Vaccines?! Between a Shot & a Hard Place: Are Childhood Vaccines SAFE, How Many Do Kids Really Need & What Parents Should Ask, with Dr. Joel Warsh

Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:00:05]: To me, the big piece of the puzzle that's missing with vaccines is the long term risks. Why hasn't a lot of this been done? Well, there's been a pressure to not look into it. There's a financial motivation to stop any research that looks into it.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:17]: Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist. And I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, beyond.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:38]: All right, in this episode, I talk with Dr. Joel Gator Warsh and we took a deep dive into vaccines. A topic that I know is juicy and controversial and full of fun ins and outs. But we get into how many jabs kids actually get. The shocking truth about how vaccines are safety tested, some of the things that we should be doing when it comes to safety standards and why you may not need to freak out all the time about vaccines. And plenty more shownotes are gonna be BenGreenfieldLife.com/HardPlace I hope you enjoy this one. It's a controversial topic, but we're gonna do it anyways. Thanks for listening.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:16]: My question was to hear your perspective on the history of vaccines, the parts of it that are important to frame the discussion.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:01:23]: Yeah, I think if you really go back to the beginning, it really started around with smallpox. Originally in the early 1900s, late 1800s, there were major concerns around smallpox. A lot of people were dying back in those days and originally they were blowing scabs, taking scabs off of infected individuals, blowing that in the noses to try to give a more mild version. Then later on with Jenner, they actually took some from some pustules from cowpox and injected those into individuals. And that's how we gave a more mild version of smallpox. And that was really the basis of the beginnings for vaccination and variolation, which variolation is basically taking apart a pustule or part of the disease and really giving it to the patients. That's kind of the very, very early on with vaccines. That's where it started.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:02:11]: And it kind of spread from there. Then as time went on, we started doing more research. And so we had vaccinations like the diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis. That was one of the first ones that was in the early 40s. And then we moved on to polio. We had vaccinations for measles. And then from there, so early on, especially when you're Talking about the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, there weren't that many vaccinations. But after the 80s, there really has been an explosion.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:02:40]: And I think really just to generally frame the topic, I mean, obviously there's a lot more than this, but when a lot of us were growing up, there weren't that many vaccines. There are a lot more now for kids. And I think a lot of adults are very surprised when they realize just how many vaccines kids get today. And really, Covid really brought this in focus because I don't think a lot of adults really thought about vaccines very much. They might not have had a vaccine in 20 or 30 years. And even when they did, they just didn't get that many. And then now they're either having kids or just realizing with COVID there's a lot more to this story, a lot more going on. And so a lot of questions have really popped up in the last few years.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:15]: I think that it was something that a lot of people in the tiny niche world of fringe health and wellness talked about a lot. I mean, I remember I was speaking at an event, gosh, like nine years ago, and we had like a little post event dinner and RFK was there and he gave up and he got up and gave a talk about vaccinations. And it was a pretty open discussion amongst kind of like the Cairo alternative wellness type of crowd. Even me as a fledgling personal trainer who was kind of looking into nutrition when my sons were born almost 18 years ago. I actually talked to our pediatrician about doing an extended vaccination schedule, which I know you talk about a little bit in the book, but yeah, I mean, it seems since COVID of course, it's exploded. And one question, I'm probably going to throw a lot of these tough questions at you, but one question or topic that I see people bring up is, well, vaccines didn't have a huge impact on disease reduction because they kind of started to come out about the same time that we were getting more hygienic and sanitation protocols were getting better. So you can't really attribute drops in disease reduction to vaccinations.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:04:29]: That definitely is something we see online often. And I think it's a little bit more complicated and nuanced than people want to make it out to seem. A lot of times people just want a headline or they want to throw one piece of information without the whole story. And the reality is that there's a lot more to disease reduction and death reduction from these infectious diseases than just vaccines. And the Medical establishment really wants to make it out to be just about vaccines. And that's not the whole reality. If you look at a lot of the vaccines and when they came out, nearly all diseases, certainly all the diseases that we vaccinate for, were on the major decline at that time, especially around the early 1900s into mid-1900s, we just started living better. We have much better sanitation, much better health in general, better food, more availability.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:17]: We started doing crazy things like surgeons washing their hands before surgeries.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:05:22]: I mean, we knew what a disease was. We knew about bacteria, we know about viruses, we know about hand washing. We had antibiotics. We have hospitals, we have technology. There was just a lot more going on. So the death rate was plummeting from all these diseases before the vaccines came out. But still many of the diseases were around, and there were plenty of infections from some of these diseases still after the vaccines came out. And so what you do see with a lot of the vaccines after they come out is the incidence.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:05:50]: So the amount of cases still dropped drastically. So we weren't seeing as much death. Absolutely true. Most of the diseases had almost no death by the time the vaccines came out, but there certainly were still a lot of infections, and the vaccines really dropped. And I think the perfect example, the easiest example for us to really think about is chickenpox. Because for most of us, if you're an adult, you come from the age where there wasn't a chickenpox vaccine when we were very young, or it just had come out and everybody got chickenpox. We had chickenpox parties. It wasn't a big deal.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:19]: Yeah, I'm part of the chickenpox party generation, by the way.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:06:23]: Me too. And now you don't really see it anymore. So you can't say that that sanitation got rid of chickenpox. And most likely. Right. It was, I'm sure, the vaccine, because it really dropped off drastically after. But the question, and it's still. It's a reasonable question, but you need the vaccine.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:06:37]: Do we need to not have chickenpox? Is that something that. That benefits us? And do the risks outweigh the benefits? So those. Those are different questions, but I think both things are true. Sanitation had a huge impact as well as vaccines, but we just have so many vaccines and so many more questions. And that's where I think the debate really starts. Because just because we have a chickenpox vaccine, the question is, do we need it? Does every kid need it? Do they need it to go to school? I mean, these are all reasonable questions. Have discussions about.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:04]: You brought up the idea that especially post Covid, people started wondering a lot more about all these vaccines that kids get, especially from an early age. I hear all sorts of numbers out there. Like, some people say it's dozens, some people say it's like 70 plus. Let's say an expectant parent is listening in. What is it exactly that they can expect the modern medical establishment to suggest that they get as far as number of vaccinations?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:07:33]: Right. So those big numbers, they're really quoting the antigen. So if you're talking about the DTAP vaccine, so diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, they would count that as three. So you see numbers are around like 70 to 100. But realistically, the amount of pokes you would get, especially if you get combination vaccines, would be somewhere around 30, maybe 30 to 40 in that range. So it's still a lot more than it used to be. But it's not like 100 different pokes. But there certainly are multiple things within some of those vaccines.