February 21, 2019 • 35 mins
Robert is joined again by Anna Salinas to discuss Dr. Robert Sears who might be the worst doctor on planet Earth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, what's barking my dogs? That was a good intro. Sophia.
Sophia approved, Anna good, I said, woof, woof, woof, woof. Excellent. Yeah,
this is the third part of our anti vaccination episode.
We are exhausted. We all just broke after the wakefield.
(00:20):
One cried a little while I went and got six
vaccinations just now. I've been I've been doing nothing but
breaking open and shotgunning in themr vaccines since we started
doing this. Oh yeah, how how are you feeling? You know?
Pretty good? You mixed with a little bit of coconut
water and rum and it's actually a pretty nice cocktail.
You shoot that too, Yeah, I mean I boof it.
(00:41):
I'm a big fan of boofing when you put it
up your butt. Oh you didn't listen to the new
Supreme Court Justices congressional testimony. They talked about it. Oh God,
that was one of my favorite. I mean, it was
all horrible, like Kavanaugh confirmation. It was heartbreaking, but like
the fact that that came up. Like when I was
(01:01):
eighteen and nineteen, my friends and I would joke about
and occasionally do it because we just thought the term
boofing was hilarious. We I remember it now from when
I was a teenager. That's in Congress. Now that's in
cong like that's there's no like history books. Kids are
going to have to learn about the congressional debate over
boofing in two thousand eighteen. Well look at it this way.
(01:23):
It's amazing. Now you can, for all those kids who
are in college, look at the drunkest, craziest, most problematic
guy at the frat party and latch on because he's
going to be something. I mean, if that were true,
then I'd be on a straight shot to the Supreme Court.
(01:46):
Oh a lot of things. The problem is you picked
the wrong side after that. You were like, I'm going
to veer to the left a little bit. I mean,
I didn't stop being a problematic drinker and drug abuser.
Should have gone the other way, you would have had
a better future. I am against I'm against middle class
white kids sobering up. I think it's bad for us.
(02:08):
I think that's what turns us into Dick Cheney. It's
so true, so true, Oh my gosh, it's so true.
And that's why if I were to if I were
to sober up and deal with all of my problematic
substance abuse problems. I'd be invading Afghanistan ten years George Bush.
It's dangerous, okay, Yeah, but if anyone out there wants
(02:29):
to sober up, you should. You should. This is a
bad thing to be joking about. But I don't know.
I watched Vice recently, you know, the movie Vice. I
just wish you've kept drinking, right. This is why people
shouldn't get married to supportive spouses, because they might facilitate
(02:51):
marry and neighbor criminal. Yeah, exactly, exactly anyway, all right,
So this episode is coming at the end of a
two part on the anti vaccine movement, but it's about
a guy named Dr Robert spears Um, and he did
not fit into either of those episodes. This is why
we're doing this as a separate thing. But it was
actually the fellow whose story inspired me to do this
whole three partter um. I pretty regularly get suggestions on
(03:14):
Twitter from fans to write about shitty person X or
garbage monster why. And I do appreciate those suggestions, but
they're usually for someone I've already heard of, like Winston
Churchill or Chairman. Now people are already on the list
they're just gonna get around to doing their research. When
somebody suggested Dr Robert Sears, I was intrigued because I'd
never heard of the guy before. It turns out he's
actually one of the most famous pediatricians in the United States.
(03:34):
His dad, Dr Bill Sears, wrote a popular series of
parenting books. Now Dr Bob Sears is a vaccine denial profiteer,
essentially making his fortune off of the doubt Andrew Wakefield
set against the MMR vaccine. Dr Bob seems to have
gotten a start hitching onto his dad's start. Dr Bill
Sears you know runs asked Dr Sears dot Com, which
bills itself as the trusted resource for parents. Dr Bob,
(03:56):
along with Dr Bill's other son, both contribute to the site.
Here's Dr Bob's bio on Asked Dr Sears dot Com.
Robert W. Sears, m D is a father of three,
practicing pediatrician, and a co author of the Sears Parenting Library.
Dr Bob, as he likes to be called by his
little patients, earned his medical degree at Georgetown University School
of Medicine in n Georgetown. Both me and Jack went, so,
(04:21):
go on, you did do better. Georgetown do Better Georgetown.
He did his pediatric internship in residency at Children's Hospital
Los Angeles, finishing in Night. Dr Bob is the proud
father of three active boys. YadA, YadA, YadA. He likes
mountain biking, California waves, getting lost in science fiction novels,
and everything is quiet. Dr Bob enjoys very unique approach
to pediatrics by providing a combination of alternative and traditional
(04:43):
medical care. See a little bit of a thing there
that's a problem. Yep, alternative, alternative, that's one of those.
You're going to do a class on how to avoid grifters.
That's the first word to look out for. Alternative. He
has a passion for healthy natural living. There's another warning
for it is sad that that is like that because
healthy living is a good thing. Yeah, if you eat well,
(05:08):
you'll be okay, But don't not do medicine. It's the
natural part that makes it skin because then you're saying like, okay,
well whatever else you're doing isn't natural. Yes, I think
you might be dishonest a little bit. He has a
passion for healthy natural living and incorporates this knowledge into
a style of disease treatment and prevention. That you won't
find in most doctors offices. By limiting antibiotic use, using
(05:31):
science based natural treatment approaches whenever possible, and focusing on
good nutrition and immune system health, Dr Bob takes preventive
medical sin to a whole new level. No, if you
remember from the first episode of this series way back,
that anti vaccine doctor who got smallpox, who thought that
his healthy diet and natural medicine would keep him from
getting sick. Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting that not only is
(05:55):
it the same school of I guess if you can
call it a school of thought up that's appearing on
the other end of this debate, but also what is
a little unsettling is I can see how that is
appealing to like people in l A and California and
Portland who's been sixteen dollars on a veggie rap exactly
(06:18):
trying to live a more natural, healthy lifestyle. But that
doesn't undo the efficacy of medicine as a whole. No,
And it's it's it's yeah, And I think some of
it comes from just like if you're a naturally physically
robust person, like it can be easy to fall on
this whole of like, well, I could just keep being
(06:39):
healthy and I don't need medicine. Yeah, yeah, anyway, Now
there's some grifter keywords in there, like science based, natural treatment, healthy,
natural living. Reading a little bit further, he didn't brag
too much. He didn't brag too much, although I cut
out a lot. There's a lot of braggy's. He's a
pretty braggy guy. But there's a paragraph to a little
(07:00):
bit further on that brings us to the true focus
of Dr Bob's career. Dr Bob has a particular passion
for helping patients understand stand childhood vaccines and options open
to them and choosing the safest possible vaccine schedule for
their child. As the solo author of the Vaccine Book,
making the right decision for your child, his in depth
knowledge of vaccines and the diseases they prevent his helped
parents nationwide get a better understanding of this complex and
(07:23):
confusing issue. Here's what the fantastic website Science Based Medicine
has to say about this book. The Vaccine Book. Dr
sears as sure as patients that there is a safer,
more sensible way to vaccinate. He wants parents to make
their own informed decisions about whether or how to proceed
with vaccinating their children, making sure to let them know
that if they do choose to vaccinate, he knows the
(07:44):
safest way to do it, and for paperback, he'll share
it with them. Okay, that's the keywords. All of it
is a keyword. Yeah, I know how to do it
by my product. Yeah, and informed decisions and yeah, just
lambasting those lazy errands who just trust medical science that
the MMR vaccine will protect their child. So he still
(08:05):
has a license, this guy. Sort of. Oh yeah, sort of,
we'll get to that. Okay, now. Uh. In the final
chapter of his book, The Science Based Medicine, the final
chapter of his book entitled what should You Do Now?
After reinforcing the common vaccine myths of the day, Dr
Sears presents his readers with Dr Bob's alternative vaccine schedule.
He places the side by side with the schedule recommended
(08:27):
by the American Academy Pediatrics and the CDC's Advisory Committee
on on Immunization Practices. So Dr Bob made a cunning
decision here. He's not anti vax, which is a completely
indefensible position from a scientific standpoint. Instead, he's trying to
thread the needle of questioning whether or not vaccines are
actually any good. His stance is kind of a work
of art of profit seeking spinelessness. Knowing he can't advertise
(08:50):
against vaccinating children and not be seen as a wakefieldy
and monster, Dr Bob decided to cash in on the
ill informed fear of vaccinations spawned by Wakefield without going
so far that his own medical license would get suspended.
