Understand Pediatric Vaccine Safety & Timing | Dr. Max Krummel & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Cancer Vaccines Versus Childhood Vaccines

00:00one group that's completely no matter whether they're hesitant against childhood vaccines and the number of them we get and the the fact that the government makes you take them and these sort of things if those people have cancer, they're very interested in vaccines because it's a there there's really good data that you can promote more immune cells against the um tumor by making a vaccine that consists of some of the proteins and peptides that are unique to the tumor and not different from you.

00:25and you introduce those as if you would introduce a virus or anything in a in a childhood vaccine on similar concept um just different peptides. their peptides from the tumor and and in those situations it's context, right? So if if you and I had cancer and we don't have the the conventional cures are not going to work on us.

00:43We know there we know statistics really well. Chemo is not very good for a lot of you know cancers and that's the only thing we got. But if you have access to something that's relatively new and particularly vaccines despite what you know some people worry about they're pretty safe.

00:55Um, and so the the certain die versus try out a vaccine drives a lot of people to be interested

Questioning Vaccine Schedules & Timing

01:02in vaccines. And I would say yeah in that case it's a really you know you can see where people's their their question about whether they're going to try something or not is very context dependent very I think uh I don't want to go too deep into the vaccine debate and I don't want to be a spokesperson for either side because that's not my role today but I think that the um the what you refer to as vaccine hesitancy actually comes back to an earlier issue that maybe you'd be willing to comment on.

01:28Sure. um which is I think there are a very large number of people for whom they are neither antivaccine nor super pro but they are um they're asking about timing and combinations. Agreed. They're saying okay listen and we had Jay Bachari on here and I've had several others who've said maybe there should be an investigation of the spacing of these things how many um how critical it is to do at a given age you know um and on and on.

01:55We could pick any vaccine for that reason. And as an immunologist, do any of those questions make sense to ask? I mean, I could see how, you know, bombarding the immune the young immune system with a lot of vaccines is a very different thing than spacing out the uh delivery of those vaccines.

02:13I'm not saying don't give them all. I'm saying over what time window does one give them? Yeah. I think a lot of people, many more people are asking that question. Yeah. It's just a quieter murmur than our um saying, "Listen, we don't want to take any of these things."

02:28Yeah. We don't want our kids to take any of these. Well, I present too. And I I think there's some fair aspect to which most of these vaccines were not studied in the context when they were studied of of what it does, you know, in in in combination and in these sorts of timings.

02:42The fact is that, you know, the the evidence that there's that there's bad things happening doesn't look to me, you know, tremendously strong. It's almost like anecdotal sort of information. So, unless it's your kid, unless it's your kid, in which case you're going to look for an explanation.

02:58So, I I don't know. Just being fair, as long as we're admitting psychology as a factor.

How Medical Protocols Are Designed

03:02Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, there there's fairness on both sides of that discussion. And I think I think that almost certainly where we are now, there's probably ways to put together vaccines and certainly more convenient ways. It's I I as a parent I I actually had something very similar where we delayed you know my first daughter's one of her vaccines partly because I know that that as a you know like there's a certain element to which when we design a protocol like the the protocol for imotherapy of cancer for patients was was actually based a little bit on the

03:32mouse work a lot on the mouse work that I did you can imagine that mice and humans are quite different but that is the protocol and protocol is protocol and that's how it's done in medicine and that's because you have a fairly good sense of the safety of it because of statistics But that isn't to say that it's the only protocol that would work.

03:46And I think you're getting at this concept of like could there be at least a more convenient one and also or safest or even one that is less disruptive to the lives of the children and the parents. I we we delayed one of our kids vaccines, you know, by just a month or something because uh she had not been feeling well just straight up.

04:03And it is true, you know, and I'd say that a couple of the vaccines that have come out that I've had recently, the shingles one is a good example. I had that has knocked me completely out and it, you know, it's very very heavily advented. It's clear that it's you know it's having to um does it does it need to be you know I actually don't know I don't know what studies were done and and there's kind of an aspect of which I don't know that we're all um being shielded from the information but I don't know that we all know how to read the information about how these regimens were chosen

04:31um some of them are chosen by competing pharma pharma companies that each make their own you know materials and you know again I think there's a there's a lot in this question I don't know how

Dogma In Science Communication

04:42much of it also represents the one problem of science that I could talk about is this um this issue that's a lot of science treat science as a kind of a papacy like we know the language we know the facts and and we probably don't have time to tell you why we think this and where where the holes are.

