Lies, Damned Lies, and Suzanne Humphries (Part 2)

A Painfully Detailed Look at a Factually Bankrupt Episode of the Joe Rogan Experience

Part 1 can be found here.

Part II

Mercury in Vaccines (43:11-46:54)

Claim: Humphries makes several claims about mercury in vaccines, suggesting "if you were to drop a vaccine at a vaccine clinic onto the floor... The hazmat people have to come and take that away. Yet we're okay to take a portion of that vial and inject it into a child." She also claims there's no difference between ethylmercury and methylmercury, stating "all mercury is bad" and "once we demethylate mercury, it's in us until you do something like chelation."

Reality: These claims demonstrate a profound ignorance of the toxicology of thimerosal (a source of ethylmercury). Importantly, since 2001, thimerosal has been removed from or reduced to trace amounts in all vaccines routinely recommended for children 6 years of age and younger in the United States, with the exception of some multi-dose influenza vaccine vials to prevent contamination. This change was made as a precautionary measure, not because evidence showed harm at the doses used in vaccines. The major impetus for the removal of thimerosal was the finding that the cumulative amount of thimerosal from the vaccine schedule exceeded guidance for safe doses of methylmercury- but subsequent research demonstrated that the ethylmercury from thimerosal did not have the same toxicologic properties. It also cannot go unmentioned that before the use of preservatives in vaccines, it was not unusual to develop injection site abscesses, sepsis, and even die from vaccines because of contamination by microbes delivered via the injection for multi-dose vaccines- this problem was solved with preservatives.

Multiple studies have demonstrated significant differences between ethylmercury and methylmercury in how they're processed by the body. Thimerosal rapidly dissociates into ethylmercury and thiosalicyate once reaching the body. From there, ethylmercury can be metabolized into a free ethyl group and the mercury ion, but it does not get converted into methylmercury as Humphries suggests. Methylmercury is far more toxic than ethylmercury because it has markedly higher central nervous system penetration and much slower clearance. It should also be noted that concerns about thimerosal within vaccines as a source of toxicity are scientifically baseless. Blood mercury levels return to baseline within 30 days after vaccination, and studies have documented mercury elimination through stool samples after vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines. In 1929, after having documented its exceptionally potent antimicrobial properties, Eli Lilly attempted to use it to treat meningococcal meningitis, giving patients a dose of 1.8 mg thimerosal. The treatment did not succeed, but no toxicity was observed. Vaccines would contain up to 250 micrograms of thimerosal- a dose 7.2 times lower than what was given to the patients with meningococcal meningitis. Rabbits showed no evidence of toxicity even at doses as high as 20 mg/kg of body weight (for a 5 kg infant, 250 micrograms of thimerosal is 0.05 mg/kg).

The claim about hazmat teams for vaccine spills is completely fabricated. There is nothing remotely close to the amount of thimerosal which would require a hazmat team to remove. You can even safely clean mercury thermometers if they break open- the EPA explains how here.

Humphries does demonstrate a basic awareness of the purpose of thimerosal as a preservative, but, astonishingly, goes on to claim that it was added to MMR, which is a truly indicting remark for her credibility to opine on vaccines. Thimerosal has never been in MMR. It doesn’t need to be- vials for MMR are single-dose, so there isn’t a risk of contamination from having to successively draw up the vaccine each time.

🧠 Bottom line: Humphries's claims about thimerosal in vaccines are misleading and scientifically inaccurate. Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines on theoretical grounds as a precaution, not due to proven harm, and the ethylmercury in thimerosal is far less toxic than methylmercury. Studies show no significant toxicity from the levels used in vaccines, and the claims about hazmat teams and thimerosal in MMR are completely fabricated. The history and toxicology of thimerosal in vaccines are well-documented and have been thoroughly researched.

COVID-19 Vaccines (54:60-57:56, 1:35:54-1:38:58)

Claim: Humphries makes numerous unsupported claims about COVID-19 vaccines, particularly regarding pregnancy. She states: "We know that it ruins stem cells in pregnant women. They don't give stem cells to their babies. The industry is upset because the placentas no longer have stem cells... They're not getting them anymore because what the COVID shots did to the placentas and those infants." She also claims that COVID vaccines are now recommended for six-month-old babies without any scientific basis.

