June 19, 2025 • 41 mins
Anti-vaccination rhetoric is often framed by proponents as a sort of medical freedom, the ability to decide what one wants to do with their own body. It’s an argument that can appeal to crunchy granola types and religious zealots alike. But there is also a darker side to this rhetoric that reveals an embrace of eugenic ideas among anti-vax advocates, whose preferred “herd immunity” approach to outbreaks subordinates the interests of older people, those with disabilities, and members of minority groups to others. This episode explores the history of eugenics as it relates to vaccines and unpacks how modern anti-vax politics tends towards eugenic responses to viral pandemics.
Sources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19602363/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11700278/
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/timelines/eugenics
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/politics/abbott-migrant-transport-order-covid
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/measles-maha-and-soft-eugenics/
https://www.nsdoku.de/en/groups/educational-program/the-nazi-society-of-exclusion
http://www.worldofinclusion.com/res/qca/Lest_We_Forget.pdf
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/07/health/hhs-cdc-vaccines-autism
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Stephen Monicelli, a journalist in Dallas and an occasional
contributor to Cool Zone Media, and welcome to episode four
of Anti vax America, a special five part mini series
for It Could Happen Here exploring the measles outbreak as
a microcosm for where we are now, how we got here,
(00:26):
and where we could be going. Today's episode we'll focus
on the twisted history of eugenics as it relates to
vaccinations and how the current MAHA agenda, as pushed by
RFK Junior, is a sort of echo of eugenic beliefs
of the past. Vaccination hesitancy historically has been framed by
(00:49):
opponents to vaccines as a matter of medical freedom, about
the ability to decide what one wants to do with
their own body. It's an argument that we've discussed can
appeal to crunchy granola types and religious zelots alike. But
there's also a darker side to this rhetoric that reveals
an embrace of eugenic ideas among anti vax advocates who
prefer quote unquote herd immunity approaches to outbreaks which subordinate
(01:14):
the interests of older people, those with disabilities, and members
of minority communities to those who choose not to be vaccinated.
On this episode of Anti vax America, we will dive
into the overlapping histories of eugenic thinking and anti vaccination
beliefs to untangle this mess. As we previously discussed in
episode two, vaccinations took off in the eighteen hundred, shortly
(01:36):
after the creation of the first smallpox vaccine in seventeen
ninety six, and so did anti vaccination rhetoric and movements.
In parallel, there were a lot of scientific developments going on.
The eighteen hundreds were a heady time in Western science.
There was Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which was
presented in Darwin's eighteen to fifty nine book on the
(01:56):
Origin of Species. Five years later, sociologists heard Robert Spencer
mixed concepts from Thomas Malthus, the economist who proposed that
population growth would outpaces food production, with Darwin's theory to
coin the term survival of the fittest and apply it
to industrial capitalism, with the end conclusion that basically those
(02:16):
who were on top were deserving of all the privileges
that they have, and that those at the bottom were
also deserving of their position in society. In eighteen eighty three,
Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, coined the term eugenics in his
book Inquiries into Human Fertility. In its developments, the book
proposed to give to quote, more suitable races a better
(02:40):
chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable. To understand
a bit more about Galton's thinking, I spoke with doctor
Michael Phillips, who we heard from in a previous episode.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Galton was in despair that all those improvements in delivery
of healthcare, medical care itself nutrician, all the humanitarian efforts
to improve the workplace, eliminate child labor, improve factories so
people don't get blown up, et cetera. What that was
(03:11):
doing was it was allowing the unfit, you know, the
people he saw as inferior, to survive past childhood, to
survive into adulthood, to have longer, healthier lives. And if
they live a longer lifespan and they're healthier during that span,
they're going to have more children. And he believed that
(03:35):
because they are less gifted with intelligence, you know, because
you know, he said, history is driven by genius. And
he actually did the first major study on intelligence where
he traced the family histories of what he said were
the gifted men. And he claimed all of this was
(03:56):
biological inheritance. You know, everything was biology. And not only that,
but all traits, all traits were biological. Work, ethic, honesty,
fidelity to your partner, alcoholism, Every single trait a human
might have he tied to biology. And he said that
the people with the worst traits it's called disgenic. People
(04:20):
who were disgenic, people who had the worst traits were
now producing large families. And because they were less intelligent,
they gave into their sexual urges more often. They didn't
plan families based on their economic circumstances. They were impulsive,
Well we have eight children, let's have sex. And you
(04:41):
know if we have a ninth child, well we have
a ninth child. And that meant that those families were
growing exponentially. But the fit who plan their families more carefully,
and you know, the partners are busier job creators, as
innovators in science and education. The women want to have
(05:03):
a life outside of the hum that they were less fertile,
they were having fewer children, and of course what the
result would be is you have the unfit out numbering
the fit, and that leads to catastrophe society falls apart.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
These sorts of ideas are represented in the satirical two
thousand and six film Idiocracy, which plays out a future
in which stupid people outbreed smart people and society consequently devolves.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
As the twenty first century began, human evolution was at
a turning point. Natural selection the process by which the strongest,
the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest,
A process which at once favored the noblest traits of man,
now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of
(05:55):
the day predicted a future that was more civilized and
more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to
be heading in the opposite direction, a dumbing down. How
did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With
no natural predators toin the herd, it began to simply
(06:15):
reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent
to become an endangered species.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Having kids is such an important decision, We're just.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Waiting for the right time.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
It's not something you want to rush into.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Obviously, no way.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Shit, I'm putting it again.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Actually, damn kids, thought you was on the pills and
shitll no.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I must have been thinking really.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, certainly meant in jest. The fundamental principle of idiocracy
demonstrates the staying power of Galton's eugenic ideas, which became
highly influential in the twentieth century. Within two decades of
the release of his book, coining the term eugenics, eugenic
thinking was widespread among white Anglo Saxon leaders of the West.
But before we hear more about that from doctor Michael Phillips,
(07:07):
a quick ad break.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
The two biggest hugenicists in the early twentieth century. They
were best selling authors Madison Grant, who was a friend
of Theodore Roosevelt's, and Walthorpe Stoddard. Stoddard in particular warned
that this was fueling radical politics, that the unfit essentially
(07:40):
were demanding the riches created by the geniuses in the world,
and they were expropriating the wealth they created, and they
were just they were just milking the fit for every advance,
and that as that became more difficult, that would breed revolution.
And in particular thought there was a link to communist revolution.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
As advancements in sanitation and modern medicine continued in parallel
with the spread of leftist thought, eugenicists were consumed with
nightmares of a Malthusian crisis and were increasingly worried about
their position in society. Something in their minds had to
be done to stem the growing tide of unfit masses.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Because natural selection in the minds of the genesis had
basically been suspended. The four sterilizations were the substitute for that.
