May 21, 2025 • 26 mins
A fascinating sit down with retired doctor of urology, Dr. Joe Camps.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
So much fun doing this. Monday, May nineteenth, Good morning, friends, Welcome.
It's kind of weird to think we are halfway past
the midway part of the month of May, and before
you know it. You know what that means. We're buying
Christmas presents and we're putting up Christmas trees. You know
it's coming up soon. Welcome to the Monday edition of
The Morning Show Show fifty three eighty two and joining
(00:26):
me this morning in studio, doctor Joe Camps. Unbelievable. How
are you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I'm doing great, Preston, how are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm doing wonderful. You and I Every now and then
we'll see each other in town and you'll be at
the football games of the basketball games. But this is
the first time in twenty three years of you and
I doing our Monday segments that we're face to face
doing this.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Unbelievable. I've talked to you from many places, some in
the operating room just going into surgery or whatever. But
glad you made that clarification. Not during surgery, of course.
You know I tried to stay focused when I was
working in of course.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, I want to give everybody just a little bit
of a snapshot of Joe Camps. I've mentioned it from
time to time over the years. You were the first
captain of a Bobby Bowden coach football team at Florida State.
Tell us how you came to FSU.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, I was being recruited. I fortunately, I guess I
was a five A athlete, which was, you know, really
exciting for me. And I made All State and Bill
Canyon coach Kanty, who was the quarterback coach, came to
my high school and he said, we'd like to recruit
you to Florida State under Larry Jones, and so I
(01:48):
decided to come here. And it's been unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Had you ever visited Tallahassee before that?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Not really?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So when you say school, where were you going to school?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I was in Gainesville and I was, okay, thinking about
going to University of Florida, Okay, yes, And they didn't
offer me. They said we'll take you on the second day.
And so when I had schools like Miami and Florida
State recruiting me, I said, I'm not going to wait around.
I'm going to take a scholarship. And boy, probably the
best decision of my life.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
What was it like playing for coach Bowden early on,
when he was really at the beginning of transforming, and
I think it would be fair to say, not just
the football program, Bobby Bowden transformed Florida State.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
University unbelievable and I'll never forget. I got called into
his office one day and he was sitting there and
I was face to face with him, and he says, Joe,
are you walking the line? And I paused, and I
mean I didn't know how to answer that because I
wasn't sure where he was coming from. I says, Coach,
I'm doing all I know and trying my very best.
(02:56):
But he says, are you walking the line? Son? I said, yes, sir.
It was unbelievable. Great man. Got to know him well,
actually provided his health services. I'll never forget when he
was diagnosed, he says. Now, Joe, I don't want anybody
(03:17):
to know about this, he says, because everybody will say
Bobby Boalden is dying and they'll recruit against me and
I'll lose a lot of players. I says, okay, Coach,
I won't say anything. And one morning, I think it
was a Good Morning America show back in the day,
this lady comes on and she says, coach Balden has
(03:38):
been diagnosed with prostate CAMS. And I went what I
had kept it secret for months and years, and all
of a sudden he exposed it. And I'll never forget
that day because I got about five job offers around
the country just on that diagnosis of the coach and
(04:00):
loved him to death. Wonderful person and just just had
a great career here in Tallahassee.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
What got you to the medical School of Medicine.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, when I was growing up, I said, I always
wanted to become a physician. It was part of my dream,
part of my goals, and I pursued it. Uh and
boy it was. It's It's been great President to be
able to to help people and and to be able
to make some reasonable contributions not only here in Tallahassee,
(04:35):
but around North Florida. And had an opportunity to train
out in Texas at the University of Texas MD Anderson
Council Center. It was a great opportunity, a great learning experience.
We had sixty beds on the urology service that it
tells you, you know, you won't have sixty beds on
(04:58):
one ward in most high hospital but we had sixty
beds with with eurology patience, and it was a great experience.
And I just feel like the Lord has just directed
my path, yeah, the whole way, because I couldn't script it. Preston,
I promise you I couldn't do that.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Back with doctor Joe Camps, you mentioned urology, being an oncologist, urologist.
There are so many fields of medicine. You mentioned wanting
to be a physician, and in my mind, I hear physician.
I think of a family doctor. You see him to
diagnose whatever is going on, and he becomes the doctor
(05:40):
for your whole family. He or she. What led you
to urology?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
You know, it's a it's an interesting question. I went
down to Miami with one of my friends who was
in medschoo His dad was a cardiologist, and he introduced
me to uncle who was a urologist. And I'll never forget.
Just out of the blue, he says, Son, he says,
(06:07):
in your line of work, you want to become a eurologist.