Reality: These claims about COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy are completely unfounded and contradicted by substantial scientific evidence. Multiple large-scale studies demonstrate that COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy do not increase the risk of poor infant outcomes, and furthermore, are protective against COVID-19 in infants. As to the risks of vaccination in pregnancy, multiple large studies find that COVID-19 is particularly dangerous in pregnancy, the vaccine protects against COVID-19 in pregnancy, and is not associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Humphries is engaging in special pleading by prioritizing in vitro data over clinical outcomes here by focusing on a single study (a frequent feature of her comments and of pseudoscience grifters in general). As to this in vitro/ex vivo study, it concludes that the vaccine substantially reduces hematopoietic stem progenitor cells (HSPCs) in cord blood. That would be extremely alarming but several aspects cast significant doubts on that claim, aside from the clinical data. Firstly, cord blood from vaccinees was smaller in the number of samples than from the SARS-CoV-2 infected and control groups, which prevented the team from carrying out multiple assays on the vaccinee cord blood stem cells and the limited number of samples creates statistical challenges in trying to do the comparison. In particular, figure 4 examined how HSPCs from cord blood differentiated into various cell types of the immune system- but it could not do this for vaccinee cord blood. HSPCs are famous for the fact that even a single HSPCs has the potential to completely reconstitute an entire immune system (but more cells will help ensure proper engraftment). Yet we don’t get to see what happens with the vaccinee cord blood samples. Additionally, Figure 2 of the paper examines apoptosis (programmed cell death) of the HSPCs across the conditions through the binding of annexin V (which recognizes apoptotic cells), finding it to be highest for the vaccinee cord blood. However, the annexin V positivity is suspiciously high for the control group (20-30%), which implies that there is some issue in terms of how HSPCs are handled by this team because that should not be the case. Additionally, looking solely at cord blood in vaccinees does not inform us about the HSPCs that are inside the actual fetus (e.g., could there be lower levels in cord blood because they migrated into the fetal circulation already?). If there were this detrimental effect clinically that Humphries is insisting exists, how it would translate to outcomes would not be clear without knowing about the effects on fetal hematopoiesis. Reduced cord blood HSPCs could be problematic for blood banking, but low numbers of HSPCs are always a problem with cord blood, and for that reason, if they are used, they undergo expansion ex vivo to increase their numbers. Ultimately though, the clinical data are king- there is no evidence of any harm to the pregnant people or fetuses that are vaccinated during pregnancy and it is shown to protect against COVID-19.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and other major medical organizations strongly support COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy based on robust safety data and the substantial risks posed by COVID-19 in this cohort.

Regarding recommendations for children, the decision to authorize COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months was based on clinical trials demonstrating safety and efficacy in this age group, not arbitrary decision-making as Humphries implies. The risk-benefit analysis for children has been thoroughly evaluated by the FDA, CDC, and independent advisory committees, with data showing that benefits outweigh potential risks, especially for prevention of severe disease. People tend to fixate on the fact that children are not the elderly, so COVID-19 does not matter in them since their outcomes are so much better than for the elderly. However, COVID-19 was a leading cause of death in Americans under 19 through to the emergence of Omicron, and even in the latest data, the group with the highest hospitalization rate for COVID-19 second to the elderly are infants under 6 months. It is difficult to comprehend why we would elect to leave babies unprotected when the threat to their health from COVID-19 is clearly nontrivial.

🧠 Bottom line: Humphries's claims about COVID-19 vaccines harming placentas or fetal development are not only unsupported by evidence but directly contradicted by multiple large-scale studies specifically designed to monitor pregnancy outcomes after vaccination. Her statements represent dangerous misinformation that could lead pregnant women to avoid vaccination, placing them at substantially higher risk from COVID-19 infection.

SV40 and Cancer (1:16:45-1:35:54)

Claim: Humphries claims that SV40 (Simian Virus 40) was present in polio vaccines and is now "the perfect war machine" for cancer. She adds: "All cancers in humanity have gone up since the inception of vaccination" and suggests SV40 from vaccines causes kidney cancer and other malignancies. She claims that SV40 is now spread person-to-person and "we're all infected." She also alludes to shoddy work that alleges that SV40 sequences are present in the mRNA vaccines and pose a risk of cancer.

Reality: This has been discussed ad nauseam because it’s one of the zombie anti-vaccine points refuted a thousand times, aka PRATTs (for instance: here, here, and here).

While SV40 contamination in some polio vaccines between 1955 and 1963 is a documented historical fact, Humphries dramatically misrepresents the evidence regarding its health impacts. Extensive epidemiological studies, examining cancer incidence in populations exposed to potentially contaminated vaccines found no increased cancer risk associated with these vaccines.

The claim that "all cancers have gone up since vaccination" is simply untrue and very easy to disprove. For instance, the incidence of stomach cancer over time has gone down; cervical cancer rates have also dropped- an effect probably attributable to HPV vaccines. Nonetheless, cancer rates have been influenced by numerous factors including increased longevity, improved detection methods, environmental exposures, and lifestyle changes. The dramatic increase in smoking rates throughout the 20th century, for example, had a far more documented impact on cancer rates than any vaccine.

