RFK Jr. Is Practically Running a Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Almost No One Is Talking About It

Transcript

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

0:00:00 Jenessa: When the U .S. switched to a recommendation of a birth dose, we went from 20,000 cases a year to 20 cases a year. We basically eliminated this disease in children.

0:00:17 Jenessa: Since we started doing this in the 90s, it's prevented over 90,000 infant deaths. This is just obviously the right thing to do. There's no like big concern about side of it. It's fine. It's fine. Just do it.

0:00:39 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1227. I'm Thomas Smith and got a, I'm sure you can tell by the title, really important one today. This is something that Jenessa is bringing to us that is just not being talked about enough and we just absolutely need to be blowing the whistle on this one. And I'm really looking forward to getting the word out. Oh, and Jenessa wanted me to add that there is a special election in New York on February 3rd with the voter registration deadline being the 24th. So coming up in just under a week, Jenessa always wants to use her time on here to shout out voting and election related stuff, and I'm happy to do it. So anyone in New York, February 3rd is that special election. The registration deadline, if you want to get registered, is the 24th. All right, well, we're going to take a quick break, which you can avoid at patreon .com slash law, and then we're gonna get into it with Jenessa. Really important stuff. So stay with us, and we'll be back after this.

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0:01:38 Thomas: Jenessa, how are you doing?

0:01:39 Jenessa: I am doing good because we haven't started talking about this terrible topic yet.

0:01:43 Thomas: Oh great well what is this terrible

0:01:47 Jenessa: So what would you say these have in common? Tuskegee, Alabama, the CDC, the

0:01:52 Thomas: Topic here we go racism done I can just say if it's any american things I just say the racism and I win the game

0:01:56 Jenessa: University of Southern Denmark, and the West African country of Guinea-Bissau.

0:02:07 Thomas: Easy racism I know oh

0:02:09 Jenessa: Yeah, nothing until about last week. Unfortunately, all of a sudden, these are all connected.

0:02:15 Thomas: Interesting okay well I'm in

0:02:18 Jenessa: We're going to start in Tuskegee, Alabama and work our way up to to the modern day when colonialism and racism continues to reign supreme in medical history. The CDC, RFK Jr. has just announced, oh, we're going to fund a new vaccine study. Hooray, like we needed that. And a lot of people have been raising red flags about the ethics of this. The breaking exclusive I want to bring you, I don't see anybody raising the issue of how the the hell is this legal?

0:02:33 Thomas: Suspense oh great oh great yeah

0:02:50 Jenessa: I certainly want to talk about the history and the ethics issues. It's extremely important. I am seeing more news sources picking this up. But I also definitely want to talk about our laws around the ethics of research. It is not just a moral issue. It is a legal issue that we do research ethically. And I am very curious how they are going to manage to do this study at all.

0:02:48 Thomas: Oh okay oh

0:03:21 Jenessa: It'll be fun.

0:03:22 Thomas: Interesting interesting okay I'm always curious to hear if we're finally going to get to the bottom of whether or not vaccines cause autism you know are we finally finally going gonna get to the bottom of that we'll see I think I think it's just that they haven't tried the right study in the right place the right time with the right people doing it they just haven't done

0:03:40 Jenessa: Yeah. People are probably familiar to some degree that like we have laws about the ethics of human subjects research.

0:03:49 Thomas: It start start with the basic, okay, you know laws, those exist sometimes,

0:03:58 Jenessa: I want to tell you about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment as our sort of jumping off point for why we have these. Are you familiar with that?

0:04:03 Thomas: Oof, oh yeah, no, that's not great,

0:04:08 Jenessa: Yeah. Something that often gets left off of this because the title of it is usually like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. It was run by the Tuskegee Institute and the U .S. Public Health Service. Our government did this. Like, this was not random private corporation. 1932, 600 black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, they were offered, join this study, you'll get free medical treatment, free meals, and a free burial when you die. You just have to agree to an autopsy. Sounds like a good trade-off.

0:04:42 Thomas: Is that in the sales point? I are instantly, sorry, free burial when I die, is that, is that imminent? Like, is dat, I guess, a different time, maybe.

0:04:47 Jenessa: Oh yeah, that was part of the offering. They were all being treated for bad blood, which was like a local term that could mean syphilis or anemia or fatigue. Like they weren't, you know, they all knew they weren't feeling great.

0:05:04 Thomas: So they They weren't doing well. Okay. Gotcha.

0:05:04 Jenessa: Yes, these were people who were not doing so hot. You could call like self -diagnosis of the local terminology. Bad blood, something ain't right. It's the 30s. 399 of them will be diagnosed with syphilis and not told that. This is kind of in the time of paternalistic medicine where like if you got diagnosed with something that was like incurable and gonna kill you they'd be like why tell them? Let them live their life.

0:05:34 Jenessa: Today we would obviously be like you have to tell people things that you know about their medical history. So when this starts, this study, there is kind of a cure. It's an arsenic based treatment. The side effects are really rough. A lot of people take it and die from the treatment. Like there's not like a widespread way to cure syphilis that's like widely available. You know, it had to be stored really carefully or else if it was exposed to oxygen. It would degrade. Most people, if you get syphilis, you're kind of screwed.

0:06:09 Jenessa: And then in 1943, penicillin is like the well -established treatment for syphilis. It was invented or discovered before that. But by 1943, this is effective, widely available. This is what you do for syphilis. It's a cure. It's miracle. And they will not offer it to them. Everyone is going to be purposely purposely not treated so that we can do an autopsy and see what your brain looks like with tertiary syphilis.

0:06:40 Jenessa: Not great. They don't know they have it and they are not offered a treatment. If they knew they had it, they might go elsewhere for a treatment because there's a treatment now. This went on until 1972.

0:06:51 Thomas: What?

0:06:53 Jenessa: Yeah. A journalist for the Associated Press, Gene Heller, broke the story and that ended the experiment immediately.

0:07:01 Thomas: Wow. Okay. I didn't, I don't think I knew that part. Holy shit.

0:07:05 Jenessa: Yeah, so that's 40 years this went on, where almost 400 people were untreated for a disease that had a safe and effective treatment on purpose.

0:07:18 Thomas: That's unreal.

