| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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To bring international students in and to educate them. | |
| And so if there is a substantial cut in international student enrollment, I think that we'll not only see restaurants losing the benefit of individual foreign student lunches, but we'll see whole towns losing the benefit of a college as those colleges need to close. | ||
| Ted Mitchell is the president of the American Council on Education. | ||
| Thank you, sir, for the conversation with our viewers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Greta. | |
| Pleasure to be here. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss recent changes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made to vaccine policy is Dr. Amish Adalja. | ||
| He is with the center with the John Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| There's been a lot in the news recently about vaccinations. | ||
| Yesterday, it was announced that HHS is ending hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development. | ||
| Explain what mRNA vaccines are and how they're different from other vaccines. | ||
| mRNA vaccines are a major step forward in the way that we develop vaccines. | ||
| The prior traditional way of making a vaccine was to take a pathogen, a bacteria, virus, whatever it might be, and expose your body to a part of it or some of it or even all of it, and then allow the immune system to then develop a response. | ||
| What mRNA does is take that kind of one step earlier. | ||
|
unidentified
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It gives your body the gene of the protein of the virus that you want to engender immunity to. | |
| And you inject that gene, the structure of that gene, the code of that gene, not the DNA, but the mRNA, which is going to become important in a second. | ||
| But the mRNA in your body's cellular machinery then takes that formula and makes that protein. | ||
| And by doing that, you kind of don't have to work with the pathogen itself. | ||
| You're just dealing with the genetic code. | ||
| And you can adapt it as you need. | ||
|
unidentified
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And that's why when it came to COVID-19, we had mRNA vaccines against this pathogen, which had not been known for over a year, like less than a year that people had known about it. | |
| We had those within a year. | ||
| Because of the elegance of the mRNA platform, they could move very, very rapidly. | ||
| They had vaccine candidates within days to hours of knowing the genetic sequence of the virus. | ||
| So mRNA vaccines give us a major, major head start and advantage when it comes to an infectious disease emergency versus traditional vaccines, which take longer. | ||
| How long have mRNA vaccines been in development? | ||
| And you mentioned COVID. | ||
| What other types of mRNA vaccines have been used before? | ||
| So mRNA vaccines were sort of a holy grail. | ||
| People had been looking at mRNA vaccines as a tool at least for 20 years prior to COVID-19. | ||
|
unidentified
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They were something that had been, had a lot of promise, had some early development going on and promising results, but never really were able to kind of hadn't yet made it to the commercial market prior to COVID-19. | |
| I had been working in the pandemic space since 2008. | ||
| And around 2016, 2017, there was a lot of buzz around mRNA vaccines being a game changer when it came to pandemic preparedness. | ||
| And companies like Moderna were really engaging in the pandemic preparedness process, saying this technology we have is going to be really revolutionary. | ||
| COVID-19 was kind of something that happened at the time that the mRNA vaccine technology was ready and poised to move forward. | ||
| So the COVID vaccines made by Moderna and BioNTech with Pfizer were the first mRNA vaccines that were available to humans. | ||
| Since COVID-19, we've had an RSV vaccine using mRNA technology also approved. | ||
| But the point is that mRNA vaccine technology was something that had been a decades-long process to develop. | ||
| And at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were kind of at the right place at the right time to really show their promise. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, you mentioned that you had been working with these types of vaccines since 2008. | ||
| You also used the phrase a holy grail. | ||
| Explain the impact that pulling mRNA vaccine development projects could have on future public health emergencies or pandemics. | ||
|
unidentified
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It could be disastrous. | |
| When you think about an infectious disease emergency, an outbreak, an epidemic, a pandemic, speed is of the essence. | ||
| The quicker you can get a countermeasure into humans to protect them from the consequences of that infection, whether that be severe disease, hospitalization, death, contagiousness, whatever it might be, that that's going to be decisive in your control of that outbreak to prevent it from getting worse, to prevent the cascading impacts from occurring all over the globe. | ||
|
unidentified
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So when you look at all our different vaccine technologies, and they're all important and they all have roles, I'm not privileging one over the other. | |
| When it comes to speed and adaptability, I don't think that there's anything that's going to beat mRNA in the near future. | ||
|
