they did pull it. Okay. Just not referencing it.

0:16:34 Kelly: Well did not say anything about it in the abstract at all. So when I first started looking into this, when I was working on my master's, I thought maybe this was just an unrelated study that they took out of context and used for anti -vax bullshit, because, you know, they pull out like single lines or single paragraphs from studies and tout it as you the be all and end all of research. Um, that's not actually the case. Um, the next section of their abstract, still in the abstract, is a summary of their findings that starts with this sentence: "Onset of behavioral symptoms was associated by the parents with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children, with measles infection in one child, and otitis in another." Media is chronic ear infections.

0:16:37 Thomas: Hmm. Okay, okay, okay.

0:17:23 Kelly: So eight children. Parents apparently claim it's the MMR vaccine. One of the kids says it's based on a measles injection. And for the other kid, it's chronic ear infection. So, again, that was the first sentence of the find. After the methodology summary that I just read you, that was their finding, how they summarized it. And so, again it's like starts as if it's not related to vaccines at all. And then it's just like, oh yeah, we found that this is related to vaccine, even though none of our methodology actually that.

0:17:55 Thomas: So, I'm confused. What's the thing about the ear infection? Was that listed as like another problem, or that was was that listed as a causal factor for whatever the thing they're saying is wrong is just

0:18:07 Kelly: Was listed as another causal factor. So So we'll get into it a little more in a bit. But basically, they pulled from either the medical history or the parents' claims that what their exposure was. So that's typically in the in their chart. It's listed as either MMR, measles infection or this otitis media ear infections.

0:18:19 Thomas: Saying, yeah, that

0:18:33 Kelly: It does.

0:18:32 Thomas: Feels like very unrelated things, yeah. Okay, it's either this vaccination, an ear infection, or if you stepped on a rake and it hit you in the face just right, like, I don't, what that does, how could all those all be doing the same thing? That seems seems odd.

0:18:49 Kelly: Up. A little deeper into the paper, the time that this study was conducted, the kids were aged like three to ten. This is years after they're vaccinated in most cases. But it included a review of medical records. So theoretically, they're able to get some accurate contemporary information. They started in section. So the methodology was pretty much what they talked about in that summary. The results section starts with the claim that all of the children showed satisfactory achievement of early milestones, except for one of them who had an issue with her aorta as a baby, but then it was repaired and she developed normally until her sudden regression.

0:19:08 Thomas: Okay.

0:19:31 Kelly: Become a little more important later as we talk about the actual story, but taking it at face value, that's what they're claiming about the kids. Eight of the kids, their parents or physician linked the start of their behavioral symptoms with MMR vaccine with an average interval from vaccination of 6 .3 days. So for eight of the kids these symptoms supposedly started either 1 to 14 days after vaccination with an an average of 6 .3 days? I'm

0:19:49 Thomas: Okay, and the symptoms are digestive crap or a regression in their entire, like, development, according to them. Also, how many days after the ear infection?

0:20:06 Kelly: Glad you asked because question. They have this whole chart in their results section that has each kid listed with their behavioral diagnosis, which is autism for just about all of them, or a question mark around a developmental disorder. It has their exposure identified by parents or doctor, interval from exposure to first behavioral symptom, and then the features associated with exposure. So the features associated are like these symptoms. From the way that they present it, you would think that these are the first symptoms or traits, I should say, of autism that you're seeing in this child.

0:20:51 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, it does seem like onset. I thought I heard the word onset used. Used did.

0:20:55 Kelly: Yeah. Just going to take a look at the very first entry in their table for child number one. Exposure is identified as this MMR vaccine. His symptoms started one week after and his symptoms were fever and delirium.

0:21:09 Thomas: I have gotten sick.

0:21:12 Kelly: Yeah, a child. And... Children get sick, as I'm sure you...

0:21:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. They're...

0:21:16 Kelly: ...know, from the last month. Yep.

0:21:17 Thomas: Never not sick. If it reported not a fever, it'd be a miracle. Like, this is, we need to call press conference. Yeah.

0:21:24 Kelly: And so some of these other symptoms were like rash and fever or...

0:21:28 Thomas: Okay. So normal kid stuff, got it. Within...

0:21:29 Kelly: Yeah. And some of them are listed as, uh, what we see as typical traits of autism. So, um, avoidance, and, uh, talk about disinterest or lack of play, um, talk about loss of speech.

0:21:42 Thomas: Six days you're...

0:21:43 Kelly: So of them are a week. Some of them are as long as a couple of months. But he included those eight that were within two weeks in that lovely average that he made. But when they talk about these onset of symptoms, the average that 6 .3 days for child one, it was the one week that went into the average, even though his behavioral symptoms might have started later or earlier.

