0:06

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This

0:09

is Sam

0:09

Harris. Just a

0:11

note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently

0:14

on our subscriber feed and will only be

0:16

hearing the first part of this conversation. In

0:18

order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

0:20

podcast, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org.

0:24

There you'll find our private RSS feed to add

0:26

to your favorite podcatcher, along with other subscriber-only

0:29

content. We don't run ads on the

0:31

podcast, and therefore it's made possible

0:33

entirely through the support of our subscribers. So

0:36

if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider

0:38

becoming one.

0:46

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast.

0:49

This is Sam Harris. Okay,

0:52

well, in the last housekeeping,

0:55

I said I would say something

0:57

about the RFK phenomenon.

1:00

I'm not going to spend too much time on this. At

1:03

the moment, I don't think it merits an

1:06

especially deep treatment,

1:08

but I think there's something

1:11

that should be said, because RFK has been

1:13

everywhere of late, and

1:16

I declined to have him on this podcast. At

1:18

one point, a mutual friend reached out, offering

1:21

to put us together, and I declined for

1:24

the time being. You know, perhaps I will

1:26

talk to him at some point, but I

1:29

hope it doesn't come to that. But

1:31

he's spoken to Rogan and Jordan Peterson

1:33

and Barry Weiss and Bill Maher and

1:36

Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson,

1:38

I think. He was on the All In podcast,

1:42

and some of the hosts there threw a fundraiser

1:44

for him for his presidential campaign.

1:47

All of these people are friends or

1:50

friends of friends or former friends,

1:52

except for Tucker Carlson,

1:54

who, as I pointed out

1:56

a few podcasts back, is just

1:59

a well-known figure. established liar.

2:01

I don't know how anyone is

2:04

holding him up as an honest broker

2:06

of information, but all these people

2:09

to one or another degree failed

2:11

to understand the problem with

2:14

platforming a person like Robert

2:17

Kennedy Jr. And this term

2:19

platforming is now stigmatized

2:22

as somehow being at odds with

2:24

a commitment to free speech, right?

2:27

Only someone who doesn't support free speech or

2:29

who doesn't understand that sunlight is the best

2:32

disinfectant would worry about

2:35

platforming a person like RFK

2:38

or anyone else, right? Why not just talk

2:40

to anybody? What could go wrong? What

2:42

are you afraid of?

2:44

Admittedly, this becomes somewhat understandable

2:47

when a person is running for president and

2:49

polling, at least according to one poll,

2:52

higher than any other person in

2:54

the Democratic party.

2:56

So yes, when someone is garnering

2:58

that kind of public support

3:01

or apparent support, it is newsworthy

3:04

and the argument for talking

3:06

to them is easier to make. But

3:08

then you have to do the hard work of

3:10

real journalism, right?

3:12

You can't just put a microphone in front of the guy

3:14

for a few hours and hope that your bullshit

3:16

detector is going to go off at the right time.

3:19

And the truth is, even if you do

3:21

your homework, you can't know

3:24

in real time, you certainly can't establish

3:26

in real time that someone is lying,

3:29

right? And so with certain

3:31

people, and I'm afraid to say that RFK

3:33

appears to be one of these people, there's

3:36

such a pattern of misrepresentation

3:39

with respect to facts that

3:42

you just have to decide in advance that

3:44

a person can't be trusted to

3:47

speak honestly about important topics.

3:49

And so yes, it becomes irresponsible

3:53

to platform such people. And

3:55

I'll show you an example of this in a moment. But

3:58

the general point to make here is that

4:00

there's no good reason to talk

4:02

to RFK about vaccines

4:05

and vaccine safety and vaccine

4:08

science because he's not

4:10

a scientist and he's not a doctor.

4:14

He's a lawyer and an activist,

4:17

and as a lawyer and an activist,

4:19

he has for the last 20 years

4:23

worked rather hard to create

4:25

a mood of suspicion with

4:27

respect to the scientific establishment. Although

4:29

ironically, he's also an environmental

4:31

activist,

4:32

and as Michael Schirmer has pointed out, he sings an entirely

4:35

different tune with respect to established

4:37

science on the topic of climate change.

4:40

He goes on and on about trusting the scientific

4:42

consensus there, and anyone

4:44

who doesn't is a crank. In fact, worse,

4:47

a crank who should be jailed.

4:49

RFK has actually said that anyone who spreads

4:52

misinformation about climate change

4:54

should be jailed, right, in particular

4:56

the Koch brothers.

4:57

On his account, they should be prosecuted for reckless

5:00

endangerment. Now, RFK is

5:02

a lawyer and he's well aware that we have a First Amendment that

5:04

protects people espousing

5:07

their bad ideas, but he thinks that the relevant

5:09

corporations and think tanks

5:11

that don't have personal First Amendment

5:14

protections should be prosecuted and

5:16

destroyed. Right, this is Exxon

5:18

and Koch Industries and the Cato

5:20

Institute and the Heritage Foundation and

5:23

the Heartland Institute and the American

5:25

Enterprise Institute, all of these organizations

5:28

should be destroyed on his account.

