Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 162 | Vaccines Part 1 with Dr. Bob Sears

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Dr. Bob Sears, author of "The Vaccine Book," presents one side of the debate about vaccinations and California's SB276 bill on mandated vaccinations.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope that everyone has had a great week. So I am doing something crazy today. I am engaging in the vaccine conversation, probably the most contentious conversation, maybe one of the most contingentious conversations that's happening in this country right now. I know some of you might think I'm out of my mom. for even getting into this. It is so controversial, but so many of you have asked me to talk about it. So many of you have asked me to address SB 276, which was the vaccine-related law that just passed in California. So I am going to talk to someone who is more on what I call the vaccine hesitant side today. I'm also going to talk to someone in the future who is very pro-vaccination because I truly, and I mean this, truly want to get both sides of it. And so, I want to ask as many questions as possible, get as much information as possible so we can have an interesting and productive dialogue about this, not just about vaccines, pro-vaccine or

anti-vaccine, but about personal liberty and how we, again, as we've talked about before, balance freedom and harm. How much personal freedom do we grant? Do we allow before harm, public harm, outweighs that freedom. So that's really my concern and my interest in this. But I wanted to talk to someone first from the more vaccine hesitant side. And that is Dr. Bob Sears. A lot of you guys know him. He is out of California. So he is going to provide us insight from his perspective today.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Okay. Let's get started with Dr. Bob Sears. Dr. Sears, thank you for joining me. Oh, you're very welcome, Ali.

I'm so thrilled that you want to have me on your show. Yeah. Will you tell everyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do? I'm a pediatrician out here in Southern California, and I've been doing that for 21 years now. But my greatest passion is actually to talk about vaccines and vaccine issues and educate people and give people informed consent about vaccines. You wrote a book about vaccines, a widely known book back in 2007, correct? Yeah, yes.

It was called the, was it called the vaccine book? Right, yeah, very simple. Yes, very similar. You don't even have to wonder what it's about. Tell me what kind of sparked your interest about vaccines, why you're passionate about telling people about them. Well, I think what made me passionate is, even though, you know, vaccines are viewed as very important by most people,

there is some risk. And when I was a medical student back in Georgetown back in the 90s, I actually discovered there was one vaccine that was actually pretty dangerous that they ended up taking off the market. It's the old D.P.T. vaccine. It was causing a lot of very, very serious brain injury. It was very tragic. It was all over the news.

It was a big issue. But the medical community was covering it up. They weren't acknowledging the injuries. And I was in medical school, so I decided to dig into the Georgetown Library and I uncovered so much research about this one vaccine. And even though it was doing some good, it was also doing a lot of harm.

So they took it off the market. but for me, they took it off the market 10, 15 years later than they should have. They should have realized the potential danger of this one vaccine way sooner. And so it made me realize the medical community sometimes is capable of covering something up when there's a problem. And so that made me just realize I need to do my own research. I jumped right in and I just have researched every single vaccine and every detail possible so that I could really make sure I was making an educated decision with my patients. So I could just make sure they know everything that's going on, all the benefits of vaccination,

but as well as the small risk of vaccination. So I'll start a way back in medical school. Okay. And your critics would call you anti-vax or even like a hero of the anti-vax movement. Are you anti-vaccination? Right. No, I'm not. I'm anti-mandatory vaccination.

I'm pretty much anti-mandatory any type of medical treatment. I don't think the government has the right to do that, especially something as complicated as vaccines. We give 69 doses to vaccines, to children nowadays. And we give the same number of vaccines in the first six months of life for babies as we used to give kids throughout their entire childhood. So it's so complicated. I'm just against mandating them.

And as a pediatrician, I mean, I give them. my office here every day. And I have given some vaccines to my kids. And so, but I'm just against mandates. But I think people label me as anti-vaccine because as a pediatrician, I think most pediatricians are our pro-mandate. They think vaccines are just so good, they're so wonderful. You just have to mandate them, right? And whereas I take a more neutral approach and basically like to give informed consent to help people make these decisions. Which is a little bit different than how you're described by your critics and people in the media. I think people that know me know what I'm about,

people that never meet me and just read about me in the media or they're, you know, a doctor somewhere that's never met me. Yeah, they definitely have the wrong impression of me. Yeah, you're described as the adjective that I've probably read the most from your critics about you is dangerous. And you have been put on a 35 month, I think, probation by the Medical Board of California. I think they listed maybe multiple allegations, but the main one was offering exemptions,

medical exemptions to patients that they didn't actually deem, they didn't deem in need of these medical exemptions. So can you talk about that probation? Yeah, I guess it's important to clear that up. My medical board probation came as a result of a court opinion letter that I wrote in a custody dispute. I saw the patient five years ago before there were any mandatory vaccination laws in California. So this was all pre-mandate. And it had nothing to do with a medical exemption, actually, the truth is. And a reporter in the LA Times just cleared up this inaccuracy last week and a story on me. This my exemption is not about, or my probation is not about a medical

exemption. It's about a child, a baby had a very severe neurological reaction to vaccines. mom and dad stopped vaccinating. Three years later, they get divorced. It's contentious. Dad wants to get a judge to force vaccines to be resumed. And I took the side of the child, and I wrote a letter to the judge in the case saying, this baby's vaccine reaction was so bad, I recommend he does not continue vaccines. And the judge agreed with me.