unidentified
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So when you're trying to think from a government perspective, how do we prepare ourselves for the next outbreak, the next disease X, the next unknown pathogen that may emerge in humans and spread, having mRNA vaccine technologies poised to attack the problem is the best way to minimize the damage that such an outbreak can cause. | |
| So if you're removing HHS's investments in mRNA vaccine technology, not only does the U.S. government not have that technology, you're also basically putting a nail in the coffin for mRNA vaccine technology because this is something that has grown kind of in conjunction with pandemic and biosecurity efforts. | ||
|
unidentified
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And if organizations in HHS like BARDA are not going to be investing in it, some of that is going to dry up and private investors may support some of it. | |
| The Department of Defense may support some of it. | ||
| But it's not going to have that same robust funding mechanism in place, which will only lead to it kind of dwindling and us becoming less resilient. | ||
| Dr. Amish Adalja is with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. | ||
| He's joining us for a discussion talking about recent HHS changes to vaccine policy. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines for this segment are regional. | ||
| If you are in the eastern or central time zone, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you are Mountain or Pacific, it is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, I want to ask you about another recent change, and that was that several last week, several medical organizations were removed from the CDC's advisory committee on immunization practices. | ||
| Explain the purpose of that group, who typically serves on that committee and your reaction to the decision. | ||
| So the ACIP or the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices is a group that CDC convenes that helps us determine the best way to use vaccines. | ||
| Who are the risk groups that are going to most benefit? | ||
| Where is the vaccine cost effective? | ||
| What are the side effects that we should look out for? | ||
| What groups should we not vaccinate? | ||
|
unidentified
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How do we adapt our vaccine schedules to new vaccines or new epidemiology? | |
| Maybe we don't need a new vaccine or maybe we need to add another dose. | ||
| All of that happens through the ACIP process. | ||
| And typically, ACIP is constituted by subject matter experts in infectious disease and vaccination in both adult, pediatric, geriatric, OBGYN populations. | ||
| And as part of that, they also have major medical organizations kind of serving as liaisons, like the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Disease Society of America, the National Foundation for Infectious Disease, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Academy of Family Medicine, so that they can actually help disseminate that information and help convey their member physicians' viewpoints. | ||
| So that's kind of how it's happened, how it's been going on for decades. | ||
| But what's happened since RFK Jr. has been installed as HHS secretary is he has basically disrupted the entire vaccine ecosystem in the United States. | ||
| And part of that was his dismantling of ACIP, firing all of the members and stacking it with his own cronies, most of which I think only one is actually really qualified. | ||
|
unidentified
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All the rest of them are not so qualified and have really great anti-vaccine bona fides. | |
| He stacked them that way. | ||
|
unidentified
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And his next step was to remove all of the medical organizations' liaison role. | |
| So what it actually is, is an attack on expertise. | ||
| It is a way to make the road for vaccine developers very hard. | ||
| It is to decrease the value of vaccines in the minds of Americans. | ||
| And this is exactly what you would expect when someone like RFK Jr. is put in a position of power like this. | ||
| He is an anti-vaccine advocate. | ||
| He does not see value in vaccinating against anything. | ||
| He doesn't even believe in the germ theory of disease. | ||
| So if someone doesn't believe in the germ theory of disease, they surely can't believe in the power or efficacy of vaccines. | ||
|
unidentified
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So to me, this is not surprising, but it is a sign of the times and it is very dangerous because what you're seeing is the voice of the dark ages. | |
| This is how societies move backwards. | ||
|
unidentified
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And that's what RFK Jr. represents when it comes to vaccines and health in general. | |
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We will start with Nelson, who's calling from Hollywood, I'm sorry, Hollywood, Florida, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nelson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Dr. Adalja. | ||
| First of all, I'd like to thank you for the hard work that you do. | ||
| I know that you don't have an easy job. | ||
| I do have a question regarding the issue of vaccines. | ||
| I'm 76 years old. | ||
| We raise our children and they got all of the vaccines that normally are applied when they're growing up at Seth Adub. | ||
| But I do know that about 20 years ago, there was a case where too many children were getting asthma. | ||