I'm not saying don't vaccinate your kid. He's saying I've
developed a healthier schedule to vaccinate your which is such
a bush and also giving like talking to parents about
(09:13):
reasons why vaccines might be bad. Oh, this guy sucks.
But also the medical community needs to get better at
dealing with this. Yeah, I mean it's hard to deal with. Like,
we do have freedom of speech. There's nothing stopping a
doctor from shooting out a nonsense. That's true, that's true.
Dr Bob's book was released in two thousand seven. By
two thousand nine, and it sold more than forty copies
(09:35):
and found its way onto the New York Times best
seller list two twelve. According to BookScan, his book has
sold over a hundred and thirty copies. Got at first,
I was like, Okay, this guy is clearly a quack,
like he's selling his product. We probably didn't catch on
too much the best seller list. This is now mainstream. Yeah,
(09:55):
it's very mainstream. No, I don't know Dr Bob, but
from everything I've read, he sounds like a guy who
has a truly fabulous bedside manner. Um. I'm serious about that.
I'm not a doctor, and I'm literally the opposite of
a doctor, but I have interviewed quite a few doctors
at length over the course of my career as a journalist,
and one thing that has been brought up repeatedly is
the fact that many great physicians kind of suck at
the whole talking to patients part of it. Yeah, exactly.
(10:18):
They can be really brusque, and you know, they're busy
and they see some ship and they don't want to
argue with someone who didn't spend twelve years in medical school. Um.
And so when you have a guy like Dr Bob
who's great at talking to patients, who's really easy and
easy going and like is able to put them at
ease and comfort, they'll do anything he says and they'll
(10:39):
trust him. Implicitly. Dr Bob is a real doctor, but
he is not an expert on vaccinology. He is not
an epidemiologist, he is not a specialist on childhood infectious diseases.
Make no mistake when he talks about vaccination, he is
doing so completely out of his ass Science based medicine
gives a really thorough breakdown of exactly how dangerous Dr
Bob's rhetoric can be. Quote. He gives polio as an example,
(11:02):
stating that the risk of polio is zero and that
therefore the vaccine does not protect the individual child from
the disease. This, of course is untrue. While new cases
of polio no longer arise in the United States thanks
to the success of the polio vaccine, they do still
in other parts of the world. As is true for
many infectious diseases, imported cases and potential outbreaks you're a
quick airplane flight away. The more unvaccinated children we have,
(11:23):
the more likely and important case will lead to larger
outbreaks of disease. So yes, vaccinating protects the individual child
as well as the community at large. Ironically, polio would
likely have been eradicated from the Earth by two two
had it not been for the propagation of a vaccine
myth in the impoverished Indian state of Lutar Pradesh, which
in the year two thousand accounted for sixty percent of
all polio cases in the world. A myth at the
polio vaccination campaign was really a government conspiracy to sterilized
(11:46):
children prevented that campaign from accomplishing its true mission of
hurting the world from this horrible disease. That's the worst part.
We're talking about eurocentric, not just Eurocentric, but America, Europe
piece of the debate. But I mean it's global, it's global,
and the CIA gets caught up in it too. When
are you going to this one? I'll probably do a
(12:07):
separate episode. Yeah, they carried out a fake vaccination campaign
in Pakistan in order to try to catch terrorists and
like made people stop getting vaccinated because like it's the CIA.
Don't do that. So bad, so bad, it's so bad.
But it's shocking that, like that's something that makes me,
(12:27):
oh God, Like it's one thing to overthrow democratically elected
leaders of a government. You expect this, You expect the
CIA and to train a paramilitary organization untied a peaceful
student movement, what you do? Yeah, but for the love
of God, don't funk with vaccines. CIA. You should know
that much. You can be unethical and not funk with vaccines. Guys. So,
(12:52):
first of all, this guy needs to see the movie Contagion.
Anyone who doubts vaccines needs to see Contagious. Great movie.
But how do they respond to because this is a
little more recent when Ebola was happening, Uh, and there
were a few cases that came to the US, like
by air and we're contained. Did they have a stance
(13:15):
on that? That's I feel like that's the closest we've
come too outbreak fear in the last few years. That's
a really good question. I haven't read any of like
what anti vaxers said about it. I'm going to guess
there was a lot of we should just stop all
immigration from Africa. Uh, that's a good point, this is good.
I'm going to guess that it was something like that.
But um, you know, I I don't know. I didn't
(13:37):
look into like what they were saying about Ebola. Uh.
What a mess. So it doesn't seem that Dr Sears
is a true believer in the bullshit he espouses, or
at least a lot of it. I think we can
assume that because of this passage from his book quote,
given the bad press for the MMR vaccine in recent years,
he's talking about Wakefield, I'm not surprised when a family
(13:57):
tells me they don't want the MMR because they're so
little risk of getting infected. I don't have much ammunition
with which to try to change these parents minds. I
also warned them not to share their fears with their neighbors,
because if too many people avoid the MMR, we're likely
sea diseases increased significantly. So he's telling people, he's basically
buying into the Wakefield bullshit and reinforcing in the heads
of these parents who trust him that like, yeah, the
(14:19):
MMR vaccine might be dangerous. But he's also saying, if
you don't vaccinate your kid, don't tell your neighbors that,
because then enough people won't get vaccinated. What a contradiction. Yeah,
you know the vaccine works, Dr Bob, just tell them
to vaccinate their kids. But I trust you it stems
from that fear that anti vactor seem to have, which is, yeah, okay,
(14:41):
I guess it helps prevent the virus, but the virus
doesn't even really matter anymore. And also there's an individual risk,
and I want my kid to be okay, But that
individual risk seems to be predicated on false research, and
Dr Bob is one of the biggest proponents of the
individual risk thing, so that's what we're getting into. So
(15:04):
another thing Dr Bob advises is that the parents of
his patients might want to avoid giving their kid the
d T a P vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus,
and pertussis whooping cough, because tetanus is not an infant disease.
Diphtheria is virtually non existent in the US, so one
could create a logical argument that a baby could skip
the tetanus and diphtheria shots for a few years and
be just fine. That's Dr Bob's reasoning. Now, if like
(15:27):
most busy parents, you don't know much about epidemiology or
medical history, that might sound reasonable. It's less shrill and
crazy than then nuts. So vaccines cause autism crowd tends
to sound, but having done the fucking research Dr Bob
should have done. Science based Medicine points out that diphtheria
used to be virtually non existent in the U S
s R. When the U S S r fell, so
did vaccination rates in several former Soviet states. This led
(15:49):
to a nightmarish and deadly diphtheria outbreak in Eastern Europe.
Because yet again, that's how herd immunity works. We're not
taking these because the current risk of diphtheria is high.
It's so that it could conten used to not be
a problem. So her immunity is just as a concept,
non existent in the anti vaccine crowd. Yeah, because they
(16:09):
don't want their kids to get shots because their kids
are special. Their kids are special. Other kids aren't. Yeah. Yeah. Now.
One of Dr Bob's other big claims is the idea
that natural infection is better than vaccination. Here's the American
Journal of Pediatrics, who you might have guessed are not
big fans of Doc Bob. Quote Sears describes the value
of chickenpox parties. Some parents may purposefully get their child
(16:32):
exposed to get the disease over with. He writes, if
you've ever been invited to a chickenpox party, you'll know
what I'm referring to. Having the disease in most cases
provides lifelong immunity, better immunity than the shot provides. So
there's practically no worry about catching the disease as an adult. Now,
I think way back to the first episode of the
series on vaccinations. Do you remember how in the tenth
century Chinese doctors we're giving people ground up scabs to snort. Yeah,
(16:53):
that's what Dr Bob is advising. It's like, yeah, it
might work out, or you might get it. It might
be and this was good science, like a thousand years ago. Yeah,
even like this whole idea of chicken pox parties is like,
what don't don't there was a there was and only
chicken pox, which is not that bad in many people,
(17:17):
but with chicken pox there there was a bit of like, oh,
your friend hasn't you might catch it. But even then
my parents were like, don't try to catch it. Well,
because I don't know, maybe maybe I'm a little bit
of a nut for saying this, but I think if
you purposefully infect your child with a disease, that might
be child abuse. It might be might be might be
(17:37):
might be so ads products services, we are back. During
the break, we started looking at pictures of Dr Bob.
