In an interview on Face the Nation, Senator and OB-GYN John Marshall claimed that children get 76 vaccines, and they do not need all of them.

Even with combination vaccines and boosters, the total number of injections from birth to age 18 is far fewer than the 76 claimed by the senator. For example, by age 2, a child would typically receive approximately 27 injections, with many vaccines combining protection against multiple diseases.

Booster shots don’t add new antigens to your body; they just remind your immune system how to fight the ones you’ve already been exposed to. Counting boosters as new vaccines can give a false idea of how many different antigens you’re actually being exposed to. The increase in recommended vaccines is about using science to protect public health, not about making money or avoiding liability.

There have been many fantastic rebuttals to the “exploding vaccine schedule” claims over the years. Mainly, we are grateful that we can prevent more diseases now than before.

But even these rebuttals gloss over the fact that the vaccination schedule has grown very, very slowly. One vaccine was dropped from the schedule in the 1970s, two were added in the 1980s, two were added in the 1990s, one was added in the 2000s, and two were added in the 2010s. And, of course, the 2020s brought us COVID and RSV vaccines. Over the decades, age recommendation changes were made, and some vaccines were replaced with newer counterparts.

Overall, the vaccine schedule has expanded by 1-2 vaccines per decade since the 1980s. This slow, methodical, scientific advance of immunization recommendations stands in stark contrast to concerns that vaccines are constantly being capriciously added to the schedule.

Besides, who wants to go back to the days when babies died from Hib epiglottis?

In an episode of his podcast, Joe Rogan discusses many issues that we have covered in the past, including the case that sanitation and nutrition are responsible for the decline in diseases, not vaccines.

Rogan got his ideas from Suzanne Humphries, a doctor with a background in nephrology (kidney medicine).

Humphries claims it’s not a virus but toxins like DDT and arsenic that cause polio. But scientists have isolated the poliovirus from the bodies of sick people many times. They also did experiments where they gave the virus to monkeys, which then got the same kind of paralysis as people. So we know that poliovirus has caused polio in the past and the present.

She says that smallpox was eradicated because of better sanitation. But for that to be true, you would have to believe two things:

1. Better sanitation can stop a virus that spreads through the air
2. Every country in the world has good enough sanitation.

Since the worldwide effort to get rid of smallpox, there hasn’t been a single case anywhere, which shows that vaccines and not just sanitation stopped it.

Rogan discusses some graphs showing polio rates going down before the vaccine was introduced, but he completely misunderstands the graphs. The graphs, found here, show that deaths had already drastically fallen before vaccines. Cases, on the other hand, didn’t fall until vaccines were introduced.

And sanitation made polio worse. Before the 1900s, most kids were exposed to polio as babies, which helped them build natural immunity. Better sanitation from the Industrial Revolution improved health but also reduced exposure to the virus, leading to polio outbreaks.

The other concerning claims about Hep B, autism, health outcomes, placebos, and tetanus are addressed on our website.

A midwestern doctor is claiming proof that aluminum salts used in vaccines cause autism.

Aluminum is used as an adjuvant to boost the immune response, reducing the number of doses needed. Studies have repeatedly shown that the levels of aluminum in vaccines are far below harmful thresholds. The body naturally processes and eliminates small amounts of aluminum found in food, water, and medicines, including vaccines.

A recent study used health data from over 1.2 million children in Denmark, making it one of the largest studies of its kind. The researchers tracked these children for many years and used reliable national health records to look for long-term health problems like asthma, autism, and other chronic illnesses. They carefully adjusted for things like age, sex, and health history to make sure the comparisons were fair. They also ran extra tests and used different ways of looking at the data to double-check their results.

Because of its size, long follow-up, and thorough design, the study gives strong evidence that aluminum in vaccines does not increase the risk of chronic diseases, such as autism, in children.

Not only do the studies done to date show vaccines are not in any way linked to autism, but studies indicate disorganization of the prefrontal cortex in the brains of autistic people. This finding about brains links autism to development that takes place before birth.