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:00]: Okay, so what you're saying is, like, if I hear that there are, like, my kids gotta get, let's say, 90 vaccinations, that's not 90 needles. It's a total of 90 antigens present in what could be a couple of dozen injections.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:08:17]: Correct. And when you get those really high numbers, they're including getting a flu shot every year, getting Covid vaccines every year. So it depends on what age you're talking about. But if you're saying by 20 years old, well, if you're getting a flu shot every year, that's 20 more. Right, so. So when you get those really, really high numbers, they're including those. It's not totally incorrect, but it's just more of a. Well, we're getting hundreds of vaccines, and that's not exactly true, but there is a lot of antigens.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:08:41]: You are protected from more things. So. So it's. It's kind of true, but I would say it's in the 20 to 30 range in general for kids. And we didn't really talk about this, but I guess, you know, even before we go on, I think it's important to kind of talk about a little bit of my background and a little bit about, you know, my position, because I'm not against vaccines. I personally believe that we should have informed consent. You should be able to choose, and vaccine should be available for those that want it, but nobody should be forced to get it. And in my office, I don't force anybody to do anything.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:09:09]: We have patients that do the regular schedule, some that do a slow schedule, some that don't do it. And that's what I believe really should be the way that we should be moving forward, not forcing people to do things. But it seems like we've really moved that way and why I wrote the book in the first place. I mean, it's not to get anybody to do anything or not to do anything. It's to have discussions like these. I trained in a very western children's hospital, Los Angeles. Super Western. I wasn't thinking about this other than, okay, here are your vaccines.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:09:37]: Here are the amazing things that vaccines have done. Here are the horrible diseases. Here's your schedule. Go ahead and do it. Like you're not trained in anything else. You just. You don't really think to question it. But because I did integrative medicine, I was getting more and more questions over the years, and I really felt like I had to learn more.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:09:53]: But it was such a censored topic like you mentioned, you couldn't really talk about it. And during COVID I decided that, you know what, it's too bad, like, I need to talk about this. You don't really care what happens. And that's what really led me to write the book. So that's what brought me here. I'm not against vaccines. I just think we should be able to talk about it like this and have open, honest discussions.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:10]: So you're actually practicing medicine. You have parents in your office with kids?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:10:14]: Absolutely. Yeah. I'm in Los Angeles.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:16]: Yeah. So you mentioned informed consent. Surely you run into scenarios where you get some parents who are just full on, don't touch my kid. Anti-vaxxer. P.S. i had them at home in a little swimming pool with a slide in it. And we are going all natural, full steam ahead. And then you probably have other parents who are just like, hook me up, give me everything. I want my kid to just have full shields activated. So when you say informed consent, I mean, how do you approach that topic of explaining to a parent what their options are and what you might recommend?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:10:54]: I think in general, informed consent is the same. Regardless, I think you need to have a discussion around the risks versus the benefits and having. Well, first I have to answer their questions. I mean, a lot of doctors are just not even willing to have a conversation around it. So I think it's being open to answering their questions and answering all questions they have and trying to provide the best information that you can. And when it comes to a medical product like a vaccine, to me, it's about going through risks versus benefits. So that's the risks and the benefits of the vaccines and the risks and benefits or the risks from the diseases. So I think if you have an understanding of those things, then you can make as informed a decision as you can.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:11:29]: I mean, we obviously don't know everything about vaccines and all the information out there always. But as long as you're giving as much information as possible and they have an understanding of what their risks are, I mean, that's how we do everything else in medicine. You don't have to take your chemotherapy if you don't want to. You can be a Jehovah's Witness and not take blood if you don't want to. So I think if you have an understanding of, let's say you're deciding not to do the hepatitis B vaccine, well, what are the risks? You get hepatitis B. What are the complications if your kid gets hepatitis B and if you choose not to do it? I mean, that is generally how we do everything else in medicine. So to me, that's how I try to provide informed consent and just try to answer every single one of their questions as best as I can. But everything has risk.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:12:07]: I mean, if you do a vaccine, there's gonna be some risk. If you don't do a vaccine, there's gonna be some risk. And that's the world. I mean, that's how everything is. There's always some risk.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:14]: Have you seen more and more parents kind of on the fence about any vaccines or being much more skeptical of vaccines?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:12:23]: Parents are much, much, much more skeptical in the last few years. I think with COVID Well, I know with COVID that people lost trust. Many people lost trust in modern medicine. I mean, the statistics are very clear about that. And there was a lot of half truths and lying and kind of manipulating of data and information. And I think that really led people to start to question everything. And they said, well, you know, if you're lying to me about safe and effective for the COVID vaccine, then what else are you lying to me about? And then people started learning and looking into the other vaccines. And I think a lot of people have thrown their hands up in the air, and they're like, well, now I don't trust anything.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:12:57]: So that's certainly a bigger issue. And one of the big reasons why I did want to talk about it, because I think it's really important that people understand, like, everything has risks. So I think you do need to understand, like, just if you don't get vaccines, well, what's your risk of getting measles, how likely are you to die from that? What's your risk of getting whooping cough? Like, those things are important to know, so that way you can decide. Because you could be the one kid that gets measles and get really sick. I mean, it happened, right? It happened this year. So it is possible. It's just not that likely.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:24]: Yeah. And no doubt there was, at least from my understanding, some amount of profit motive behind the COVID vaccine. But I mean, in your book, you kind of go much farther back than that. I always thought John D. Rockefeller was like a great American entrepreneur, oil magnet. And then I started maybe, like, maybe I was late to the game. But like six or seven years ago, I'd see his name pop up in books about medical school and the pharmaceutical industry. And then you talk about him in your book. What's your perspective on where John D. Rockefeller and the pharmaceutical industry fit into the whole vaccination discussion?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:14:04]: Yeah, I think it's really interesting because I think we have a very similar background in that sense, where I didn't really think about this stuff a long time ago. Like, it just wasn't part of my mind. And the more that you learn, the more that you read, the more interesting that it gets. And especially recently, you know, Cali Means has been talking about it a lot. So it really did pique my interest to go back into history and try to read a little bit more about it. And it is really interesting to go back to the time of the early medical schools and Rockefeller and how he really had control over the oil, and the oil byproducts really were a big part of the pharmaceutical industry. And then seeing how his policies and his foundations really shaped a part of it, I'm sure it's not all nefarious. You know, I don't know anything about him personally.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:14:50]: You know, back then, it's hard to say. It's really easy to kind of look back. But it is very clear that things were shaped in a certain direction, and that direction benefited the pharmaceutical industry and benefited him. Him directly. They. When you go back before modern med school, there were a lot of other kinds of medicine practice. There was a lot of alternative medicine practice that was kind of the norm. And really with the Flexner Report, that was shifted towards what we really more consider modern medicine today.