He upheld my opinion. But the medical board of California felt differently. The dad reported me. And the medical board said, no, we feel like people can only opt out of vaccines if they have a severe brain damaging neurological injury or they go into anaphylactic shock and nearly die and you have to be resuscitated. That's really that the medical board's restrictive guidelines, whereas me as a doctor, I would judge people should be able to opt out after any potentially serious vaccine reaction. So that's what that's all about. And you're right, the medical board has a few more cases coming against me for actual medical exemptions that I've written for patients. But I stand by those exemptions.

I think I only write them for children in whom I think vaccines might be dangerous for them to continue. So we'll see. We'll see what happens with those. You feel like in their cases, the vaccines would probably do more harm than good. So that's what you feel like you are weighing against when you're looking at these patients. Are other pediatricians that you know, are they kind of dealing with the same struggles and obstacles that you are? You know what?

Most doctors, probably 99% of doctors in California are now scared to even write any medical excuses from vaccines for any patients because they're seeing that the medical board is coming down on us. And I have maybe a dozen or so colleagues that are evaluating patients and doing what we're call vaccine safety evaluations and, you know, consulting with patients to determine if they should get a medical exemption. And a lot of them are following the same parameters that I am. You know, a child who had a very severe reaction shouldn't have to continue. If there's a younger baby in the same family, the younger baby shares the same genetic risks as the older kid. And I would judge

that that kid, the baby could have a bad reaction. If mom or dad had a really bad vaccine reaction, or if three or four or five close relatives had very severe vaccine reactions, they all share the same genetic risks. And the California law actually made it very clear a few years ago. Doctors are supposed to consider family history of vaccine reactions when we're making these safety evaluations. And so that's what myself and my colleagues do. But again, the medical board and the legislators that just passed this more restrictive law in California,

They're judging that. No, the only vaccine reactions that warrant an exemption are, again, what's called CDC contraindications. That's what I told you before. It's brain injury where it's so severe you go into a coma and get severely brain injured or you go into anaphylactic shock and nearly die. That's their recommendation for exemption, whereas I think most people maybe, I don't know, with a brain would say, no, if you have any sort of severe nerve injury or say it's a moderate allergic reaction, but you don't nearly die, where you suffer like a terrible allergic disease that starts right after vaccines. And most people recover from these vaccine reactions, but when you have something pretty serious, you might not want to continue vaccinating.

And I think everyone really should have that right secure for them. And then this new California law overrules that, unfortunately. So do you automatically exempt someone who had a bad reaction to a particular vaccine or do you ever work with the family to say, okay, we know, at least we know as best as we can that you had a bad reaction to this particular shot, detap or whatever it is, but I still think it's important for you to get either, you know, the polio vaccine or whatever, or do you just say, you know what, you don't need to have vaccines anymore? Well, that would be a case-by-case basis, and it depends on the severity of the reaction. You know, I have given people exemptions, say, from vaccines, but then we have, say, a measles outbreak in our area.

So some people will actually come and get the measles vaccine, even though we know it's going to be riskier for them, now we have an outbreak. And so we might say, well, the need for that might supersede your exemption. Yeah, if we had a polio outbreak in our area, we haven't had polio in the U.S. for 35 years, but if we were to have a polio outbreak, yeah, I would probably say, even though you had like say a moderately bad reaction before or maybe your sibling had a bad reaction, but polio was polio, right? And so, you know, we don't want to put your risk on polio, so I might selectively and carefully vaccinate an exempt child. It's all based on need. But, Ali, what I think is

very concerning, what I think everybody, regardless of what you feel about vaccines, whether you think they're important or not. What the California law just did last week is they took the judgment away from the doctors. Doctors no longer get to make these decisions with their individual patients. The decision is now made by the public health department who is an appointed, hired, you know, employee, a bureaucrat, so to speak. They now get to make these medical judgments on whether or not your child can be exempt after a bad reaction. And that's very uncomfortable to me, and I hope that scares everybody that the government would say our judgment in medical decisions regarding a 69 dose vaccine schedule is now going to supersede the judgment

of your doctor. Your doctor can't decide anymore. We get to decide. And anything that interferes with the doctor-patient relationship like that, I think is a huge red flag and should really wake up America to this huge government overreach. Yes, I definitely want to get into that. The SB 276 because that's really why I think a lot of people have asked me to address this because, as you said, no matter what people think about vaccines, this makes even some of the most pro-vaccination people I know extremely uncomfortable to put this in the hands of Democrats, especially people who are conservatives. This is a conservative podcast, even though this issue isn't necessarily just a conservative one. Conservatives are typically naturally mistrusting of so much

centralized power, especially when it comes to, you know, injecting something into your child's body. But I want to go back just a little bit, just so I can better understand. I was talking to you before this about how I'm just kind of, I'm researching vaccines really kind of, not for the first time, but learning, learning a lot, reading a lot, of course, as a mom. You said that if there was a measles outbreak, or if there was a polio outbreak, I think I read that in some country they're having a polio outbreak right now. So say something crazy happened. Polio happens here. You said that you might take some people who would be sensitive to vaccines and you would vaccinate them based on the risk. But I think the argument to that would be,

well, why not? If the disease is that bad, if measles or polio is that bad, isn't it worth the risk? And the first one, why wait until there's an outbreak until this person gets polio? or measles, why not just vaccinate them in the first place? Well, I mean, that is a great question. I think it's all based on risk assessment. We have no polio. We haven't, you know, for many years. So I don't think there's any need, you know, to get a polio vaccine if there's risk.