And then he began to talk about it, and the
more I began to think about it, I thought, what
an interesting career because you get to practice medicine. A
lot of eurological issues are medically treated, but also you
had the opportunity to become a surgeon as well, and
(06:29):
there's something called endoscopy where you use lots of scopes,
and neurology is one of the fields where using instrumentation
really was ahead of a lot of different specialties in medicine.
And I thought, boy, I have a chance to practice
medicine sort at a primary care level, but yet move
(06:50):
up the scale to become a surgeon. And it gave
me the best of both worlds in medicine, so I
was able to practice medicine, if you will, and then
I had a chance to develop my skills to be
able to operate on people, and most eurological procedures you
have good outcomes and people get better right away. So
(07:12):
it was very gratifying for me, particularly those that had
let's say, for instance, a kidney stone sure which can
be very very painful, I mean extremely painful. So I've
heard and one hour later the patient's smiling and going
thank you, doc. I feel great. So the rewards were great,
and some of them were immediate. I think of things
(07:32):
like testiculatorsion you're twisting of the testicle, you have a
young kid and one hour later they're laughing and smiling.
So the returns on your work were very gratifying, and
in some instances, obviously there were more significant things, such as,
sure what the president's being diagnosed with the former president
(07:54):
Joe Biden. Prostate cancer probably not that uncommon in an
eighty plus year old.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But maybe finding it seemingly as late as they found
it allegedly we don't know, of course, but it seems
in a very aggressive form.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yes, well, that's part of the mystery of prostate cancer.
He had a nodule, and so fifty percent of those
that have a nodule, a large percentage of those will
have prostate cancer. But sometimes it can be benign and
not really an issue. And then some say, well, there's
PSA prostaate specific anergen, which is a blood test that
(08:31):
everybody talks about. But some tumors are low secretors of PSA.
You might have a normal PSA but a very aggressive
form of prostate cancer. So you have to think it
through and work it up, which is what they did
and found out, Yeah, he probably has a low secreting
(08:52):
PSA on a very aggressive prostate cancer, and so a
large percentage of mails after the age of seventy will
develop prostate cancer, and sometimes it's readily apparent and sometimes
it's not.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And I guess the big takeaway, which is something you
and I have talked about frequently over the twenty three years,
is for men to not ignore those routine checks exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And in this case it was found on a nodule.
A large percentage of prostate cancers are diagnosed by PSA,
the blood test, but that could be misleading as well.
So you need a complete evaluation not only laboratory findings
and physical findings, but some of the detection methods that
we now have available to us today. You know all
(09:42):
of the scanning the radiologic diagnosis. Obviously are talking about
a PET scan which gives you another detection mechanism. So
it can be a complicated set of issues that you
have to work through. So a patient needs authority evaluation.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
With me in studio is the host of our Healthy
Expectations segment, Doctor Joe Camp's talk about the great double
entendre right health. The expectations we ought to have them
tell me in your field, if you were to consider
where you were in understanding the different forms of cancers
(10:29):
and the treatments of them. When you first started to
where we are now, how would you quantify if you could,
the developments and improvements.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It's been a quantum leap. You know. Traditionally there was
radiation therapy, sometimes there was radical surgery. Sometimes there was
hormonal therapy. Certain tumors respond to the hormones, and if
you block the hormones, you'll get regression. But I think
(11:00):
therapy is going to be the real breakthrough for cancer treatment,
and that is activation of your t cells, your own body,
activating cells that will attack the tumors. Part of the
problem with cancer treatments is that it's toxic to the body,
and sometimes you just to kill other things like suppression
(11:25):
of the bone mare, and so what happens if you
suppress your bone mare, you potentially could get some type
of an infection that actually takes you out. The cancer
itself didn't do it, but it's it's an infection of
some sort of pneumonia, those kinds of things, or sepsis
(11:46):
that can happen, and so it's toxicity from the treatment itself.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And so when you say immunotherapy, do you expect that
type of treatment to come within your field of oncology
and urology, or is it a separate field under itself
that will work in parallel or as a companion to.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It's going to be a companion too, because activation of
your bone mare to fight against a foreign invader limits
the toxicity which you get from some treatments. And I
say toxicity meaning that some things actually can suppress your
bone mare. So if your bone mare isn't functioning, then
(12:27):
you have a whole myriad of problems that develop, such
as becoming a nemic, developing pneumonia's all sorts of medical
issues that the cancer itself didn't take you out, but
the treatment did because it suppressed the bone marre. So
these therapies can be quite complicated, and you know, you
(12:51):
don't want to deal with the host, the host meaning you,
the body and its response. Sometimes you just don't know
how that's going to happen. And uh and so the
cancer itself didn't kill you, but the treatment did because
it suppresses your bone mare, You become a mnemic, you
get pneumonias, those types of things which ultimately UH can
(13:12):
can be the source of one demise.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Are you still consulting, are you still reading the trades.