Eugenicists were in despair about vaccines that they there was
an organized campaign to ban them on eugenics reasons, because
(08:43):
I think they knew politically that would be unpopular, because
there were enough people who realize they could see the
benefits as vaccinations became more common.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
In other words, some early genesists were both supportive of
things like for sterilization, but were also a poe those
to vaccinations because they believe that vaccinations would allow the
weak and unfit to survive, prosper and multiply. But not
all eugenicists were inherently opposed to vaccinations. The Nazi regime,
(09:13):
which exterminated millions of Jews, and other people deemed undesirable
also embraced widespread vaccination against diseases like typhus, even if
they actually rolled back mandatory vaccination laws that had been
put in place prior to the rise of the Nazis. Nevertheless,
the relationship between eugenic thinking and anti VAXX beliefs goes deep,
(09:35):
and it reveals a helpful heuristic for thinking about eugenics. So,
on the one hand, there's a sort of active or
hard eugenics, in which medical authorities or the state forcefully
sterilize and exterminate people who are deemed unfit. And then
on the other hand, there's a sort of passive or
soft eugenics, in which potentially preventable deaths are written off
(09:57):
as a product of a process in which the to
survive and go on to improve the overall gene pool. Now,
before we go any further, it is important to note
that eugenics has been morally and scientifically discredited so thoroughly
that it shouldn't even be necessary to mention it. But unfortunately,
eugenesis thinking is in resurgence. President Donald Trump himself has
(10:20):
said there are a lot of bad genes in our
country right now, and that immigrants are poisoning the blood
of our country.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
That's been an ongoing thing with immigration debates ever since
the late nineteenth century, this idea that certain groups of
immigrants are disease carriers, and that has particularly been aimed
at Mexican immigrants. That's been a ongoing thing. And during COVID,
(10:48):
Greg Abbott, he's the governor of Texas, was saying it
was Mexican immigrants, undocumented immigrants, who were bringing COVID to Texas.
At one point he made that accusation, and it's exactly
like what they were saying. We had in Texas during
this period of this panic bat immigration. Late nineteenth early
choice centric Galveston. A medical doctor who was inspecting people
(11:14):
coming into the Port of Galveston who were Jewish immigrants,
and he was rejecting them because he was saying they're
carrying infectious eye diseases, tuberculosis, all of that, and Jewish
civil rights scripts had to intervene to stop that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Racism, anti semitism, and eugenics historically have gone hand in hand,
but it hasn't been since the early nineteen hundreds that
people who hold such beliefs also hold so much power
in the state. RFK Junior, a longtime anti vaccination activist
and now head of the United States Department of Health
and Human Services, said in twenty twenty three that COVID
(11:52):
was quote ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi, Jews and Chinese people. Now,
his make America Healthy Again agenda is absolutely dripping with
soft eugenic thinking. And to unravel all that, I spoke
with doctor David Gorski, a doctor who regularly writes in
a blog called Science Based Medicine.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
My name is David Gorsky. I'm a professor of surgery
and oncology at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So, doctor Gorski, you're also a bit of a writer,
and you keep a pretty regular blog in RICHI o'pine
on a number of things, and recently you've written a
couple of blog posts about the measles outbreak, the anti
vaccination movement. RFK Juniors make America Healthy Again an agenda.
(12:44):
And you know what folks over at the Conspiratuality podcast
called soft eugenics, or perhaps what we could also think
of as a sort of social Darwinist logic or sort
of passive eugenics.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
You know, a couple months ago when I first came
across the episode of conspiratuality, which was called MAHA's soft eugenics,
like kind of like a light bulb went off in
my brain in that it sort of helped me crystallize
things that I had been thinking of about the anti
vaccine movement, but not so much the rest of Maha, which,
(13:19):
you know, let's face it, a mishmash of you know,
anti vaccine beliefs, you know, appeals to nature, anti pharma,
a lot of quackery mixed in with some you know,
semi reasonable stuff like you know, yeah, sure, diet, exercise,
it's good for you. I think measles really epitomizes what
(13:40):
they called the quote unquote soft eugenics, which was basically,
instead of you know, like actively trying to kill children
or people that you you know, whose genes you don't
want passed on, you're basically letting nature do it. And
you hear this a lot when they talk about for example,
one of the most common arguments you'll hear from anti
(14:01):
vaxers about measles is that, you know, if someone gets
really sick for measles or dies of measles, they must
have had something wrong with them, They must not have
been healthy like that. Measles is harmless if you are healthy.
And of course, you know, there's a whole lot of
appeal to virtue as far as health goes. In other words,
(14:21):
there's this this belief system that's kind of embedded in Maha,
and it's been around for ages and ages and the
alternative medicine crowd that you know, you have basically total
control over your health. In other words, if you do
the right things, eat the right diet, you know, take
the right supplements, you know, do the exercise appropriately, you know,
(14:44):
you can keep yourself healthy. And it's even as good
as vaccines or better to prevent vaccine preventable diseases, infectious diseases. Right.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
So, I think that's a great way to understand the
differences here. You know, we're not talking about the hard
active eugenics of the past, which was epitomized by the
Nazi regime and their quote unquote final solution.
Speaker 5 (15:11):
And also, you know, you're in the good old us
of Aga years ago, right.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You know, or even you know, in the lingering sterilization
regimes that continued up until you know, the later twentieth century,
which we're you know, sort of originally rooted in this
idea that we should be calling people out of the
reproductive pool who have these undesirable traits or are you know,
considered to be unfit in some way, so that that's
(15:38):
not what we're talking about. We're talking about this more
let nature take its course, survival of the fittest type mindset.
I don't know if it's a resurgence or it's just
continuing to gain in popularity. There's a recent conference, it's
been one of two conferences that have happened in Austin,
Texas where a lot of these quote unquote liberal eugenics
(16:00):
also met up with people who are in the pro
natalist movement. And then there's this overlap with people who
are kind of dabbling in race science or trying to
resuscitate old ideas that are basically you know, eugenic in
nature with regard to some people, you know, being smarter
by genetic basis.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
I mean there's a lot of that around too, and
that's not soft eugenics, that's like straight up eugenic.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Right, And so there's a continuum, you could say, there's
this spectrum and you know, these things are not disconnected,
but they also can be understood as somewhat discrete phenomenon
or ideologies or belief systems. And so you did write
a little bit about one specific document that you know,
I hadn't been particularly familiar with, called the Great Barrington Declaration.
(16:49):
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Okay? So I can't believe it's like four and a
half years ago now, but way back in early October
of twenty twenty three, scientists were brought together by a
far right wing, you know, activist named Jeffrey Tucker, who
was associated with a right wing thing tank at the
time called the American Institute for Economic Research. The idea
(17:14):
behind the document was, you know, all of these measures
to control COVID are like, you know, destroying the economy.
So what we should really do, supposedly based on science
but not really as I'll get into, is to let
the virus spread among quote unquote young and healthy, you know,
(17:34):
those who are not at high risk, so not the elderly,
not those with pre existing conditions that make them high
risk for severe disease complications and death from COVID. Just
let it spread to reach what they call you know,
quote unquote natural herd immunity heard immunity for those not
(17:56):
familiar with it, is when a pathod is so prevalent
in the population and that so many people have developed
what they call natural immunity, but the more appropriate term
is post infection immunity. You know, immunity after having been
infected to the point where you know a sufficient proportion
of the population is immune and the virus doesn't spread
(18:19):
much like if you have a sufficient proportion of the
population vaccinated the virus, you know, you might get sporadic
cases in small outbreaks, but it just can't spread further.
If you don't know much about infectious diseases, including COVID,
it sounds like not unreasonable given that there wasn't a
vaccine back then. The other part of it is what
they call it, quote unquote focus protection. So the idea
(18:42):
was supposedly that you could protect those at high risk
while letting the virus circulate, which are pretty incompatible, because
how are you going to you know, how are you
going to keep these high risk people from coming into
contact with people who could have the virus, unless you
like quarantine them all or something like that, which again
(19:03):
would be impractical because you know, it's what twenty percent
of the population at least. The other problem with this
idea is for there to be natural herd immunity. I
hate that term, but I'll use it just because it's
what they use. A couple of conditions are necessary. First,
post infection immunity has to be lifelong or at least
(19:24):
very long lasting. The second is, in other words, that
the virus can't be mutating to avoid immunity, which we
all know now and even new then that coronaviruses are
very good at doing. So that it was expected that
you know, new variants would come up and they could
evade even post infection immunity in terms of like influenza.