| And one of the things that was blamed for that was the overprotection of our children in the administration of vaccines, of being so careful that they didn't have an opportunity to be exposed to the natural environment to the extent that they were able to build up resistance to diseases. | ||
| And I'm wondering where do you, sir, come to the point where you conclude that perhaps there is a problem with too much care, if I may put it that way, to the point that it can be harmful to the population and especially to children. | ||
| And thank you for your answer. | ||
| So what the caller is talking about is something called the hygiene hypothesis. | ||
| This is a long-standing theory about exposure to microorganisms when you're a child, when your immune system is learning, when it's adapting, when it's growing. | ||
|
unidentified
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And if it is too sterile an environment, there is this theory that you are more prone to autoimmune diseases like asthma, like eczema. | |
| And I think that there is evidence to support that, but it's not that we're vaccinating too much. | ||
|
unidentified
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The hygiene hypothesis has to do with exposures in an overly sterile environment, meaning when a child's bottle falls on the ground, the mother will grab it or the father will grab it and wash it off and not let them touch it. | |
| Or they're limiting exposure to certain animals, dogs, cats, farm animals, dirt. | ||
| All of that does play a role. | ||
|
unidentified
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Those exposures in early life are less likely to then have you get asthma at a later age. | |
| But it's not that vaccines are the problem here. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is just a general overly hygienic environment in terms of dirt and back, and it's primarily bacteria that we're talking about here. | |
| So one thing I would tell the caller is the overuse of antibiotics, that has a lot, actually has evidence behind it. | ||
| So the more antibiotics a child gets as a child, the more likely they are to get asthma. | ||
| So yes, there is something to the hygiene hypothesis, but it's not related to vaccines. | ||
| And many diseases like RSV, for example, many infections like RSV and upper respiratory infections might lead to asthma. | ||
|
unidentified
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So when we have vaccines to protect children against RSV, you might actually get less asthma. | |
| But yes, I think it is important when you're dealing with a growing child to make sure that they are not getting too many antibiotics that are unnecessary. | ||
| And remember, 80% of antibiotic prescriptions are completely unnecessary and they affect all the bacteria in your body. | ||
| And that may have a role in the development of autoimmune diseases like asthma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Lucy is in 8 Mile, Alabama. | |
| Good morning, Lucy. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Dr. Amesh. | ||
| I'm calling you from Mobile, Alabama, and I am a full-time cancer survivor. | ||
| I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. | ||
| I started getting the vaccine the first time you all put the vaccine out. | ||
| And I've been taking it ever since then. | ||
| But I'm a little bit worried. | ||
| Will the vaccine be available this fall for individuals like myself? | ||
| And how do you see the safety of the vaccine if they're going to pull, you know, the MR in a attribute, you know, from the vaccine? | ||
| How do you see that? | ||
| So the vaccines will still be available in the fall. | ||
| There'll be an updated version that would be available for someone like you that has pre-existing conditions that put them at high risk for severe COVID. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you shouldn't worry about that. | |
| And the mRNA vaccines that are already on the market, the mRNA vaccines from against COVID, from Moderna, from BioNTech Pfizer, as well as the RSV vaccine from Moderna, those aren't going anywhere. | ||
| What RFK Jr.'s decision does is make it harder for new mRNA vaccines to flourish, to be developed. | ||
| So what's already out there, I don't see any, there's not going to be a removal of those vaccines. | ||
| They will still be available to people. | ||
| It's what's happening in the future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And for the next time, we need to develop a novel mRNA vaccine. | |
| Dr. Adalja, in May, HHS Secretary Kennedy announced COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. | ||
| What is the process for making a policy change like that? | ||
| And what are your concerns? | ||
| The process for making a policy change like that would be convening the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices from CDC to look at the data and see: are these people actually benefiting from the vaccine? | ||
| Is this a cost-effective risk outweighed by the benefit? | ||
| But RFK Jr. didn't really do that when it came to those decisions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He kind of did it by fiat. | |
| And it was the exact opposite of the science because when you come, when you look at pregnant women, for example, they are at higher risk for severe COVID. | ||
| They are higher risk for pregnancy complications if they get COVID. | ||
|
unidentified
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So they are somebody, a group of people that definitely should be vaccinated with each pregnancy. | |
