Cathy Meehan: Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the Meehan Mission Podcast. I’m your host, Cathy Meehan, and today we’re talking about technology and decision-making skills. Now, if you know me, you know that technology is not my cup of tea, which is exactly why I had to do this episode. My special guest is Chris Downey. He is the founder of VaxCalc. This is a software program where he just helps parents organize and explore all of the options and information that’s out there in regards to the decisions you’re going to need to make when you are visiting your pediatrician. So Chris uses his technical skills as a software developer plus his own personal journey, which actually brought him into this whole arena of informed consent. to make sure that you as a parent have the tools and resources you need to make confident decisions regarding your child’s health. So if you’re a parent, this episode is for you. Let’s get started and let’s welcome Chris to the show.
Cathy Meehan: Hello everyone and welcome to the Meehan Mission Podcast. And as promised, I brought Chris Downey back from VaxCalc. Chris, it is great to see you today.
Chris Downey: thank you so much, Cathy. It’s great to be here.
Cathy Meehan: You bet. Well, really what is so important nowadays is all of the information and the overload and AI when it comes to making informed decisions for parents regarding their children’s health. So
Chris Downey: You know, it yeah, that’s that’s an excellent question. You know, it’s for for decades, for decades we’ve been saying that parents need to remain the primary decision makers. But at the same time, there’s you know just an an overload of information, more information. I mean you can do endless research. The thing that’s missing is a decision framework. And that’s what VaxCalc is building and striving to bring to parents.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Well, why don’t we start with what got you involved in the whole world when it comes to health and kids and informed consent?
Chris Downey: no, thank you so much. That’s a that’s a really good question. what got me involved? You know, I was just sort of like a geeky software developer. And I never I never thought you know about vaccines or anything. And you know, my wife was pregnant with our first child. This was way back in 2003.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Chris Downey: And I you know, I we we were talking, we should go around and we we we decided we needed to go and talk to some different pediatricians to see just to find a good fit. And it had nothing to do with like vaccines, no vaccines or anything like that. It was just I just want to find a good fit, someone who I you know, I I often go by the gut. Like do I like this person? Do I not? Do I have a good feeling? Do I not? And so we went around and we talked to like five, six or seven of them. And you know, all of them were great. They were friendly, they were professional, they had nice personalities, they seemed to know what they were talking about. But then whenever the issue of vaccines came up, it something just switched. You know, it was like this kind of wall came down. Or I’d noticed that like their instead of looking right at me, their eyes would kind of look up in a way, almost like they were reading a script in their in their minds. And every single one of them said something strange. And it and it was said in the exact same way that our soon-to-be born daughter would need the hepatitis B vaccine. And when I every time I heard that, you know, I just stopped. I was like, wait a, wait, wait a second. I don’t understand why you would give a baby or even a newborn the hepatitis B shot. I mean, isn’t that the disease you get from sharing dirty needles, sleeping with prostitutes? I mean, I just don’t see this as an issue. You know, what what’s the rationale here? And their answers were always incredibly lame. They had nothing to do with our life. He’s like, well, you know, she, you know, she might get bit in daycare. It’s like, well, but she’s not going to daycare, so you know, that’s not an issue. Right. And they say, well, she might need a blood transfusion. It’s like, well, how much do you have any data you could show me that about the chances she’s gonna need a blood transfusion? I mean, this is starting to sound kind of weird. And they would just tense up as they were trying to give more and more reasons for it.
Cathy Meehan: That’s nuts. Yeah.
Chris Downey: And one one of them even said, Well, you know, I’ll have to report your refusal. And I’m looking at it, yes, yes. I’m like, wait, I’m not, I mean, I’m not even I’m not even working with you yet. And you’re like, you’re gonna report my refusal. I felt like I was back in eighth grade. I was, you know, I even said, you know, that’s like what an eighth grade teacher would tell me if I refused to do, you know, to do something in the classroom. This is this is kind of weird. Yes, yes, yes. And so, you know.
Cathy Meehan: No they did not
Cathy Meehan: Oh my.