(19:47):
That's why the flu vaccine has to be updated, you know,
every year, because the strains mutate, and the rise of
the delta wave, the omicron wave, et cetera kind of
showed that people getting infected again and again that you know,
post infection immunity for COVID was not long lasting. So
basically the Great Barrington Declaration was, you know, giving up
(20:11):
more than anything else in order to let people make
money again. And it never would have worked because even
back then we had every reason to expect that post infection,
immunity after COVID infection would not be long lasting, and
that the virus would mutate and you know, come up
(20:31):
with new strains that could bypass pre existing immunity from
previous infections. However, this idea was very influential, and in fact,
the Great Barrington Declaration was kind of late in the
game because the idea of just letting the virus spread
to achieve natural herd immunity was being pushed as early
(20:53):
as March and April in twenty twenty. And one of
the writers or the scientists who wrote the Great Barrington
Declaration is now our director of the NIH doctor J. Bodichario.
The other was doctor Senatragupta in England. And then there
was of course Martin Caldor, who I now hear is
(21:14):
involved in the autism you know, vaccine study that RFK
Junior is supposedly organizing. So basically, you know, these these
are the idea behind the Great Barrington Declaration, far from
being censored and canceled, et cetera, actually found purchase at
(21:34):
the highest levels of government in the US and the UK,
the Boris Johnson government and Donald Trump administration both you know,
listen to these scientists, and I mean great Barrington Declaration
writers you know, actually got to meet with Trump at
one point, I believe in July, and it was unfortunately
(21:56):
very influential, and it was discouraged stronger public health measures.
I did call this idea eugenesis at the time, although
maybe you can argue if it's soft eugenics or social Darwinist.
I mean, maybe more social Darwinists, given that, oh well,
it's kind of like screw the old people who will
die of this, you know, seem to be part of
(22:17):
the attitude behind it. You know, we throw up this
focused protection kind of as an afterthought, you know, where
the main idea is just to you know, let the
virus spread and most people will be okay. And this
is the same sort of idea that we that I
heard again and again years and years before with the measles,
you know. And in fact, if you go back to
(22:39):
twenty fifteen, which was you know, after the Disneyland measles
outbreak and during the holidays of twenty fourteen that you know,
took part in the early part of twenty fifteen, you
would see a lot of anti vaccine activists going on
and on about how if you just keep yourself healthy.
Measles is not a danger. That natural immunity to measles
(23:01):
is far greater than vaccine induced immunity. What they always
fail to mention is that a price of getting post
infection immunity can be besides just being sick. Could it
involve the risk of you know, complications, neurologic damage, or even.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Death right And so in a way, there's a sort
of moralization around health in that you know, it's something
that individuals have to be personally responsible for, and as
you said, if they succumbed to an illness like measles,
it is sort of an indication that maybe they were
unfit in some way or unhealthy, And his dovetails with
(23:44):
something you also wrote about RFK Junior's recent speech in
which he talked about autism and described it as a
tsunami and likened it to an epidemic. He claimed that
the increasing statistical prevalence of autos is due to environmental
risk factors and is something that is sort of induced
(24:06):
by human behavior, as opposed to that statistical prevalence being
a result of improvements and diagnostic tools that more accurately
measure a phenomenon, and he also portrayed autistic people as
a sort of burden on society, you know, or people
who will never be able to do things like fall
(24:26):
in love or get a job, despite the fact that
there are countless examples of people with autism or under
the umbrella of what we call autism, doing exactly those things.
And there's this undercurrent of rhetoric that you sort of
describe it as an echo of something. I hadn't heard
this term before, but I'm familiar with the idea of it,
(24:48):
or rather the way in which it was deployed, the
idea of quote unquote useless eaters. And so, can you
just walk us through sort of what your reaction to
RFK Junior's speech was in you know how you made
that connection.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
Well, look at what the very first thing he said
about people with severe autism. Okay, what did he say?
He said, they'll never pay taxes, they'll never have a job,
and then oh, they'll never go on a date, they'll
never play baseball. It's what are the first two things
he mentions paying taxes and having a job. This is
(25:28):
straight up useless eaters rhetoric, and useless eaters was basically
a term that the Nazis used, you know, for people
with you know, severe you know, neurologic conditions or diseases
that made it such that they would require lifetime care
and would never contribute to society. So that was the echo.
I think that echo was pretty clear describing them that way. Now,
(25:51):
the other interesting thing about the eugenics angle, there's a
very strong denial of what we know thus far about autism,
which is that it's like roughly eighty percent genetic. You know,
you can argue over the exact figures, but it's predominantly genetic.
I think there's little doubt about that. So parents who
(26:14):
have an autistic child, they often blame themselves or they think, wait,
if it's genetic, that means it must be me and
or my partner, you know, which if you're thinking in
terms of the whole health is virtue thing, you know,
if there is something about you that is not changeable,
(26:34):
mainly your genetics, and that you know, no amount of
exercise or you know, living right is going to change,
it's easy to fall into denial of that and seek
to blame something else. So there's that, and you know,
one of the things I'm kind of afraid of is
(26:56):
that if it becomes undeniable, you know, if they keep
doing all this stuff and failing to find, you know,
any real evidence that an external exposure is causing autism,
and they're forced to reckon with autism being primarily but
not exclusively, but primarily genetic. Where does that lead you
(27:16):
in terms of what do you do about autism? And
my mind has gone in some fairly dark directions thinking about.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
That, right right, And there's little discussion of what autistic
people think or want.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
No, it doesn't matter to them at all. Really, In fact,
they're almost entirely dismissive of what autistic people themselves think exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
And there's also a total disregard for the value of
difference and the contributions that people who are autistic have
made to society that perhaps they might even correlate with
the fact that they're autistic. So there's this erasure of
(28:01):
not only what an entire group of people actually want
for themselves as advocates for themselves, but also their value,
you know, not just as a group of people, but
as individuals as well.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
To add to that, let's go back to around two
thousand and seven, two thousand and eight when Jenny McCarthy
was the face of the anti vaccine movement. So like
one of the things she said after, you know, supposedly
after her son Evan got vaccinated, was that quote unquote
the light went out of his eyes. And then you
(28:35):
hear this a lot when parents realize their children are
showing the signs of, you know, the early signs of autism.
Is it like they there's language about how their child
was stolen from them, in other words, as if this
autistic child is not their child, rather their idealized version
of what their child should be is their real child
(28:58):
or their quote unquote normal child. This is some really
ancient stuff in that, you know, I don't know if
you there's the whole idea of the changeling myth, in which,
you know, the idea of being. You know, children with
mental illness, you know, have been taken over or their changelings.
They are no longer what they were before. It's almost
(29:19):
as if they are no longer human. I mean, the
dehumanization that you hear from the anti vaccine movement about
autism has long been horrific, and it's just that up
until now, most people have not heard that rhetoric, and
now they're hearing it from a high government official and
(29:39):
it is becoming federal health policy.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, that is certainly a new development. Is something we've
discussed on previous episodes, is the deeper history of anti
vaccination belief or hesitancy that goes deep in American history.
You know, for almost as long as vaccines have ever existed,
it has rarely ever been enshrined in law and policy
(30:05):
in the way that it is now being done. And
so we've talked about one of these people, high level
government officials, RFK Junior, whose statements have drawn your attention
and elicited your concern. But he's not the only one.