| And they also pass the antibodies that they generate on to the developing fetus, who is then protected for its first months of life from the mother's vaccination. | ||
| So it's the exact opposite of what you would recommend for pregnant women. | ||
| For children, I do believe that children benefit from getting the initial series of vaccinations when they are eligible at six months because children, even if they're healthy and have no medical problems and they were born term, they still have higher rates of hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and probably the first two years of life than we would want to have. | ||
| So I do think children should get the initial series. | ||
|
unidentified
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Healthy children after that initial series, I think that's debatable where the value is if they have no other medical conditions. | |
| But the purpose, the point, the larger point is that RFK Jr. didn't go through any kind of rigorous examination of the data or consult experts. | ||
| This was more of his anti-vaccine rhetoric being actually transformed into policy. | ||
| And again, not surprising, but it does completely overturn the way that vaccine policy has been made in the past. | ||
| Mark is calling from Middletown, Connecticut. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, doctor. | ||
| I want to thank you for coming on. | ||
| Thank you for C-SPAN to have you on. | ||
| I've always been a vaccine believer, and I've always been at that mindset. | ||
| When COVID hit, I took the Pfizer mRNA vaccine in 2021. | ||
| I took two of them, and I was still working. | ||
| I was a healthy 63-year-old and non-diabetic, no heart issues, no blood pressure issues, et cetera. | ||
| Cholesterol is good. | ||
| August of that year, I was stricken with a vascular occlusion along my optic nerve in my right eye, which led to subsequent partial blindness in my right eye. | ||
| Following that, I took two additional boosters over the course of the next few months. | ||
| And in May of 22, I was driving to Maine to see my son with good vision still in my left eye, legally blind in my right eye. | ||
| And I was stricken again with another vascular occlusion in my left eye. | ||
| And I haven't been able to drive since then. | ||
| Legally blind. | ||
| And I'm 66 now. | ||
| And I haven't taken another one since. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I guess my question is: I heard of a study that was relating some vascular occlusion issues to these mRNA vaccines in the presence of the virus in the body. | ||
| My neuro-optimologist indicated that she hadn't heard of anything specific. | ||
| I don't know if anything, if you're aware of any such things like that. | ||
| I've heard a lot of weird stories about people with blood clotting and whatnot. | ||
| Mine happened to affect me in my optic nerves, leading to neuropathy and permanent vision loss. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I don't know of any evidence that that's related to the mRNA vaccines. | |
| I think it's important to have that investigated to talk to your neuro-ophthalmologist about what they think was the cause, especially since you had it in more than one eye and happening kind of sequentially. | ||
| I also think that it is the case that COVID itself causes blood clots. | ||
|
unidentified
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So it's hard to disentangle some of that. | |
| But I think this is an important area for investigation. | ||
| But in my knowledge, in my reviews, I've not seen any conclusive evidence that this is something that's caused by the mRNA vaccines. | ||
| But I think it's important to investigate it. | ||
| And I think it's also important to remember that there are rare side effects that happen with vaccines, and those are really important to investigate and understand so that we can have much more precision guided recommendations like we did with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which is no longer available, which had the problem with blood clots, which was a non-mRNA vaccine. | ||
| I would also tell you that there are other options other than mRNA vaccines that are available to you if you want to continue to protect yourself against COVID. | ||
| There are other, there is Novavax, which is a non-mRNA vaccine that's available as well. | ||
| But I think I don't think that there's enough evidence to say that this is conclusively caused by the vaccine, but I think it's important to investigate that and continue your discussions with your neuro-ophthalmist. | ||
| Lulu is in Tampa, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Lulu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I have a question about the vaccines that they give babies when they're born. | ||
| My granddaughter was given a hepatitis B shot at birth. | ||
| There's three of them that have to be given for hepi. | ||
| But my question was, why are they giving these shots in some states to newborn babies? | ||
| Hepatitis B. Mother never had it and father never had it. | ||
| So hepatitis B is a virus that can cause hepatitis. | ||
| It can also cause liver cancer. | ||
| And it is much more likely to cause liver cancer if you acquire it from your mother during birth. | ||
| And hepatitis B vaccines were developed and we were giving them to children kind of at an early age, but we were still getting, we're still missing people. | ||
| People were still catching hepatitis B from their mother at birth. | ||
