"If you were to drop a vaccine at a vaccine clinic onto the floor, the hazmat guys will come, and you're not allowed to just pick it up if it's a mercury-containing vaccine. The hazmat people have to come and take that away. Yet we're okay to set a portion of that vial and inject it into, you know, a child," claims Suzanne Humphries, a nephrologist AFP has previously fact-checked for spreading health misinformation, in a video posted to Instagram April 23, 2025.
The clip, which also circulated on Facebook, comes from a March 26 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" in which Rogan promoted Humphries's debunked 2013 book "Dissolving Illusions" (archived here). The YouTube video of the interview received more than 2.2 million views.
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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken May 8, 2025
Vaccine ingredients are regularly targeted by activists who claim, without evidence, that they are dangerous or linked to neurological disorders such as autism.
Humphries's statement about mercury is also false.
"It is absolutely made up that there is any danger with a spill from a vaccine," said pediatrician Michelle Fiscus, the chief medical officer at the Association of Immunization Managers (archived here). "Typically what you do is clean it up with a piece of paper towel."
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