What I learned that I didn’t know after watching the interview: I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on this subject. But I got caught! Vinay spoke about how everyone assumes the MRN technology is able to quickly be changed to match a changing or mutating virus. I have heard this from the start and assumed it as well. Thats been the basis of wanting this technology to get popular. Yet I did not know that even that has not been adequately tested!
Sadly, and not to be overly critical, pediatricians are not well educated in the risks and benefits of vaccines. You are absolutely correct. The AAP is not a reliable source for information. I believe that pediatrician make money on giving vaccines, so.....
I think the answer depends a lot on what question you’re asking. A pediatrician may be the right person to integrate the evidence with an individual child’s history and care, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily the best person to interrogate every trial, regulatory decision, or methodological nuance behind it. Medicine gets healthier when we’re comfortable being explicit about where our expertise ends.
Except a fortune cookie may possibly recommend against.
No mainstream pediatrician will offer any response other than "take this shot, and if you're not up to date we can't see you anymore." They take a risk if they say anything else.
I don't know how many of you are parents with young children, but if you try to find a pediatrician who will see your child, the office receptionist won't even book you unless you state that you'll comply with vaccine standards. Luckily, some doctors ignore that once you get to see them one-on-one.
Sigh, are they really watching Barbie shows anyway. Gen X'ers played Barbie all day 24/7. That's what medical advice has devolved to. I remember being a new practitioner looking up the answers to hard questions. Getting back to patients with research based answers. Now, just say fake sh*t and blame Barbie shows.
one more point- once you see your cousin's wife spend a year in a wheelchair after taking a flu shot, there is no amount of data or scientific studies, assuring you of safety that will ever assure you of safety. you will never be convinced to unsee your own actual experience.
what you are left with is an absolute belief that these rapacious drug companies and their doctor foot soldiers see you as a line on their balance sheet and everything they say or do must be assumed to be a lie so that they can profit by hooking you into suffering..
I wondered, Dr. Vinay, if you would ever jump into this. I’m happy to see you apply the same rigor to vaccine questions as with other interventions. Please continue to pick it apart!
Vaccines need to be properly debated. I took a ‘vaccine 101’ course in grad school from researchers who made vaccines and walked out with a brand new case of skepticism. They showed a video journalism piece from the 80s about how the old style pertussis vaccine had injured children severely. Those parents were gaslit and their children’s lives ruined. Then they proceeded to continue to sing the praises of vaccines but not breakdown any statistics on a single thing AND talk down concerned parents. In the video you see authorities at the time saying it wasn’t the vaccine and avoiding having to pay the parents for the harm they had caused. That’s still the case to this day.
When you go digging in the ‘vaccine hole’ you find people like Dr. Sears who try to break it down for parents with citations and lo and behold…Dr. Sears makes a whole lot of sense. Vaccines are an intervention with some benefits and risks. Vaccines NEED to be debated AND scrutinized for the intervention they are. Each one. My kid gets bit by a rabid bat? You bet your bum I’m giving them the rabies vaccine full stop. Benefits clearly outweigh any risk. They recommend my 2 year old get a COVID shot? Uh no that’s dumb.
I am a retired pediatric specialist. Pediatricians often work on a virtual time clock. Vinay is correct that most are not really prepared at this time for complex questions from parents. However, they need to be. The American Academy of Pediatrics has celebrated progressive causes and positions in recent years but here they could provide a real service by utilizing a panel of "experts" to develop materials both for parents and pediatricians to tutor each with insights on different sides of the various debates using real world language. I hope that most pediatricians would embrace this responsibility. As a group, they totally flailed when children were kept out of school for months to years during the pandemic. Common sense and their own experience should have informed them to take positions different from the AAP and Dr. Fauci!
I have now read many of the comments below. It is so sad to me that many opinionated people generalize from their own experience, even if it represents a rare phenomenon, and decide that they cannot trust anyone in the medical profession. Please listen to reasonable voices like Dr. Prasad.
