Joe Rogan Experience #1756 — John Abramson Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! And this is the subject of your book. I tried to get it. Well, let's start with that question. Yeah, let's do that. Because then the amount of money that's involved in advertising, There's no beneficial use of those. that. They tell you trulicity for diabetes prevents cardiovascular events in diabetics. How much does it cost? How many people do you need

5:31 or whatever it is. They're clearly fucking with people's heads and they're using psychology. If you want to do that to sell a car it doesn't bother me at all but you're doing something that you people who have health problems But I think we could make the drug ads. You could ensure that the drug ads leave people with an accurate understanding of what the benefit of the drug is going to be.

7:54 Yeah, I'm totally with you. I just think that it's not going to happen that we get rid of them. be so bad. lifestyle choices, if you're talking about diet and exercise and how it affects the way these Yeah, yeah, yeah. drugs have some amazing benefits and they've been incredible for mankind in so many different ways. But as well, some pharmaceutical drugs are amazing.

11:43 Their purpose is to make money. the lie? Like, what were they selling versus what was reality? So I can't tell you. I know, of the primary data, I got that. I got to see how the marketing people strategize to exploit the science to create And I did. And that was the end of it. They keep their cards close to their chest. We can, well. Wow. are trained that they should read and trust peer reviewed articles that are well conducted.

16:25 medicine where good doctors practice evidence-based medicine, and that's based on the peer-reviewed That's correct. First, they decide what they're about, come out with data that's going to sell the drug. And then after they've done all of that, more than the same brand name prescription drugs in the other OECD countries, Organization of cost effectiveness studies and we don't allow cost effectiveness studies to be used in government

20:40 understand how this works. And the docs, they're trying hard. They're drowning in information and they're under more and more pressure. The purpose of the fellowship was to train academics in family medicine to increase the prestige of family medicine, which seems like a good idea. So, yeah, I got a letter from a mother whose child died, 17-year-old child died from taking Vioxx, eight samples of Vioxx.

23:33 that that was better than non-steroidal anti-inflammatories exactly because it And you can have a study of 8,000 people where you leave out three heart attacks and you flip the statistics And at that point, I was sitting in my office at lunchtime reading, taking a break between sessions, reading this article. in it. And a week after that book was published, Vioxx was pulled from the market. It wasn't my

26:38 In the same ballpark as the number of Americans who died in Vietnam. Well, not only that, they're still making profit. It's crazy. That's written down. It's written down. and no one goes to jail for that no he's i mean that that is insane i mean imagine any other thing that you do that's fraud The biggest fine? There's a lot of dealing with inflammation.

30:02 by all the people who were dying from GI bleeds, But with Vioxx, we have the data on Vioxx because it did go to litigation in open court. so that if there's another flagrant foul, the subsidiary gets, it's called disbarred, and make sure that the parent company doesn't get hit with the fire. And a lot of times the plaintiff's lawyers will settle. Hilarious.

34:03 Let's turn this into a drug ad right here. second-line seizure drug, and one was for post-herpes zoster pain. Those were the two had misled the doctors in the Kaiser health system to prescribe this drug. The short of it is that for COVID. What Pfizer did to mislead doctors was there was a randomized controlled trial, of the randomized controlled trial,

38:10 this propaganda against it i my issue is with ivermectin oh i'm sorry yeah i apologize but On the situation you've talked about where you were derided for taking ivermectin, it because uh it was so weird that i couldn't believe it was true but that someone in the people still have Delta. It's not like Delta went away, but they're blocking the use of monoclonal

40:54 I talked about vitamin IV drips that I took, all these different things that I took, and I got better really quickly. that drug, ivermectin, is a generic drug. looked at the data and they said there's not enough data to rule on whether ivermectin is And you do that by manipulation. and someone comes along and says, why do you keep looking there? No, nobody's funding that.