But I think, I mean, you know, when you look at measles, measles as a disease, you know, we had a very small outbreak here in California. We've had more measles this year in the United States than we've had in about 20 years, but it's still not widespread outbreaks. These outbreaks are pretty well contained. The risk of measles as a disease is about 1 in 10,000 risk of dying, right? One out of every 10,000 cases in our country will be fatal. So we haven't had a child to die of measles in the United States since 2003.

And all these outbreaks we've had in recent years, no kids have died. So it's not a disease that's rampaging and killing everybody left and right. Measles actually used to be viewed on par as chicken pox. Everyone caught measles back in the 60s and 70s. And there's a Brady Bunch episode where the kids all caught measles and they acted like it was kind of a no big deal. And they were almost glad they caught measles. And I'm not saying you should catch measles. But it used to be viewed that way. The fatality rate is extremely low. The complication rate is very, very low. you can reduce the complications of measles by taking a lot of extra vitamin A. And if you're well-nourished, measles will be a very routine disease.

So that's measles, right? And when you look at the MMR vaccine itself and you're comparing the danger of the disease compared to the danger of the vaccine. And MMR, just so everyone knows, is measles, mumps, or rebella? Correct. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's measles, months, rebella, mixed together because it's just easier to give it that way. The risk of the actual vaccine, every time there's a serious reaction to a vaccine, Ali, these are all the reaction reports are sent to the government. Every time someone has a really serious reaction to a vaccine, MMR vaccine has had tens of thousands of serious reactions reported.

But MMR vaccine has actually also had about 400 fatal reactions reported from it over the last. 30 years. And we've had about 100 fatal reactions reported to this vaccine in the last 19 years. All right. So we've had one child die very tragically from measles in the last 19 years. And we've had 100 people have fatal reported reactions right after the vaccination. Yeah. So you can describe to me, describe to me what how we tie the fatal reactions to MMR. Is that investigated to know, okay, all of these are very probably linked to the vaccination and not to something else? Well, that's a great question, a very important question. Right. I mean, it's all, it's all tied together based on timing, all right? You get, you're very healthy,

you get an MMR vaccine and a day or two later or within a week, you suffer what's called encephalitis, where the vaccine basically infects your brain. It's a very rare complication of the vaccine. And even the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is the foremost expert on vaccines, they reported on this finding 20 years ago. They did a case study. They found 48 confirmed cases of severe brain injury reactions after the MMR vaccine. That was just 48 confirmed. So when you talk about non-confirmed serious or fatal cases, it's just based on timing. You had the vaccine, you suffer this horrible, your brain injury or other severe allergic reaction within a few days or a week and you pass away, that gets reported to the government. Now, how many are for sure

from the vaccine? We don't know, Allie, because they're actually not very carefully investigated. But I would say even if 10% of those are due to the vaccine, there's still more fatal vaccine reactions than we do from actual fatal cases of the disease. So, I think, again, it comes down to should you as a healthcare consumer and a patient, should you be able to have these conversations with your doctor and assess all the data and kind of make these decisions for yourself? Or should the government step in and make this decision for you and make it mandatory? And I say no.

I think these always have to be optional decisions. Where there's a risk like this, especially a medically known risk that's been confirmed, there has to be a choice. Why is it that with vaccines, it seems like, asking questions as a parent, just asking basic questions, like, hey, what's in this? Are there any adverse reactions? Tell me the risk here.

Just wondering, you know, especially when you've got this little tiny baby that's never had anything injected into its body, has never eaten anything except for milk. And you are worried about, you know, defiling the purity of this little child. But if you ask questions, it does kind of seem like all of a sudden you are ostracized as some kind of hippie. And I'm saying this is, I'm trying to say this as a neutral person on vaccines. I think that that is wrong. Why is that? Why is it that when

people just ask simple questions, could be totally pro-vaccination, but they just want to know what what is the risk for my six-week-old, eight-week-old child? Why are they looked at like they have three heads. Yes. And that's probably the number one reason, you know, why we do the vaccine conversation with myself and Melissa is no one can have those conversations anywhere. I mean, you can't talk to your neighbors, can't talk to your family, and you definitely can't talk to your doctor about it. And I'm sorry to say that as a doctor, but doctors just won't have this conversation with you. Most doctors are now kicking patients out unless they comply. with the full vaccine schedule.

I think doctors largely view vaccines as so critically important that there's only one right answer. And the other problem is doctors are actually trained that vaccine reactions are not real. And it's sad to say, as real as they are and as clear as the evidence in the scientific literature is about vaccine reactions, we're trained in medical school. All vaccine reactions are coincidental. so they don't really happen. You can just ignore them.

Therefore, vaccines are perfectly safe and effective, and therefore there's only one right answer. So why would I, as a doctor, waste my time and your time having a discussion about it when there's only one thing you should choose? And it does a huge disservice, Allie. I mean, yeah, I mean, imagine you sitting there in front of a doctor and you ask a question and they just shut you down.

I mean, you can talk about discipline all day long. They're going to prescribe you an antibiotic, and they're going to warn you about the side effects. You want to go on your ADD medication for your child with ADD, and they're going to have to warn you about the cardiac side effects and the neurological side effects and the psychiatric side effects. You can talk all day about anything else, but you can't talk about vaccines with your doctor.

