Who Trolled Amber? - Dr Anti-Vax: Episode 3 - The movement

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Radicalised by Covid, the anti-vax movement goes mainstream – and RFK Jr emerges as a new figurehead.You can find out more about Tortoise:Download the Tortoise audio app - for a listening experience curated by our journalistsSubscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and ad-free content Become a Tortoise member and get access to all of Tortoise's premium audio offerings and more.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I prevent cancer. I prevent cancer. I prevent cancer. I prevent cancer. I prevent cancer. It's the summer of 2017, and a group of doctors in Pittsburgh come up with a way of protecting kids in their community. Get your child's HPV immunization started now. A social media video promoting the HPV vaccine, a jab which guards against something called the human papillomavirus. A jab which guards against something called the human papillomavirus. One of the things that really launched us into this whole situation was that in 2017,

that the CDC listed the increase of HPV vaccinations as a top five priority. HPV is mostly harmless, but in some cases, it can be very serious, even deadly. For the first time, we were able to provide significant protection against a virus that causes over six forms of cancer. Todd Wallin, the pediatrician in charge of the clinic, wants to offer the HPV vaccine to as many of his patients as possible. So he asks Chad, his social media manager, to put together a video involving all of the staff. Chad posts it on their local Facebook group, a group full of mums and dads and other patients who want to keep up with news from the practice. And it's a hit. Everyone said it was amazing. It was better than Hamilton. They would watch it again and again. They absolutely loved the video. I prevent cancer. again and again. They absolutely loved the video. I prevent cancer.

Parents and grandparents call into book appointments. Everyone compliments the production values. Pretty slick for a local clinic. But Todd and Chad could never have predicted what is about to hit them. How one innocent video puts them at the center of a new battleground, a war being fought over children's health. I'm Alexei Mostras, and from Tortoise, this is Dr. Antivax, Episode 3, The Movement. So we posted the video in August of 2017, and as Todd said, it was a huge success. The problem is that in primary care pediatrics, much like in Shakespearean tragedy, the moment you start feeling a little too good about yourself, the universe has a way of coming around and course correcting. The aunt of a child in our practice saw our post on her sister-in-law's wall and dropped it like chum in the waters

into the anti-vaccine Facebook group. This anti-vaccine Facebook group has more than 40,000 members. When the aunt posts Todd and Chad's video, it's as if she's lobbing chunks of meat into a shark pool. Two people are... You have no grip on reality. into a shock pool. Two people are in hell for killing babies. You have no grip on reality. We were attacked from over 30 countries around the world,

24 hours a day for eight days. They started on the post itself, started attacking us on other posts on our Facebook page, started attacking not just the posts, but the personal Facebook pages of parents on our practice. They went after our Facebook reviews. They went after our Yelp reviews. They went after our Google reviews in the span of two or three days. All three of our offices went from 4.5 to about 0.8 in about two or three days. All three of our offices went from 4.5 to about 0.8 in about two or three days. When Chad talks about it today, he's clear about where this all came from.

The anti-vaccine movement as we know it today, particularly the way it's weaponized through first old media and now through social media. That all really begins with Andrew Wakefield. I like to refer to him as Asshole Zero for the anti-vaccine movement. The timing of what happened to Todd and Chad is interesting to me. They've been criticized before, but nothing on this scale. What happened to them makes me think that something changed for the anti-vax movement around 2017,

in the months and years after Wakefield released Vaxxed. By this point, anti-vaccine beliefs are becoming more prevalent, more extreme. point, anti-vaccine beliefs are becoming more prevalent, more extreme. In 2019, before Covid hit, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate identified more than 300 anti-vax groups online. Most had been created in the last few years. Compare that to the period immediately after Wakefield publishes his Lancet paper in 1998. Back then, Wakefield has to rely on old school media to get his message out. He goes on CNN to be interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and he gets absolutely destroyed. But sir, there's no proof of that. And your study is a fraud, according to this latest investigation, which is taking quite some time. And sir, let me just continue. It's not just this one journalist who's saying this,

who you believe is some sort of a hitman. It's not just pharmaceutical companies or the AMA. And it's not just public health officials from around the world. And it's not just doctors from around the world. It's also other journalists who have looked into your research and found it simply incorrect. But by 2017, CNN's ratings are plummeting, like most mainstream media. Donald Trump is president. Misinformation is rampant. We're living in a post-truth age. Wakefield and

the other anti-vaxxers set up their own podcasts, internet radio shows, YouTube channels, and Twitter threads. And this time, there's no establishment pushback. This is Andy Wakefield, and this is the Andy Wakefield Podcast. Nobody better to talk to us about that than Dr. Andy Wakefield, who joins us now. Good, Dr. Andy Wakefield. Welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Clay, it's great to be back. Thank you. In the years after vax came out, the internet's echo chambers became flooded with anti-vaccine sentiment. By the time the decade ends, anti-vax is growing fast, but it's still a fringe issue, just about. But then something happens, a global event, a catastrophe that simultaneously proves the value of vaccines and makes the anti-vax movement more popular than ever.