0:07:19 Jenessa: So not great. When it came out in that story, the Health and Human Services Secretary directed the U .S. Public Health Service to start treating everyone. They created a fund to make sure that everybody got the medical treatment they needed. In 1997, there was a formal presidential apology for it from Bill Clinton. There was a class action lawsuit over this that resulted in an out -of -court settlement for $10 million.

0:07:51 Thomas: Per person, right? Per, no.

0:07:53 Jenessa: No, total. If it was only for the people who were untreated, that's $25,000 for those 400 people. That doesn't feel sufficient to me.

0:08:07 Thomas: Not good.

0:08:08 Jenessa: Yeah. The good news that comes out of this, is a huge motivating factor for the development of institutional review boards and some actual rules around this. The National Research Act gets signed into law by Nixon in 1974. So really quick, this gets reported in 72. There are hearings about this, and there's a ton of back and forth, and we get a law out. If anybody wants to read the unbelievable tedium of every little piece of this, it's 45 CFR 46, Protection of Human Subjects. That's where it falls in our regulations. It does a lot of things. It basically says the vast majority of research with humans as participants are going to have to go through this process where there's an institutional review board made up of independent independent individuals, people with no financial stake, no personal stake. It will usually have to include community members. So it's not just like other scientists who are like, oh, yes, great idea. Somebody who's going to say, you know, I don't think this has the value that you guys think it does, you bunch of nerds. It Will Require Informed Consent. There are pages and pages defining what what informed consent actually means and what that really looks like. Pretty much anything that involves humans. There'll be exemptions for things like, you know, if you just conducted like a little survey where you ask some totally innocuous questions, it's not going to hurt anybody. That kind of thing is exempted automatically, basically. So, you send out a survey to patrons about like, what do you like about this? What do you not like about that? You're not like violating something because you didn't get an IRB.

0:10:03 Jenessa: As soon as it is medical, personally sensitive information, certainly anything that could, you know, if somebody discloses something that like could show they're guilty of a crime, like that you solicited information that could reasonably have anticipated to go that way.

0:10:21 Thomas: I hope this is like what Matt said with some of the immigration stuff is like kind of silly because it's been written in law for like a hundred years. So they'll be like, are you a member of Adolf Hitler's cabinet? You know, like they actually still ask questions that are literally it's something like that. I think they should do just in case you can't be too careful now. Hey, are You going to not cure a bunch of black men of an easily curable disease that will ruin their probably kill them and like ruin a bunch of lives just have to ask and a standard on the form. It's it. Yes, there is a reason I have to asked this.

0:10:57 Thomas: It's not just out of nowhere. Yeah. Oh, God. Awful.

0:10:54 Jenessa: You'd be

0:11:02 Thomas: I really didn't remember that it went on for that long. As much as like, obviously, I think people listening are in general more educated than the average American about American racism. Even still, there's like, oh, shit. OK, that's still for adjusted, you know, even adjusted expectations. Expectations, you're like, oof, boy, still flew right under those expectations. Did not even come close. Wow. Okay. That's awful.

0:11:01 Jenessa: Surprised yeah yeah yeah I know it feels like it almost fits my 30s expectations like 40s is Nazis right right?

0:11:33 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:33 Jenessa: So like, we were also doing Nazi shit. 70s?

0:11:38 Thomas: Yeah, once again, famously, Adolf Hitler was like, America, I like a lot of what they're doing, but some of it is too racist. Some of it as a little too racist for Hitler, as we covered in a recent OA.

0:11:50 Jenessa: That's how he felt about our immigration policy. I wonder how he might feel about this. A lot of our IRB stuff came out of the Nuremberg trials, looking at Nazi experiments. And yeah, I was just following orders. You know, I was juste trying to learn how the human body works. And it's like, all right, did you have to to do that? I don't think that was what was required to learn this.

0:12:15 Thomas: Right now, hopefully those people were executed, and

0:12:16 Jenessa: You know, I don'T actually know. I think a lot of them were. Yeah, the

0:12:17 Thomas: And a lot of them were, they had no chill back in those Nuremberg trials. And you know what I get? I'm, I'm anti -death penalty, but I understand in some situations, I at least understand not having any chill being like, nope, don't believe you hang him.

0:12:31 Jenessa: Chill had left the room at that point, pretty understandably. There isn't really like an international law that I could find very easily of like, this is the rule that, you know, every UN country has to follow this or whatever. Whatever the nuremberg code it is like for sure if you're not following that basic ethic of human subjects research there's some serious shame on there it's what a lot of countries used when they wrote their own laws about what exactly they had to do it's a great place to start of course I tried to find if there was like any un laws and naturally the first thing I come across is an article complaining about the fact that when the UN funds research, they have rules about how they will do research,

0:12:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Fair. Right. Hmm. Hmm.

0:13:21 Jenessa: And they are accused of not following it. So, like, the UN fund's the World Health Organization, and THEY have ethics rules and they follow them very well, according to this article, but other UN organizations may not be following, like the UN version of IRBs. So there's complaints out there about that but in terms of like a treaty that most UN countries have signed that like we're all gonna do this I couldn't really find that but it does seem most countries have pretty similar things especially like western countries that are doing the same kinds of academic research there tends to be very similar types of things the U .S. we have the National Act and these institutional review boards. Critically, the way ours is written, if it is done on U .S. soil, or if the U. S. government does it, or If the U S. Government funds it, you have to follow the IRB rules, period.

0:14:29 Jenessa: You don't get away with, oh, it's somebody doing it overseas, or, well, we didn't do the research, we just funded the research. It doesn't matter. Matter. All of these laws are going to apply no matter what. So when the CDC says we're going to fund a study on something, we have to follow the rules.

0:14:48 Thomas: Seems good.

0:14:49 Jenessa: Yeah, that seems like a loophole you'd want to close, right?

0:14:52 Thomas: Yep. Yep.

0:14:52 Jenessa: There's a lot of things that say like department heads, which of course would include HHS as a department and RFK Jr. as the head of all heads at this department, that they they could like sometimes waive certain things. But when you go track that down, it's always going to come back to as long as they do it consistent with the Belmont report, which is a report that was used to create the National Research Act. It was all about ethics problems and research. As long as it's still consistent, you know, if they didn't use an official IRB, that they used a process that was consistent with IRB. There's some equivalent was present. So it's never just like, ah, you can just screw it. You can buy fiat, decide we're skipping IRBs.

