It’s hard to take the doctor serious after she told me girls start menstruation at earlier ages now because young girls watch too many Barbie shows. My child’s doc seriously said that to me with a straight face. After a comment like that, how can I trust any of her advice?
Have you ever seen how much research has been done on "Vaccine Hesitancy," even before COVID? In 2018, the World Health Organization named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health, prompting a massive wave of empirical mapping, surveys, and behavioral studies. Even before that, really. If you start reading them, they are almost all the same and take the stance that we can convince people we are right and they are wrong, but with empathy. I wonder how much money has been, and still is being, spent on this, and they really don't get it because they just can't get past their own bias. As an L and D RN back when we started giving a birth dose of Hep B, I questioned why we were doing this, and no one knew, just that it was easier to comply. I had to consent these women, usually right after giving birth, and of course they trusted me. I told them there was no rush; they could read this carefully when they were ready and ask their doctors if they had questions. My supervisor got complaints from some Peds! Why were so many patients being told they could take their time and ask questions? The horror! At least my supervisor backed me up!
This was a great article, and I am sure Vinay is going to take a lot of shit for it. Not to mention being blamed for creating more vaccine hesitancy. Not creating "hesitancy" or creating "missed opportunities" has become much more important than actually looking at benefit verses risk and helping people. Just what were the surrogate endpoints used for this type of research? Probably the number of people saying they would vaccinate in a survey. Or, like mandating research, the percentage that get vaccinated. Well, yeah, if you force vaccination by mandate the vaccination rate goes up. The trust drops!
Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth - highly recommend this resource with over 1,200 citations from official documentation at FDA, CDC, etc...
Still angry. My daughter, who has struggled with fertility issues, found out she was pregnant with twins in 2023. Her doc told her she needed a Covid booster. At her next checkup, one of the babies had died. Then the second died shortly after.
"pediatricians and doctors are fully capable of dispelling some vaccine myths, and answering many questions." When I was in medical school many decades ago pediatricians were still considered doctors.
Quibble #2 there are enough Ai's that are known to hallucinate that repeating or quoting "AI says" should start coming with the footnote of WHICH AI is being referenced
I love that you are opening the topic of discussion, Dr. Prasad.
I'd love to see included in the post a piece of information that I think is highly relevant: that pediatricians get a financial incentive for every 2 year old within the practice who is fully vaxxed according to CDC recs. However, the incentive goes away, altogether, if under 65% of the practice is not vaxxed. Someone crunched the #s for the # of 2 year olds in the average pediatric practice and it came to between $100,000 and $200,000, per doctor, per year.
That's a lot of money! How is not mandated that such a huge conflict of interest not be disclosed? I've made it my job to share that information, because I think it's outrageous that there's no ethical code if not fully prohibiting such payment, at least mandating full disclosure.
The makers of vaxxes always claim that it would be "unethical" to do a trial of the real vax versus placebo. Therefore the next best thing is a retrospective study. Dr. Zervos of the Henry Ford Foundation did that study, it included over 18,000 kids and it looked at longterm health outcomes. In advance of doing the study, he agreed to publish it no matter what the results said, When the results came out altogether not what he expected - the unvaxxed kids were far healthier on every metric, across the board - he then caved and refused to publish.
Del Bigtree who made the documentary talks to him, severetly recording him, about why he changed his mind about publishing. First Del asks: "was there anything wrong with the study in terms of methodology or design or conflicts of interest, would there have been any way at all to make the study better?" Zervos says no. Then Del asks "so why not publish?" and Zervos says "it would be career suicide. I don't want my name dragged through the mud, I don't want them to do to me what they did to Malone and McCullough."
Re: the recent "measles deaths" in PA: here's what Josh Parsons, the Commissioner for Lancaster County, actually found when he did an investigation:
So in other words, Josh Shapiro highly distorted, if not flat out fabricated, the "alarming news."
Independent journalist Jeffrey Jaxsen posted:
There appears now to be enough information to begin an investigation into Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shipiro under Pennsylvania law:
18 Pa.C.S. § 4905 (False alarms to agencies of public safety)
A person commits this offense by knowingly causing a false alarm of fire or other emergency to be transmitted to any official or volunteer organization that handles emergencies
Even more interesting: after major news media reported on the initial "scary development," there's been no update, retraction, or clarification now that we have further data.
