We Want Them Infected Podcast

Polio Amnesia: When "Freedom" Becomes an Iron Lung Policy

Jan 25, 2026
A sharp rundown of an aborted Hepatitis B infant trial and why its design was unethical. A critique of rhetoric treating polio and measles as negotiable public-health choices. Concerns about autism advisory panels being repopulated with anti-vaccine-aligned voices. Reports of FDA and NIH institutional erosion, industry pullback from vaccine research, and calls to preserve the record of how trusted figures enabled this shift.
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INSIGHT

Guinea-Bissau Blocks Unethical Hep B Trial

  • Guinea-Bissau blocked an unethical hepatitis B vaccine trial that would have withheld vaccines from infants to observe harms.
  • Jonathan Howard and Wendy Orent celebrated the country's decision to suspend the study pending proper ethical review.
INSIGHT

Polio Vaccination Is Nonnegotiable

  • Kirk Mulholland suggested reconsidering polio vaccines citing better sanitation and lower disease risk now.
  • Howard and Orent rejected that logic, emphasising polio's stealthy spread and the near-zero risk of inactivated polio vaccine.
INSIGHT

'Natural Experiment' Framing Is Dangerous

  • Mulholland framed measles resurgence as an opportunity for 'real world' study of unvaccinated children.
  • Howard and Orent condemned experimenting on children and stressed vaccines prevent nearly all measles harm.
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