I am 58 years old. I have had Crohn's disease since i was 10 years old. I grew up in a children's hospital. Because of the amazing medical care I got (and my parents) i went out to get 2 degree's including law. In total i have had 10 operations, my first PE at 17 years old, suvived sepsis (central line) etc. When i was 17 years old it was the ICU nurse who said "i think this is a PE". The ICU resident on call, said "PE's don't occur in 17 year old girls (i was 4 days post-op, colectomy, on my 5th surgery for Crohn's disease). The nurse was correct because she was looking at the patient, not at statistics from a text book. I never saw the resident again.
Medicine, medical training and doctors have changed, especially in the last decade. There is an arrogance and an ignorance that has appeared, as their general training has declined. The average RN with a decade of in-hospital experience, is better at practicing medicine than a 4th year GI resident. I have had to teach 4th year residents how to take a proper medical history, because they still don't know how to do it. They ask about pronouns, vaccines, social ties but not about age of diagnosis, and where the disease 1st appeared. Nevermind comorbidities.
I just got a clinical note from the last visit with my GI and the Fellow, who took the history (and clearly never bothered to check the previous entries). She got diagnosis, surgeries, dates and treatments all wrong. She even got my other treating specialist's wrong. However, there was a note about the vaccines she recommended and that "I had refused them" (i am on two biologics which supress my immune system, therefore the majority of vaccines are contraindicated, which i told her at the time, which she failed to actually write down). This person was a GI Fellow and she was totally incompetent.
Everytime I have to sign a medical liability release form and it asks "sex assigned at birth" i cross it out and simply state "humility demands we respect, that which we cannot control. Sex is not assigned in 99.999% of fetuses, it is biologically determined at the moment of conception". If medicine cannot accept simple biological fact on a liability waiver, why does it deserve the trust of the general public?
Yes. Except it's not "crickets" it's verbal abuse, "You see those diplomas on the wall?! I went to medical school, how dare you question my expertise! Nothing on the Internet is true!"
Ending with getting kicked out of the practice for refusing to cave. Worse things have happened.
A really good interview. Thanks for the link. It is appreciated.
As for those with the opinion that vaccines are entirely free of adverse event, but for the infamous injection site issues, vaccines are statutorily drugs. Have they not seen commercials for other drugs? The ensuing long list of adverse events, "lower limb loss" being my favorite. So they believe drug developers have perfected the discovery and manufacture of vaccines, but for all the billion dollar drugs other than vaccines, not so much? Implausible.
For what it’s worth… My thinking as a medical scientist and physician is that ‘real life’ experience can be a reasonable guide. So, if a vaccine (or combination of vaccines) has been given to a billion people over decades, one would expect to see enough benefits and harms to justify a significant signal on either side of ratio. If someone wants to suggest the presence of high risk in this context, I ask “Ok - where are ‘they’ hiding the bodies?”
That said, Dr Prasad’s comments and assertions are worth our attention, and I have myself - over the past 30 years or so - been very disappointed in the medical science literacy of many of my physicians colleagues. This was vey sadly evident during the recent pandemic.
don't waste another penny trying to analyze what causes vaccine hesitancy. in 1976, my cousin's wife took that swine flu vaccine and spent the next year in a wheelchair. that did it for me! I didn't even have words for what happened to her but now I realize it must have been GBS. when I have a flu, I rest in bed, drink plenty of warm fluids- homemade bone broth- and keep my vitamin C levels at bowel tolerance. I take no medications and drive my fever up with a hot epsom salts/essential oil bath, keeping water and a thermometer at hand. since the "pandemic," I've added IVM to my regimen. when I had covid, I treated it as I'd treat any flu and it was 2 days of low grade fever, headache and body aches- nothing worth shredding the Constitution over.
the remaining "vaccine hesitancy" comes from parents who dutifully vaccinated their children and then watched while they descended into autism. these parents haven't vaccinated their successive children who are thriving- a perfect study with it's own control group!
of course, my cousin's wife back in '76 was gaslit to death- it's all in your mind, you're depressed, you've got the housewife blues.
the parents of vaccine injured children get their own special version of the same bullshit- that most "scientific" of explanations: coincidence, correlation doesn't equal causation.
