Good article, and reasonable. Tracy Beth Hoeg is wonderful.
I would like to comment on the dangerous idea that scientists should not debate non scientists. This is truly worthy of the medieval Catholic Church. First of all, every citizen, every adult human being has the right to have some sort of opinion on vaccines IF they are mandated for us, or for our beloved children. The idea that we should just shut up and obey, is pernicious. I also question the idea that "scientist" is some special elite caste. Many of the greatest scientific discoveries were made by amateurs ( Newton, Galileo, etc. come to mind). Science is really an attitude of empiricism. Science is about testing hypotheses, of being objective, and open, until something is demonstrated one way or the other. Science is never settled. So challenges should be welcomed.
Yes! Absolutely agree about lay scientists. But would add, "reasonable" in there: "reasonable challenges." Someone without interest in being truthful does not add to science, but merely sows confusion and chaos. Honest actors are always welcome, with the caveat that honest actors with limited expertise, bad judgment, and huge platforms can create a lot of problems all on their own. At least call up a doctor friend and run your new theory by them before tweeting it to your 2M followers, maybe?
as promised, here is some of what Glenn Greenwald had to say about Dr. Hotez
"Peter Hotez is not exactly been confining himself to the lofty heights of peer-reviewed science or journals, he has instead been spending the last several years deliberately turning himself into a Twitter star and a cable news star, constantly going on the scummy MSNBC shows like Joy Reid and Chris Hayes and the various CNN shows where he's routinely heralded as a hero and as a great man, hours on “Morning Joe.” There's not somebody too high-minded to lower themselves to a podcast like Joe Rogan's, which has at least ten times the audience as those other programs that I just named and which he's been spending his time on.
He's been on TMZ where he's talked about the origins of COVID, claiming that it is preposterous to believe that it might have come from a lab leak and he has gone around saying the most really alarming and stirring things. I don't blame them for wanting to keep him shielded from any kind of debate or critical scrutiny at the hands of somebody who really knows what they're talking about, like RFK, Jr. because it would instantly reveal this person not only as dishonest but as demented. He's a true authoritarian. He wanted dissent from their pieties and orthodoxies on lockdowns and COVID and vaccines to be criminalized, he demanded the U.S. government treat it like terrorism – to say nothing of all the many things that he insisted were true, that turned out to be completely false."
I agree. But how reasonable is Hotez? He mocked the lab leak theory and is one of the few scientist who still refuses to consider it. I will post an extract from glenn greenwalds tecent summary of hotez’s credibility when i get home.
Not reasonable! I decided to drop my paragraph about him as not really being germane to the post, but he is an ideologue in his own right. I would not put him in the same class as RFK Jr, but the thought of watching the two of them spout off talking over each other makes me want to explore a lengthy Buddhist retreat.
I think Gore can enter the climate debate based on his merits in being able to discuss the available data, consult experts, and not claim that good science is falsified intentionally (for profit no doubt). Whether Gore is right or wrong in his assessment is not the point here. RFK Jr is misusing his stage to spew anti-establishment paranoia imo, which has been with us all along but is just starting to metastasize in recent years.
We had an energy crisis from 2001-2009 that undermined the economy…nobody could have done a worse job than Bush/Cheney in dealing with that energy crisis.
I've heard him say more than once, no one ever shows him where he's wrong. Maybe he never debated someone like Hoeg.
From what she wrote, she should be able to do that with half her brain tied behind her back. The acid test, though, is how it would go if she said it to him face-to-face, where he had an opportunity to respond.
Thank you for writing this piece. I saw the Rogan-RFKjr interview and was very impressed. Your fact-check has put a lot of what RFKjr said (he presents well) in perspective.
I think he will be a flash in the pan this election cycle. A lot of people are so desperate for someone other than Biden or Trump, I’m afraid they will grab at anyone who looks halfway decent.
Re your last paragraph, the idea of having a debate between two knowledgeable “people committed to speaking honestly” seems impossible now days. All we now get are two partisan liars trying to score points with their base - in science as well as politics.
