Joe Rogan Experience #1261 - Peter Hotez

Large epidemiological studies in over a million children show no association between vaccines (including MMR and thimerosal) and autism, while genetics and early fetal brain development data indicate autism starts well before any vaccination occurs.

Researchers have identified at least 99 autism-associated genes and MRI patterns in infants as early as six months that predict later autism, supporting the view that vaccines neither cause nor exacerbate autism in predisposed children.

Hundreds of anti-vaccine websites, books, and documentaries, amplified by social media (and possibly foreign bots), flood search results, outcompeting pro-vaccine science and leading parents to avoid safe vaccines and adopt dangerous “treatments” like bleach enemas or chelation.

Measles cases are climbing in the U.S. and Europe, with infants too young to be vaccinated most at risk, and in a recent U.S. flu season roughly 150 unvaccinated children died—despite vaccines that, even when imperfectly matched, greatly reduce severe illness and death.

Hundreds of millions globally—and an estimated millions of impoverished Americans—harbor infections like hookworm, toxocariasis, Chagas disease, and others that cause anemia, organ damage, and measurable drops in IQ, quietly reinforcing cycles of poverty and underachievement.