How how involved are you, Because there's a part of
me that thinks, as much as it's good to kind
of say, I've had my career, especially in the field
where you are doing surgeries and operations and you're you
say that there's great reward, but there's still very weighty
matters that you're you know, consulting with patients about. Are
(13:37):
you staying actively in it?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yes, I currently work part time at the hospital and
organizational improvement uh AND and also our work and review
physician work activity. And you know, no one's perfect, and
so I'm able to counsel sometimes the physicians on decisions
(13:59):
that were made and launch programs to improve the delivery
of the healthcare. So I'm up every day. This morning,
I was up at five, met my walking crew. We
walked our usual four and a half miles.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
A boy and.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Got a shower, jumped in and I'm here at the show.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
You say you walk four and a half miles At
any point, does that turn into a jog?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
No?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I used to jog for about twenty five years. I
know you did, and I really enjoyed. And one of
my highlights was I actually got the jog with one
of our governors who met us at the club, and
we had a chance to jog and really had some
(14:50):
fine mornings. A lot gets done at five o'clock in
the morning, Preston, tell me about it and get a
chance to discuss issues, talk about issues with family, talk
about life issues. We talk about football, basketball, baseball, and
(15:13):
then other subjects depending on what turns up.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Doctor Joe Camp's with me. More time with doctor Camps next.
Tell me when was the last time you had this
much time with a doctor? Right right, exactly. That's what
we're doing here this morning on the Morning Show with
Preston Scott. Time flies when you're having a great conversation,
doesn't it. Doctor Joe Camps with me in studio for
another two segments here. We talked last week about prescription prices, Yes,
(15:43):
and the President told a hilarious story about the fat
shot and how a guy goes to the UK and
gets it for eighty eight bucks and he's paying twelve
hundred in New York for the same exact shot.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Absolutely, the pharmaceutical industry has been under scrutiny.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I think fair.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I think it's fair. I think we need to take
a look at that because I've I've looked at certain
drug costs and pharmaceutical cost it's insane. I mean you
can't afford it. I mean you lose your life savings
trying to purchase medication.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
It's like, what's the point of the medicine if you
can't afford to take it.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yes, you probably shouldn't even advertise it. To be honest
with you, I knew long ago when I first read
about some of the newer drugs that they were phenomenal.
And we're finding out like ozembic and we'll go be
the things we're talking about, they're finding that they could
have benefits in the treatment of Alzheimer's. I mean, you
(16:49):
name it. This is a breakthrough. And I remember we
talked about this drug and I said, press and I
think this is going to be a real breakthrough. And
now it's it seems to be the drug of choice
to deal with obesity, which still I think is probably
one of the number one health issues in our country.
(17:09):
You're quite honest with you, and create some myriad of
problems that could be avoided. You think of orthopedic cases
from you know, pain on the wear and tear on
the joints, and you just you know, obesity again needs
to be attacked, and I think I think this drug
(17:30):
has been phenomenal in that sense.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Do you think that that the pharmaceutical companies are and
to oversimplify, is the United States paying for the R
and D the research and development portion of of these things.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
A lot of them, Yes, I mean some of that.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
So these high prices domestically, it's because they kind of
view the Americans can afford it.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yes, I absolutely do. How can you spend literally one
eighth in a foreign country for me medication? Here you pay,
you know, seven eight times the real cost of the
of the drug. And then what you get is we'll
talk to the pharmacy benefit managers. Well, it's not them
(18:13):
that totally decides the pricing. Is that it's a business.
I mean, you can, you can make a lot of
money on pharmaceuticals, and people know that, especially if in
this case you've got a drug that deals with weight
and a lot of people desire to lose weight for
various reasons, and they're willing to spend whatever it takes.
(18:38):
And so I think this will always continue to be
a challenge and I think around the world we'll perceived
as as having the greatest resources, and of course Americans
can pay more, and that's just something I think we're
gonna have to wait and see and get some parody
around the world on this issue.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Do you feel like the government has to involve itself
in this?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Probably because when you look at spending, you're looking at
Medicare and Medicaid. The commercial products are available and they
spend lots of money as well, but the number one
source of revenue for the pharmaceutical industry is the government.