Sophie thinks he has a very punchable face. Anna and
I believe he looks like the stock photo model for
(18:00):
white doctor Um. She also had a picture of him
on like some new show where he's got glasses on
that we're pretty sure if fake glasses just to make
him look smart. I mean, I'm shocked he didn't go
on and his doctor scrubs, yeah, with the stethoscope around
his neck in his suit. Now, part of why Dr
Bob is dangerous is that he makes what seems to
lay people to be a convincing argument that there are
(18:22):
significant risks to vaccinating children. He bases this on the
CDCs Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System data. There's data, as
it's known, is basically something the CDC keeps track of
because they are exactly the opposite of the monsters Andrew
Wakefield accuses them of being. There are negative side effects
of vaccination sometimes in the CDC wants to know about it,
but Fara's data should not be viewed as an authoritative
(18:43):
list of the side effects of vaccines. Science based medicine
explains why quote everyone, doctors and patients alike is encouraged
to use THEIRS anytime a vaccination is followed by an
adverse event, whether or not they suspect the vaccine is
the actual cause of the event. Being an open, voluntary
passive reporting syst them VARs is susceptible to fraud and abuse,
as anyone can submit a report. The purpose of the
(19:05):
system is to give a very broad look at possible
unforeseen events related to vaccination. It is a screening tool
from which trends can be observed, possibly triggering true validated analyzes. So,
in other words, various data can be used as a
springboard to study whether or not a given vaccine can
cause adverse reactions. It is not useful for determining on
its own the risks associated with vaccinations correlation. It's just yeah,
(19:28):
and it's just like it's everything. Like if anything bad
that happens within a couple of months of getting vaccinated
winds up on there, then you maybe look into it
further to see if there's maybe a causal link. Using
data that is not supposed to be used for this purpose,
Dr Bob has discovered that one in a hundred thousand
vaccinated people suffers what he determines to be a severe reaction.
He extrapolates from this that every single vaccine has a
(19:49):
one and one hundred thousand risk of hurting every single child.
By cherry picking information in this very undoctorly way, he concludes, quote,
the risk that any one child will suffer a severe
reaction over the higher twelve year vaccine schedule is about
one hundred. The risk of a child having a severe
case of vaccine preventable disease is about one in six
hundred each year for all childhood diseases grouped together. I
(20:12):
can see how that is damaging because it sounds real.
It sounds real, and people are bad at statistics. The
numbers are like, oh yeah, it feels right, but that's
that's study. That's not a real study. It's not it's
not real science. There's control, but it's like it's nonsense,
(20:32):
it's lies. Because again, this motherfucker has a medical degree.
He knows, he knows how statistics work, he knows what
he's doing. He's a he's a con artist. But it's
so I think he is more troubling than Wakefield. Yeah,
in a lot of ways, and he feels so mainstream. Well,
and that's how it goes with grifters. Is like the
(20:52):
guy who starts the grift in Wakefield is like the
first modern doctor who started that grift. They're never the
best at it. You know, they they just they they
plow that road. He went on, Alex Jon He went on, Look,
a lot of people are going to believe him after that.
But also so this calculation that one in six hundred kids, Uh,
(21:13):
the risk of a child having a severe reaction to
a vaccine is so high that brings Dr Bob to
his million dollar question, Literally, our vaccines worth it? He
concludes that sometimes they aren't, and that parents should minimize
which ones they give their kids. He seriously asks, and
is this like what is sensibly a medical advice book?
Are measles even that bad? Has he had measles? I'm
(21:35):
gonna guess not usually not most cases and children passed
within a week or so without any trouble. However, approximately
one in a thousand cases is fatal. Uh, now that
measles is rare. Many years ago by without any fatalities.
Science based medicine put together a handy that measles is rare. Yeah,
why do you think gets rare? Not? Many kids die anymore?
So don't want don't bother with it? Yeah, Science face
(21:57):
Medicine put together a handy list of exactly how she sious.
Measles is just in case you think Dr Bob might
have a point one in a thousand cases of measles
results and encephalitis with a high rate of permanent neurological complications.
In those who survive, approximately five percent developed pneumonia, the
fatality rate is between one and three per thousand cases.
Contrary to doctor series statement, death is most commonly seen
(22:18):
in infants with measles. Subacute glurosing pan andcephalitis is a
rare complication of measles infection that occurs years after the illness,
in approximately ten out of every hundred thousand cases. So
there's a lot more risks than just one in a thousand. Yeah,
and I think the idea that like, you don't need
to vaccinate your baby and they'll be fine. Yeah, it's
crazy because babies are the most defenseless. And by the way,
(22:42):
actual doctors who have done the actual numbers, Uh, he's
saying like one in dred kids will suffer a severe
reaction over the vaccine schedule. It's one in ten thousand
children will have a serious event following a vaccine. Sometimes
it's just a drop in blood pressure or an allergic reaction.
That's much more common than developmental disorder. And we actually
have the Vaccine Court in the United States. That's whole
(23:03):
job is. It's a bunch of people who evaluate the
cases of parents who think their kids were hurt by
a vaccine to pay them compensation. Because we're saying there
will be some people. You know, you've got some human
biology is complicated. You're vaccinating millions of kids. Some of
them will have a negative reaction. Some people get sick
when you get certain vaccines. Some people get sick from
peanut butter. You can't not have kids get vaccinated. So
(23:25):
instead you established this thing by where if someone does
have an adverse reaction, they get a pay out. So
that because it's it's unfair to do anything else. Now,
I have a question, do you think vaccines, in light
of all this history now should be compulsory? Yeah, yeah,
I do, because I I think it's the same reason
why you can't drive drunk. I believe you have a
(23:46):
right to be drunk. I believe you have the right
to drive. I don't believe you have the right to
drive drunk because then you're risking other people's lives. And
I think that just the way epidemics work, you can't
let people risk that for other people. Right if I,
if I could reorganize the world my way, the CDC
would be a global organization. Like it's like, there's nothing
more important our government does than try to stop the
(24:09):
spread of infectious diseases. Absolutely, I'm a big fan of
not having epidemics killed millions of people. Huge fan of that. Yeah,
big c d C. Stand. What should the penalty be?
You know, that's a lot harder to talk about, but like,
I think you could make a case that it's child abuse, um,
and so I think maybe there should be like a
(24:30):
family law thing or something like that. Like I I
don't want to get into like we should do this
penalty or that penalty, but like, if you're refusing to
vaccinate your kid, and especially if your kid gets sick
as a result of that, there should on other kids
kids get sick as a result of it, there should
be a significant penalty. And I think also having vaccines
be plentiful and accessible and free, yah is the way
(24:55):
you do that so that it's not poor people blanket
neighborhoods and drop them from the sky. Thousands of needles
filled with the m M by drone put them in
Cheetos or even Dorritos. Doritos. Every bag of Doritos comes
with a polio vaccine. Yeah, handamout its cool. Hand them
out is cools. Yeah, put them in cigarettes. Fuck it,
(25:16):
vaccines and everything. Look, people think Alex Jones is radical,
but that's just because they haven't heard this podcast. Because
they haven't heard this podcast all of those suggestions. Philip Morris,
if you want to get in touch with me about
releasing a line of cigarettes with vaccines and them, I
will advertise your vaccine cigarettes absolutely, especially if it's that
new lung cancer vaccine that Cuba developed, Why not put
(25:37):
that in a cigarette? Is that real? Oh yeah, they
got a lung cancer vaccine. Yeah, I put it in cigarettes.
Why not smoke your way to not having lung cancer?
That's crazy. I don't know, Like I think it might
just be like limited types of lung cancer. I don't.
I don't really so many types. It only prevents against
(25:58):
the one type, the bad type, because I'll have the
good type. We all have the good type. Everybody wants
some good We did put HPV in the in the
cigarettes too, fine, Yeah, not even the vaccine, just HPV itself.