0:21:43 Thomas: Like, like, okay.

0:22:07 Thomas: Oh, right.

0:22:08 Kelly: It as a 6 .3 day average of their behavioral symptoms coming into play, but be it just a fever.

0:22:15 Thomas: Oh, okay, so he's like, and this is obviously just the most dishonest fucking shit, like, unless you're completely incompetent, I don't know how you make this mistake, but if I understand it right, is it like, all right, what are all your symptoms that you had after this? And then the mom, who probably hates vaccines, is listing all these fucking things. Oh, fever, you know, started picking his nose, uh, can't, know How to Talk yet, no, just a bunch of bullshit, and then he's like, all right, when did that start, and they blended together all of that with like the lowest onset amount or something. Is that, oh...

0:22:35 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Just the shortest amount of time to the first symptom, whether it's related to autism or not.

0:22:47 Thomas: My god. This... Is awful, I... Mean, you could take 12 random kids and find fucking God knows what by using this criteria.

0:22:53 Kelly: Yep. 80 % of them have probably had a fever within the last week. Week. So child number nine was the one with the ear infections. Although he lists the exposure as ear infections, but then conveniently lists the date of that child's MMR vaccination as well, just in case, I guess. Symptom onset is listed as one week after his recurrent ear infections I'm not sure how that works because if they're recurrent, which one is at one week after and months after his MMR vaccine. The one week is what gets averaged in there because, again, he's not paying any attention to whether it's the ear infection or the MMR that he's doing that average with.

0:23:16 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:23:38 Thomas: I can't get over this ear infection thing. It might be that too. It might just be if you get some shit in your ear. What? I don't understand.

0:23:45 Kelly: Yeah. And one of the 12 kids. But again, he included that MMR.

0:23:48 Thomas: Oh, so is it because the sample size is so terrible that like anything they had is going to be statistically significant? This one also had an ear infection, so it could be that, too. Too.

0:24:00 Kelly: Basically. Then there's a bunch about like the gastrointestinal personal testing, which I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole because Wakefield himself didn't really seem to give much of a shit about it. Going with the whole taking it at face value approach, assuming that these results are perfectly recorded and pulled from the children's medical histories and do exactly what they say they do, let's go into the discussion section.

0:24:23 Thomas: Okay.

0:24:24 Kelly: It's formatted more like what we'd expect to see in an introduction. This is kind of where he gets into his lit review and stuff. Just want to skip to the concluding paragraph. They do mention in the discussion that they can't prove any kind of causal link because of the sample size. But they end it with, we in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction. In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps, and rubella immunization. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine.

0:24:24 Thomas: Oh, my God. This is so stupid. Wasn't there a single scientist at the press conference who was like, or no, wasn't there? A single human who's like, yeah, no, I know. We're all idiots who don't like vaccines, but like 12 kids. Really? Are you sure?

0:25:00 Kelly: Yep.

0:25:12 Kelly: Actually there were, the press conference, I didn't want to talk too much about this before I actually got into the Study, but basically they released this study and it gets some attention. So they have this press conference. And it's five doctors. They all talked about it beforehand to make sure that they were going to be consistent in their messaging and share that they recommended MMR vaccines and that this study does not show anything about a lack of safety or anything about The MMR Vaccines. So they all got together. They were all on the same page, including Wakefield. And then Wakefield went rogue during the study and started talking about how he didn't recommend amended anymore.

0:25:18 Thomas: Sure. Oh. Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Oh

0:25:50 Kelly: And he thinks you should get all the vaccines separately. Even taking the study at face value, it's basically a series of case studies and not set up in a way that could prove the things that they claim it proves, which nothing wrong with having a study of 12 kids as like a pilot or as a case study to explore some things. The issue comes when you're using it to make claims like this. They're making the claims in the study itself. Because It's we We often have the situation where they put out a small study, a kind of pilot study, and then the media takes it and runs with it.

0:26:20 Kelly: But the scientists were completely legitimate in how they laid it out and they were clear about their limitations in the study. But the media just didn't give a shit because of headlines. But this is not one of those cases like they heavily, heavily imply some things that their study does not show.

0:25:52 Thomas: My God. Yeah. Right. Yeah And you say they, it was Wakefield going rogue This

0:26:39 Kelly: Talking about in the studying itself. Itself, Wakefield was the lead researcher in the study. There were other researchers on it, but he was the leading investigator. But yes, also Wakefield going rogue in the press conference, same thing, making like these big claims that are not in any way supported. It

0:26:55 Thomas: Doesn't sound like good science, Kelly.