Chris Downey: This experience was bothering me. It was driving me nuts. I was like, what is going on here? There’s something I don’t understand. Something is going on because every single one of them, you know, very different people, different locations, male, female, different races, everything. They all said the same thing. Okay, and yeah. And so I’m noticing this pattern. I was like, you know, what are the chances of every single one of them lying to me in the exact same way? On purpose. I was like, I think, I think that’s probably kind of low. I think the chances of that are really low. So then could it be that there’s someone or or something lying to them and they and and through them lying to me? And then I started to feel like, you know, someone somewhere is trying to use my daughter for a purpose that no one is telling me. And I definitely do not approve of. And it just made me obsessed with turning like every rock over that I could possibly find. And then, yeah, later on, I I figured out what I was actually doing in that situation. Like as a software developer, you know, you have you have teams of software developers. Let’s say we have a team of like eight or ten people.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Chris Downey: And we’re all working on the same system. You could think of this newborn, my daughter, as this as a system, as a software system. And those doctors are other software developers on the team. And so whenever we work together on a single system, we each write code alone. Like I write code that does this. They, you know, she writes code that does that. But before we put the new code into the existing system, we come together as a team, we talk about the purpose of the code, we examine the code, we ask, have tests been run? Do we know what the code’s gonna do? Are there anything unexpected that might break in some other you know other area that we don’t aren’t even touching because it’s just so complex we don’t know the connections inside? And I mean, this is just like a common everyday practice for software developers thinking in systems. And I gotta tell you, if any of those doctors were on my software team, they would have been fired really quick because I knew they didn’t know what they were talking about. They just wanted to put their code in into my daughter without any understanding. So I was like, absolutely not.
Cathy Meehan: That is well well first I want to commend you because you and your wife went out and actually interviewed pediatricians. So you took that first step to see what was available. So I applaud you for that because I don’t think I don’t think enough new parents actually, you know, go out and interview pediatricians and find somebody that they get along with and that they like what they’re doing. And then that the other huge portion that is so important.
Chris Downey: Right. No, thank you.
Cathy Meehan: Is you were a critical thinker. And that really is if if the one thing that I could wish upon everyone is to, you know, dig down deep and use some critical thinking skills, because that’s really where you start to question the narrative and that you start to realize like, why were all of these pediatricians reciting the same same verbiage? They’ve got the same playbook.
Chris Downey: Yes.
Chris Downey: Right.
Chris Downey: Same.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: And then when you confront them with some questions that are outside of their box, that’s when they get defensive, they get rude, they say they’re gonna report you to CPS, which is absolutely ridiculous. So no.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Chris Downey: And the thing was, like, I didn’t even feel like I was confronting them. I mean, I to me, I was just asking common sense questions. Like, can you explain? Yeah, can you explain why you want to do this? And it just made no sense. And and it was it was just so clear they had no clue how to defend it. Like they could they could speak at like a population level, but every time they speak at a population level, I would bring them back and say, but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about my daughter, her. Speak to her, her individualized risks.
Cathy Meehan: Exactly, exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.
Cathy Meehan: Yes, specifically. Yeah, absolutely. So good job on that. Good job on that. So I do have a, you know, a little question. Going into new parenthood, did you all even research like some of the medical procedures like vaccinations? Did you already have kind of some knowledge that there were questions about vaccination safety and efficacy? Or did you go into the pediatrician’s office, you know, thinking everything was safe and effective?
Chris Downey: Hey, thank you.
Chris Downey: Right.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.
Chris Downey: you know, I I was kind of an arrogant software techie guy. You know, I read The Economist cover to cover, thinking I knew everything about everything and I understood. I understood enough about science, whatever. Right. And I would have tended to believe the safe and effective narrative and not questioned it at all had it not been for the unbelievably stupid policy of saying my daughter needed the hepatitis B shot. That just I mean that just that turned me, you know, like upside down and inside out in terms of how I was viewing vaccines. Because then I’m like, well, what else? What else is there that I don’t know that makes zero sense that I was just about getting ready to accept? But you know, this didn’t happen overnight. This was a journey of a you know probably maybe like three years or so. Yeah. Cause because it’s it’s so ingrained. I mean it in a way if you think about Aaron Siri‘s fantastic book Vaccines, Amen when you know vaccines as like a combination of religion and ideology, it is not easy nor a fast process to get out of that when you’ve it’s just been part of your background that you haven’t even noticed. You know, in a way it’s like you know if you’re born with your ears ringing, you’re not going to notice that your ears are ringing. Well it was kind of like that.
