A Pediatrician’s Unfiltered Take on Pharma, Research, and Real Health— Why Medicine Needs Transparency Now | Dr. Joel “Gator” Warsh

24:41So a bunch of vaccine manufacturers left the market, and there was concern that the lawsuits would get so big that companies would all go bankrupt. And so that's when that was put into effect. And after that point, they no longer really had liability anymore. And so you still have this explosion of new vaccines hit the market. And now we have a lot more. So it depends on, you know, some people call like 72 as antigens, but that's not really true. And there are more vaccines now. We have the COVID vaccine, the RSV, flu vaccines every year. But there are 30 to 40 pokes that you can get as a kid at this point.

25:14And some of those are combination vaccines with multiple in them. So it's a lot more than you used to get, no question about it. And I mean, some part of that's good. I mean, we have protection against more diseases, so it's not all bad. But we really don't have a lot of research, if any research, on what do these all look like together? How does this affect us long term? Because you would have to have some independent body doing that. What we have in terms of our safety is we have the VAERS, right? So that's the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System. So anybody can go in, anybody can report a side effect that they think might have happened from a vaccine, and so that goes in that system.

25:53But you have to think about it to actually put it in. We have things like the vaccine safety data link. So that is another, it's like a database with medical records, so that's also in there. And that's a pretty good system to look for things. So we do find some signals, like they did find the myocarditis signal, they did find intussusception rotavirus. So it's not completely useless, like they certainly find stuff, but that's not really how you're supposed to do research to find long-term complications. You have to follow people forward. You have to follow vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids to really get a true baseline of safety.

26:29And we really need to do that for years, maybe generations. How would you know if, for example, let's say you get the hepatitis B vaccine, and that's related to some sort of cancer 15 years later. If you got, I don't know, knee cancer when you're 10, you're not going to think that was because of my hepatitis B vaccine when I'm a child. So you're not going to go report that to VAERS or any system. The only way you would know that is if you were following a whole bunch of kids forwards and you were like, hey, how come all the kids with vaccines have knee cancer? That's the only way you would find those things.

26:59So we don't actually have any real way to assess that other than looking backwards and someone has to ask the question. It's really difficult to do. Why do you think it is? In no other facet of science or medicine would it be acceptable for us to say just self-report. And even when somebody self-reports a vaccine injury, they're often not believed. They're dismissed. Their provider might not report it. But why do you think it's in this case it is acceptable not to have long-term studies, not to follow cohorts, and to rely on self-reporting? Well, I don't think it is reasonable. I don't think it is okay.

27:38But I don't think that I thought about that before. So I think the biggest issue is doctors don't think about this. Right. It's not brought into your mind. You think that they're safe because you're told that they're safe. And if anybody says to you that they're not, then you call them crazy. and vaccines are so ingrained into physicians that I think it's a part of the identity. And, you know, finances or not, you could give doctors zero dollars, have nothing to do it. They would still give vaccines because that's what we're taught and that's what we believe in. That's what we feel like has saved humanity.

28:11And that's your job as a doctor, as a pediatrician to help kids to be healthier. And you so believe that that's what you're doing. And I think that's a part of it. And any questioning of that questions medicine, questions your training. And I don't think that people actually know what the research is. I think you just don't really think about it because you never really hear the whole story. I mean, not until recently, did we have social media and you could listen to someone like RFK talk for three hours, right? Unless you went to a meeting. You know, when I was going through med school, the only thing I ever heard about RFK was like, oh, crazy crackpot anti-vaxxer person.

28:46Like, you don't hear anything else. So if anything comes up about him, oh, it's just a crazy anti-vaxxer guy. But once you hear him speak for three hours, you're like, hmm, wait a minute, he makes some good points. And I don't think that that's happened for a majority of the physicians yet. They're kind of in their silo. They're so busy. They're doing what they're doing. And they're not questioning vaccines. And it opens up a whole can of worms, I think, because if you start to say, oh, it might be related to this or that, then what do we do with the whole program? What happens if people start to question it?

29:15that you would start to see some of these diseases potentially come back and be problematic. Mix that in with pharma's incentive to not have people question. So I think we have this mix of pressure. And any time that somebody questions anything, they get shut down as a crazy crackpot. And just like you said, it's like a mom who brings their kid in to get a vaccine, who has a bad reaction, and then questions the vaccine. That is not someone who's an anti-vaxxer. That's someone who's so trusted medicine, they took their kid to get a vaccine. And then they now believe that there's a problem. They have no reason to lie.

29:48That's what they believe. They might not be right. They could have had a situation where you got a vaccine today, you had a heart attack this afternoon, and it has nothing to do with it. That happens too. But we have to listen to parents and say, well, this is data, this is information. This is someone who believes that the vaccine caused their issues. Let's research that. Let's figure out if it's true. And if it is true, how do we minimize it? I think if we came at it from a safety perspective, then that would be a lot better. I think doctors are so afraid that vaccines are just going to go away or people are just going to stop doing it, that it's easier to just stop that conversation totally, which is not the reality of where things would go.