Furthermore, the most important risk factor for cancer is age, and since life expectancy has increased over time (save the last few years), more people will be diagnosed with cancer. In the same vein, screening practices evolve to maximize capture of cancer, ideally at earlier stages, so that it can be intervened upon to ensure a good outcome.

The claim that we are all infected with SV40 is demonstrably false. One challenge with studying SV40 is that it is a polyomavirus and there are other polyomaviruses that do infect humans and are very similar structurally to SV40, such that antibodies cross-react between them, which can give the illusion of SV40-elicited antibodies. However, wastewater monitoring frequently identifies human-infecting polyomaviruses, but not SV40. Additionally, depletion of antibodies recognizing other polyomaviruses drastically reduces antibody reactivity to SV40, suggesting that positive results are driven by crossreactivity with other polyomaviruses. Finally, SV40 has a critical place in the history of molecular biology, and so many reagents contain DNA sequences from SV40; contamination of tumor samples with these reagents gives the erroneous conclusion that SV40 DNA is present in tumors, which would suggest a risk of cancer.

🧠 Bottom line: The claim that SV40 contamination in polio vaccines led to a cancer epidemic is heavily misrepresented. Extensive studies show no increased cancer risk from the contaminated vaccines. Cancer rates have been influenced by factors like age, improved screening, lifestyle changes, and environmental exposures like smoking. The idea that SV40 is widespread in humans is false, as it is often confused with other polyomaviruses. The association between SV40 and cancer is based on cross-reactivity and contamination issues in historical research, not a direct cause-effect relationship.

Autism and MMR Vaccine (1:57:50-2:03:24)

Claim: Humphries defends Andrew Wakefield, claiming he was unfairly vilified and that his research actually demonstrated a connection between MMR vaccines, autism, and intestinal inflammation. She states: "He published this paper, which remained in the journal for 12 years... All he said is, I did biopsies. I saw this. And this is possibly a connection... the vaccine virus was in that biopsy, and it was. It wasn't a wild virus."

Reality: Humphries fundamentally misrepresents both Wakefield's research and the extensive body of evidence regarding MMR and autism. A comprehensive discussion of Wakefield’s fraud can be found in Brian Deer’s The Doctor Who Fooled the World; here we will only attempt an abridged summary.

Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper was retracted not because of controversy but because of specific ethical violations and methodological problems, including undisclosed conflicts of interest and falsified data. Contrary to Humphries's characterization, the fraud did more than suggest "further research" - it explicitly linked MMR vaccination temporally to the onset of behavioral symptoms, despite having no evidence for such a causal relationship.

Most critically, Wakefield's findings have been thoroughly investigated and refuted by numerous large-scale epidemiological studies. A meta-analysis in the journal Vaccine examining studies covering more than 14.7 million children found no relationship between vaccines and autism. Similarly, a comprehensive Danish study of 657,461 children published in Annals of Internal Medicine found no increased risk of autism after MMR vaccination.

The claim that vaccine strain measles virus was found in intestinal biopsies of children with autism has not been replicated by independent researchers. Multiple studies attempting to find such evidence, including a case-control study published in PLoS ONE using sensitive molecular techniques, found no evidence of persistent measles virus in children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms.

It also cannot go unsaid that the way Humphries discusses autistic people is profoundly ableist and dehumanizing, reducing their entire identity to stimming behaviors and toileting habits, in an extremely casual, matter-of-fact manner. For all the concern they raise about autism, anti-vaccine activists are remarkably passive about speaking up for accommodations and support for autistic people- because they don’t actually care about them. Furthermore, profferring nostrums that you can prevent autism both implies that parents are somehow at fault for their child being autistic and that there is something fundamentally wrong with autistic people, and it is exploitative of parents.

🧠 Bottom line: Humphries's defense of Wakefield omits critical information about his ethical violations and financial conflicts of interest while ignoring the overwhelming body of evidence contradicting his claims. It is unconscionable that anyone would defend the actions of Wakefield given how much public health devastation he has wrought from the fraudulent work he attempted to use to enrich himself at the expense of patients and study participants. This selective presentation creates a blatantly false representation about both Wakefield's work and the extensively studied relationship between vaccines and autism.

Tetanus Vaccine (2:08:50-2:13:26)

Claim: Humphries makes several misleading claims about tetanus and tetanus vaccines: "Being vaccinated for tetanus is not necessarily security against not getting tetanus," "tetanus has been treated," and "the delayed onset. So the earlier your symptoms come on, the worse the tetanus is going to be." She recommends "high doses of magnesium, high doses of vitamin C, local wound care" as treatment.