It's taboo. And I think wise parents are starting to realize if there's something that we can't talk about, there's got to be a reason they're not willing to talk. talk about it and I'm going to need to go discover for myself what's, you know, what's taboo about it. And when parents do that, they realize that even though vaccine injury is not common, it's real and they're concerned about it and they just want to know the truth and the risk. Do you think that the risk of vaccine injury and vaccine death is at all overblown?

Or do you think that everyone who is talking about the risks of it have a really? good handle on the likelihood. No, I don't think we're overblowing at all. And think about the motivation of these people, Ali. I mean, a lot of people talk about, you know, I mean, most people are motivated financially by something if they're going to go out and promote something. But when you're the parent of a vaccine injured child, you don't have anything to gain by being vocal about it.

You have everything to lose. You're going to be ostracized by your family, your friends. The ones that really know you and love you will stand by your side. But, I mean, what would be the parents' motivation to lie about vaccine injury? I mean, now they're getting kicked out of school for not continuing vaccines. You know, if they're just going to be quiet about it and move on with their lives, then they could keep all their friends and they could safely walk around the neighborhood without people looking at them funny.

So there's no motivation for these parents to lie about these vaccine injuries. And then me as a doctor and the colleagues of mine that speak out about it, you know, our medical licenses are at risk, our reputations at risk. We certainly don't make any money. In fact, I lose a lot of money over this. My malpractice insurance is double. I actually can't contract with medical insurances to get insurance payments for patients anymore because of my probation.

Actually, it costs me a lot of money to make this stand about, you know, know, vaccine safety awareness and vaccine injury awareness. So when you, you know, when it comes to motivation, I think motivation is really how you can read somebody. And you show me a parent that has a nefarious motivation for talking about that vaccine injury. And I'll stop. I'll stop talking about this because you're not going to find out of those parents.

Their heart is broken. Their child is broken. They have to live this vaccine injury the rest of their life. to take care of their child, they simply want other parents to know. They want to know there's a risk. It probably won't happen to your child, but if it does, you just got to go into this with your eyes open. That's what their motivation is.

And I think it's a very pure motivation. I think that there are pure motives. There are purely motivated people on both sides, and that the people who are pro- vaccine, they're very scared. I mean, and I can, I understand this. I am too. I don't, even though my child might not die from measles, I don't want her to get measles. You know, I don't want my child to get polio. I don't want to see my child suffer from whooping cough. People who have compromised immune systems feel like they are relying on other people to be immunized. And so there's real fear on the other side. And then you have real fear on what I like to call people who are hesitant.

about vaccines. I don't like to say anti-vax. I think it's used as a pejorative of the the risks that there are for injury. They don't want to see their child suffer in that way. They're afraid of that. And I think everyone, they come up with different conclusions, but everyone is weighing the risks and they come up with their own decisions. And I think that is where I can speak into that confidently of saying, I want every parent to be able to do that. I want every parent to be, as you have said, informed, fully informed. I don't want a parent who just has questions about vaccines to feel intimidated by their doctor.

And I don't want the doctor to be intimidated by the medical board. I want to be able to have honest conversations about that. I want a parent who says, I'm all for vaccines to go for it. I want there to be a reasonable conversation on the other side about the risks as well. And I think that's where SB 276 comes in in California. where it seems like all of those conversations are being stifled, where the doctor probably feels very intimidated. I think that the bill says, and you can tell me exactly what the bill says,

but you are basically limited. If you reach more than five medical exemptions, medical exemptions, we're not talking about philosophical exemptions, which are already outlawed in California, but medical exemptions, then that triggers something, it triggers the medical board to review you and all that.

basically you could get in trouble. So that scares me as someone who is being as neutral as possible on this. Can you talk a little bit more about it? Yeah, and let me let me touch base also on the worry about about unvaccinated kids and you know, do it does everyone need to vaccinate it in order to protect the immunocompromise kids and keep diseases at bay. And the way I look at that issue, Ali, and it's very important to look at it, is almost all adults are effectively unimmunized because all our vaccines have worn off for the most part. We have very little polio immunity. We've lost our measles immunity, mumps and rebella. We're not immune to chicken pox. We're not immune to whooping cough. So the majority of the population or the herd, so to speak, is not immunized

anymore. We're susceptible to these diseases. And that's the primary reason why we still see measles outbreaks. Most measles outbreaks are started by adults, many of whom were immunized as kids. And then some of this spreads to immunized kids, some of this spreads to unimmunized kids. But a lot of these diseases spread among adults. So even if we vaccinate 100% of children, we're still going to have disease outbreaks because it'll happen in adults and it'll happen in the 5% of kids in whom the vaccines don't work. So for me, when you have one or two percent of children who are opting out of vaccination, that doesn't change the global herd immunity to any significant extent. And for me, that's why it is safe as a nation and as a community to have people be able to have a certain

percentage with medical need, children, I like to call them the vaccine compromise. They've already had a severe reaction or they have siblings or parents with severe reactions. Those vaccine compromise kids need to be protected as well. So I think we can do a better job working together for everybody instead of requiring these very strict mandates. And you did say, though, that we've had more measles this year than we have in 20 years, but you did mention that only one child very tragically died back in 2003, but do you not correspond the out, so-called, I mean, I guess it's an outbreak. I don't know if you could, what technically is qualified as an outbreak, an increase in measles. Do you not correspond that with what seems like a growing movement of Vax hesitant people?