Cathy Meehan: Yes.
Cathy Meehan: Yes, exactly. And just a a little shout out to Aaron Siri. I do have a podcast with Aaron talking about his book, Vaccines, Amen, because it is a fabulous book. So what Chris was talking about, if you guys can, you know, check out Aaron Siri’s podcast, because it really goes kind of into the mind and the background of how a lot of physicians and people really take vaccines as a religion.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Chris Downey: How do
Cathy Meehan: And they won’t even look outside of the box or use critical thinking skills. Again, let’s go with that. Yes.
Chris Downey: No, that’s a good that’s a good point. I mean, you know, Aaron Aaron Siri is really a a phenomenal example of like why, you know, even though a lot of times people express express frustrations with lawyers, I I can’t like you know, he inspires me to think like I can’t imagine living in a society without lawyers. I mean, talk like the critical thinking, the fighting in the legal system, I mean, all that stuff. Absolutely important.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Well, you know, Aaron Siri is a great hero to those of us in the world of informed consent. But what I want to talk about is how you have used your IT skills to create VaxCalc because this is a phenomenal resource for parents. And if you would you know what
Chris Downey: Thank you.
Cathy Meehan: What was the you know, the brainstorm behind VaxCalc? And also for those of us who are unfamiliar with that, what exactly is VaxCalc? So take it away, Chris.
Chris Downey: Yeah, sure. Well, VaxCalc started I actually started it in 2009, and it was a volunteer project for National Vaccine Information Center, NVIC. And I I worked on it there for a few probably actually till 2018. And the original point of it was to make it easy to see what ingredients are actually in any individual vaccine, and then the totality of ingredients for multiple vaccines. But it’s since then. It’s evolved into something entirely different. It’s becoming a decision-making platform because the the biggest challenge that parents face is actually going into the well visit prepared. And what I mean by prepared is knowing what they’re gonna do, knowing what they’re not going to do. And sticking to it in the face of all kinds of like in your face pressure and subtle pressure.
Cathy Meehan: Yes. Yeah. Very important because especially new parents or new moms, they are programmed nowadays to just take your child to the pediatrician because for their well visits. When actually, you know, you know, my late husband Jim always said, you know, that that that is just programming to get you in so that they can get your child vaccinated, whether you want to do it or not. It’s all part of the programming.
Chris Downey: Yes.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: But you know, if you’re the type of person that’s going to go to those well visits, you need to be prepared, which is what VaxCalc does, is it helps you be prepared. and so that you don’t go in there all timid and without the knowledge that you need to fight back or even ask the right questions.
Chris Downey: Right. And
Chris Downey: Right. And and that’s such a good point bringing up the well visit because even if you even when parents feel really uncomfortable with the well visits, they’re they still they’re still gonna go. Especially new parents that haven’t had any children before. Sometimes you need to go just to make sure everything’s okay. Like you want someone else, like some kind of health professional to check out your baby. I mean I can totally I can totally get that. So you know, VaxCalc is organized with well visit guides for every single one. one like you know newborn, one month, two months, four, you know, four months, six months, the whole thing, all the way up to age 18. Because the idea, the critical idea here is to make a decision. You need to about what you’re gonna do and what you’re not going to do, you need to make that decision in advance of going to to the well visit and be complete and make the decision in advance before you’re going.
Cathy Meehan: Yes. Yeah. Say that again. Say that again.