I laughed every time you talked about doctors having humility! doctors think they know everything because they accrued so much debt to get their own special "big" words and they resent any questioning of their status as deities.
in my lifetime (73) of experiences with conventional medical doctors, the only ones I've come across who had some humility were chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths and functional medicine doctors- all the ones who don't take insurance and who got so disgusted with their profession that they abandoned their MDs and went back into "medicine" via another route. those are the docs I go to even though Medicare would cover visits to inferior but arrogant doctors!
Absolutely brilliant last paragraph. There've many quite a number of many medical doctors over the years who've done just that, studied another modality. They learn how to see you as a whole person and also as an equal.
On Saturday past I went to the pharmacy and asked the pharmacist if my MMR vaccination needed to be boosted. I got it 60 years ago; the problem is, I live in Pennsylvania and I am an Amish Taxi driver, part time. We are experiencing an "epidemic" of measles right now (their words). On Thursday I was asked to drive a young man whose brother recently had been very sick with measles for two weeks. There are 11 children in the family. I felt I had to decline the ride.
I got the MMR. The pharmacist showed me a list of other vaccinations I should get.
I would have passed. but you did what you felt was right. I hope you have no adverse reactions. I don't think you're in any danger of getting measles. when I was a child, no one ever talked about "measles outbreaks" or "epidemics." every few years, measles made the rounds and every child of a certain age got it and their mothers took care of them and that was it. no one got hysterical, no one died, no one went to the hospital or called the "experts."
What I learned that I didn’t know after watching the interview: I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on this subject. But I got caught! Vinay spoke about how everyone assumes the MRN technology is able to quickly be changed to match a changing or mutating virus. I have heard this from the start and assumed it as well. Thats been the basis of wanting this technology to get popular. Yet I did not know that even that has not been adequately tested!
Sadly, and not to be overly critical, pediatricians are not well educated in the risks and benefits of vaccines. You are absolutely correct. The AAP is not a reliable source for information. I believe that pediatrician make money on giving vaccines, so.....
I think the answer depends a lot on what question you’re asking. A pediatrician may be the right person to integrate the evidence with an individual child’s history and care, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily the best person to interrogate every trial, regulatory decision, or methodological nuance behind it. Medicine gets healthier when we’re comfortable being explicit about where our expertise ends.
Except a fortune cookie may possibly recommend against.
No mainstream pediatrician will offer any response other than "take this shot, and if you're not up to date we can't see you anymore." They take a risk if they say anything else.
CPNP here. Agree with everything written.
I don't know how many of you are parents with young children, but if you try to find a pediatrician who will see your child, the office receptionist won't even book you unless you state that you'll comply with vaccine standards. Luckily, some doctors ignore that once you get to see them one-on-one.
Sigh, are they really watching Barbie shows anyway. Gen X'ers played Barbie all day 24/7. That's what medical advice has devolved to. I remember being a new practitioner looking up the answers to hard questions. Getting back to patients with research based answers. Now, just say fake sh*t and blame Barbie shows.
one more point- once you see your cousin's wife spend a year in a wheelchair after taking a flu shot, there is no amount of data or scientific studies, assuring you of safety that will ever assure you of safety. you will never be convinced to unsee your own actual experience.
what you are left with is an absolute belief that these rapacious drug companies and their doctor foot soldiers see you as a line on their balance sheet and everything they say or do must be assumed to be a lie so that they can profit by hooking you into suffering..
I wondered, Dr. Vinay, if you would ever jump into this. I’m happy to see you apply the same rigor to vaccine questions as with other interventions. Please continue to pick it apart!