In January 2020, COVID arrives in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first U.S. case has been detected in Washington. Fast-breaking developments in the coronavirus emergency in the U.S., the number of cases soaring just today. In March, the Trump administration declares a nationwide emergency. Good afternoon. Let's go straight to the Rose Garden. President Trump about to hold a news conference on the coronavirus crisis. California is the first state to issue a stay-at-home order. This morning, Californians waking up to a new reality, bracing for a statewide lockdown affecting 33 million residents.

And when a vaccine eventually does emerge, states put in place mandates that require thousands of workers to be jabbed in order to keep their jobs. Suddenly being an anti-vaxxer isn't just about whether you agree with the science. Taking vaccines or being forced to take vaccines becomes about far broader issues like personal freedom and autonomy. When Joe Biden and Donald Trump fight a bitterly contested election battle in 2020, public health is at the top of everyone's agenda. Votes and vaccines are being bonded. Politics and public health intertwine. For the anti-vax community, COVID is a game changer.

We started out as a very, very small organization, very, very small budget, and things really started to blossom, especially through the COVID-19 era. That's Brian Hooker. You remember, he was the scientist at the center of Wakefield's vaxxed movie. Hooker is now the chief scientific officer at an organization called the Children's Health Defense. And in some ways, Hooker is now an even bigger deal than Wakefield himself. Because the CHD is the biggest anti-vax organisation in the US. Its website pumps out this firehose of articles and videos that rail against vaccines, big pharma and 5G. During the COVID pandemic, the CHD launches a series of high-profile lawsuits

challenging vaccine measures imposed by US states. And its donations swell, from $2.9 million in 2019 to $15.8 million in 2021, way more money than Andrew Wakefield ever made. Why was the Children's Health Defence able to take over from Wakefield and the other anti-vaxxers as the premier anti-vax outlet in the US? The answer lies with its founder, chairman and chief legal counsel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Here he is in a stirring promotional video taken at a CHD rally. And for all future generations, and I can tell you this, I will stand side by side with you, and if I have to die for this, I'm going to die with my boots on.

Kennedy is a scion of the Kennedy family, about as close to royalty as you can get in America. To me, he represents the next generation of anti-vax activist, version 2.0 of Andrew Wakefield, bigger, stronger and far closer to actual power. RFK's credentials are impeccable. He's the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of Bobby Kennedy, assassinated in 1968 when he was running for president. And if you spoke to someone 20 years ago, they probably have lots of good things to say about RFK Jr., as he's known. For most of his professional life, he's this really well-respected environmental lawyer.

He develops a reputation as one of the good guys, someone who never backs down, who fights the good fight. But in the early 2000s, he becomes convinced that vaccines and the chemicals in vaccines cause autism and other chronic conditions. He founds the Children's Health Defence in 2007 and over the next 16 years becomes one of America's most powerful anti-vaccine advocates. I've actually had my eye on RFK Jr. for a while. Back in 2020, I investigated his influence among the anti-vaccine community.

I analysed thousands of Facebook posts containing false information about COVID, and I found that he was the most significant promoter of medical misinformation online. When my colleague Basha Cummings interviewed him as part of our investigation, you can hear how slippery he is to pin down. And we gathered 145,000 Facebook and Instagram posts posted between the 1st of January and the 17th of July. So really sort of the main chunk of the pandemic so far. And these were posts that contain verified examples of public health misinformation. So these were things that were fact-checked. Who verified it? Who verified it? Fact-checked by reputable news sources, so the BBC.