Chris Downey: And so what a lot of parents, especially new ones, don’t realize is a well visit is like a container. Okay? And inside this container is a whole series of medical decisions that are actually have already been made for you. And that’s called the CDC schedule, as presented to you by the pediatrician. They’ll actually come walking in the room. Yeah, with the expectation and even using the presumptive language with you that the decision has already been made by your presence in that room that you are going to give like allow your child to have every recommended vaccine for that particular visit. So one so what our well visit guides do is they break that apart. They show you That like every vaccine that is going to be presented you know as like one single you know thing. Okay, they’ll they’ll have a tray of shots or whatever, right? Every one of those vaccines is actually a choice or a decision that you need to make. And for every decision, there’s actually four options. So for example, you can accept it. You can yes, say yes, we will do that here and now. You can delay, you can say, No, you know, we’re we’re gonna delay this. even gonna think about this right now. We’re just gonna we’ll we’ll put this aside till later. You can modify it and by modify it could mean a number of different things basing based on the vaccine, but modify how it’s done. Like no, you know, we’re potentially interested in that particular shot, but not with seven others. So maybe we’ll do it like one at a time so we can be safer. Or or you could just simply decline. You could say, no, we’re gonna decline this. And the other thing that that in the well visit guides at VaxCalc will show you, act there’s a lot of stuff in there that’ll show you, but it’ll also give you a heads up because more and more, especially at those early visits, like two months, four months, six months, more and more pediatricians are using six in one vaccines like Vaxelis, where you get six vaccines in one shot. And and a lot of parents don’t even know how much is in that one shot.
Cathy Meehan: So that is so deceptive. It is so deceptive because they think, I took my child and guess what? The doctor only gave us one vaccine. And then you’re like, sorry, honey. No, you got, you know, it was a five in one vaccine. And that is just so deceptive. It angers me. Yes.
Chris Downey: It is. It really is.
Chris Downey: No no it no it it it really it really is. No it does because it’s I mean it’s well known that more at one time is obviously riskier. I mean that’s it it’s just common sense. You don’t even need studies to to do that, right? I mean like you know think about it
Cathy Meehan: I mean, yeah, it is. come on, Chris. It is common sense. It is common sense. But we don’t have enough critical thinkers. We don’t have enough critical thinkers because they’re like, that’s that’s okay. My they we can give this little bitty baby all of these vaccinations and they’ll be fine. Sorry. I’m just getting so mad here thinking about because our Yeah. it is.
Chris Downey: It is common sense. Like, is it safer for you to take f five medications? Yeah.
Chris Downey: Right. Right. No, no, it’s all no, it’s all right. I mean, this is a very passionate subject because whenever whenever someone whenever a professional that you would like to trust does not tell you the complete truth and treat you with respect, I mean it’s it’s angering. That’s a natural thing. And in fact, that’s why no parent should ever go to a well visit alone.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Chris Downey: Bring your spouse, bring a family member, bring a friend. And ideally the person that you bring should be someone who can have your back, can be outspoken. Yeah, definitely on your team and they know what you want and they will support you in it.
Cathy Meehan: G yes, yes, yes.
Cathy Meehan: Yes, on your team. Mm-hmm.
Chris Downey: And so the the other thing that you’ll find in in the well visit guides in VaxCalc is you can play around with the like what can you expect from one or more shots? Because the picture changes radically with every additional shot you give. So what we’ve done is so if there’s like six different potential shots that could be given at the two-month visit, there’s actually probably eight. You would you might let’s just say you choose one, and then all of a sudden you’re gonna see the common adverse events, and these are all from the FDA package inserts, they’re gonna be shown right there on the screen immediately. And also, if there’s anything from the US government injury tables, and a lot of people may not know what those are, okay, but the idea of this vaccine injury table, in it’s been around for decades, is that if if a child gets a shot and a adverse a certain event happens, And it could be a very serious event. And if it happens within a certain time period, it’s automatically assumed that the vaccine is the cause of it. And so VaxCalc has combined the FDA package insert data with the injury tables. And as you add more and more shots to a single well visit, you will see on your screen all the things to watch for. Because if you’re gonna take that, see that here’s the other thing. That is never done in it. VaxCalc is bringing the parents. All the emphasis is on getting parents to comply, to give all those multiple shots, but there is no training whatsoever, no guidance, no nothing on what to look out for. Right now, you may get like a sheet for DTaP and a sheet for rotavirus, and it’ll say, the common reactions, the common reactions. But the thing is, they’re not. They’re just that’s not how vaccines are given. They’re not given like isolated one at a time, like these sheets are presenting. So we use our software technology to combine all these things and bubble up.
Cathy Meehan: Right.
