Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign what's Worthwhile Healing Mind, Body, and Spirit? I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body, and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion, or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:30] Hey there, it's Ramsay here.
[00:00:33] This week I watched the film An Inconvenience Study, available free online.
[00:00:37] The title gave me flashbacks, but this is a new film produced by Del Bigtree and the High Wire who made the movie Vaxxed a few years ago. An Inconvenience Study is one of those movies that you cannot unsee and you cannot ignore or dismiss lightly. Look, I get it. Vaccines are a supercharged issue.
[00:00:55] So far, I've maybe danced around the issue in this podcast, but have not spoken about them at length, let alone taken any kind of stand. But my guest this week mentioned that she was not vaccinated and she chose not to vaccinate her kids. And we talked about it. And then this film came across my social media feeds. I know that politeness calls for us not to talk about such issues and that heated emotions call for us to only yell at each other about such issues, but I I call for us to open mindedly consider and open heartedly discuss important human questions like these Are vaccines safe or are they harming our kids?
[00:01:36] I'm embarrassed to admit that when my guest this week started talking about how she was unvaccinated and that she chose not to vaccinate her kids and their experiences with whooping cough and chicken pox, I was uncomfortable.
[00:01:49] Oh boy. I thought, should I ask her about it or move on or edit it out or what? But I kept going because this was her experience, her firsthand experience, her story to tell.
[00:02:01] I don't have a strong personal experience. I'm not wholly against vaccines, certainly not against the idea of vaccination, but I do favor leaning on the body's natural processes to fight off illness and to heal. I think the problem is that fundamentally we don't know, and certainly don't agree, whether vaccines are truly safe or not. Vaccine safety has been accepted by mainstream culture and the official narrative. Perhaps that's now changing in my life. I'm no stranger to the idea of mainstream cultural narratives shifting over time. The reason I got Flashbacks from the title of An Inconvenience Study is because I'm old enough to remember An Inconvenient Truth when it first came out in theaters. Al Gore made that film, and it did more than any other movie or mainstream source to boost climate change or global warming as we used to call it, I suppose, into the zeitgeist and collective psyche. I can only imagine that the naming mirror was no coincidence, but instead a hope that this film will do something similar an inconvenience study is riveting because it centers around a hidden camera dinner conversation between del Bigtree and Dr. Marcus Zervos. Or where Dr. Zervos straight up admits that he will not publish a study because it would end his career and destroy his credibility. Not because the study was low quality or because he believes it's faulty. Quite the opposite, because it would powerfully go against the grain of the prevailing narrative that vaccines are safe and effective for children's health and that the science is settled. Before I say anything else about the movie, let me recommend that you watch it for yourself.
[00:03:43] I will always suggest that you think for yourself and do your own research. This is no exception. What's the big deal? And what's so huge about this particular study that warrants a film, an undercover gotcha, a refusal to publish for fear of career loss, or even a podcast episode by me that I'm recording with trepidation that's going to take a little bit of effort to explain, so bear with me here for a few minutes. The logical fundamental question is whether people are more healthy taking vaccines than not taking vaccines. But the current standard of testing a new vaccine to see if it's safe and effective is to compare a group taking the new vaccine with a group taking another already approved vaccine. And there's the problem. The approved vaccines today were not themselves tested in comparison to people taking no vaccines.
[00:04:35] RFK Jr and Del Bigtree and the Maha crowd are calling for placebo controlled double blind studies which are the so called gold standard in drug testing. Such a study with vaccines would mean that one group gets the vaccine, one group gets saline instead of a vaccine.
[00:04:54] Neither group knows which group they're in, and neither do the researchers know who is in which group until the study period is over. But that is considered unethical because people parents either want or don't want the vaccines and authorities believe it to be unethical to deprive people of previously approved vaccines.
