The Highwire with Del Bigtree - MICHAEL SHERMER: THE UNEXPECTED VACCINE DEBATE

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer makes a career of debunking false claims. But, when he tries to debunk RFK Jr, he inadvertently crosses into Del Bigtree’s investigative wheelhouse, launching the interview into an unexpected clash of self-proclaimed“Skeptics.”Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

All right, I'm here with Michael Shermer, Science Historian. This is your magazine, right? Sceptic Magazine. That's it. Founded in 1992. And so also contributed to Scientific American for 18 years. 18 years. So science history is your wheelhouse?

So every issue of skeptic has a particular theme to it. This one's on energy, nuclear power. Anything that's controversial, it's part of the culture wars, science has something to say about it. That's my beat. I'm sort of really deeply into science too, the work that I do, mostly been very focused on the pharmaceutical industry. I started investigating vaccines, vaccine safety, and started recognizing that the science that we were told was being done is not actually being done at the level that we think it is. I think the scientific method is on a ventilator taking remdesivir and could die any second right now. Well, okay.

Let's clarify a couple things. Yeah. There is a scientific method. It's not perfect. But what's the alternative? It's just your opinion and my opinion. There's got to be some way that you and I, no matter what our beliefs are, can go, look, there's the evidence. Now, sometimes the evidence is clear.

Sometimes it's not all right to go on Joe Rogan and talk about it. Yeah. And it's all right to go in some other show and have the skeptic debunk it, whatever. I liked that fact that RFK Jr. went on Rogan, and Rogan offered to pay. Peter Hotel. Peter Hotez, 100,000 bucks, and that's up to like 2 million now or something. And he doesn't want to give RFK Jr. a platform. I happen to think he's wrong about vaccines.

And we've written quite a bit in skeptic. Here's the claim. Here's why it's wrong and so on. Let's have this conversation now, then, since you're well educated on it, I'd enjoy this. One of the major claims being made by Robert Kennedy Jr. is that the childhood vaccine schedule, 16 vaccines, were not run through a salient placebo trial, long-term salient placebo trials, and he's being said that that is misinformation. Okay, part of this is what we call changing the goalpost, moving the goalpost.

In fact, the original claim back in the 90s was that vaccines cause autism and other problems because of the mercury. Well, that was taken out in 1999, officially by 2000. It was out. And so then autism rates continue to increase. That's true. Now, autism rates may not actually be increasing. category may be expanding that more people are being diagnosed on the spectrum.

Okay, let me challenge that because I think that's one of the stupidest scientific statements ever made. Where is the old folks home filled with autistic people? Where are all the autistic people that are your age? They don't exist. Well, they do exist. They just weren't diagnosed. You don't have anyone having repetitive motion disorders that are at your age or my age. It depends on what we're talking about. I'm talking about autism. So there's a huge wide spectrum. You have, you know, someone like Elon Musk who says, I'm on the autistic spectrum. Well, he's very different from the ones on the far end that are self-stimulating and barely functional. So none of that has been proven to be caused by vaccines. In fact,

the original study that was published in the Lancet was withdrawn because it was fraud, not only fraudulent, not only poorly run, but it was fraudulent. Not true. Yes, it wasn't proven to be fraudulent. In fact, there's a whole long book about this, that the guy had taken money and that there was a only I think 14 subjects total and 12 subjects even worse and then and then it's only a case study and then a case study is just the beginning of an investigation into an idea but there was never any causal mechanism between he never claimed there was the gut I know but then only the parent no let's be clear the only thing that that study ever did was you had parents of the 12 kids saying that they

believe the child's autism started after the mmr vaccine the study was only of a gut biome problem that they were having something that looked like Crohn's disease and that's scientist, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was a specialist on Crohn's disease and gut issues, and his paper said unequivocally, this study does not prove a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. So then how did this thing get promoted as that? And then how does this guy lose his career because he made an honest statement saying that this study didn't do it, and you're claiming that that study was fraudulent. He's been promoting this.