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:15:17]: And of course, some of that's good. I mean, having medical training is good and having better science is good. So it's not all bad. But it really did shift away from alternative medicine and really painting That I would say really negatively when I think the reality is there's a good, a good argument to made that a balanced approach is better and we don't have to necessarily poo poo all of alternative medicine. There's a place for both and some of what they did is excellent and maybe not all of it. And of course profits do play a big part in this. Certainly more and more in these last few decades with pharma. I mean they're some of the biggest companies in the world.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:15:56]: So there's no question that they're shaping the narrative to benefit themselves, which is pretty obvious because what would you do if you were in charge of a pharma company, right? You wanted to make more money. That's what they're supposed to do.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:07]: Statin therapy apparently reduces natural GLP1 levels in humans and therefore you could make a case that there could be profit motive behind both statin prescription and GLP prescription because they're kind of like turkey and cranberry. Now since one depletes the other. You hear stuff about this all the time. But you said a phrase, I think a lot of my listeners might not be familiar with this. You said the Flexner Report. What is that?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:16:33]: So Rockefeller commissioned his friend and colleague Mr. Flexner, who really the commission was to go through medical training and to look at what could be altered or adjusted to improve medical training. And really ultimately the big things that came out of that were to streamline medicine to take things like places like John Hopkins as the model of, of health versus some of the other locations which really practice more alternative medicine, streamline healthcare training and hospitals residencies. It was, it was to move away from alternative health and move towards pharmaceutical health. And really that's the model that we practice today. So I just don't think that most people realize that. I certainly didn't realize that, that before that time it wasn't abnormal to see homeopathy, it wasn't abnormal to see alternative medicines, food used more as medicine. And that really did move away, I guess purposely because the model was to really move towards pharmaceuticals which because Rockefeller had such a control, like 90% of all oil in America at that time and the byproducts of those oils were used to make pharmaceuticals. There's certainly reasonable argument.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:52]: Oh, so that's the link is he's in the oil industry and you can actually use oil byproducts to make drugs. Therefore if he could somehow fund a medical education system that allowed for him to do something with the leftover oil byproducts because doctors were prescribing more pharmaceuticals, that there could be a little bit of a capitalistic advantage.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:18:17]: Correct. There certainly was. And I don't think there's any question that that's true, whether that's the reason why he did it. I mean, I don't know his motivation. Right. But I think it's certainly self serving. And he used individuals like Flexner, who he knew very well, who were involved in some of these locations and individuals at John Hopkins, which he called the best institution. He was very much a part of that institution and had major donations and donated to their public health school. And so he was just very intertwined with all of this, which certainly had self serving interest.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:18:47]: So, you know, whether he did it out of just the goodness of his heart and happened to financially benefit him, you know, who knows? But I'm sure when you're, you know, that wealthy and you're shaping medicine, you're doing it with, with some personal, you know, some personal stakes in it and whether that's good or bad. I mean, at the end of the day there just, there's some conflict there.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:06]: Yeah. I mean, my mind goes towards. There seems like there could be a little bit of bad there or at least bias. You know, I'm a total capitalist, I have nothing against making a buck. But if it introduces bias into the medical standard of care, yeah, there's potential concern. And that's actually, I mean, why we're talking about this in the first place, of course, Joel, is pharmaceutical companies make vaccines. And this is probably one of the biggest shockers in the book, at least for me. It sounds like it was for you too. And researching, writing the book, how are vaccines actually tested when it comes to safety standards?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:19:44]: It really was one of the big shockers for me going back and reading and researching just how we have a different perspective on how a vaccine is studied versus how it actually was studied. And what we need to understand is if you go back in time, a lot of the early studies were not done in a similar manner to what we would, we would assume it would have been done today, which was not the best kind of double blind controlled placebo trials which you would think have been done on all these products that before we give them to kids. And most of the vaccines, especially the ones that we give to kids today, were never studied against an inert placebo. Now, it's really important to understand the nuance here.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:27]: Yeah. Because a lot, just to tell you the truth, Joe, a lot of people will have no clue what you just meant when you said they're not tested against an inert placebo.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:20:33]: Yeah, exactly. And so I think we've heard this in the news recently, especially because Secretary Kennedy talked about this a lot. But so a placebo, when you're taught in medical school or just any health in general, you're taught a placebo is an inert substance, so really not supposed to do anything in the body like salt water or saline. And that way, when you're testing a new product, you're testing liquid medication against salt water, you don't expect salt water to do anything. So you can see if any benefit happens from the medication or you can see any risk because it should be different than salt water, which shouldn't do anything. So that's how you assume things have been done. But the reality is that most vaccines, almost all vaccines in the childhood schedule were never studied in this way. They were actually studied against other vaccines.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:21:16]: And so you get a relative safety, not an absolute safety. And what I mean by that is, if you study vaccine one versus vaccine two, then let's say you find 10 seizures in both groups. You could say, and this is the way that they say it, well, there's no increased risk of seizures. That's the normal baseline. So therefore the product's safe versus if you were studying, let's say, vaccine one versus vaccine two versus an inert placebo, let's say a 10 seizures, 10 seizures and one seizure in the inert placebo. You can see how those two studies are different. Right. And nobody ever forced vaccine manufacturers to do studies in this way.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:21:50]: So a lot of these vaccines don't actually have studies against inert placebos. And. And they just call the placebo in their site, they say, oh, yeah, we've done a placebo controlled trial, but the placebo is actually another vaccine. So it's a little bit of wordsmithing to create a situation that's better for them.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:07]: Why? How? I mean, how could that be? I don't know if legal is the right word. Ethical, definitely. Is there some kind of a loophole that allows for that type of research to be done?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:22:17]: There's no loophole or ethics. There's no rule that makes you do it. Right. So when. When, you know, if you're going back to the very early studies, let's say in the 30s, 40s, I mean, they just sometimes did research like, oh, you. You studied against your brother. Right. Like, it's not.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:22:30]: It's not like it was today where we have blinded studies, big trials necessarily, for all those vaccines. So so those original, original studies weren't necessarily done like that. But then as you move forward through time, there was no requirement to do an inert placebo controlled trial. The fda, the CDC could have required them to do it, they just never did. And if you're a company, then why would you do an inert placebo controlled trial if you're not forced to? I mean, you're just decreasing your risk to find a problem. Right? Because if you do an inert study, then you're more likely to find a safety concern than if you studied against another vaccine. So it's a self serving way to do it. And that is why Kennedy has said, well, I want new studies to be done against inert placebo controls.