0:15:40 Jenessa: So if you go read this language, you might see things can be waived, but like don't let that deceive you into thinking you're allowed to just skip it .You do have to do this stuff. Sometimes there's alternatives. For example, let's say we're working with an international university. You can say, okay, you're going to establish an IRB here. You can go through one of ours. Or if you have an equivalent process in your country, you just have to promise us you're following that process and you have to prove to us that that process is equivalent.

0:16:15 Jenessa: As long as your process is as stringent as ours or better, it's fine for us to let you use your IRB. What you can't do is say, well, this country has lower standards for treating their own citizens, citizens so screw it we'll just go do terrible stuff over there no not allowed one of the critical things we're going to get that is like the real meat of what it's going to require when the IRB assembles and you say I want to do this experiment what are the things they have to consider obviously there's a ton about informed consent for the participant but then even if you give them informed consent you can't just do whatever right one consideration here risks to to subjects, are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits, if any, to subjects and the importance of the knowledge that may be reasonably expected to result. In evaluating risks and benefits, the IRB should consider only those risks and benefits that may result from the research, as distinguished from risks and benefits of therapy, subjects would receive even if not participating in the the research. So that would be like, if you're in a clinical trial and your control group is going to get the old school treatment and your new group, your experimental group will get a new treatment, you can't say, well, one benefit to participants is they're going to get, you know, the control group will gets the standard treatment. And you're like, they would have gotten that anyway, even if they weren't in your study. That's not a benefit, right?

0:17:50 Thomas: Hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with the health care system being what it is, is that true?

0:17:58 Jenessa: I suppose if you you were offering it for free.

0:18:01 Thomas: Like people who can't afford it? Yeah.

0:18:03 Jenessa: That actually goes right into another section. Selection of subjects is equitable. This is a requirement you have to think about. In making this assessment, the IRB should take into account the purpose of the research and the setting in which the research will be conducted. The IRB should be particularly cognizant of the special problems of research research that involves a category of subjects who are vulnerable to coercion or undue influence, such as children, prisoners, individuals with impaired decision-making capacity, or economically or educationally disadvantaged persons. This is something we talk about a lot, that there is an amount of money you could pay a participant that is inappropriate. No matter how demanding your study is and you're like, God, I really want to pay them well for participating, there's a certain amount of money that's like informed consent has, consent is gone. Like, can they really say no if saying no means they can't pay their rent?

0:19:09 Thomas: Right.

0:19:09 Jenessa: It gets hairy. When some or all of the subjects are likely to be these vulnerable or coerced groups, including economically disadvantaged, there have to be additional safeguards to protect their rights and welfare. One of the ways you can do that is just like once they start the study, you're just going to pay out in full even if they back out. That's a good way to do it. If they withdraw consent, there can never be a punishment for that.

0:19:35 Jenessa: Certainly, you can set it up so like, hey, you know what? We'll bite the bullet on like somebody could hypothetically sign up for this and then 20 minutes later drop out and I got to pay you two grand. But I can't risk that somebody feels like they can't drop out of my study because they need the money. I don't feel good about that.

0:19:52 Thomas: Well, shoot, this one weird trick. I'm gonna go make a killing on signing up for and dropping out of medical studies.

0:20:00 Jenessa: It just requires a lot of balancing. And people really are doing this behind the scenes. The researchers are thinking carefully about this. We write our IRB applications explaining how we've thought about this, if it is like a really big study or a study that has vulnerable populations. And then the IRB thinks very carefully about this and sometimes comes back with like, you're going to have to do this a different way. This just, this isn't right. This is too much.

0:20:28 Jenessa: And it can be a back and forth process like that. You're not just like accepted or rejected. They can ask, hey, if you just change it like this, that'll be okay. That'll be enough.

0:20:37 Thomas: So basically, the woke left won't let you even experiment on humans anymore. Pretty much can't do anything fun.

0:20:41 Jenessa: Off yeah we you know stopped that whole lying to everybody about everything thing and withholding medical treatments and well we thought we did god so I mean this has been working pretty well there's expedited review you know my research I could almost always get through an expedited review where I was like yeah I'm gonna have people come in for like half an hour and they're gonna going to fill out a couple of questionnaires and they're going to like stare at a screen and press some buttons. I'm not going to ask them anything sensitive. And they're like, boop, rubber stamp, you're good. Like I'm, I'm nicht doing anything that's bugging anybody. I had one that had to go for a longer review because I had people walk around a maze with a blindfold on and I was like, here's all the safety measures I put in place.

0:21:25 Thomas: And she was just doing that for shits everybody just so you know that was completely for her own purposes had no scientific value

0:21:29 Jenessa: Yeah. You know, whatever. Yeah, I stapled them pool noodles on all the corners so that nobody could like bonk their head. You Know, did what what I had to do to make it a safe experience for college freshmen. Most of what they see is going to be a bunch of stuff like I'm doing that's just like, it's not hurting anybody. It's fine. And then you get the medical stuff and the medical staff's a big deal. It has been working. It's not a huge barrier. It is actually a great learning experience for students to have them go through the process because they actually have to draft up everything they are planning to do. Obviously, you have to get this approval before you ever recruit a participant or collect any data.

0:22:10 Thomas: Whatsoever yeah and long story short I've heard based on talking to you about different stuff this is a huge deal this is not a casual thing fortunately uh among the improvements that we've sort of made that we'll see if it sticks around in society is maybe don't experiment on humans unethically and they uh they got pretty pretty uptight about it you know I got pretty uh pretty I was gonna say they're like they're almost like nazis about it that's the wrong way they're nazis about not experimenting on

0:22:37 Jenessa: Little bit, little bit. Nazis about not being Nazis.

0:22:43 Thomas: Humans yeah I'm kind of a Nazi about not being Nazis just the thing

0:22:50 Jenessa: Tolerance paradox or whatever. Yeah, they do not mess around about this. I mean, I would have lost my job if I ever collected data and then like, whoopsie, I forgot. That's not, it's not a joke. If you go past Psych 101 and you are even talking about becoming a psych major, you're going to take a class that is all about all the horrible things we've ever done and why this is so important and then teaches you how to write IRB approvals. Because you may, as an undergrad, you may have to write one if you want to do like a thesis. You do not mess around with this. It's so extremely deeply serious. It will ruin your career if you ever did something without approval. Yes, yes, absolutely.