Chris Downey: like the the the overlapping risks that may have been less common for one, but as you add more vaccines and more vaccines, the that risk might bubble up and it is something that you know it you need to just watch out for after the event. Yes.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, so important. So important. Yeah. I remember getting those vaccine inf what is it called? Vaccine information sheet. Yeah. And and okay guys, I was like the worst parent, because my children got way too many vaccinations. It was before I knew any better. And I will say we had eczema and pneumonia and gosh.
Chris Downey: Vaccine Information Statement? Yeah. They’re watered down.
Cathy Meehan: One of my daughters would just scratch so bad that she’d have blood in her sheets every morning from scratching. my fourth child, Macy, she didn’t even speak until after she was three years old. And the pediatrician said, well, that’s normal. And and my last baby, poor little Daniel, he cried and cried and cried. And I just think about, my gosh, I thought I was so good because I would give him Tylenol before we went to the pediatrician. get his shots. And you know, thank goodness we didn’t have any profound autism in in our children, but we we definitely had some some issues. And but those little vaccine information sheets that it was like I kind of remember it was like redness or swelling around the injection site. you know, possible sleepiness. It was just like these real minor things when that’s that’s just the, you know, that’s just a wash over. That’s
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Chris Downey: And the thing is that doesn’t make you that doesn’t make you a bad parent at that time. You were doing the best you could with the information that you had. And what it it does do is Yeah. And
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. I didn’t have VaxCalc. And you know, I I want to say the other thing, Chris, is if I would have just had one person say to me, Do you know what’s in a vaccine? I would have looked it up. But nobody ever said that to me. I honestly thought it was saline solution with a little bit of virus. And that was it. I mean, that’s
Chris Downey: I mean yeah, I mean that’s that’s just normal. We can’t I mean we can’t question everything, right? Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: gosh. I trusted my doctors. I trusted my pediatricians. I mean Jim was a Jim was a resident in medical school. I was a pharmaceutical rep and but I had no training on vaccinations. He had no training on vaccinations. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. yeah. So my little thing. Yeah, I
Chris Downey: Wow.
Chris Downey: So that’s interesting. You are a pharmaceutical rep, so you have inside information on how sales are done. that’s really fascinating. We could do a whole interview on that.
Cathy Meehan: It was easy. You go into these physicians’ offices and you have this beautiful slick and it talks about these are the symptoms. So prescribe this drug. And that’s all we didn’t talk about gut microbiome, you know, our lifestyle of living or nutrition or movement and exercise. We didn’t talk about any of that. We just talked about and then if they had an adverse event, guess what? Here’s the second pharmaceutical you want to put them on. So I, you know, God put me on that path though to
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: be doing what I am doing today. It’s all of those things that happened which gets us here. And it you yourself again being in IT and then experiencing what happened with you and your wife as first parents and going that it’s like God puts us on this path and now you’ve created VaxCalc so that other parents can go there for information, which is beautiful. Love it.
Chris Downey: Without a doubt. Without a doubt.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Chris Downey: No, thank you so much. Yeah. I mean w I know with with me, God created one of the most stubborn people on the planet.
Cathy Meehan: Was that you? Okay.
Chris Downey: That is me. Yeah, so that’s why VaxCalc exists, ’cause I I still haven’t dropped that experience. I just want to I want to improve the world for my kids and and their kids. And you know, and I I think I think like parents being able to make
Cathy Meehan: Yes.
Cathy Meehan: they do.
Cathy Meehan: Yes. Yeah, that’s the way you do it.
Chris Downey: their own medical and vaccine decisions. And that is not gonna that’s see the thing is okay, so VaxCalc is founded on no one is going to give that to you. No one is gonna give us that ability. It’s something that we have to take. I mean power is never given. We have to claim it as our own. And if for I think for a free society to to continue to exist, parents have to have that power.
Cathy Meehan: Hm, yes, good.
Chris Downey: It’s just I mean, it’s just not possible to remain free while at the same time mandating something that requires ninety-eight percent of the people to take, whether or not they want it.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Yeah. It’s that’s ridiculous. And and when you start, you know, if you want to call it going down that rabbit hole, my gosh, there’s just so much going on.
Chris Downey: And yeah and and that’s the and that’s the other thing, like VaxCalc is is designed that parents don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. Because you know and I because the whole idea of like this information overwhelm and this the battle of studies that’s always going on, I I I think I think that’s done on purpose to kind of overwhelm people. There’s just way too much stuff we need to know. And so they it just you know, the pr the that’s just part of the pressure.