I get messages from very smart and world-savvy patients all the time where they watch or read something by a convincing "expert" and they ask me to weigh in... and it is complete nonsense. A compelling speaker or writer who is willing to fabricate facts in support of their theories can be incredibly convincing!
I'm afraid you're probably right with your last point.
The cited placebo-controlled HPV vaccine trial involved patients who had previously received quadrivalent HPV vaccine. That's not so relevant, is it? Patients who had an earlier adverse reaction wouldn't participate.
Edit: Shingrix is not a childhood vaccine and the Salk polio vaccine is no longer given. Apparently, it's not easy to find actual saline-placebo-controlled trials of childhood vaccines.
Maybe it's just a matter of what you were trying to get out of the podcast (a discussion of vaccines in some cases I guess or evaluation of a politician in my case) but I boil down everything RFK says about vaccines to two things
- I'm only involved in this vaccine thing because of the environmental work I did on fisheries 20 years ago with mercury being the common link
- I'd like to know why the rate of autism has gone from 1/500 to 1/26 in two generations (1/150 to 1/26 just this century)
But this is only one of 10 things that those of us evaluating RFK as a candidate care about (and one of the least important). The real important issues are the effect of inflation on the middle class, the waste of money in the Russian civil war, Social Security, financial protection against the costs of health care (including the futures of Medicare and Obamacare), what's wrong with the union movement, censorship in academia (and increasingly everywhere), the cost of (need for) a college education, civil rights, and parents rights.
(As to the specific thing about childhood vaccine testing, the key word of RFK's that you missed was "prelicensing." I have no idea if it is relevant or typical political hackery on RFK's part or even whether you intentionally left it out.)
I think most observers agree that the bulk of the autism increased incidence is due to increasing our diagnoses of autism with broader awareness and far more inclusive criteria. The rest of the increased incidence is indeed a mystery. What has changed since the 1970s? More vaccines, yes. More plastic exposure. Estrogens everywhere. Changes in pollutants. Changes in food additives. Increasing antibiotic exposures. Shifts in diet. That's with 20 seconds of thought - I am sure there are many more potential "causes." Pinning it on vaccines without any solid evidence to connect those dots is spit-balling, nothing more.
As to "prelicensing," that just means pre-approval. At the minimum, covid vaccines, rotavirus and polio are exceptions to his strident claims about none of them every being tested. It's still an obvious lie.
He may have stumbled into his anti-vaccine views, but he has certainly leveraged them into a great deal of fame and adulation from his followers. I suspect he truly believes them -- which makes me worry more about why he so rarely tells the truth about vaccines.
I'm sorry if the tone of this is harsh despite your reasoned and reasonable comment, but I guess RFK Jr just pushes my buttons!
Maybe you should do a separate column on just the autism thing (maybe you have-I only read your stuff when it shows up on RCP) because if that claimed connection could be put to bed that would squelch a lot of the related things about vaccines in general.
You mean all those things that have changed since the 1970s affected the mothers correct... certainly they would make sense for increased allergies if you are referring to the patient himself or herself. But the autism thing pushes my button... if it were just a case of increased diagnosis that would be easy to prove if it were so - with the medical and other records of everyone now alive (born 1920-1960) easily available - to go back and reconstruct that 1 out of 26 of us now 60-100 years old had autism all along and did not know it (instead of 1/500)
NOTE: I have nothing against vaccines. I'm 77, a "Polio Pioneer," inoculated against M and M and R the old fashioned way, have had 3 shingles vaccines and have still gotten it, feel my age cohort is the only one that should be getting the prophylactic Covid therapy (it's not really a vaccine, correct) and have been getting a flu shot since I was about 55 and don't recall getting the flu since (but I don't recall getting it before I was 55 either).
Congratulations for proving that you know more about vaccines than a Democratic congressman. Unfortunately, like most physicians, you aren't so good at debate. You missed the real issue and went for the red herring. Hotez shouldn't be asked to debate RFK, Jr.; he should be given a list of three physicians who are neutral on COVID vaccination effects, and then offered the opportunity to identify the physician on that list whom he wanted to debate.