Reality: These statements greatly misrepresent tetanus prevention and treatment in dangerous ways. Tetanus vaccination is extremely effective at preventing disease, with efficacy estimated at 95-100% for complete vaccination series. While no vaccine provides 100% protection, characterizing tetanus vaccination as "not necessarily security" vastly understates its effectiveness and could discourage life-saving immunization.

Humphries's claim about treating established tetanus with vitamin C is not supported. While tetanus is indeed treatable with modern intensive care, it remains a severe disease with 10-20% mortality even with optimal treatment in high-resource settings. The disease takes on several forms, but generalized tetanus is the most common and most severe one. This is defined by uncontrollable muscle contractions that cannot be relaxed, potentially even breaking bones through those contractions, and arresting breathing if the toxin reaches the diaphragm. Tetanus also causes profound autonomic instability, meaning patients with tetanus can experience unstable body temperatures, rapid heartbeat, and elevated blood pressure. Treatment once symptoms begin typically involves wound care to try to clear out as much of the bacteria as possible, tetanus immune globulin to neutralize any toxin that has not yet made its way into cells, muscle relaxants, sedation, ventilatory support for when tetanus begins to compromise respiratory function. Though tetanus is caused by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, which can be killed with antibiotics, the disease is driven by production of a toxin (tetanospasmin) and the disease will not resolve until the toxin is cleared (which takes weeks), meaning that antibiotics can help to terminate the replication of the bacteria so that toxin does not continue to be produced, they will not treat the actual clinical signs of tetanus. In the same vein, prophylactic antibiotics are not shown to be effective for preventing tetanus. Humphries is correct that magnesium can be used to help treat tetanus by reducing muscle spasms and autonomic instability, but it does not negate the need for mechanical ventilation.

One of the most alarming things about tetanus is that even if you recover from the disease (not a trivial task) the dose of toxin needed to produce life-threatening illness is so low that you do not generate an antibody response to it, which means you are not protected from another bout of tetanus simply by recovering. Furthermore, tetanus can be prevented with post-exposure vaccination: if a high-risk wound occurs (especially puncture wounds, such as those from animal bites), treatment with tetanus toxoid vaccines and tetanus immunoglobulin (administered at separate sites) is effective in preventing the disease. However, the time to the onset of symptoms depends greatly on where the wound is- the closer to the central nervous system the more rapidly symptoms will appear.

Humphries's statement about symptom onset timing does contain a kernel of truth - shorter incubation periods are generally associated with more severe disease, and the incubation period depends on the distance of the infected site from the central nervous system - but she frames this in a way that downplays the seriousness of tetanus and overemphasizes the role of alternative treatments that lack scientific support.

🧠 Bottom line: Tetanus vaccination is highly effective, with an efficacy rate of 95-100% for complete vaccination. While vitamin C is not supported as a treatment for tetanus, the disease is treatable with modern care, but mortality remains high without proper treatment. Tetanus is caused by a toxin, and antibiotics can’t cure the clinical signs of the disease. Even recovering from tetanus doesn’t provide immunity, so vaccination is crucial. Post-exposure vaccination with tetanus toxoid and immunoglobulin can prevent the disease if administered in high-risk cases. Humphries' portrayal of tetanus vaccination and treatment understates the effectiveness of vaccines and overemphasizes unsupported alternative treatments.

Tobacco and Medical History (~12:24)

Claim: "Blowing smoke up people's butts" came from recommendations to smoke cigarettes.

Reality: This claim about medical history is incorrect. Humphries says this practice began in the 1970s, but it was actually an ancient practice throughout the old world and particularly among Native Americans. It was also used at one time for resuscitation of drowning victims.

While a small detail that isn't directly relevant to the content of the episode, it is emblematic of how consistently shoddy Humphries is in her presentation of medical history and medicine.

The "Sanitation Myth" - A Perfect Example of Humphries's Misleading Approach

One of Humphries's core arguments—that diseases declined primarily due to improved sanitation rather than vaccines—perfectly illustrates her method of misrepresenting data to support predetermined conclusions. This claim has been thoroughly debunked.

• Yes, sanitation had a huge impact—especially on waterborne illnesses like cholera and dysentery. The introduction of modern sewage systems and chlorination in the early 1900s dramatically reduced these infections.

• But respiratory diseases persisted: Even with sanitation improvements, respiratory pathogens (like measles and pertussis) continued to cause massive outbreaks—until vaccines were introduced.