So you also wrote about oprah adjacent television personality, doctor
menad Oz.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
Okay, Yeah, well doctor Oz actually is sort of surprising
you a little bit, but then in retrospect not really.
So I'm surprised there wasn't more commentary about this. But
when he gave his brief little acceptance speech after having
been confirmed as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare
(30:46):
and Medicaid Services, which is the part of HHS that
administers you know, Medicare, Medicaid Affordable Care Act, it's like
really important, huge programs. When he said, basically, it is
your patriotic duty to take care of yourself, you know it,
to be healthy, and then he goes, oh, and it
(31:07):
feels better as well. But he said, it's your patriotic
duty to take care of yourself and be healthy because
then you, you know, draw less. I'm paraphrasing because I
don't remember exactly what he said, but because you pull
less from the pool, you know, which, interestingly E goes
exactly almost exactly other than the patriotic duty part what
(31:27):
RFK Junior said. When Bernie Sanders asked if healthcare was
a human right, as you recall, RFKA Junior did his
best not to answer, you know, he dodged and weaved
around the question, and then he brought up the example
of a someone who smokes cigarettes for decades and then
develops lung cancer and is now drawing from the pool.
(31:50):
He was like, very you know, emphasized drawing from the pool,
as if that person does not deserve healthcare basically because
an addiction gave you cancer. Because you know, what he
neglects to mention is just how addictives you know, tobacco
and nicotine are, and as a former addict himself, you know,
I found that striking. But coming back to the whole
(32:11):
patriotic beauty thing. Know, the whole idea is, again, health
is virtue. You control your health, and if you don't
do the right things and become ill, that you're somehow
less worthy of healthcare.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
And there's an interesting thread there in that some EU
genesis thinkers, at least American ones, were somewhat concerned about,
you know, the idea that vaccinations could prevent the weak
or the unfit from being called naturally.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Oh yes, definitely. Yeah, So there is.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Some linkage here, even if these are somewhat discrete ideas.
And you know, you also quoted something from a doctor
Oz speech back in twenty thirteen. You pulled a video
that had been and resurfaced in recent years, and as said,
people don't have a right to health if they're uninsured.
(33:08):
And so it's not like what he's saying is kind
of new for him. He's been saying things like this
for a while. And the idea that you know, there's
this national body that we all have a duty to
sort of be healthy cells of is something that there's
a long history of that sort of thinking and policy.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
Yeah, yes, the whole I mean, I can't help but
think of Nazis and the vult quick aside.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
For those who don't know, the Nazi idea of the
Vulcan has a few elements to it. Not only does
it relate to racial and cultural homogeneity, but it also
conceives of the nation as a sort of body composed
of cells, one that must be cleansed of unfit or
unhealthy cells in order to become perfect. In other words,
a dutiful member of the Vulcan would prioritize their health
(33:59):
as a sort of paireotic or nationalistic duty, and would
participate in eugenic programs to eliminate the unfit.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
You know, I'm not saying this is straight up Nazi
or anything like that. It's just that these sorts of
themes have echoed through you know, not just eugenicist movements,
but nationalist and authoritarian movements.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
And there's this concerning development. RFK Junior has proposed basically
creating like a national database or registry of people with autism,
and if it's not just autism, maybe other disorders like ADHD.
And if you read reports that interview people with autism
or similar disorders. They are very concerned by this for
(34:46):
the reasons that you just described, So the creation of
this database could be framed as a way to improve
our ability to understand this hypothetical linkage that they are
so doggedly stuck on between autism in vaccines. But I
think those who know their history could easily imagine such
a tool being used for other more nefarious purposes, because
(35:10):
you know, similar policies were passed in Germany in the
nineteen thirties to sort of, you know, identify these people
and categorize them and then eventually do what they did
with them. So, you know, for all those sorts of reasons,
and you know, also the fact that we're living at
a time in which American citizens and legal residents are
being sent to a foreign prison colony as is certainly
(35:34):
you know something that I think people are picking up
on and maybe making connections with.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
As you mentioned, a lot of autistic people don't want
to be on this database, and as a result, I've
read reports in the news of parents are asking that
their child not be given a diagnosis of autism so
that they don't end up in the database, which could
artificially cause, you know, the revolence of autism to level
(36:02):
off and start to decline, at which point RFK declares victory.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
We'll hear a bit more from doctor Gorski after a
quick ad break. There's a recent proposal out of rfk's
HHS that intends to provide placebo vaccines during testing for
(36:30):
all quote unquote new vaccines.
Speaker 5 (36:33):
So the idea is, the vaccines in the childhood schedule
have quote unquote never been tested against placebo control. Although
ironically it's funny. I read an article the other day
where they did admit that the COVID vaccine for children
was indeed tested against a placebo control. I'm kind of
surprised they conceded that, but I guess sometimes they have
(36:54):
to concede reality. But here's the idea. So it's true
that some of them vaccines have not been tested against
the strict siline placebo control that they want, but there
are a number of reasons for that. The primary reason
is ethics. So let's go back. So if you have
(37:15):
a new vaccine that is for a disease that has
never had an approved vaccine before, yes, it's tested against
a placebo control. This has been the case for a
very long time. However, if you have a new vaccine
for a disease that already has a vaccine that's been
approved as safe and effective and is the standard of care,
(37:37):
it is completely unethical to do a randomized study where
you know one third to half of the participants will
be randomized to a group that does not get the
standard of care treatment as in, you know, the vaccine
or the standard of care preventative. In that case, the
only ethical way to test the new vaccine against the
(37:58):
disease for which there's already a vaccine is to test
it against an existing vaccine and then make sure that
it is at least not inferior or preferably better. So,
if you trace back the lineage of all the vaccines
on the childhood vaccine schedule, if you go back to
the first vaccine against the disease that was approved, it
(38:22):
was tested against you know, placebo, when it was a
new vaccine against a disease that didn't have a vaccine.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I'm wondering if you agree with this, but it does
sound like this proposal if it were to be implemented
in a way that involves vaccines for existing diseases that
have already been treated with vaccines, if there were placebos
introduced into this testing, and you know, like you said,
there's a random percentage of people that were given a placebo.
(38:51):
I mean to me, it recalls like a soft version
of a Tuskegee experiment.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Yeah, I've been meaning to make that that any but
you beat me to it.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
As we discussed in a prior episode in this series,
the Tuskegee Syphilist Study was a horrifically unethical, racist and
eugenic experiment that helped seed a long standing distrust of
vaccines and medical authorities, particularly among minority communities in the
United States, and it straddled the intersection of hard and
soft eugenics. While it was not a forced sterilization program,
(39:25):
the intent of the experiment was to test the eugenic
hypothesis that racial groups were differently susceptible to infectious diseases.
And that's because they basically believed that black people had
different nervous systems than white people and that they were
not the same. And they also allowed black men who
could have otherwise been treated for syphilis, which there were
treatments for that at the time, to instead suffer and
(39:48):
die after being given placebo treatments without their knowledge. Children's
health defense while under the leadership of RFK Junior invoked
the Tuskegee Syphliss experiment in a recent anti vaccine film
they specifically promoted to Black Americans to encourage vaccine skepticism,
and now the former leader of that organization is proposing
an approach to vaccines that is eerily reminiscent of the
(40:10):
sordid Tuskegee experiment. In the post COVID world, vaccination rates
are on the decline, and anti vaccination beliefs are spreading
in tandem with eugenesis thinking. The rhetoric of the leaders
of our top health bureaucracies recall chilling episodes in recent history,
ones that we would rather not repeat. But because we
(40:31):
have history as a guide, it is not impossible for
us to imagine what could happen if things continue to
trend in the direction we are already headed. So on
the next episode of Anti vaxx America, I'll explore some
of the worst case scenarios that could unfold if the
proponents of the MAHA agenda get their way. I'm Stephen Monchelli.