Well, no, I don't relate it to that, Allie, because measles is spreading again largely among previously vaccinated adults who have lost their. immunity. It just spreads around communities that way. Yes, it involves some kids, too, and it involves some unimmunized kids. But I don't think we're having this increase because of the higher number of unvaccinated children. I think we're having this increase just simply because adults don't have herd immunity. They don't have their natural immunity. And another big reason, actually, Ali, and there is science that looked at this is adults who caught measles 40, 50 years ago, they grew up immune and they're immune for life. So our entire adult population actually

used to be immune because everyone used to catch measles. Now, all the older people who have natural immunity, they're all passing on, you know, passing on with life. They're all passing away from, you know, natural causes and whatever. Our middle-aged adult population, now are all the ones that were vaccinated for measles in the 60s and 70s and 80s. So they never got natural immunity. So now we have this huge adult growing population who are susceptible, right? So they're the ones catching measles. Whereas 20, 30 years ago, our entire adult population was a lot more immune naturally

from having caught the disease. So we weren't seeing the disease spread way back then. So I think that's why we're seeing more measles now, not because of unemployment. unimmunized kids. And so that's why I don't think we need to discriminate against these unimmunized kids or come down hard on them or mandate things because we have this huge adult population who are unimmunized to deal with. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I've definitely, I've never heard that before. I would love to look at some studies of who is actually catching, or at least the age range of people that are catching measles. And I don't know if we can know

if they were vaccinated or not, that that would be really interesting to look at. I'm sure this is... Right. We have those data. And Melissa has those data. She loves to talk about it. We could have that conversation sometime. I don't have it in front of me. That's okay. My age is hard to, you know, always memorize all these numbers. But that's what my partner is for in this endeavor. You know, you asked about the law. Yes. About this, specifically about the law. What did you ask me again? I forget. Well, I want to hear from you what exactly it is. I do know, like I said, the five exemptions, but if you could go into detail on what this is. Okay. All right. Right. Well, what this new California law does, it basically sets up a new system for writing medical exemptions starting next year, 2020 or 2021. I forget. It's one of those two years. doctors will now write an exemption letter and send it to the public health department for approval

and for review. Every single one? Every single one will, it'll either get sent to the health department for approval or it'll get sent to the school and then the school will send it to the health department for approval, one of those two. And the health department will look at these exemptions and verify if the exemption was based on the CDC criteria. Basically, did the child have anaphylactic shock and nearly die, or was the child severely brain injured and say go into a coma and suffer severe neurological damage? And if that happened, then that child can be exempt from that one vaccine that caused that reaction. but we won't exempt the child from all the other vaccines. You'll still have to continue to vaccinate.

And oh, if that happened to your first child, your second child will not get an exemption. Your second child will have to get the same vaccine that caused that very severe injury. And then if the public health department finds exemptions that were written for any other reason, like say just more moderate severe reactions like what I right now, If they find exemptions like that, they'll report you to the medical board. And if you write more than five in a year, they will review all yours directly. It's a very broken system. Now, the exemptions that people have been writing as of now, as of this year, like all the old exemptions from the past few years,

that's kind of uncertain right now. We think those exemptions are going to be grandfathered in and not revamped. but only until your child reaches kindergarten if they're younger or only until your child reaches seventh grade if they're already in elementary school. Once your child reaches one of those checkpoints, kindergarten or seventh grade, then the exemption will be revoked. And you'll then need to get a new exemption under the new guidelines. And it's just, it's mind boggling how a government could think that that's a better idea for its people compared to the current system. It just blows my mind.

And is this for children that are only attending public, private school? If someone is homeschooled, are they somehow mandated to be vaccinated as well? No, homeschoolers are not subject to this law. And so I think we're going to have a lot of homeschoolers. homeschooling is already tripled in California when they passed the first law four years ago. We're now going to have a lot more homeschooling families because, you know, these families are not, you know, most of them are not going to be comfortable continuing vaccines and they're at-risk kids. And I actually think I worry that we're going to, school is going to lose funding. Their populations are going to decrease because of this.

They're going to lose funds. People are going to lose their jobs. It's going to cause a big kind of upheaval in the educational system. You know, a public school, private school, religious school, all daycares. You can't register your child anywhere anymore unless you get vaccinated or you have a qualifying medical reason to opt out of vaccines. I think some people, I've heard actually stories of people who do have a vaccine injured child, who they believe was injured from a vaccine.

They're in California. They're trying to find a pediatrician to take them in. and some pediatricians won't even see them, even though their child is legitimately injured, won't even see them because of the risk. And it seems like this law could maybe exacerbate that. Yeah, yeah, again, Allie, because what is that doctor thinking? That doctor is thinking your child's vaccine injury is not real. It didn't happen. It was coincidental. Even if it happened, you know, one hour after a group of five vaccines, your child crashes and burns and is severely brain injured, you know, not automobile crash and burn. I just mean they just deteriorate before your

eyes and suffer severe neurological injury. Even if that happens, doctors are trained that that's just not real. It would have happened anyway. It would have just randomly happened even if we had not just done these five injections. That's literally how doctors see this, Allie. So they do not want to acknowledge vaccine injury. So they just don't want it in their office. And I don't know if it's a protective mechanism. I don't know if they're worried about facing something that's uncomfortable. You know, they were taught vaccines are 100% safe. So they've been giving them to their patients all these years. Yeah, the occasional patient has a severe reaction and leaves their office, leaves their practice. So it doesn't stay in their mind. Maybe it's just more comfortable for them

to continue practicing just kind of in their bubble of not acknowledging real vaccine injury. I think that just as a huge disservice to these families. You might not know that doctors do have a financial incentive to vaccinate. Insurance companies actually now give doctors year-end bonuses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars if they have a very high rate of fully vaccinated patients in their office. So very sadly, these families that are either vaccine injured and opt out or the families that choose not to vaccinate in the first place, they are now actually hurting the bottom line of these doctors.