0:26:57 Kelly: Does not, but you know what, even matter because it's all bullshit. So investigative journalist named Brian Deer published an expose on Wakefield and this study in particular, and he uncovered a ton. I want to start with is the conflicts of interest, because anti-vaxxers seem to love conflicts of interests. Everyone's in the pocket of big pharma. We're all shills.

0:27:19 Thomas: Wakefield was actually being paid by mumps. Big mumps was like, fuck, we're having a hard time lately with this Hmm.

0:27:26 Kelly: So Honestly, close. Pretty, since conflicts of interested are so important to anti-vaxxers, it's weird that they never seem to discover that Wakefield had a bunch of them because was put on retainer two years before the study by a lawyer named Richard Barr, who was working on a class action lawsuit based on MMR vaccines and autism. Yeah. So seen different amounts, but anywhere from 55,000 pounds to 435,000 pounds.

0:27:48 Thomas: Okay Wow.

0:27:58 Thomas: Not nothing.

0:27:59 Kelly: So he was paid a bunch by this lawyer two years before that study was published. The lawyer needed a temporal link between autism and the vaccines to make his case and money for these families and himself. Yeah. Yeah. So a of quotes from Wakefield and the lawyer talking about kind of what they were looking for. In a newsletter that was going to his MMR clients and contacts, to Wakefield. He has deeply depressing views about the effect of vaccines on the nation's children. And if your child has suffered from all or any of these symptoms, could you please contact us and it may be appropriate to put you in touch with Dr. Wakefield and that's how he found his participants for this study.

0:28:42 Thomas: Okay Okay. I think it's amazing that he still only got 12. And

0:28:49 Kelly: Yep and the symptoms the that he listed that you know he said if your child has suffered from these symptoms contact us. Those symptoms included pain, weight loss, fever, and mouth ulcers. If your Child's ever had a fever you you might want to talk to Dr. Wakefield about it being because of MMR.

0:29:06 Thomas: Again, because fucking most kids get this vaccine, like, yeah, you're going to have a zillion of kids who have these symptoms because a lot of them have these systems at any given time. Was this conflict listed in this? Because usually you have to, well, no. Okay. Wow. Doesn't seem on the level, Kelly. Oh,

0:29:18 Kelly: Yep. It was not. But that's not all when it comes to conflicts of interest, because Wakefield also filed a patent for a measles vaccine eight months before the paper was published. When he was talking at the press conference about how he couldn't recommend the MMR with the three vaccines together, and he thinks you should get the single shots, was the one who stood to benefit from people choosing to get those single shots

0:29:36 Thomas: Wow. Okay. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. And that's interesting because that still would be a vaccine. And I feel like the movement he created, well, I don't know what he created. But the movement that really took off kind of as a result of this would probably not be cool with his vaccine either, I wouldn't think.

0:29:51 Kelly: Yeah.

0:30:05 Kelly: Don't worry, he's totally changed that now. Yeah. I know you were very worried about him not getting along with his anti -vax followers, but he's he not really attached to any of his principles, so no need to worry about it. Um, so Brian Dear talked about this conflict, conflicts of interest in the expose, but he also talked to the families that were involved in the studies.

0:30:07 Thomas: Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. Hmm.

0:30:26 Kelly: All bullshit too. Of it, basically.

0:30:27 Thomas: What's all bullshit? Just like the tiny amount of data he did have.

0:30:31 Kelly: Kids were never diagnosed with autism. Also, Deer found out that a bunch of the parents were were sent by the anti -vax group JABS, a UK anti -vax group. So that's, again, where they coming from, either from that lawyer, from this anti -vacc group, and that's how he got this reference. So you already have people who think that this vaccine is the cause of their child's condition. And that's How the participants were selected.

0:30:40 Thomas: Hmm.

0:30:56 Thomas: Think what I'm stuck on is like I almost would have guessed that the data was legitimate just because it's already so pathetic. You you're going to fabricate a study or lie about your data, like you have could done a lot better.

0:31:08 Kelly: You'd make it better. Yeah, so we talked about how that average interval from vaccination to symptoms was 6.3 days, and it was already pretty bullshit based on like what they wrote about it, even taking it at face value, but it's even more bullshit, and the only way that it could possibly be not a lie is if his average included negative numbers for all the kids whose symptoms actually started before they they were vaccinated. Uh, of all, literal P hacking, when 6.3 average was of eight kids, apparently there was a version of the paper that was circulated earlier, and it reported that nine of the 12 families had had symptoms start within 56 days.

0:31:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:49 Kelly: Um, then Then another version talked about kind the range for all of the families. But he decided that 56 days wasn't small enough and didn't quite show the temporal link that they were looking for for this lawsuit. He settled on doing the average for eight out of the 12 kids so that he could get that maximum symptom interval of 12 days.