(19:24):
It's Medicare and Medicaid. And make no mistake about.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It, It's not lost on me that what maybe half
of the commercials on any sports day are going to
be commercials dealing with medications.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Absolutely, and so they're trying to message the products that
they have. And let's face it, this a business too,
and one that's very lucrative, and there are a lot
of players in this marketplace. So I think we're going
to continue to see challenges across the board here.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Joe Camps with me one more segment. Joe, you and
I talked about this in the break and how I
believe that the medical community, broadly speaking, obviously exceptions, I
paint with a broad brush and you understand that. Yes,
I believe the medical profession really damaged itself during COVID
(20:21):
greatly the stance of vaccine only and not allowing room
for dissenting views and thoughts which were proven to be
accurate dissenting views and thoughts. But it gets back to
trust ultimately, as a doctor, you have to have the
trust of the people you're speaking to.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
How does the medical community broadly regain trust loss during COVID?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Well, I think we we we should listen to our
patients and look at the twos that we have to
work with medications, surgery, those types of things, and you know,
make the best decisions in our minds that we think
(21:10):
is the right thing for the patients. And quite frankly,
I remember the COVID situation and it was devastating. I
have never seen more refrigerated trucks carrying bodies out at
the hospital than during that time, both hospitals, and I
(21:34):
think it had a tremendous effect on the medical community
because we were dealing with something that I'm not sure
we really anybody really knew what needed to be done
in the moment. You can always go back and review
your data, become analytical with it. But the doctors that
(21:59):
I worked with, I think we're trying the very best
using the two's that we had.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Do you think there was some bullying going on? Though?
For example, I feel like a lot of the medical community.
I actually had emails from doctors that said, I'm being
threatened with my job if I don't do this, and
that had never been happened, and that had never happened.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
No, it never happened, And I think that I think
there was a lot of fear. I'll never forget. We
had to go into some of the rooms and we
had HASMA suits and I mean we were covered as
if there was some big plague in.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The movie Outbreak.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, And I think I think it was a moment
in time where, quite frankly, a lot of us didn't
know exactly what to do. And you know, when we
take our oath to become physicians, the first thing we
say is first, do no harm. And I think that
(22:59):
a lot of people truly were paralyzed by this. They
weren't sure exactly what to do.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
But yet, but yet the medical community was ordering you
will do this when you're right. I think you're exactly right.
I think a lot of doctors were like, hold on
here now, but we're being ordered to a protocol that
science ironically showed this guy who was a college dropout
(23:27):
that you can't vaccinate against the coronavirus. There's never been
one developed to stop it, and yet that's what we
were told.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yes, and I think when you think of viruses, we
know the one thing that happens is things mutate, and
so you're not really sure no matter what you're doing.
I promise you you're not one hundred percent sure. And
if you think about that, and then our decision making
doctors deal with that all the time every day, patient
(23:55):
the patient. Do I really believe this? Yes, but I'm
not sure, and so sometimes you just it's not a
finite process.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Do you think lessons were learned?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh? Absolutely, And in some cases I think we overreacted
and sometimes I'm sure there were bad decisions. Yeah, I'm
sure there were times there were good decisions, but boy,
that was a challenging time for us.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I commented to you in the break that I think
it would be useful if broadly we had leaders of
hospitals and doctors associations and so forth come out and say,
you know, we made some mistakes and we were wrong
about this, this and this, But I've not heard that.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
No, you haven't. And I think that that's one of
the things that positions sometimes struggle with. And I promise
you it weighs on your mind. Sure, it's a tough
that's a tough position sometimes Becau's why.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I'm not one, But it's it's it's very rewarding, but
there are challenges in this business that and we do
it on a day to day basis, case by case
sometimes and we're not one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
And if there's a position out there there's one hundred
percent sure, then I want to meet that person because
that's the challenging part of what we do. Well.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's why it's called practicing medicine.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yes, I agree with that. It is practicing because we
don't always it's yeah, we don't always have the Sometimes
the decisions that are made are toxic to the body.
We talked about that, and sometimes the best decision probably
is to do nothing sometimes if you're not sure, or
seek advice. But we deal with those day to day
(25:47):
issues every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I appreciate you making time and coming down here. Thank
you for having me do this again. Sometimes, yeah, we'll
do it. Sometimes we'll take some questions someday, Oh, I
don't know, open up some questions to some of the
guys out there asking about it. Are we going to
ever do this colonoscopy without getting that stuff that we
got to take?
Speaker 2 (26:04):
No, I'm afraid that's with you and it's called golightly,
So uh you will go.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Good. Good to see you.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Thank you very much for having me
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Doctor Joe Camps with me on The Morning Show with
Preston Scott
So much fun doing this. Monday, May nineteenth, Good morning, friends, Welcome.