Until next time.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
It Could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone Media.
For more podcasts cool Zone Media, visit our website foolzonmedia
dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it could Happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Stephen Monicelli, a journalist in Dallas and an occasional
contributor to Cool Zone Media, and welcome to episode four
of Anti vax America, a special five part mini series
for It Could Happen Here exploring the measles outbreak as
a microcosm for where we are now, how we got here,
(00:26):
and where we could be going. Today's episode we'll focus
on the twisted history of eugenics as it relates to
vaccinations and how the current MAHA agenda, as pushed by
RFK Junior, is a sort of echo of eugenic beliefs
of the past. Vaccination hesitancy historically has been framed by
(00:49):
opponents to vaccines as a matter of medical freedom, about
the ability to decide what one wants to do with
their own body. It's an argument that we've discussed can
appeal to crunchy granola types and religious zelots alike. But
there's also a darker side to this rhetoric that reveals
an embrace of eugenic ideas among anti vax advocates who
prefer quote unquote herd immunity approaches to outbreaks which subordinate
(01:14):
the interests of older people, those with disabilities, and members
of minority communities to those who choose not to be vaccinated.
On this episode of Anti vax America, we will dive
into the overlapping histories of eugenic thinking and anti vaccination
beliefs to untangle this mess. As we previously discussed in
episode two, vaccinations took off in the eighteen hundred, shortly
(01:36):
after the creation of the first smallpox vaccine in seventeen
ninety six, and so did anti vaccination rhetoric and movements.
In parallel, there were a lot of scientific developments going on.
The eighteen hundreds were a heady time in Western science.
There was Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which was
presented in Darwin's eighteen to fifty nine book on the
(01:56):
Origin of Species. Five years later, sociologists heard Robert Spencer
mixed concepts from Thomas Malthus, the economist who proposed that
population growth would outpaces food production, with Darwin's theory to
coin the term survival of the fittest and apply it
to industrial capitalism, with the end conclusion that basically those
(02:16):
who were on top were deserving of all the privileges
that they have, and that those at the bottom were
also deserving of their position in society. In eighteen eighty three,
Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, coined the term eugenics in his
book Inquiries into Human Fertility. In its developments, the book
proposed to give to quote, more suitable races a better
(02:40):
chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable. To understand
a bit more about Galton's thinking, I spoke with doctor
Michael Phillips, who we heard from in a previous episode.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Galton was in despair that all those improvements in delivery
of healthcare, medical care itself nutrician, all the humanitarian efforts
to improve the workplace, eliminate child labor, improve factories so
people don't get blown up, et cetera. What that was
(03:11):
doing was it was allowing the unfit, you know, the
people he saw as inferior, to survive past childhood, to
survive into adulthood, to have longer, healthier lives. And if
they live a longer lifespan and they're healthier during that span,
they're going to have more children. And he believed that
(03:35):
because they are less gifted with intelligence, you know, because
you know, he said, history is driven by genius. And
he actually did the first major study on intelligence where
he traced the family histories of what he said were
the gifted men. And he claimed all of this was
(03:56):
biological inheritance. You know, everything was biology. And not only that,
but all traits, all traits were biological. Work, ethic, honesty,
fidelity to your partner, alcoholism, Every single trait a human
might have he tied to biology. And he said that
the people with the worst traits it's called disgenic. People
(04:20):
who were disgenic, people who had the worst traits were
now producing large families. And because they were less intelligent,
they gave into their sexual urges more often. They didn't
plan families based on their economic circumstances. They were impulsive,
Well we have eight children, let's have sex. And you
(04:41):
know if we have a ninth child, well we have
a ninth child. And that meant that those families were
growing exponentially. But the fit who plan their families more carefully,
and you know, the partners are busier job creators, as
innovators in science and education. The women want to have
(05:03):
a life outside of the hum that they were less fertile,
they were having fewer children, and of course what the
result would be is you have the unfit out numbering
the fit, and that leads to catastrophe society falls apart.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
These sorts of ideas are represented in the satirical two
thousand and six film Idiocracy, which plays out a future
in which stupid people outbreed smart people and society consequently devolves.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
As the twenty first century began, human evolution was at
a turning point. Natural selection the process by which the strongest,
the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest,
A process which at once favored the noblest traits of man,
now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of
(05:55):
the day predicted a future that was more civilized and
more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to
be heading in the opposite direction, a dumbing down. How
did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With
no natural predators toin the herd, it began to simply
(06:15):
reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent
to become an endangered species.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Having kids is such an important decision, We're just.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Waiting for the right time.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
It's not something you want to rush into.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Obviously, no way.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Shit, I'm putting it again.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Actually, damn kids, thought you was on the pills and
shitll no.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I must have been thinking really.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, certainly meant in jest. The fundamental principle of idiocracy
demonstrates the staying power of Galton's eugenic ideas, which became
highly influential in the twentieth century. Within two decades of
the release of his book, coining the term eugenics, eugenic
thinking was widespread among white Anglo Saxon leaders of the West.
But before we hear more about that from doctor Michael Phillips,
(07:07):
a quick ad break.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
The two biggest hugenicists in the early twentieth century. They
were best selling authors Madison Grant, who was a friend
of Theodore Roosevelt's, and Walthorpe Stoddard. Stoddard in particular warned
that this was fueling radical politics, that the unfit essentially
(07:40):
were demanding the riches created by the geniuses in the world,
and they were expropriating the wealth they created, and they
were just they were just milking the fit for every advance,
and that as that became more difficult, that would breed revolution.
And in particular thought there was a link to communist revolution.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
As advancements in sanitation and modern medicine continued in parallel
with the spread of leftist thought, eugenicists were consumed with
nightmares of a Malthusian crisis and were increasingly worried about
their position in society. Something in their minds had to
be done to stem the growing tide of unfit masses.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Because natural selection in the minds of the genesis had
basically been suspended. The four sterilizations were the substitute for that.
Eugenicists were in despair about vaccines that they there was
an organized campaign to ban them on eugenics reasons, because
(08:43):
I think they knew politically that would be unpopular, because
there were enough people who realize they could see the
benefits as vaccinations became more common.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
In other words, some early genesists were both supportive of
things like for sterilization, but were also a poe those
to vaccinations because they believe that vaccinations would allow the
weak and unfit to survive, prosper and multiply. But not
all eugenicists were inherently opposed to vaccinations. The Nazi regime,
(09:13):
which exterminated millions of Jews, and other people deemed undesirable
also embraced widespread vaccination against diseases like typhus, even if
they actually rolled back mandatory vaccination laws that had been
put in place prior to the rise of the Nazis. Nevertheless,
the relationship between eugenic thinking and anti VAXX beliefs goes deep,
(09:35):
and it reveals a helpful heuristic for thinking about eugenics. So,
on the one hand, there's a sort of active or
hard eugenics, in which medical authorities or the state forcefully
sterilize and exterminate people who are deemed unfit. And then
on the other hand, there's a sort of passive or
soft eugenics, in which potentially preventable deaths are written off
(09:57):
as a product of a process in which the to
survive and go on to improve the overall gene pool. Now,
before we go any further, it is important to note
that eugenics has been morally and scientifically discredited so thoroughly
that it shouldn't even be necessary to mention it. But unfortunately,
eugenesis thinking is in resurgence. President Donald Trump himself has
(10:20):
said there are a lot of bad genes in our
country right now, and that immigrants are poisoning the blood
of our country.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
That's been an ongoing thing with immigration debates ever since
the late nineteenth century, this idea that certain groups of
immigrants are disease carriers, and that has particularly been aimed
at Mexican immigrants. That's been a ongoing thing. And during COVID,
(10:48):
Greg Abbott, he's the governor of Texas, was saying it
was Mexican immigrants, undocumented immigrants, who were bringing COVID to Texas.