If improved sanitation and hygiene alone eliminated vaccine-preventable diseases, we would expect all these diseases to disappear around the same time. Instead, we see a clear pattern: diseases disappeared when their specific vaccines were introduced and widely administered. As Vincent Fonseca, MD, a public health and preventable medicine specialist states, "Out of all the anti-vax arguments, it's the easiest to prove that it's simply not true."

Consider the timeline of disease elimination in the United States:

• Yellow fever (1905)

• Polio (1979)

• Smallpox (1980)

• Measles (2000)

• Neonatal tetanus (2000)

• Congenital rubella syndrome (2004)

• Respiratory diphtheria (2009)

Perhaps the most compelling evidence is chickenpox. Despite significant improvements in sanitation throughout the 20th century, chickenpox continued to infect about 4 million Americans annually in the early 1990s. After vaccine introduction in 1995, cases dropped by approximately 85% by 2004. Why would better sanitation and hygiene only prevent chickenpox in countries that routinely use the chickenpox vaccine?

More Recent Evidence:

• The ongoing measles outbreak in the U.S. isn’t due to poor sanitation—it is due to declining vaccine coverage and missed immunization thresholds for herd immunity.

• COVID-19 spread and killed over 1 million Americans despite our excellent sanitation. It spread because it was highly transmissible and we initially had no vaccine.

Furthermore, infectious disease outbreaks drain hospital resources and lead to indirect increases in deaths from other causes. Vaccination helps flatten these burdens.

Humphries's ability to present misleading information persuasively—as with her "fancy graphs" showing disease decline—demonstrates why her claims require thorough scrutiny and fact-checking.

Miscellaneous Other Errors by Humphries

1. Humphries alludes to cocker spaniel kidney cells used for manufacturing vaccines, describing them as “tumorous.” The cells she is referring to are a cell strain known as Madin-Darby canine kidney cells and they do not derive from cancer cells. Many cell lines used in cell culture are derived from cancers, such as HeLa cells, so the error could be attributed to a momentary lapse. Nonetheless, it fits with the consistent sloppiness of Humphries’s adherence to facts throughout the episode.

2. Humphries suggests that we are still using animal vaccines (in the smallpox sense): We have not used the animal vaccine method in decades (it stopped completely once Dryvax was phased out which was in 2008). Vaccines today are made aseptically through cell/tissue culture using a suitable cell strain or in some cases culturing in embryonated chicken eggs.

3. Humphries states “anytime there’s inflammation, anything can cross the blood-brain barrier” (BBB): This is farcical. Transport of substances across the BBB is still an unsolved problem despite decades of research. The role of inflammation in blood-brain barrier function is nuanced. For you to get any increase in BBB permeability requires prolonged, sustained inflammation. The early response to systemic inflammation involves microglia migrating to the CNS vasculature to promote integrity of the BBB. Sustained, chronic inflammation can increase its permeability, but this is not the situation with vaccination. The BBB can be made more permeable from inflammation within the central nervous system. This might occur in multiple neurologic diseases e.g., Alzheimer’s and can occur from infection of the central nervous system (meningitis, encephalitis). Notably, Humphries’ phrasing implies that the blood-brain barrier essentially becomes porous as soon as there’s inflammation- but this is not what happens. If this were to occur, it would immediately trigger vasogenic edema which is a medical emergency that is fatal in a matter of hours if not corrected. Some defects in BBB function are seen in multiple sclerosis, but this is not “true” BBB opening in the sense that the BBB is not suddenly porous; rather it allows immune cells to enter the CNS whereas they are normally excluded. This is because inflammation induces the production of cytokines that enable immune cells to adhere to the vessel walls and then migrate between them.

   

   Marchetti, Luca, and Britta Engelhardt. “Immune Cell Trafficking across the Blood-Brain Barrier in the Absence and Presence of Neuroinflammation.” Vascular Biology, vol. 2, no. 1, Apr. 2020, pp. H1–18. vb.bioscientifica.com, https://doi.org/10.1530/VB-19-0033

4. Humphries engages in artificial inflation of the number of vaccine doses children get, claiming that we are in the 70s: Children get more vaccine doses today than they did years ago because we can protect them against more diseases. Humphries’s approach involves counting each individual antigen of the vaccines as a separate vaccine (e.g., DTaP is counted as 3 vaccines because it covers diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis). In reality, most vaccines, particularly those given at the beginning of life, are given as combination vaccines, which reduces the number, sparing kiddos extra shots. Ultimately, this number is a distraction meant to overshadow the fact that the current vaccine schedule lets us protect children from more diseases than the vaccine schedule of previous generations. It is also intended to feed into unfounded anxieties about a child’s immune system’s capacity to maintain memory against all that it encounters. If you were to get a sense of how much memory is devoted to the vaccination schedule, you would not be counting vaccine doses, but rather you would be counting the number of antigens- the specific things the immune system is tasked with remembering. This number has actually dropped substantially over time. The whole cell pertussis vaccine alone contained about 3000 antigens, and the smallpox vaccine was about 200. Today, if you add up all of the distinct antigens children would get from the childhood vaccination schedule to age 18 (counting each unique antigen once), you would get 179. If you so much as scrape your knee, you will be exposed to FAR more unique antigens than the cumulative number that you get from the entire vaccination schedule.