30:28We want things to be safe. If there is an ingredient in vaccines that is related to asthma, let's figure out what it is. Maybe something on the schedule could be changed to minimize that risk. Maybe that ingredient could be taken out. That's not anti-science. That's what science is. We should have better vaccines in a decade from now than we have now. We should have lower side effects than we have now, but we can't do that unless we admit that they could have side effects. And it's like, no, they don't have any side effects. They never have a problem. It's never because of the vaccine. You take an antibiotic when you're sick with the virus and you get a rash.

31:05Right away, doctors are like, oh, it could be an amoxicillin reaction that could be anaphylaxis, don't ever take amoxicillin again. A kid has a seizure after getting a vaccine, and it can't be because of the vaccine. It's such a weird double standard that we have with the vaccines where it's like, it can't be because of the vaccine. And it doesn't make any sense. Everything has reactions for some people. And if you're vaccinating 20, 30 vaccines, even if it's a small risk, that risk adds up over time. And there are many different reactions that are possible depending on your genetics and your environment and the vaccine and whether the vaccine was made perfectly, whether it was stored perfectly, whether it was given perfectly.

31:40There's so many reasons why there could be a reaction in a small minority. Most kids get vaccines and are fine, but it's not going to be true of every kid. There's a whole list of reactions that we do agree upon that happen. So why couldn't some of the other things also be caused by vaccines sometimes? I hear a lot coming from you that the fear is that people won't get vaccinated if we talk about these things openly. I think the data is now showing that it's been quite the opposite. And the more legislation pushes to force people to do things, we saw this with SB 277 here in California, the more it makes people not want to.

32:20I think this is like pretty human nature, though, to be like, don't tell me what to do kind of situation. So I'm wondering, with the fears in mind of I'm being forced into something that might not be the best thing for me, for my child, and the other camp, which is that if we talk about it, people will not get these vaccines, vaccines will go away. How do we start to move forward? Bridging that trust, having these conversations, and still maintaining the herd immunity that we need to protect our most vulnerable. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema, so I get how it can steal your time.

33:01But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about ebglyss? Ebglyss, Lubrikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies, EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to EBCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

33:33Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS. Before starting EBCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit eplist.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. The first part of that, I think there's two ways to look at it because there is a lot of research and data that shows if you kind of force things upon people, if you put in legislation, it does increase the vaccination rates to a degree in the short term.

34:06And I think that's probably true because if you're forced to do something to go to school, you will do it. But it doesn't breed trust in the system. And I think without question, we're seeing an erosion of trust. We're seeing the highest rates of kids that have never been vaccinated at all, the highest rates of kids that are not fully vaccinated, the highest rate of exemptions, the lowest rates of trust in the system in general. And personally, the more people coming in saying, I don't trust anything with medicine. I don't want to do anything anymore. So I think that's happening. And it's really interesting and crazy to think.

34:38But the one thing that medicine is trying to do, preventing hesitancy, they're actually creating. And they're creating the hesitancy that they're trying to avoid by not talking about it. And the long-term solution is not to force people to do things. It's to get the research and the data, give people the information and have people want to do it. Have them feel comfortable doing it. And if people are uncomfortable because they feel like certain information is missing, they need to figure out what that information is that people feel like is missing. And then they need to go and get that research and data, I think if people felt, if parents felt that the medical system was hearing their concerns and was addressing it, they would feel much more comfortable doing things.

35:21Again, we don't know what we don't know. We don't have a crystal ball. We don't know who's going to be the one kid to have a reaction from a vaccine or the one kid who's going to die from measles, right? We don't know who's going to be that child. Do you feel like at this point, though, we could have done more research to understand, to have a better informed consent? Of course we could. We haven't done so much of the research. If you go back and look at the research, the original studies on a lot of these vaccines are not that good. They're from many years ago when we don't have the standards that we have today.

35:52So they weren't randomized. They weren't blinded. They weren't large trials. They weren't very long. And then all of the studies after that are vaccine trials against the old vaccine. So you're studying the new vaccine against the old vaccine, not against a true placebo, inert placebo. and so you don't actually have a baseline study of safety. Like for example, the whooping cough vaccine. The newer vaccine is studied against the old vaccine, which was taken off the market because of safety concerns. So you're saying that it's safe in comparison to the other one, but the first one wasn't so safe.

36:23So that doesn't give you a true baseline. And when people say, well, I want to see how these affect our total health, how they are vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. Those studies don't exist. and there are ethical complications around doing vaccinated versus unvaccinated studies because of the concern or the theory that if there is a treatment or prevented it, like if there's a vaccine for something, then the standard of care is to give it. So if you don't give a kid a vaccine, then that's not ethical. So there's an ethics around that. But these studies weren't done in that way originally. And now we're in this position where people feel like we need to get more.