0:31:57 Thomas: Again, just at this point, just make it up. Like, come on. I actually feel insulted by this. Do a better job.

0:32:13 Kelly: Right. I mean, So kind of did make some of it up, so, um, the looking at just a couple of examples, child number five, um, his symptom onset is listed as two months after his MMR vaccine. Uh, Brian Dear looked into the medical records and talked to the family, and his parents actually had developmental concerns five months before MMR. Child number eight was the one he talked about in in the methodology who was showing symptoms early, but then she had her aorta repaired and she was totally fine. And then she got her MMR, and then bam, all the symptoms are back. But says that she lost her developmental skills, including language. When they talked to her doctors, she only had two or three words pre -MMR. They make it seem like she had all of these language skills and they were gone. But there weren't a ton of language skills to start with.

0:32:47 Thomas: Yeah, okay.

0:33:04 Kelly: So I don't want to go through all the kids one by one, but it's a lot more of that type of thing.

0:33:08 Thomas: It wouldn't be that hard. It's 12 fucking kids. I

0:33:11 Kelly: Right. But I think child number four really shows Wakefield's motives underneath it because child number 4's developmental concerns started at 18 months. Want to guess when he got his MMR vaccine?

0:33:26 Thomas: Know when he was five.

0:33:28 Kelly: Close, 4. in the paper, it's reported that he got His single measles vaccine at 15 months. Developmental concerns started at 18 months. In the paper, I'm going to quote it directly. Measles vaccine at 15 months followed by slowing in development, dramatic deterioration in behavior immediately after MMR at four to five years.

0:33:50 Thomas: So, so the initial scout, of the one vaccine, like, got in there early, you know, infiltrated, and then there they were, sleeper agents, that vaccine, and then finally when the, when the big boy came, that's when all this stuff happened. I was gonna say, yeah, it was a single shot.

0:34:02 Kelly: Yeah, but that measles vaccine is the one that Wakefield has a patent for. I Yeah. That's I not the specific one that he had the patent for, but THAT'S what he's trying to convey is that that measles by itself, not a big deal. It calls it a slowing in development. Mild. And then dramatic deterioration after MMR.

0:34:21 Thomas: So by his So by his logic, if we buy his patented Andrew Wakefield vaccine, we'll just get a slowing of development.

0:34:30 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, just a little bit of autism.

0:34:33 Thomas: That is, oh my God. Okay.

0:34:35 Kelly: May be wondering why these cases are so different from the actual story. Could be he just made shit up. It could mean that he just didn't know what he was doing. It could also be the family's misremembered. But Brian Deer also found out that Wakefield was calling the families before they went in to get their medical histories for the studies.

0:34:50 Thomas: Hmm. Priming the pump a little bit.

0:34:54 Kelly: We don't have records of what they said on the calls, but yeah, that would what I would suspect.

0:35:01 Thomas: Interesting. A lot of these measures are pretty subjective. I mean, I know from, you know, having kids, like lot OF this stuff is someone talks to you and asks you like, okay, do you think your you does this the normal amount or, you Know, more or less than the other kids or, you know, stuff like that. So if you're already priming that, you know, that's going to be really easy to manipulate.

0:35:02 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and it's so tough because with symptoms like these, there's so much confirmation bias because they be so vague or hard to see, so unless you're specifically looking for them, you're not necessarily going to notice them. And when you tell parents that the MMR vaccine might be an issue, then as soon as their kid gets the M MR vaccine, they're suddenly going to be looking for these symptoms. And if their kid already has autism, they might find it.

0:35:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:44 Thomas: This is already hard enough. Like, I just want to say, I'm sure people listening have an indication of kind of how I am. I very much do not want to give any false impressions in anything like this. Am Like one of those people, you Know, like where the question is worded. So that's like an an all or nothing question, but I'm like, oh shit. But what about if it's like 10 % and the doctor's like, sorry, it's all or Nothing. I'm Like, God damn it. I don't know. Fucking how do I answer that? If you're wanting an all -or -nothing and I'm saying it's Like, yeah, some of the time it's I agonize over that stuff. And as a parent who, I'm a pretty smart guy and I really want to make sure I'm getting accurate care for my kids. Like even, I really struggled with some of these things to not feel like I was messing up in the questions.

0:36:26 Kelly: Yeah.

0:36:27 Thomas: So like in under the best best of circumstances, it's not a perfect system. You know, like kids are weird. So sometimes they may be going through a phase, you know, and you're like, ah, should I answer this? He's only been doing that for like a week. And honestly, he might just stop doing that next week. You never know. And so like, it'S already hard enough, let alone if you're priming and you know the confirmation bias involved.