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:23:10]: That should be the standard. So I think we all agree, like it should be done that way. It just never was forced to be done that way.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:15]: Yeah, and I don't want to play like the tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists, but when you're saying the CDC didn't require that, I mean, is that because there's like some kind of pharmaceutical lobbying or financial interest for CDC officials to not require something like that? Have you thought about that type of scenario?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:23:34]: Well, I think it just isn't required. And the individuals who review vaccines, like the advisory committees, they review the information that's given to them by the pharmaceutical companies. So they could have made a rule at some point that said we're not going to approve your vaccine unless you do it this way. But just nobody ever did. So I don't know if that just was never done. Nobody thought about it or, or yes, you know, maybe they're like, you know, maybe there is some sort of financial motivation. I don't know. I don't know what people's motivations are.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:24:01]: I don't want to, want to be.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:03]: You know, something about it seems just kind of asinine.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:24:05]: No, it's fishy. No, it is fishy. And that's why I think it's important to know. Right? That's what we have to talk about it. And that's why when Kennedy says these kinds of things, it's not all tinfoil. Conspiracy stuff like this is the reality of what the research is. And we can't change the research that we have, but we can agree that this should be done moving forward. Right.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:24:23]: We can say if you're going to make a new vaccine, it has to have an inert placebo controlled trial. We're not going to license your vaccine unless you do this. We want the best safety data possible for Our kids. There's nothing anti vaccine about that. You just want the safest products.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:37]: That's a very reasonable approach, Joel. Are you telling me though, there is no vaccine that we currently get or have that has been tested against an inert placebo?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:24:48]: No, that's not. That's not accurate either. So some vaccines have been inert placebo control tested, but the vaccines on the childhood American schedule in general, almost all of them, have not been cited against an inert placebo. Not the ones we currently use today.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:01]: Geez. Do you know off the top of your head which ones have been tested against the placebo?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:25:06]: So the initial polio vaccine was tested against inert placebo, but that's not the same version that we use today. There are some flu vaccine, Covid vaccines that were done in placebos, and then a bunch of vaccines that are used in other places around the world, but really not the major vaccines that we see for kids. Not the dtap, not the pneumococcus, not the. Generally the flu vaccine, not the polio vaccine, the one that we use. It's really not done that way. And there's a good book, Turtles all the Way Down. That's what I based a good chunk of the research on, and I kind of validated all myself.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:40]: Turtles all the way Down.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:25:41]: Turtles all the way Down. And that book is just song.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:43]: It's a book.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:25:44]: It's a book. Yeah, it's a book. And it's, it's. It's just on this history, that's all they do. And it was released, you know, several years ago, and the authors didn't put their name on it because they were too scared to do that. So we don't even know who wrote it. But it's pretty good book.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:56]: Okay, so, so what's. What's that mean? Turtles all the Way Down.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:25:59]: So it's a proverb, I guess, that, that it's a story where I guess an individual goes. I mean, there's different versions of the story, but they just keep saying like, oh, there's nothing at the bot. The stack of turtles. So you just keep stacking another turtle and another turtle. But there's no base, there's no foundation. And so that's kind of the metaphor for vaccines, which is you study one vaccine versus another vaccine, this vaccine versus another vaccine. But there's no foundational base for the safety data.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:27]: Right. The initial foundation would be like an inert placebo test, and that doesn't exist.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:26:31]: Correct. So like for diphtheria, tennis pertussis, the Original DTP vaccine was taken off the market for safety concerns, for concerns around seizures and neurologic complications. But the new DTAP that we use today was studied against the old dtp. So is it safe, the new one? Or is it just as safe as the old one which was taken off the market? Right, so that's a reasonable question to ask when the new one was studied against the old one.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:54]: Yeah. In your book, I actually have this page folded over because I wanted to ask you because it's kind of a strong statement. You say it's on page 137. I don't know if you remember why you said this, but you say, "Are you screaming what in the actual ___? You're not alone." What were you referring to there?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:27:12]: I mean, I've thought that several times, but presumably I think it's just around this kind of scenario for testing vaccines. Because we're giving these to our kids, right? We're giving them more and more vaccines and you would expect that these things should be studied in the best possible way, especially for example, something like hepatitis B. Right. We're talking about giving a newborn baby with who's one day old a vaccine. And the safety studies that are quoted in the vaccine insert, the insert that comes with vaccine were three to six days, like they were just a couple of days. How is that enough safety data? And where is the other safety data that one would assume? That's not to say that you shouldn't do it. It's how could these things have been approved to be used in our kids without requiring the best possible safety data? And if we did that, we might find, oh, they're totally safe. That's totally fine with me.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:28:05]: But it shouldn't be anti vax, woo woo cuckoo to say, hey, look at the safety data that we have. That's not enough for me. I want more, I want better. I want it to be definitively proven if we're giving this to our one day old baby, that it has a net positive, there's nothing wrong with that. In my mind, that is a reasonable concern for a parent to have. If they look at that data and say, you know, five days of safety is not enough for me.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:27]: What in your opinion? This might be kind of like a loaded question, but I'm just curious, after having written the book, what would good ethical and safety standards look like in a vaccine? Like, what would you like to see?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:28:38]: I mean, I would love to see several years of research, like at least one to two years of follow up before something gets on the market. And then very close follow up for multiple years after and bigger studies that followed kids forward and followed them for many years, maybe decades, and look to see what kind of long term complications we see and compare kids who are unvaccinated to kids who are partially vaccinated, to kids who are fully vaccinated. And that to me is the best kind of research. It's obviously not easy to do, but it's certainly possible to do. And as we add more and more vaccines, there are just more and more questions about the cumulative effect, whether there's a net concern, a net risk from these vaccines for things like chronic disease, autoimmune conditions, cancer, autism, adhd. I mean, these are the questions that are swirling around right now that we don't have any researcher data for because we've never followed kids for that long, that the companies do the research in general before the product hits the market. It's a few months, if we're lucky, maybe it's a year, but generally not that long. So how do we know how these things affect our kids in the long term? We know that they can protect you from diseases, but.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:29:42]: But are they increasing your risk for cancer? Are they increasing your risk for allergies? These are reasonable questions where there is some epidemiological research about it, but not a lot. And the research is mixed, even though they said that it isn't, but it really is. And we don't have the best kind of research that we need. And I think we just need to do that.