Who would that be? Because what we found is that the fact-checking organizations are not accurate. They're funded in many cases by Bill Gates or by pharmaceutical interests, or they're funded by the social media platform. The word disinformation has become a euphemism for any statement that departs from the pharmaceutical industry paradigm or from government pronouncements. By 2020, RFK has built up this huge following online, more than 1 million followers on Instagram, 2.4 million on Twitter. It's a huge support base,

online and off, and it's coming from both Democrats and Republicans. So I guess it's not that surprising that in early 2023, RFK takes a leave of absence from the Children's Health Defense and announces that he's running for president. He is a Kennedy after all. At first, RFK runs as a Democratic candidate, but in October, he announces in front of this big crowd in Philadelphia that he's running as an independent. I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate. that he's running as an independent. I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate.

And we declare independence from Wall Street, from big tech, from big pharma, from big ag, from the military contractors and their lobbyists. RFK claims that he's representing a broad church, attractive to those on the left and the right. But he doesn't mention some of his more extreme beliefs. He doesn't mention, for example, that in 2022 he was executive producer on a film made by his friend Andrew Wakefield. A film called Infertility, a Diabolical Agenda, field, a film called Infertility, a Diabolical Agenda, which alleges falsely that the World Health Organization had been deliberately contaminating vaccines in Kenya as part of

a sinister plan to shrink the population. If you do not stop World Health Organization, when they are through with Africa, they're coming for you. Keep your children ready. They will come for Africa, they're coming for you. Keep your children ready. They will come for them and they'll come for you. I find it a bit strange, this guy standing up in front of a big crowd, announcing that he's running for president, presenting himself as a unity candidate,

when his name is on a film which is essentially a big conspiracy theory. If we're being realistic, Kennedy is never going to be president. But he does have significant support enough to steal votes from the frontrunners Biden and Trump. Some people fear that whoever does win the presidency might appoint RFK to high office as a way of buying into his support base. The reason why I'm concerned about this is because former President Trump has tried to do this before. This is Matthew Motta. He's a political scientist at Boston University's School of Public Health. We've seen the former president force out experts in leading governmental agencies. RFK Jr. was initially the former president's choice to lead a vaccine safety commission

that was ultimately scrapped. But in a world where he would be term limited and not necessarily running for a third election, you know, perhaps this is a plan that doesn't get scrapped the second time around. And so I'm very worried that this is the type of thing that would happen if Trump was reelected to the presidency. In fact, I'd go even further and say that it's almost certain to happen if he's reelected to the presidency. Even if RFK doesn't get a big job in a new administration, it's clear that his views have already had an influence. Here's Donald Trump pushing exactly the agenda espoused by Children's Health Defence in a 2024

campaign video. In recent decades, there has been an unexplained and alarming growth in the prevalence of chronic illnesses and health problems, especially in children. We've seen a stunning rise in autism, autoimmune disorders, obesity, infertility. It's time to ask, what is going on? When the video came out, RFK tweeted, I love this brand of plagiarism and invite all other presidential candidates to follow suit. It seems then that one way or the other,

Antivax views are getting closer and closer to the center of power. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. It's a story of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of the nation. scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of the nation. Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com But what about Andrew Wakefield? What is he doing while RFK is stealing his anti-vax thunder? Well, just as COVID radicalizes part of the anti-vax movement, it seems also to radicalize Wakefield himself. Please stand to your feet and help me welcome one of the heroes of the health freedom movement, Dr Andrew Wakefield.

In 2021 and 2022, Wakefield appears on stage at something called the Reawaken Tour. Hosted in mega churches and conference centres every month around the US, the Reawaken events are attended by a mix of right-wing Christian nationalists and diehard Trumpers. They're part prayer service, part conspiracy convention, and part political rally. Good morning, Las Vegas! Jesus is king, ladies and gentlemen.

President Donald J. Trump is who we voted for. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to start today's festivities with the opening prayer. And Amanda Grace, in the plate. I'm King Jesus. Reawaken's headliners include General Michael Flynn, Trump's disgraced former head of national security, Roger Stone, a political operative who was convicted of lying to Congress, and Trump's two firebrand kids, Eric and Donald Jr. And in amongst them, Andrew Wakefield. My commitment to you is to do whatever it takes to take whatever risks need to be taken to make this world a safer place for your children and your grandchildren and so on. But I can't do this without you.

What I need is help to make this next film. It will turn this narrative around and it will unmask one of the greatest corruptions in history. But I need your help. It's easy to dismiss Reawaken as a fringe group, unrepresentative of the mainstream. But I find it interesting because Wakefield's personal journey, someone who starts out with concerns about one particular vaccine and morphs into a Trump supporter who thinks that all vaccines are unsafe and that the companies and governments who make them are corrupt, that's a transformation that's also happened to millions of Americans.