43:59 It may be because we can't test fast enough to make a decision. not a shortage of supply. It's a shortage of distribution. And he believes it's by design. We don't have all the data yet, but I hope they work. like if you if you're sick and you get those for a lot of people that seems to do the trick and you The whole idea, the binary approach has been everyone needs to get vaccinated. They keep saying it over and over again, even in light of Omicron,

46:34 Well, yeah, we're a month in. damaging than Delta. Yes. And it's going to take two to four weeks in before you know What data is this? I'd only take it out of political entanglements. When we look at the FDA and ask the same question, Is there a source I rely on? it wrong, but you you got to make your best when I went into private practice. As time went on, it was clear that things were going off the

51:43 He gave this lecture about why we should prescribe this pain drug, which had been withdrawn two days before. He gave this lecture about why we should that this is a commercial proposition that we've got going, that the academics who are coming out but there was kind of a gentleman's agreement that you wouldn't. One of the things he said that really confused me and I wanted to ask you about this because I couldn't believe this is the whole

55:02 bullshit, right? Is that... I can't believe it either. by 50%. You wouldn't say 100% effective. No. The relative risk is 50%, which is equally outrageous claim. And that's what I'm concerned with when I keep hearing people repeating what he said Is it possible that there's that much shenanigans going on Well, if it was, because they never, didn't they say it was in the high 80s?

58:11 Right. United States. For the past two years, about 1,300 people a day have died of COVID. That's bad. Our health, the health of Americans is just abominable compared to the other wealthy countries. It's ruining our country. They can't control that problem with peer reviewers not having the data. But they can do governmental or to distort the medical knowledge.

1:02:54 who use 80% of the insulin in the United States. you can use it as a second-line drug, but not a first-line drug. But we're essentially playing Like how many of the factors are calculated? that the wages and quality of life are not as high, But the important fact here, that's true and that's awful. with 2.6 people in their household. Is there a way that that could be somehow or another re-diverted?

1:08:12 And you could do it with tax credits. And how we get to some middle ground on this, I hope you're smart enough to figure it out, economy grew after World War II, blue collar workers were getting their fair share. And the That's what's gone. And I agree with your reservations, Joe. I'm not happy. Yeah. stuff. towards their business as opposed to a business that's purely gross capitalism where they don't

1:13:31 we get to the same place in healthcare. They think they are, but they're not. you look at like west virginia and you look at these places where you have these pill like And it was essentially they showed that Florida had created this situation where they would have these pain management centers that were essentially just pill mills. And they also did not have a digital database.

1:16:30 So you see the synergy between the folks whose lives aren't working out the way they wanted and not get into trouble with it. So you've got the drug company that's an actor and you've got the social circumstances where people are hurting, whether it's medical hurting or spiritual 100,000 people died in this country from fentanyl that are ages 18 to 49,

1:18:28 Oh, that's not what I thought. of drug overdoses but drug overdoses are the number one cause of death between people 18 to 49. Absolutely. I know what is wrong with health care. I know what is wrong with healthcare. I know what the drug But we need to recreate the center with authority so that you can't make a whole bunch of money selling fat food to poor people and you can't make a whole bunch of money lying about your drugs and getting them covered by Medicare or private insurance.

1:22:08 of our problems are going to go away. These are compounding problems that seem to be getting worse that the healthcare that they're getting, That's the case essentially with everything Correct. And now some of that has to do with social context better for somebody who needs insulin, but it doesn't help to contain the costs. It makes it better for somebody who needs insulin, but it doesn't help to contain the costs or rationalize the use of insulin, insulin analogs

1:25:55 we're big enough now, so we're just not going to buy your new drug at that price. expensive, everyone can't afford it. So you have to make it just expensive enough so that they can If you place this drug that doesn't have therapeutic advantage over less effective drugs higher in the formulary so it has a lower cop copay, will give you, the PBM manager,

1:28:32 Wow. innovative drugs, and they're buying back their stock. company is in the business of making money. And they do it very well. And they will continue to do it ever better To preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, and number three would think, that they're going to go under and they're not going to make medicine anymore they would say, let's have health technology assessment

1:33:18 So that could have, just one case like that, a very large public case like Vioxx, where But we've got this sort of system where it's somehow you use a term that was like an agreement, but somehow this isn't working properly. Do you think there's some hope that we will have some common sense regulations that are That's another story we could talk about another time.

1:35:50 drugs in underdeveloped countries. So in May of 2021, the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the World Health Organization got together and said, we need $50 billion right now next one, I don't know what the next Greek letter after Omicron is. No, don't. I don't either. But And it was even worse than that. So Pfizer said it's dangerous for them financially? Is that what they said?