Try this new cheese. It's full of good cholesterol and
good HPV. Yeah, all the all upsides. So medical researchers
(26:19):
have been able to draw a direct line between Dr
Bob's bullshit and an actual epidemic. And two thousand eight
a seven year old boy returned from a trip to
Switzerland with his family. He brought the measles back with him,
infecting eleven other children, forcing dozens more to be quarantined,
and sparking California's largest outbreak in twenty years. That seven
year old was later found to be a patient of
guess Dr Bob Sears, So does he get in trouble
(26:42):
after that? Not for that, but he does get in trouble.
The story will end with some good news. Back in
mid two thousand eighteen, Dr Bob was put on a
thirty five month probation by the California State Medical Board.
The specific cause for this was that, back in two
thousand fourteen, he wrote a bunch of letters to exempt
a toddler from childhood vaccinations. Dr Sears did not bother
to obtain a detailed medical history of the child before
(27:03):
he wrote these exemptions. On social media, he defended himself
by saying he took the kid's mom at her word
when she said her son had reacted badly to vaccines
in the past. Here's Dr Bob on Facebook. Why accept
a settlement when I've done nothing wrong? A child and
his mother came to me for help. The mom described
how her baby had suffered a moderate to severe neurologic
reaction to vaccines almost three years prior, and she was
(27:26):
afraid to judge in her upcoming hearing was going to
force her to resume vaccines. Now, isn't it my job
to listen to my patients and believe what a parent
says happened to her baby. Isn't that what all doctors
do with their patients, After all, I don't want a
child to receive a medical treatment that caused more harm. No, dude,
doctors do medicine. Medicine isn't just listening to someone and
not do we tests. Yeah, we know your job is
(27:49):
not to listen to what a mom says and then
assume it's the truth without any study. But he has
this very specific way of appealing. It's almost like rooted
in his bedside manner. It's like I was just helping
my patient. Course, a parent is the highest authority on
their parents, don't let the government tell you what to do.
And this gets onto like a big issue I have
(28:11):
with like how a lot of people treat parenting in
this country like children or property of their parents, and
so like if I decide my kids should get homeschooled
and not get vaccinated, and that's my right as a parent, No,
you don't own your kid. You shouldn't have as much.
I don't know. Well, this will get into politics and
the government gets involved. If you are an addict raising
a child and neglecting your child, maybe the government should
(28:33):
get involved. If you're a crazy person, yeah, if you're
rejecting like life saving medicine. It's the same thing with
like those Christian scientists won't let their kids get like
blood transfusions and stuff, and their kids die, and it's
like that shouldn't be happening. Yeah, two thousand nineteen, I agree,
what are you talking about? So the downside of this
(28:54):
good news is that, unlike Doc Wakefield, Dr Bob has
not lost his medical license. He gets to keep doctoring,
if you could call it that, but he is on probation.
He has to take an ethics class in forty hours
of continuing education year he's on probation and another doctor
will have to watch him for everything he does, so
it is a severe limitation. It's not a good thing.
Is not going to change because he's got damn adult
(29:17):
grifter's mind. A grifter. I think the supervision thing is
good though. That's that is good. Yeah, Now, don't worry
about Dr Boff's lilihood. Though I could see that you
were worried that he wasn't going to get to make much.
Something tells me he's going to be just fine. He's
still got that book out. And I ran into a
website called Age of Autism, which bills itself as the
daily new web newspaper of the autism epidemic. In this
(29:39):
there were a bunch of posts from parents who were,
you know, in this anti vax sort of subculture, talking
about the news that Dr Sears had basically been put
on probation. I'm going to read a couple of their
quotes to close this autum. Posted by David Wiener June eighteen.
Medical licensing is a hoax, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
It is supposed to protect the public against bad doctors,
(30:01):
but in reality it protects the medical cartel. Against innovators
and competitors, innovators, innovators and not vaccinating your children. These
people need to get deadly diseases. Uh. Here's another one
from farm Stir on June. Time to admit defeat. There
is no way of totalitarian vaccine dictatorship is sustainable. Terror
(30:22):
and force will not result in long term compliance. Quite
the opposite. You cannot maintain the illusion of vaccine safety
when the truth is just one mouse click away. This
makes me feel insane. Comments are so riled up. I
feel like I have brain problems, Like what, guys, what well? Ah,
(30:44):
so he's still out there. He's still out there, still
doctor bobbing it up, being a doctor, being a doctor
under supervision. You know, Okay, I know that you have
compassion for Jenny McCarthy and there are people who are
worse than her. Yeah, but maybe maybe here's the solution.
(31:06):
You get Jenny McCarthy on the podcast Oh there we go.
Who knows she's a host on the Mass Singer right now?
Maybe she needs a little Really, I see the bulletin
boards for that show. It just looks terrible. It is
a show from the future. That's how it feels. It's
like watching a show from the year psychea watching like
(31:27):
TV and The Running Man. Yeah, it's really wild. But
she is a judge, which also feels weird because it's like,
are we really going to ignore how problematic she is
because she's she's stopped talking about that. As much as
I understand that, I guess her a little bit, but
I think we need someone like that to come out
and say I was wrong, I was real wrong. We
(31:48):
need because I think the medical community can be bad
at PR. That's what all three episodes have to their
nerds there. Nes they're big, they're like, look, no, but
we did the study the right Also some of them
were bad and racist. Yeah, every so we need we
(32:09):
need better PR vaccination camp. Yeah, because the problem is that,
like it just seems like any time a doctor is
really good at that thing, they realize that they can
make more money being a grifter. Yeah, so all the
great doctors are terrible at talking to the cameras. There's
a doctor who has a big you two following. I
(32:30):
think he's called the handsome doctor. Oh that's not a
good sign. Okay, yeah you say that, but I think
he's good. Oh is he is he like doing doing
the good thing he hasn't gotten. Okay, at least he's
not peddling conspiracy theories and as much here I mean,
I guess I'm confessing something, which is that I've watched
several videos by the Handsome Doctor. Is he really handsome?
(32:52):
He's so charming? And is he more handsome than Dr
Bob Oh? Is he more handsome than Andrew Field? Is
he more handsome than Alex Jones? Okay, that's where yea,
I wouldn't believe you. Then, well, because you've seen him shirtless. Yeah,
I've seen Alex June sless. We need a handsome okay, tweeters,
(33:17):
people on Twitter, totts, we need to convince the handsome
doctor to come out against anti baxers. There we get
the record straight. Because he has a following. It's probably
the same following that is like what happens when I
clicked these conspiracy videos. You could get to the you know,
that is what is necessary is like a sexy, charismatic
(33:39):
doctor who's not a grifter. Yes, or even if you're
a grifter, but a good hearted grifter who doesn't doesn't
grift on bad medicine, off these videos. Fine, fire, As
long as we needed tell people to get their MMR
shots for God's sakes. Yeah. So, if you're in the
Pacific Northwest and currently have measles, I hope the show
(34:00):
has made your suffering more bearable. Uh. You can buy
t shirts from te Public if that will help your
measles in any way, don't resell them. Do not resell
them if you wear measles shirts. Yeah, because we have
enough measles that we have enough infected shirts. You can
also buy stickers ont public behind the Bastards Anna Plug
(34:20):
Double Plug. You can find my web comic on Instagram.
It's bad Comics with an X by Anna with two ends.
It's about anxiety and depression and stuff. And I have
the same handle bad Comics by Ona on Twitter. Hit
me up. I'd love to know your thoughts on the
Handsome Doctor. Yeah, I'm gonna have to check that guy out.
(34:41):
Oh my god, if I'm butchering what his name is
on YouTube, I'm never going to forgive myself. Yeah. Well,
I'm sure they'll figure it out. Just look up Handsome Doctor.
It'll either take you to that guy or Dr bob Um.
I'm Robert Evans website Behind the Bastards dot com social
medis at Bastard's Pau, Twitter and Instagram. I'm I right,
(35:02):
okay on Twitter. I have a book, A Brief History
of Vice. Unlike Dr Bob's book, it will not lead
to measles outbreaks. It might lead to people drinking their
own urine mixed with tobacco and garlic, which is something
I did in the book to test an ancient meso
American remedy. It works. Yeah, it was like it was
a It was an ancient like Mayan treatment for constipation,
(35:22):
and it works. I don't Oh yeah, no, you you.
You drink that and you will be purging everything in
your body. Yeah, it's it's it doesn't just like you're everywhere. Yeah,
it's bad. It's real bad. Anyway, great book, Give it
a give it a read, drink your own p and
tell me how it goes. I'm Robert Evans, and I
(35:43):
love about you.