[00:05:16] So while this would be the ideal scientific design, it's difficult to imagine how to perform such a study. Did I mention that the time horizon for such a study would be something like from birth to age 10 or older? The next best thing would be a large set of historical data that tracked specific individuals over a long period of time where a large number were vaccinated and a large number were unvaccinated. Hopefully, these two groups would be as similar as possible in other respects in order to avoid what is called confounding factors. Well, the study in question comes close to these characteristics. It is a data set from the Henry Ford Health system, with around 18,500 children born between the years 2000 and 2016, of which around 16,500 had received one or more vaccines and around 2,000 had never gotten any vaccines. The study did not look at whether or not the individuals got sick from the specific diseases that they were vaccinated for. Instead, it looked at a myriad of different health conditions. At this point I have to state that I'm not a scientist. I do not have expertise in reading or evaluating or reporting on scientific studies. Again, please watch the movie, or better yet, read the study yourself or evaluate it with your own expertise. The film asserts that the study uses the data set to describe the numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals with a list of conditions and chronic illnesses. Therefore, it relays relative numbers. The vaccinated group fares far worse than the unvaccinated group in many categories, including being two and a half times more likely to have some kind of chronic health condition, three times more likely to have an atopic disease like eczema, 4.25 times more likely to have asthma, 5.5 times more likely to have some kind of neurodevelopment disorder like adhd, speech disorders, or behavioral, learning or motor disabilities, and six times more likely to have an autoimmune disease. There were no negative conditions where the unvaccinated group was decisively worse off. Again, this was a data set of 18,500 individuals, which may seem large, but it still has its limitations. For example, they could not state how many times higher the vaccinated group was than the unvaccinated group for several conditions because there were no reported cases of those conditions. In the unvaccinated group, this included brain dysfunction where there were eight cases, diabetes where there were 42 cases, tics where there were 46 cases, behavioral disability where there were 165 cases, and ADHD where there were 262 cases. The big kahuna of recent debates has been whether or not vaccines cause severe autism. This study had one case of autism in the unvaccinated group and 23 cases in the vaccinated group. That is not a large enough sample size to be statistically significant. As a difference. There are criticisms of this study and its methods, pointing out its limitations. A compelling point is that there are far more doctor visits over a longer period of years for the vaccinated group, which naturally gives more opportunities for diagnosis. The study authors mention this, and it is mentioned in the film, and the numbers presented were adjusted to try to compensate for this fact. Perhaps the parents of the unvaccinated group did not bring their kids to the doctors yet when they were suffering from a condition. But I wonder, wouldn't they be more likely to bring their kids in if they were experiencing serious conditions? Another criticism is that the study does not factor in socioeconomic factors, but I would think that as a whole, the unvaccinated group would be less well off financially, which should make them more ill. But maybe that's a poor assumption on my part. I don't know. So where does that leave us? Where does it leave me?
[00:09:22] Well, leaves me profoundly shaken. I don't have a dog in this fight. To use a crude analogy, I don't experience any of those conditions, nor do my children, who are now in their 20s and who were fully vaccinated as kids. By all standards of reason and business sense, I shouldn't be saying any of this into a microphone. Even bringing it up is risky, right? But something bigtree said to Dr. Zervos in the film was, if not you, who?
[00:09:48] That is an ancient question, one that applies to many people in many topics. If not you, who? If not now, when? Perhaps we were made for such a time as this. I believe in my bones and in my gut that there are a whole lot of things wrong with a whole lot of things. I'm also old enough to remember seeing the Matrix for the first time in theaters. Like Morpheus said to Neo, it's like there's something wrong with the world and you can feel it like a splinter in your mind.
[00:10:18] Well, we're never going to find the answers to big questions or find common ground and common cause with other people if we don't address and talk more about contentious issues that we don't agree upon. We can't and shouldn't dodge tough issues forever. I don't know the answers. Maybe no one does. But I think we need to do our best to think about issues, learn about them, and talk about them.
[00:10:44] And for today, that is enough.
[00:10:48] Looking for more? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to listen to podcast episodes, learn from books and articles, and live better by choosing healthy products and practices. I'm now offering services through worthwhile advisors for personal coaching, professional advising, speaking, and group facilitation. If you or your team are ready to reduce stress and anxiety, build vitality and momentum, and accomplish your goals without burning out, then please contact me, Ramsey Zimmerman, through the website or on social media like Instagram X or LinkedIn. Thanks.
