Ask Dr. Drew - “No Increased Risk” to Pregnant Women From COVID Vaccines, Says Reproductive Immunologist Dr. Viki Male – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 196

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

“The miscarriage rate following COVID vaccination in women is the same as normal,” says Dr. Viki Male, an expert lecturer at Imperial College London. She says claims that the rate is higher than normal – such as those by Naomi Wolf showing a 4000% increase in pregnancy loss – are based on faulty numbers because they include all miscarriages “after seeing a heartbeat on a scan” and are “based on a misunderstanding of how spontaneous reporting works.” [Click here for LINKS & SOURCES] “Studies of more than 360,000 people vaccinated against COVID in pregnancy find no increased risk of pregnancy loss,” tweeted Dr. Male. She joins Ask Dr. Drew LIVE to discuss the data and safety of mRNA vaccines for pregnant women. Dr. Victoria Male is a Senior Lecturer in Reproductive Immunology based in the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction at Imperial College London. She received a PhD at the University of Cambridge on NK cells in human pregnancy. In 2015, she was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Male was also involved in collating and communicating information on the effect of SARS-CoV2 infection and COVID vaccination on fertility, pregnancy, and breastfeeding, and in research on how COVID vaccination affects the menstrual cycle. Find more about Dr. Male at https://imperial.ac.uk/people/v.male and follow her at https://twitter.com/VikiLovesFACS 「 SPONSORED BY 」 • BIRCH GOLD - Don’t let your savings lose value. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Claim your free, no obligation info kit from Birch Gold at https://birchgold.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get 10% off with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. Hundreds of millions of people have received a COVID-19 vaccine, and serious adverse reactions are uncommon. Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician and Dr. Kelly Victory is a board-certified emergency specialist. Portions of this program will examine countervailing views on important medical issues. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 WITH DR. KELLY VICTORY 」 Dr. Kelly Victory MD is a board-certified trauma and emergency specialist with over 30 years of clinical experience. She served as CMO for Whole Health Management, delivering on-site healthcare services for Fortune 500 companies. She holds a BS from Duke University and her MD from the University of North Carolina. Follow her at https://earlycovidcare.org and https://twitter.com/DrKellyVictory. 「 GEAR PROVIDED BY 」 • BLUE MICS - Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue • ELGATO - See how Elgato's lights transformed Dr. Drew's set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/ 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And welcome, everyone. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Vicki Mayle today to the program. She's very kindly agreed to join us, a senior lecturer in reproductive immunology based on the Department of Metabolism, Digestion, and Reproduction at the Imperial College of London. Got her PhD at University of Cambridge on NK cells in human pregnancy in 2015, and she was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship. We will talk, you can follow her on Twitter at Vicki loves FACS I believe that's and it's VI ki so she very kindly agreed to present her material to us which I'm delighted to listen to we'll get right to after this our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre psychopath

start this right he was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f***'s sake. Where the hell

do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real.

We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want to help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say.

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years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario and uh everybody we are watching you out on the restream and of course we are out on twitter space as well uh i see people piling in right now. We'll hopefully have a chance to get some questions in here at some point. And of course, the Rumble Rants will be watching you there as well. So as I said, Dr. Mayle is a PhD in reproductive immunology, and she had some really interesting Twitter threads out there. If

you want to see her position, she spells it out very nicely and clearly. Let's go ahead and welcome to the program, Dr. Mayle. Hey there. Hi, good evening. Nice to be here. Thank you for staying up for this. I appreciate it. We invite people all the time who, for reasons that are unclear to me, refuse to come in. But I think just conversation amongst peers is so important. And collegialiality and modeling how science is done through communicative exchange and didacticism. I don't see any downside to that myself. So thank you for being a part of it. As always, for me, people have grave misconceptions about who I am or what I represent. And always people, whatever people say about me is what comes through. So let me sort of tell you where I'm starting for this conversation is, you know, my dad was a family practitioner for 50 years. I

practiced general medicine for 40 years. And so do no harm is a major sort of ethical preoccupation I have. And so before I engage in any sort of medical interventions, I like to be very clear on the risk reward of what's going on. In my practice, all of my patients are age 65 and above are fully boosted and with the bivalent, they're just, that's it, period. And in fact, I was so grateful recently when I had a complicated tuberculosis patient who'd had near liver failure from one of the anti-tuberculosis meds, was on five meds, got COVID. I couldn't use the Paxilvid because of the interaction causing further hepatotoxicity. I was so grateful that my patient had been vaxxed and boosted by both the

full series and the bivalent booster. So in elderly patients, there's no doubt in my mind about the risk-reward benefit. Now, because I have a nuanced opinion on vaccine, I get blasted from both sides, of course. And I saw you taking on some heat today. It's a lot of fun, isn't it, when people start attacking you for your position, even though it isn't really representing your position. My question, I want to get right the risk-reward in younger populations. I'm a little confused about it.

I want you to help me out with that. Sound like a place to start, or would you like to start somewhere else? Yeah, I would be really happy to start there. My area of expertise is COVID vaccination in fertility, pregnancy and a little bit breastfeeding. So how about we start by talking about what can happen if you get COVID when you're pregnant? Let's start one step before that. We do need to get into that.

We have a, because I think this would be a way into it. I don't know if you saw the CDC just an hour ago release data on pregnancy in the United States, that we are at all time highs for complications of pregnancy. And the increase that has been steady over the last three years does not mention COVID. It mentions cardiovascular disease and particularly pulmonary emboli. And one of my questions is, if pulmonary embolus is on the upswing, could that be something related to post-COVID phenomenon? Could it be something post-COVID plus vaccine?

What is this where suddenly pulmonary embolus is killing pregnant women? That's a really interesting question. And I'm afraid I haven't seen that data that the CDC has released. So I can't really comment on that. We do, of course, know that COVID is quite often, particularly when it's bad, and particularly in pregnancy, you know, a problem of clotting. And we do also know that there can be long-term effects, particularly in the heart of COVID, even when the acute disease is over. So I'm not going to say that you're wrong there, but I'm afraid I haven't seen that data from the CDC this evening.

Yeah, well, just read what it says. I'll read it to you. It says, cardiovascular conditions, pulmonary embolism, uncontrolled bleeding, and problems from hypertension are leading cause of pregnancy-related death. Does not mention COVID anywhere. Some pregnancy complications. It's interesting that they should mention hypertension because that is actually one of the things that we know that COVID increases the risk of in pregnancy. So you probably know that preeclampsia is hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, and we know that COVID increases the risk that you'll get preeclampsia in pregnancy, not by loads, but by enough that we can spot it 1.6 times. And while we're talking about what COVID does in pregnancy, we know that it increases the risk that your baby will be born preterm by about one and a half times, that your baby will be stillborn by about

two and a half times, and that your baby will die when they're a newborn by about three and a half times. So it's possible that COVID is playing into these things that the CDC have mentioned there. I feel like probably if they really thought that COVID was a major causative factor, they would have mentioned that. But I think that is a really good starting point for our discussion to talk about all these terrible things that COVID can do to your baby when you're pregnant. And also, it's not great for you. It increases the risk that you're going to need intensive care. And these are, when we're talking about risks and benefits of vaccination, these are the benefits of vaccination. It reduces these risks of preterm birth, stillbirth, and you needing intensive care. What are the actual numbers on the stillbirth?