It's kind of weird to think we are halfway past
the midway part of the month of May, and before
you know it. You know what that means. We're buying
Christmas presents and we're putting up Christmas trees. You know
it's coming up soon. Welcome to the Monday edition of
The Morning Show Show fifty three eighty two and joining
(00:26):
me this morning in studio, doctor Joe Camps. Unbelievable. How
are you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I'm doing great, Preston, how are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm doing wonderful. You and I Every now and then
we'll see each other in town and you'll be at
the football games of the basketball games. But this is
the first time in twenty three years of you and
I doing our Monday segments that we're face to face
doing this.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Unbelievable. I've talked to you from many places, some in
the operating room just going into surgery or whatever. But
glad you made that clarification. Not during surgery, of course.
You know I tried to stay focused when I was
working in of course.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, I want to give everybody just a little bit
of a snapshot of Joe Camps. I've mentioned it from
time to time over the years. You were the first
captain of a Bobby Bowden coach football team at Florida State.
Tell us how you came to FSU.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, I was being recruited. I fortunately, I guess I
was a five A athlete, which was, you know, really
exciting for me. And I made All State and Bill
Canyon coach Kanty, who was the quarterback coach, came to
my high school and he said, we'd like to recruit
you to Florida State under Larry Jones, and so I
(01:48):
decided to come here. And it's been unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Had you ever visited Tallahassee before that?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Not really?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So when you say school, where were you going to school?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I was in Gainesville and I was, okay, thinking about
going to University of Florida, Okay, yes, And they didn't
offer me. They said we'll take you on the second day.
And so when I had schools like Miami and Florida
State recruiting me, I said, I'm not going to wait around.
I'm going to take a scholarship. And boy, probably the
best decision of my life.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
What was it like playing for coach Bowden early on,
when he was really at the beginning of transforming, and
I think it would be fair to say, not just
the football program, Bobby Bowden transformed Florida State.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
University unbelievable and I'll never forget. I got called into
his office one day and he was sitting there and
I was face to face with him, and he says, Joe,
are you walking the line? And I paused, and I
mean I didn't know how to answer that because I
wasn't sure where he was coming from. I says, Coach,
I'm doing all I know and trying my very best.
(02:56):
But he says, are you walking the line? Son? I said, yes, sir.
It was unbelievable. Great man. Got to know him well,
actually provided his health services. I'll never forget when he
was diagnosed, he says. Now, Joe, I don't want anybody
(03:17):
to know about this, he says, because everybody will say
Bobby Boalden is dying and they'll recruit against me and
I'll lose a lot of players. I says, okay, Coach,
I won't say anything. And one morning, I think it
was a Good Morning America show back in the day,
this lady comes on and she says, coach Balden has
(03:38):
been diagnosed with prostate CAMS. And I went what I
had kept it secret for months and years, and all
of a sudden he exposed it. And I'll never forget
that day because I got about five job offers around
the country just on that diagnosis of the coach and
(04:00):
loved him to death. Wonderful person and just just had
a great career here in Tallahassee.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
What got you to the medical School of Medicine.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, when I was growing up, I said, I always
wanted to become a physician. It was part of my dream,
part of my goals, and I pursued it. Uh and
boy it was. It's It's been great President to be
able to to help people and and to be able
to make some reasonable contributions not only here in Tallahassee,
(04:35):
but around North Florida. And had an opportunity to train
out in Texas at the University of Texas MD Anderson
Council Center. It was a great opportunity, a great learning experience.
We had sixty beds on the urology service that it
tells you, you know, you won't have sixty beds on
(04:58):
one ward in most high hospital but we had sixty
beds with with eurology patience, and it was a great experience.
And I just feel like the Lord has just directed
my path, yeah, the whole way, because I couldn't script it. Preston,
I promise you I couldn't do that.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Back with doctor Joe Camps, you mentioned urology, being an oncologist, urologist.
There are so many fields of medicine. You mentioned wanting
to be a physician, and in my mind, I hear physician.
I think of a family doctor. You see him to
diagnose whatever is going on, and he becomes the doctor
(05:40):
for your whole family. He or she. What led you
to urology?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
You know, it's a it's an interesting question. I went
down to Miami with one of my friends who was
in medschoo His dad was a cardiologist, and he introduced
me to uncle who was a urologist. And I'll never forget.
Just out of the blue, he says, Son, he says,
(06:07):
in your line of work, you want to become a eurologist.