5. Humphries claims that there is a link between smallpox vaccination and tuberculosis, with two of Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccination study participants having died from tuberculosis: There are isolated case reports of tuberculosis occurring with receipt of the smallpox vaccine, but a clear relationship between the two is not described in the epidemiology for each disease. ACAM2000 is noted to be able to cause falsely negative tuberculin skin tests for 1 month following vaccination, but this is not sufficient to demonstrate that smallpox induces tuberculosis reactivation (no such warning is affixed to the package insert of Jynneos). None of Jenner’s smallpox study participants are reported to have died, whether due to tuberculosis or any other condition. His wife and son, however, did die of tuberculosis. It is possible she is confusing the incident with a tragedy in 1902 wherein smallpox animal vaccines were contaminated with tetanus and administered, killing 9 children.

6. Humphries points out that Jenner’s study was not a randomized-controlled trial in an attempt to suggest no vaccine is properly studied: Jenner’s vaccine trial today is mostly a point of historical interest. It’s true that Jenner’s study was a case series. However, the concept of a randomized controlled trial didn’t even exist at all until 1747 with James Lind’s scurvy study, and the concept of a placebo didn’t really exist until the early 1800s. It wasn’t until 1863 that we had a true randomized placebo-controlled trial using an herbal extract to examine its effects on rheumatism in 13 patients. Jenner’s methods were not unreasonable for the time period given the available knowledge base for conducting research. It’s also a moot point and a distraction because since the era of Jenner we have had multiple randomized controlled trials of smallpox vaccines (as well as every vaccine routinely offered on the schedule).

7. Humphries claims that ACIP is financially compromised: This is the height of irony because Secretary Kennedy’s recent venture into revealing all conflicts of interest ever held by ACIP members immediately demonstrated the exact opposite of this.

8. Humphries claims we have a lot of subclinical scurvy: Subclinical scurvy is not a thing. You can have vitamin C deficiency by labs without it having yet developed into scurvy, and you can have varying degrees of severity within scurvy. In the US, vitamin C deficiency does exist, but it’s not super common- about 7% of all participants in the 2017-2018 NHANES survey were found to have vitamin C deficiency, with substantial variation among different subgroups (nearly 15% of smokers were found to be vitamin C deficient).

9. Humphries claims that focal segmental glomerulosclerosis requires chemotherapy to treat: Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis is a condition in which some factor in the serum induces a process known as podocyte foot process effacement which essentially compromises the ability of the kidney to control what flows into it for filtration, causing major loss of proteins and other substances in the urine. This is accompanied by the deposition of extracellular matrix into the kidney’s glomeruli (the ball of capillaries that deliver blood to the nephron- the functional unit in the kidney). It is caused by some toxic factor in the serum but that factor has not been identified definitively and it may have multiple precipitating toxic factors. The treatment of this condition does not involve chemotherapy. Rather, the cornerstone of treatment is immunosuppression with either calcineurin inhibitors or glucocorticoids, neither of which are chemotherapy as well as blockade of the renin-angiotensin system. This is a very unusual error for a nephrologist (or former nephrologist) to make.

10. Humphries promotes the use of homeopathy at several points: Homeopathy is the idea that water has a memory and can retain the properties of substances dissolved in it- and the more diluted the substances are, the more potent the preparation is. It is absolutely fascinating in that its own principles are self-contradictory, and any benefit observed with it is entirely explainable by placebo effects. The dilutions used in homeopathy are so extensive that there is not a single molecule of the proposed active ingredient in the preparations. It’s also rather odd that the water remembers just the medicine that you diluted in it and not all the excrement it has come into contact with at some point in its existence.

11. Humphries mentions treating multiple tetanus cases: There are several major concerns here before even getting into how she claims to have treated the tetanus patients. The first is that tetanus is extremely uncommon today and a reportable disease, so it is very unusual that Humphries would see multiple cases at all as patients- it would be unusual even if she saw just one. Moreover, as a former nephrologist, Humphries is not the appropriate specialist to be managing cases of tetanus (that would be emergentologists, intensivists, infectious disease, pulmonologists- experts who deal in organisms or body parts that tetanus specifically affects). This would suggest that Humphries is practicing far outside of her scope of practice as a nephrologist. There is, of course, a third possibility: she’s lying.