Americans' trust in scientific authorities has been relatively high for decades, but that masks something really important that's been going on underneath the surface, which is that these views have become increasingly politicized. Folks on the ideological right have become increasingly likely

to hold negative attitudes towards science and scientific expertise, and those on the left have become increasingly more likely to hold negative attitudes towards science and scientific expertise. And those on the left have become increasingly more likely to hold positive attitudes. And so the aggregate looks like these things are canceling each other out, but we actually see sharp politicization happening underneath the surface. That's Matthew Motta again. He tracks anti-vax feeling and he says that it used to be spread fairly evenly across the left and the right. But about 15 years ago, this starts to shift and it's a shift that accelerates during COVID. Now, more than ever, people on the libertarian right hold anti-vax views and people on the left don't.

One of my favourite examples of this is the Marin County flip. When we speak to Tim Caulfield, a Canadian law professor and research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, he tells us an anecdote about a particular area in California called Marin County. Very affluent, very educated, very democratic, right? Very democratic.

Before the pandemic, it was one of the most unvaccinated places in the United States, right? And that was largely because of kind of that new agey wellness movement that was embraced by that community. wellness movement that was embraced by that community. The pandemic happens and being anti-vax becomes an ideological flag for the GOP, for the Republican Party, right? And that ends up being, look, hey, I'm not Republican. And Marin County flips.

And now it's one of the most vaccinated places in the United States. And that is fascinating because that highlights the degree to which this is about ideology. It's not about science, right? It's not about public health. It's about ideology.

As we're putting this episode together, my producer Ilan found something that I think sums up this third act in the modern day anti-vax story. An arc that's seen it travel from an idea at the fringes of society to one bolstered by celebrities and the echo chambers of the internet to a political movement forged by the Covid pandemic. He found a video of January the 6th, 2021. That's the date when a crowd of Trump supporters attack the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. Five people die and 138 police officers are injured. But the video he found isn't of that main event.

It's of a side rally happening at the same time as the Capitol storming. On January 6th, on a separate stage, yet very much part of the election protest, this micro rally had a different focus. These are the anti-vaxxers. With people like Del Bigtree, the producer of Andrew Wakefield's film Vaxxed. Innocent people are being lined up, walking to their potential death. And a wealthy couple called the Bollingers, who sell alternative remedies and who have donated to many anti-vax causes

in the past few years. When one half of the couple, Charlene Bollinger, gets on the stage, she's clear. She supports what's happening only metres away. We pray for the patriots that are there now, inside, they're trying to get inside that capital. Lord, use these people to eradicate this evil, these swamp creatures, the cesspool of filth and waste. To me, this rally is the ultimate example of how anti-vax support and right-wing insurgencies come together during COVID.

The more I learn about the anti-vax movement, the more it seems like something that's growing out of control. And Andrew Wakefield agrees. When I started in this 35 years ago, 30 years ago, there were a handful of us. Literally, now, that number is half the world that is winning that is winning half the world now is concerned about vaccine safety about vaccine mandates about bodily autonomy that is what has happened so if you think you are losing if you think we are losing

think again the soviet union it was inviolable. It was massive. It was all powerful. It could never fail. And then the blinking of an eye, it was gone. It was gone. Wakefield wants his own Berlin Wall moment. He wants the institutions and agencies responsible for public health to topple. And he thinks it can happen soon. But I'm not so sure. By the time Wakefield says these words, 12.7 billion doses of the COVID vaccine have already been administered, including 655 million in the US alone. 80% of the US population has had at least one shot. The vaccine is phenomenally successful. By 2022, it's prevented more than 3 million

additional deaths, according to the University of Maryland School of Medicine. If Wakefield is right that COVID wakes some people up to the dangers of vaccines, it alerts many, many more to their power and possibility. And as anti-vax groups are starting to grow online, a resistance is also forming. Remember Todd and Chad's family clinic, the one in Pittsburgh which posts the video about the HPV vaccine in 2017? After they're attacked by anti-vaxxers, they find that they're not alone. On the fourth day, there was this insurgence of a cavalry that came to our aid from the AAP, from some folks who followed us nationally, and also from an amazing group called Physician Moms Group. They're sort of a secret society.