So I don't know yours in America, but I can give you ours from Britain. So between March of 2020 and October 2021, we have 77 on the record COVID pregnancy losses, of which 59 are stillbirths. So, you know, some of those are miscarriage, what we would call miscarriages, they're slightly earlier in pregnancy losses. And the reason that these pregnancy losses can be put down to COVID is because a condition called SARS-CoV-2 placentitis was identified and was very strongly linked by someone called David, I think his first name is Schwartz,

through a case series of 68 stillbirths where the mother had COVID and they took a look at the placenta and they could see that the placenta had this very particular pathology. One of the things was that it was infected with the COVID virus, SARS-CoV-2. Another is that you can see the placenta dying. So the cells in the placenta are dying. And you can also see immune cells called macrophages coming in in between the villi of the placenta, so where it should be mum's blood flowing freely, there's inflammation, and there's also fibrosis, so like scarring. And these are

the three characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 placentitis. And about 50% of the time that this happens, according to the first case studies, this is when you'll get a stillbirth. So I want to be really clear, I don't want to panic anyone, you know, stillbirth is quite rare. It's about half a percent of pregnancies usually, or even a little bit less. So even if you have, you know, three times the chance of stillbirth, that's only, you know, one and a half percent or 2% chance of stillbirth if you're getting COVID. But still, you know, to me, 77 pregnancy losses over the course of 18 months that we could have prevented here in the UK. And you've got 10 times more people than us.

So I'm going to say you're probably in the ballpark of 700, 800 over the course of the year. I think if we can prevent those, we should. I'm, again, provided that by intervening, we're not somehow causing something on the other side. I'm looking at the mortality data. Maternal death rates increased from 23.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 32.9. 89% increase since 2018, either during or within 42 days of the end of their pregnancy. Huh. either during or within 42 days at the end of their pregnancy. Now, in the 59 stillbirths, you said there were spontaneous abortions in that group?

They weren't all full-term deliveries born still, which is what I consider a stillbirth? So, no, there were 77 pregnancy losses of which 59 were stillbirths. So, let's take 59 away from 77 uh so what have we got we've got um 22 uh miscarriages were included in those statistics okay uh so less it's so weird that would be less because spontaneous abortions are so common and what was what was this and what was the statistical analysis they used to establish that that was an adequate uh end in this in this study to actually say i understand you're saying there's one and a quarter or whatever increase in silver but is that is that statistically i know it's not good

but is it statistically significant that they do some sort of statistical analysis to say that this was relevant? Yeah. Sure. So those are just our raw numbers from the UK. The figure that I give you of, it's actually exactly 2.36 times the odds ratio of having a stillbirth if you have COVID compared to if you don't have COVID. It comes from a systematic review by, oh, I can't now remember if it's John Ality's systematic review in the BMJ or Greg Marchand's, which is in the American Journal of Obst and Gynecol, but one of those. And what they've done is they've looked at all the risks, the outcomes that you get in pregnancy when people catch COVID. And

they've done what's called a systematic review to, in an unbiased way, find all of the literature on that. And then what's called a meta-analysis, which is to kind of combine the literature together so that instead of having maybe 10 or 20 small studies, you kind of do a bit of statistics to make it more like it's one big study. And then they've said, is that, yes, statistically significant? And the answer is that all of those things that I've just told you, they are statistically significant increases over what would happen if you didn't have COVID. I won't be mentioning any risks that are statistically no different, because if the risk's no different, we don't necessarily need to talk about it. And of course, meta-analyses get criticized for a million reasons.

The only, and this was not a Cochrane study, which is the one that people usually point at as the sort of the gold standard of meta-analysis. We're talking about a different study from the one that you were talking about with the 77 and 59 stillbirths. So, and there are no RCTs, right? We have nothing going forward, or do we?

About safety and pregnancy, well, we do have some data from RCTs. So it was in the clinical trials, the participants were asked not to become pregnant, which is really standard way of running a clinical trial. And we can talk about why that is a little bit later and actually whether that is how we should run clinical trials. But people were asked not to become pregnant. These were big trials, right? Really big trials with, you know, 15,000 people in each arm in some of the mRNA vaccine trials and accidents happen. And so, of course, in a big trial where accidents happen at a low rate, you will see some pregnancies, even though people were told not to become pregnant.

And the one that I think that you were showing for that tweet was the Pfizer trial. But the exact same thing is true of the trials of the Moderna vaccine. And also you in America, I think you've approved J&J for us here in the UK. We have not J&J but AstraZeneca, all of these had some level of accidental pregnancies that happened and in the Pfizer trial in the control group there were 47 pregnancies that happened by accident, seven of which led ultimately to pregnancy loss so 15% of the pregnancies in the control group so the people who weren't vaccinated, had pregnancy loss. And in the vaccinated group, there were 42 pregnancies and three miscarriages. So that's a 7% miscarriage

rate. So straightaway, some people might get excited about that and say, hey, we know, and I haven't gone on to talking about this yet, but we know the vaccine prevents people who get vaccinated are less likely to have a stillbirth. Oh, wow, hey, are people who get vaccinated are less likely to have a stillbirth. Oh, wow. Hey, are people who get vaccinated also less likely to have a miscarriage? But I want to be really clear here that even though the miscarriage rate is lower in the vaccine group in the trials than it is in the control group, these differences are not statistically significantly different from each other. And they're also not different from normal. So this is the Pfizer trial, which I've gone into in a little bit of detail because that's the tweet you showed, but we have really similar data from the Moderna trial, from the J&J trial, and from the AstraZeneca trial. They all had some amount of accidental

pregnancies, the outcomes of which were all in the range of normal. And I think you actually emailed us that saying, I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. That was very much appreciated. And I read you actually emailed us that saying, I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. That was very much appreciated. And I read that one. Oh, no worries. I think it's hard to have a discussion if we don't tell each other in advance, you know, what the evidence is that we're going to be talking about. So it's absolutely a pleasure to have done that. Yeah, it's very kind.

And again, I'm just trying to get to the, get to a level of comfort with these things. Because as I said, when you're dealing with elderly population, it's so clear the benefits. I mean, it's obvious. But clinically, it's a lot harder in younger people having seen a ton of vaccine injury. And when you render healthy people sick with your medical intervention, it catches your attention. It's not something you feel particularly good about. And so, you know, you see a few of those and you start scratching your head about what are we actually doing, especially now I'm not talking about the pregnancy now, but didn't say younger males were having lots of problems. The COVID itself is of no significance to them, really.

I mean, almost nothing. And you just, you wonder, you just start asking questions. So what about, this is the other area I'm having a question in my own mind with. Everybody's had COVID, right? And in all probability, let's just posit that the immunity from the vaccine and COVID is equivalent, just for the sake of conversation. Everyone's had COVID.

Why expose somebody, assuming that they've had, you know, let's say they had COVID six months ago. Why add another medical intervention to that patient since their risk of COVID is so low? Yeah, I think you're asking a good question there about how we determine the vaccine schedule. And I guess I would ask you to think about how we vaccinate against flu and particularly how we vaccinate against flu, and particularly how we vaccinate against flu in pregnancy. Because everyone's had flu, and a lot of people have had flu vaccine in the past,

so why do we recommend that when you're pregnant you get a booster against flu? And the answer for that really is that immunity wanes over time, and we certainly know this for COVID. And we actually know it for COVID infection. And we also know it for COVID vaccination. So there's some point at which your protection gets, you know, low enough that you might be at risk of some of those bad effects of COVID that we've talked about, particularly in pregnancy. And the logic, certainly to our policy here in the UK, which is that if you're pregnant, you'll be offered a booster in the autumn, as long as it's more than three months since your last COVID infection. It's effectively just that, that we think that if it's been longer than three months since your last

infection, your immunity is waning enough that you're potentially at risk of these dangerous things happening. And the logic is the same for the flu vaccine, which we also offer in pregnancy as a booster in the autumn. Now, your policy. Careful, careful. There's a little there's a little bit of a false comparison there, because what I'm saying, what if somebody had flu three months before their pregnancy? Would you give them a booster during pregnancy if they had covid three months before the pregnancy? Would you give them a booster?