37:01We talked about long-term studies that hasn't been done. It could be done. And it just never was. And people would be more willing to do it if they felt like we were working towards that. And we were acknowledging that, okay, maybe they do cause some reactions. Let's figure out what. Let's figure out why. Let's figure out how. Let's make them safer. No one expects things to be perfect. You get a cancer medication again. And it's like, we know that you could lose your hair. It could affect your immune system. It's going to affect your immune system. You might get really sick. But it might save your life.

37:32We know the risks and the benefits. You choose to do it or you don't choose to do it. That's the way it should be with vaccines and everything else. And we should know the risks and the benefits. And we shouldn't assume that they're perfect. They're not. And nothing is. And we should make them better. But we won't make them better if the companies have all the power. Are we going to have 1 ,000 vaccines? Are we going to have 5 ,000 vaccines? How many vaccines are we going to have before we say maybe it's too many? Maybe these things are causing a reaction. Maybe 10 vaccines on a day is too many for a one-day-old.

38:01I mean, now you could have three. You can have three different things on the first day of life or two days left. You can get a Hep B, you can get an RSV, you can get antibiotic ionic, you can get vitamin K, all within a day or two of life. So what if the CDC says, oh, you know what, you can actually give all 20. You can give 20 vaccines on the first day of life. Go for it. Yeah. Right? Like there has to be a point where or maybe you do that research and it shows, no, those kids do way better. That's good to know, too. Like, if someone's concerned about vaccines and autism, give them the research that they want.

38:33If that research doesn't show it, they're going to be more comfortable doing it. That's what science is. You shouldn't be afraid to do the research because you might not find what you want. If you don't find what you want, do you think that doctors want to be harming patients? Doctors don't want to harm patients. If you were giving a vaccine to a child and you knew that it was increasing the risk of dying, would you want to do that? They would not. But they have to have that research and data to show that that's happening. and right now it's like, no, no, they're perfect. They're great. They're saving lives.

39:00And I don't think that most people actually have any idea what the research is. For sure, they don't have any idea what the autism research is. That's the thing that shocked me most. So intuitively, I think when people hear like just trust a pharmaceutical, trust without question, intuitively, I think people are like, no, absolutely not. And so to your point, I think every pharmaceutical that's out there, we know it comes with risk. We know that there are side effects. Vaccines seem to be the one exception to that, where it's like, it saves lives. Don't question it. Don't talk about the side effects.

39:35And I do think that's where people get uneasy and they get uncomfortable. And especially when they go to their pediatrician to ask questions and the pediatrician says, oh, what, are you an anti-vaxxer? You're going to be out of this practice if you don't vaccinate. They trusted you to have this conversation with them. And in my clinical experience, the majority of people, vast majority, that I've come across that have vaccine questions are interested in getting the vaccine. And they want to get the answers so they can alleviate their concerns. They're in no way like, I don't want vaccines at all.

40:10And when I have talked with people who are incredibly anti-vax, because those people exist, often something has happened in the doctor-patient relationship that really, it wasn't a seed, it was like a grenade that blew something up in their life. And I think that's where we have to be really mindful in having these conversations. The other concern that comes up is many parents feel like the exemption is too narrow. What are your thoughts about that? I agree. I personally agree. I think that it's very, well, it depends where you are. I think that's the first step because exemption rules are different everywhere in the world and very different in every state, even in America.

40:52So some places you can have a personal belief and you can just get an exemption and that's fine. And other places there are religious exemptions and everywhere has medical exemptions. The problem with medical exemptions is they're very narrow. It really doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance and it doesn't acknowledge anything that might have happened that you see with your patient that you're like, well, I can't prove that that was from the vaccine because it's really hard to prove that something's from a vaccine. Like if something happens to a kid three days later, could just be coincidence.

41:23It could be from an infection. It could be something else. But it's really hard to prove definitively that something's from a vaccine. So you feel as your gut as a physician, like those things are related. I don't think that kid should get a vaccine anymore. But you can't give them an exemption in places where it's very strict because it has to meet the CDC standards, which are very narrow. The CDC standards are like a severe anaphylaxis, an allergy to an ingredient. That's really it, other than if they have like an immune deficiency like HIV or something like that. So there's not a lot of wiggle room for this kid is very sensitive, in my opinion, and they've had this kind of reaction or they had a lot of reactions in their family before.

42:04And so we want to go slower or they don't want to do it. And it's an odd thing that we would take that kind of decision making away from parents when there is a reasonable risk, right? If there is a reasonable risk that someone has a good reason for why they think that they should not give their kids vaccines for whatever reason, that should be the decision between the doctor and the parent, not an outside body, I think. I think it's good to have guidelines to help people to understand what you should be looking at. But at the end of the day, if you've had a bad reaction to a vaccine, it's not unreasonable, I think, to allow that family a little bit more leeway, to go slower, to be a little bit more careful, to be a little bit more cognizant.