Thanks for helping us with RFK, Jr., but the real problem is that medical professionals with profound influence, like Fauci, refuse to openly discuss the basis for their decisions.
And by the way, you might also want to take up a different subject: did Obamacare help, or hurt medicine?
Obamacare is inconsequential with respect to the state of medical care in America…the biggest factor is the aging population. Obamacare was crafted specifically as to not disrupt the status quo and it didn’t. Why anyone would prefer the 2008 status quo to other health care systems is beyond me but that’s what America wanted to perpetuate.
RFK is not and never was a Democratic Congressperson. Perhaps you are confusing him with his older brother (who was a MA Congressperson 30 years ago) or one of his nephews or cousins (who have been Congresspeople at various times)? I don't believe he has ever served in political office or has even ever run for political office
The above does not include a statement that RFK is or was a congressman. I could be wrong, but I understood the first sentence to be a comment on the ignorance of Democratic congressmen in general.
I read the journal article referenced by Ms HoeG. The trial with 70k participants. It does not say what was in the placebo. If it was saline they would have said so which would have closed the debate. At least for me.
RFK’s thesis is that none of the childhood vaccines has been tested against an inert placebo. He claims to have a letter from the NIH confirming this.
RFKs position on this was crystal clear in the podcast. The bit you quoted even makes it clear also.
You are mischaracterising his position. You could have read the journal article, searched for placebo, and like me confirmed his thesis correct. It took me five minutes.
Yes! Thank you for elaborating on this. An apology is due to RFK Jr. regarding this makes a huge difference! My understanding is pharm companies use the virus without adjuvant as the “placebo” or claim it’s “trade secret” and test it against the virus with adjuvant. Too sneaky
Here is a list of search results from clinicaltrials.gov, and it has placebo controlled trials for meningitis, hep B, rotavirus, pneumococcal, HPV, DTAP, influenza...
I narrowed the results to trials that have results, and the inclusion criteria was children aged birth to 17 years, placebo controlled.
I actually kept an open mind in 2021 and I listened to Berenson…he turned out to be wrong about pretty much everything. The fact Hawaii hasn’t been ravaged by Covid these last 12 months as millions of Omicron infected mainlanders have traveled there is all of the evidence one needs.
Bottom line—we never found a “silver bullet” to stop Covid but the vaccines mitigated severity and masking mitigated spread through the Delta variant…and now everyone has some form of immunity and we are in the endemic phase.
I'm reminded of those who, when they don't like a statement or opinion, try and discredit the person making the statement with "He can't be trusted because he's making money selling books about this," all the while the other side is awash in a flood of $ from various sources. There's plenty of critique of RFK here, but zero look at the Hotez antics and malarkey (and marketing of his books) he spilled over the last few years. It would be fantastic if the studies used by the government to make public health policy were publicly available and free to read, but I've found in my anecdotal experience that it's getting harder and harder to find anything more than one paragraph abstracts. When I do find a link to studies, it then costs to view. We are supposed to have a classically liberal K-12 education so we can somewhat intelligently evaluate what the politicians and experts have to say. I suggest a publicly available digital library of the research (the entire study) used to create government policy. I've used my very basic middle-school science education to discern what an experiment should look like, and I've found some farcical "research" in my reading travels.
Buzz: I am not going to get into the flypaper of RFK Jr. and vaccines. But a subject I am fairly well versed on is the JFK assassination. I know the facts and the theories pretty well. As you know RFK Jr. has implicated the CIA. This comment section is too short to go into that erroneous wormhole but here is RFK Jr. at his best:
In a July interview he said, “When Congress investigated my uncle's murder in the 1970s, the Church Committee did a two-year investigation, and they had many more documents and testimony than did the Warren Commission, this was a decade later, they came to the conclusion that my uncle was killed by a conspiracy.” Unfortunately, journalists rarely do their homework any more and no one looked it up. The Church Report actually said, “The Committee emphasizes that it has not uncovered any evidence sufficient to justify a conclusion that there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.”