Ben Greenfield [00:30:00]: Well, what if not that this would ever happen, there's some kind of like a global pandemic and you got to fast track something and you can't have the luxury of long term human research. What would you do in a scenario like that?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:30:11]: And that that's a different scenario. So that again is about informed consent, right? I don't think, you know, for example, with the COVID vaccines, because this has happened. I don't think that there's an issue if you want to get something out quickly, if you absolutely have to, but people need to be informed of just what you do and do not know and shouldn't be forced to do it. That's it. Right. I think that if instead of saying safe and effective, we said something like, based on the research that we have so far, the benefits seem to outweigh the risks. It seems like it decreases your risk of hospitalization and death. We haven't found any sort of long term or short term complications yet, but of course it hasn't been a year.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:30:47]: So we have no idea what's going to happen to you in a year, but if you want to take it, that's fine. And I think that's how you have to go about it. That's what an emergency use is. We don't know all the research, but this is the best that we have. That, to me, is okay. It's when you start to force people to do things where you run into an issue, and especially in a time of rushing something to market because of a pandemic, then they might have to bend those rules a little bit, but you still shouldn't force people to do it. If it was an ebola outbreak and nine out of 10 people were dying, you wouldn't have to force anybody to do it. They'd be running to get Ebola vaccine even if we didn't know the risks.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:31:19]: Because you're like, well, you're going to die if you get Ebola. So it's different than when something has a 0.01% chance of death. Then that's pretty different.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:27]: Yeah, people always act fast when bloody diarrhea is a serious risk. What about AI? I've heard about in medicine, for example, I think it's called a digital twin, where you could just, I don't know, take a whole human genome and everything we know about the human body and then just throw a bunch of molecules at it and see if a large language model or artificial intelligence could give a pretty good prediction or proxy of what's going to happen long term. Is that something that's done in the pharmaceutical industry?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:32:00]: I don't think it's been regularly done up until this point. I think it's certainly something we've heard Secretary Kennedy talking about, and I know it's starting. So, yeah, I think there's definitely benefits to AI in that sense, and I think that's something that certainly could be used. But ultimately, certainly at this point, AI is not perfect and we won't be able to really understand exactly what happens in the human body until we actually use it. So I think we need to, to use all tools at our disposal to minimize risk to our kids. But. But again, ultimately we have to actually do the research. We have to study kids moving forward, we have to see what these things do.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:32:32]: And AI is not going to be helpful when we haven't ever done it in reality. Like it's based on, you know, information that we have. It doesn't necessarily always think outside the box. So we, we need to get that data ourselves too.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:44]: That's true. It could predict, it could predict what might happen to a certain biochemical pathway given all inputs that exist to this point. But yeah, there's a lot of soft variables, environmental, social, et cetera, that it can't take into account. So with the idea of vaccines causing issues like the example that you gave with seizures a little bit ago, what is it about them? Because you hear some people talk about, I think they use the term adjuvants, like, which from my understanding are metals or something that are added to the vaccines or things that cause the immune system to spark a reaction. So the vaccine works and those might be the problem. But help me and my audience understand, like the ingredients that could actually be problematic based on what you found writing the book.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:33:35]: Yeah. So I mean, let's just start with the ingredients. So there are all kinds of different ingredients in vaccines. The main ingredient that we're starting with is the antigen. So that's the disease that we're trying to protect you against. So think, you know, measles or whooping cough. So that's going to be in there. Whether it's the whole virus, whether it's just a part, whether it's a protein that's the antigen the adjuvant would be in many of the vaccines, it's the part of the vaccine that helps stimulate the immune response.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:34:02]: So especially for a vaccine that's just a part of the disease, let's say a protein like the hepatitis B, you're not necessarily going to have a robust immune response because there's only one little part of the disease versus the whole disease. So they add an adjuvant which would usually be a metal like aluminum, that's the standard adjuvant that's used and that creates a more robust immune response to help it work. So the reason why aluminum is in a lot of these vaccines is to help stimulate that immune system to give a good response. That's long term. I would say of all the things in vaccines, that's probably the biggest concern. There are certainly other things that people have concerns, but adjuvants would be the main concern. The answer to your question about what causes the issues, I don't think we know. Right.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:34:44]: Discussions around problems with vaccines or side effects or risks are always minimized and we really haven't done a lot of that research. Seizures is something that is definitively proven why it actually happens, I don't think we know for sure. It's a reaction from your body, whether it's an allergic type reaction, whether a part of the vaccine gets into a Location where it's not supposed to get to into the bloodstream. I mean, I think there are different theories behind that, but we just don't exactly. No, I would say probably aluminum is the biggest concern at the moment, but it could be really any of the ingredients or maybe it's just the actual active vaccination, maybe it's. Who knows what it is? I don't know.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:22]: Yeah, well, there's certainly limits to what's allowed in our food, like lead, aluminum, mercury. California probably be the most notorious Prop 65. You gotta be super careful about what's in your freaking sea salt and sugar in that state. But generally in the US we look at levels of certain things that could be problematic in foods and then limit the allowable contaminant or ingredient in that food based on human safety standards. Is there a difference between something that gets injected versus something that gets eaten as far as the way the body processes it? Because it seems like some of these things that we find in vaccines would not be allowed or considered safe in the food supply.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:36:07]: So what you're saying is correct. And the correct question that is, I would say difficult to answer because of the way that modern medicine kind of deflects. And the standard answer for let's say something like aluminum would be, well, there's so much less aluminum in a vaccine than there is allowed in food and it's a natural ingredient in the world. So it's just a very small amount and therefore it's safe. And that's the general answer that you hear for most things when it comes to vaccines. Where, oh, it's just a small amount, oh, it's just a few. And so there isn't a biological plausibility that's causing an issue that to me really doesn't answer the question appropriately, especially because it's a different mechanism when you're eating. It's going through the gut, your body's filtering it out.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:36:47]: A lot of it gets pooped out. A lot of it doesn't get absorbed versus if you're vaccinating something, then it goes directly into your bloodstream mechanism. It's, it's, you know, there's a bunch of other stuff in that vaccine that's interacting. So I don't think that we appreciate or respect a vaccine as being different than in food and we just kind of minimize that risk. And we're like, it's, yeah, there's so much more aluminum food, you eat more aluminum every single day, so it's totally fine. And that's kind of the generalized mentality right now, which I think just doesn't answer the question of whether those things could, could cause an issue or certainly cause an issue in a certain subpopulation or certain genetics or whatever it is that we just aren't willing to discuss.