| So they changed the policy and made the recommendation to give hepatitis B vaccination, the first dose, to a newborn before they leave the hospital to cut down on the cases of hepatitis B that were being transmitted from mother to child or in the perinatal period. | ||
|
unidentified
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So that's why the hepatitis B vaccine is given to birth, to get that protection in as quickly as possible because we were missing cases. | |
| Not every person who delivers a baby has all that blood work done to know if they're hepatitis B or positive, be positive or negative. | ||
| So that's why that vaccination was moved up. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I think we've seen great results with moving it up in terms of mother to child transmission of hepatitis B. | |
| It's a major success story. | ||
| And hepatitis B vaccine is very, very safe. | ||
| Dr. Azalja, when we talk about child vaccines, that's something else that Secretary Kennedy's team is looking at. | ||
| They are reevaluating, reexamining the current federal childhood vaccine schedule. | ||
| Explain what that is, who follows this schedule, and how often is it revised or reassessed? | ||
| The childhood immunization schedule is the schedule that CDC puts out that most pediatricians, most primary care physicians are going to follow. | ||
|
unidentified
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And what it deals with is which vaccines are recommended for which groups and at what age group that they're recommended. | |
| Do you get this one at age five? | ||
|
unidentified
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Do you get this one at age 12? | |
| That whole schedule. | ||
| And if you go to a pediatrician's office, you might see it hanging on the wall. | ||
|
unidentified
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And that's kind of the way people determine which vaccines to give at each visit. | |
| And it is continuously revised. | ||
| Anytime there's new data, new epidemiological data that this disease is going away or this disease is coming back or the strains are changing for this disease, they're updating it, or a new vaccine is available or a new formulation or a new way of giving the vaccine or a new dosing schedule. | ||
| So it's continuously evaluated and updated every year or even sooner if necessary based on new data. | ||
| What I worry about is that with RFK and his group in charge of everything, that it will be completely disrupted. | ||
| And decisions will be made not based on science, but based on pandering to RFK Jr.'s acolytes. | ||
| And we've already seen that happen. | ||
| So I would not be surprised that the CDC immunization schedule completely gets scrambled, things disappear, that hepatitis B at birth shot that we just had a question about, I would not be surprised if they try and remove that in absence, even in the absence of evidence, because this is something that the anti-vaccine group has already been attacking for some time. | ||
| And what will happen then, I think, is that the immunization schedules that pediatricians and primary care physicians use are going to be the ones that are generated by their professional society, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, like the American College of Physicians. | ||
| And that's likely where physicians are going to have to turn for evidence-based, objective information about when to give vaccines and to whom. | ||
| Jonathan is calling from Plano, Texas. | ||
| Good morning, Jonathan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question is, why are you recommending people to get vaccinated if the last one had poor sakes? | ||
| My son at the time is 12 years old. | ||
| We'll go to Brian in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Dr. Adalja. | |
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| I really appreciate you being on here today. | ||
| I have two quick questions. | ||
| I hope you could respond to both. | ||
| And my first question is, are mRNA vaccines being produced or created due to laboratory enhancement of potential pandemic pathogens? | ||
| Or is it the reverse? | ||
| Or is it potential pandemic pathogens that are being created in laboratories that make mRNA vaccines more possible? | ||
| My second question is, in your opinion, was the COVID-19 virus a purely natural virus or was it laboratory enhanced? | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| I'll wait for your response. | ||
| So for the first part of the question, mRNA vaccines are a response to the threat of pandemics, whether those pandemics are natural or they are man-made. | ||
| So the fact that countries like North Korea, the former Soviet Union, China developed biological weapons, and the fact that we've got many pathogens in nature, that necessitates us getting better, mastering this problem. | ||
|
unidentified
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And mRNA is a way to master that problem by using new technologies. | |
| And mRNA vaccines didn't come out just for pandemic pathogens. | ||
| They were actually studied initially as cancer vaccines. | ||
| And that's how Moderna was founded. | ||
| And that's still what the big push is in mRNA vaccine technologies to make tumor vaccines. | ||
| It just so happens that they're really great at pandemic pathogens as well. | ||
| And we do face pandemic pathogen threats from hostile nations as well as from nature itself. | ||
|
unidentified
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Whether the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic or SARS-CoV-2, I think there's still inconclusive evidence. | |