5:30

And anyone who's playing the same just-asking-questions

5:32

routine he's playing with respect to vaccines,

5:35

but doing it on the topic of climate change,

5:38

he wishes we had a law

5:40

that would allow us to prosecute these people,

5:42

because on his account they should be enjoying

5:45

three hots and a cot at the Hague

5:47

with the other war criminals. Right, those are his

5:49

words. Right, so all you free

5:51

speech absolutists who insist upon the wisdom of

5:53

platforming the sky at every opportunity might

5:56

want to reflect on his commitment

5:59

to free speech. Again, this man

6:01

is an activist and a lawyer, and

6:04

lawyers have very different relationships

6:07

to making arguments

6:08

than scientists do.

6:11

So on each of these podcasts, he

6:13

has spread a host of

6:15

wacky ideas, some

6:18

of which may in the fullness of time

6:20

turn out to be true, but most

6:22

of which certainly won't.

6:24

He blames SSRIs for

6:27

mass shootings. He thinks that cell

6:29

phones cause brain cancer.

6:31

I think he has also said that wifi

6:33

causes brain cancer, but it seems that he's most concerned

6:35

about cell phones. He thinks

6:37

they damage the blood-brain barrier and damage

6:40

mitochondria, and

6:42

he also claims to be sitting on groundbreaking

6:44

evidence for all this.

6:46

He in the past has sounded

6:48

skeptical that the HIV virus causes

6:51

AIDS. He's just asking questions

6:53

there. He has said that the pandemic

6:55

restrictions during COVID were part of

6:57

a CIA plot to exert totalitarian

7:00

control over our society.

7:02

Incidentally, he is absolutely sure

7:04

that the CIA killed

7:06

his uncle, JFK, and

7:09

he's pretty sure

7:11

the CIA killed his father, RFK.

7:14

But above all, he thinks that childhood

7:17

vaccines, in particular the MMR vaccine,

7:20

causes autism.

7:22

I'll talk about that in a moment. But

7:24

the problem is that he is tapping

7:26

into something that is real

7:29

and which he, I think, has appropriately

7:31

diagnosed.

7:32

If you listen to him talk about the

7:35

pervasive distrust of institutions

7:37

at this moment in American history,

7:40

and in particular how the institutions

7:43

earned this distrust

7:45

in recent years,

7:47

he's right about all that.

7:49

And this is something that I've talked about a lot on the

7:51

podcast. So he's messaging

7:53

into an environment

7:55

where there is a massive appetite

7:58

for contrarian taste.

7:59

takes on more or less everything.

8:02

This has been an absolute boon

8:04

to the misinformation cult

8:08

that he has been at the center of for

8:10

two decades. And this is

8:12

the cult of vaccine fear.

8:16

And again, the truth here is complicated

8:18

because some vaccines

8:20

have been recalled. Vaccine

8:22

injury is a real thing. Some

8:25

vaccines don't work as well as advertised.

8:27

Some people can't get vaccinated because they

8:29

have real allergic reactions. Those

8:32

people, incidentally, rely on the

8:35

rest of us to get vaccinated so they can be

8:37

protected by herd immunity. The

8:39

COVID vaccines don't work as

8:41

well as we hoped. The herd immunity

8:43

argument goes out the window there because they

8:46

don't prevent transmission.

8:48

With any medical intervention, you can always

8:50

find horror stories. I mean, literally,

8:52

you can find people who have died from

8:55

aspirin. And when you're talking about

8:58

medical interventions

8:59

on healthy people,

9:02

especially healthy kids

9:04

that can sometimes go wrong,

9:06

this understandably triggers

9:09

everyone's deepest fears.

9:11

I let them stick a needle in my child

9:14

and he died.

9:16

Every parent's worst nightmare.

9:18

So it's into this schema

9:21

that RFK has been spreading

9:24

his lies, it

9:26

seems, for 20 years. So

9:29

while he can be quite compelling in describing

9:31

the national mood of

9:34

distrust, listening to him

9:36

on that topic is like listening

9:39

to an arsonist report from the scene

9:41

of a fire which he helped

9:44

start. He has been part

9:46

of the problem all along.

9:49

So in particular, he thinks that

9:51

the MMR vaccine causes autism

9:53

because it has mercury in it or had

9:56

mercury in it. And that is

9:58

a claim that has been

9:59

thoroughly debunked.

10:01

It's based on what is now acknowledged to

10:03

be a scientific fraud.

10:05

Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet

10:08

in 1998, which has since been retracted.

10:10

And I believe 10 or 11 of

10:13

his 12 co-authors

10:15

supported the retraction.

10:17

And the evidence for his fraudulence

10:20

has been established in at least

10:22

one book-length expose. And

10:24

in any case, thimerosal, the preservative

10:27

with the traces of ethyl mercury, was

10:29

removed from childhood vaccines 22

10:32

years ago

10:33

in 2001 to appease the concerns

10:34

of parents. And the

10:38

rate of autism has not decreased

10:41

in the meantime.