And I would actually not say that I don't think that's what motivates most of these doctors. I don't think they're financially motivated. But I think that's part of their fear. They're just trying to make a decent living. And insurance pays so little to begin with if they can get these year-end bonuses, it really helps their business. And then sadly that that's probably, in part, what is affecting their unwillingness to serve these patients.

Senator Pan, that's his name, correct? The guy who really was in charge of SB 276, he has a list of myths on his site or what he calls myths on his site and what he calls truths to combat that myth. And one thing that he says is that it's actually a myth that doctors in any way financially benefit from the accident. but you're saying that's untrue.

Right, right. Yeah, we showed the legislators. A friend of mine that that practice is near me. He showed me his medical insurance contract. And it says very clearly, for every child in his practice that gets the MMR and the chickenpox vaccine, we will give you $150 year-end bonus. So if he has a thousand kids in his practice that he's vaccinating with MMR and chickenpox that year, that's a $150,000 bonus he gets at the end of the year. He showed it to me. And we showed this to legislators. Legislators don't believe it either. We showed this in print, the actual contract.

And they were shocked. But again, you alluded to this earlier, but people have to realize this mandatory vaccine agenda is very largely a Democratic Party agenda. And Democrats are our are dumbfounded as to why. I mean, the Democratic Party often is kind of founded on on individual freedoms and, you know, and, you know, it's a government, you know, for the people. And, you know, and, you know, not having government overreach. And, you know, and it's strange. When I talk to most Democrats and Republicans, too, as far as citizens, almost every one of them is against mandatory vaccines, especially this new law, especially after you've already been injured. But for some reason, the Democratic legislators won't budge. Their party is pushing this

agenda. And I've sat in front of a number of these Democratic legislators. They told me, I agree with you. Dr. Sears, you are right. I agree with you. But I can't vote that way. If I vote that way, I'll be screwed by my party. I'll get in trouble. I'll lose the support of my fellow party members is very sad. And I think the public needs to wake up to, you know, to what's really going on. And you really need to make your voices heard and heard loud because they're not listening and there's some sort of influence over them that that kind of baffles all of our minds. What incentive would these legislators have, like Senator Pan, to push something like this? I mean, there's definitely an argument on that side for just public health, that this is

public health issue. But I know a lot of people on the other side aren't really buying that. There's a lot of talk of big pharma. And I don't really know that much about that. Is that part of the ulterior motive that you feel like these legislators have? Well, I think this is not going to be news to your listeners, Ali. Big business donates billions of dollars to legislators. I mean, that's not news to anybody. big oil donates, you know, farm workers unions, teachers unions, any credit big business, you know, cellular industry, tech industry, and the pharmaceutical industry. They all donate billions of dollars to legislators.

And so the legislators, they are sadly beholden to people who donate to them. And here's kind of the, you know, and we know Senator Pan out in California, he was one of the largest recipients of pharmaceutical donations over the last few years. And I don't know if this number is exactly correct, but a number from last year said, I think 40% of all his donations were from the pharmaceutical industry. And you can't say there's nothing illegal about that. And you might say it's unethical, but it's not illegal to accept these donations and then act on them. I mean, that's just the nature of our process. But here's where it goes wrong. And Here's where I have a problem, Allie.

You may or may not know, but in 1986, the government passed the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, and they gave pharmaceutical companies liability from all vaccine injuries. So many kids were getting injured by vaccines. Pharma said we can't make vaccines anymore. They're costing us too much in injury liability. So Congress said, okay, we'll take away liability so people can't sue you anymore. but we're going to want you to work on vaccine safety and start researching more. So that was 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, pharma has not done anything to make vaccines safer. They've just come out with more vaccines because now vaccines are liability-free. So why not make more of them? Because even if they cause harm, it's okay. You can't get sued. But again, that's not even the bad part. Meanwhile, pharma over the last 30 years has donated billions and billions of dollars to all these legislators. Now these legislators are mandating pharma's liability-free products. And to me,

that's where they've gone too far. Congress did pharma favor to take away liability. Farmer returned the favor by donating billions of dollars to government and legislators. And now legislators are going to mandate those actual products that they made liability-free and that they're getting billions and donations for? How can that possibly be ethical by any standard? And to me, that's really the ultimate way where they've crossed the line with this law. I mean, it's one thing to say vaccines are important. It's another thing to say they're mandated for school. You have no choice. And if you don't get in line and keep doing it after an injury, we're going to kick you out. We're going to segregate you. We're going to discriminate against you. This isn't, you know,

separate and equal schools. This is no schools for certain. certain people now. And that just devastates me. And I hope the American public will wake up to this. Does SB 276 say that you have to get every single vaccine that the CDC recommends, like even rhodovirus or something like that? A great question. No, the law only mandates about half of the vaccines on the schedule for now. But the law can expand any time. include any new vaccines and any recent vaccines that have been added. So, I mean, right now, again, we give 69 doses of 16 different vaccines. The law mandates about half of them, but they're going to add them on. They might add, you know, HPV vaccine. They can add rotavirus, numerical,