42:46Because a lot of these diseases are quite rare. We're very lucky that they're quite rare these days. And so for the kid that's more sensitive, had a reaction, has a lot of other stuff going on in their life, autoimmune conditions, those are probably the kids that are more sensitive. And so the parents should be able to decide, do I want to get my kid vaccinated or not? Because the flip side of that is maybe the more sensitive kid is more sensitive to the diseases and they're more at risk from the disease. So you have to weigh those for yourself and then decide if you feel comfortable getting vaccines or not.

43:14And if you don't, because you've had a bad reaction, there should be some room there to allow a parent to make that decision. And it might be the wrong decision. Maybe they're going to die of a disease you could have prevented. That's part of life. But that's how we do everything else. And it shouldn't be taken away from parents, I think. That should be a decision that parents get to make. And you had a question I didn't really answer before, which is what do we do next in terms of discussions? I think we just have to talk about it. I think doing this is the first step. And that's why I wrote the book.

43:44And that's why I go back to it. I didn't have any sort of goal with the book in in terms of convincing people to do anything, I don't tell anybody what to do. I don't say like, you should vaccinate, you shouldn't. I wanted RFK beside Paul Offit. I wanted discussions about sun infant death syndrome and autism and chronic disease and like what actually is out there. Here's the information. Let's move forward with discussion and debate and do this. If we can't even talk about it, we're never gonna have any changes. So I think the first thing is we need to have discussions about it. We need to have debates.

44:15I would love to see big debates between really smart people on both sides of the fence in, I don't know, in universities, on big shows where they talk about like RFK needs to sit down with Paul Offit and they need to have a discussion and say like, OK, here are the things that are going on. Why do I think this? Why do I think that? Where is the concern? That would be very helpful. It's never happened. We don't have vaccine debates and we have people that say wildly different things. They can't both be true. You would look at Paul Offit's book versus Neil Miller's book, and you look at hepatitis B, and they're like two different products.

44:50So you need to have these discussions and say, why do people think on both sides? And then we can start to work towards, okay, well, maybe we are missing some information on long-term complications. How do we go do that? Maybe the science on autism is not settled totally. Maybe we could do this kind of research to give people a little bit more information. Not to say that they do cause a problem, but let's look into it. Let's not assume that the science is settled because that doesn't make any sense, nor has most of these things even really been ever studied. We're just repeating things over and over again.

45:20And I think doctors repeat what they've heard, but they don't know because I did not know. I did not know what the research was. I was repeating what I was told, and it's not actually – it doesn't actually exist, a lot of this research that we think it does. We think it's so robust. We give kids hepatitis B on the first couple days of life based on three and four days of safety research. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. You know, what you brought up, I think, is so important. And it was actually a conversation that I was having earlier this morning in that people who have opposite beliefs and ideas don't often come together and have a discussion, a civil discussion.

45:59And something happened really in the last 20 years where that stopped being modeled for us. It was, if you believe or think different than me, you're bad. You're in the other camp and I'm going to yell at you about it. And so we don't really see that behavior modeled so much among people who disagree that we can sit down, we can have this discussion. And there's almost this idea that you should never be able to have your mind changed, which I just find really odd in the context of science. Something happened during the pandemic that everybody's minds got muddled about what science actually was.

46:32And I mean, for me, the moment people started saying, just trust the science, I was like, that's a red flag. And I'm like, always question the science. Trust the data we have right now, but trust we will probably find something wrong with it in the future. And I think people need to understand that nuance. And what you're saying is so, so important. We have the data we have right now. We're making the best decisions we can right now based on this data. And as you were saying, you know, what was it in the 80s when the pharmaceutical companies basically got a free pass of like, oh, you make them.

47:09No one's ever going to hold you accountable for them. It did a lot of harm in terms of actually moving the science forward and our ability to ask more questions. And, you know, for people who are listening right now, I can understand where there's people that are like, my child is going through chemo. If other kids are not vaccinated, that could risk my child's life. Very valid concern. You just brought up autoimmune disease. That is not an exemption for the CDC. However, for people to understand, anything that you get, whether it is a vaccine or a naturally acquired virus that triggers your immune system, can activate autoimmunity.

47:51I bring this up as a parent who has a child who has pandas. The pandas and pans community, for people who don't know what it is, roughly one in 200 are going to get it, and roughly like 90 something percent of doctors won't believe it uh i'm making up that 90 percent but that's the mom experience of like doctors do not believe they're a little better now it's like 80 percent probably probably 80 percent more people believe my son um he developed pandas seven years ago and i mean even doctors who didn't know me online when i talked about it were like you're spreading misinformation why would you be talking about this how dare you talk about this like you're making moms hysterical and i'm like how are you sleeping at night right now like i'm telling you what i'm going through and you're telling me this is so my point is i know within that community moms talk about it about how their specialists advise modified schedules not saying don't vaccinate this child at all but when your child's in a flare you so for people who don't know the immune system's attacking the brain they literally lose their ability to walk, talk, be able to go to the bathroom on their own.