12. Humphries claims that there was a CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) in 1984 that prohibited questioning vaccine safety: To the best of our ability to tell she is referring to this, and no such language appears in the Federal Register. What it actually says is:
    “Because the [polio] vaccine used in the initial clinical trials was not neurovirulent in the subjects tested and because the oral poliovirus vaccine currently in use in the United States is safe and effective, FDA has concluded that it is in the best interest of the public health to amend § 630.11 to eliminate the unnecessary requirement that the vaccine used in clinical trials show satisfactory Results in all tests applicable to lots used in clinical trials, and thus avert any possible loss of confidence in the polio immunization program.” Which is very much not what Humphries implies it says.

13. Humphries claims that Fauci and Morens admitted that the COVID-19 vaccines would never have been licensed if they were held to the standards of DTP: Fauci, Taubenberger, and Morens have a perspective in which they discuss the challenges of immunizing against rapidly evolving mucosal pathogens, and they note that a limitation of the mRNA vaccines is that they don’t elicit mucosal immunity within the respiratory tract effectively. They never once suggest that mRNA vaccines are not effective or not safe enough to warrant licensure- because that would be incorrect.

14. Humphries claims that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein interacts with nicotinic receptors and can use them as receptors: This has been demonstrated to be false.

15. Humphries claims that smokers fared better against SARS-CoV-2 and they have a change in the polarity of their mucous membranes which promotes resistance: While very early data from the pandemic did suggest smoking reduced the risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection, subsequent systematic reviews demonstrated the opposite. The remark on changing cell polarity is difficult to parse. Cell polarity refers to the orientation of epithelial cells in terms of their apical and basolateral surfaces. In the case of the respiratory epithelium, the apical surface faces the lumen, and the basolateral surface anchors the epithelium to the basement membrane. If the cell polarity shifted, you would simply exhale your respiratory epithelium because it would no longer be anchored to the basement membrane. This would greatly compromise your ability to protect against respiratory infection.

16. Humphries misrepresents Original Antigenic Sin (OAS): Original antigenic sin describes the phenomenon in which prior immune memory to one antigen influences the immune response to a related antigen. Usually, OAS is used to refer to the version of this known as negative interference, in which the prior immune memory suppresses responses against the new structural features the immune system has never seen before (though authors are inconsistent in how they use the term)- the more neutral terms include imprinting, primary addiction, and antigenic seniority. In her discussion of original antigenic sin, Humphries started by saying that it was renamed linked epitope suppression (LES). These are not quite the same thing. In general, OAS refers to suppression of responses to a single antigen. LES describes suppression of responses to antigens physically linked to the one we have memory too. For instance, the acellular pertussis vaccines have 2-5 antigens (depending on the specific vaccine), and if one were to introduce whole cell pertussis vaccines again, which have about 3000 antigens, it would be difficult for the immune system to generate responses against the new antigens because the immunity to the antigens present in both the acellular and whole cell vaccine enable the whole cell vaccine to be cleared too rapidly to generate a response against the new antigens. Humphries then proceeds to conflate OAS with antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). ADE is a situation in which there is bona fide negative vaccine efficacy. It occurs only with specific pathogens (mainly Dengue) and only when antibodies are at a goldilocks level in which they bind, but do not neutralize (block infection) of the microbe. This leads to enhanced replication of the microbe within the cells of the immune system. In the case of dengue, it is generally accepted that there are 4 strains which do not generate effective cross-protection. If a person is initially infected with DENV1 and then gets infected with DENV4, they would be at risk for severe dengue through ADE. In this case, OAS synergizes with ADE to make the situation worse. However, in general, there isn’t compelling clinical evidence that OAS reduces vaccine effectiveness, even if it may reduce antibody responses. For instance, the example often brought up in discussing “harmful” OAS is the 1918 pandemic, which was infamous for its unusual W-shaped mortality curve: mortality as greatest in the extremes of age and those 20-40 at the time of the pandemic. Seroarchaeology has reconstructed the strains of influenza circulating beforehand and suggested that both the eldest and the youngest would have had partial protection from H1N1 from first encountering H1N8, whereas those in the 20-40 age group would have had immunity biased by exposure to H3N8- which does not share either hemagglutinin or neuraminidase subtypes. However, rather than the suggestion that immunity to H3N8 harmed their protection from influenza, it is equally consistent with the data that exposure to H1N8 made individuals more resistant to H1N1, without needing to invoke a deleterious effect of immune memory.

