In this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum discusses how misinformation, distrust in science, and extremist rhetoric are fueling a deadly resurgence of preventable diseases in the United States—and urges clear and responsible leadership to protect public health. He’s then joined by Alan Bernstein, the director of global health at the University of Oxford, to examine the long-term consequences of the right’s war on science and vaccine research. Finally, David answers listener questions on creating laws to counter Donald Trump’s norm violations, on David’s confidence in the future of free and fair elections, and on how to teach civics to high schoolers in the Trump era. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Hello, and welcome to episode four of The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Thank you for all who watched and listened to the first three episodes. All of us at The Atlantic and at The David Frum Show are so gratified by the extraordinary response to our first three episodes, and we hope to continue to meet your expectations in this and future episodes.
My guest today is Alan Bernstein, Director of Global Public Health at Oxford University. Alan Bernstein there coordinates all the health and medical research across the vast domain of Oxford University and tries to ensure that scientists talk to each other and talk to the public in ways that benefit the safety of the whole planet.
Before that, Alan served as the founder and president of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, a coordinating body for health research across all of Canada, much like the Centers for Disease Control in the United States. And before that, he rose to fame and eminence as one of the world's leading researchers in cancer and virology. So I'm very glad to be joined today by Alan Bernstein.
And first, some preliminary remarks on the subjects we'll be talking about in today's discussion. As I record this episode in late April 2025, the United States is gripped by an outbreak of measles. More than 800 cases have been diagnosed in 24 states. Three people are dead, two of them unvaccinated school-age children, one of them an unvaccinated adult.
We are only about one third of the way through the year 2025. And yet the United States has suffered nearly triple the number of cases of measles in 2025 as it did in all of 2024. The measles is caused, of course, by a pathogen. But it is enabled by human ignorance and human neglect. Rising numbers of children are going unvaccinated.
About a third of American children fail to get the full suite of vaccines that the CDC's Centers for Disease Control recommends. And about 7% of American children go unvaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella. These are invitations to human harm and human suffering.
And they come about because of a rise in American attitudes of ignorance and unawareness about the causes of disease and how diseases are prevented. Let me read you a recent statement from the Kaiser Family Foundation, an important source of health and medical research information. Here's Kaiser.
When it comes to false claims that the measles vaccines have been proven to cause autism, or that vitamin A can prevent the measles infections, or that getting the measles vaccine is more dangerous than becoming infected with measles, less than 5% of adults say they think these claims are definitely true, and much larger share say they are definitely false.
That's the good news, returning to Kaiser. However, at least half of adults are uncertain about whether these claims are true or false, falling in the malleable middle and saying each claim is either probably true or probably false.
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