I know you died but I just wanted to say I think it's really weird you chose to say that RFK Jr's claim that childhood vaccines are not placebo tested is "absurd" because Salk polio (not on schedule and hasn't been for decades) and Shringrix (not a childhood vaccine)
For those unaware, Dr. Buzz Hollander (the author of Buzz About Medicine) recently passed away 2 days after he wrote this post, on Sunday June 24th. His memory and beautiful legacy will certainly be a blessing the many lives he touched for years to come.
RFK Jr. meant there were no RCT’s using true saline placebos! Wow…pathetic. I can’t believe Dr. Hoeg paints him to be a liar.Rotavirus didn’t use a true saline placebo/control arm, instead used the rotavirus alone without added adjuvant as the placebo. I think many pharm companies do this for vaccine trials and it’s sneaky! They should use plain saline. But using the virus without adjuvant as control arm allows their vaccines to pass easily. because if there are adverse events, it will show on both sides. Both of you owe him an apology! Please do your research first
The result that DTAP vaccine kills should be weighted more highly. The stuff was given for decades in the US. Now it's water under the bridge? Why did our safety system detect nothing?
That, Hepatitis B, HPV, and COVID-19 put the entire childhood schedule in doubt.
FWIW, I remember looking up FluMist Quadrivalent safety and saw no placebo controlled studies. The placebo trials involved FluMist, a different drug that seems to be no longer available.
Just because RFK Jr may have some things wrong does not mean he is wrong overall. None of us has a lock on the truth.
Good article, and reasonable. Tracy Beth Hoeg is wonderful.
I would like to comment on the dangerous idea that scientists should not debate non scientists. This is truly worthy of the medieval Catholic Church. First of all, every citizen, every adult human being has the right to have some sort of opinion on vaccines IF they are mandated for us, or for our beloved children. The idea that we should just shut up and obey, is pernicious. I also question the idea that "scientist" is some special elite caste. Many of the greatest scientific discoveries were made by amateurs ( Newton, Galileo, etc. come to mind). Science is really an attitude of empiricism. Science is about testing hypotheses, of being objective, and open, until something is demonstrated one way or the other. Science is never settled. So challenges should be welcomed.
Yes! Absolutely agree about lay scientists. But would add, "reasonable" in there: "reasonable challenges." Someone without interest in being truthful does not add to science, but merely sows confusion and chaos. Honest actors are always welcome, with the caveat that honest actors with limited expertise, bad judgment, and huge platforms can create a lot of problems all on their own. At least call up a doctor friend and run your new theory by them before tweeting it to your 2M followers, maybe?
as promised, here is some of what Glenn Greenwald had to say about Dr. Hotez
"Peter Hotez is not exactly been confining himself to the lofty heights of peer-reviewed science or journals, he has instead been spending the last several years deliberately turning himself into a Twitter star and a cable news star, constantly going on the scummy MSNBC shows like Joy Reid and Chris Hayes and the various CNN shows where he's routinely heralded as a hero and as a great man, hours on “Morning Joe.” There's not somebody too high-minded to lower themselves to a podcast like Joe Rogan's, which has at least ten times the audience as those other programs that I just named and which he's been spending his time on.
He's been on TMZ where he's talked about the origins of COVID, claiming that it is preposterous to believe that it might have come from a lab leak and he has gone around saying the most really alarming and stirring things. I don't blame them for wanting to keep him shielded from any kind of debate or critical scrutiny at the hands of somebody who really knows what they're talking about, like RFK, Jr. because it would instantly reveal this person not only as dishonest but as demented. He's a true authoritarian. He wanted dissent from their pieties and orthodoxies on lockdowns and COVID and vaccines to be criminalized, he demanded the U.S. government treat it like terrorism – to say nothing of all the many things that he insisted were true, that turned out to be completely false."
I agree. But how reasonable is Hotez? He mocked the lab leak theory and is one of the few scientist who still refuses to consider it. I will post an extract from glenn greenwalds tecent summary of hotez’s credibility when i get home.
Not reasonable! I decided to drop my paragraph about him as not really being germane to the post, but he is an ideologue in his own right. I would not put him in the same class as RFK Jr, but the thought of watching the two of them spout off talking over each other makes me want to explore a lengthy Buddhist retreat.