04:58Excuse me for interrupting but you know a huge basis of this podcast is to counter exactly that. I know. I mean, I know all these incredibly smart, incredibly well-meaning people who have lives of their own, health lives of their own, health challenges of their own, kids of their own, and on and on and no one was hearing from them.

05:19Yeah, it it was and as things get more politicized, there's less incentive to give nuance. I actually really appreciate you providing some nuance on the I mean it's clear where you stand on vaccines generally based on what you've said, but you're you're offering perhaps the opportunity for for better understanding and certainly delivery of the information.

05:38Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's a huge problem. Yeah. Well, I guess it's it's one of those ones that I can only speak about what I did, right, as a as a as a human when I had kids and I looked at the data and I have probably better capacity than some anyways to read it and look at risk versus harm, you know, the percentages of these things.

05:56I absolutely, you know, vaccinated kids and that was it seemed like it seems even now like a a reasonable no-brainer. But I just told you too that I I asked to go off protocol because at some point I know these protocols have a little bit of like again they were designed on a one study but it doesn't mean that it doesn't work if you wait another month.

06:14In fact if you do if you've done enough mouse experiments as I have you know that when you vaccinate on a slightly different schedule you can still end up with the same outcome you know that is protection you know with slightly different schedules.

06:23It's not that convenient for doctors and hospitals and and even sometimes for patients to get off on, you know, like weird schedule and then you forget a dose and then it isn't as effective, right? So there's there's efficacy that comes with, you know, trying to follow the protocol and because the protocol has [gasps] some convenience built into it that means you're going to do it.

06:41It's um it's like it's like brushing your teeth in the morning, you do it, the morning, the evening is affects when you do it and so you'll do it twice a day. So there's a lot in this. I mean, you know, there's a lot of politics, I think, involved in in vaccine 2 that relates to the question of like at what point can the government do tell you what to do, which is, you know, it's a it's a surrogate question to the vaccine one where a vaccine is, you know, if there's a harm, who gets to choose with the harm benefit and then resources are given out for like schools

07:10and you know, we know all these we know all these sort of nuances. From the science standpoint, I don't think you want to wipe out the baby with the bath water. I don't think you personally like I wouldn't not immunize my kids. Could there be additional studies about the combination of these into like fewer shots?

07:24I think so. I don't see why not. Here's where you get the financial res. What's the benefit to any pharma company of doing that? Well, I think this is again I I have to be careful that I don't place myself into an advocacy group that I'm not.

07:35I

Understanding Anti Big Pharma Sentiments

07:37I'm I look at everything on a case- by case basis. I really try to do that. But the, you know, and I've tried to be in recent years more open to the to at least understanding what the anti- big pharma stance is really about. You know, it comes up a lot around SSRIs, but you talk to somebody with clinical grade OCD and they will tell you that SSRI saved their life.

08:02So you go, okay, well, you know, so we can say all we want about pharma. Are you talking about people getting in taking insulin or, you know, and till recently the GLPs were mostly available through pharma? Now they're sort of it's kind of the wild west.

08:13People are micro doing them from all sorts of compoundingies as their own issues and so on. But my sense is that the frustration around the kind of dictatorial like you're going to do this at this point because this or else like your persona nonrada that kind of like people not people being shunned in both directions in either direction rather.

08:35That's you know that that's really the source of the problem. There there really hasn't ever been a conversation quite like this. Yeah, I agree. At least not one I've seen publicly. Yeah, there not a lot of labs that are going to devote themselves to this.

08:48People will wage the argument that and I don't know if this is actually true, but that the pharma companies are protected against lawsuits about vaccine injuries. Yeah. I mean, I think that probably is

Psychology Of Vaccine Injury Concerns

08:58frustrating to very frustrating, excuse me, to a parent whose kid seemed essentially fine, got a vaccine, and 3 days later started exhibiting symptoms that then set them off on a course that was um really really tragic. Yeah. Um and those groups are the ones that have accumulated the most oomph out there.

09:18And if you think about the those parents, it's totally understandable. Yeah. why they would feel that way, whether or not the basis of their feelings is exactly right. I can't speak to, but you can understand if your kid is one way, walked out of the doctor's office is is another way.

09:31And you can't do anything about it. That's got to be mad. I mean, beyond maddening and and and the question is what could you have done differently? I think is in those situations, having been in them, not that exact situation where you said, "Oh, now it's done and now it can't go backward."

09:47And you did that to them. This is the thing that well this is the thing I think that is not often discussed is that the the parents made that choice on the basis of what they thought was the best. So that there's a certain um guilt/ anger. I mean there's a whole psychology to it that's completely understandable.

10:04Yeah. [music] [music]