Hmm, what's barking my dogs? That was a good intro. Sophia.
Sophia approved, Anna good, I said, woof, woof, woof, woof. Excellent. Yeah,
this is the third part of our anti vaccination episode.
We are exhausted. We all just broke after the wakefield.
(00:20):
One cried a little while I went and got six
vaccinations just now. I've been I've been doing nothing but
breaking open and shotgunning in themr vaccines since we started
doing this. Oh yeah, how how are you feeling? You know?
Pretty good? You mixed with a little bit of coconut
water and rum and it's actually a pretty nice cocktail.
You shoot that too, Yeah, I mean I boof it.
(00:41):
I'm a big fan of boofing when you put it
up your butt. Oh you didn't listen to the new
Supreme Court Justices congressional testimony. They talked about it. Oh God,
that was one of my favorite. I mean, it was
all horrible, like Kavanaugh confirmation. It was heartbreaking, but like
the fact that that came up. Like when I was
(01:01):
eighteen and nineteen, my friends and I would joke about
and occasionally do it because we just thought the term
boofing was hilarious. We I remember it now from when
I was a teenager. That's in Congress. Now that's in
cong like that's there's no like history books. Kids are
going to have to learn about the congressional debate over
boofing in two thousand eighteen. Well look at it this way.
(01:23):
It's amazing. Now you can, for all those kids who
are in college, look at the drunkest, craziest, most problematic
guy at the frat party and latch on because he's
going to be something. I mean, if that were true,
then I'd be on a straight shot to the Supreme Court.
(01:46):
Oh a lot of things. The problem is you picked
the wrong side after that. You were like, I'm going
to veer to the left a little bit. I mean,
I didn't stop being a problematic drinker and drug abuser.
Should have gone the other way, you would have had
a better future. I am against I'm against middle class
white kids sobering up. I think it's bad for us.
(02:08):
I think that's what turns us into Dick Cheney. It's
so true, so true, Oh my gosh, it's so true.
And that's why if I were to if I were
to sober up and deal with all of my problematic
substance abuse problems. I'd be invading Afghanistan ten years George Bush.
It's dangerous, okay, Yeah, but if anyone out there wants
(02:29):
to sober up, you should. You should. This is a
bad thing to be joking about. But I don't know.
I watched Vice recently, you know, the movie Vice. I
just wish you've kept drinking, right. This is why people
shouldn't get married to supportive spouses, because they might facilitate
(02:51):
marry and neighbor criminal. Yeah, exactly, exactly anyway, all right,
So this episode is coming at the end of a
two part on the anti vaccine movement, but it's about
a guy named Dr Robert spears Um, and he did
not fit into either of those episodes. This is why
we're doing this as a separate thing. But it was
actually the fellow whose story inspired me to do this
whole three partter um. I pretty regularly get suggestions on
(03:14):
Twitter from fans to write about shitty person X or
garbage monster why. And I do appreciate those suggestions, but
they're usually for someone I've already heard of, like Winston
Churchill or Chairman. Now people are already on the list
they're just gonna get around to doing their research. When
somebody suggested Dr Robert Sears, I was intrigued because I'd
never heard of the guy before. It turns out he's
actually one of the most famous pediatricians in the United States.
(03:34):
His dad, Dr Bill Sears, wrote a popular series of
parenting books. Now Dr Bob Sears is a vaccine denial profiteer,
essentially making his fortune off of the doubt Andrew Wakefield
set against the MMR vaccine. Dr Bob seems to have
gotten a start hitching onto his dad's start. Dr Bill
Sears you know runs asked Dr Sears dot Com, which
bills itself as the trusted resource for parents. Dr Bob,
(03:56):
along with Dr Bill's other son, both contribute to the site.
Here's Dr Bob's bio on Asked Dr Sears dot Com.
Robert W. Sears, m D is a father of three,
practicing pediatrician, and a co author of the Sears Parenting Library.
Dr Bob, as he likes to be called by his
little patients, earned his medical degree at Georgetown University School
of Medicine in n Georgetown. Both me and Jack went, so,
(04:21):
go on, you did do better. Georgetown do Better Georgetown.
He did his pediatric internship in residency at Children's Hospital
Los Angeles, finishing in Night. Dr Bob is the proud
father of three active boys. YadA, YadA, YadA. He likes
mountain biking, California waves, getting lost in science fiction novels,
and everything is quiet. Dr Bob enjoys very unique approach
to pediatrics by providing a combination of alternative and traditional
(04:43):
medical care. See a little bit of a thing there
that's a problem. Yep, alternative, alternative, that's one of those.
You're going to do a class on how to avoid grifters.
That's the first word to look out for. Alternative. He
has a passion for healthy natural living. There's another warning
for it is sad that that is like that because
healthy living is a good thing. Yeah, if you eat well,
(05:08):
you'll be okay, But don't not do medicine. It's the
natural part that makes it skin because then you're saying like, okay,
well whatever else you're doing isn't natural. Yes, I think
you might be dishonest a little bit. He has a
passion for healthy natural living and incorporates this knowledge into
a style of disease treatment and prevention. That you won't
find in most doctors offices. By limiting antibiotic use, using
(05:31):
science based natural treatment approaches whenever possible, and focusing on
good nutrition and immune system health, Dr Bob takes preventive
medical sin to a whole new level. No, if you
remember from the first episode of this series way back,
that anti vaccine doctor who got smallpox, who thought that
his healthy diet and natural medicine would keep him from
getting sick. Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting that not only is
(05:55):
it the same school of I guess if you can
call it a school of thought up that's appearing on
the other end of this debate, but also what is
a little unsettling is I can see how that is
appealing to like people in l A and California and
Portland who's been sixteen dollars on a veggie rap exactly
(06:18):
trying to live a more natural, healthy lifestyle. But that
doesn't undo the efficacy of medicine as a whole. No,
And it's it's it's yeah, And I think some of
it comes from just like if you're a naturally physically
robust person, like it can be easy to fall on
this whole of like, well, I could just keep being
(06:39):
healthy and I don't need medicine. Yeah, yeah, anyway, Now
there's some grifter keywords in there, like science based, natural treatment, healthy,
natural living. Reading a little bit further, he didn't brag
too much. He didn't brag too much, although I cut
out a lot. There's a lot of braggy's. He's a
pretty braggy guy. But there's a paragraph to a little
(07:00):
bit further on that brings us to the true focus
of Dr Bob's career. Dr Bob has a particular passion
for helping patients understand stand childhood vaccines and options open
to them and choosing the safest possible vaccine schedule for
their child. As the solo author of the Vaccine Book,
making the right decision for your child, his in depth
knowledge of vaccines and the diseases they prevent his helped
parents nationwide get a better understanding of this complex and
(07:23):
confusing issue. Here's what the fantastic website Science Based Medicine
has to say about this book. The Vaccine Book. Dr
sears as sure as patients that there is a safer,
more sensible way to vaccinate. He wants parents to make
their own informed decisions about whether or how to proceed
with vaccinating their children, making sure to let them know
that if they do choose to vaccinate, he knows the
(07:44):
safest way to do it, and for paperback, he'll share
it with them. Okay, that's the keywords. All of it
is a keyword. Yeah, I know how to do it
by my product. Yeah, and informed decisions and yeah, just
lambasting those lazy errands who just trust medical science that
the MMR vaccine will protect their child. So he still
(08:05):
has a license, this guy. Sort of. Oh yeah, sort of,
we'll get to that. Okay, now. Uh. In the final
chapter of his book, The Science Based Medicine, the final
chapter of his book entitled what should You Do Now?
After reinforcing the common vaccine myths of the day, Dr
Sears presents his readers with Dr Bob's alternative vaccine schedule.
He places the side by side with the schedule recommended
(08:27):
by the American Academy Pediatrics and the CDC's Advisory Committee
on on Immunization Practices. So Dr Bob made a cunning
decision here. He's not anti vax, which is a completely
indefensible position from a scientific standpoint. Instead, he's trying to
thread the needle of questioning whether or not vaccines are
actually any good. His stance is kind of a work
of art of profit seeking spinelessness. Knowing he can't advertise
(08:50):
against vaccinating children and not be seen as a wakefieldy
and monster, Dr Bob decided to cash in on the
ill informed fear of vaccinations spawned by Wakefield without going
so far that his own medical license would get suspended.