At one point he made that accusation, and it's exactly
like what they were saying. We had in Texas during
this period of this panic bat immigration. Late nineteenth early
choice centric Galveston. A medical doctor who was inspecting people
(11:14):
coming into the Port of Galveston who were Jewish immigrants,
and he was rejecting them because he was saying they're
carrying infectious eye diseases, tuberculosis, all of that, and Jewish
civil rights scripts had to intervene to stop that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Racism, anti semitism, and eugenics historically have gone hand in hand,
but it hasn't been since the early nineteen hundreds that
people who hold such beliefs also hold so much power
in the state. RFK Junior, a longtime anti vaccination activist
and now head of the United States Department of Health
and Human Services, said in twenty twenty three that COVID
(11:52):
was quote ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi, Jews and Chinese people. Now,
his make America Healthy Again agenda is absolutely dripping with
soft eugenic thinking. And to unravel all that, I spoke
with doctor David Gorski, a doctor who regularly writes in
a blog called Science Based Medicine.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
My name is David Gorsky. I'm a professor of surgery
and oncology at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So, doctor Gorski, you're also a bit of a writer,
and you keep a pretty regular blog in RICHI o'pine
on a number of things, and recently you've written a
couple of blog posts about the measles outbreak, the anti
vaccination movement. RFK Juniors make America Healthy Again an agenda.
(12:44):
And you know what folks over at the Conspiratuality podcast
called soft eugenics, or perhaps what we could also think
of as a sort of social Darwinist logic or sort
of passive eugenics.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
You know, a couple months ago when I first came
across the episode of conspiratuality, which was called MAHA's soft eugenics,
like kind of like a light bulb went off in
my brain in that it sort of helped me crystallize
things that I had been thinking of about the anti
vaccine movement, but not so much the rest of Maha, which,
(13:19):
you know, let's face it, a mishmash of you know,
anti vaccine beliefs, you know, appeals to nature, anti pharma,
a lot of quackery mixed in with some you know,
semi reasonable stuff like you know, yeah, sure, diet, exercise,
it's good for you. I think measles really epitomizes what
(13:40):
they called the quote unquote soft eugenics, which was basically,
instead of you know, like actively trying to kill children
or people that you you know, whose genes you don't
want passed on, you're basically letting nature do it. And
you hear this a lot when they talk about for example,
one of the most common arguments you'll hear from anti
(14:01):
vaxers about measles is that, you know, if someone gets
really sick for measles or dies of measles, they must
have had something wrong with them, They must not have
been healthy like that. Measles is harmless if you are healthy.
And of course, you know, there's a whole lot of
appeal to virtue as far as health goes. In other words,
(14:21):
there's this this belief system that's kind of embedded in Maha,
and it's been around for ages and ages and the
alternative medicine crowd that you know, you have basically total
control over your health. In other words, if you do
the right things, eat the right diet, you know, take
the right supplements, you know, do the exercise appropriately, you know,
(14:44):
you can keep yourself healthy. And it's even as good
as vaccines or better to prevent vaccine preventable diseases, infectious diseases. Right.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
So, I think that's a great way to understand the
differences here. You know, we're not talking about the hard
active eugenics of the past, which was epitomized by the
Nazi regime and their quote unquote final solution.
Speaker 5 (15:11):
And also, you know, you're in the good old us
of Aga years ago, right.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You know, or even you know, in the lingering sterilization
regimes that continued up until you know, the later twentieth century,
which we're you know, sort of originally rooted in this
idea that we should be calling people out of the
reproductive pool who have these undesirable traits or are you know,
considered to be unfit in some way, so that that's
(15:38):
not what we're talking about. We're talking about this more
let nature take its course, survival of the fittest type mindset.
I don't know if it's a resurgence or it's just
continuing to gain in popularity. There's a recent conference, it's
been one of two conferences that have happened in Austin,
Texas where a lot of these quote unquote liberal eugenics
(16:00):
also met up with people who are in the pro
natalist movement. And then there's this overlap with people who
are kind of dabbling in race science or trying to
resuscitate old ideas that are basically you know, eugenic in
nature with regard to some people, you know, being smarter
by genetic basis.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
I mean there's a lot of that around too, and
that's not soft eugenics, that's like straight up eugenic.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Right, And so there's a continuum, you could say, there's
this spectrum and you know, these things are not disconnected,
but they also can be understood as somewhat discrete phenomenon
or ideologies or belief systems. And so you did write
a little bit about one specific document that you know,
I hadn't been particularly familiar with, called the Great Barrington Declaration.
(16:49):
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Okay? So I can't believe it's like four and a
half years ago now, but way back in early October
of twenty twenty three, scientists were brought together by a
far right wing, you know, activist named Jeffrey Tucker, who
was associated with a right wing thing tank at the
time called the American Institute for Economic Research. The idea
(17:14):
behind the document was, you know, all of these measures
to control COVID are like, you know, destroying the economy.
So what we should really do, supposedly based on science
but not really as I'll get into, is to let
the virus spread among quote unquote young and healthy, you know,
(17:34):
those who are not at high risk, so not the elderly,
not those with pre existing conditions that make them high
risk for severe disease complications and death from COVID. Just
let it spread to reach what they call you know,
quote unquote natural herd immunity heard immunity for those not
(17:56):
familiar with it, is when a pathod is so prevalent
in the population and that so many people have developed
what they call natural immunity, but the more appropriate term
is post infection immunity. You know, immunity after having been
infected to the point where you know a sufficient proportion
of the population is immune and the virus doesn't spread
(18:19):
much like if you have a sufficient proportion of the
population vaccinated the virus, you know, you might get sporadic
cases in small outbreaks, but it just can't spread further.
If you don't know much about infectious diseases, including COVID,
it sounds like not unreasonable given that there wasn't a
vaccine back then. The other part of it is what
they call it, quote unquote focus protection. So the idea
(18:42):
was supposedly that you could protect those at high risk
while letting the virus circulate, which are pretty incompatible, because
how are you going to you know, how are you
going to keep these high risk people from coming into
contact with people who could have the virus, unless you
like quarantine them all or something like that, which again
(19:03):
would be impractical because you know, it's what twenty percent
of the population at least. The other problem with this
idea is for there to be natural herd immunity. I
hate that term, but I'll use it just because it's
what they use. A couple of conditions are necessary. First,
post infection immunity has to be lifelong or at least
(19:24):
very long lasting. The second is, in other words, that
the virus can't be mutating to avoid immunity, which we
all know now and even new then that coronaviruses are
very good at doing. So that it was expected that
you know, new variants would come up and they could
evade even post infection immunity in terms of like influenza.