Cathy Meehan: Yes, yes.
Chris Downey: You know, in a way, we just need to go we need to parents need to go with their gut. Hey, do I feel good about all these shots all at once? I mean just start there. Don’t you don’t have to read any studies. Right? Just just ask just ask ask the question. Do I do I do I think this is a good idea? And is this like the ultimate way to health?
Cathy Meehan: Yes, yes, yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, you start start with your gut. I like that. Yeah. And and
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. And and and just think. I mean, because going back to my own personal story, I didn’t think. I was told by the pediatrician that this is what we do and this is what you do and and that was it. It was A B C walk in, walk out, and I didn’t think. I I did not think.
Chris Downey: But we I think I yeah, I mean you probably might be being too unfair with yourself though, right? Because like s we can’t question literally everything that we come come across, right? We we have to be we need to be able to to live effectively, we need to be able to trust.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Downey: And so and so that’s actually part of the equation here. As we get older and develop more wisdom, we we figure out you know who we can trust and who we cannot trust. And do you do you mind if I jump in with like a little rule of thumb for that one?
Cathy Meehan: I would love it. Yes.
Chris Downey: Thank you. So so for young parents, new parents, like the way to figure out who you can trust is you you look, especially regarding your kids, like who has skin in the game, right? So if a doctor is giving you advice about vaccines for your child, and then some you follow that advice and something goes wrong, does your doctor pay a price? Are they penalized? Are they punished for that? Do they suffer along with you? No, they do not. They’re actually protected from that by law. So the doctor gets all the upside of your compliance. While if if there’s a downside to it, that that is for you and your child to carry alone, unfortunately. The doctor, meanwhile, gets his bonuses. And so that is not skin in the game. And so for me, that’s not someone I can really trust. Even even if I like them a whole lot. Okay, it’s like I need to know they have skin in the game. Like if I suffer, my child suffers, they need to suffer too somehow. Otherwise they’re just, yeah, it’s just not an expert that’s like the needs are not aligned.
Cathy Meehan: Well.
Chris Downey: Their needs and and our needs are not aligned.
Cathy Meehan: That is so true. Well, and I mean that can even go a step further. The physician’s mind, they are programmed to believe that vaccinations are safe and effective. So a lot of times, you know, a child will have an adverse event, and I’ll tell you what happens. That parent realizes what it was and they never go back to that doctor again.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Chris Downey: Right.
Cathy Meehan: Or they come back, the doctor gaslights it, says it wasn’t the vaccinations, and then now they have a patient for life. That’s really that’s really what happens. It is more like it’s a the doctor’s future revenue, whether it’s a bonus from an insurance company, which we know they do that, Blue Cross Blue Shield does it, Aetna does it, it’s called P4P, pay for performance. They have to vaccinate so many of their population.
Chris Downey: Right.
Cathy Meehan: And then they also get the benefit of if your child is injured, whether it’s asthma or it’s eczema, or no matter what what it might be, they have that child as a patient for life. And so it’s just a conveyor belt. So really
Chris Downey: No, that’s a really good point. And then e either I think one of the the easiest thing easiest responses to someone saying safe and effective, like if a doctor’s saying, Well, you know, it’s been proven to be safe and effective, you you just ask, Well, well, for who? For who? For my child. I mean, really, for my child, can you can you show this to me? Because again, you know, when you come in for like injury, it’s individualized care. You come in for a bad cough, it’s individualized care. They look at specifically what’s going on for you. But when it comes to vaccines, they will never talk to you in terms of like your child today, with their vulnerabilities, you know, your family’s medical history, you know, their unique biological characteristics or anything like that.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Downey: That there is no time spent on that, it’s always at the population level. So, what parents need to do is part of what you’re talking about, part of like thinking is pulling the doctor down to the individual level from the population level. It’s like, hey, you know, she is not everyone, she is not the one in whatever studies you’re thinking of, okay, because we’re not going to argue studies.
Cathy Meehan: Mm mm.
Chris Downey: I want you to show me and maybe even give me some kind of guarantee that ever that this is actually a good idea for her today. And that there there must be a way to prove it afterwards. Like doctor, can you what results would we see afterwards that would prove that this is actually a good decision? I mean, they can’t answer any of this stuff.