I'm not saying don't vaccinate your kid. He's saying I've
developed a healthier schedule to vaccinate your which is such
a bush and also giving like talking to parents about
(09:13):
reasons why vaccines might be bad. Oh, this guy sucks.
But also the medical community needs to get better at
dealing with this. Yeah, I mean it's hard to deal with. Like,
we do have freedom of speech. There's nothing stopping a
doctor from shooting out a nonsense. That's true, that's true.
Dr Bob's book was released in two thousand seven. By
two thousand nine, and it sold more than forty copies
(09:35):
and found its way onto the New York Times best
seller list two twelve. According to BookScan, his book has
sold over a hundred and thirty copies. Got at first,
I was like, Okay, this guy is clearly a quack,
like he's selling his product. We probably didn't catch on
too much the best seller list. This is now mainstream. Yeah,
(09:55):
it's very mainstream. No, I don't know Dr Bob, but
from everything I've read, he sounds like a guy who
has a truly fabulous bedside manner. Um. I'm serious about that.
I'm not a doctor, and I'm literally the opposite of
a doctor, but I have interviewed quite a few doctors
at length over the course of my career as a journalist,
and one thing that has been brought up repeatedly is
the fact that many great physicians kind of suck at
the whole talking to patients part of it. Yeah, exactly.
(10:18):
They can be really brusque, and you know, they're busy
and they see some ship and they don't want to
argue with someone who didn't spend twelve years in medical school. Um.
And so when you have a guy like Dr Bob
who's great at talking to patients, who's really easy and
easy going and like is able to put them at
ease and comfort, they'll do anything he says and they'll
(10:39):
trust him. Implicitly. Dr Bob is a real doctor, but
he is not an expert on vaccinology. He is not
an epidemiologist, he is not a specialist on childhood infectious diseases.
Make no mistake when he talks about vaccination, he is
doing so completely out of his ass Science based medicine
gives a really thorough breakdown of exactly how dangerous Dr
Bob's rhetoric can be. Quote. He gives polio as an example,
(11:02):
stating that the risk of polio is zero and that
therefore the vaccine does not protect the individual child from
the disease. This, of course is untrue. While new cases
of polio no longer arise in the United States thanks
to the success of the polio vaccine, they do still
in other parts of the world. As is true for
many infectious diseases, imported cases and potential outbreaks you're a
quick airplane flight away. The more unvaccinated children we have,
(11:23):
the more likely and important case will lead to larger
outbreaks of disease. So yes, vaccinating protects the individual child
as well as the community at large. Ironically, polio would
likely have been eradicated from the Earth by two two
had it not been for the propagation of a vaccine
myth in the impoverished Indian state of Lutar Pradesh, which
in the year two thousand accounted for sixty percent of
all polio cases in the world. A myth at the
polio vaccination campaign was really a government conspiracy to sterilized
(11:46):
children prevented that campaign from accomplishing its true mission of
hurting the world from this horrible disease. That's the worst part.
We're talking about eurocentric, not just Eurocentric, but America, Europe
piece of the debate. But I mean it's global, it's global,
and the CIA gets caught up in it too. When
are you going to this one? I'll probably do a
(12:07):
separate episode. Yeah, they carried out a fake vaccination campaign
in Pakistan in order to try to catch terrorists and
like made people stop getting vaccinated because like it's the CIA.
Don't do that. So bad, so bad, it's so bad.
But it's shocking that, like that's something that makes me,
(12:27):
oh God, Like it's one thing to overthrow democratically elected
leaders of a government. You expect this, You expect the
CIA and to train a paramilitary organization untied a peaceful
student movement, what you do? Yeah, but for the love
of God, don't funk with vaccines. CIA. You should know
that much. You can be unethical and not funk with vaccines. Guys. So,
(12:52):
first of all, this guy needs to see the movie Contagion.
Anyone who doubts vaccines needs to see Contagious. Great movie.
But how do they respond to because this is a
little more recent when Ebola was happening, Uh, and there
were a few cases that came to the US, like
by air and we're contained. Did they have a stance
(13:15):
on that? That's I feel like that's the closest we've
come too outbreak fear in the last few years. That's
a really good question. I haven't read any of like
what anti vaxers said about it. I'm going to guess
there was a lot of we should just stop all
immigration from Africa. Uh, that's a good point, this is good.
I'm going to guess that it was something like that.
But um, you know, I I don't know. I didn't
(13:37):
look into like what they were saying about Ebola. Uh.
What a mess. So it doesn't seem that Dr Sears
is a true believer in the bullshit he espouses, or
at least a lot of it. I think we can
assume that because of this passage from his book quote,
given the bad press for the MMR vaccine in recent years,
he's talking about Wakefield, I'm not surprised when a family
(13:57):
tells me they don't want the MMR because they're so
little risk of getting infected. I don't have much ammunition
with which to try to change these parents minds. I
also warned them not to share their fears with their neighbors,
because if too many people avoid the MMR, we're likely
sea diseases increased significantly. So he's telling people, he's basically
buying into the Wakefield bullshit and reinforcing in the heads
of these parents who trust him that like, yeah, the
(14:19):
MMR vaccine might be dangerous. But he's also saying, if
you don't vaccinate your kid, don't tell your neighbors that,
because then enough people won't get vaccinated. What a contradiction. Yeah,
you know the vaccine works, Dr Bob, just tell them
to vaccinate their kids. But I trust you it stems
from that fear that anti vactor seem to have, which is, yeah, okay,
(14:41):
I guess it helps prevent the virus, but the virus
doesn't even really matter anymore. And also there's an individual risk,
and I want my kid to be okay, But that
individual risk seems to be predicated on false research, and
Dr Bob is one of the biggest proponents of the
individual risk thing, so that's what we're getting into. So
(15:04):
another thing Dr Bob advises is that the parents of
his patients might want to avoid giving their kid the
d T a P vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus,
and pertussis whooping cough, because tetanus is not an infant disease.
Diphtheria is virtually non existent in the US, so one
could create a logical argument that a baby could skip
the tetanus and diphtheria shots for a few years and
be just fine. That's Dr Bob's reasoning. Now, if like
(15:27):
most busy parents, you don't know much about epidemiology or
medical history, that might sound reasonable. It's less shrill and
crazy than then nuts. So vaccines cause autism crowd tends
to sound, but having done the fucking research Dr Bob
should have done. Science based Medicine points out that diphtheria
used to be virtually non existent in the U S
s R. When the U S S r fell, so
did vaccination rates in several former Soviet states. This led
(15:49):
to a nightmarish and deadly diphtheria outbreak in Eastern Europe.
Because yet again, that's how herd immunity works. We're not
taking these because the current risk of diphtheria is high.
It's so that it could conten used to not be
a problem. So her immunity is just as a concept,
non existent in the anti vaccine crowd. Yeah, because they
(16:09):
don't want their kids to get shots because their kids
are special. Their kids are special. Other kids aren't. Yeah. Yeah. Now.
One of Dr Bob's other big claims is the idea
that natural infection is better than vaccination. Here's the American
Journal of Pediatrics, who you might have guessed are not
big fans of Doc Bob. Quote Sears describes the value
of chickenpox parties. Some parents may purposefully get their child
(16:32):
exposed to get the disease over with. He writes, if
you've ever been invited to a chickenpox party, you'll know
what I'm referring to. Having the disease in most cases
provides lifelong immunity, better immunity than the shot provides. So
there's practically no worry about catching the disease as an adult. Now,
I think way back to the first episode of the
series on vaccinations. Do you remember how in the tenth
century Chinese doctors we're giving people ground up scabs to snort. Yeah,
(16:53):
that's what Dr Bob is advising. It's like, yeah, it
might work out, or you might get it. It might
be and this was good science, like a thousand years ago. Yeah,
even like this whole idea of chicken pox parties is like,
what don't don't there was a there was and only
chicken pox, which is not that bad in many people,
(17:17):
but with chicken pox there there was a bit of like, oh,
your friend hasn't you might catch it. But even then
my parents were like, don't try to catch it. Well,
because I don't know, maybe maybe I'm a little bit
of a nut for saying this, but I think if
you purposefully infect your child with a disease, that might
be child abuse. It might be might be might be
(17:37):
might be so ads products services, we are back. During
the break, we started looking at pictures of Dr Bob.