And then he began to talk about it, and the
more I began to think about it, I thought, what
an interesting career because you get to practice medicine. A
lot of eurological issues are medically treated, but also you
had the opportunity to become a surgeon as well, and
(06:29):
there's something called endoscopy where you use lots of scopes,
and neurology is one of the fields where using instrumentation
really was ahead of a lot of different specialties in medicine.
And I thought, boy, I have a chance to practice
medicine sort at a primary care level, but yet move
(06:50):
up the scale to become a surgeon. And it gave
me the best of both worlds in medicine, so I
was able to practice medicine, if you will, and then
I had a chance to develop my skills to be
able to operate on people, and most eurological procedures you
have good outcomes and people get better right away. So
(07:12):
it was very gratifying for me, particularly those that had
let's say, for instance, a kidney stone sure which can
be very very painful, I mean extremely painful. So I've
heard and one hour later the patient's smiling and going
thank you, doc. I feel great. So the rewards were great,
and some of them were immediate. I think of things
(07:32):
like testiculatorsion you're twisting of the testicle, you have a
young kid and one hour later they're laughing and smiling.
So the returns on your work were very gratifying, and
in some instances, obviously there were more significant things, such as,
sure what the president's being diagnosed with the former president
(07:54):
Joe Biden. Prostate cancer probably not that uncommon in an
eighty plus year old.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But maybe finding it seemingly as late as they found
it allegedly we don't know, of course, but it seems
in a very aggressive form.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yes, well, that's part of the mystery of prostate cancer.
He had a nodule, and so fifty percent of those
that have a nodule, a large percentage of those will
have prostate cancer. But sometimes it can be benign and
not really an issue. And then some say, well, there's
PSA prostaate specific anergen, which is a blood test that
(08:31):
everybody talks about. But some tumors are low secretors of PSA.
You might have a normal PSA but a very aggressive
form of prostate cancer. So you have to think it
through and work it up, which is what they did
and found out, Yeah, he probably has a low secreting
(08:52):
PSA on a very aggressive prostate cancer, and so a
large percentage of mails after the age of seventy will
develop prostate cancer, and sometimes it's readily apparent and sometimes
it's not.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And I guess the big takeaway, which is something you
and I have talked about frequently over the twenty three years,
is for men to not ignore those routine checks exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And in this case it was found on a nodule.
A large percentage of prostate cancers are diagnosed by PSA,
the blood test, but that could be misleading as well.
So you need a complete evaluation not only laboratory findings
and physical findings, but some of the detection methods that
we now have available to us today. You know all
(09:42):
of the scanning the radiologic diagnosis. Obviously are talking about
a PET scan which gives you another detection mechanism. So
it can be a complicated set of issues that you
have to work through. So a patient needs authority evaluation.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
With me in studio is the host of our Healthy
Expectations segment, Doctor Joe Camp's talk about the great double
entendre right health. The expectations we ought to have them
tell me in your field, if you were to consider
where you were in understanding the different forms of cancers
(10:29):
and the treatments of them. When you first started to
where we are now, how would you quantify if you could,
the developments and improvements.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It's been a quantum leap. You know. Traditionally there was
radiation therapy, sometimes there was radical surgery. Sometimes there was
hormonal therapy. Certain tumors respond to the hormones, and if
you block the hormones, you'll get regression. But I think
(11:00):
therapy is going to be the real breakthrough for cancer treatment,
and that is activation of your t cells, your own body,
activating cells that will attack the tumors. Part of the
problem with cancer treatments is that it's toxic to the body,
and sometimes you just to kill other things like suppression
(11:25):
of the bone mare, and so what happens if you
suppress your bone mare, you potentially could get some type
of an infection that actually takes you out. The cancer
itself didn't do it, but it's it's an infection of
some sort of pneumonia, those kinds of things, or sepsis
(11:46):
that can happen, and so it's toxicity from the treatment itself.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And so when you say immunotherapy, do you expect that
type of treatment to come within your field of oncology
and urology, or is it a separate field under itself
that will work in parallel or as a companion to.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It's going to be a companion too, because activation of
your bone mare to fight against a foreign invader limits
the toxicity which you get from some treatments. And I
say toxicity meaning that some things actually can suppress your
bone mare. So if your bone mare isn't functioning, then
(12:27):
you have a whole myriad of problems that develop, such
as becoming a nemic, developing pneumonia's all sorts of medical
issues that the cancer itself didn't take you out, but
the treatment did because it suppressed the bone marre. So
these therapies can be quite complicated, and you know, you
(12:51):
don't want to deal with the host, the host meaning you,
the body and its response. Sometimes you just don't know
how that's going to happen. And uh and so the
cancer itself didn't kill you, but the treatment did because
it suppresses your bone mare, You become a mnemic, you
get pneumonias, those types of things which ultimately UH can
(13:12):
can be the source of one demise.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Are you still consulting, are you still reading the trades.