Well, national guidance in the UK would be to do so, and your national guidance in the USA would be to do so as well. To take the flu, to take a flu booster even though you had flu three months ago. So for flu, I didn't actually look up your national guidance in the USA. Maybe you can tell me what your national guidance in the USA is. No, no, no, but I'm saying is that your guidance in the UK? I want to make sure I'm getting it. That's all. I your guidance in the uk i'm going to make sure i'm getting it that's all i'm not i'm not challenging i'm just getting it so because i i thought i heard you say i thought i heard you say if you had the vaccine this year you still got a booster during pregnancy for flu well for yeah if you know if you had we

only offer the flu um during what we call autumn, which starts in, roughly speaking, October and finishes, confusingly, in, roughly speaking, February. So you wouldn't really have the opportunity to have had it that soon, if you see what I mean, under the way that we do it here. No, I think we're not hearing each other. So, so if you had flu, let's say you get influenza A and you get pregnant three months later, what you told me is you take a flu vaccine anyway, even though you just had flu. That's the recommendation. What I'm also at. Okay. And what I'm also asking is if I had the flu vaccine in November and I get pregnant in February, are they also recommending a booster for the vaccine? That's a really interesting question. I don't actually know if you had, say, a flu vaccine in November because you're, say, a healthcare worker and you became pregnant

in, say, January. Would you be offered another? I think not, and I'll tell you why. It's because it's called the autumn boost, and they'd say, have you had your autumn boost? And you would say, yes, I have. But I think the question that you're really getting at here is you're saying, okay, under these circumstances, the benefit of getting a boost is smaller, right? That's your logic. And at some point, the benefit of getting a boost is... I'm wondering, I'm not quite, it's not quite that clear in my head yet, frankly. It's just, here's really what's in my head, which is everybody's had COVID, period, end of story. And all the data is sort of pre-natural immunity vaccine alone. And so I'm wondering what COVID plus vaccine does. I'm wondering what that is because we have no data on that really. Do you mean in terms of protection? No, I'm sure I've seen some of the protection data

in terms of, it's a little bit better, but I mean in terms of, uh well how much of an upside benefit and how much of added risk is there because we don't have the data we just don't have it and so that's really everybody now everybody's had covet and everyone's getting the vaccine what is happening in that situation can we say something about that yet so go ahead we can actually okay so let's talk about the data and let's kind of, before we talk about the studies that have come out really recently, looking at boosters in populations who have already lived through the pandemic, who have

already had their primary course, let's just start right out and talk about the major safety data that we've got, because it's something that we really need to address when we're talking about risks and benefits, and we haven't got to it yet. So the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is our equivalent here, and 119 other public health bodies around the world,

they recommend that you get vaccinated against COVID when you're pregnant or a boost. And what data are they making that recommendation on? And I think it's really important that we understand this. So, yes, we've talked about the clinical trial data, but that's kind of limited, you know, not that many people got pregnant in the clinical trials. What we really need is more data. And America has actually been amazing at this. So well done. And Israel has also been amazing because America and Israel, you know, they took the view very early that, OK, we have this clinical trial data. It's not a lot, but we know that COVID is bad in pregnancy. Let's offer the vaccine to people. They're adults,

they're old enough to consent and make up their own minds. And we will track them really, really carefully to see what's going on. And it was really noticeable to me, because obviously, I've got a lot of colleagues who are obstetricians and gynecologists, and some of them are in the States, that all of my and I've got a lot of colleagues who are pregnant, just because the age that I am, and all of them who were pregnant were really, really keen to go out and get the vaccine because they had seen these COVID stillbirths and these COVID preterm births, and they didn't want that for their own baby. But what America did amazingly was collect data from these people through V-safe

and also through the Vaccine Safety Data Link. And by February of 2021, we had the first data there, which was from just under 4,000 people that signed up for V-safe and among whom the pregnancy outcomes looked normal. And that's exactly the data that we used in the UK later on in April to say, okay, we've been holding off. We've wanted more data before we felt comfortable offering the vaccine in pregnancy. But now we have this really nice data from the United States and we're starting to get really nice data from Israel. And this is what we'll use to make our recommendations.

And the data has just kept coming in. And we now have, to my knowledge, 36 studies from nine different countries and that include more than 360,000 people vaccinated in pregnancy. And they've looked at all of the outcomes you would hope that they would look at. So is there an increased risk of miscarriage if you get vaccinated and you're pregnant? No, there's not. Is there an increased risk of preterm birth? No. Is there an increased risk of stillbirth? No. And in fact, as I've mentioned, there's some evidence from meta-analyses that there's a decreased risk of stillbirth among people who get vaccinated. And that kind of makes sense if we think about the fact that we know that COVID can cause you to have a stillbirth. Although, you know, there are some statistical things that we can maybe talk about in addition

with that that might be important to mention. Is there an increased risk your baby will be smaller than they would be expected to be? No. Is there an increased risk of preeclampsia? No. Is there an increased risk of congenital abnormalities? That's something that people would often worry about. No. And some of these studies have followed babies up until they're six months old. And all of these babies are looking just like lovely, normal babies at six months old. So we have this wealth of data about the vaccines when they're first given, you know, doses one and two, that tell us that there's absolutely no increased risk of any pregnancy problems. And as I've said, a potentially decreased risk of COVID stillbirth.

And one thing I didn't mention when I was talking about COVID stillbirth is that there's been a really lovely review of all the cases of COVID stillbirth that was published in January of this year by Schwartz, who's the person who discovered COVID stillbirth, or really found the mechanism. And there have actually been no cases of COVID stillbirth among people who are vaccinated, which supports, you know, that data showing that vaccination does reduce the risk of stillbirth. OK, so this is where we are. You know, this is where we make the recommendation. Have those one, have those two, get yourself protected, don't have these problems that COVID can cause during pregnancy. But we kept collecting the safety data. Of course we have, because this is such an important point. And we've moved on to collecting safety data about boosters in populations who have already had their primary course, in populations who have already had COVID.

And all of these studies on the safety of boosters show that they're exactly the same as the first set of doses. There's no increased risk of any of these pregnancy problems that we would really like to avoid, like miscarriage, preterm birth, and stillbirth, even when we're looking at data on boosters, not just on the primary course. It seems odd to me when I see data, again, that doesn't sort of fit my clinical experience. I worry about it and the the fact that there's no documentation of any vaccine injury or vaccine post-vaccine symptomatology and pregnant women was very odd it just doesn't fit it's just anybody that's done hundreds of vaccines will see things. And that all made me call it into question, you know, what's, you know what I mean? And by the way, you sent me the V-safe data too, and I really appreciate that as well. But, you know, it just doesn't, when things don't fit my clinical experience, I just,

I just, it gets difficult for me if, if they were saying, well, you know, we saw a certain number of vaccine injuries, but it didn't affect the birth or didn't affect the pregnancy or, you know, I, that I would understand that I get, but I didn't see anything like that. Is that somewhere? So let's start by saying that it's not completely true that there are no cases in the literature of any vaccine injuries, because I do know of at least one um with i think it was the astrazeneca vaccine or the janssen vaccine it was one of the adenovirus vectored vaccines being used down in brazil and there was a case of what's called um vaccine induced um thrombocytic thrombocyte. It was TTP.