0:23:35 Thomas: And it should

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0:23:42 Jenessa: Lots of terrible, sad stories in the past. We have this new thing it's not perfect it's not like it's made all research perfectly wonderfully ethical but it's I think doing a very good job certainly your average person doing research is stopping to take a breath and think before they do things which is probably for most people that's probably all it takes to stop you from doing something unethical is just a little self reflection but we have all these rules in place skip to the modern day you

0:24:14 Thomas: Yeah I always love that part of the story where we talk about how we used to have things that were kind of good relatively speaking and then uh skip to today okay here we

0:24:19 Jenessa: Know hepatitis B. What a joy. A virus that attacks your liver. If you catch it as an adult, there's about a 5 % chance you'll get a chronic infection. I actually didn't know this. I thought you just always got it forever, but it turns out for adults, you can just get an acute infection and then get better. Hooray. For kids, if you get infected as an infant, there's about a 95 % chance of developing chronic infection. You're going to have this.

0:24:40 Thomas: Go

0:24:59 Jenessa: 90 % of them will get cirrhosis or liver cancer. If you catch it between the ages of one and five, there is a 25 % chance of liver cirrhoses or liver cancers. Like it's really, really bad if you got it as a baby. It's not like good to get it as an adult, but it's really bad if you get it as a baby. The vaccine is nearly 100 % effective. So when the U .S. switched to a recommendation of a birth dose, we went from 20 ,000 cases a year to 20 cases a years.

0:24:58 Thomas: Wow yeah wow

0:25:30 Jenessa: We basically eliminated this disease in children. Typically, we say it's A is transmitted through food and water and B is sex and C is blood, but that's like really really oversimplifying yeah yeah so that's it gets gross um gross this is kind of exactly the problem like you're joking but like no absolutely that's the issue um with b the virus is present in blood saliva vaginal fluids and semen so obviously sexually transmitted but also like you know oh iv drugs all right I'm not worried about my infant doing IV drugs but it's infectious on surfaces for up to a week think about how easily like blood or saliva could a little bit gets on something if one infected child is around other infected children like sharing

0:25:44 Thomas: Some people have sex that involves all three of those things so it's the hepatitis factory lots of other random ways yeah

0:26:29 Jenessa: A toothbrush sharing nail clippers or earrings these are methods of close household contact now think about the fact that in the u .s kids under five go to daycare and they are in close household hold contact with a ton of other children all the time you need other children to not have this freaking disease so like trump will tell you he literally said that it's sexually transmitted so just wait till they're developed like when they're 12

0:26:59 Thomas: Sorry he really said wait until they're 12 like to have sex with them that's what that sounded like oh oh okay wait wait until the, ah, I wasn't sure it's Trump. I don't know. Would that be crazy? He hit on an eight -year -old the other day. Is that, I mean, come on.

0:27:03 Jenessa: I swear to God no well he wasn't saying that he said wait to give them the vaccine well no I mean he's not he's really not beating the allegations with this one he literally said why are you giving it the vaccine to a baby who's not developed so

0:27:32 Thomas: I know we were talking about it, it got transmitted through sex and you said, wait until they're developed, like when they're 12. And I just, I'm going to say, I don't think it was insane of me to be worried. That's That's all. That's what I'm saying.

0:27:46 Jenessa: Gross he's like well it's sexually transmitted why would you give it to a 12 year old sir yeah

0:27:54 Thomas: I wasn't that far off of what I said. So yeah, that's crazy. This thing is interesting. I know a little bit about this because we covered the hearings for RFK Jr. And I got to say, a big I was wrong was like, I thought that RFK Jr. wouldn't get confirmed because he was too crazy. Oh, sorry. Because he was is too crazy. And we talked about the Republican. This to give you an indication of how bad this disease is and how effective this vaccine is.

0:28:24 Thomas: It's so effective that there's a Republican who has stuck to his guns in terms of like defending it. Now, did that, what's that guy's name again? I can't remember. Bill something.

0:28:24 Jenessa: Bill

0:28:36 Thomas: Bill Cassidy. Did that make that Republican vote no on RFK? No, because we don't live in a world where anyone can do anything like that. But at at least he didn't change his view because of MAGA. He didn't go like, well, I'm a doctor. I guess I'll undo all my doctor knowledge. He, he, he was pretty vocal about it and he thought he gained assurances from RFK Jr., which that was stupid of him to think, but he at least tried to gain assuriances from RFJ Jr. that they wouldn't do anything on vaccines without, you know, running it by the committee and all that kind of stuff. So like, that's how effective this is and good vaccine is, is there's a there's a Republican who still defends it. Like, that's how good it is.

0:28:35 Jenessa: Cassidy yeah this is completely not debated in the medical community that this is a good idea he keeps trying to point to like there's some other countries that are like you know industrialized like doing great countries that don't recommend it at birth denmark for example and let me tell you why first of all the entire country has a population of wyoming and they track everybody's medical records in a like national singular database so it's real easy to track a person got infected contact everybody who's been around them and let's address it they also have a year of paid maternity and paternity leave so kid can be home with mom and dad they're not in a crowded daycare and they have freaking socialized medicine they don't have to worry about like like, oh, I got sick. I can't afford treatment. I might avoid going to the doctor until it's too late. They just go to the Doctor when they're sick. So it's easier for them to address things. They can have somebody come into the maternity ward and give birth and get tested and find out they have Hep B and then get the baby back for a vaccine. Whereas we are like, this might be the last time I see you, we're just going to give your baby everything we can give them right now.

0:30:42 Jenessa: Because if your test comes back positive for Hep B and I call you to say you have to come in, your baby needs either the vaccine or the treatment right away. And you tell me you can't afford another doctor's appointment because you live in the United States where that costs money. Like, what am I supposed to do now? It's a different country. Like, these are apples and oranges. You cannot compare them. But RFK Jr. will be like, well, not everybody does it at birth. All right, well not everybody does all kinds of stuff. It's not an argument. It is a really good idea in the U .S. Again, we went from 20 ,000 cases a year to 20 cases a years. Since we started doing this in the 90s, it has prevented over 90 ,000 infant deaths. This is just obviously the right thing to do. There is no big concern about side effects. It s fine. It S fine. Just do it.

