Happy Monday! Sam speaks with Dr. Peter J. Hotez, Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, to discuss his recent book The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning. Sam runs through updates on the US’ facilitating of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, revelation around Israel’s coercion of UNRWA members, progressives vs. AIPAC, the NLRB’s joint employer ruling, Boeing’s criminal inquiry, and Haiti’s state of emergency. Dr. Peter J. Hotez then joins, beginning by stepping back to tackle the evolution of both his work on vaccines and the anti-science movement, and of the movement itself, beginning in 1998 with claims of the MMR vaccine’s correlation with autism, and continually reinventing itself in the wake of scientific evidence and studies disproving its newest claims. After touching on the particular anti-vax grift around increased autism diagnosis, Dr. Hotez and Sam parse through the evolution of the union between the anti-science and right-wing movements, with the former beginning as more of a niche movement in California and Texas, before dwindling success forced the it to reinvent itself, finding roots in the Tea Party. Expanding on this, they look at the ideological common ground between the anti-science community and the US right, including an emphasis on individual freedoms, attacks on elites, and general hatred for the state, all of which helped push it to the fore with the COVID-19 crisis, with Fox News and sitting Congresspeople actively misinforming and fear-mongering around vaccine safety. Peter and Sam also touch on the particular role Big Pharma’s greed and malpractice played in pushing distrust of the medical industry, and explore what it would mean to redefine the medical and scientific communities’ restricted relationship to both the public and the marketplace, before wrapping up the interview by looking to the horizon of the ongoing COVID pandemic, and the future of humanity’s relationship to vaccines.

And in the Fun Half: Sam dives into Biden’s attempt to tentatively set a conditional red line for supporting Netanyahu’s siege of Gaza, and Bibi’s direct and clear refutation of that, also watching the stark difference between the Pentagon’s assessment of Israel’s and Hamas’ respective dangers to aid for Palestinians, and Google Cloud engineers speak out against their company’s role in facilitating the genocide in Gaza. Boom from Indianapolis touches on more transphobic abuse felt by non-trans people, Jacob from Alabama (and the Valley Labor Report) explores the varying responses to Senator Katie Britt’s response to Biden’s State of the Union, and Maria Bartiromo revolutionizes the whole “they’re using illegals to get more votes” conspiracy. Donald Trump touches on touching the third rail (social security), plus, your calls and IMs!

Check out Peter’s book here: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/33293/deadly-rise-anti-science

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