flu shots, hepatitis A. I mean, they can add any vaccine they want to in the future. And they will. I mean, why wouldn't they, Ali? I mean, no government is going to make. mandate these and just stick to the, you know, the doses that, you know, that they're in the law now, of course, they're going to add all the new vaccines. And that's why people need to stand up now to this, because if we let this start rolling over across the country and state-by-state starts passing these same laws, I mean, it's, I hope it doesn't go there. I hope people wake up to this. And I almost think this even could backfire on them. If too many Americans, Americans realize that the government has gone too far, they might stand up. And this might bring

down the whole vaccine industry because people are now starting to realize of the conflicts of interest and follow the money and the denial of vaccine injury. When people start to realize all that and now they're turning it into laws, you know, hopefully people will rise up and will have a huge change to the system where you can make it better and safer for everybody. I think it's unfortunate how they have gone about this in California because this is, and again, I'm not even, I'm not assuming that you agree with all my politics, but something that we talk about on this podcast is that how the left does things can alienate people. You could maybe say that about the right as well, but coming from a conservative perspective,

how they do things pushes people towards the center and even towards the right. And I think that's true about this. the only reason why I'm even having this conversation, why it even came to mind is because of the issue of personal liberty. And there's always, there's always in everything, whether you're talking about guns or whether you're talking about vaccines, there is always a balance to strike between freedom and harm. How much personal freedom can we grant someone until the harm just begins to outweigh it. As a conservative, I typically go on the side of freedom. And so I think that is, I think that is the issue here.

And that's what people are afraid of, that even people that are pro-vaccine, that might be a Democrat, that might be on the left, they're like, okay, I am pro-vaccination, but I want to be able to ask questions. I want to be informed. And I certainly don't want the state and bureaucrats deciding whether or not my child was injured enough to have a vaccine. Like, that's just very hard to prove as well. And I think that that's the concern.

and if I'm just being totally candid, again, is a neutral person in all of this. That is my concern as well. I'm always concerned with government overreach, but especially when it comes to our children, especially from the party who talk so much about bodily autonomy and talk so much about the private decisions between, you know, an OB and a woman to be able to have an abortion or not, all of a sudden that's thrown out the window. And that does kind of confuse me a little bit. as someone who does see benefits and vaccines.

Yeah, I hear the same thing from all my Democratic friends here in California. They're just, their minds are boggled why, you know, out of one side of the mouth, the Democrats can talk about everything you just said. And then on the other side of the mouth, they can say, we're going to mandate vaccines. And even after vaccine injury, you still have to keep getting them or you're, you know, kicked out of a society. Again, it's, and I can't say. enough, it's not the Democratic people. It's not the Democratic voters. There's something strange

going on in the legislative house that is driving this. And there, I mean, so many of their Democratic constituents are calling these offices and saying, please don't vote for this bill. And they're just not listening. And again, it probably just comes down to the pharma agenda, the medical agenda. That's just, you know, pharma is just, one of the biggest industries that has a hold on our government. And I think everyone nationwide wants to fix that part of our government. They don't want big industry to have this strangle hold on our government anymore, but no one knows how to fix it.

People always say, well, just vote them out. Well, you know, farmers are just going to vote in the next person, right? Until we fix that system of people being able to have such influence by, you know, by any sort of large corporations. Until we fix that, I think we're going to continue to see this problem, and not just in the area of mandatory vaccines, but in a lot of areas. So stand up now.

Stand up now while you still can. Yes, I think they're going about it the wrong way. If you want to educate people about the benefits of vaccines, I think that can be a very good thing. But when you start telling someone that you have to do something, and by the way, if you ask about what's in this, if you ask about the risks, then you are going to be bullied into silence, then that makes people inherently start questioning.

Well, why? What are you hiding? Maybe they're not hiding anything, but it makes people, very thoughtful people, not conspiracy theorists, just thoughtful people say, well, hang on just a second. Do I not have a right to know? So I think that they're going about it completely the wrong way. One other question that I had is about,

does this cover, does this law cover delayed vaccine schedules? You came up with the delayed vaccine schedule. I've been told by pediatricians that there is no medical research at all supporting delaying vaccines or spreading them out. Does this law have anything to do with that? Can you still delay them if you want to? Yes, yeah, you can still delay. And that's what a lot of my patients are doing.

Most of my patients don't vaccinate anymore because I'm the only office they can come to in all of Southern California. So people flock to me from everywhere because I'm the only one that'll see them. So sort of by default, I have this large population of unvaccinated patients. But a lot of them will start vaccinating in order to go to school. But yes, the law does allow you to delay them. You don't have to do them during infancy. you can just start them when your child's two, three, or four years old. You just have to get on sort of get on board with part of the schedule by the time you enter school.