So there you have that.
Also: I am for releasing the vax records of infants who die from SIDs. I've heard that many times it is within a day or two of a vaccine, but naturally, those records "can't be" released.
And finally, re: the Vaxellis vaccine, I posted this:
6 infant deaths are reported at the top of page 9 of the insert.
“Deaths In the 2 US studies, death was reported in 6 participants (0.2%) who received VAXELIS and in 1 participant (0.1%) who received Pentacel + RECOMBIVAX HB vaccines; none were assessed as vaccine related. Causes of death among infants who received VAXELIS were sepsis, 2 cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, asphyxia, unknown cause, and hydrocephalus (occurring 2, 10 and 49, 42, 44 days, and 11 months post-vaccination, respectively). Across all 6 clinical studies, there were no deaths assessed as related to VAXELIS.”
From page 4, section 5.3:
5.3 Guillain-Barré Syndrome and Brachial Neuritis A review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found evidence for a causal relation between tetanus toxoid and both brachial neuritis and Guillain-Barré syndrome. If Guillain-Barré syndrome occurred within 6 weeks of receipt of a prior vaccine containing tetanus toxoid, the risk for Guillain-Barré syndrome may be increased following VAXELIS. (1)
65% of funding for med schools currently comes from pharma:
and pharma "donates" huge amounts of money to APA, AMA, and FDA. It's all publicly listed on their website on the financial donor pages. I think it was Pfizer who was at over $1 million (they don't indicate how much over $1 million) for one of those 3 agencies.
No wonder there's a case of "vaccine hesitancy" going around.
Such pertinent points here. What a pity that there was no double blind placebo controlled trial on the smallpox vaccine. And what to say of the Polio vaccines. After all the God of Healthcare in America stated that the Polio vaccine was “very very very” dangerous and more people died from it than those who benefited?? And the God of all things said recently that the MMR vaccine was lethal. And so much politicisation of the two recent so called deaths from measles. Splenic rupture was clearly the cause in one. So refreshing to see that the new CDC Director is making such a great stand for Gold Standard Science. May her objectivity keep shining.
After Covid, my default position is to NOT trust the doctors, government, and Pharma. Wollensky lied. She should be in jail. Fauci should be in jail. My pediatrician wouldn't sign off on medical exemption for my son because he *had* covid. So it was take the booster or he couldn't continue his education. BUT NO ONE WAS COERCED says the evil MSM/Fauci. I wish I had 10 million dollars so I could hire an ARMY of lawyers and sue every university that mandated the jab. I DREAM about doing that.
I HATE that I hate the CDC/FDA/doctors. I was once proud of the work they did. Little did I know that they were FILLED to the brim with bureaucratic megalomaniac demigods.
Little did I know that pediatricians are nothing more than antibiotic/vaccine drug dealing shills.
The problem is (again) guidelines and guideline writers.
The average doc in any field was probably trained to learn and to stay abreast of the relevant guidelines of their field. At one time, that was solid advice.
But these days, guideline writers seem to be motivated by many things, most of which seemingly have nothing to do with the faithful representation of the state of the science (including humble acknowledgment of what is not known), learned critical appraisal, or proper weighting of evidence.
And of course, politicization is particularly relevant in the vaccine arena.
Vaccine policy has been ruined by overreach of BigPharma. We have good vaccines. They eradicated polio and had measles and have done a good job on meningitis. Unfortunately Pharma needed more profit. When they couldn't get an RSV vaccine to work in children they repurposed it for older people and the government and vaccine groups went along. No effect on mortality. Banned for adults under 75. Why Hepatitis B vaccine for all and at birth. Even in seronegative mothers? Well, because we can. And why at birth? Because they figured no new mother could refuse a vaccine for their child. And as a bonus maybe the child as a teenager might shoot up. Who knows? How about the high dose flu shot for seniors? More side effects. No more effective than regular flu shot. Flu shots for children? Why are pediatric flu deaths rising, not falling? Pharma got too big for its britches. Doctors didn't question. Nor did the government. And some people exercised their right to" just say no." It's payback. And medicine has to re-earn respect for judgment and humility.