48:59And with that, they'll get this, they'll be told like, let's do a modified schedule. It's all in the hush. And the doctors are like, I can't write to an exemption. I can't do that. Even though clinically my best judgment is this is how we do this with the child. And I think it's so unfortunate that the doctor using their clinical judgment with this disease that hasn't been studied extensively enough for us to truly understand it, feels like they have to keep that secret and are telling the parents, like, we're going to do this thing, okay? They're not anti-vax. They're not saying don't get vaccinated.

49:33What they're saying is your child's health in this moment, this is what we've got to prioritize and this is how we have to do things. Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready because Quaker's coming in hot with morning nutrition 100 whole grain oats and a good source of fiber to fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day and that sounds absolutely delicious fuel to start whatever's next Quaker official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26 I-O, let's go! Do you see any hope of that changing in the near future? I hope it changes. I mean, I think it's a very uphill battle, but I think if there was ever a time to see it change, it's now.

50:25The people who had very strong oppositional voices all of a sudden are in power of health, which is weird. It's a weird change that, you know, RFK and Dell Bigtree are, like, running health from where they were before, but they were very vocal about their positions on certain things. And whatever you feel about them, they say what they feel, and they want to push for discussions and debates. So I think there is a movement towards that. I think social media has changed a lot, so debate and discussion are willing to happen. And I think that with the pandemic, like you said, for me and for a lot of people, it opened up our eyes to the reality of how science is working right now to some degree and how much control pharma has over the media and the agenda and things that just made no sense that could possibly make sense were happening.

51:15And that had to be a point where we say, wait a minute, look at our health. What is going on? Look at our kids. They're not super healthy. Not like we're all dying. We're 40, 100 years ago. So not all of science is bad, but life expectancy is going back down. Chronic disease rates are skyrocketing. So maybe not everything that we're doing is exactly perfect in the last 20 or 30 years and maybe there's some nuance and some middle ground. And maybe there's some room to talk about this without having two camps of anti-vaxxer versus pro-vaxxer. Because like you said, your experience is similar to mine.

51:45Most people want to vaccinate. Most people do want to do it. They just want to feel heard. They want to talk about it. They want to know that you care. They want to know what you've seen. Because everybody's read the story of the kid who gets the vaccine and then their parents feel like they got autism because of the vaccine or they had a terrible reaction or they had a terrible reaction to a COVID vaccine. And so now they're concerned and they want to hear what you've seen as a doctor when you've seen thousands of patients, what you feel like they should do, what your concern level is, and what's being done about this.

52:15That's all reasonable. That's what a good parent should do. Good parents should not just give their kid 40 vaccines. They should have questions, have discussions, and do what they feel is right. That might be to do all the vaccines in the regular schedule, that's fine. I think it would be very arrogant to say that I know better than the CDC, right, or something like that. I think there are a lot of smart people that have studied these things for a long time, and they have come up with a schedule that they think is best. And that's what you should defer to if that's what you're going to defer to.

52:44I can't tell people what to do. But I think asking questions is important because right now we're not trying to make them better. And I think we can make them better if we have discussions about it And there are studies out there to show that, not very many, but like a few studies from different countries that, oh, if you delay a certain vaccine, you decrease your risk of asthma or you decrease your risk of, like, these are the kind of questions we should be asking. It's not like the American way is the only way. There are many different vaccine schedules out there. MMR is given at very widely different times.

53:15Not everybody gives hepatitis B at birth. We have a very high risk of infant mortality in America. Not everything that we're doing is amazing here. So let's look at that. Let's be realistic. Let's look at our autism rates. Let's look at our chronic disease rates. And let's say, all right, well, what can we do to make them better? Everything should be on the table, including vaccines. And if there are things in vaccines or things that we are doing with vaccines, we should be open as a profession and as a society to say, look, we gave all these vaccines because we thought they were helping. And we realize that it's actually increasing your risk of something else.

53:51I don't think that the vaccines don't work. Mostly they work. I think a lot of these diseases are decreased, but the question is at what cost? At what cost, if you get an MMR, is that going to create some sort of other reaction? Does it prevent you from measles? Yeah, it probably does. So I don't think that's the big question. The question is, if you get that vaccine, well, what are your risks from anything else? That's what we need to know. That's what the question of someone who has questions is. That's not an unreasonable question to have. The answer might be, no, it's really beneficial as a net positive.