And that was why it was pulled from the market. It happened in pregnancy. That's my point. It happened in pregnancy. And I actually had some of the symptomatology of that because I took the Janssen vaccine and I woke up with raccoon's eyes

and the symptoms of a transverse sinus thrombosis, which was really awesome. And that's caused by a TTP-like concept of coagulopathy. So I'm not surprised. Oh, there's my eye. Not surprised that happened with AstraZeneca. But there's tons of other vaccine reactions going on that people are seeing clinically. It's hard to tell how common because the data is just, people are arguing about the data all the time, but there's things that happen. And the fact that none of that is happening in pregnant women, just,

I don't know, it just stands out to me. That's all. The other question I have is are there other vaccines? Let's talk about that. Cause that's actually something that people quite commonly ask me. They say, okay, I feel really reassured by the data that we've properly collected to do with, you know, is there any harm to the baby or the pregnancy? And I feel reassured that there's loads of that. But what are the possibilities of other side effects that are

to do with my pregnancy? And we've already discussed how there's one case in the literature of what I would call VIT down in Brazil. And that had quite a bad outcome, actually, largely because the person didn't receive the proper treatment. And as you say, we wouldn't recommend that vaccine in young people now for exactly that reason. The thing that we do recommend in pregnancy, the vaccines that we prefer to use because we have the most safety data on them, are the mRNA vaccines.

But as you probably know, there is one potential quite severe side effect that can happen with the mRNA vaccines, and that's myocarditis. And that happens most commonly in young males. So you can straight away start to see why there's a reduced risk of that happening if you're a female and also maybe even a further reduced risk of it happening if you're pregnant. But nonetheless, there has been specific surveillance for this. and one in the Journal of the American College of Cardiologists, both in August of last year, saying, let's review the literature and be really sure that we haven't missed any reported cases of vaccine-induced myocarditis happening in pregnancy. And both of these reviews couldn't find anything, which of course isn't to say that there isn't anything, because maybe it hasn't been reported in the literature, but certainly it's not been common enough to be reported in the literature and actually I got in

touch with the first author of the review in the American Journal of Obst and Gynae and I said hey you published this safety review in August and I just wanted to check with you because I know you keep up with this it's part of your job. Has there been anything since then and he said no but it is important to know that actually in the official recommendations both from um the american um general of ox and gyne and from the american college of cardiologists they say well you know although we've never seen it happening it is a possibility and we do need to be alert to it so if you've got a pregnant patient and they're five days post vaccination or now it would probably be five days post-boost, and they're getting, you know, chest pain, pressure,

shortness of breath, sort of palpitations, it's definitely something that you should suspect and that you should treat in the same way that you would normally treat it. So I just want to be really clear that, you know, there are probably reasons that this is much rarer among pregnant people than it is among, you you know young males where we usually see it could well be and it's not what we're not looking for we are looking for it we just haven't seen any yet i i actually wasn't thinking about myocarditis because i've yet to see that in a female i was thinking more about this kind of myasthenia that people get where they're incredibly weak and short of breath and can't walk and i mean maybe it's hard to distinguish that from some of the third trimester pregnancy symptoms. I don't know. But I just, there was

none of that in the, it's all transient. It's transient. And to be fair, it's transient. And if it saves a baby on one side and you get some misery on the short term, I think most people would take that short term misery, no problem. But I just that it didn't show up was what seemed odd to me. So V-safe did specifically ask people to report on myalgia, fatigue and weakness. And there were some reports of that. In fact, going up to, you know, a decently large amount, kind of in the 10% range, I'm afraid I can't remember quite off the top of my head. Now, the problem is if you say to someone, you know, did you feel achy? Did you feel weak?

They might say, yeah, but, you know, they were still perfectly able to get up and about. Or they might say, no, I felt so achy and weak that I was in bed for three days. But it's not that those things weren't looked for and weren't reported on. They have, however, been kind of lumped in together with people who felt AQ. And again, I get you. And you're really kind of lumping in the sort of acute vaccine response on discomfort. I'm talking about something that goes on for six months

where people can't walk across the room. I've seen quite a bit of this. In fact, I'm going to interview a friend of mine that had this and he's a robust writer,producer. All of a sudden, life was taken away from him for a year. And if you give the vaccine out, you see this. You just do. And again, they don't die. At least there are cases where people claim there are deaths, but the ones I've seen have just been disabling. And the fact that, anyway, because there were such big, the big numbers you were describing, I was like, there's got to be people in there

that have these reactions. But anyway, let's leave that behind, that we can't solve that. Let's talk about menstrual irregularities for a second. So let me explain to you why I was apologizing to Naomi Wolf. I was apologizing to Naomi Wolf because I was very dismissive

of her report of menstrual irregularities after the vaccine. And I said exactly, what's that Susan? Seven months ago, seven months ago that she, she came in and said, and I went, women's menstrual periods get affected by everything. It doesn't mean anything. Stop it. Don't, don't look there. That doesn't mean anything to me. Then, uh, I saw reports from Pfizer and multiple other sources saying that there are significant menstrual irregularities that there was some data also that generally side effects from the vaccine were worse in women I'll get that data for you in a second it was kind of weird

here it is sorry. No, I didn't. It seems like I didn't copy it. Nope, don't have it. But anyway, there's some report of worsening side effects in females. But what got me is, this is unpublished data I've seen from a pathologist showing spike protein without nucleocapsid,

in other words, pure spike protein, meaning vaccine-produced spike protein, in hypothalamus, in ovaries, in the lining of the uterus associated with a certain coagulopathy that could add to excess bleeding. And I thought, wow, it's being widely reported and there's some possible mechanisms here. I owe her an apology for being so dismissive. So that was the reason for the apology was that I was very dismissive of it. I am pleased that you apologized for, you know, dismissing people's reports of their own experiences of their bodies. And you probably know because you invited me on here but maybe your viewers don't that one of the things that I was involved in quite early in the pandemic was saying hey I think we should listen to people's

reports not necessarily that we should just believe people's reports because you're right menstrual cycles do vary a lot and one of the things that we've really found out in investigating this properly and I've been one of the people who've been involved in investigating this properly is quite how much menstrual cycles vary, because the background level of variation is just enormous. And yeah, some people said at the time, you know, hey, Vicky, you're wasting your time doing this research, it will just turn out to be background variation. And then some other people were also very angry that I was doing the research. They were like, hey, why do you need to do the research? You know, don't you believe me when you say that

my period was later or heavier or whatever it was? And of course, I do believe them. But the question is, is that caused by the vaccine or is that something that would have happened anyway? And we now have really, really good data that addresses this. And I think it's a good idea to go into this now because it's not something that you discussed last time you were talking to Naomi. Maybe it's not something that she knows about. But one of the really strong ways of approaching this has been to use menstrual cycle app tracking data. And the reason for that is because if we ask people about their experience after the vaccine, they'll tell us their experience. Maybe they a little bit misremember it because it was a bit in the past, or maybe they tell us completely accurately. But what also tends to happen is that the people who had something really weird happen