Vaccines need to be properly debated. I took a ‘vaccine 101’ course in grad school from researchers who made vaccines and walked out with a brand new case of skepticism. They showed a video journalism piece from the 80s about how the old style pertussis vaccine had injured children severely. Those parents were gaslit and their children’s lives ruined. Then they proceeded to continue to sing the praises of vaccines but not breakdown any statistics on a single thing AND talk down concerned parents. In the video you see authorities at the time saying it wasn’t the vaccine and avoiding having to pay the parents for the harm they had caused. That’s still the case to this day.
When you go digging in the ‘vaccine hole’ you find people like Dr. Sears who try to break it down for parents with citations and lo and behold…Dr. Sears makes a whole lot of sense. Vaccines are an intervention with some benefits and risks. Vaccines NEED to be debated AND scrutinized for the intervention they are. Each one. My kid gets bit by a rabid bat? You bet your bum I’m giving them the rabies vaccine full stop. Benefits clearly outweigh any risk. They recommend my 2 year old get a COVID shot? Uh no that’s dumb.
I am a retired pediatric specialist. Pediatricians often work on a virtual time clock. Vinay is correct that most are not really prepared at this time for complex questions from parents. However, they need to be. The American Academy of Pediatrics has celebrated progressive causes and positions in recent years but here they could provide a real service by utilizing a panel of "experts" to develop materials both for parents and pediatricians to tutor each with insights on different sides of the various debates using real world language. I hope that most pediatricians would embrace this responsibility. As a group, they totally flailed when children were kept out of school for months to years during the pandemic. Common sense and their own experience should have informed them to take positions different from the AAP and Dr. Fauci!
I have now read many of the comments below. It is so sad to me that many opinionated people generalize from their own experience, even if it represents a rare phenomenon, and decide that they cannot trust anyone in the medical profession. Please listen to reasonable voices like Dr. Prasad.
I am 58 years old. I have had Crohn's disease since i was 10 years old. I grew up in a children's hospital. Because of the amazing medical care I got (and my parents) i went out to get 2 degree's including law. In total i have had 10 operations, my first PE at 17 years old, suvived sepsis (central line) etc. When i was 17 years old it was the ICU nurse who said "i think this is a PE". The ICU resident on call, said "PE's don't occur in 17 year old girls (i was 4 days post-op, colectomy, on my 5th surgery for Crohn's disease). The nurse was correct because she was looking at the patient, not at statistics from a text book. I never saw the resident again.
Medicine, medical training and doctors have changed, especially in the last decade. There is an arrogance and an ignorance that has appeared, as their general training has declined. The average RN with a decade of in-hospital experience, is better at practicing medicine than a 4th year GI resident. I have had to teach 4th year residents how to take a proper medical history, because they still don't know how to do it. They ask about pronouns, vaccines, social ties but not about age of diagnosis, and where the disease 1st appeared. Nevermind comorbidities.
I just got a clinical note from the last visit with my GI and the Fellow, who took the history (and clearly never bothered to check the previous entries). She got diagnosis, surgeries, dates and treatments all wrong. She even got my other treating specialist's wrong. However, there was a note about the vaccines she recommended and that "I had refused them" (i am on two biologics which supress my immune system, therefore the majority of vaccines are contraindicated, which i told her at the time, which she failed to actually write down). This person was a GI Fellow and she was totally incompetent.
Everytime I have to sign a medical liability release form and it asks "sex assigned at birth" i cross it out and simply state "humility demands we respect, that which we cannot control. Sex is not assigned in 99.999% of fetuses, it is biologically determined at the moment of conception". If medicine cannot accept simple biological fact on a liability waiver, why does it deserve the trust of the general public?
Yes. Except it's not "crickets" it's verbal abuse, "You see those diplomas on the wall?! I went to medical school, how dare you question my expertise! Nothing on the Internet is true!"
Ending with getting kicked out of the practice for refusing to cave. Worse things have happened.