He's still promoting it. Even today, he makes appearances for parents of children. It was fraudulent and his statement was accurate and you'd have to agree with the statement. No, no, no. What I'm saying is he's been pushing this, whatever he wrote in the paper, his own co-authors denounced it as fraudulent and incorrect. No, they did not. That is not true. The Lancet withdrew the article and said this was.

That's all that happened. Lancet withdraws a lot of articles whether they're true or not. They had to withdraw. Okay, so if this is true, why is he still telling parents that vaccines caused your kids autism? I would guess because he believes that. I think he does believe that. That's the point. And he's wrong.

So here's what's actually happening. How would you prove that? Here's how you'd prove it. Thymerosol was taken out of the mercury. Autism is still continuing. All right. So it's not the, it's not the thimerosal. Then they move the goalpost.

Oh, no, no, it's not. It's the order in which they... Oh, no, it's not the order. It's the timing. Oh, no, it's not the timing. It's the number. So they keep changing the goalposts. I could make a similar argument about cancer.

Oh, cancer is cigarettes. Well, no, it's not. No, it's asbestos. Oh, so now you're moving the goalpost. Now, you know, the cancer is caused by this kennel. glyphosate. Oh, you're moving the gold post. There are multiple toxic chemicals that cause the same types of problems in people. And so just because you remove one element doesn't mean that you've proven that the vaccines are not causing this issue. And I agree with you. I don't, I think the only

misstatement was that mercury may be the cause of autism. What we have never seen is a study that looks at the entire vaccine program compared those that are vaccinated to those that were unvaccinated and live the same lives. What are the health outcomes? Is there more autism and vaccinated populations compared to unvaccinated populations. We have tons of studies on autism. There is no link to vaccines at all. The only studies you have, let me explain how the study's done. You're not a scientist. This is what I do. I'm a journalist. You're a journalist. Are you a scientist or a journalist?

I am a scientist. Okay. I'm a social scientist. I don't do epidemiology. Vaccines is not my area. But we've had people that study vaccines write for skeptic and show this is incorrect. I would guess that most of those people probably are funded. But this was long ago before all this stuff took off with RFK Jr. and all this is back in the early 2000s. Yeah, but it's still happening. We still have a problem with autism. So what do you think is the cause of autism? Because we don't know.

So we don't know what the cause is. And I find it astounding that after, you know, decades of science that we don't know, but we do know what's not causing it? I think that's a ridiculous statement. I think it shows me that you're probably not looking in the right places. But what do I think is causing autism? So you know the cause of autism? Oh, wow. Here's what I think. I'll tell you what I think, because I have been investigating this for some time.

I think that it appears that when you talked to a lot of scientists around that really deal with autism, or really treating it or trying to figure out what's going on there, most of them will say it appears that autism is an environmental toxicity problem. You have children that can't methylate as quickly as other children. And so the toxins in the world are building up and at some point are creating an encephalophathy, you know, the swelling of the brain. they could have ended up having Tourette's or some issue. In my case, the symptom that occurred was autism. So I think that what you're seeing with autism,

and more and more, they've tried to push the idea you had that we're diagnosing it better. That's falling apart. Now they're back to, now they're back to admitting it must have environmental issues that are involved. The category of autism spectrum has grown inside. So there's more diagnoses. Okay, also the methylation hypothesis has been tested.

It's not true. what happened, I'm just going to give you my opinion. I'm listening to it. Yeah. There's all this is really is two perspectives. Between around the age when autism starts to make appearances behaviorally in children is around the age that they also get vaccinated. So parents understandably, they get vaccinated.

And then their child is diagnosed. What's the last thing we did? Oh, the vaccine. So of course, this gets fingered. And that's what happened in the 90s. And after the Wakefield paper, that's what parents thought. And then everybody, looked into it and said, nope, that's not it.