I agree with you, Dr Prasad, that the best "solution would be for medical organizations to curate and host the debates in the space, but that would require humility and political neutrality, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon."
In spite of that, many people have found new sources for medical information. Some sources are organizations, such as the Independent Medical Alliance (https://imahealth.org/). Some are individuals who have proven they can think independently, with "humility and political neutrality," like yourself.
The medical credentialing groups lost their moral authority when they went after doctors like Dr Peter Mccullough and Dr Pierre Kory. For better or worse, I honestly don't care about them anymore.
Secretary Kennedy is exposing some of the other issues, such as the financial conflicts with medical journals and with CPT codes. Maybe, in time, something meaningful will happen.
As a subscriber, I would encourage you to interview some contrary voices so we can hear the "debate" you rightly identify we need. You have a voice that can reach people and places few can and the "humility and political neutrality" to make a discussion meaningful.
This issue is a lot broader than just asking a vaccination question to a pediatrician. The same logic applies to almost any medical question to any physician. If you upload your medical history, your doctor's clinical notes, your labs and your imaging to ChatGPT, Grok or Gemini AI, you may get a lot more useful information than your doctor was able to cover in a 20 minute office visit. And it won't just be the guidelines or the most recent population-based RCT published in JAMA.
It’s hard to take the doctor serious after she told me girls start menstruation at earlier ages now because young girls watch too many Barbie shows. My child’s doc seriously said that to me with a straight face. After a comment like that, how can I trust any of her advice?
Have you ever seen how much research has been done on "Vaccine Hesitancy," even before COVID? In 2018, the World Health Organization named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health, prompting a massive wave of empirical mapping, surveys, and behavioral studies. Even before that, really. If you start reading them, they are almost all the same and take the stance that we can convince people we are right and they are wrong, but with empathy. I wonder how much money has been, and still is being, spent on this, and they really don't get it because they just can't get past their own bias. As an L and D RN back when we started giving a birth dose of Hep B, I questioned why we were doing this, and no one knew, just that it was easier to comply. I had to consent these women, usually right after giving birth, and of course they trusted me. I told them there was no rush; they could read this carefully when they were ready and ask their doctors if they had questions. My supervisor got complaints from some Peds! Why were so many patients being told they could take their time and ask questions? The horror! At least my supervisor backed me up!
This was a great article, and I am sure Vinay is going to take a lot of shit for it. Not to mention being blamed for creating more vaccine hesitancy. Not creating "hesitancy" or creating "missed opportunities" has become much more important than actually looking at benefit verses risk and helping people. Just what were the surrogate endpoints used for this type of research? Probably the number of people saying they would vaccinate in a survey. Or, like mandating research, the percentage that get vaccinated. Well, yeah, if you force vaccination by mandate the vaccination rate goes up. The trust drops!
Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth - highly recommend this resource with over 1,200 citations from official documentation at FDA, CDC, etc...
https://www.amazon.com/Turtles-All-Way-Down-Vaccine/dp/9655981045
In what's going on today the Pediatrician would be the last person that I would consult.
Still angry. My daughter, who has struggled with fertility issues, found out she was pregnant with twins in 2023. Her doc told her she needed a Covid booster. At her next checkup, one of the babies had died. Then the second died shortly after.
Yeah ~ it’s anecdotal. Still angry.
So sad.
And be sure to ask your painter if your house needs painting.
Or, ask a used car salesman about what car to buy. After all, he's the expert.
"pediatricians and doctors are fully capable of dispelling some vaccine myths, and answering many questions." When I was in medical school many decades ago pediatricians were still considered doctors.
Quibble #2 there are enough Ai's that are known to hallucinate that repeating or quoting "AI says" should start coming with the footnote of WHICH AI is being referenced
I love that you are opening the topic of discussion, Dr. Prasad.