0:36:47 Kelly: Looking back to that term of regressive autism, some of the studies that they've done since that diagnosis regularly have found that while the initial claim was regressive, of autism was this rare form of autism where a student lost skills, when they actually studied kids before they were initially diagnosed. So basically what they did was they took kids who were siblings of autistic kids, so they were more likely to to have autism because there is a genetic component to it. They studied those kids and found out that this regression was was actually way way common in autism than they initially realized, but it's just, you don't necessarily see it things like language can be really easy to track, because you might be keeping track of the words that your kid is using, but when you're looking at things like play skills or social skills, it's so vague that regression might take place at some point and you might not notice it.

0:37:42 Thomas: Hmm. Is it really regression though? Like, cause as someone who's kind of looked at some of this stuff for my kids, um, is a concern of like, well, it looks like it might be fine now but you can keep an eye on it, and it's possible that your kid might develop slower or maybe this they'll kind of stay where they are, and in which case years down the road it will look like, oh wait, actually there is the deficit here, that's one of of the, you know, specific conversation I had, but I don't know about a regression. Like why would you, yeah.

0:38:11 Kelly: Yeah, well, and I think regression the has a lot of connotation with it. Kind of looks at where their skills are. And it's not necessarily this like steep decline, but it might just be a kid stops making progress in this skill or a kid stops using this language they were using. But

0:38:33 Thomas: Really though. Okay. That's interesting. I didn't, I didn't know.

0:38:35 Kelly: Stops language entirely, but just might be more reserved. There are so many things that might count as regression, but the way that the paper makes it seem is that they have all these skills and all the skills are suddenly gone. When

0:38:39 Thomas: Hmm. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Okay, yeah, they were reading Shakespeare and then the next day they're like, I don't, you can't say anything because of this vaccine.

0:38:55 Kelly: Exactly. Whereas regression might be like, oh, they didn't practice this skill for a while. So you might need to reteach it to them or something like that.

0:39:01 Thomas: Okay gotcha. Yeah they They could tie their shoe and then they kind of forgot. Actually, okay, yeah, no, that makes sense. I've actually had this problem with a few things with my kids, just in normal everyday kid stuff, you know, not a medical context, but like, yeah. There are things that you're like, oh, taught you that. That looks good. And they do it for a few days and then they just stop doing it. And then they can't do it. And you're, like, goddammit, I thought we solved that.

0:39:06 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Oh, as a teacher with ADHD, I see it all the time because we'll, have a teacher from a student's previous class tell me about something they do. We practice it a little bit at the beginning of the year. And then I kind of forget about it a little bit and we go back to it and we need to kind necessarily relearn it, but work on it a little bit more because we we didn't maintain that practice.

0:39:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not going to be a teacher. I feel like I'd be really bad at that. Note to self, stick to podcasting. Okay.

0:39:51 Kelly: Sent me down quite a bit of rabbit holes because I also wanted to kind of see where Wakefield was at now.

0:39:59 Thomas: Oh, are we done with the, the with part that's like all the bullshit of the study? So, long story short, uh, even a little bit long, there's almost no fucking part of any of that that was legitimate science in any way, just

0:40:09 Kelly: Yeah. That's why they retracted it. Study was published in The Lancet. The Lancets retracted and Wakefield lost his medical license.

0:40:16 Thomas: Yeah. The Lancet's a real thing? How did it even get get published to begin with

0:40:19 Kelly: It's a real thing. Is a fantastic question. Really able to find much on that. I found some people talking about it afterwards saying like the study shouldn't really have been published or the study should have been, you revised to not make the claims that it made or things like that. Yeah, I have no idea how it was initially published.

0:40:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:39 Thomas: Who knows.

0:40:39 Kelly: Sounds insane.

0:40:40 Thomas: Maybe. Just, and it also might be, yeah, like some of the ways they played a little fast and loose with the claims, like not emphasizing certain stuff in the study itself, but then emphasizing it in the press thing, you know, like that might be a way they kind of snuck it in under false pretenses. Who knows. Okay, yeah.

0:40:55 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. And they definitely kind hinted at some things without outright saying them in the study itself. They, you threw in their disclaimer that this doesn't show a causal link between MMR and autism because we don't have enough data for that. But then they go on to imply some kind of link.