tend to really want to tell us about it. And the people who didn't have anything particular happen are not so bothered to take part. So menstrual cycle app tracking data is really great because people are just tracking the menstrual cycles anyway. They always do as a way of keeping on top of their health. It's a good idea. And we can use that data with their permission to say, OK, here's your data that you've logged anyway. Can you please tell us what day you were vaccinated? And then we can look at what, say, three cycles for them on average looked before they got vaccinated and we could say is the cycle after you got vaccinated different and crucially we can also compare them to people who didn't get vaccinated so we've got a control group and when we do that what we find is that on average getting vaccinated

does increase the length of your cycle by about half a day or a day depending on which study because a whole bunch of studies have been done looking at this. But crucially, and the people actually who really, really saw a big difference, some people did, was if you managed to get both doses of the vaccine, dose one and dose two in the same cycle, you saw a bigger difference. It was more like a little bit over three days, somewhere between three and three and a half days. So that's quite a noticeable difference, actually, for a lot of people. But really importantly, the differences in cycle length went back to normal for people who had one dose in the cycle, the following cycle, or for people who have two doses in the cycle, the cycle after that.

So we're back to our normal cycle length. And then we've also looked at things like menstrual flow, which is obviously a little bit more to do with your subjective feelings. And that one was really interesting because what we found was that about 34% of people who weren't vaccinated, so this is our control group, this just tells us what's happening ordinarily, in a particular cycle will say, oh yeah, that cycle was, my period was heavier than usual. But 38% of people, and that is statistically more, significantly more, who have been vaccinated will say, oh yeah, my period was a little bit heavier than normal. So we do also have evidence from these same approaches that the period after

you're vaccinated will be, well, in about 4% of people due to the vaccine will be heavier than normal. But again, this goes back to normal, next cycle and this is really really important for lots of reasons first of all it means that you know if you get vaccinated and you notice a small change to your cycle a bit later than usual a bit heavier than usual that's not necessarily cause for concern although to be fair usually if you just have one cycle that's a a little bit weird, that's not cause for concern. But it could be due to the vaccine. But if you notice a change that persists, the evidence suggests that that's not due to the vaccine. And that's something that you should go and you should talk to your doctor and you should get checked out to find out what's going on and to get it treated. Because what we would really hate is for people who had something that was treatable

that should be checked out to think that it was a vaccine effect when it was not. So these are the two really important kind of clinical points that come up from this. But sort of philosophically, I think another really important point is that it is important to listen to people's experiences of their own bodies, to use that to guide our research questions, and yeah, to take people's reports seriously.

So although I thought Naomi misrepresented a lot of stuff last week and failed to mention a lot of stuff, I do think you actually, you know, I think it was fair that you apologized to her for dismissing this as something that wasn't important because it is important. And I do try to let my guests present their data as they understand it. I'm not sure I quite understood why if you have persistent menstrual irregularities, you can necessarily rule out a vaccine effect. But I totally agree with you that you get an evaluation to make sure that there's not some other cause, which is certainly likely. Yeah. Well, I think an important thing to say about these studies that have been done with ventral cycle tracking apps is the study design is really strong. And I think once you put all the studies together, you've got something like

20,000 people in there. So you're right that when you're only looking at 20,000 people, if you've got something that happens, you know, one in every 100,000 times, you're not going to detect that. So, you know, as always, with science, I put my hand on my heart. And I say, well, we can't see it in 20,000 people, but maybe it happens 100,000 times. But if it does happen, certainly really, really, really rare, so rare, we haven't been able to detect it when we've been looking really hard for it. And your study parsed things out a little more, but I did find the Pfizer data. This is in a cumulative analysis of post-authorization adverse event reports. Appendix 2.1, cumulative number of case reports, serious and non-serious, medically confirmed and non-medically confirmed.

So, again, we're going to left with the same questions, but it shows substantially greater numbers of adverse events in women contrasted with men. The signal is particularly strong for the reproductive organs and their functions. Women have approximately three times the risk of adverse events than males and the specific risk to the reproductive organs and their function is even stronger than that three times. So something, and again, it might, but let me just

say it could be just that one cycle, right? That would qualify for that data that comes under that appendix. I think it's really important to talk about how that data is collected because that's what's called spontaneous reporting. And it's really important that we collect data from spontaneous reporting because it's amazing at spotting. It's not VAERS. This isn't VAERS. This isn't VAERS. This is the Kaiser post-analysis, cumulative analysis of post-authorization adverse events by Pfizer. This is their follow-up on their, yeah, okay, I'm just making sure we got

the same thing. Okay. No, no, I know. And actually, if you, if you dig into that report a little bit, you'll see that some of that data does come from VAERS. Some of that data comes from our version of VAERS in the UK, which is Yellow Card. Some of that data comes from Udra Vigilance. So you're right, it's not VAERS. And some of it has actually been reported directly to Pfizer. You did have the option to report directly to Pfizer, certainly in the UK and probably also in the US. Although what they tried to do was if you reported to, say, Yellow Card and Pfizer, they would try to make sure that, you know, didn't turn up twice in their report. But it's all spontaneous reporting, whether it's to VAERS, whether it's to Yellow Card, whether it's to uterovigilance, or whether people have reported directly to Pfizer. And so it works the same way, which is really that, you know, you get vaccinated. And after you're vaccinated, you say, oh, well, you know, I've noticed this, let's say I've noticed I've had a heavier than usual period. And you

don't necessarily have to think that that happened because of the vaccine, but you can report it anyway. And it's a really, really great way of finding very severe things that never happen when you're not vaccinated, but do happen when you're vaccinated, even if they're really rare. And this is exactly how we found Vip with the AstraZeneca vaccine. And it's exactly how you in the USA noticed vaccine-associated myocarditis. So it really works for certain classes of things. It's not so good, though, for things that happen really commonly and might increase in their rate. So a really good example of this is a heavier than normal period. That will happen normally about 30-something percent of the time. And so if everyone were

reporting, it would be absolutely flooded with reports of heavier than normal periods, because that's going to happen to about 30 something percent of people. And one thing that's really important to realize as well is that reporting is affected by how much people are talking about things. And so we had a period in both the UK and in the USA circa about May of 2021, April or May of 2021, when a lot of people were talking about this, you know, oh, does getting vaccinated cause you to have a slightly different period than usual? And as a result of this, and I absolutely said to people, you know, if you've had a different period than usual, and it's in the month after you got vaccinated, yeah, report it to Yellowcard. Like, Like we won't you know, there won't be enough evidence to investigate it properly unless these things get reported.

And so people like me encouraging people to report cause people to report. And so a lot of those reports will be just because of increased awareness and increased reporting rather than because all of those are vaccine associated events. Lots of them are just things that happened after vaccination. And that's why it was important to these proper formal studies to really nail it down. And again, I'm going to give big credit to you in the USA, because in about May, when these reports started to come in, the National Institutes of Health Research were like, hmm, yeah, we definitely need to investigate this. And they put something like $1.6 million aside and funded five studies into it. And some of these studies are the ones that I've just been reporting. So, you know, although a lot of people were dismissive of this, the US government, they kind of put their money where their mouth was, and they

saw a signal and they investigated it. and now we know what that signal was. And as I was saying before, it's not inconsistent with what you reported in terms of the study you just parsed out with the increased flow abnormal period for one month. The three times adverse event in females may include a large population, which are just reporting exactly what you said in your study, right? Which is that they had a abnormal period that went back to normal, that would still get reported as an adverse event. Yeah, absolutely. It could be just a different way of reporting exactly what you were talking about a few minutes ago. So what would you like to go over next? I have to take a little break here.