(19:47):
That's why the flu vaccine has to be updated, you know,
every year, because the strains mutate, and the rise of
the delta wave, the omicron wave, et cetera kind of
showed that people getting infected again and again that you know,
post infection immunity for COVID was not long lasting. So
basically the Great Barrington Declaration was, you know, giving up
(20:11):
more than anything else in order to let people make
money again. And it never would have worked because even
back then we had every reason to expect that post infection,
immunity after COVID infection would not be long lasting, and
that the virus would mutate and you know, come up
(20:31):
with new strains that could bypass pre existing immunity from
previous infections. However, this idea was very influential, and in fact,
the Great Barrington Declaration was kind of late in the
game because the idea of just letting the virus spread
to achieve natural herd immunity was being pushed as early
(20:53):
as March and April in twenty twenty. And one of
the writers or the scientists who wrote the Great Barrington
Declaration is now our director of the NIH doctor J. Bodichario.
The other was doctor Senatragupta in England. And then there
was of course Martin Caldor, who I now hear is
(21:14):
involved in the autism you know, vaccine study that RFK
Junior is supposedly organizing. So basically, you know, these these
are the idea behind the Great Barrington Declaration, far from
being censored and canceled, et cetera, actually found purchase at
(21:34):
the highest levels of government in the US and the UK,
the Boris Johnson government and Donald Trump administration both you know,
listen to these scientists, and I mean great Barrington Declaration
writers you know, actually got to meet with Trump at
one point, I believe in July, and it was unfortunately
(21:56):
very influential, and it was discouraged stronger public health measures.
I did call this idea eugenesis at the time, although
maybe you can argue if it's soft eugenics or social Darwinist.
I mean, maybe more social Darwinists, given that, oh well,
it's kind of like screw the old people who will
die of this, you know, seem to be part of
(22:17):
the attitude behind it. You know, we throw up this
focused protection kind of as an afterthought, you know, where
the main idea is just to you know, let the
virus spread and most people will be okay. And this
is the same sort of idea that we that I
heard again and again years and years before with the measles,
you know. And in fact, if you go back to
(22:39):
twenty fifteen, which was you know, after the Disneyland measles
outbreak and during the holidays of twenty fourteen that you know,
took part in the early part of twenty fifteen, you
would see a lot of anti vaccine activists going on
and on about how if you just keep yourself healthy.
Measles is not a danger. That natural immunity to measles
(23:01):
is far greater than vaccine induced immunity. What they always
fail to mention is that a price of getting post
infection immunity can be besides just being sick. Could it
involve the risk of you know, complications, neurologic damage, or even.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Death right And so in a way, there's a sort
of moralization around health in that you know, it's something
that individuals have to be personally responsible for, and as
you said, if they succumbed to an illness like measles,
it is sort of an indication that maybe they were
unfit in some way or unhealthy, And his dovetails with
(23:44):
something you also wrote about RFK Junior's recent speech in
which he talked about autism and described it as a
tsunami and likened it to an epidemic. He claimed that
the increasing statistical prevalence of autos is due to environmental
risk factors and is something that is sort of induced
(24:06):
by human behavior, as opposed to that statistical prevalence being
a result of improvements and diagnostic tools that more accurately
measure a phenomenon, and he also portrayed autistic people as
a sort of burden on society, you know, or people
who will never be able to do things like fall
(24:26):
in love or get a job, despite the fact that
there are countless examples of people with autism or under
the umbrella of what we call autism, doing exactly those things.
And there's this undercurrent of rhetoric that you sort of
describe it as an echo of something. I hadn't heard
this term before, but I'm familiar with the idea of it,
(24:48):
or rather the way in which it was deployed, the
idea of quote unquote useless eaters. And so, can you
just walk us through sort of what your reaction to
RFK Junior's speech was in you know how you made
that connection.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
Well, look at what the very first thing he said
about people with severe autism. Okay, what did he say?
He said, they'll never pay taxes, they'll never have a job,
and then oh, they'll never go on a date, they'll
never play baseball. It's what are the first two things
he mentions paying taxes and having a job. This is
(25:28):
straight up useless eaters rhetoric, and useless eaters was basically
a term that the Nazis used, you know, for people
with you know, severe you know, neurologic conditions or diseases
that made it such that they would require lifetime care
and would never contribute to society. So that was the echo.
I think that echo was pretty clear describing them that way. Now,
(25:51):
the other interesting thing about the eugenics angle, there's a
very strong denial of what we know thus far about autism,
which is that it's like roughly eighty percent genetic. You know,
you can argue over the exact figures, but it's predominantly genetic.
I think there's little doubt about that. So parents who
(26:14):
have an autistic child, they often blame themselves or they think, wait,
if it's genetic, that means it must be me and
or my partner, you know, which if you're thinking in
terms of the whole health is virtue thing, you know,
if there is something about you that is not changeable,
(26:34):
mainly your genetics, and that you know, no amount of
exercise or you know, living right is going to change,
it's easy to fall into denial of that and seek
to blame something else. So there's that, and you know,
one of the things I'm kind of afraid of is
(26:56):
that if it becomes undeniable, you know, if they keep
doing all this stuff and failing to find, you know,
any real evidence that an external exposure is causing autism,
and they're forced to reckon with autism being primarily but
not exclusively, but primarily genetic. Where does that lead you
(27:16):
in terms of what do you do about autism? And
my mind has gone in some fairly dark directions thinking about.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
That, right right, And there's little discussion of what autistic
people think or want.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
No, it doesn't matter to them at all. Really, In fact,
they're almost entirely dismissive of what autistic people themselves think exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
And there's also a total disregard for the value of
difference and the contributions that people who are autistic have
made to society that perhaps they might even correlate with
the fact that they're autistic. So there's this erasure of
(28:01):
not only what an entire group of people actually want
for themselves as advocates for themselves, but also their value,
you know, not just as a group of people, but
as individuals as well.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
To add to that, let's go back to around two
thousand and seven, two thousand and eight when Jenny McCarthy
was the face of the anti vaccine movement. So like
one of the things she said after, you know, supposedly
after her son Evan got vaccinated, was that quote unquote
the light went out of his eyes. And then you
(28:35):
hear this a lot when parents realize their children are
showing the signs of, you know, the early signs of autism.
Is it like they there's language about how their child
was stolen from them, in other words, as if this
autistic child is not their child, rather their idealized version
of what their child should be is their real child
(28:58):
or their quote unquote normal child. This is some really
ancient stuff in that, you know, I don't know if
you there's the whole idea of the changeling myth, in which,
you know, the idea of being. You know, children with
mental illness, you know, have been taken over or their changelings.
They are no longer what they were before. It's almost
(29:19):
as if they are no longer human. I mean, the
dehumanization that you hear from the anti vaccine movement about
autism has long been horrific, and it's just that up
until now, most people have not heard that rhetoric, and
now they're hearing it from a high government official and
(29:39):
it is becoming federal health policy.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, that is certainly a new development. Is something we've
discussed on previous episodes, is the deeper history of anti
vaccination belief or hesitancy that goes deep in American history.
You know, for almost as long as vaccines have ever existed,
it has rarely ever been enshrined in law and policy
(30:05):
in the way that it is now being done. And
so we've talked about one of these people, high level
government officials, RFK Junior, whose statements have drawn your attention
and elicited your concern. But he's not the only one.
So you also wrote about oprah adjacent television personality, doctor
menad Oz.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
Okay, Yeah, well doctor Oz actually is sort of surprising
you a little bit, but then in retrospect not really.