| There is some evidence. | ||
| There is evidence pointing to the wet market, and there are lots of irregularities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in terms of their biosafety. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think we're going to get to the bottom of this. | |
| This may have been a natural spillover. | ||
| This also might have been something that came from a laboratory accident or a laboratory leak. | ||
|
unidentified
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There's no evidence that this was an engineered virus, but we do know that lax biosafety, even with the natural virus, could infect somebody who could then go on and spread it. | |
| But I don't think that we're going to get to the bottom of this until there's more transparency from the Chinese government. | ||
| And I think it's important to know which way this actually, where this actually originated, because this is not the last coronavirus that we will face as a pandemic threat. | ||
|
unidentified
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Neil is calling from Rockville, Maryland. | |
| Good morning, Neil. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You have told us that this COVID vaccine was made from a genetic material that came from the actual virus. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| No. | ||
| What happened was the virus was isolated. | ||
|
unidentified
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They sequenced the genetic material and then basically printed it off. | |
| They printed off the sequence, the codes of the code of the gene of the spike protein after they figured out what that code was. | ||
| So they used the genetic material to decipher what was going on, and then the mRNA is kind of generated synthetically. | ||
|
unidentified
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I know. | |
| Well, we don't have, unless you know something that I haven't heard of yet, we don't have any clinical information that describes what this type of material does to the human body. | ||
| And I think that's the criticism that's going on. | ||
| We know what the other vaccines do. | ||
| They're made from the actual material. | ||
| And this is like a piece of it. | ||
| And you can't tell the people listening right now that when you use that material, it will not affect your eyes. | ||
| It will not affect your brain. | ||
| It's just never been tested that way. | ||
| And you're so critical of Robert Kennedy Jr. that he raises these issues. | ||
| He wants to know whether or not there's any danger for using this. | ||
| And you gave the wonderful example: you're giving vaccines to women who have never had hepatitis B, and you're compelling their babies to get vaccinated. | ||
| And the vaccination has no value for a baby that has never had a mother that had hepatitis B. Why are you doing that? | ||
| And then I thought to myself, well, why are they doing it? | ||
| Money, drug companies, this man, and I don't know whether you can disclose this or not, but don't you have some relationship with these companies? | ||
| It's just hard for me to believe that a real scientist would go along with this scenario, which is becoming propaganda that I hear everywhere now about how terrible Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is. | ||
| Neil, we'll get a response from Dr. Adalchia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So a couple of things. | |
| I can tell you that mRNA is a natural product. | ||
|
unidentified
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mRNA exists in our body. | |
| mRNA exists in everything that we eat or ingest. | ||
| So, there has been no safety signal with respect to mRNA, and there has been decades of work showing the safety of mRNA prior to its use as a vaccination. | ||
| But remember, we have mRNA in our body. | ||
| That's part of how we make proteins. | ||
|
unidentified
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That comes from mRNA. | |
| So, this is not some kind of alien molecule that's going to have unpredictable effects. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it has been studied, and we've done multiple safety studies in the five years since the COVID vaccines have been out and have not seen a major safety signal, especially in pregnant women, like he mentioned. | |
| With respect to hepatitis B, we talked about the fact that there are women who present for delivery, that you cannot do it. | ||
| There's not enough time to get the blood testing done. | ||
| We were missing mother-to-child transmission. | ||
|
unidentified
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We are trying to protect the baby, and there are no untoward effects from hepatitis B vaccination of newborns. | |
| And when he talks about dealings with the pharmaceutical industry, you have to remember the pharmaceutical industry saved the world from COVID. | ||
|
unidentified
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They are heroes, and I'm tired of people disparaging them because we would be nowhere. | |
| We wouldn't have any vaccines if it weren't for the ingenuity of the pharmaceutical and biotech industry that turned vaccines into vaccinations. | ||
| So, I don't think that there is any problem with having dealings with the pharmaceutical industry. | ||
|
unidentified
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And remember that vaccines are a money loser for pharmaceutical industries. | |
| We've seen vaccine companies disappear because it's not lucrative compared to cancer drugs or hypertension drugs or antidepressants. | ||