Sophie thinks he has a very punchable face. Anna and
I believe he looks like the stock photo model for
(18:00):
white doctor Um. She also had a picture of him
on like some new show where he's got glasses on
that we're pretty sure if fake glasses just to make
him look smart. I mean, I'm shocked he didn't go
on and his doctor scrubs, yeah, with the stethoscope around
his neck in his suit. Now, part of why Dr
Bob is dangerous is that he makes what seems to
lay people to be a convincing argument that there are
(18:22):
significant risks to vaccinating children. He bases this on the
CDCs Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System data. There's data, as
it's known, is basically something the CDC keeps track of
because they are exactly the opposite of the monsters Andrew
Wakefield accuses them of being. There are negative side effects
of vaccination sometimes in the CDC wants to know about it,
but Fara's data should not be viewed as an authoritative
(18:43):
list of the side effects of vaccines. Science based medicine
explains why quote everyone, doctors and patients alike is encouraged
to use THEIRS anytime a vaccination is followed by an
adverse event, whether or not they suspect the vaccine is
the actual cause of the event. Being an open, voluntary
passive reporting syst them VARs is susceptible to fraud and abuse,
as anyone can submit a report. The purpose of the
(19:05):
system is to give a very broad look at possible
unforeseen events related to vaccination. It is a screening tool
from which trends can be observed, possibly triggering true validated analyzes. So,
in other words, various data can be used as a
springboard to study whether or not a given vaccine can
cause adverse reactions. It is not useful for determining on
its own the risks associated with vaccinations correlation. It's just yeah,
(19:28):
and it's just like it's everything. Like if anything bad
that happens within a couple of months of getting vaccinated
winds up on there, then you maybe look into it
further to see if there's maybe a causal link. Using
data that is not supposed to be used for this purpose,
Dr Bob has discovered that one in a hundred thousand
vaccinated people suffers what he determines to be a severe reaction.
He extrapolates from this that every single vaccine has a
(19:49):
one and one hundred thousand risk of hurting every single child.
By cherry picking information in this very undoctorly way, he concludes, quote,
the risk that any one child will suffer a severe
reaction over the higher twelve year vaccine schedule is about
one hundred. The risk of a child having a severe
case of vaccine preventable disease is about one in six
hundred each year for all childhood diseases grouped together. I
(20:12):
can see how that is damaging because it sounds real.
It sounds real, and people are bad at statistics. The
numbers are like, oh yeah, it feels right, but that's
that's study. That's not a real study. It's not it's
not real science. There's control, but it's like it's nonsense,
(20:32):
it's lies. Because again, this motherfucker has a medical degree.
He knows, he knows how statistics work, he knows what
he's doing. He's a he's a con artist. But it's
so I think he is more troubling than Wakefield. Yeah,
in a lot of ways, and he feels so mainstream. Well,
and that's how it goes with grifters. Is like the
(20:52):
guy who starts the grift in Wakefield is like the
first modern doctor who started that grift. They're never the
best at it. You know, they they just they they
plow that road. He went on, Alex Jon He went on, Look,
a lot of people are going to believe him after that.
But also so this calculation that one in six hundred kids, Uh,
(21:13):
the risk of a child having a severe reaction to
a vaccine is so high that brings Dr Bob to
his million dollar question, Literally, our vaccines worth it? He
concludes that sometimes they aren't, and that parents should minimize
which ones they give their kids. He seriously asks, and
is this like what is sensibly a medical advice book?
Are measles even that bad? Has he had measles? I'm
(21:35):
gonna guess not usually not most cases and children passed
within a week or so without any trouble. However, approximately
one in a thousand cases is fatal. Uh, now that
measles is rare. Many years ago by without any fatalities.
Science based medicine put together a handy that measles is rare. Yeah,
why do you think gets rare? Not? Many kids die anymore?
So don't want don't bother with it? Yeah, Science face
(21:57):
Medicine put together a handy list of exactly how she sious.
Measles is just in case you think Dr Bob might
have a point one in a thousand cases of measles
results and encephalitis with a high rate of permanent neurological complications.
In those who survive, approximately five percent developed pneumonia, the
fatality rate is between one and three per thousand cases.
Contrary to doctor series statement, death is most commonly seen
(22:18):
in infants with measles. Subacute glurosing pan andcephalitis is a
rare complication of measles infection that occurs years after the illness,
in approximately ten out of every hundred thousand cases. So
there's a lot more risks than just one in a thousand. Yeah,
and I think the idea that like, you don't need
to vaccinate your baby and they'll be fine. Yeah, it's
crazy because babies are the most defenseless. And by the way,
(22:42):
actual doctors who have done the actual numbers, Uh, he's
saying like one in dred kids will suffer a severe
reaction over the vaccine schedule. It's one in ten thousand
children will have a serious event following a vaccine. Sometimes
it's just a drop in blood pressure or an allergic reaction.
That's much more common than developmental disorder. And we actually
have the Vaccine Court in the United States. That's whole
(23:03):
job is. It's a bunch of people who evaluate the
cases of parents who think their kids were hurt by
a vaccine to pay them compensation. Because we're saying there
will be some people. You know, you've got some human
biology is complicated. You're vaccinating millions of kids. Some of
them will have a negative reaction. Some people get sick
when you get certain vaccines. Some people get sick from
peanut butter. You can't not have kids get vaccinated. So
(23:25):
instead you established this thing by where if someone does
have an adverse reaction, they get a pay out. So
that because it's it's unfair to do anything else. Now,
I have a question, do you think vaccines, in light
of all this history now should be compulsory? Yeah, yeah,
I do, because I I think it's the same reason
why you can't drive drunk. I believe you have a
(23:46):
right to be drunk. I believe you have the right
to drive. I don't believe you have the right to
drive drunk because then you're risking other people's lives. And
I think that just the way epidemics work, you can't
let people risk that for other people. Right if I,
if I could reorganize the world my way, the CDC
would be a global organization. Like it's like, there's nothing
more important our government does than try to stop the
(24:09):
spread of infectious diseases. Absolutely, I'm a big fan of
not having epidemics killed millions of people. Huge fan of that. Yeah,
big c d C. Stand. What should the penalty be?
You know, that's a lot harder to talk about, but like,
I think you could make a case that it's child abuse, um,
and so I think maybe there should be like a
(24:30):
family law thing or something like that. Like I I
don't want to get into like we should do this
penalty or that penalty, but like, if you're refusing to
vaccinate your kid, and especially if your kid gets sick
as a result of that, there should on other kids
kids get sick as a result of it, there should
be a significant penalty. And I think also having vaccines
be plentiful and accessible and free, yah is the way
(24:55):
you do that so that it's not poor people blanket
neighborhoods and drop them from the sky. Thousands of needles
filled with the m M by drone put them in
Cheetos or even Dorritos. Doritos. Every bag of Doritos comes
with a polio vaccine. Yeah, handamout its cool. Hand them
out is cools. Yeah, put them in cigarettes. Fuck it,
(25:16):
vaccines and everything. Look, people think Alex Jones is radical,
but that's just because they haven't heard this podcast. Because
they haven't heard this podcast all of those suggestions. Philip Morris,
if you want to get in touch with me about
releasing a line of cigarettes with vaccines and them, I
will advertise your vaccine cigarettes absolutely, especially if it's that
new lung cancer vaccine that Cuba developed, Why not put
(25:37):
that in a cigarette? Is that real? Oh yeah, they
got a lung cancer vaccine. Yeah, I put it in cigarettes.
Why not smoke your way to not having lung cancer?
That's crazy. I don't know, Like I think it might
just be like limited types of lung cancer. I don't.
I don't really so many types. It only prevents against
(25:58):
the one type, the bad type, because I'll have the
good type. We all have the good type. Everybody wants
some good We did put HPV in the in the
cigarettes too, fine, Yeah, not even the vaccine, just HPV itself.
Try this new cheese. It's full of good cholesterol and
good HPV. Yeah, all the all upsides. So medical researchers
(26:19):
have been able to draw a direct line between Dr
Bob's bullshit and an actual epidemic. And two thousand eight
a seven year old boy returned from a trip to
Switzerland with his family. He brought the measles back with him,
infecting eleven other children, forcing dozens more to be quarantined,
and sparking California's largest outbreak in twenty years. That seven
year old was later found to be a patient of
guess Dr Bob Sears, So does he get in trouble
(26:42):
after that? Not for that, but he does get in trouble.