54:24Great. But the answer might also be, well, we did all these studies in Africa looking at DTP and the kids had an increased risk of dying, which is out there. Like there are several studies from Guinea-Bissau which show that kids that get the DPT vaccine have five-fold increased risk of dying, two-fold risk of dying, not from diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus, but from other diseases. These are the kinds of things we should be asking to look at the net positive. because if you give a vaccine and it increases your risk of dying overall, that's not a good thing, right? Of course, we could all agree on that.

54:57It doesn't mean that's what's happening, but that's not an unreasonable question to ask. But nobody's asking that question because we just say they're great. They're perfect and everybody should do it. And we have to protect the other kids like you mentioned. Yeah, we do want to protect people. We don't want anybody to die, but we want to look at things for the best possible health for our kids. And if you can't question something, you need to ask why we can't question it. There has to be somebody or something or many things pushing us against asking questions. Why? We have to figure that out.

55:28I don't think parents need to be forced to get vaccines. I don't think anybody should be forced to do anything that they don't want to when it comes to a medical procedure, especially for routine things. And we should be asking the questions as a profession, why are people hesitant? Okay, let's get the research to make them less hesitant. That's what we should be looking for, not how do we convince them to do the thing that they don't want to do. So you've been pretty honest about your own fears of facing backlash, losing your platform. We've historically seen examples made of any doctor who speaks up about vaccines or questions them in any way.

56:11What made you decide to speak out, to write this book, and to start talking about this? I just feel like we need to. I mean, I've seen so many people step up. I was just very curious about the topic. I feel like it's the right thing to do to talk about it. I feel like I'm in a good position to do it because I don't really have a specific position or a reason to kind of push things from one side. I don't have like a pharma backing or anything like that. It's just, this is what I'm getting asked all the time. This is what I'm getting asked online. This is why people are coming to my office. This is the information that people want.

56:43And I didn't have any sort of real resource to send people to. All I could say to people before was, well, if you're going to read a book, read two books. You got to read one on the pro side, one on the anti side and kind of learn what they say. There's not a good website in the middle. Nothing like that exists right now. And that's not helping what I think is the majority of the parents at this point and the majority of individuals who are in the middle. And they're not against medical products totally, but they are hesitant and they are aware and people are asking questions. And I think that that's a good thing.

57:19And there's a platform to get this information out that didn't exist before. If you were to try to get a book or this information out five years ago, where would you go? I mean, you would never get on the mainstream TV. You would not get on anything. You'd get shut down from social media. So it'd be useless. No one would hear it. But now alternative media is bigger than regular media. You don't have to go on the news or on a late night talk show or whatever to get a book out there and get information out there. So I think it's the right time because people are talking about every kind of controversy.

57:52And this shouldn't be controversial. I mean, it's part of my job. I should feel comfortable giving vaccines and having all this information. And I should be able to get the questions answered that I have. That stuff doesn't exist. Like the conversation about autism, you don't have to agree. People don't have to agree with it. If they can find different information, send it to me. I said that in the book. I'm like, here's, I wrote out every single thing that I did and where I found it and what the research is. And if somebody finds something different, send it to me. I'll change my mind. I don't have a position.

58:20I just think we should be able to talk about it. And not talking about it doesn't help our kids. Maybe it's because I'm a dad too. Maybe that changes things and changes your perspectives. You want a better world for them. Maybe I'm just farther on in my career that I feel like I felt compelled to do it. But I don't know. There's not a specific reason. I just think that it's the right thing to do. You've also been stepping into the arena, lobbying against artificial food dyes and the food system in the U.S. I'm curious what the data says in terms of how it affects our children's health and their behavior, because there's certainly a lot of people who say food dyes are the least of our concerns.

58:59Yeah, so that goes back to, I think, the bigger picture of chronic disease. And one of the big reasons why I got into this in the first place was chronic disease rates are skyrocketing. I think our kids are more sick than they were a decade or two ago. And we need to do something about that. And I think that that sentiment is echoed in why it became a part of politics this year, which is weird because I've been talking about kids' health for a while, never really a part of mainstream anything. But then it really became political this year and the Maha movement and, you know, whatever you want to call it.

59:30But it's not political. It's health. It's our kids. And it's really important that we do talk about it. I agree that probably dyes are one of the most, the least important things in terms of our health in general, but it's something that people could get behind. It's something that was a part of catalyzing the movement. It's something in our food that has a lot of evidence that it has side effects and concerns in terms of your mental health and your behavior and endocrine disruption and immune disruption. I mean, we have a lot of evidence about that at this point, and there is no medical benefit to it.

1:00:07So it's a pretty simple thing to get behind in terms of this is almost certainly not good for us. There's no major benefit to it. Let's get out of our food. It's a much bigger discussion, but it has to start somewhere. You have to take one step in the direction. You're not gonna change the entire food system in a few weeks, but you can change some of the laws and you can change some of the ingredients and that's a first step. There is a lot of pushback on it. It's like, oh, you know, it's just a bunch of people that don't get it and taking out dyes doesn't really change anything. It doesn't. It doesn't really, but it moves things in a direction.