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So, vaccines have never been a major revenue generator for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. | |
| So, these are all anti-vaccine RFK Jr. talking points that are easily debunked if someone actually opens their eyes, has an active mind, and actually tries to understand this issue. | ||
| Dr. Adalja, it's hard to believe, but we are approaching flu season. | ||
| In June, the CDC vaccination advisory committee recommended against flu vaccines containing thimerosol. | ||
| I don't know if I said that right. | ||
| Explain what that is and what the concern may be over it being included in flu shots. | ||
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Thimerosol is a mercury-based preservative that are used in multi-dose vials of certain vaccines, and that allows you to get more than one dose out of a vial, and thimerosol keeps that vial sterile, free from contamination, so it makes it safer. | |
| What's happened is thimerosol has become a target for the anti-vaccine community because thimerosol is a mercury product. | ||
| But it's important to know there are types of mercury: there is ethylmercury and methylmercury. | ||
| Methylmercury is insoluble, it's what you worry about when people have mercury poisoning. | ||
| Ethylmercury is soluble, you excrete it, just like you excrete ethyl alcohol, but don't excrete methyl alcohol, which is what some people drink when they can't find alcohol, and that's toxic. | ||
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But what happened was people painted with a very broad brush and went after ethylmercury. | |
| And several years ago, the FDA and CDC and other organizations asked to remove companies that voluntarily removed thimerosol from vaccines as a confidence-building measure, even if there was no risk. | ||
| And I think that was a bad precedent, and I've written about that. | ||
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But what's happened is there's still been some level of thimerosol in certain vaccines, only about 4% of the flu vaccines that are used in the United States. | |
| But this, again, was a talking point of the anti-vaccine movement. | ||
| So, you saw ACIP, with one notable exception, vote to remove have thimerosol removed from flu vaccines. | ||
| And this is a recommendation that RFK Jr. accepted. | ||
| And so, now our flu vaccines will not have thimerosol, but 96% of flu vaccines given in the United States did not have thimerosol anyway. | ||
| This was just another gift to the anti-vaccine movement to kind of take one of their myths and turn it into government policy. | ||
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But what it does is it makes it harder. | |
| If you're going to a nursing home and you want to do a vaccine drive, it makes it harder because you can't use, they're not going to be multi-dose vials. | ||
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Or if you're going into rural areas and you want to use multi-dose vials to get to people to give them protection against flu, it's going to be harder to do that. | |
| And it's going to have a chilling effect on the global use of thimerosol. | ||
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So this was just another bad decision, but one that was completely predictable if you'd listened to RFK Jr.'s rhetoric prior to this. | |
| Charles is calling from Buffalo, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Charles. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Doctor. | ||
| You know, I think the real virus we have here in this country is trust. | ||
| And I think we've really lost trust on all sides. | ||
| My son at 34 years old got uveitis in both eyes, about as serious as a thing that you could get. | ||
| We saw nine different doctors, neurologists, and they all told us, do not get a vaccine again. | ||
| And we're like, oh, what are you seeing? | ||
| We're seeing what we're seeing. | ||
| And we would recommend that he not get the vaccine. | ||
| That's my side story. | ||
| What I'd like to do is ask you: do you know Marty McCary? | ||
| Isn't he a cohort of you at Johns Hopkins? | ||
| And isn't he on the committee with Mr. Kennedy? | ||
| And why is it that, you know, the two of you from Johns Hopkins, which I think is great, that you should have a debate. | ||
| And why can't we have a debate about it if two experts like yourselves are kind of against each other? | ||
| I'm smelling a lot of politics here. | ||
| I'd like to know your comment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| With respect to the uveitis, yes, there are rare side effects that can happen with vaccines. | ||
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And I think, as I said earlier, it's very important to run those down and to understand them and get medical advice about future vaccinations. | |
| That's always been the position when it comes to vaccines. | ||
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With respect to Dr. Macri, I do know him. | |
| He's a friend of mine. | ||
| He's someone that I think has been a colleague of mine. | ||
| And we talked a lot during COVID-19. | ||
| We talked even up to his appointment as FDA commissioner. | ||
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He doesn't sit on any committees with RFK Jr. | |
| He's the head of the FDA and RFK Jr. is the secretary of HHS. | ||
| So he is subordinate to RFK Jr. | ||
| I haven't had any discussions with him, but in general, I find him to be a very reasonable and scientifically based person. | ||
