Please Don't Take Vaccine Advice from 'The Joe Rogan Podcast'

Around the New Year, I decided I needed to check in on the, uh, second most popular podcast in America—if only so I could push back on some of his more outlandish claims (and take issue with his poor understanding of Hunter S. Thompson). Thankfully, I recently found a place where his podcasts are transcribed, so I never have to suffer through three hours of this man’s droning bullsh** again.

The man is a crackpot, and while he’s right to be annoyed by the number of Big Pharma ads on television, drug marketing and drug science are not the same thing. With RFK Jr. bringing in his own repeatedly disproven doctor to study the nonexistent link between vaccines and autism, it’s more important than ever to push back against anti-vaccine claims on his podcast. I was dismayed, in fact, to see so many people on X acknowledging, agreeing with, and amplifying the views shared by Dr. Suzanne Humphries on Rogan’s podcast this week.

Humphries, an alternative medicine doctor who promotes ozone therapy and claims she turned against vaccines in 2008, has written about her vaccine skepticism, which is apparently all the credentials Rogan needs. Among the claims she made on the podcast, Humphries:

— Claims that polio wasn’t eradicated by vaccines but simply renamed after the vaccine’s introduction. She argues that polio was caused by environmental toxins like DDT rather than the poliovirus and that it was eliminated by improved sanitation. I can assure Humphries that my grandmother didn’t walk with a limp her entire life because of exposure to an insecticide. In fact, science suggests that better sanitation and cleaner drinking water may have actually increased the rates of polio by delaying exposure until later in life, when infections were more severe.

— Claims that SV40 (simian virus 40), found in early polio vaccines, was linked to kidney cancer, an assertion for which there is no scientific basis. (SV40 was also no longer used in polio vaccine production after 1965.)

— Makes similar claims about smallpox, arguing it wasn’t eradicated by vaccines but that the disease was simply renamed, and again credits improved sanitation. No, y’all: We didn’t get rid of smallpox by simply renaming it. She calls the vaccine success story a “fairy tale” and a “joke.”

— Says aluminum in vaccines interferes with the immune system and causes the rise in food allergies and autoimmune conditions. There is no conclusive evidence to support this, and besides, we’re exposed to far more aluminum through our natural environment than through vaccines.

— Claims hospitals only administer vaccines because they’re incentivized to do so, alleging they would lose $40,000 per infant if not vaccinated within the first 24 hours, and that her research has been silenced by the, uh, hospital industrial complex.

— Opposes the COVID-19 vaccine, obviously, claiming it contains snake genes, that vaccinating a child is “insane,” and that it damages stem cells in pregnant women.

I should also note that at no point does Joe Rogan push back on these claims. He affirms them and adds his own anecdotal “evidence” (based on something he read on the Internet) in support. I should also note that, in the podcast, Rogan claims that John D. Rockefeller Sr. ensured that all drugs manufactured by the medical establishment were oil-based because he was an oilman.