1:00:41It gets people talking. It brings awareness, but it's a much bigger discussion about food that needs to be had. And it's starting. It's just beginning. And you're starting to see the discussions around formula, starting to see the discussions around school lunches and different rules. I mean, that's why I started trying to get involved more in California with Jesse Gabriel, who is a great politician here who's pushed some of those really boundary-pushing laws around dyes, and now they're working towards getting ultra-processed food out of schools. So these are the steps that we can take. It's going to take many years, but you have to start with what you can do now, and then you can start pushing for bigger things.

1:01:21You're not going to have a garden pop up in every area next week. You're not going to have fresh food available to everybody tomorrow. But if we can't agree that there's a problem, then we're not going to get to the bigger things. I think it's one step at a time. And that's where I get, it is frustrating sometimes when people call that out and it's like, okay, I think everybody gets it. It's not about food dyes totally. You know, it's still junk food without a food dye, but it's junk food that's a little bit better. And how is that bad? Let's pick and choose what we can do. And let's start to change things, especially with things that have been changed in other places.

1:01:56And let's at least try to get our food to be the healthiest possible within reason. And I think we could do that. We could do it over the next 10, 20 years. What do you wish parents knew about ultra processed food in terms of how it affects their children's health? I just wish that parents understood that you are literally built of what you eat. And if you're not eating the nutrients that you need to thrive and you're not giving your kids real fresh food, then there's no possible way that they're going to be healthy and thrive. Most kids are eating the vast majority of their calories from ultra-processed foods.

1:02:30And even in the best case scenario, a lot of our fruits and veggies are shipped from some other place at this point. They're sprayed in all sorts of chemicals. They're still not ideal because you lose a lot of the nutrient density from mass production, but it's better than mass-produced ultra-processed foods. So I think we have to start making steps and strides towards getting back to more fresh local produce that's available for everybody. But we just need to understand that that starts with the ultra-processed food. And we've been marketed to for so many years about faster, cheaper, easier. And we have to shift that back to taking time, family, cooking, local produce.

1:03:10Like, these are things that we have to value and then work together to have societal change towards valuing those things, bringing the price down for fresh food, having that kind of food available for our kids at schools. It's not impossible. You look at school lunches in other countries and they have much better food than what we have here. So it can be done. It's not simple, but it's important. And to go back to your point about like the bigger picture, it's not about food dyes. It's about the food in general, but we have to acknowledge that our food is pretty crappy and a big part of our chronic disease epidemic and why we have a third of kids with diabetes or prediabetes and why more than half adults are overweight or obese.

1:03:52These are things that matter. And if we start to have this conversation and move things the other direction, it'll make a big difference for our kids. We won't see those same levels in 10 or 20 years. It's not about dyes. It's about food. Is infant formula as problematic as people are making it out to be in the United States? Yes and no. I think it's important that we understand that of the food that we have, formula is one of the most regulated. So there actually are a lot of regulations. And even with that new consumer report, nothing was above the level of actual safety concern. Like nothing was above the level...

1:04:28When you're talking about the heavy metals. The heavy metals, yes. So they were still below the levels that were set, but they were there. Obviously, we want to have as minimal as possible. It's really hard to make products these days, it seems, that don't have any sort of trace metals in them because they're in the environment. They're normally in the environment, but then they're also abnormally in the environment from water contamination, agriculture, the manufacturing. So I think we have a bigger problem in terms of the metals and the contaminants in our food that needs to be discussed because it's pretty pervasive.

1:04:56But at least from those studies, I mean, it's good because we want them to be as safe and nutritious as possible. And we have high fructose corn syrup as one of our first ingredients where other countries don't. And that's probably not a great thing. We had some metals in there. That's probably not a great thing. We don't want arsenic in there. But it's not that the levels were so high that we need to be super scared. It's just that they're there. And when we're talking about our infant formula, which is something that kids who are on formula are going to have that maybe exclusively for six months.

1:05:27We want to set up our kids for success. And so we want better formula in a decade than we have now. And if we, again, allow companies to just kind of run the show, and you just have a couple of companies that are so big that have most of the formula, which is the way that it is now, they have no reason to make their products better. We have to do that. And that's why I'm really happy about that. Not to say that the formula is specifically so problematic right now, but it's such a vital thing. It's the only thing a baby's eating. So to put extra standards on them, to put more checks and balances, to watch over them, to try to make them better.

1:06:01How is that possibly bad? How is it possibly bad to want them to be better always? They're better than they used to be. Let's make them better moving forward. There should be no argument there. Let's make it better for our kids. Whatever that means. It's not the best formula we're ever going to have as humanity. I think it's important for people to understand that as you're talking about these big corporations who are involved in this, you know, Nestle has never done something out of the goodness of their heart. They are actually probably the one who can take the credit for why we don't have maternity leave in the United States because they've lobbied against it for so long to ensure that moms are completely stressed out, they lose their milk supply, and that they're then having to use formula.