How how involved are you, Because there's a part of
me that thinks, as much as it's good to kind
of say, I've had my career, especially in the field
where you are doing surgeries and operations and you're you
say that there's great reward, but there's still very weighty
matters that you're you know, consulting with patients about. Are
(13:37):
you staying actively in it?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yes, I currently work part time at the hospital and
organizational improvement uh AND and also our work and review
physician work activity. And you know, no one's perfect, and
so I'm able to counsel sometimes the physicians on decisions
(13:59):
that were made and launch programs to improve the delivery
of the healthcare. So I'm up every day. This morning,
I was up at five, met my walking crew. We
walked our usual four and a half miles.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
A boy and.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Got a shower, jumped in and I'm here at the show.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
You say you walk four and a half miles At
any point, does that turn into a jog?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
No?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I used to jog for about twenty five years. I
know you did, and I really enjoyed. And one of
my highlights was I actually got the jog with one
of our governors who met us at the club, and
we had a chance to jog and really had some
(14:50):
fine mornings. A lot gets done at five o'clock in
the morning, Preston, tell me about it and get a
chance to discuss issues, talk about issues with family, talk
about life issues. We talk about football, basketball, baseball, and
(15:13):
then other subjects depending on what turns up.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Doctor Joe Camp's with me. More time with doctor Camps next.
Tell me when was the last time you had this
much time with a doctor? Right right, exactly. That's what
we're doing here this morning on the Morning Show with
Preston Scott. Time flies when you're having a great conversation,
doesn't it. Doctor Joe Camps with me in studio for
another two segments here. We talked last week about prescription prices, Yes,
(15:43):
and the President told a hilarious story about the fat
shot and how a guy goes to the UK and
gets it for eighty eight bucks and he's paying twelve
hundred in New York for the same exact shot.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Absolutely, the pharmaceutical industry has been under scrutiny.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I think fair.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I think it's fair. I think we need to take
a look at that because I've I've looked at certain
drug costs and pharmaceutical cost it's insane. I mean you
can't afford it. I mean you lose your life savings
trying to purchase medication.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
It's like, what's the point of the medicine if you
can't afford to take it.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yes, you probably shouldn't even advertise it. To be honest
with you, I knew long ago when I first read
about some of the newer drugs that they were phenomenal.
And we're finding out like ozembic and we'll go be
the things we're talking about, they're finding that they could
have benefits in the treatment of Alzheimer's. I mean, you
(16:49):
name it. This is a breakthrough. And I remember we
talked about this drug and I said, press and I
think this is going to be a real breakthrough. And
now it's it seems to be the drug of choice
to deal with obesity, which still I think is probably
one of the number one health issues in our country.
(17:09):
You're quite honest with you, and create some myriad of
problems that could be avoided. You think of orthopedic cases
from you know, pain on the wear and tear on
the joints, and you just you know, obesity again needs
to be attacked, and I think I think this drug
(17:30):
has been phenomenal in that sense.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Do you think that that the pharmaceutical companies are and
to oversimplify, is the United States paying for the R
and D the research and development portion of of these things.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
A lot of them, Yes, I mean some of that.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
So these high prices domestically, it's because they kind of
view the Americans can afford it.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yes, I absolutely do. How can you spend literally one
eighth in a foreign country for me medication? Here you pay,
you know, seven eight times the real cost of the
of the drug. And then what you get is we'll
talk to the pharmacy benefit managers. Well, it's not them
(18:13):
that totally decides the pricing. Is that it's a business.
I mean, you can, you can make a lot of
money on pharmaceuticals, and people know that, especially if in
this case you've got a drug that deals with weight
and a lot of people desire to lose weight for
various reasons, and they're willing to spend whatever it takes.
(18:38):
And so I think this will always continue to be
a challenge and I think around the world we'll perceived
as as having the greatest resources, and of course Americans
can pay more, and that's just something I think we're
gonna have to wait and see and get some parody
around the world on this issue.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Do you feel like the government has to involve itself
in this?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Probably because when you look at spending, you're looking at
Medicare and Medicaid. The commercial products are available and they
spend lots of money as well, but the number one
source of revenue for the pharmaceutical industry is the government.