Al Gore should not be able to discuss climate.
Greta Thunberg should stick to high school subjects. ( maybe not such a bad idea after all)
Totally off topic, I'm told yesterday marked the five year anniversary of the day Greta Thunberg said the world would end in five years
I think Gore can enter the climate debate based on his merits in being able to discuss the available data, consult experts, and not claim that good science is falsified intentionally (for profit no doubt). Whether Gore is right or wrong in his assessment is not the point here. RFK Jr is misusing his stage to spew anti-establishment paranoia imo, which has been with us all along but is just starting to metastasize in recent years.
We had an energy crisis from 2001-2009 that undermined the economy…nobody could have done a worse job than Bush/Cheney in dealing with that energy crisis.
Sounds like Tracy Hoeg should debate RFK.
I've heard him say more than once, no one ever shows him where he's wrong. Maybe he never debated someone like Hoeg.
From what she wrote, she should be able to do that with half her brain tied behind her back. The acid test, though, is how it would go if she said it to him face-to-face, where he had an opportunity to respond.
I find it odd that a naked lobbyist such as Hotez is regarded as a "scientist."
Good point. When is a scientist not a scientist? When hes a lobbyist.
Thank you for writing this piece. I saw the Rogan-RFKjr interview and was very impressed. Your fact-check has put a lot of what RFKjr said (he presents well) in perspective.
I think he will be a flash in the pan this election cycle. A lot of people are so desperate for someone other than Biden or Trump, I’m afraid they will grab at anyone who looks halfway decent.
Re your last paragraph, the idea of having a debate between two knowledgeable “people committed to speaking honestly” seems impossible now days. All we now get are two partisan liars trying to score points with their base - in science as well as politics.
I get messages from very smart and world-savvy patients all the time where they watch or read something by a convincing "expert" and they ask me to weigh in... and it is complete nonsense. A compelling speaker or writer who is willing to fabricate facts in support of their theories can be incredibly convincing!
I'm afraid you're probably right with your last point.
The cited placebo-controlled HPV vaccine trial involved patients who had previously received quadrivalent HPV vaccine. That's not so relevant, is it? Patients who had an earlier adverse reaction wouldn't participate.
Edit: Shingrix is not a childhood vaccine and the Salk polio vaccine is no longer given. Apparently, it's not easy to find actual saline-placebo-controlled trials of childhood vaccines.
The scripted lies of the Biden administration were far more egregious than anything Robert Kennedy said off the top of his head in a podcast.
once again everyone wants to attack RFK Jr so long as he's out of the room.
Maybe it's just a matter of what you were trying to get out of the podcast (a discussion of vaccines in some cases I guess or evaluation of a politician in my case) but I boil down everything RFK says about vaccines to two things
- I'm only involved in this vaccine thing because of the environmental work I did on fisheries 20 years ago with mercury being the common link
- I'd like to know why the rate of autism has gone from 1/500 to 1/26 in two generations (1/150 to 1/26 just this century)
But this is only one of 10 things that those of us evaluating RFK as a candidate care about (and one of the least important). The real important issues are the effect of inflation on the middle class, the waste of money in the Russian civil war, Social Security, financial protection against the costs of health care (including the futures of Medicare and Obamacare), what's wrong with the union movement, censorship in academia (and increasingly everywhere), the cost of (need for) a college education, civil rights, and parents rights.
(As to the specific thing about childhood vaccine testing, the key word of RFK's that you missed was "prelicensing." I have no idea if it is relevant or typical political hackery on RFK's part or even whether you intentionally left it out.)
I think most observers agree that the bulk of the autism increased incidence is due to increasing our diagnoses of autism with broader awareness and far more inclusive criteria. The rest of the increased incidence is indeed a mystery. What has changed since the 1970s? More vaccines, yes. More plastic exposure. Estrogens everywhere. Changes in pollutants. Changes in food additives. Increasing antibiotic exposures. Shifts in diet. That's with 20 seconds of thought - I am sure there are many more potential "causes." Pinning it on vaccines without any solid evidence to connect those dots is spit-balling, nothing more.