Cathy Meehan: No, they can’t. And then they just get mad. They get mad.
Chris Downey: Yes. So have fun with it. Yeah. Have I mean if you you know, if if you have the kind of personality where you want to have a little fun, right, just ask some questions like that.
Cathy Meehan: gosh. I would I tell you, I would love to go with the knowledge that I have now. I would love to go back into a pediatrician’s office. I mean, that’s kind of like I think I dream about how that would turn out because I I have a whole different perspective on them. And there’s and then but what I don’t want to forget us talking about is all the information.
Chris Downey: Yes.
Chris Downey: yeah, sure, yes.
Cathy Meehan: that is out there. Cause you talk about studies. I mean the the doc has studies, although they don’t have very many of them. And then you know, we have studies and where AI comes in when it comes to health matters and health decisions. Because AI is, I mean, it’s coming like that, everybody. I mean
Chris Downey: Right.
Chris Downey: Right.
Cathy Meehan: I’m even using AI for stuff. And yes, it’s a little scary. I mean, I don’t know the parameters that we need to put on it, but what are your thoughts on AI and health decisions and parents?
Chris Downey: I I think they can be I think AI can be phenomenally helpful so long as you don’t ask AI vague questions like are vaccines safe and effective? If you ask it that, it’ll talk to you like it’s a CDC website. But if but you know, AI can be incredibly helpful at like first line defense. Like if it’s late at night and something really weird is going on for yourself or your child, you can you can talk to it about everything you see and get a really good response.
Cathy Meehan: Mm.
Cathy Meehan: Okay. Okay.
Chris Downey: And and so there it’s i I and I’m not saying it replaces doctors, but it what it can do is it can help parents know, is this something I need to worry about? Or is this something that we can wait on? it’s it’s so it’s really phenomenal at that. And AI is also excellent at pattern recognition within like it’s sort of like finding a little golden needle in two million haystacks all over the place. It can do it like that. So there are our stories, like for example, there was a mom, and this was a couple years ago when ChatGPT was fairly
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Chris Downey: There was a mom with a child who she I think the child was like eight or nine and in intense pain. And she brought him to literally 17 different doctors and no one could figure out what it was because it was a super rare disease. And when she got she heard about ChatGPT, she got onto it, she uploaded, probably typed in a lot of the stuff, his medical records. And within 30 minutes, the mom and ChatGPT honed in on this very rare disease. It had something to do with the spine. and and yes, and then she went to another doctor to confirm that. And it was confirmed.
Cathy Meehan: Greatness.
Chris Downey: So AI can actually be super helpful for doctors in finding incredibly rare things and parents too. So AI can help parents be much more active and proactive and even to challenge medical advice they may be getting when it’s you know when it’s not like extremely urgent. So it could be really yeah, it could be your friend.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, no, that’s great. I yeah, I like how you said, you know, it it depends on what the information you put in is gonna, you know, give you good or bad information out. Yeah.
Chris Downey: The the more yeah, well more when it’s individual like when it’s very specific to a certain person right now, this is what they’re experiencing, then AI is phenomenal. But if you ask if you ask like general vague questions like is this medication safe, you know, you’re you’re it it it can’t it can’t really say that you you’ll get the kind of vague talk that’s not helpful.
Cathy Meehan: Maybe shallow kind of answer. Yeah, not enough information specifically.
Chris Downey: Yeah. And in fact, we actually we’re actually building an AI agent that supports parents in their decision making. And what it does is it through Telegram, it will contact the parent maybe a week before their well visit just to reorient them on like why are you going? So it’ll it’ll simply ask, why are you going? Because that’s one of like one of the key things in in making a decision and holding to it is to understand, well, hey, I’m I’m going to this well visit. It and this is why, this is what I want to get out of it. And so it puts that it kind of helps them with visioning success. Like here is what this successful well visit is going to be. So it’ll be a lot easier to hold to the decisions that were already made by the parent.