(19:24):
It's Medicare and Medicaid. And make no mistake about.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It, It's not lost on me that what maybe half
of the commercials on any sports day are going to
be commercials dealing with medications.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Absolutely, and so they're trying to message the products that
they have. And let's face it, this a business too,
and one that's very lucrative, and there are a lot
of players in this marketplace. So I think we're going
to continue to see challenges across the board here.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Joe Camps with me one more segment. Joe, you and
I talked about this in the break and how I
believe that the medical community, broadly speaking, obviously exceptions, I
paint with a broad brush and you understand that. Yes,
I believe the medical profession really damaged itself during COVID
(20:21):
greatly the stance of vaccine only and not allowing room
for dissenting views and thoughts which were proven to be
accurate dissenting views and thoughts. But it gets back to
trust ultimately, as a doctor, you have to have the
trust of the people you're speaking to.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
How does the medical community broadly regain trust loss during COVID?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Well, I think we we we should listen to our
patients and look at the twos that we have to
work with medications, surgery, those types of things, and you know,
make the best decisions in our minds that we think
(21:10):
is the right thing for the patients. And quite frankly,
I remember the COVID situation and it was devastating. I
have never seen more refrigerated trucks carrying bodies out at
the hospital than during that time, both hospitals, and I
(21:34):
think it had a tremendous effect on the medical community
because we were dealing with something that I'm not sure
we really anybody really knew what needed to be done
in the moment. You can always go back and review
your data, become analytical with it. But the doctors that
(21:59):
I worked with, I think we're trying the very best
using the two's that we had.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Do you think there was some bullying going on? Though?
For example, I feel like a lot of the medical community.
I actually had emails from doctors that said, I'm being
threatened with my job if I don't do this, and
that had never been happened, and that had never happened.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
No, it never happened, And I think that I think
there was a lot of fear. I'll never forget. We
had to go into some of the rooms and we
had HASMA suits and I mean we were covered as
if there was some big plague in.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The movie Outbreak.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, And I think I think it was a moment
in time where, quite frankly, a lot of us didn't
know exactly what to do. And you know, when we
take our oath to become physicians, the first thing we
say is first, do no harm. And I think that
(22:59):
a lot of people truly were paralyzed by this. They
weren't sure exactly what to do.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
But yet, but yet the medical community was ordering you
will do this when you're right. I think you're exactly right.
I think a lot of doctors were like, hold on
here now, but we're being ordered to a protocol that
science ironically showed this guy who was a college dropout
(23:27):
that you can't vaccinate against the coronavirus. There's never been
one developed to stop it, and yet that's what we
were told.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yes, and I think when you think of viruses, we
know the one thing that happens is things mutate, and
so you're not really sure no matter what you're doing.
I promise you you're not one hundred percent sure. And
if you think about that, and then our decision making
doctors deal with that all the time every day, patient
(23:55):
the patient. Do I really believe this? Yes, but I'm
not sure, and so sometimes you just it's not a
finite process.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Do you think lessons were learned?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh? Absolutely, And in some cases I think we overreacted
and sometimes I'm sure there were bad decisions. Yeah, I'm
sure there were times there were good decisions, but boy,
that was a challenging time for us.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I commented to you in the break that I think
it would be useful if broadly we had leaders of
hospitals and doctors associations and so forth come out and say,
you know, we made some mistakes and we were wrong
about this, this and this, But I've not heard that.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
No, you haven't. And I think that that's one of
the things that positions sometimes struggle with. And I promise
you it weighs on your mind. Sure, it's a tough
that's a tough position sometimes Becau's why.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I'm not one, But it's it's it's very rewarding, but
there are challenges in this business that and we do
it on a day to day basis, case by case
sometimes and we're not one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
And if there's a position out there there's one hundred
percent sure, then I want to meet that person because
that's the challenging part of what we do. Well.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's why it's called practicing medicine.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yes, I agree with that. It is practicing because we
don't always it's yeah, we don't always have the Sometimes
the decisions that are made are toxic to the body.
We talked about that, and sometimes the best decision probably
is to do nothing sometimes if you're not sure, or
seek advice. But we deal with those day to day
(25:47):
issues every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I appreciate you making time and coming down here. Thank
you for having me do this again. Sometimes, yeah, we'll
do it. Sometimes we'll take some questions someday, Oh, I
don't know, open up some questions to some of the
guys out there asking about it. Are we going to
ever do this colonoscopy without getting that stuff that we
got to take?
Speaker 2 (26:04):
No, I'm afraid that's with you and it's called golightly,
So uh you will go.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Good. Good to see you.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Thank you very much for having me
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Doctor Joe Camps with me on The Morning Show with
Preston Scott
Popular Podcasts
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.