I'd love to see included in the post a piece of information that I think is highly relevant: that pediatricians get a financial incentive for every 2 year old within the practice who is fully vaxxed according to CDC recs. However, the incentive goes away, altogether, if under 65% of the practice is not vaxxed. Someone crunched the #s for the # of 2 year olds in the average pediatric practice and it came to between $100,000 and $200,000, per doctor, per year.
That's a lot of money! How is not mandated that such a huge conflict of interest not be disclosed? I've made it my job to share that information, because I think it's outrageous that there's no ethical code if not fully prohibiting such payment, at least mandating full disclosure.
just saw this article today:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-161042765
This documentary is illuminating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvEuMMAafF8
The makers of vaxxes always claim that it would be "unethical" to do a trial of the real vax versus placebo. Therefore the next best thing is a retrospective study. Dr. Zervos of the Henry Ford Foundation did that study, it included over 18,000 kids and it looked at longterm health outcomes. In advance of doing the study, he agreed to publish it no matter what the results said, When the results came out altogether not what he expected - the unvaxxed kids were far healthier on every metric, across the board - he then caved and refused to publish.
Del Bigtree who made the documentary talks to him, severetly recording him, about why he changed his mind about publishing. First Del asks: "was there anything wrong with the study in terms of methodology or design or conflicts of interest, would there have been any way at all to make the study better?" Zervos says no. Then Del asks "so why not publish?" and Zervos says "it would be career suicide. I don't want my name dragged through the mud, I don't want them to do to me what they did to Malone and McCullough."
Re: the recent "measles deaths" in PA: here's what Josh Parsons, the Commissioner for Lancaster County, actually found when he did an investigation:
https://x.com/commissionerjp/status/2092981507614736869
I really encourage everyone to read it, it's super interesting. The real story turns out to be not at all what was reported by Shapiro.
And then there's this, Alex Berenson's update
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/update-the-pennsylvania-measles-debacle?r=1easgq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
So in other words, Josh Shapiro highly distorted, if not flat out fabricated, the "alarming news."
Independent journalist Jeffrey Jaxsen posted:
There appears now to be enough information to begin an investigation into Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shipiro under Pennsylvania law:
18 Pa.C.S. § 4905 (False alarms to agencies of public safety)
A person commits this offense by knowingly causing a false alarm of fire or other emergency to be transmitted to any official or volunteer organization that handles emergencies
Even more interesting: after major news media reported on the initial "scary development," there's been no update, retraction, or clarification now that we have further data.
So there you have that.
Also: I am for releasing the vax records of infants who die from SIDs. I've heard that many times it is within a day or two of a vaccine, but naturally, those records "can't be" released.
And finally, re: the Vaxellis vaccine, I posted this:
https://thirtyyearsdowntherabbithole.substack.com/p/mopsys-tip-30-parents-of-newborns
which is basically nothing other than a link to the actual package insert, here:
https://www.fda.gov/media/119465/download
6 infant deaths are reported at the top of page 9 of the insert.
“Deaths In the 2 US studies, death was reported in 6 participants (0.2%) who received VAXELIS and in 1 participant (0.1%) who received Pentacel + RECOMBIVAX HB vaccines; none were assessed as vaccine related. Causes of death among infants who received VAXELIS were sepsis, 2 cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, asphyxia, unknown cause, and hydrocephalus (occurring 2, 10 and 49, 42, 44 days, and 11 months post-vaccination, respectively). Across all 6 clinical studies, there were no deaths assessed as related to VAXELIS.”
From page 4, section 5.3:
5.3 Guillain-Barré Syndrome and Brachial Neuritis A review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found evidence for a causal relation between tetanus toxoid and both brachial neuritis and Guillain-Barré syndrome. If Guillain-Barré syndrome occurred within 6 weeks of receipt of a prior vaccine containing tetanus toxoid, the risk for Guillain-Barré syndrome may be increased following VAXELIS. (1)
65% of funding for med schools currently comes from pharma:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/4/23/hms-biopharma-funding/
and pharma "donates" huge amounts of money to APA, AMA, and FDA. It's all publicly listed on their website on the financial donor pages. I think it was Pfizer who was at over $1 million (they don't indicate how much over $1 million) for one of those 3 agencies.
No wonder there's a case of "vaccine hesitancy" going around.