The story will end with some good news. Back in
mid two thousand eighteen, Dr Bob was put on a
thirty five month probation by the California State Medical Board.
The specific cause for this was that, back in two
thousand fourteen, he wrote a bunch of letters to exempt
a toddler from childhood vaccinations. Dr Sears did not bother
to obtain a detailed medical history of the child before
(27:03):
he wrote these exemptions. On social media, he defended himself
by saying he took the kid's mom at her word
when she said her son had reacted badly to vaccines
in the past. Here's Dr Bob on Facebook. Why accept
a settlement when I've done nothing wrong? A child and
his mother came to me for help. The mom described
how her baby had suffered a moderate to severe neurologic
reaction to vaccines almost three years prior, and she was
(27:26):
afraid to judge in her upcoming hearing was going to
force her to resume vaccines. Now, isn't it my job
to listen to my patients and believe what a parent
says happened to her baby. Isn't that what all doctors
do with their patients, After all, I don't want a
child to receive a medical treatment that caused more harm. No, dude,
doctors do medicine. Medicine isn't just listening to someone and
not do we tests. Yeah, we know your job is
(27:49):
not to listen to what a mom says and then
assume it's the truth without any study. But he has
this very specific way of appealing. It's almost like rooted
in his bedside manner. It's like I was just helping
my patient. Course, a parent is the highest authority on
their parents, don't let the government tell you what to do.
And this gets onto like a big issue I have
(28:11):
with like how a lot of people treat parenting in
this country like children or property of their parents, and
so like if I decide my kids should get homeschooled
and not get vaccinated, and that's my right as a parent, No,
you don't own your kid. You shouldn't have as much.
I don't know. Well, this will get into politics and
the government gets involved. If you are an addict raising
a child and neglecting your child, maybe the government should
(28:33):
get involved. If you're a crazy person, yeah, if you're
rejecting like life saving medicine. It's the same thing with
like those Christian scientists won't let their kids get like
blood transfusions and stuff, and their kids die, and it's
like that shouldn't be happening. Yeah, two thousand nineteen, I agree,
what are you talking about? So the downside of this
(28:54):
good news is that, unlike Doc Wakefield, Dr Bob has
not lost his medical license. He gets to keep doctoring,
if you could call it that, but he is on probation.
He has to take an ethics class in forty hours
of continuing education year he's on probation and another doctor
will have to watch him for everything he does, so
it is a severe limitation. It's not a good thing.
Is not going to change because he's got damn adult
(29:17):
grifter's mind. A grifter. I think the supervision thing is
good though. That's that is good. Yeah, Now, don't worry
about Dr Boff's lilihood. Though I could see that you
were worried that he wasn't going to get to make much.
Something tells me he's going to be just fine. He's
still got that book out. And I ran into a
website called Age of Autism, which bills itself as the
daily new web newspaper of the autism epidemic. In this
(29:39):
there were a bunch of posts from parents who were,
you know, in this anti vax sort of subculture, talking
about the news that Dr Sears had basically been put
on probation. I'm going to read a couple of their
quotes to close this autum. Posted by David Wiener June eighteen.
Medical licensing is a hoax, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
It is supposed to protect the public against bad doctors,
(30:01):
but in reality it protects the medical cartel. Against innovators
and competitors, innovators, innovators and not vaccinating your children. These
people need to get deadly diseases. Uh. Here's another one
from farm Stir on June. Time to admit defeat. There
is no way of totalitarian vaccine dictatorship is sustainable. Terror
(30:22):
and force will not result in long term compliance. Quite
the opposite. You cannot maintain the illusion of vaccine safety
when the truth is just one mouse click away. This
makes me feel insane. Comments are so riled up. I
feel like I have brain problems, Like what, guys, what well? Ah,
(30:44):
so he's still out there. He's still out there, still
doctor bobbing it up, being a doctor, being a doctor
under supervision. You know, Okay, I know that you have
compassion for Jenny McCarthy and there are people who are
worse than her. Yeah, but maybe maybe here's the solution.
(31:06):
You get Jenny McCarthy on the podcast Oh there we go.
Who knows she's a host on the Mass Singer right now?
Maybe she needs a little Really, I see the bulletin
boards for that show. It just looks terrible. It is
a show from the future. That's how it feels. It's
like watching a show from the year psychea watching like
(31:27):
TV and The Running Man. Yeah, it's really wild. But
she is a judge, which also feels weird because it's like,
are we really going to ignore how problematic she is
because she's she's stopped talking about that. As much as
I understand that, I guess her a little bit, but
I think we need someone like that to come out
and say I was wrong, I was real wrong. We
(31:48):
need because I think the medical community can be bad
at PR. That's what all three episodes have to their
nerds there. Nes they're big, they're like, look, no, but
we did the study the right Also some of them
were bad and racist. Yeah, every so we need we
(32:09):
need better PR vaccination camp. Yeah, because the problem is that,
like it just seems like any time a doctor is
really good at that thing, they realize that they can
make more money being a grifter. Yeah, so all the
great doctors are terrible at talking to the cameras. There's
a doctor who has a big you two following. I
(32:30):
think he's called the handsome doctor. Oh that's not a
good sign. Okay, yeah you say that, but I think
he's good. Oh is he is he like doing doing
the good thing he hasn't gotten. Okay, at least he's
not peddling conspiracy theories and as much here I mean,
I guess I'm confessing something, which is that I've watched
several videos by the Handsome Doctor. Is he really handsome?
(32:52):
He's so charming? And is he more handsome than Dr
Bob Oh? Is he more handsome than Andrew Field? Is
he more handsome than Alex Jones? Okay, that's where yea,
I wouldn't believe you. Then, well, because you've seen him shirtless. Yeah,
I've seen Alex June sless. We need a handsome okay, tweeters,
(33:17):
people on Twitter, totts, we need to convince the handsome
doctor to come out against anti baxers. There we get
the record straight. Because he has a following. It's probably
the same following that is like what happens when I
clicked these conspiracy videos. You could get to the you know,
that is what is necessary is like a sexy, charismatic
(33:39):
doctor who's not a grifter. Yes, or even if you're
a grifter, but a good hearted grifter who doesn't doesn't
grift on bad medicine, off these videos. Fine, fire, As
long as we needed tell people to get their MMR
shots for God's sakes. Yeah. So, if you're in the
Pacific Northwest and currently have measles, I hope the show
(34:00):
has made your suffering more bearable. Uh. You can buy
t shirts from te Public if that will help your
measles in any way, don't resell them. Do not resell
them if you wear measles shirts. Yeah, because we have
enough measles that we have enough infected shirts. You can
also buy stickers ont public behind the Bastards Anna Plug
(34:20):
Double Plug. You can find my web comic on Instagram.
It's bad Comics with an X by Anna with two ends.
It's about anxiety and depression and stuff. And I have
the same handle bad Comics by Ona on Twitter. Hit
me up. I'd love to know your thoughts on the
Handsome Doctor. Yeah, I'm gonna have to check that guy out.
(34:41):
Oh my god, if I'm butchering what his name is
on YouTube, I'm never going to forgive myself. Yeah. Well,
I'm sure they'll figure it out. Just look up Handsome Doctor.
It'll either take you to that guy or Dr bob Um.
I'm Robert Evans website Behind the Bastards dot com social
medis at Bastard's Pau, Twitter and Instagram. I'm I right,
(35:02):
okay on Twitter. I have a book, A Brief History
of Vice. Unlike Dr Bob's book, it will not lead
to measles outbreaks. It might lead to people drinking their
own urine mixed with tobacco and garlic, which is something
I did in the book to test an ancient meso
American remedy. It works. Yeah, it was like it was
a It was an ancient like Mayan treatment for constipation,
(35:22):
and it works. I don't Oh yeah, no, you you.
You drink that and you will be purging everything in
your body. Yeah, it's it's it doesn't just like you're everywhere. Yeah,
it's bad. It's real bad. Anyway, great book, Give it
a give it a read, drink your own p and
tell me how it goes. I'm Robert Evans, and I
(35:43):
love about you.
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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