Anti-vaccine sentiment is not new: Jenner's own book is full of people cursing him
This episode shows the anti-vaccine movement is as old as vaccines themselves; phage SPO1 uses liquid-liquid phase-separated condensates to switch transcriptional phases; ancient smallpox DNA from South America confirms transmission by European colonization; and declining reading plus AI-generated content threaten our powers of discernment.
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A vaccine is not a bottle of soda; it is half a milliliter
The United States has signed an executive order that attempts to reduce the number of childhood vaccines and to split up the MMR vaccine. The hosts call this ‘absurd’ and cite a commentary by Jake Scott at CIDRAP, which notes that Trump claimed children are injected with a volume of vaccine equivalent to a bottle of soda, when a vaccine is typically only half a milliliter — a difference of more than 200-fold from a 20-ounce soda. The piece also rebuts claims such as vaccines causing autism.
— Vincent RacanielloExperts were replaced by ideological loyalists, and a court ruled it illegal
Rich fills in the background: after taking office, RFK fired the sitting Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a body made up of experts whose recommendations are the basis on which states distribute vaccines. RFK installed non-expert ideological loyalists in their place, and the vaccine schedule they proposed was ruled illegal by a court. The new executive order is another attempt; it is expected to be challenged as well, but it will create confusion among parents and damage trust in the medical system.
— Rich ConditThe phage has to act early, because once σA binds it cannot be evicted
GP27 is the key protein that forms the condensate: its intrinsically disordered region (IDR) binds DNA, while its folded region interacts with the beta subunit of RNA polymerase. GP33 is an inhibitor of the host sigma factor σA; it binds between σA and the beta subunit and blocks the transcription complex from entering a productive transcription state. Competition experiments show that if σA binds first, GP33 cannot displace it — which is why the phage must suppress host σA early.
— Jolene RamseySmallpox was carried into the Americas by European colonization: the first molecular evidence
A new paper reports the earliest ancient smallpox genomes from South America, recovered from two individuals from the Inca colonial period in northern Chile, dated to roughly 1492-1631. The phylogeny places them within a European medieval lineage, providing the first molecular evidence that smallpox entered the Americas through European colonization.
Smallpox gene loss is a continuing process that had already begun in medieval times
In the CAM208 genome, 49 genes are deleted or inactivated. Of these, 37 are inactivated in both the ancient and modern genomes, 2 are unique to the CAM lineage, and 10 are inactivated in CAM and in modern smallpox but variable in the medieval genomes. This supports the view that gene inactivation is an ongoing process, and that some genes had already begun to be inactivated in the early medieval period.
The marginal notes in Jenner's own book are today's anti-vaccine talking points
Rich shares a scan he found of an original copy of Jenner's An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, and discovered that the book once belonged to the Southampton Anti-Vaccination League: its pages carry a large number of handwritten annotations by anti-vaccinationists. For example, where Jenner says cowpox virus can render a person permanently immune to smallpox, the annotation reads ‘nonsense’; where Jenner notes that blacksmiths are often resistant to smallpox inoculation, the annotator attributes it instead to their being physically fit from their labor. These notes are indistinguishable from contemporary anti-vaccine rhetoric.
— RichReading is not an instinct, and AI makes judgment scarcer still
Brianne shares The Atlantic's article ‘The End of Reading’, which notes that in 2022 fewer than half of adults had read any book at all. The article argues that reading is not a human instinct — it has to borrow other regions of the brain — and that television and the internet have crowded out the time for it. On AI, the article argues that AI-generated prose is fluent but lacks originality, and may erode people's powers of discernment and judgment, which are precisely the capacities that will be needed more in the future.
— BrianneThe man talking nonsense is also holding the nuclear launch codes
Charles recommends a piece by Derek Lowe, which quotes the U.S. president on vaccines: ‘I've seen where they have a vaccine thing that looks like a bottle of soda in size, and they pour it into a little kid.’ Derek calls this ‘gibberish’, and points out that this man is not only fantasizing his way to health policy but also controls the nuclear launch codes.
— VincentIn their own words · checked verbatim
There's no reason to do that. Well, Trump says that if you do that, the rates of autism are going to go down. And there's no evidence for that, of course, because vaccines do not cause autism.
Vincent Racaniello8:32
Vaccinations are part of child care. We know that they're really important. And so pushing back against well-studied and recommended vaccines is essentially child abuse.
Vincent Racaniello12:50
only between two and 50% of the RNA polymerase in the cell is actively associated with sigma A at any given time.
Jolene Ramsey47:22
what renders cowpox virus so extremely singular is that the person who has been thus affected is forever secure from infection of the smallpox. And the marginal note says, what humbug.
Rich1:42:46
anti-vax is as old as vax. It comes from the very beginning.
Rich1:47:51
this is deranged nonsense expressed in the words of someone whose cerebral cortex is shedding vocabulary by the day. Vaccination thing, really? A brief reminder, this man not only imagines he is making medical policy, but he also has the nuclear launch codes. And that part is unfortunately no delusion.
Vincent1:58:56
Figures
| Gap between vaccine volume and a soda | more than 200-fold | 8:32 |
| Fraction of RNA polymerase bound to σA | 2%-50% | 47:22 |
| Native molecular weight of the H5 protein | 35 kDa | 51:24 |
| Apparent molecular weight of H5 by size-exclusion chromatography | 300 kDa | 51:24 |
| Sequence identity between CAM9-208 and CAM9-205 | 99.912% | 1:13:28 |
| Inactivated genes in the CAM208 genome | 49 | 1:19:55 |
| Share of adults who had read a book in 2022 | fewer than half | 1:52:54 |
| Average daily television viewing by Americans in 1985 | more than 7 hours | 1:54:54 |
| Average daily television viewing by Americans in 2010 | 9 hours | 1:54:54 |
Glossary
- liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS)
- The process by which molecules inside a cell aggregate into membraneless organelles; implicated in transcriptional regulation.
- intrinsically disordered region (IDR)
- A region of a protein with no fixed three-dimensional structure but important function, often involved in phase separation.
- biomolecular condensate
- A membraneless organelle formed by phase separation that concentrates particular proteins and nucleic acids.
- RNA polymerase holoenzyme
- The form of the core enzyme bound to a sigma factor, able to recognize promoters and initiate transcription.
- vaccinia virus factory
- The region inside a cell where the virus replicates and assembles, induced by viral proteins.
- synonymous substitution rate
- The rate of nucleotide mutations that do not change the amino acid; used as a read-out of evolutionary time.
How to listen
Researchers, medical students and science-minded listeners who follow virology, phage regulatory mechanisms, vaccine policy and evolutionary biology.
The listener-tools segment from 1:49 to 1:52 can be skipped, but the discussion of declining reading after 1:52 is worth hearing.