I'm wondering, we could maybe take some calls or we could talk about fertility. I'm not sure what's on your, what do you think we've missed? Well, do you know what? We've talked about pregnancy. We've talked about the menstrual cycle. I think it would be really natural

to talk about fertility. There's a lot of evidence around this and it's also something that people are quite often worried about. So let's talk about that when we come back. All right. All right. All right. We'll do that.

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Again, visit birchgold.com slash D-R-E-W. All right, we are back. Our guest is Dr. Vicki Mayles. Let's bring Dr. Mayle in here. And we are going to talk a little bit about fertility. Let me just say before we launch into it, I was just thinking before we got to know each other that if the menstrual irregularities were more substantial

than the studies suggested, which kind of has been my clinical experience, my experience has been that, again, it could be from something else. It could be improperly. I get it. But a study is not necessarily thus saith the Lord. Believe me, like I said, I've got 90 years of medical practice between my dad and myself bearing down on me.

And I've seen standards of care be wrong more times than I care to count. And then one of the things that raises my concern is when my clinical experience doesn't fit it. And I would say, in addition to the nasty sort of neurasthenia from the vaccine, I've seen a lot of six months of menstrual irregularities of either amenorrhea or oligomenorrhea, just changes in their significant changes in their menstrual flow. That does restore. It does go back to normal. But if that's true or if that's any reflection of reality, again, if it's on the vaccine

and if my clinical experience is a reflection of reality, it's hard to imagine how that couldn't affect fertility, at least in the short term, right? It would have to. Okay, let's jump in right there because we do have a study that actually addresses that directly from someone called Amelia Westlink, which was published last year in the American Journal

of Epidemiology. So the first thing to say, of course, is that, you know, let's say that our studies of 20,000 odd people are true and menstrual change is a delay of, you know, half a day or a day. Even the most enthusiastic TTCers, as we would call them in my line of work, people who are trying for a baby, will not be timing their intercourse down to the half day. So a half day change in the timing of the menstrual cycle, I mean, if anyone is timing their intercourse down to the half day, please call in, I would love to hear from you. Would anyone who's having's um having that kind

of change their menstrual cycle we wouldn't expect it to affect um conception because the fertile window is is three days usually um but a specific study by amelia westlink has been done to look into this and what she was doing was she was tracking um a little over 2 000 couples who were trying to conceive um through intercourse and we can talk a bit later about the studies that have been done in IVF settings, because there are lots of them. And she found that even in the month that you get vaccinated, that doesn't reduce the chance that you conceive. And that's kind of in line with what I've just said that we would expect. This is a super important study, though, because it looked at both the male and the female partners, vaccination and infection. And vaccination didn't reduce the chance that the couple would conceive, whether it both the male and the female partners, vaccination and infection. And vaccination didn't reduce the chance

that the couple would conceive, whether it was the male or the female partner. And actually infection didn't reduce the chance that the couple would conceive if it was in the female partner. But infection did reduce the chance that the couple would conceive if that was the male partner that got infected.

And it reduced the chance that they would conceive for about two months. And this is actually in line with lots and lots of studies that we've done looking at what happens to sperm when you get COVID. And getting COVID makes your sperm, it lowers the count and it lowers the quality. So it's kind of not surprising that it temporarily reduces your fertility. But I want to be really, really clear. I don't want anyone who gets COVID to panic. It's a temporary reduction in fertility. So, you know, don't panic. I'm sure there's got to be other data on other severe viral illnesses that look about the same, right? I mean, it sounds sort of axiomatic. Yeah, well, the absolute classic, and we stray slightly out of my area of expertise here as we start to talk about the testicles, but, you know, it's 11 o'clock here, so why not?

Mumps is the absolute classic, causes orchitis, and that orchitis causes temporary reduction in fertility and can actually potentially cause a longer-term reduction in fertility. So yes, you're absolutely right. COVID isn't the only thing that can reduce male fertility. But it's kind of important, I guess, for people to know if they're trying to conceive, that this might be a possibility and that if it's really important to them to conceive quickly, they might want to avoid catching COVID. But okay, yeah, so that's Amelia Westlink talking about female fertility specifically in couples who are trying to conceive through intercourse and showing that it doesn't reduce even in the month you get vaccinated and it doesn't reduce in the months. She did nine months of follow-up, so it doesn't reduce in the following months.

How about IVF? I'm guessing there's a lot of data there. We have a lot of data from IVF settings. And that's kind of because it's, you know, it almost just kind of builds itself up in the filing cabinet in IVF clinics, because, you know, you've got your patients, are trying to conceive through intercourse, where we don't know how hard they're trying. And we know if they're vaccinated or not, because all of that's in the patient notes. And so with respect to female fertility, there's now 11 studies that have been done in IVF settings. And none of them show any difference in chance of conception between people who have been vaccinated and people who haven't been vaccinated. And there are, for males, there are five studies in IVF settings, and then there are two further studies among volunteer sperm donors, again showing no reduction in chance of conception among people having IVF. So obviously, this is quite strong as a study design, because

you know, really, that people are trying to conceive really hard, you have really good data on their outcomes, and on whether or not they were vaccinated, you might have some confounders, which some of the studies do control for. But obviously, people quite often say, well, you know, I'm not having IVF, I'm trying to conceive through intercourse. So is this IVF data relevant to me? And it maybe isn't necessarily, but I think what it does tell us biologically really strongly is that nothing on the path of like your ovaries working, producing eggs, producing good quality eggs, your endometrium, that's the lining of your uterus, being able to accept, be receptive to an embryo, none of any of those steps that all have to work to get an IV of pregnancy are less likely to work

if you've been vaccinated. And I know that this is something that people sometimes worry about, but it's definitely something that's been looked into a lot. And there's no evidence at all, even though we've looked really hard, that COVID vaccination reduces the chance that you'll get pregnant if that's what you want. May I chime in? Really quick though, I want to ask

one quick question, then you may. I want to go back to the pregnancy data. Was all the nasty outcome with pregnancy during Omicron? No. Well, so some was. So we had, it's really important actually to realise that outcomes in pregnancy have differed depending on what variant we're looking at. So from the point of view of pregnancy outcomes, Omicron and wild type are about equivalent. So if you're unvaccinated right now and you get pregnant and you catch COVID, it's exactly like it would have been if you're unvaccinated right now and you get pregnant it's and you can you catch covid it's exactly like it would have been if you'd caught covid at the very beginning of the pandemic and and i'll be honest that wasn't good we we saw some really people in my colleagues in clinical practice saw some really dreadful things but it actually got worse uh because in the alpha wave

and then particularly in the delta wave, these variants were much more associated with the increased risk of stillbirth. So although things are a little bit less bad now than they were in the Delta wave, and that's partly because so many people are vaccinated, yes, we do have a difference in pregnancy outcomes depending on the variants, and the Delta variant in particular

was really bad for causing stillbirth. Yeah, I can't imagine Omicron is anywhere near what Delta was. I had Delta myself. It's nasty. Susan, go ahead. Okay, so about IVF. You say getting pregnant, the vaccine has no effect. I had IVF and I gave birth to triplets and it was, it was rather difficult to, you know, stay pregnant. And, you know, I had to have a shot for 60 days. I had shots of progesterone and then I was on monitors and then I was, you know, I had so much science going on. And my question is, you know, would you recommend to someone like me who would be probably not interested in a vaccine just because I didn't have any alcohol, you know, I wanted to do right because I didn't want to feel guilty later for accidentally giving one of them, you know, some kind of disease or have a stillbirth or lose the pregnancy.