| I think it's a difficult position to be in any department run by RFK Jr. | ||
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And you can already see that he's had one of his deputies fired by the political process in Washington. | |
| He wants that person back. | ||
| I'm talking about Vinay Prasad. | ||
| So I don't really see much of anything that I would really debate with Dr. Macri. | ||
| I think we agree on most of the scientific principles. | ||
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We may disagree on some of the policy implementations, but I mean, it's the same science. | |
| And I consider him a friend. | ||
| Michael is calling from Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
| Hey, good morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| I guess, you know, the main thing I want to say is I support Robert Kennedy, you know, 100%. | ||
| And the reason is, is because, you know, I think what we rank 26th, 28th in the world for health, I mean, that's pretty low. | ||
| You know, this country's underneath of us. | ||
| Don't get this vaccine schedule, don't have all these pharmaceutical things, don't have doctors prescribing, you know, insane amounts of pills to their clients. | ||
| And, you know, they're healthier than us. | ||
| So, I mean, that's saying something is wrong in this country. | ||
| Something is seriously wrong. | ||
| And going to the vaccine thing, if you don't mind me saying something about that, too, is that with the vaccine schedule, you know, it seems like what they're doing is, like you said, it was a loss to the companies. | ||
| Well, maybe they're setting themselves up, you know, getting us sick later in life with these things, causing a cancer later on in life with a vaccine or a new technology, as you put it. | ||
| And later, they got all these pharmaceuticals for those people because sick people are more profitable to this system or to the pharmaceutical companies than healthy people are. | ||
| You know, Robert Kelly is a healthy man. | ||
| He seems like a healthy person. | ||
| I would rather take my advice from a person that's healthy than a person that's working as a vice CEO of a pharmaceutical company or being transferred back and forth out of the pharmaceutical industry into the FDA or into the testing for these drugs, and then they just pass them. | ||
| Robert Kennedy said there was no test for any of these. | ||
| There's no tests. | ||
| There's been no conclusive tests for any of the vaccines. | ||
| There's been no conclusive tests for a lot of the pills and drugs that they put out. | ||
| They just put them out, wait for people to get sick, come up with some other drug to give them. | ||
| But that's all my comment. | ||
| You know, thanks for having me. | ||
| And, you know, hopefully other people can think about that too. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I would just say that yes, there is a chronic disease problem in the United States, but vaccines aren't part of that equation. | ||
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Vaccines have added to the lifespan of every American in terms of what our average lifespan is. | |
| Yes, we've got problems with diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease. | ||
| And I don't think RFK Jr. is the one to solve those because he doesn't even believe in the scientific method. | ||
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And if you're going to solve those chronic disease problems, you actually have to believe in the scientific method. | |
| He doesn't even believe in the germ theory of disease. | ||
| The other point is that when you talk about, you know, dealings with pharmaceutical companies, remember that RFK Jr. will refer people to law firms for lawsuits against vaccines like the HPV vaccine, Gardasil. | ||
| So I think you can't have it both ways. | ||
| That if physicians and experts deal with the pharmaceutical industry, but RFK Jr. is giving is referring cases for lawsuits, I think that there's, you know, there's people are kind of evading that issue. | ||
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Steve is in Charlotte, North Carolina. | |
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It seems like we're going to have to relive the whole reason that vaccines were developed in the 20th century. | ||
| My uncle grandma had measles when she was pregnant, and he was born with a birth defect that kept him from working for the rest of his life. | ||
| I'm really sorry to see this come about. | ||
| Yes, I think that's something that happens. | ||
| We live in a time when we don't, we have the luxury of not knowing people who've had severe diseases from vaccine preventable illnesses in our classrooms or in our neighborhoods because vaccines have been so successful. | ||
| Not even our grandmothers can remember this now. | ||
| And I think, unfortunately, it does take the, it sometimes will unfortunately take that, seeing these diseases come back, seeing complications for people to actually understand that vaccines were a great human achievement, one probably the greatest human medical achievement ever, and that people painstakingly fought to develop vaccines because they were trying to solve these problems to allow humans to flourish. | ||
| And unfortunately, we're going backwards. | ||
| This is, as I said, how societies turn away from their science and technologies. | ||
| And this is kind of a mini dark ages. | ||
| Our guest, Dr. Amish Adalja, is with Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. |