They stay very much below the radar, but they saw what was happening to us, asked if they could come to our aid. And so by the end of that day, it was like that scene from The Two Towers where everybody is descending upon, you know, the valley to take out the orcs. The Physician Moms storm onto the clinic's Facebook pages, posting comments countering all this anti-vax abuse.

And what we learned was that anti-vaccine bullies, like all bullies, lose interest in punching someone when they start getting punched back. And that was literally the turning point of our attack. After their bruising experience, the pair set up a group called Shots Heard Around the World, a nonprofit with the power to send out a digital army of pro-vaccine volunteers to defend anyone who is attacked by anti-vaxxers online. If you're a soft target, I hate to sound militaristic, but healthcare practices and doctors are typically soft targets,

you're easy pickings. But if you stand up to them, and if you get the reinforcements you're actually left somewhat impervious to future attacks one because you blocked all these attackers and two they help your message become more viral we set out at the start to try and answer the question how did anti-vax get so big? And I think we've seen through the story of Wakefield and the rise of these other players like RFK Jr. how this strange set of beliefs easily evolved into something bigger than just the science. How it became a sort of all-purpose fuel, capable of making money for hucksters selling bleach as a

cure for Covid, capable of boosting followers for anti-vaxxers on Instagram and YouTube, capable of gaining votes for politicians ready to exploit fears about freedom or medical autonomy. And we've seen the real world consequences of all this for the clinicians who regard vaccines as a literal lifesaver. It's a cause that has mutated to become part of a broader chaos of conspiracy politics. I really want to know what Andrew Wakefield thinks about all this. Is he surprised at how the anti-vax movement has turned out? Does he feel any responsibility for the harm it has caused? And will he ever stop promoting anti-vaccine views? We try and arrange a call with Wakefield through the producers of a new film he's making,

a film called Protocol 7. But as soon as they see that we might be asking Wakefield some tough questions, they pull out. So I dig through the legal papers filed by Wakefield in the case he brought against Francesca Alessi, his old camera operator, and I find a mobile number. So I call him. Hello? Oh hi, is that Andrew Wakefield? It is. Hello. I'm really sorry to disturb you. This is Alexei Mostras from Tortoise Media. We're making a show, we're making a podcast about the health freedom movement and about vaccine safety.

Can I... Well, it doesn't seem like he wants a public debate. What do we think about that? I mean, I'm not surprised. It's a shame, to be honest, because a few months ago, Wakefield publishes a video online. It's a thank you message to Elon Musk. Elon, Andy Wakefield here.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for taking over Twitter and hopefully making it a genuine town square where we can have frank and open debates about important issues such as the potential role of vaccines in childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, vaccine safety, etc. If you take Wakefield at his word, he's saying he's open to scrutiny, that he wants to have a debate about vaccines. But you can see from his reaction to me that actually that isn't true. I don't think Wakefield wants an open debate about vaccines.

I don't think he wants to face someone like Anderson Cooper, the CNN host, ever again. And here's the thing. In today's fragmented media landscape, he doesn't need to. So long as he has his fans, parents, celebrities, money men, who he can appeal to directly, that's enough. This all reminds me of Dr Ari Zuckerman, the doctor from the Royal Free Hospital who thumped the table in exasperation at Wakefield during that first press conference about MMR. It didn't make any difference then, and what's scary is that perhaps

thumping the table won't make a difference now. There are people fighting back, people like Todd and Chad, and there are millions of parents who believe in the power of vaccines. But it's clear from what happened to Andrew Wakefield and from what's happening to people like RFK Jr. that the battle over vaccines is only just beginning. Before this episode comes out, I try Dr. Antivax again, and I leave him a message. Hi, this is a message for Andrew. It's Alexei Mostras from Tortoise. I noted in your message to Elon Musk that you called for a proper debate about vaccines in the public square. So

I hoped in that spirit, you might be willing to answer some questions. If you would like to speak to me, I'm around. Just give me a call on this number. I hope to speak to you soon. A few weeks later, and I'm still waiting. Thanks for listening to Dr. Antivax. If you enjoyed this series, we hope you'll listen to more of Tortoise's Investigations, including our next series, which will be live next week. It's reported by my colleague, Basha Cummings, and it's a wild story about a deceitful relationship and a mystery that journeys through big tech and national security,

where seemingly anyone who can tell a good story can go far. Follow the feed so you don't miss it. Dr. Antivax is written and reported by me, Alexi Mostris, and Ilan Goodman. The producer is Ilan Goodman. Sound design is by Tom Birchall. The editor is David Taylor. TOTUS