And so that's something I'm guiding a lot of my patients through, through that process of delayed vaccination but meeting the school requirements because they don't have a good legitimate medical reason to opt out of the vaccines. What are you telling people who are very scared right now? of people are super, super concerned. And I think for a good reason, just from a liberty standpoint about the law in California and what kind of precedent that sets, what do you tell people who were worried? Well, I'm telling people that one of the biggest problems in this issue is everyone's been silent for too long about their vaccine injury. You know, 20, 30 years ago, you had a severely

vaccine injured child, you just didn't tell anybody out of fear. You just kind of went home and then just lived the rest of your home quietly. The more people that start talking about it, the more friends and family members that start to realize, hey, you know, I've been your friend for five years. I always wondered what was, you know, why your child seemed neurologically injured, you know, why you tell me about it, you start talking about it. And they start understanding you, started listening and understanding what happened to your child. child, then those people will start, you know, will stand behind you and get on board with you. And if all friends and family and neighbors got behind every vaccine injured child because

their family is now talking about it and publicizing it, then whole neighborhoods would sort of would, could be, could work together on this and communities. They could all go to the legislators together. And there could be, you know, a hundred fully vaccinated families standing behind their one neighbor who suffered a terrible vaccine injury and said and say, hey, we love this person. We're going to stand up for them and stand up for their rights. You can't mandate vaccines for them. Even though we all, you know, we all think that vaccines are good and we did them all

with our kids and our kids all got through them okay, we're not going to let you segregate or discriminate against our one neighbor who was injured. If more people could band together that way and stand up, I think would be in a much better place. That's why what I tell my vaccine injured patients, or they're ones who, you know, who have, you know, more kids after a vaccine injury, I just tell them, just stop being quiet about it, have the conversation, you know, wear interesting T-shirts that spark conversation. You know, grocery stores that you're at the, you're getting your haircut, getting your nails done, you're at the gym working out, wherever you are, you know, strike up these conversations.

the more humanity that we show, the more personal to person to person relationships we can we can establish and just that are safe places just to talk about this. and the more that it's out there, I think the better community will have, the better country will have and we'll be able to deal with this problem once and for all instead of sweeping it under a rug and not talking about it and just ignoring it and moving on with mandates instead of doing what we really need to do, which is address why vaccine injuries happen and how to make vaccines safer. So talk about it. Have the conversation. I am definitely inclined to towards conversation and dialogue. I think there are very few things that can't be made better by that.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the temperament of our country and a lot of things. Definitely not just vaccines, but a lot of different freedoms that we have. It doesn't seem like we can have just a dialogue where both sides can have questions. I know a lot of pro-vaccine people that have a lot of questions for the vaccine people and vice versa. but so often it turns to this yelling match where both sides are accusing them of hating children. Both sides are accusing them of wanting children dead. I don't think either side wants that.

I don't think either sides wants that, which is why I think it was important for me and very informative for me to have this conversation with you because I appreciate hearing from all sides. Like you have said, and I've read that you have said this, this is complex. We treat it like it is so simple, like it's so, duh, but people have legitimate concerns, and that's why you think it's worth talking about.

If you could direct people to where they can find you and where they can learn more about what you do, that would be great. Well, yeah, I have the vaccine conversation podcast with Melissa and Dr. Bob. Melissa is my partner and everything to do with vaccines. You know, we speak together, we write, we do a lot of research together. and last year we started podcasting. And it's funny, you would think a podcast about vaccines would be super boring. But let me tell you, the reason I have so much fun doing it is Melissa just makes it so much more interesting.

Instead of me just being a doctor, you know, talking about medicine all day, she brings in the humanity and the mom's perspective and the statistical analysis. She's a real science-based background. And so we just have this fun conversation for an hour. a couple times a week. Every episode is about one little aspect about vaccines. We talk about pretty much every single thing you could ever want to know about vaccines and the diseases. You know, we talk about what the disease risk is, what the vaccine risk is, herd immunity,

social media, you know, the media myths, legislative stuff, you know, old research articles. We actually go back 150 years and talk about some of the, the origins of the, you know, like the anti-compulsory vaccination movement and they bring out these, you know, old historical documents and talk about them. And it's so funny, we actually found there is like, there was a Melissa and Dr. Bob 150 years ago that were touring around San Diego trying to warn people about the dangers of the smallpox vaccination. And, and they had all the same issues back then as we do today. Government overreach, medical, you know, the medical system coming down on everybody and everyone denying that smallpox vaccine injury was real and it was real.

So it's just so fun. I mean, we just have all these great conversations. It's a lot of fun. It's just the vaccine conversation podcast. And I'm going to keep doing that the rest of my life, hopefully, because I don't think I've ever found anything more fun. It's a lot more fun than writing about vaccines is simply having a conversation with someone that I like to talk to about it.

Do you have an episode? One thing that we didn't address that we don't. have time to, but I wish that we did was the aborted fetal parts that I used to actually think was just a conspiracy theory. And then it's not. It's a known thing. The CDC says that there are. Do you have an episode on that that people could listen to since we don't have time to discuss it today? You know what? We don't. But we will soon. I'll put that on the list for maybe next week's agenda. do we just clarify, you know, the actual FDA documents that verify the presence of aborted fetal DNA and proteins in vaccines?

Yes, and there are a lot of different. I'm a Christian, so there's a lot of different Christian ethical perspectives on that. Some that say it's okay because we're not directly supporting abortion. Some that obviously say it's not okay because you're indirectly supporting abortion and we're pro-life. And so there are a lot of different perspectives on that. I think it would be interesting to hear people talk about it. it for sure. And it's a little scary to know that the actual physical fragments of that fetus's DNA and proteins from that fetus actually are still in the vaccine solution that's injected into

you. And I think people need to know that because that, I mean, could it be harmless, probably, but is that that's kind of, I think, an ethical dilemma that Christians have to be aware of. Yes, and I am always for more research, more information, more conversations, less fearmongering, more just factual-based dialogue about this. So thank you for facilitating that and thanks for taking the time to come on my show. Sure. Thanks a lot, Ali. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day. and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.