As to "prelicensing," that just means pre-approval. At the minimum, covid vaccines, rotavirus and polio are exceptions to his strident claims about none of them every being tested. It's still an obvious lie.
He may have stumbled into his anti-vaccine views, but he has certainly leveraged them into a great deal of fame and adulation from his followers. I suspect he truly believes them -- which makes me worry more about why he so rarely tells the truth about vaccines.
I'm sorry if the tone of this is harsh despite your reasoned and reasonable comment, but I guess RFK Jr just pushes my buttons!
Maybe you should do a separate column on just the autism thing (maybe you have-I only read your stuff when it shows up on RCP) because if that claimed connection could be put to bed that would squelch a lot of the related things about vaccines in general.
You mean all those things that have changed since the 1970s affected the mothers correct... certainly they would make sense for increased allergies if you are referring to the patient himself or herself. But the autism thing pushes my button... if it were just a case of increased diagnosis that would be easy to prove if it were so - with the medical and other records of everyone now alive (born 1920-1960) easily available - to go back and reconstruct that 1 out of 26 of us now 60-100 years old had autism all along and did not know it (instead of 1/500)
NOTE: I have nothing against vaccines. I'm 77, a "Polio Pioneer," inoculated against M and M and R the old fashioned way, have had 3 shingles vaccines and have still gotten it, feel my age cohort is the only one that should be getting the prophylactic Covid therapy (it's not really a vaccine, correct) and have been getting a flu shot since I was about 55 and don't recall getting the flu since (but I don't recall getting it before I was 55 either).
"- I'd like to know why the rate of autism has gone from 1/500 to 1/26 in two generations (1/150 to 1/26 just this century)"
Big Pharma has introduced all sorts of wonderful drugs for treating people "on the spectrum". Follow the money.
Congratulations for proving that you know more about vaccines than a Democratic congressman. Unfortunately, like most physicians, you aren't so good at debate. You missed the real issue and went for the red herring. Hotez shouldn't be asked to debate RFK, Jr.; he should be given a list of three physicians who are neutral on COVID vaccination effects, and then offered the opportunity to identify the physician on that list whom he wanted to debate.
Thanks for helping us with RFK, Jr., but the real problem is that medical professionals with profound influence, like Fauci, refuse to openly discuss the basis for their decisions.
And by the way, you might also want to take up a different subject: did Obamacare help, or hurt medicine?
Obamacare is inconsequential with respect to the state of medical care in America…the biggest factor is the aging population. Obamacare was crafted specifically as to not disrupt the status quo and it didn’t. Why anyone would prefer the 2008 status quo to other health care systems is beyond me but that’s what America wanted to perpetuate.
RFK is not and never was a Democratic Congressperson. Perhaps you are confusing him with his older brother (who was a MA Congressperson 30 years ago) or one of his nephews or cousins (who have been Congresspeople at various times)? I don't believe he has ever served in political office or has even ever run for political office
The above does not include a statement that RFK is or was a congressman. I could be wrong, but I understood the first sentence to be a comment on the ignorance of Democratic congressmen in general.
OK
I read the journal article referenced by Ms HoeG. The trial with 70k participants. It does not say what was in the placebo. If it was saline they would have said so which would have closed the debate. At least for me.
RFK’s thesis is that none of the childhood vaccines has been tested against an inert placebo. He claims to have a letter from the NIH confirming this.
RFKs position on this was crystal clear in the podcast. The bit you quoted even makes it clear also.
You are mischaracterising his position. You could have read the journal article, searched for placebo, and like me confirmed his thesis correct. It took me five minutes.
Yes! Thank you for elaborating on this. An apology is due to RFK Jr. regarding this makes a huge difference! My understanding is pharm companies use the virus without adjuvant as the “placebo” or claim it’s “trade secret” and test it against the virus with adjuvant. Too sneaky
Is there a list of the childhood vaccines?
Are these the same ones that kids have to have to go to school?
I used this to confirm which vaccines he might have meant:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html
Here is a list of search results from clinicaltrials.gov, and it has placebo controlled trials for meningitis, hep B, rotavirus, pneumococcal, HPV, DTAP, influenza...