You might as well ask a fortune cookie, vintage VP
Reminds me of Ruth Langford from the series, The Ozarks " I don't know #hit about **ck!"
Th
Such pertinent points here. What a pity that there was no double blind placebo controlled trial on the smallpox vaccine. And what to say of the Polio vaccines. After all the God of Healthcare in America stated that the Polio vaccine was “very very very” dangerous and more people died from it than those who benefited?? And the God of all things said recently that the MMR vaccine was lethal. And so much politicisation of the two recent so called deaths from measles. Splenic rupture was clearly the cause in one. So refreshing to see that the new CDC Director is making such a great stand for Gold Standard Science. May her objectivity keep shining.
After Covid, my default position is to NOT trust the doctors, government, and Pharma. Wollensky lied. She should be in jail. Fauci should be in jail. My pediatrician wouldn't sign off on medical exemption for my son because he *had* covid. So it was take the booster or he couldn't continue his education. BUT NO ONE WAS COERCED says the evil MSM/Fauci. I wish I had 10 million dollars so I could hire an ARMY of lawyers and sue every university that mandated the jab. I DREAM about doing that.
I HATE that I hate the CDC/FDA/doctors. I was once proud of the work they did. Little did I know that they were FILLED to the brim with bureaucratic megalomaniac demigods.
Little did I know that pediatricians are nothing more than antibiotic/vaccine drug dealing shills.
Color me jaded.
I like what you said. You are on it!
The problem is (again) guidelines and guideline writers.
The average doc in any field was probably trained to learn and to stay abreast of the relevant guidelines of their field. At one time, that was solid advice.
But these days, guideline writers seem to be motivated by many things, most of which seemingly have nothing to do with the faithful representation of the state of the science (including humble acknowledgment of what is not known), learned critical appraisal, or proper weighting of evidence.
And of course, politicization is particularly relevant in the vaccine arena.
Vaccine policy has been ruined by overreach of BigPharma. We have good vaccines. They eradicated polio and had measles and have done a good job on meningitis. Unfortunately Pharma needed more profit. When they couldn't get an RSV vaccine to work in children they repurposed it for older people and the government and vaccine groups went along. No effect on mortality. Banned for adults under 75. Why Hepatitis B vaccine for all and at birth. Even in seronegative mothers? Well, because we can. And why at birth? Because they figured no new mother could refuse a vaccine for their child. And as a bonus maybe the child as a teenager might shoot up. Who knows? How about the high dose flu shot for seniors? More side effects. No more effective than regular flu shot. Flu shots for children? Why are pediatric flu deaths rising, not falling? Pharma got too big for its britches. Doctors didn't question. Nor did the government. And some people exercised their right to" just say no." It's payback. And medicine has to re-earn respect for judgment and humility.
I agree with you, Dr Prasad, that the best "solution would be for medical organizations to curate and host the debates in the space, but that would require humility and political neutrality, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon."
In spite of that, many people have found new sources for medical information. Some sources are organizations, such as the Independent Medical Alliance (https://imahealth.org/). Some are individuals who have proven they can think independently, with "humility and political neutrality," like yourself.
The medical credentialing groups lost their moral authority when they went after doctors like Dr Peter Mccullough and Dr Pierre Kory. For better or worse, I honestly don't care about them anymore.
Secretary Kennedy is exposing some of the other issues, such as the financial conflicts with medical journals and with CPT codes. Maybe, in time, something meaningful will happen.
As a subscriber, I would encourage you to interview some contrary voices so we can hear the "debate" you rightly identify we need. You have a voice that can reach people and places few can and the "humility and political neutrality" to make a discussion meaningful.
Thank you for your thoughtful articles.
This issue is a lot broader than just asking a vaccination question to a pediatrician. The same logic applies to almost any medical question to any physician. If you upload your medical history, your doctor's clinical notes, your labs and your imaging to ChatGPT, Grok or Gemini AI, you may get a lot more useful information than your doctor was able to cover in a 20 minute office visit. And it won't just be the guidelines or the most recent population-based RCT published in JAMA.
So excellent that Dr. Prasad shares his knowledge with us.