0:41:12 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:41:12 Kelly: So they're kind of squirmy about it. But I went down some rabbit holes because I was like, oh, let's take a look at where Wakefield is at now, because I knew he was still active in the anti-vax movement. Um, I didn't quite know what his message was at this point because, like you said earlier, he was initially advocating for getting the single vaccine instead of the three. Combined. And that does not really jive with what we know of the modern anti-vax movement, that is not okay with any of the vaccines. Uh, absolutely did. So he moved to Texas. He's by Andy now, probably, because anytime you Google his name it just comes up with all of this shit. I watched an interview with him and Steve Kirsch, another anti-vaxxer, and he says that he changed to being a filmmaker, as if he had a choice in the matter.

0:41:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like he must have switched his grift by this point.

0:42:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:42:02 Kelly: Um, if you know, he, he was, was going to keep doctoring and researching.

0:42:04 Thomas: He voluntarily turned in his medical license. See. You He actually, no, it. They let you exchange it for a director's license. A filmmaker's degree.

0:42:10 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, so he went on to make films like Vaxxed, Vaxxxed 2, a that I watched this weekend called Infertility, A Diabolical Agenda. Like I said, I went down a lot of rabbit holes.

0:42:20 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, God. Wow. Love it. This is is opening a whole level of seriously awful movies, Kelly. This is a lot of candidates for that.

0:42:38 Kelly: They were rough. I watched an interview with Steve Kirsch that he did, and Steve Kirsch is an anti-vaxxer, um, was in, if anybody knows of it, um, was an anti vax movie last year called "Died Suddenly," where, yeah, They were talking to coroners about all of these claims

0:42:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think Gam did that. Yeah, that was terrible. Wow.

0:42:58 Kelly: They did, um, I watched that one too, um,

0:43:01 Thomas: Oh why? You didn't have to. I hope you didn't watch those on my account, but now it sounds like we definitely need to do some seriously awful movie.

0:43:08 Kelly: No, I watched that one back last year. Um, then recommended it to Gam, um, the interview with Steve Kirsch, Steve Kirsch asked him, if you were forced to get one vaccine, which which vaccine would you get, implying that, like, there's no vaccine you actually want, but, if you had to get one, which is like not going to murder you the most.

0:43:09 Thomas: Oh Oh okay. Okay. I gotcha. Nice. Oh there you go.

0:43:28 Thomas: Yeah if If the circumstances of your fucking custody agreement with your kids is that you have to give them one vaccine because, you that's why your partner left you, then, you know, which one would you get or something? I can't imagine the real life scenario in which this question matters, but okay.

0:43:40 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. And he said it would get the mumps vaccine because of some bullshit about him already having mumps and it's not that good a vaccine anyway and whatever. But his answer was super telling of his shift because initially he was like, Hey, hey, get this single measles vaccine. And by the way, I have a patent for it. But now he's just like, nope, no vaccines. We're done.

0:43:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:06 Thomas: I mean, obviously, the obvious grift path that you would take in that situation. Yeah.

0:44:11 Kelly: And he's riding the grift hard. He was part of the Reawaken America tour all the asshole right-wing anti -vaxxers around and talking about COVID vaccines.

0:44:22 Thomas: Didn't actually hear that much from him, but based on this, I would have figured like that would be a person who would have been pretty key to the anti anti COVID vax movement. I don't, I recall unless it's just, you know, again, anecdotal, but I DONT recall hearing much about him. Is it that he's so discredited that like they pick other other spokespeople now, you know, maybe, I don't know.

0:44:43 Kelly: He's still part of The Movement. He's definitely Not the leading voice of the moment or anything, thing but they portray him as like this champion of um, and honesty in the face of big pharma and

0:44:45 Thomas: Oh, cause the woke took away his fucking medical degree, didn't they? Or his medical license.

0:44:57 Kelly: Yup. Exactly. He was canceled, and so now he's a hero.

0:45:01 Thomas: Yeah. Oh yeah. I remember when we had a meeting to do that. That That Was was, satisfying. I'm glad that we woke did that by actual doctors though.

0:45:05 Kelly: Yeah. Thing is, there that actually was a meeting to cancel him by the medical board, taking away his medical license with actual reasons. I

0:45:15 Thomas: Yeah, right. Right. It sounds like he's a real you know of like, he'll be at the conventions. He's a name that probably among anti -vaxxers, he's a little bit of a celebrity, but I feel like he's not, I think his credibility is pretty shot mainstream because I, I just feel like I would have heard, you know, cause I followed a decent amount of these idiots who were doing the, anti -COVID vax thing. And I think he's too toxic even for for them, for the most part.

0:45:43 Kelly: Because it's pretty easy to point to the study being retracted, his medical license being stripped. Like it's not a hard debunking to do. Um, the current anti-vax movement has again still incorporated him. He's still this you know, hero of truth -telling.