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:27]: Is there still mercury in vaccines?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:37:30]: So there isn't really mercury anymore. So thimerosal was the ingredient that was used as a preservative and it was in the vaccines until around the late 90s. And then it was taken out from all the vaccines except for the multi dose flu vaccine. And then just this year they announced they're taking it out of the multi dose flu. So it won't really be in any vaccines after this, this year, next year, whenever they fully take.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:51]: Well, that's kind of a good sign. I mean, I mean, I'm assuming the reason that they would take mercury out of vaccines is because it was found to be problematic.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:37:58]: It depends who you ask again with all this stuff. It kind of depends who you ask. There's two different worlds with everything. I. So it goes back again to how the initial research was done, which is just crazy. Like in around the late 90s, somebody was like, hey, you know, there's actually more mercury in vaccines than we allow in food. Is that safe? And, and everyone's like, wait, wait a minute, what? And so they started looking into it. They hadn't really done good safety research on mercury.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:38:24]: It was in there as a preservative. It works pretty well as a preservative to help with bacterial or fungal contamination. But they were like, well, okay, it's a different form of mercury. So it's a different form of mercury than is in food.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:35]: Yeah, I've heard that. Sorry to interrupt. I've heard that the ethyl versus methylmercury, that they have different levels of safety and that I think it's the, what is the vaccine that has ethylmercury and food has methylmercury and you can't compare the two equally.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:38:51]: Correct. So, so, so originally it hadn't been really studied at all. And so someone just was like, well, there's more mercury. And then they realized it's a different form. But they were, they started to study it and, and they just weren't sure at that time. They decided in the early 2000s, you know what, it's better we just take it out as a precaution because we're just not sure what it, what it does. It was never proven officially to be harmful in that form. More of it apparently gets excreted, so it doesn't absorb as much as the one in food.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:39:18]: I don't know what's true or what's not true, but that's the standard medical kind of lingo around it. So if you ask somebody who is very, very standard medicine, they say, well, it should be in vaccines. It's a good preservative. It's never been proven to be harmful. Whereas I think most individuals are like, I don't think injecting mercury in any form is good. And I think we have other versions of the vaccine that don't have it. So why inject it even if it isn't proven to cause an issue? So I'm in that camp. I have no problem taking it out.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:39:45]: I just don't understand how you can, even if it's a little different form, tell parents, like, you can't have mercury. You need to worry about the amount in fish, and then, oh, it's okay to go vaccinate your kid with more mercury, even if it's a different form than the one that we say we don't do. So I think it's a good step towards confidence in vaccines. To get mercury out of the vaccines, it's just not needed in there. But it's not definitively proven.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:08]: Well, no doubt safety standards, in terms of the way that vaccines are developed and tested against inert placebo needs to be changed. But is it just theory that vaccines could be dangerous in the way that they currently are packaged right now? Because you hear about, I don't know, probably the most popular one is autism. Other people I've heard talk about Alzheimer's and dementia, ADD, ADHD. It seems like you could take just about any chronic disease or especially childhood condition and blame it on a vaccine. Is that just scapegoating or have you come across, especially in writing the book, any research that there's anything to any of these theories about the link between vaccines and chronic disease?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:40:52]: So there is some definitive research on some conditions. So it's definitively proven to cause seizures. It's definitively proven to cause Guillain-Barré, which is an autoimmune condition.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:04]: And I'm assuming, by the way, when you're saying this, not in everybody, but in people who would potentially be like, genetically or environmentally susceptible to having that reaction most.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:41:13]: I mean, a lot of times we don't know why a certain individual has it. And again, these kinds of reactions that I'm talking about that have been proven are still rare. They're not overly common, but they have been Proven through the research and the studies in the Institute of Medicine, who does the reviews to be causally linked to vaccines? Meaning that you can, if you get this right after you get a vaccine, you could sue and you could win because it's been proven through research that there's an increased risk for some vaccines.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:40]: I thought you couldn't sue vaccine companies.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:41:42]: So you can't sue the vaccine company. Yeah, you sue the government.

Ben Greenfield [00:41:45]: Oh, I see. Okay.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:41:47]: But you can only sue them for the things that are proven. I mean, you can sue for anything. But you don't win with vaccines because you have to, have to be causally related. So, yes, there are some reactions that have been causally defined, but really not much else. Most other things haven't been studied enough to be able to say one way or another. Which again, is the other really crazy thing that I really came across when doing this research because I was taught so definitively, oh, we've studied autism so much. We studied all these things so much. It's definitely proven not to be related.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:42:12]: And when you really look at the research, there just isn't that much that has actually been done, especially when we're talking about autism, which the most of the researchers are on thimerosal, that mercury component and MMR, but not all vaccines. So the reality of our research is quite minimal when it comes to long term risk. And there are, there are some studies, but there are good studies on both sides that might show that there are problems. So the answer to the question in general with chronic diseases, we don't know. And that should be everybody's answer and we should be doing more research to figure this out.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:42]: Yeah, but standard practice of medicine based on a we don't know is kind of scary, correct?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:42:46]: Well, that is my point. I mean, that's one of the big things that I really want to get across and have been trying to get across is we do need more research on this stuff. Important because to me, the big piece of the puzzle that's missing with vaccines is the long term risks. I think we have a good understanding of the diseases, we have a good understanding of your risk if you get the disease. We have a pretty good understanding if you get a vaccine of your short term risks of what happens to you within a day or two. But we don't know how that affects you long term. And that's really important. It's really important to know if it increases your risk of asthma or increases your risk of autism or ADHD or any of these other chronic conditions that we are seeing rise.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:43:20]: And it is easy to blame everything on vaccines because we're seeing such an increase in chronic disease. But it might have nothing to do with vaccines, but it also might have to do with vaccines. So we should be open to researching that. And that is my biggest point, I would say in the book is we shouldn't just assume that we know everything. That's not science. And we should be honest about what we do and do not know. And we should be okay getting more research because ultimately, no doctor wants to harm anybody. Right.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:43:46]: The reason you're giving a vaccine is to protect what you feel like is protecting that child. And if ultimately it turns out that the hepatitis B vaccine increases your risk for asthma by ten times, wouldn't everybody. Wouldn't we want to know that? When a doctor want to know that, wouldn't you want to say, okay, why? What ingredient? What about it is causing that? Let's change it?