I narrowed the results to trials that have results, and the inclusion criteria was children aged birth to 17 years, placebo controlled.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=Vaccine%20placebo&aggFilters=ages:child,results:with&term=placebo%20controlled&limit=100&distance=50
I actually kept an open mind in 2021 and I listened to Berenson…he turned out to be wrong about pretty much everything. The fact Hawaii hasn’t been ravaged by Covid these last 12 months as millions of Omicron infected mainlanders have traveled there is all of the evidence one needs.
Bottom line—we never found a “silver bullet” to stop Covid but the vaccines mitigated severity and masking mitigated spread through the Delta variant…and now everyone has some form of immunity and we are in the endemic phase.
I'm reminded of those who, when they don't like a statement or opinion, try and discredit the person making the statement with "He can't be trusted because he's making money selling books about this," all the while the other side is awash in a flood of $ from various sources. There's plenty of critique of RFK here, but zero look at the Hotez antics and malarkey (and marketing of his books) he spilled over the last few years. It would be fantastic if the studies used by the government to make public health policy were publicly available and free to read, but I've found in my anecdotal experience that it's getting harder and harder to find anything more than one paragraph abstracts. When I do find a link to studies, it then costs to view. We are supposed to have a classically liberal K-12 education so we can somewhat intelligently evaluate what the politicians and experts have to say. I suggest a publicly available digital library of the research (the entire study) used to create government policy. I've used my very basic middle-school science education to discern what an experiment should look like, and I've found some farcical "research" in my reading travels.
Came for the Dan Snyder bashing, left with a side ache due to your candor. I will be billing you! Great piece though, thanks for sharing.
It could always be worse—see the Houston Texans.
Buzz: I am not going to get into the flypaper of RFK Jr. and vaccines. But a subject I am fairly well versed on is the JFK assassination. I know the facts and the theories pretty well. As you know RFK Jr. has implicated the CIA. This comment section is too short to go into that erroneous wormhole but here is RFK Jr. at his best:
In a July interview he said, “When Congress investigated my uncle's murder in the 1970s, the Church Committee did a two-year investigation, and they had many more documents and testimony than did the Warren Commission, this was a decade later, they came to the conclusion that my uncle was killed by a conspiracy.” Unfortunately, journalists rarely do their homework any more and no one looked it up. The Church Report actually said, “The Committee emphasizes that it has not uncovered any evidence sufficient to justify a conclusion that there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.”
The exact opposite of what RFK Jr. said.
I know you died but I just wanted to say I think it's really weird you chose to say that RFK Jr's claim that childhood vaccines are not placebo tested is "absurd" because Salk polio (not on schedule and hasn't been for decades) and Shringrix (not a childhood vaccine)
For those unaware, Dr. Buzz Hollander (the author of Buzz About Medicine) recently passed away 2 days after he wrote this post, on Sunday June 24th. His memory and beautiful legacy will certainly be a blessing the many lives he touched for years to come.
Two hyperbolic liars. Not really a debate
RFK Jr. meant there were no RCT’s using true saline placebos! Wow…pathetic. I can’t believe Dr. Hoeg paints him to be a liar.Rotavirus didn’t use a true saline placebo/control arm, instead used the rotavirus alone without added adjuvant as the placebo. I think many pharm companies do this for vaccine trials and it’s sneaky! They should use plain saline. But using the virus without adjuvant as control arm allows their vaccines to pass easily. because if there are adverse events, it will show on both sides. Both of you owe him an apology! Please do your research first
The result that DTAP vaccine kills should be weighted more highly. The stuff was given for decades in the US. Now it's water under the bridge? Why did our safety system detect nothing?
That, Hepatitis B, HPV, and COVID-19 put the entire childhood schedule in doubt.
FWIW, I remember looking up FluMist Quadrivalent safety and saw no placebo controlled studies. The placebo trials involved FluMist, a different drug that seems to be no longer available.
Just because RFK Jr may have some things wrong does not mean he is wrong overall. None of us has a lock on the truth.