0:31:35 Jenessa: Who are you hurting? Why Why would you not want to be vaccinated?

0:31:38 Thomas: that'S pretty much entirely upside. And these people are dangerous idiots. It's so frustrating.

0:31:45 Jenessa: On the one hand, we've got him saying that and we've got the ACIP. It's like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, I think. He stocked it full of his favorite people and they all decided they're going to say, oh, you don't have to get it. You know, we're goingto switch to the model of like shared decision making with your doctor, which normally when they do that for a vaccine, they've done that like four times ever in the history of U .S. vaccination policy. And when they doing that, they put out like really detailed guidance about like, okay, when you have the conversation with your patient doctor, here's what you're going to do. You're going ask him about this and this. You're gonna tell him this. They didn't do any of that. They did the same thing with the COVID vaccine. They were like, talk to your doctor. That's our recommendation. It's just like the most useless crap on earth.

0:32:41 Jenessa: They have not yet put in anything that should change your insurance coverage. So like if you want it, you should still be in the position where it's going to be covered. I don't trust any of these people if they're telling me, oh, don't worry, don't worry, we're not going to do that. Like, sure, sure you won't. But for now, that change in recommendation probably just means more people are going to not get it because their doctor is being told you should have some the conversation they're already gonna have but they're not gonna say the magic words like this is the default recommendation for every single person so annoying whatever in other countries it is endemic it is a huge problem problem where tons of people have the disease. In a country like Guinea -Bissau, for example, we had this program GAVI. I don't actually know what it stands for. I couldn't find it anywhere, but it was G -A -V -I. The U .S. was funding this program where we were helping to vaccinate people for all kinds of different diseases in that country. That country is among the lowest GDP per capita and human development index in the world, a place where colonization and the slave trade really wrecked that country. They got their independence in 1974. And like, you know, they're working their way up. They're doing better. But it's still a place that is really struggling economically, really struggling with human development. About 18% of adults have hepatitis B. About 11.2% of toddlers in Guinea-Bissau have hepatitis C. So they're really really struggling with this. They've been trying to get the vaccine to all babies at birth. That's a goal in 2027 for their government. Right now, the recommendation is to get it by the six-week mark. About 17% of infants are getting it at birth, which is obviously what you would want every infant to get in a place where you don't have great access to modern health care, and 18 % of adults have it.

0:34:54 Thomas: Again, there'S just no downside, right?

0:34:56 Jenessa: Yes.

0:34:57 Thomas: What is the downside? And realistically, I know there'S sometimes there'S a tiny chance of some sort of tiny minuscule vaccine related injury sometimes with these things. But like, really, like, what is it? Is it literally just like the poke? You know, like what's the actual downside?

0:35:08 Jenessa: The vast majority of people will have like either no side effect or like redness and soreness at the injection site. A lot of the times these things that are supposedly vaccine side effects, I'm sure we've talked about like the VAERS database, submit, I got in a car accident two weeks later and like we can't stop you from submitting that. I don't think the car accident was caused by the vaccine, but go ahead and write it down. Sometimes people get a fever liver some infants have febrile seizures so that could happen it's extremely rare and and even if that happens like that is not necessarily the worst thing in the world and like dying of measles is pretty freaking bad like getting liver cancer at a 90 percent chance of liver cirrhosis or cancer answer if you get it as an

0:35:30 Thomas: Right. Yeah. It's just self -reported stuff. Okay. That doesn't sound good. But how often are we talking? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's really bad.

0:36:13 Jenessa: Infant I can't think of much worse you know

0:36:17 Thomas: We had so much dialogue back and forth about how do we deal. And this has been a long time. It's been, I don't know, at least that I've been aware of it at least 15 years or something of like, how do we deal with anti -vax people? And obviously, it's gotten from just a very niche problem to what it is now. And I don't know the numbers on how much more your average person is anti -vax, but I do know that the people in control of the effing government now are insanely anti -vax. What's the answer I get that the answer previously is like well we have to like be really understanding of the fact that they don't trust the medical system I'm getting to the point where it's like I that didn't work so can we just try yelling at them now can we try yelling I don't know I just feel like that'll help me it'll help you get better and and like it seems like nothing's working against these idiots so I donno that sounds once again to compare it to the the great science of vaccines it sounds like all upside and no downside for me yeah

0:37:15 Jenessa: Yeah I mean one of the things that's been the most effective is the school requirements do you feel like homeschooling your child most people will tell you no and eliminating as many frivolous exemptions as possible like make it difficult to not do this because I'm sorry it's It's not something that just affects you. It affects all the kids around you. It's a huge freaking problem. This is about to get so much worse. I'm sorry. This Gavi group, we were funding them. This helped to get 1 .2 billion children around the world vaccinated. Kennedy pulled their funding. Based on some research, there was a 2018 study by a Danish married couple, Peter Abbey and and Christine Stabel, they work at the University of Southern Denmark, but they have, it seems like it's some kind of like satellite office in Guinea -Bissau, the Bandom Health Project. They put out a study in 2018 saying that the DTP, diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, oh, when you guys were giving that vaccine in Guinea Bissau it killed some young girls and And Kennedy was like, well, there you go. Can't be doing this. This is bad. That same group put out a study in 2022 saying, actually, it didn't. We reanalyzed the data. Apparently, we're just going to ignore that because we just cherry pick everything. This couple, their science is terrible. They are looking for non -specific effects of vaccines. They think that positive or negative. Negative it's not just whether it prevents the virus or not whether it has side effects or not but that there's like a more general thing going on oh did it it was a measles vaccine but also some people who got it were less likely to get this other disease isn't that so interesting and it's like well yeah it is because there's no mechanistic reason that should happen that's really weird then you did another study the next year that didn't find it so somebody did a a statistical breakdown and they were like, hey, so out of 25 studies you did, we only looked at the ones that you pre -registered. And because you pre registered it, we knew what your hypothesis was going in. One of those studies found the thing you were looking for, which is consistent with random chance.