Cathy Meehan: I like that. Yeah. Well, and the more prepared you are, the more confident you’re going to be going into any of those visits with a pediatrician. I mean, that’s just yeah.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Chris Downey: No, exactly. I mean it’s like it’s like going, you know, car shopping. Right? If you know if you know what you want and what you don’t want, you you you’re you’re in a much more powerful position, right? But you don’t want to go talk to a car salesman and say, well, hey, you know, what what car do you think I should get? That’s like that there’s no difference between that and going to a doctor and saying, Well, what vaccine should she get? you’re gonna get a sales job in both cases.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm. Yeah, ’cause they just wanna make the sale. That’s what it is. Yeah, yeah.
Chris Downey: Exactly. Or they, ’cause it’s probably not even so much the money, it’s it’s it’s the statistics. You know, the the well the bonuses from the insurance company, but also, you know, keeping that level high so they don’t have problems with the State Health Department or the Medical Board, blah, blah, blah.
Cathy Meehan: Yes, yes, yes. That’s so good. So Chris, let’s talk about if a parent is interested in finding more information about VaxCalc and how they can utilize it. what what do you where do we tell them to go?
Chris Downey: Sure.
Chris Downey: Well, yeah, go to vaxcalc.org. That’s V A X C A L C dot org. And you can just get onto our email list. It’s very once you’re on, it’s super easy. If you don’t like it, you know, you can you can unsubscribe, but you’ll probably like it. We send out an email every day. It’s usually pretty entertaining. It’s sort of like what’s that called? Infotainment in a way. Learn learning through enjoyable little stories. Yeah, we have a Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we have a character named Tony who gives me a lot of crap for being so geeky.
Cathy Meehan: Yes yes it is. Yes, yes it is. I actually love it. Yeah.
Chris Downey: And and also you can, if you scroll down the the landing page or the home page of vaxcalc.org, you can actually go in in into into a live newborn well visit guide and without having to sign in or anything like that and just see what see what it’s like.
Cathy Meehan: that sounds great. That sounds great. Do you have any last advice for parents that are
Chris Downey: Yeah, actually actually I I do. I think I think like the most important thing for parents is to to trust your gut. You don’t need to read all these different books. I mean, if you want to, that’s phenomenal, but you don’t need to. The first thing to do is is to trust trust your your gut. I mean, you’ve been given parental instincts by God for a very important reason. And there’s a lot of forces that want to dull you to those instincts to kind of numb them out. And they do it with fear. They do it with shame. So take just take the time to just just like before make before going in, just like do is this a good idea? And you know, and if you don’t unless you feel like yes, I really want to do this, you know, it you could just say, well, no, not today. Not today. And that’s it.
Cathy Meehan: Not today. Not today, yes. Yeah. It it it is that easy. And I just I wish, like I said, that having my we had five kids, people. We had five kids. Jim and I had five children. All of them followed pretty much the entire vaccination schedule. We did stop before HPV because by that time Jim had done enough research and enough digging that he was like, I don’t think we’re gonna be doing these anymore.
Chris Downey: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: And then I also have all of my grandchildren who are not vaccinated. So I have my own little vaxxed versus unvaxxed study in the Meehan household, and I can guarantee that the unvaxxed kids have a much healthier childhood than our child, our our kids actually did. So yes.
Chris Downey: Vaxxed. Yes.
Chris Downey: Yes. I I’ve I’ve heard that from from so many parents. I’ve I’ve actually not once ever heard it in reverse. I’ve not never never heard it in reverse, not once.
Cathy Meehan: No, I haven’t either. Yeah. The day I hear that it’s reversed, I’ll let people know. So yeah. Yeah, we’ll bring on. Yeah, we’ll
Chris Downey: Yeah, actually bring on for an interview. I mean that would be absolutely bring on for an interview. Yeah, a after after yeah, figuring out what what what their you know agenda really is. But
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, how did that how did that happen? I don’t know. Well, Chris, it has been so great talking to you again. And I look forward to doing more podcasts with you and reaching out to help save the babies in our future generation. And most importantly, we need to provide the parents with the education that they need and the resources to go out there and be confident in their decision making. So
Chris Downey: Thank you.
Chris Downey: Really appreciate it.
Cathy Meehan: Thank you so much for your time and you bet. You bet we’re gonna do it again. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Downey: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. It’s it’s always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Absolutely. You take care. Bye.