0:45:45 Thomas: Yeah, it's real bad. Sure. Yeah. He's a crowd pleaser, but

0:45:58 Kelly: Yeah, and he still made vax like which was a super harmful anti-vax propaganda movie he made with Del Bigtree. So he still is active in the movement. Um, he's not the person they point to when they're talking about COVID vaccines, yes.

0:45:58 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah? True? That's a good point. Yeah Yeah. Another component of that could be that I feel like a lot of the anti -COVID vac stuff was people who, sadly, people who before this weren't crazy, like was a lot of people who you have known better did know better, but they've been so radicalized. And the reason I say that is I bet those people probably had already identified that like, all right, Andy Rickfield is kind of an idiot from way back in the day. And so I imagine among that cohort he wouldn't be super credible unless they totally rewrite history, you know.

But I will say, as as an observer of grift, I think, think Andy, Andy Wakefield, if I can call you Andy I have to call you now, yeah, Andy, um, think he's doing the right stuff. Honestly, he's a good, if I had a grift rating, just like, you know, it's evil, but like, taking it at its own face, you have to pivot to the, you know, yeah, the woke took away my medical license because that's just a free ticket now. Like, it's the easiest thing in the world to say. So, you know,

0:46:52 Kelly: It's Andy now yeah Yep.

0:47:11 Thomas: He's, he's, he's on the grift scale, doing a good job.

0:47:13 Kelly: Now he's doing all the interviews and making all the movies. I haven't seen him talk about the COVID vaccine and autism. Um, think a lot of the talking points now are vaccine safety and big pharma and the government's covering up information. Like Vax talked about a CDC whistleblower who showed that the CDC was, was covering up all this data that they had that that was related to vaccines and autism. But he's definitely kind of leaning more into the, the conspiracy mindset of it now.

0:47:16 Thomas: He think that the COVID vaccine causes autism or did he pivot to the same, you know, like the other?

0:47:33 Thomas: Sure.

0:47:46 Thomas: Yeah. Now you know we mentioned last episode lydia did that we are doing a new thing for our patrons at patreon.com/seriouspod And that is we're posting ahead of time kind of what conversations we're doing and seeing if anyone has any questions. And of this course, we can't guarantee that any given guest has an answer to all the questions, you know, but it's It's a great, like, to get the conversation going and see what people are interested in.

And I think we have time for, maybe you one or two here. Someone, Dr. Clark had an interesting point and a question about the stigma here. And I think that's something we absolutely have to mention here. The idea that autism is a thing that should be looked at even as like, oh man, this vaccine causes this horrible thing is totally insulting to the many, many autistic people that I'm friends with and know are listeners to this show. So that's important to be said.

And you are a special education teacher. And Dr. Clark asks, what kinds of things do parents of neurotypical children say when When they find out you are a special education teacher, because, you their perception, there's a big stigma there.

0:47:46 Kelly: Yes.

0:48:51 Kelly: They say the same thing every time. Say, oh, you're such a special person. Like, oh, it takes a special person to do the job that you do. And I seethe with anger every time, and depending on how comfortable I am with the person, will adjust my response. But it's a really frustrating response because as a teacher, like class is different and like Teaching, teaching special ed is different, but it's not necessarily harder or easier. You're still teaching, is just all about connections with kids. It's just different ways that you're building those connections. And I personally don't think I could teach a class full of neurotypical children at this point. I don't want to be anywhere near gen ed. I don't have 30 kids in my class. It's just, it's a different skill set.

And, and it's really frustrating to get that response because I think it's really hard, for I teach students with severe and multiple disabilities. For a lot of my students, communication is a huge barrier, and also access is a big barrier, huge barrier, because of issues like transportation and things like that.

So my students don't get a ton of social interaction, but when they do, it's again with that attitude that people like talk about you, educators with, is like, oh, you're such a sweet person for doing that, as if like this is some community service you're doing, and they're not just actual students. So, really frustrating, and you see people like Wakefield's leaning into those stigmas.

You saw it with Vax, it would show this alleged connection between, between vaccines and autism, but they'd also show parents of autistic kids talking about how it ruined this child's life or

0:49:07 Thomas: Hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:50:30 Kelly: It changed their child, and it's not their child anymore. And it just, it contributes so much to the stigma that leads to people not viewing these kids as actual people.

0:50:41 Thomas: Let me just go ahead and say this is casting judgment among other parents is typically something people shy away from. But I will say if you were one of those parents, you fucking suck as a parent. Sorry. Sorry, apologies. But if you look at your beautiful child and you're like, they're not, you using enough words. So I don't like them now. Like that's such a like way to look at it. Let You me tell you, as a parent, you knows, it's an interesting area. Like I had a lot of conflicting feelings when we had, you evaluated. I talked about it on Dear Old Dads.