0:39:48 Jenessa: And of the studies where you found a thousand four hundred tests that you did And you came up with about 215 nonspecific effects of vaccines across all these studies. Even if you're not great at mental arithmetic, you might be spotting that that kind of looks like chance. When they did a correction for multiple comparisons, the fact that you are just looking for everything, there's basically like one thing survived multiple comparisons. This is chance. This is random chance crap that they're finding.

0:40:29 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:40:29 Thomas: So this is a married couple that just wants to ruin medical science and and misinform people about vaccines is that just do I have that right okay cool charming fantastic

0:40:40 Jenessa: A white couple from Denmark in a West African country

0:40:44 Thomas: They're not sending us their

0:40:44 Jenessa: Doing this. No, they publish this. Kennedy says, ha ha, this is what a great reason to stop funding the organization that, among other vaccines, would have, for free, given hep B vaccines to people in Guinea -Bissau. Instead, what we just announced last week is we're going to fund that Danish couple to do a placebo -controlled study of the Hep B vaccine in Guinea -Bissau.

0:41:08 Thomas: Best oh my god freaking idiots god I can't stand

0:41:18 Jenessa: We're going to let them give some of the kids the Hep A vaccine and some of them a placebo and not tell them which one they got.

0:41:26 Thomas: It that's not good is that allowed

0:41:28 Jenessa: Okay. If it were a brand new vaccine, there's sort of this myth that we've never done placebo -controlled studies of vaccines. That's not true.

0:41:36 Thomas: Oh you know why there's a myth they just say that constantly like a religion like a mantra they just just

0:41:42 Jenessa: I know. If anybody has a memory span span of like two goddamn years, you would remember that we did this during COVID. We had vaccine trials and people got placebos and other people got the vaccine. And then what you do, because it's a goddamn emergency, is as soon as it's clear, the vaccine is working. So we have either no treatment or the vaccine, oh my God, it works. You call everybody who got a placebo because now Now other people are getting the vaccine, like just regular old getting medical treatment. You call them and you say, hi, you got a placebo. Go get the shot. You know how very early there were like only certain people qualify?

0:41:52 Thomas: Constantly yep mm-hmm yep I remember that

0:42:27 Jenessa: So like most people couldn't get the vaccine yet, but it was like early approval. I know somebody who was a doctor who said, hey, I was in the trial and now I could go get the real shot. I'm qualified to get it. Did I get the shot? And they were like, we will unblind your file. You did get the shot in the trial. There's no need for you to go get the show. You're good. So because you were in like now it is ethically not right to keep you blind because it's time to get vaccinated for real.

0:42:48 Thomas: Huh it's interesting mm

0:43:02 Jenessa: The same thing happened with the Ebola vaccine. There was a huge outbreak in West Africa. Somebody was like, I think I have a vaccine. They started testing it. And so early on, it became so clear, this vaccine is extremely effective.

0:43:02 Thomas: -hm yeah Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

0:43:17 Jenessa: People are dying everywhere. Cancel the trial, Cole. Everyone who got a placebo, everyone's getting it. Like, it would not be ethical to keep giving people a placebo in the middle of an epidemic that is killing people, obviously. Like, yeah. Yeah.

0:43:32 Thomas: Yep. I think you can say obviously. Yeah, sure.

0:43:36 Jenessa: So when we very first try the very first vaccine for a disease, we do do placebo -controlled trials because you have to know if it works. It would also not be ethical to be selling people medications that might not work. Or like, what if there are side effects? How would we know? We do test it. First of all, as soon as it's clear that it works, depending on the severity of the, you know, if there's a big epidemic going on or whatever, we will eventually, we have to unblind this and actually give people the thing because it's life -saving. When we have a working vaccine for a disease and then there's a new vaccine that they're like we think this one's more effective or safer or whatever what they do is it's no longer placebo controlled you do the old treatment against the new treatment the old vaccine against the new vaccine so you don't withhold vaccines when you could give it you just test the new one right And think the same way. If we had a new cancer drug, we wouldn't be like, well, these people got no cancer treatment. You would check if it was better than the standard cancer treatment, because who cares if it's better than no treatment at all? It should be better than the old treatment. So here's the thing. It is ethical to do a placebo -controlled trial if we We have no other treatment. We have done placebo -controlled trials of this exact vaccine. We know it's effective. We know the side effects are like little to none. It's well -established. It's worth it, especially in a country where the disease is endemic and the risks are very high and healthcare access is low. There is literally no value to this.

0:45:29 Thomas: Well, but have you considered that we've never done a placebo controlled trial of any vaccine though? Just counterpoint. I wasn't listening to anything you said. Hi, I'm in charge of our entire healthcare system.

0:45:40 Jenessa: Right. Yeah, that's the only way you get here.

0:45:45 Jenessa: Okay, this is what's going to be even worse. It's not double -blind, it's single -blind. They're not going to tell the parent whether or not the kid got the vaccine, but the researchers are going to know. So just rubber-stamp whatever bias you want on top of this data. Write down whatever you're feeling today. They don't even have in here what they're going to look for they're still just looking at this overall health effects these non -specific effects they're not looking for efficacy they're not looking for side effects they're not testing whether you should give it on day one or day three or day five they just want to see what happens you You know, just checking, we're just gonna see what happens to these black babies as a bunch of white researchers

0:46:29 Thomas: To be fair, we've never done a placebo controlled trial of a vaccine, though. If you ever listen to these people, that's all it is. It's saying the same thing, the same wrong debunked thing over and over and over and despite having been debunked over and over. That's all it is. And you know what the other thing is, is RFK will be the first one to admit he's wrong. That's the other thing. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm wrong whenever I decide I've been wrong, which is never.

0:46:32 Jenessa: I just almost spit my drink over the whole desk. He said that so many times. Yeah, this is the most colonizer bullshit I've ever heard in my life. You could not get away with this in the U.S. You're gonna just take a bunch of U.K. babies and like, I guess if you got a bunch parents who were willing to not vaccinate their kid, but that's not random, is it?

0:47:19 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:47:20 Jenessa: That's not blind.

0:47:21 Thomas: We're outsourcing our unethical medical tests to awesome.