10:42

And also, kids who don't get vaccinated get

10:44

autism. And it's also a fact that children

10:46

absorb more methylmercury, which

10:48

is the natural environmental form of mercury.

10:51

They get more of that in their first months of life than

10:54

they ever got ethylmercury in the vaccines.

10:56

And methylmercury has a half-life in the bloodstream

10:59

that's 10 times that of ethylmercury.

11:01

So it's more likely to do harm.

11:04

Anyway, Kennedy continues to spread

11:06

fear

11:07

about childhood vaccines and this

11:10

spurious link to autism. And

11:12

when he is pushed by any of these podcast hosts,

11:15

he says he's just asking questions or he just

11:17

wants the same scientific standards

11:19

to apply to vaccines as get applied

11:21

to everything else.

11:22

But he's not just asking questions. Again,

11:25

he's spreading a mood

11:27

of suspicion and fear. And

11:29

he is claiming, in many cases

11:31

explicitly, but

11:32

in every case at least tacitly,

11:34

that

11:35

the link between vaccines and autism

11:38

has been established. And certainly,

11:40

he's never admitting that it has been debunked

11:42

as a fraud. But this fraud

11:45

gave birth to the modern anti-vax movement

11:47

and this fraudulence appears to animate what

11:50

RFK Jr. is doing now. Because

11:53

he is demonstrating a pattern

11:55

of systematically misrepresenting

11:57

the conclusions of the studies, he cites.

12:00

And he also just appears to make things up.

12:03

And the important point here is that

12:05

there's no way for a podcast

12:07

host

12:08

to know that he's doing that

12:10

in real time.

12:12

He makes claims about the FDA and the CDC

12:14

that just appear to be flat wrong.

12:17

Now I'm going to read you something that Paul Offit

12:19

wrote in 2017 in Stat News.

12:23

Paul Offit is a pediatrician and a

12:25

vaccine expert. I

12:28

believe he's on the patent for the rotavirus

12:30

vaccine.

12:31

And Kennedy has made some crazy claims about

12:34

this and his relationship to it.

12:36

In any case, Offit wrote the

12:38

following in response to

12:40

an interview that Kennedy gave back

12:42

in 2017.

12:44

This is Offit.

12:45

Kennedy also said that he wanted to ensure,

12:48

quote, that vaccines are subject

12:50

to the same kind of safety scrutiny and safety

12:52

testing that other drugs are subject to,

12:54

end quote.

12:56

In fact, vaccines are subjected

12:58

to greater scrutiny than drugs,

13:00

much greater.

13:02

The CDC spends tens of millions of dollars

13:04

every year on the Vaccine Safety Data

13:06

Link, a system of linked computerized

13:08

medical records from several major health maintenance

13:10

organizations that represents about 7 million

13:13

Americans, 500,000 of whom are children. Nothing

13:16

like this exists on the drug side. Frankly,

13:19

if a drug safety data link existed, the

13:21

problem with Vioxx as a cause of heart attacks

13:24

might have been picked up much sooner. Perhaps

13:27

most outrageous was Kennedy's claim that, quote,

13:29

the hepatitis B vaccines that are currently

13:31

approved had fewer than five days of

13:33

safety testing. That means that if

13:35

the child had a seizure on the sixth day, it's

13:38

never seen. If the child dies, it's

13:40

never seen, end

13:42

quote.

13:43

Safety monitoring for the hepatitis B vaccine,

13:46

like all vaccines tested before being licensed,

13:48

involved determining the side effects

13:50

in the vaccinated and unvaccinated group for

13:52

weeks after each dose. Indeed,

13:55

some subsets of vaccinated individuals have

13:57

been monitored for 30 years after

13:59

hepatitis

16:01

is a CDC and an FDA

16:04

that we can trust.

16:06

And insofar as the basis for

16:08

trust has really eroded,

16:10

we have to fix that.

16:12

But what we do not need is

16:14

someone like Elon Musk dunking

16:16

on vaccine experts in front of 140 million

16:19

people

16:20

and putting their lives at risk, as he

16:22

recently did with a different doctor,

16:25

Peter Hotez.

16:26

And we don't need people like Joe Rogan

16:28

giving another four hours to a just

16:31

asking questions routine, because again,

16:33

people like RFK

16:35

are not just asking questions.

16:37

They make shit up. Here's an

16:39

example.

16:41

This is from Jordan Peterson's podcast.

16:43

And if you haven't heard RFK before, he's

16:46

got a vocal condition called spasmodic

16:48

dysphonia,

16:49

the effects of which you will certainly notice. Listen

16:51

to the anecdote he tells here. I've

16:54

seen again and again and again, people

16:57

like shit do that. If you'd like to

16:59

continue listening to this conversation, you'll

17:01

need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. Once

17:04

you do,

17:04

you'll get access to all full-length episodes of

17:06

the Making Sense podcast, along with other

17:08

subscriber-only content, including

17:10

bonus episodes and AMAs and

17:13

the conversations I've been having on the Waking Up app. The

17:16

Making Sense podcast is ad-free and

17:18

relies entirely on listener support, and

17:20

you can subscribe now at SamHarris.org.