It wasn't the mercury, it wasn't the timing, it wasn't the sequence or the order or the number. That's the changing goalposts. And we may have always had something like an autism spectrum in the history of humanity. I don't think so. There's a theory that creative geniuses, the Elon Musk's of history, were autistic.

Okay, but let's stick with severe autism because that's something we would have recognized. You don't have Tourette's, Charcot, Freud, these guys went into every insane asylum, described everything they saw there. We don't have a single description of anything that represents the Rain Man, the autism person. And when we saw Rain Man, everyone was like, I've never seen that person before. It was really unique. Now we all know somebody.

Clearly something is changing. We can't say it's always been here. Okay, let me give you a recommendation. There are tons of great videos online. Like, for example, taking apart the RFK appearance on which is three hours I watch the whole thing so step by say here's his claim here's why he's wrong yeah here's the claim here's why he's wrong and so on like the vaccines are not tested the way drugs are it's not true here's how they're testing that's not true i i i i've sued

the fdaa the nih health and human services i've won in fact robert kennie junior's quoting him a lot of the work that i've done there are no placebo-based studies using a salient yes there are not you would not be able to prove that you couldn't provide them right here I guarantee you can. Well, I don't have my computer. I would love to see all of the placebo trials using saline placibos of the 16 vaccines Robert Kennedy Jr. is talking about. If you can provide those, I'll shut up tomorrow.

I'll email you the stuff I saw. We'll put it on our website. Okay. All right. I don't want some version. I don't want an opinion. I want saline placebo studies, which is the gold standard of pharmaceutical testing done in the pre-licensure phase of 16 vaccines that we give our children in 72 doses.

and I can assure you because I have been in courtrooms on this, they do not exist. Okay. All right? Everything we've published and skeptic on vaccines, I'll send it to say. I like to ask you this question. If I'm right and there are no print on here, I was wrong. You would, will you? If there are no saline, let me be perfectly clear about my statement.

I don't know about the saline. The saline placebo studies in the pre-licensure phase. I'll get to the answer to whatever it is, but I don't know. Well, I'm telling you that doesn't exist. And I'm telling you that the hepatitis B vaccine was only trialed for four days and five days for the two versions that are out there, four and five days. I suspect that's not true, but I'll look that up. I have sued the FDA and the CDC and said, show me anything longer than seven days and there's nothing that exists on this planet. When you say you sue them, what are you suing?

I bring a FOIA request. I said I would like to see any trial you have of the hepatitis B vaccine that lasted longer than seven days that you use to license this product. They usually don't respond for a while. I pressure and then I sue them. I take them to court and say you have to respond. And their response, ultimately, we do not have any studies that we can provide that were longer than seven days. Is that long enough for you for a product conjection? Babe, let me ask you this.

I don't know. Would you take a drug that was tested for seven days? I don't know. Maybe. It just depends on what the, I don't know the protocols. You have some, this is the way lawyers operate. You have some very specific, like right there. I don't happen to know what that particular one.

particular one is I would say but this is one of those things when you look it up it's very different from what you're saying right not I'm not I'm not one of these people that like I am right okay that's why I do what I do we'll see and I'd love to you know I will send that to you I'm all right and I'll send you everything I've been pet do we have our book do I have my I can book here we go this is a debate I had with health and human services I can so this is the informed consent action network it's my nonprofit all right it funds my my show that I do called the high wire and And in this is just three letters.

One letter is what we wrote to Health and Human Services, laying out all the issues we have with the vaccine program. Everything we do is connected with hyperlinks. You could find it on our website too, if you want to click them, and it shows where our evidence comes from. They responded to our letter, the CDC, FDA, everybody got together to respond to us on the issues.

And then we wrote back a follow-up saying, here's where you're short on what you're saying, and ultimately they've never responded to us. But it's a very interesting read. I will get my skeptic. vaccine experts to respond to that. That sounds good. How's that?

I love it. All right. I really appreciate the conversation. I love a good debate, obviously.