0:47:26 Jenessa: Danish researchers in an African country. Yeah.

0:47:30 Thomas: That seems super cool.

0:47:31 Jenessa: Now, critically, it is our money going to it. We still have to file the IRB. There are really special rules when it's children in particular. So like already, we had that whole rule, right? You have to have these risks to subjects are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits, if any, the importance of the knowledge that may be reasonably expected to result. What is the knowledge? They haven't even said what they're testing. They have not said what they're going to look for. Selection of subjects is equitable. Taking into consideration the coercion or undue influence of economically disadvantaged people. This vaccine, like in the U.S. without insurance, I checked like the U.K. if you for some reason weren't covered. This ranges from like 50 to 150 dollars for this shot. So like you're withholding something that if we kept funding Gavi, they could have gotten this for free. We would have funded it.

0:48:29 Jenessa: But we pulled funding from that on the basis of what these Danish researchers said. And now these same Danish researchers are going to withhold it from half their participants. To check for what?

0:48:29 Thomas: For nothing.

0:48:42 Jenessa: To what benefit?

0:48:44 Thomas: God, it's infuriating. So it's harming people. It's violating medical ethics because an idiot won't admit he's wrong. Right? Pretty much.

0:48:52 Jenessa: Yeah, pretty much. When the HHS funds research that kids are involved in, if you you find more than minimal risk, which minimal risk is specifically defined as like, you can get expedited or like no review. A minimal risk study is anything I'm going to do is no more dangerous than what you encounter in your day -to -day life.

0:49:14 Jenessa: Like I'm gonna ask you to walk down the street, people walk down the Street all the time.

0:49:17 Thomas: Right. Right. You can't go nuts and be like, well, there's a danger that, you know, you could get hit by a car. It's like, Well, okay, how much is that normally, it's got to at least be within that normal limit.

0:49:27 Jenessa: Something you wouldn't have done unless I asked you to do it, right? If it's anything more than minimum risk and involves a a child, it has to be an intervention or procedure that holds out the prospect of direct benefit for the individual subject or by a monitoring procedure that is likely to contribute to the subject's well -being. Are we checking that box here?

0:49:52 Thomas: This seems like the opposite of that. This is endangering kids, right?

0:49:56 Jenessa: Yeah, because their parent thinks they might have gotten the vaccine, but they're not sure. What if a charity shows up and offers it to them? Yeah.

0:50:02 Thomas: And regardless, some of them aren't getting it, right.

0:50:06 Jenessa: Yeah, again, if this was a brand new vaccine, you would say, that's true, but we do have to know if it works. And so we're balancing these different interests. And as soon as we know it works, we will get it to them. But we do know that it works and all the money that you're spending to keep data collection going, you're going to like go into these like rural areas and try to keep contact with people and keep them coming back so you can measure whether they're having having symptoms. You could spend all that money to just vaccinate all of them. That's also an option.

0:50:40 Thomas: Yeah, that'd be good.

0:50:41 Jenessa: That would be great. After going through all of this, Lydia put in a FOIA request for us. I want to know what the IRB did here. Did the Danish university approve this? I believe the Danish government would have had to approve this because it's a health study. I tried to stop myself too much from reading Danish laws because I couldn't find official translations and I don't speak Danish. But from what I could find, I'm pretty sure they have a very similar IRB -like system in their universities. But if it's a health thing, it would have had to go through their government. So did we approve it with an IRB? Did their government approve it? Did both of those have to happen? Did we rely on their government? Did RFK Jr. say your government doing it is fine. Who approved this? Who's the board? When did they sit down? What were their findings? Who said this was okay? I want to know, and I wantto know what they said.

0:51:44 Jenessa: Also, there was no competitive process. This was allegedly an unsolicited request for funding, and there was no comparable request, so they didn't have to do a competitive process where you let other people say, well, I wanto do a similar study, and here's why you should give the money to me. So we requested the communications.

0:52:03 Thomas: Hell yeah.

0:52:04 Jenessa: I would love to know whether this was truly unsolicited by a guy who cited them before as justification for cutting funding. God knows how long it'll take him to get back to us about that, but I struggle to imagine an IRB full of conscientious people sat down and said, this is a great idea.

0:52:25 Thomas: Yeah. So you're saying it's like you're not even sure how this would would have happened because it's not like the irb is like trump people now right or am I

0:52:34 Jenessa: Well, if you work at the CDC, for example, For example, they have an IRB at the CDC that you would go to, but it's made up of like not your boss. It's a board of people you would go to. But there's also an IRP at like every university. There's not like the IRB.

0:52:40 Thomas: Wrong oh okay okay yeah sure sure fair

0:52:56 Jenessa: Allegedly, there must have been, right? A board of of people who were assembled for the purpose of approving this. These documents have to exist. A bunch of parts of the IRB law, specifically the National Research Act, specifically when our government funds something, this should be in the National Register or alternatively documented in like blah, blah, bla, different ways. Somebody wrote it down if they did it.

0:53:14 Thomas: Enough

0:53:26 Jenessa: And also somebody somebody wrote down how this was not solicited. It should be the first communication came from the researchers and not the other way around.

0:53:25 Thomas: Yeah I know I know this is it's essentially a cliche at this point but what are the consequences of any or how would they happen or who could you know

0:53:43 Jenessa: Oh boy. Okay. So if it was like me, if I did this, I would lose my job. I don't know if there's actually criminal consequences here. As soon as something you did wasn't an approved medical study, like now you're just assaulting people, Like now you just stabbed a guy. That wasn't an injection. That was a stabbing. But if you are the funder and you chose to fund something like knowingly you didn't do the IRB, are we going to hit the level of like RFK Jr. is a political appointee and the only option is impeachment? Probably. Yeah, I don't think there is inherently like a criminal penalty in here.