Ben Greenfield [00:44:04]: Well, Joel, there's a tiny part of me that thinks that maybe some people, especially those vested in the pharmaceutical industry, might consider that to be an inconvenient truth.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:44:15]: Of course, that is probably why some of this stuff hasn't been done. I'm not denying that. I mean, again, you can't guess motives on people. But just logically speaking, you know, why hasn't a lot of this been done? Well, there's been a pressure to not look into it. There's a financial motivation to stop any research that looks into it. You do a study on this and you lose your career. If you show any sort of problem, they, you know, you get torn apart. That that's been the mentality for the last 20 or 30 years.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:44:39]: So, yeah, I think there is a push against looking into this, and certainly the companies are not going to do it. Why would the company do research on their own product and say, hey, you know what? We've had this thing out for 20 years and we're making billions of dollars. Let's do a new study to see if we can find any problems so we can pull our product off the market.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:55]: Right. The only reason they do it is if they deeply, deeply cared about the patient. Do you think, you know, RFK's name has come up a couple of times. Obviously, he's heavily associated with the call for better safety research in vaccines. We brought up so far some obvious issues. Is there hope that we are going to be able to test a lot of these against inert placebo or input, better ethical or safety standards? Are you seeing anything politically that might suggest this could happen?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:45:28]: I think there is a lot of change going on right now. I would say, in terms of moving the research forward, it's certainly the best time that it's ever been in terms of an openness to discuss this. He's kind of pushing the envelope on that. Doing inert placebo trials on vaccines that are already in the market are difficult from an ethical perspective because mainstream medicine would say, well, we have this vaccine, we've had it for 20 years. It's clearly proven to work. It's unethical not to give a kid a vaccine, so you're unlikely to see that kind of study. But we certainly could see open label trials, meaning you're not blinded, but you can choose what you're doing. So people can choose to not get vaccines, they can choose to do vaccines.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:46:06]: Perfect study. But it's still better than what we have. And I do think that we. We can see that moving forward. We certainly can. Can have kids who volunteer to get. Not get vaccinated. Volunteer to get vaccinated and follow those kids forward.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:46:18]: So, yeah, I think there's a political climate that is more open to looking into this. The mainstream medicine, not so interested.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:26]: Yeah. Okay. So, you know, my sons are 17, so I would probably, I hope, be giving them a little bit of advice at some point in the next decade about their children. And like I mentioned earlier, they did the extended vaccination schedule. Like, mom and I didn't know a lot about vaccinations, but our reasoning was I was racing triathlons all over the world at the time. That was like, my job was. I was like, travel blogging and racing. And so we're dragging these tiny little infants all over the world, often to some pretty dirty places.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:04]: And we thought, well, we want to get at least some of the biggies, mmr, diphtheria, polio, et cetera. And then we also thought, well, we know that there are some of these potentially harmful adjuvants that we don't want to load them up with. So we talked with the doctor about spreading them out over a longer period of time, which he did. I think we were supposed to do it over like 12 years. And you're probably going to cringe at this as a pediatrician, but I think we just kind of stopped doing everything after five or six years. But that was our approach. Our reasoning was, well, let's just spread it out over a longer period of time and get less of them, especially when it comes to spreading things out over a longer period of time. Is there any logic to that? Idea, this whole extended vaccination schedule idea.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:47:53]: Yeah, great question. And certainly it doesn't make me cringe, what you said, because I have plenty of patients that don't do vaccines or spread them out, and I've seen everything. And I think that's. That's okay. I think everyone has to decide what's right for them. And again, even before I answer that question, I try not to tell people what to do. I don't think that's my position. My job is to inform people of the information. And I think it would be extremely arrogant of me to say, well, I know better than the CDC. Dr. Joel knows better. You should follow my schedule.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:23]: Well, yeah, but Joel, at least you'll admit, like, I don't know. I mean, I think that's better than, yes, these are safe.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:48:29]: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I think that it's arrogant to say, well, I know better. I think that for the standard practices to do the vaccines on the CDC schedule, I think anything that anybody wants to do outside of that schedule is a personal choice, and I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to do it. I think a slow schedule is totally reasonable, and many patients in my practice do that, and it makes them more comfortable to get them done. And they're spacing them out over time. And I don't know if it's better or worse. I mean, it's never been studied. Right.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:48:56]: So that's the hard part is like, well, what's the best slow schedule? I mean, who knows? No one's ever studied.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:01]: Meaning. And I actually don't know the answer to this question, Joel. Meaning nobody has ever looked at extended vaccine vaccination schedules and autism or ADD or ADHD or any of these things that are sometimes attributed to vaccines.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:49:12]: Sure. Because they only study them on the regular schedule, if they study them at all. And you're not generally studying all the vaccines together. So the theoretical benefits of a slow schedule, but you're not doing as many on one day you're older as you're getting them, you're decreasing your toxic load. Maybe your body can handle a little bit better. That's totally reasonable to me. I think that makes some sense. I mean, it may not be true, but I think that makes some.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:49:33]: Makes a lot of logical sense. And if it makes you more comfortable to do it for a parent and there's going to. If they're going to do it, then I don't have any issue with that. The downsides are pretty minimal. I mean, unless you happen to not get your. You Know your, I don't know, haemophilus vaccine today, and you get hemophilus last week. Other than that, as long as you're still doing them, you're still getting your vaccines, you're still getting your protection. But, but the schedule is built for public health. It's built to get a lot of things at one time because there are many people that just can't come to the doctor that often or, or can't afford it. So if you can, you don't mind going to the doctor more. I don't think there's a huge downside of that.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:06]: Okay. Related to that, I think towards the latter pages of the book where you're giving some advice as far as what you tell parents. I recall you had a section in there where you said, well, do you have a history in the family of people having some kind of a deleterious reaction to vaccines that might suggest some kind of genetic susceptibility? Which seemed like kind of a common sense, prudent answer. But are there other things that you tell parents? I realize it's frustrating sometimes for a parent to not get a concrete response, but are there some pretty sage pieces of advice that you dish out beyond something like investigate or consider genetic susceptibility?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:50:48]: You're asking all the right questions. I mean, these are the questions we should be asking, right? If you wanted to get people to be more confident, you say, what are the things that decrease your risk? Right. Or who are the people that are most at risk? And generally, you'd first have to admit that there could be a problem. Which I think is the biggest issue in medicine in general, is that just there's a lack of admission that you ever have a reaction. So when I talk to parents, you know, when you're talking about who can't get a vaccine, the CDC list is very small. Like, it's really, really narrow to say that you shouldn't do a vaccine. It's like you've had a serious reaction that basically almost tried to kill you and put you in the hospital. You have an immune response, and really nothing else is really counted, like your family history, like your genetics, like your previous reaction.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:51:30]: So I, I think from a personal level, it's totally reasonable to consider those things, to consider your personal risk. And, and how you can see your personal risk, if you're weighing it, is, well, what, what is actually around? What, what might you catch if you catch it, would it actually kill you and, and, and your own personal history. So have you had vaccines before? Have you had A reaction. Did you have a parent or a grandparent or a sibling who had a terrible reaction to a vaccine? It doesn't mean you're going to have one. But I would think that if your mom had a really bad reaction to a vaccine, then maybe there are some sort of genetics that caused that. Maybe it was just a bad vaccine, I don't know. But I don't think it's unreasonable to be a little more cautious in that case. Why would you not be?