So I'm surprised there wasn't more commentary about this. But
when he gave his brief little acceptance speech after having
been confirmed as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare
(30:46):
and Medicaid Services, which is the part of HHS that
administers you know, Medicare, Medicaid Affordable Care Act, it's like
really important, huge programs. When he said, basically, it is
your patriotic duty to take care of yourself, you know it,
to be healthy, and then he goes, oh, and it
(31:07):
feels better as well. But he said, it's your patriotic
duty to take care of yourself and be healthy because
then you, you know, draw less. I'm paraphrasing because I
don't remember exactly what he said, but because you pull
less from the pool, you know, which, interestingly E goes
exactly almost exactly other than the patriotic duty part what
(31:27):
RFK Junior said. When Bernie Sanders asked if healthcare was
a human right, as you recall, RFKA Junior did his
best not to answer, you know, he dodged and weaved
around the question, and then he brought up the example
of a someone who smokes cigarettes for decades and then
develops lung cancer and is now drawing from the pool.
(31:50):
He was like, very you know, emphasized drawing from the pool,
as if that person does not deserve healthcare basically because
an addiction gave you cancer. Because you know, what he
neglects to mention is just how addictives you know, tobacco
and nicotine are, and as a former addict himself, you know,
I found that striking. But coming back to the whole
(32:11):
patriotic beauty thing. Know, the whole idea is, again, health
is virtue. You control your health, and if you don't
do the right things and become ill, that you're somehow
less worthy of healthcare.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
And there's an interesting thread there in that some EU
genesis thinkers, at least American ones, were somewhat concerned about,
you know, the idea that vaccinations could prevent the weak
or the unfit from being called naturally.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Oh yes, definitely. Yeah, So there is.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Some linkage here, even if these are somewhat discrete ideas.
And you know, you also quoted something from a doctor
Oz speech back in twenty thirteen. You pulled a video
that had been and resurfaced in recent years, and as said,
people don't have a right to health if they're uninsured.
(33:08):
And so it's not like what he's saying is kind
of new for him. He's been saying things like this
for a while. And the idea that you know, there's
this national body that we all have a duty to
sort of be healthy cells of is something that there's
a long history of that sort of thinking and policy.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
Yeah, yes, the whole I mean, I can't help but
think of Nazis and the vult quick aside.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
For those who don't know, the Nazi idea of the
Vulcan has a few elements to it. Not only does
it relate to racial and cultural homogeneity, but it also
conceives of the nation as a sort of body composed
of cells, one that must be cleansed of unfit or
unhealthy cells in order to become perfect. In other words,
a dutiful member of the Vulcan would prioritize their health
(33:59):
as a sort of paireotic or nationalistic duty, and would
participate in eugenic programs to eliminate the unfit.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
You know, I'm not saying this is straight up Nazi
or anything like that. It's just that these sorts of
themes have echoed through you know, not just eugenicist movements,
but nationalist and authoritarian movements.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
And there's this concerning development. RFK Junior has proposed basically
creating like a national database or registry of people with autism,
and if it's not just autism, maybe other disorders like ADHD.
And if you read reports that interview people with autism
or similar disorders. They are very concerned by this for
(34:46):
the reasons that you just described, So the creation of
this database could be framed as a way to improve
our ability to understand this hypothetical linkage that they are
so doggedly stuck on between autism in vaccines. But I
think those who know their history could easily imagine such
a tool being used for other more nefarious purposes, because
(35:10):
you know, similar policies were passed in Germany in the
nineteen thirties to sort of, you know, identify these people
and categorize them and then eventually do what they did
with them. So, you know, for all those sorts of reasons,
and you know, also the fact that we're living at
a time in which American citizens and legal residents are
being sent to a foreign prison colony as is certainly
(35:34):
you know something that I think people are picking up
on and maybe making connections with.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
As you mentioned, a lot of autistic people don't want
to be on this database, and as a result, I've
read reports in the news of parents are asking that
their child not be given a diagnosis of autism so
that they don't end up in the database, which could
artificially cause, you know, the revolence of autism to level
(36:02):
off and start to decline, at which point RFK declares victory.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
We'll hear a bit more from doctor Gorski after a
quick ad break. There's a recent proposal out of rfk's
HHS that intends to provide placebo vaccines during testing for
(36:30):
all quote unquote new vaccines.
Speaker 5 (36:33):
So the idea is, the vaccines in the childhood schedule
have quote unquote never been tested against placebo control. Although
ironically it's funny. I read an article the other day
where they did admit that the COVID vaccine for children
was indeed tested against a placebo control. I'm kind of
surprised they conceded that, but I guess sometimes they have
(36:54):
to concede reality. But here's the idea. So it's true
that some of them vaccines have not been tested against
the strict siline placebo control that they want, but there
are a number of reasons for that. The primary reason
is ethics. So let's go back. So if you have
(37:15):
a new vaccine that is for a disease that has
never had an approved vaccine before, yes, it's tested against
a placebo control. This has been the case for a
very long time. However, if you have a new vaccine
for a disease that already has a vaccine that's been
approved as safe and effective and is the standard of care,
(37:37):
it is completely unethical to do a randomized study where
you know one third to half of the participants will
be randomized to a group that does not get the
standard of care treatment as in, you know, the vaccine
or the standard of care preventative. In that case, the
only ethical way to test the new vaccine against the
(37:58):
disease for which there's already a vaccine is to test
it against an existing vaccine and then make sure that
it is at least not inferior or preferably better. So,
if you trace back the lineage of all the vaccines
on the childhood vaccine schedule, if you go back to
the first vaccine against the disease that was approved, it
(38:22):
was tested against you know, placebo, when it was a
new vaccine against a disease that didn't have a vaccine.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I'm wondering if you agree with this, but it does
sound like this proposal if it were to be implemented
in a way that involves vaccines for existing diseases that
have already been treated with vaccines, if there were placebos
introduced into this testing, and you know, like you said,
there's a random percentage of people that were given a placebo.
(38:51):
I mean to me, it recalls like a soft version
of a Tuskegee experiment.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Yeah, I've been meaning to make that that any but
you beat me to it.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
As we discussed in a prior episode in this series,
the Tuskegee Syphilist Study was a horrifically unethical, racist and
eugenic experiment that helped seed a long standing distrust of
vaccines and medical authorities, particularly among minority communities in the
United States, and it straddled the intersection of hard and
soft eugenics. While it was not a forced sterilization program,
(39:25):
the intent of the experiment was to test the eugenic
hypothesis that racial groups were differently susceptible to infectious diseases.
And that's because they basically believed that black people had
different nervous systems than white people and that they were
not the same. And they also allowed black men who
could have otherwise been treated for syphilis, which there were
treatments for that at the time, to instead suffer and
(39:48):
die after being given placebo treatments without their knowledge. Children's
health defense while under the leadership of RFK Junior invoked
the Tuskegee Syphliss experiment in a recent anti vaccine film
they specifically promoted to Black Americans to encourage vaccine skepticism,
and now the former leader of that organization is proposing
an approach to vaccines that is eerily reminiscent of the
(40:10):
sordid Tuskegee experiment. In the post COVID world, vaccination rates
are on the decline, and anti vaccination beliefs are spreading
in tandem with eugenesis thinking. The rhetoric of the leaders
of our top health bureaucracies recall chilling episodes in recent history,
ones that we would rather not repeat. But because we
(40:31):
have history as a guide, it is not impossible for
us to imagine what could happen if things continue to
trend in the direction we are already headed. So on
the next episode of Anti vaxx America, I'll explore some
of the worst case scenarios that could unfold if the
proponents of the MAHA agenda get their way. I'm Stephen Monchelli.
Until next time.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
It Could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone Media.
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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