But how, I mean, as a woman and also somebody who really had a long nine months, had three healthy babies, originally had four embryos taken, one didn't make it. How would you approach somebody like me and say, oh, it's okay, you can do it? I mean, I just am curious, like, with an in vitro insemination pregnancy, it's a little different, you know, especially if you have multiples, unfortunately, and multiples, but how do you see that? Yeah, that's definitely a good point. And how do you see that? Yeah, that's definitely a good point. And I think you bring up two really important points there. So one is that, how long ago did you have your babies? 30 years. Okay, so not really babies anymore. So not in the pandemic. One important thing, they never stop being your babies, right? My babies are still my babies. They're not quite 30. But one really important

thing to know in the context of the pandemic was actually a lot of IVF clinics said, we really recommend that actually you wait until you're fully vaccinated before you start this course of IVF. And the reason that clinics often recommended that was because they knew that people in that position would be hesitant about getting vaccinated while they were pregnant. Even though we had a lot of reassuring data then, we had less than we do now, they knew that people feel that way and it's quite natural. So a lot of them recommended getting fully vaccinated before you started trying to conceive. And the other or rather you started trying your IVF cycles. And the other reason they recommended that is because, as we've mentioned, we know that catching COVID reduces male fertility.

And there was some evidence. I think probably we have decided now that it's not very good quality evidence, and it's been overruled by other evidence, that it could reduce female fertility. So that's another reason that they said, you know, you've got to get yourself in absolutely top condition before you start your IVF cycles. So that's one aspect of, you know, how IVF was handled during the pandemic. But I do take your point, and I've spoken to so many people who were in the position that you were in of having a pregnancy that for whatever reason is high risk. Or maybe it's not high risk. Maybe it just took you a really long time to get pregnant. Or maybe it didn't even take you a really long time to get pregnant. You're just anxious.

All of these things are such natural ways to feel and in these conversations that I've had with people what I've always emphasized and what I actually emphasize with everyone is that you know it's your body it's your choice it's a personal decision and you just have to have all the information and be really comfortable with the decision you've made. And a lot of the time when people hear about these risks of catching COVID, they sort of think to themselves, well, how would I feel if I caught COVID and then something bad happened when I could have protected myself? And they make the decision that they want to get vaccinated. And some people think about that and they think, well, you know, I'll be really careful. My job means that I can work from home a lot. I'll wear masks when I'm out and about. And actually, you know, I would prefer to take my chances with COVID than the vaccine.

Now, this isn't our official guidance. We wouldn't recommend it, but it's absolutely a personal choice. And I think it's really important that we respect people's you know autonomy in this and so that's really been how I've kind of approached these conversations when I've been having them with people you just have to to get all the information and to make a decision that you feel comfortable with and actually quite a lot of the time people make kind of halfway house decisions. Sorry, I'll just finish quickly. Where sometimes people are like, oh, I feel really nervous. I don't know if I want to get vaccinated.

And we talk about it a bit and I say, well, the time it's risky is to get COVID is after when you're about 28 weeks pregnant and you're about 10 weeks pregnant now. So maybe, you know, wait to have your scan, which in the UK we have at about 12 or 13 weeks. And if everything looks good on your scan, maybe you might feel comfortable then. Or wait until you've had your 20 week scan and you've seen that everything looks good. Maybe you might feel comfortable then. And actually a lot of people who early in their pregnancies were like, oh, I don't know, ultimately went on to get vaccinated later in their pregnancies. But the important thing was it was their choice based on all the information and based on what they felt comfortable with.

Yeah, you're zeroing in on such a core issue here that in this country, informed consent and patient choice was largely thrown out of the window for much of the pandemic. And I think the mandates are what created half of the resistance and the concerns out there because people were just told, do it or you can't go to school, you can't go to college, you can't work, you can't go in a restaurant. And doctors weren't even given a chance to give an informed consent because there was just a mandate. So we used to call what you do just routine practice of medicine with informed consent. And all of a sudden that was all thrown out the window. So I appreciate so much that you bring that topic up. It's interesting. I work with, you know, I do another stream with a doctor who has very grave concerns about the vaccine.

So when she sits with a patient, her informed consent would be different. Mine is sort of closer to yours. Actually, as you know, all my elderly patients are all vaccinated. I just have still reconciling my clinical impressions with what the data is showing and then which data is right and is there any problem with the publications. I've seen adulteration of medical literature during this pandemic, much to my amazement. And so I'm just trying to be very, very careful in getting to the truth. I appreciate that you feel very confident in your position, your data seems solid,

and I understand why you would feel the way you do. But what I like most is that you bring up this aspect of you present your data to your patient, and the patient with you makes that decision. We used to just call that medicine. It used to be just medical care. And why that would be something that is suddenly noteworthy is just, we live in an incredible time. So I wonder if you have any reaction to that. Well, I think that this differed a lot between countries. There were lots of places that didn't have mandates. And I don't know exactly how it went down for you guys,

but I hope that if we can meet anywhere, and I think we've met in a lot of places, we can meet in this space where we agree that it's really important for people to know all of the information, the risks of COVID, the risks of vaccination, and the benefits of vaccination and they make their decision that they can feel comfortable with and i hope that by coming on i have opened up some of that information to people who might not have heard it before but what i would like to say because i see our time is running down is that to anyone out there

who is pregnant if you are you know sitting there thinking oh I don't know if I should I would really recommend that you schedule time and have a discussion with your midwife or your doctor or whoever it is that's looking after you because you probably have individual concerns that all of this stuff I've talked about tonight doesn't necessarily address but your own medical practitioner will be able to address those medical concerns because they know you they know know your whole medical history. So anyone out there who's making this decision for themselves, I really would recommend just having a chat with your midwife or doctor. And hopefully you can come to one of these places where whatever decision you

make, you feel really comfortable with it. Of course, of course. And thank you for saying that. Let me just get, let's get down some little get down some little more brass tacky before I let you go. So if somebody's been fully vaccinated and boost with a real American obstetrician to check that I was reading your guidance right, because I knew you might ask me about your guidance. Your guidance in America is basically that you have a kind of something that the CDC considers as being up to date. And up to date right now would be having had your primary course, having had your first booster, and having had a bivalent booster. And if you're pregnant and you are up to date, you are good. You need nothing further. And if you're thinking of getting pregnant and you're not up to date, you can absolutely

get yourself up to date before you get pregnant. That is completely fine on the USA guidance. If, however, you're already pregnant and you're not up to date, then the recommendation would be that you get up to date. And getting up to date right now would mean getting a bivalent booster. Unless you just had Omicron. Unless you just had it. Yes, thank you for reminding me.

Unless you just have it, in which case the CDC says that you need to wait two months is your guidance before you get this. And then it's like, it seems odd. That's a very odd recommendation. Oh i think six months yeah that's what it i don't know it's it's so interesting how medicine and make the boosters better and make sure medicine obstetrics look at things a little differently it's now i know i mean i just you just what you're worried i know everyone's worried i'm worried about women not having a voice and understanding their bodies. They do have a voice. Dr. Mel just said specifically that.