A really good interview. Thanks for the link. It is appreciated.
As for those with the opinion that vaccines are entirely free of adverse event, but for the infamous injection site issues, vaccines are statutorily drugs. Have they not seen commercials for other drugs? The ensuing long list of adverse events, "lower limb loss" being my favorite. So they believe drug developers have perfected the discovery and manufacture of vaccines, but for all the billion dollar drugs other than vaccines, not so much? Implausible.
For what it’s worth… My thinking as a medical scientist and physician is that ‘real life’ experience can be a reasonable guide. So, if a vaccine (or combination of vaccines) has been given to a billion people over decades, one would expect to see enough benefits and harms to justify a significant signal on either side of ratio. If someone wants to suggest the presence of high risk in this context, I ask “Ok - where are ‘they’ hiding the bodies?”
That said, Dr Prasad’s comments and assertions are worth our attention, and I have myself - over the past 30 years or so - been very disappointed in the medical science literacy of many of my physicians colleagues. This was vey sadly evident during the recent pandemic.
It’s so refreshing to read something so SENSIBLE (and funny!)
don't waste another penny trying to analyze what causes vaccine hesitancy. in 1976, my cousin's wife took that swine flu vaccine and spent the next year in a wheelchair. that did it for me! I didn't even have words for what happened to her but now I realize it must have been GBS. when I have a flu, I rest in bed, drink plenty of warm fluids- homemade bone broth- and keep my vitamin C levels at bowel tolerance. I take no medications and drive my fever up with a hot epsom salts/essential oil bath, keeping water and a thermometer at hand. since the "pandemic," I've added IVM to my regimen. when I had covid, I treated it as I'd treat any flu and it was 2 days of low grade fever, headache and body aches- nothing worth shredding the Constitution over.
the remaining "vaccine hesitancy" comes from parents who dutifully vaccinated their children and then watched while they descended into autism. these parents haven't vaccinated their successive children who are thriving- a perfect study with it's own control group!
of course, my cousin's wife back in '76 was gaslit to death- it's all in your mind, you're depressed, you've got the housewife blues.
the parents of vaccine injured children get their own special version of the same bullshit- that most "scientific" of explanations: coincidence, correlation doesn't equal causation.
I laughed every time you talked about doctors having humility! doctors think they know everything because they accrued so much debt to get their own special "big" words and they resent any questioning of their status as deities.
in my lifetime (73) of experiences with conventional medical doctors, the only ones I've come across who had some humility were chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths and functional medicine doctors- all the ones who don't take insurance and who got so disgusted with their profession that they abandoned their MDs and went back into "medicine" via another route. those are the docs I go to even though Medicare would cover visits to inferior but arrogant doctors!
Absolutely brilliant last paragraph. There've many quite a number of many medical doctors over the years who've done just that, studied another modality. They learn how to see you as a whole person and also as an equal.
I'm not shy about walking out on a scheduled appointment if the doctor shows the least bit of "superiority" or arrogance.
thank you for the compliment!
This is so interesting. Thank you for posting.
On Saturday past I went to the pharmacy and asked the pharmacist if my MMR vaccination needed to be boosted. I got it 60 years ago; the problem is, I live in Pennsylvania and I am an Amish Taxi driver, part time. We are experiencing an "epidemic" of measles right now (their words). On Thursday I was asked to drive a young man whose brother recently had been very sick with measles for two weeks. There are 11 children in the family. I felt I had to decline the ride.
I got the MMR. The pharmacist showed me a list of other vaccinations I should get.
I would have passed. but you did what you felt was right. I hope you have no adverse reactions. I don't think you're in any danger of getting measles. when I was a child, no one ever talked about "measles outbreaks" or "epidemics." every few years, measles made the rounds and every child of a certain age got it and their mothers took care of them and that was it. no one got hysterical, no one died, no one went to the hospital or called the "experts."
Good for you. Sensible decision!