With the Wind with Dr. Paul — Show 199: Pediatric Perspectives: Risking Everything with Suzanne Humphries, M.D.

In this episode of Pediatric Perspectives, I'm joined by Suzanne Humphries, M.D. — board-certified internist and nephrologist, and co-author of Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History. Dr. Humphries has spent years studying vaccine history, immunology, and the clinical record, and like me, she's made professional choices that have come at a cost. This is one of the most substantive conversations I've had on this show.

In this episode, we cover:

• What Dr. Humphries witnessed firsthand on the Vaxxed bus tour — and why it changed her perspective on childhood vaccine injury
• Why she has largely stopped trying to reach skeptical colleagues, and what she believes actually works instead
• What the health of unvaccinated children actually looks like — and why "normal" is the right word
• The vaccine schedule examined one by one: which she considers biologically indefensible, which present genuine complexity, and why
• What foundational health actually requires, from a nephrologist's perspective

Dr. Humphries joined the Vaxxed bus tour at the end of 2016. She had no involvement in the film or the founding of the initiative — that grew out of Polly's personal story. What she encountered on the bus were families showing videos of healthy, engaged children, and then the shots, and then a child who was no longer there in the same way. Marriages that didn't survive. Grandparents following grown boys they had minimum control over. She eventually had to step outside and stand with the families waiting in line rather than stay inside for the interviews.

I have sat across from enough of those families in my own practice — three to five new ones a week for years — to understand exactly what she means. You cannot unsee what you see.

Dr. Humphries worked through the schedule directly, and I want to represent what she said accurately:

She calls for ending all pregnancy vaccines outright, hepatitis B at birth, flu shots, and Covid shots — none of which, she argues, produce meaningful herd or personal immunity. She describes the mumps vaccine as one that should never have been created, noting that Merck has faced serious accusations of falsifying its efficacy studies. The tetanus vaccine, she says, should be elective and age-appropriate — not given to newborns or infants. Gardasil/HPV vaccines she wants stopped immediately, citing a significant injury profile she has observed. On pertussis, she explains the IgG4 mechanism: repeated vaccination produces immune tolerance, which is why we see so much pertussis circulating in older vaccinated children and adults. Measles she acknowledges as the most complicated case — vaccination has disrupted the natural maternal immunity that previously protected infants through the placenta and breast milk, and the generation with genuine immune memory is aging out. She views that as a problem created by the program, not a justification for continuing it.

​I also asked about something I've observed over the course of my career: the apparent rise in childhood cancer. Dr. Humphries was careful not to overstate what the data shows — she acknowledged she can't offer precise statistics — but drew on something she witnessed directly: when she was leaving Bangor, Maine, a large, well-funded children's cancer institute had just opened that wasn't there at the start of her career. Her concern is that vaccine ingredients including animal DNA, viruses, and retroviruses — many not fully characterized — may interact with immune function in ways that demand better research. The vaccinated versus unvaccinated studies, she believes, would bring these patterns into clearer focus.

​Drawing on her nephrology background, Dr. Humphries is direct about where foundational health actually comes from: good nutrition, adequate hydration, sunlight, and minimal pharmaceutical intervention. Hydration in particular — most people are chronically dehydrated, and the mineral and electrical balance the immune system depends on requires it. These are not radical ideas. They are basics that a medical culture organized around intervention has largely displaced.