1:06:44We need formula. It is very, very important. There are women, for whatever reason, are not able to breastfeed. It needs to be available. But to your point, I do believe Nestle is definitely one of the top companies that needs to be kept in check, and that we do need to be making sure that there are really strict guidelines on what they're doing and what is going into our infant formula. I saw a lot of pushback online where people were saying, oh, they're focusing on the infant formula now, but they're like, you know, deforestation is about to happen. Fracking is coming. And like, that's a bigger problem.

1:07:24All of these are a problem. They are a big problem. There's lots of problems in the world. And when it comes to the current administration, there is no denying there are absolute contradictions happening every single day that are literally driving my mind bonkers. Because on one hand, And there's this focus of clean up infant formula. We've got to talk about SNAP program and cleaning up our food supply. And on the other hand, the head of the USDA is the biggest lobbyist for processed food that ever existed. We see we're losing EPA protections in our environment. And so I think a lot of people find those contradictions are hard to reconcile with.

1:08:05and it's very easy to say, well, all the bad things they're doing here, this can't be any better. It's so complicated. There are so many things. But I think what we can unite around is the love of our kids and the future health of our kids. And to me, anything that seemingly pushes that health forward, anything that's aiming towards healthier, better products is a good thing. There will be contradictions. there are many other things that you might prioritize or this other person might prioritize or maybe is actually more important than the thing that is getting done first. RFK is going to have his, you know, his marching orders is going to do what he wants to do.

1:08:47Whoever else is around him is going to do what they want to do. But at least my hope would be that with the individuals that are in there now, they're not as tied to a lot of these companies as they used to be. And we can start to unravel that a little bit and we can start to put some checks and balances back in. And if somebody's worried about deforestation, those are legitimate concerns too. So you shouldn't fight against the momentum that there is for health. I think that's a good thing, and there are so many people that are online that just trash people on Maha or people on whatever, and they say, well, they're doing this, and this is the one sentence they said, and that's ridiculous, they should be talking about this.

1:09:29Sure. There are lots of things to be talking about. Everyone needs to unite. That's the best way to do it. I mean, if you disagree with something that's going on or you feel like something else is more important, then hopefully those people can get involved and push for change in that arena, too. It's so not black and white on everything. All of these topics and we want it to be black and white and it's not. And at least we're seeing change. Change is good where we're going in the wrong direction. And I think that you have to give a little bit of time. It's not like every single thing is just going to be fixed overnight or these bigger issues like food deserts or whole foods or the cost of foods are going to be changed in a month.

1:10:10Like that's not realistic. It's going to take decades. Problems that have been created in decades are going to take decades to change. And I think we have to go after some of the things we can actually change in the short term to gain a momentum. Just like you hear all the, you know, the lifestyle bros and the people that are working with individuals who go to the gym or have unhealthy lifestyles. It's like getting those early wins. It builds momentum, you know, for those people that are obese. Getting those early wins, working towards something, seeing that weight coming down. Those first kind of steps make a big difference to giving that momentum to put you in that other direction, to eat healthier and to live healthier.

1:10:47And I think and I hope that's what we're seeing right now, which are some early wins or some early discussions about some of these things that we can actually make some changes over. So it's a part of the news. It has to be something that people want to vote for. It has to be something that people care about. When we see what happens, I mean, we see what was able to be done from a group of people that were health conscious. this, for better or worse, I mean, it really can affect politics if there is a movement behind it. And it actually makes a difference. Most of the politicians don't know anything about this.

1:11:23They don't know about health. They're not doctors. They're not nutritionists. Why do they know? Why do they care? If a bunch of people that are constituents care about a topic, they're going to learn about it. It's amazing now to realize how many even experts just don't know the research on their own topics. I could for sure say that I didn't know most of the stuff on vaccines. And that's the thing I talk about all the time. It's just the reality. There's no reason to look at the baseline research and data and spend all that time unless you're kind of pushed to do it. And you just do what you think is correct based on what you were told.

1:11:57And you don't realize what you're told is based on what someone else was told, what someone else was told. And that message just keeps going until somebody opens up the information and says, well, here's what the actual data shows. Oh. Right? Oh, that's what it shows. That's not great. Let's look at that. Well, thank you for taking the time to share all of this with us, to be brave enough to navigate this conversation in an unbiased way and to be able to hopefully help to build trust among patients that they can have conversations with their provider and that we can move forward in a society where everyone's health is kept in mind, but also fears are alleviated.

1:12:39Yeah, I think that's really the main goal is really to partner up because doctors and patients are not adversaries. We're all on the same team, especially when it comes to our kids. So let's come together. Let's work together. And it's OK to ask questions. I think that's a good thing.

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