0:54:26 Thomas: So I guess I'm I'm not entirely clear are you thinking that they bypassed something or are you thinking that they corruptly okay that that whatever irb board we're talking about corruptly ok'd something do you have do we have we just not have any idea and that's why we're uh foying those assholes mm

0:54:43 Jenessa: Pretty much. I think there's quite a few possibilities. So one is R .K. Jr.'s a goddamn idiot and he doesn't know any of this. He doesn't know these are the rules. And so he just rubber stamped something and he fired everybody who knows these are the rules and nobody did anything. And it's going to be news to them that the National Research Act exists. That's always a possibility. It's possible that in the same way that he has stacked the ACIP and he's being sued for that and being told he needs to redo that entire committee and undo every decision they've ever made, that lawsuit's going to take forever, but that's happening. It'S possible he assembled a board of himself and his best buddies to approve it because he doesn't know it has to be an independent board and it hasto include community members. ItS possible the things that would be like not technically illegal but really annoying could be well we took the assurance from the danish government that this was okay and they have been approving to let this danish couple keep doing this shit in guinea -bissau for a

0:54:58 Thomas: Yep mm -hum okay ah right

0:55:50 Jenessa: Decade so the u .s does not have a monopoly on racism and we're just apparently yes so that's possible that we just said they have an equivalent process to us and we took their assurance that they did it. But that should still mean that we will get the documents from Denmark because they can't just pinky swear. They have to send us the documentation. And I believe when it's specifically not just that we okayed it or that it happened on U .S. soil, but that we funded it with our tax dollars, I think they have an obligation to to actually do an IRB. So that might not work.

0:55:55 Thomas: If other countries jumped off a bridge would you? Yeah. Yeah

0:56:31 Jenessa: There's lots of pathways that are legally allowed to approve a study. So it's not 100 % clear to me what we will get back and whether that will be legal. But also, I just want to know who the hell said this was okay. People are in an absolute uproar. Every human subjects researcher, every doctor, every medical association is like, like, what are you doing? There's no possible reason, like the benefit of this. Why not do it in Denmark? Denmark does not recommend it at birth for all of their kids. So just do a study there where you randomly assign some of them to get it at birth. Why do you have to go to this country where they're not getting it at birth because they're broke?

0:57:23 Jenessa: Yeah, I'll let you know what comes out of the FOIA. I'm very excited about that.

0:57:21 Thomas: Big difference well it's interesting that you said people are going nuts about it because like I was just about to say I haven't heard about this but I imagine you know it depends on the uh you know is this in the science circles kind of

0:57:33 Jenessa: Yeah, it's yes. So it started really niche. I literally heard it. The complaints from one doctor on social media who complains a lot about RFK Jr. And then finally, the New York State Department of Health actually put out a statement about how unethical they believe this to be and that, you know, we still recommend every New Yorker get this frickin vaccine, please. And now I'm starting to see, I'll post a ton of links for everybody. Science Magazine put out a piece about it. The Guardian put out a really good piece about It.

0:57:46 Thomas: Thing wow I think what you're saying is that I don't read well well yeah well then there's so much like there's always so much happening at all times yeah

0:58:12 Jenessa: Well, no, no. It's just it's taken so much time. Like some of these articles. Yes, yes.

0:58:20 Thomas: But that's yeah it's truly disturbing

0:58:21 Jenessa: Yeah, it is. It is. And it's really is just like colonial bullshit to be of all the places you could do this. It just reeks of like, we don't care if If these black babies die, why not do it in Denmark then? If it's not worrying about kids dying, like if you're, if you think this is totally safe and why not doing it in your own country?

0:58:34 Thomas: Well

0:58:44 Jenessa: Disturbing. Yeah.

0:58:43 Thomas: That's awful thanks for bringing this to our attention and and like you said we've got the foia out it foia is pretty powerful you know I know it's like they don't want to be held to account and I'm sure they'll do what they can to not but like they also I mean it is the freaking law they got to do it we foiled nasa back in the day about the The stupid name change, this thing of the James Webb telescope. And yeah, we got it back. We got some interesting stuff back then.

0:59:09 Thomas: We did that for where those woke early on. So this is stuff that does work. You can do.

0:59:14 Jenessa: And Lydia did a really good job of writing that in a way that had the precision to make it super clear what we're looking for, but the breadth to make sure they would not be be able to strategically leave something out that is within the purview of what we're looking for. So she worked really hard on that. If it doesn't turn anything up, it will be very telling. Yeah.

0:59:37 Thomas: Well, she's the best. Someone should marry that girl. All right. Well, thanks so much for the breakdown. We'll keep an eye on it. We'll let everyone know the moment we have a response. There is a time period they're supposed to do, but I don't know. Yeah, it's and it's not years. It's like months, I think.

0:59:48 Jenessa: There is. There is a limit. They can't drag it out forever.

0:59:55 Jenessa: Yeah. I think the New York one is they have 30 days to either get it to you or tell you they need more time.

1:00:05 Thomas: Oh, right. Yeah, that's true. I think we will hear from them an initial response that could be bullshit. We'll have something within, I want to say, 30 or 60 days, like you said, something like that.

1:00:13 Jenessa: And something like that.

1:00:16 Thomas: Okay, so we'll keep an eye on it. All right. Well, thanks for the breakdown. Thanks, everyone, for listening so much and support our FOIA efforts. Patreon .com slash law. And we'll see you next time.

1:00:26 Jenessa: See ya. Give me one second. I gotta pop these headphones out.

1:01:04 Thomas: You know what? Putt these headphones out?

1:01:06 Jenessa: Yeah, I had to take my hoodie off, so I had to take my headphones out.

1:01:10 Thomas: Oh, I just heard putt my headphones out and I was like, putt them out. What does putt mean? Okay.

1:01:13 Jenessa: Oh, I tried to say can you give me a second to take my headphones out, so for some reason the whole front half of my sentence disappeared. That's not great.

1:01:23 Thomas: That was weird.

1:01:24 Jenessa: Or maybe the first half of the sentence happened in my brain and didn't come out of my mouth.

1:01:28 Thomas: I'm just reacting to putt My headphones out. That's what I'm reacting. Is putt a word that you use? Pop.

1:01:33 Jenessa: Maybe I meant to say pop.

1:01:35 Thomas: That might be it. Okay.

1:01:36 Jenessa: I tried to say pop, I can't guarantee you that's what did come out of my mouth, but I was trying to say pop.

1:01:42 Thomas: We got there. I've got a Nazi about not being a Nazi. It's just the thing.

1:01:49 Jenessa: Adults aren't usually licking everyday objects, but toddlers are.

1:01:55 Thomas: If other countries jumped off a bridge, would you?