Like it is an interesting thing because, you there's a huge conversation there. We don't have to get into it now, you Know, but it put in terms of like different deficits. Like that that is the way that they are evaluated, that your kids evaluated. And, you know, you don't really want your kid to have a deficit in anything, like it's, it's a balancing act of like, I also know that I love Arlo so much, he is such a kind, amazing, fun kid, and whatever it is, it doesn't change that at all. Like, it is just like, okay, some kids may need extra help in certain areas, you know, so

0:51:02 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:51:46 Kelly: And might excel in others.

0:51:47 Thomas: Or or not, like it's fine if you know, like that's another thing that I think Eli, uh, to get Dear Old Dads lot, which I think is important, um, I'm misremembering, or it's me, I don't know, but like the idea that like then you get into the like the fucking Rain Man paradigm of autism. It's like, yeah, you might have a kid who has different needs and doesn't fucking count cards at a casino, like, you know, it doesn't, have they don't have to have some superpower to be, be valued as a human, you know, like so getting in a weird thing there too, yeah.

0:51:49 Kelly: Yeah yeah. Yeah at and within like ADHD, you see a lot of the, oh, ADHD is my superpower. And like, I, don't love that interpretation of it. Also, like with that kind of portrayal, in fact, I also wonder, I a teacher, I do not really meet a lot parents like that. I do I cannot think of any families who look at their child's disability that way. And I wonder how much of it was just the shitty filmmaking and wakefield and the other filmmakers going out of their way and you know selectively editing to to create this portrayal when it's not actually the parents attitudes

0:52:21 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:52:32 Thomas: No. That's good. Yeah.

0:52:50 Thomas: And I want to leave a lot of space. Look, parenting is fucking hard, it's really hard, and I wanna leave space, like, maybe a parent's initial reaction to something could be bad because they don't know any better, they haven't had the experience, maybe they react badly. And And then maybe they see the reality of it and they learn and they're like, oh, this is still my kid, this is fine, you know, I could see people, you know, hard being a parent. It like sometimes, especially for moms, by the way, but even for dads too, like it feels like you have to get everything right 100% of the time, all the time. Because if someone happens to be watching in the moment, you get something wrong. Just It can look so much worse than it really is. So I do want to leave space for like people to learn and grow on this, you you know, and maybe people, I,

0:52:50 Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

0:53:34 Thomas: You know I'm sure I haven't had the best reactions at all times and you know it's hard.

0:53:38 Kelly: That's also what the anti-vaxxers feed on is that like fear that you're going to do the wrong thing. And it's kind of this, this difference between like that active and passive risk. Parents don't want to do the wrong thing, they don't want to be the cause of some issue for their kid, whether they think the vaccine is going to cause autism, or with the COVID vaccines, they think it's going to cause myocarditis or all these things. But they don't wanna be the one responsible for that, so they choose to do nothing, because doing nothing feels like they are not hurting their child, even if their child gets way more hurt because they got measles or they got COVID. Benefit, if you look at it, is a no-brainer, but when you're actually a parent and having to make this decision, it feels like you're doing a lot more when you're choosing to get your kid vaccinated versus choosing to do nothing. Yeah.

0:53:40 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Mm -hmm.

0:54:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Kelly Burke, thank you so much. I know we barely scratched the surface. I'm sure everybody, you know, like this is also something that I know a lot of listeners are very passionate about. So apologies if we didn't get to each and every nuance that I'm sure many of you were, but there's always another day and there's only so much time for a given recording. But I will say, thank you so much for taking us through that. I truly did not know what level of bullshit that was. And it turns out it's like level 57 million of bullshit. It's like 10 bullshit, you know, like degrees that it's bullshit. And thanks for taking me through that, that.

0:54:43 Kelly: Yeah.

0:55:00 Kelly: Thank you, and there's a lot of rabbit holes we could go down here, um, if there's any others that you want to explore, just let me know and I will dive in there and watch all the anti-vax movies. I

0:55:09 Thomas: I definitely think that that could be a really fun thing to do. So we'll have to see what our Seriously Awful Movie schedule is this month. There anything you want to plug or point people to? I always give people that opportunity at the end of the show here.

0:55:22 Kelly: Don't really have anything personal to plug, but I do do the social media for the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. If you're interested in these topics, this is also a great resource. So go follow them on social media. And it's secretly me behind the scenes. Not

0:55:37 Thomas: I imagine several people have heard of that show who listen. Awesome. Thank you so much. And yeah, hopefully we'll see you again soon sometime. Where

0:55:48 Kelly: Thank you.