No, I know. It's my body, my choice. That's what she is saying. But see, it's hard when you're being mandated and told. I understand. That's where a lot of this trouble is coming from. And the obstetrician's office is like, get your vaccine. You've got to do it.

That's right. And they don't have the data. It's only been three years. Like, in 10 years, I want to know if I get your vaccine. You got to do it. And they don't have the data. It's only been three years. Like in 10 years, I want to know if I need a vaccine. You know what I mean? There'll be more data. I need more data. But that's why I wanted Dr. Mayle to come in here.

I thought she is convinced of her data and her data is solid. I'm persuaded. I'm not quite there yet, but all the way. So I have questions here and there. No, but I'm glad. I'm not quite there yet, but all the way. So I have questions here and there. No, but I'm glad you're here. Every time something new comes out, you will find me tweeting about it. So as the day comes, you will see it. And your tweets are nice and clear.

And is that, again, Vicky Mail FACS or something? Or what is that? Vicky Loves FACS? I have lived to regret the handle that I chose. So FACS, F-A-C-S. It stands for flow assisted cell sorting. That's the laboratory technique that I cut my teeth on and I love it. And so my handle, which I came up with when I was very junior scientist,

is Vicki loves FACS. It's my favorite laboratory technique. That is my handle. It's too late to change it. So if you would like to follow me, that's where you can follow me. It's fine. It's all good. Thank you for being one of those that's willing to just, I don't know that it takes courage to come in here, why it should take courage. I don't understand that at all. I give a lot of credit for showing up. I was very sure that you would give a fair hearing to the data that we use to make these

recommendations and that you in America, with AC the data that we used to make these recommendations and that you in America would be able to also use to make these recommendations. And it was a pleasure talking to you. Very late here now, though. So I'm sorry. OK. Apologies, but apologies, but gratitude that you came in. Thank you so much. And we'll hopefully talk someday soon.

Take care. That is Dr. Our producer needs to go take care of his baby. I soon. Take care. That is Dr. A.B. Mayle. Our producer needs to go take care of his baby. I know. He's got a minute 37 to go. And his wife, by the way, was vaccinated when she was pregnant. And everything turned out fine, right?

And he turned out totally fine. Yeah, exactly. He's fine. This was before we knew any hesitation at all. This was right at the beginning of everything going on. Again, people need to make their decisions with their doctor on their own, not mandated by government or public health officials. That is a categorical, that's got to be categorical.

I told Caleb that he genetically married up. Oh, I definitely did. And she's hot. Definitely did. So did I. I definitely married up. But I'd have to say something to be clear, because people say this every time that I mention that I got the vaccine and my wife got the vaccine. She got it while she was pregnant.

We have not given any of those vaccines to the baby since he was born. This was way back at the beginning of the pandemic. I still don't understand. I don't understand the aggression which is being recommended for the kids. I understand if somebody is taking care of critically ill kids with alpha and delta particularly, but now it's Omicron. It's very rare for a healthy kid to have really serious trouble. We've heard a lot of concerns about vaccine injuries. I've seen a lot of vaccine injuries. I don't think all the women are reporting their menstrual cycles either.

Yeah, you know me as different data. And I can honestly, I can honestly tell you, and I hate doing the anecdotal evidence in, you know, discussions like this, but I absolutely do know multiple people who are very pro vaccine, very pro medicine. I've never questioned anything and have either children or are themselves going through some severe neurological side effects that they don't want to talk about publicly. So there are a lot of people that aren't reporting it because they're just confused because they don't understand why something that they've trusted all of their lives

is suddenly harming them, but they don't also want to come out and appear to be anti-science. So they're stuck somewhere. So there's a lot of- I have seen plenty of people. I've seen a lot of people with clear-cut vaccine injuries that have been mistreated,

marginalized, pushed aside. People don't want to talk about it, deal with it. It's very weird. It's very, very weird. And again, as always, the truth is going to be somewhere in the middle. The fact that there were no vaccine injuries in all that data that she presented to us is what makes me uncomfortable with the data because anybody that's given out hundreds of vaccines has seen injuries. And if there's tens of thousands, there's got to be vaccine injuries in there. And why wasn't that reported? And I guess it didn't affect the pregnancy, which is good news. But it's still a bit confusing. But that was very reassuring data that she did

present and it certainly pushes thing in a in a in a easier direction and we could tell that she's also empathetic to women it didn't seem like it with all the data but she's clearly you know she she understands that women have her passions and worries and you know we're we're different we have i mean the men there are men out there that probably lost fertility which is not good too but um but the whole thing is just so disconcerting if there was greater transparency about the people that have had the horrible reactions i think people again there is this belief that somehow by bringing things into the sunlight you're somehow going to make people more resistant or make things worse. You're not. You make things worse by things being just on an anecdotal basis and people hear horror stories. You don't have to hear too many of those or see

too many of those without having grave, grave concerns. And if they just opened it up, talked about it, and it's complicated because Omicron is so much milder. It does hurt some people still, particularly older folk. It is a lot milder. There are vaccine injuries. The risk reward is less. It's endemic now. But again, flu is endemic, and so we get regular vaccines for that. I feel a little better about pregnant women,

but I'm still concerned about young people and children. So there we are So this is what he wasn't gonna push back on her and yell at her So I apologize for I was gonna ask her about her funding sources Which she talked about in huge detail on Twitter You can find it there right and I apologize for not having asking that quite asked that question So one thing I forgot to do You know, it's kind of like listening to a defense attorney defend a killer. No, no, no, no.

It's not. They believe that that person... That's Robert Kennedy. This is like listening to an expert witness. Expert witnesses give good data. Sometimes that data is reflective of an abject truth, and sometimes it's near the truth. And so... But I mean, it's her job. It's what she does, and she's going to

do what she does. All right, listen. Somebody's got to do it. We will see you next Monday. Gad's sad in the house. Is that going to be a usual time at three o'clock, three o'clock Pacific time. And, uh, again, I'm going to keep sorting through this stuff. We're going to keep listening to everybody. I'm going to try to get some opinions like a Dr. Mail in here to give them a chance to present their, present their data. And it data. And I think it's right. I think it lines up well with the concern data as well. You know, the things that we look at and go, oh my God, is this, you know, should we be alarmed about this? It helps balance things out a little bit. Thanks for listening, everybody. Yeah. Appreciate you all being here. And your comments

were great. Sorry we didn't have time for calls. Susan was in on the, what's that? Very grateful, very grateful to her for coming on. People don't understand. We've extended invitations to an endless list of experts and physicians and doctors. And so far, only two people have agreed and she was one of them. So I'm very grateful for her.

Sorry you're not called a right-wing loon this week. Which is bizarre as an independent and Democrat for most of my life. I saw that and I was like, like god damn we got to get somebody but she was suggested to me on twitter by she was better than the other last one and maybe we can get another one in here and more interesting i think people will actually watch this yeah it was good data it's good data and we'll share if you care everybody i'd like to see if um we get a pediatrician in here that is very, very, very pro-vaccine and sort of get that data on the table, too.

Because that's confusing to me, and it's still, so. All right, everybody. We'll see you on Monday with GADSAT, 3 o'clock Pacific time. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment.

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