Ben Greenfield [00:52:10]: Yeah, I mean, it takes more time. I'm shocked at the number of people who I know who are on a statin. And I asked them if their doctor just checked into whether genetically they're a statin responder or non responder. In most cases, the doctor doesn't check just because it is an extra step. Right. It kind of gets into the realm of concierge medicine and that can be a little bit burdensome on the medical industry to have to take those extra steps. Vitamin D. Right.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:37]: A lot of doctors will just say, well, take. Many good doctors will say, take whatever 2,000, 4,000 units of vitamin D a day. And some people, if they haven't had a blood test prior to that, are at risk of calcification at that level of vitamin D. So. So it is an extra step to do the extra testing, to perhaps customize some of these recommendations. But I mean, is that sustainable to do something like that?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:53:01]: It could be. I mean, it could be sustainable, but with vaccines there isn't even that kind of testing. That's the first problem. Right. The first thing we need to do is gather up every single person who's had a potential reaction and start to test them and figure out why. I think that would be super valuable information. Because imagine if there was a genetic test, a swab that you could do and you could say, okay, well, this person has a very high risk of having a bad reaction, so this is the person you should go slow with or not do vaccines or go slower. And then, you know, the 99% of other people could do it.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:53:31]: But this is the one kid that maybe shouldn't or maybe should do it. Slower. Like that is something we could do in the next 10 years. We can start to figure this out or start to increase your risk. But there is no easy test right now to say, well, this kid's at higher risk of having a vaccine reaction or, or these are the five things that you should do to decrease your risk. It doesn't exactly exist. I mean, there's some things you could look at for Detoxification and other things like that. But it's not really definitive or specific to vaccines.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:53:55]: So it's not very easy. It's certainly not practical right now. It could be something. Again, if you're giving kids 30, 40 vaccines, I think it's very reasonable to test for what the risk of having a serious reaction is. If there could be a serious reaction, that's not impractical. And I think a lot of parents would be willing to do it, obviously providing the cost. Maybe it could be something that was covered. You know, it's not unreasonable that it could be something that's covered.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:54:17]: You're saying, let's do 20, 20 vaccines. Let's test your susceptibility before we do that. That's not a reasonable. We test every, we test almost all parents now when, when they're having kids for their genetics. So it could be a thing that's tested with that if it was good, if had good efficacy and decrease your risk.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:32]: I mean, with as many. At least from my perspective, new vaccines seem to be getting suggested or rolled out. It seems like at some point we need to do something better because, you know, better than me, Joel. But from my perspective, I think, gosh, could my great grandkids be getting suggested, like whatever, 60, 70, 80, 90 plus antigens or more? Because it seems like stuff gets added to the schedule on a somewhat frequent basis.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:55:01]: It does. And that is another reason why I have said, and I think other people think we have to look into this now. We have to think about this because more isn't necessarily better. Sometimes more is better, but sometimes more is not better. Sometimes it increases your risk to have a reaction. And if we're not studying the cumulative effects of the vaccine schedule, we're not studying long term risks, then at some point you might be cutting more...

Ben Greenfield [00:55:23]: Piling more bricks on a broken house foundation, right?

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:55:26]: You might, yes. Let's say you're protected against 60 diseases, but you're dying of cancer next year. You have to weigh these two things. You do want to protect kids as much as you can from disease, but you also want to minimize their risks. And so we have to figure out what those potential risks are so we can weigh them. Because ultimately, if we do come out with a whole bunch of more vaccines, we may have to prioritize. We may not be able to do every single vaccine. There might be a limit to how many vaccines are good versus one.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:55:52]: That kind of tips the scale into being a problem. And maybe we would say, well, you know, we want to prioritize the measles vaccine and whooping cough and haemophilus and, well, there hasn't been polio in 40 years. So maybe we just don't need that one anymore. Maybe we give it to kids later in life or. Or maybe we just haven't seen diphtheria in anybody, so we don't need that vaccine. Like maybe we can start to take away some of the ones that are less important and prioritize the ones that are more important. And again, that's not anti science or anti vaccine. That is literal science.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:56:19]: That's updating, that's thinking through. Like, we don't just give everyone a smallpox vaccine anymore just because it exists. There's no benefit to it because there's no smallpox. So we can do that similarly with some of the other vaccines or at least prioritize the most important ones versus things that are less important, especially as we adding on more and more, which you said we've had on the COVID vaccine and the RSV vaccine just in the last couple years.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:40]: Yeah. I think a big part of it is parents being informed and talking with their doctors. Yeah, lobbying and changes politically are going to make a difference, but I think a lot of stuff, I think the same thing about changing culture. Right. It needs to start with kids in education, not legislation. And I think a big part of this starts with parents having frank discussions with their physicians just as much as it does political lobbying.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:57:02]: Yeah, I totally agree. And that goes to the heart of why I wrote the book. Right. It's about this. This is literally what's going to change things. And it is changing things. You look at any doctor group, they're talking and the doctors just don't know what to do. They're getting more and more questions.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:57:15]: More and more parents are frustrated. More and more people are opting out or asking more questions or spacing things out or whatever they're doing. And that's why we have to all to discuss these things. We can't have censorship. You can't censor the word vaccine. It's a medical product. And we have to be able to have these kind of conversations that are open and honest not to get people to do anything, but to open up the discussion so we can make them as safe as possible. And by doing this, by talking on podcasts, by talking on shows, by having it on social media, it does open the discussion to, I think, a better future.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:57:47]: And we need some humility to assume we don't have the best schedule humanity is ever going to have or it couldn't be better ten years from now. We can always make it better. So let's just keep trying to do that.

Ben Greenfield [00:57:56]: Yeah, it's a good book. Between a Shot and a Hard Place looks like this. For those you're watching the video version, Joel Warsh is my guest. He's the author. I'm going to link to everything we discuss where you can also, because I know this is kind of a juicy topic for a lot of people. Leave your comments, leave your feedback BenGreenfieldLife.com/HardPlace that's BenGreenfieldLife.com/HardPlace Joel, thanks for writing this man.

Dr. Joel Gator Warsh [00:58:22]: Thank you for having me on. Thanks for chatting about it.

Ben Greenfield [00:58:24]: All right folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Joel Warsh signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an incredible week to discover.

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