1:38:28 Yeah. dollar, it's like we're building this huge swimming pool and we've created for ourselves Merck was the most respected drug company for seven years in a row, starting in 1987. And during that run, the CEO, ivermectin away to the areas of Africa that were at risk of Supposedly they're doing that in Japan as well. I mean, you've got a natural experiment.

1:42:06 I think there's... Why would they do that for a study for a drug that's generic? because we don't know whether ivermectin works or not, sometimes you can't do it. I mean, you can't them to a control group, to a group that got treated with the diabetes drug metformin, Now, the results of that study were fairly reported. my program was, I would say, look, lifestyle is the best way to fix what you got. And here's a program that's easy and will gradually get into the exercise so you don't get an athletic injury.

1:46:11 to understand what their resistance was and to confront their resistance. How'd you do that? where people were randomly assigned to go to these counselors and have these sessions, You said it earlier. Well, I don't know if I agree with you on that, because I think it's just, there's a problem with human nature. And I've been around fitness and It really will get someone to sign up at a gym and maybe get some of those first baby

1:48:53 randomized controlled trial and these people lost I think 10 pounds and The time is now and you're also now a part of a trial. So there's a thing where you're in a group and, you know, I think everyone should belong to some sort of an organization like a local community gym that has exercise programs and classes and things like Your taxes go to the fire department.

1:51:14 and especially exercise in terms of like a group dynamic It has 15,000 people in it. But as it unfolds, big pharma controls so much of how doctors think the best way to treat diabetics is, along. The scientific infrastructure for genetic engineering of drugs was coming along. And once they figured out how to insert human DNA code into E. coli sell. And more than 90% of the insulin prescriptions flipped over very quickly when that

1:54:16 It sounds cooler because it's genetically engineered. So the innovators said, well, now what do we do? We got this insulin and the manufacturers manipulated the standards that the doctors were held to, organizations like the National Committee for Quality Assurance adopted that standard and they certify outpatient healthcare providers as being high

1:57:13 we're not doing the exercise program that you know would not only prevent diabetes, but heart when it costs them about $3 to make, some effect controlling drug prices. And we came up with this plan to limit the price of insulin, They're in the slaughterhouse. I'm all for drug development. That's a good summary. written a 900 page book like Robert Kennedy. It would have been a lot

2:01:35 because they're making money. that's feeding at the trough of drug company money. of how medicine should be run in the United States So first you make data transparent pre-publication once an article is published the cows are out When a drug company does a clinical trial, they do what's called – and have a statistician get the primary data. But what I'm saying is that there's no reason in the

2:05:03 You could fix the professional societies and societies and let's figure out how to fund them. Doctors are making good salaries. Maybe they could pitch in some money. Maybe you could have a match plan with the then, but they're not making, most of the doctors are not making big money. That's exactly right. Do you agree with that? How much of an impact do you think that would have?

2:08:22 They don't. I don't think it's, No. What is that? status. And it has about a 33% incidence of brain side effects, brain swelling, brain bleeding. They said, we're not going to work. We're not going to do this for you anymore. This is really scary. And the press releases, a memo about of drugs that reduced amyloid, and none of them improved Alzheimer's.

2:13:18 like this. And they're going to use their influence to push stuff like that through. They've gone from being, in many people's eyes, That is wild. true. The way you do it is in the last chapter of the book. You've got to build this coalition. it has a lot of health benefit to trust. If you have a doctor you trust. I think that's a very and have readily available classes and things you could follow along online in a free form,

2:17:59 is just so important here, Yeah. And I think history is gonna show So three quarters of the new molecular entities that are approved and I found that, do you have that slide? And this is per million kids who are vaccinated. So why is the Israeli data so much higher than what the VAERS has put out? Is it Don't get diagnosed. They're maybe half as much.

2:23:23 Right, but we don't have long-term studies on that. considered. So if you ask me, which I was hoping you wouldn't, if you ask me do I think kids should get vaccinated, are associated with that 80% It was a personal account of a kid who got vaccinated. Right. you have to get vaccinated to go to public schools, which seems in my mind to be kind of I can't argue with you, Joe.

2:27:40 In excess, 16,000 children die a year. There's nothing gray about that. It's horrific. And I think we've raised so many issues in this that I think people are going to have to dissect on because I think it's very hard for people as it was you know for you being Let everybody know.