17. Humphries implies that we should not be attempting to lower our cholesterol levels, saying that cholesterol is trying to save us: This is possibly the single most dangerous remark Humphries makes in the entire podcast. It is not even a question in the field of cardiology that LDL-cholesterol causes heart disease- the evidence is overwhelming. We have also seen that lipid-lowering therapies (namely, statins) reduce all-cause mortality. Telling people not to lower their elevated LDL-C will needlessly shorten the lifespan of those unfortunate enough to believe her.

Understanding Vaccine Opposition and Humphries' Position

To understand why Humphries promotes views that contradict established medical consensus, it's important to consider several factors that drive vaccine opposition more broadly. Humphries's trajectory from medicine to anti-vaccine prophetfiteer follows patterns observed in other medical professionals who adopt similar positions.

Several motivating factors may contribute to the promotion of anti-vaccine views:

1. Personal experiences and cognitive biases: Humphries has cited personal observations of patients experiencing kidney issues after vaccination as a formative experience in her denialism. Confirmation bias can lead to overemphasis of anecdotal cases while dismissing systematic evidence to the contrary. This selective attention to rare temporal associations while ignoring the vast body of controlled studies represents a fundamental misapplication of scientific reasoning.

2. Alternative health paradigms: Many vaccine-skeptical physicians embrace alternative health frameworks that fundamentally differ from evidence-based medicine. These approaches often prioritize "natural" immunity and skepticism of pharmaceutical interventions. Humphries has become associated with homeopathy and other alternative practices that exist outside mainstream medical paradigms - practices that lack rigorous evidence of efficacy yet are often marketed as superior to medicine.

3. Distrust of pharmaceutical industry: Legitimate concerns about pharmaceutical industry practices may evolve into broader distrust of all pharmaceutical products, including vaccines. This distrust can lead to conflating legitimate critiques of industry practices with unfounded skepticism about well-established vaccine science. However, vaccines are among the most strictly regulated and studied medical interventions precisely because they're given to healthy people, including children.

4. Identity and community: The anti-vaccine movement provides a strong community and identity, particularly for professionals who leave medicine, who are embraced as “brave truthtellers.” These communities often provide validation, speaking opportunities, book deals, and other forms of recognition that reinforce continued advocacy of these positions. They offer a sense of belonging. Once someone like Humphries becomes identified as an "expert" within these circles, there are powerful social and psychological incentives to maintain that position.

5. Financial and professional interests: The wellness and alternative medicine industry represents a multi-trillion dollar market that can benefit from promoting vaccine skepticism. While individual motivations vary, promoting vaccine skepticism often aligns with selling alternative health products, books, speaking engagements, and consultations. Humphries's own economic incentives may have shifted from medical practice to a career based on challenging mainstream medical views, and throughout this podcast episode she transparently advertises selling her book as the incentive behind her appearance.

Conclusion

As scientists and medical professionals, it strained our grip on sanity to watch a former physician with fringe views receive an enormous platform to spread dangerous misinformation that contradicts the overwhelming scientific consensus established through countless rigorous studies, particularly when that former physician has not contributed to the advancement of that evidence base. It is no less disappointing that Joe Rogan continues to elevate these harbingers of harm, when wielding a platform of his size could be used to accomplish much good.

The stakes are not merely academic. When figures like Humphries acquire influence and disseminate anti-vaccine propaganda that is utterly unmoored from reality, they contribute to hesitancy that has real consequences—from measles outbreaks in unvaccinated communities to preventable suffering and death. What's particularly disheartening is that when these outbreaks occur, the burden of those diseases will disproportionately fall on children who did not make the choice to not protect themselves, instead having to rely on parents who, however well-intentioned, are misled by people like Humphries. It is a profoundly cynical, venal thing to generate your livelihood on promoting the interests of infectious diseases- and it is exactly what Humphries is doing.

Understanding the motivations behind vaccine hesitancy does not legitimize the spread of misinformation. What makes Humphries's approach particularly dangerous is her selective use of data, presented with the authority of her medical credentials, to support conclusions that contradict the vast body of scientific evidence.

As scientists and healthcare professionals committed to evidence-based medicine, we will continue to push back against misinformation while working to maintain public trust in one of medicine's greatest achievements. Vaccines remain one of our most effective tools for preventing disease and have undergone rigorous safety and efficacy testing. Their benefits far outweigh their risks, and they have been instrumental in dramatically reducing morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases worldwide.

The pandemic demonstrated both the incredible potential of vaccines—developed in record time to save millions of lives—and the devastating consequences when misinformation undermines their acceptance. Public health requires not just scientific innovation but also a commitment to communicating accurate information, even when faced with the superficially compelling rhetoric of those who would undermine it. Part of that means you have to speak out when people are being endangered.