January 5, 2018 • 55 mins
In the near future, your doctor may begin prescribing 'smart pills,' medicines that remain in contact with your hospital, pharmacy or doctor's office and tell your health care providers whether you're sticking to the treatment schedule, along with other medical information. To the supporters of smart pills, this is a life-saving breakthrough. To critics, however, the potential threats of this technology outweigh the benefits. Are smart pills a new way to keep patients healthy longer, or another step in the construction of a biomedical Big Brother?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
our compatried Noel is away at the moment, but never
fear he will be returning very soon. In the meantime,
they still call me Ben. We're here with our super
producer Paul Deck and you are you and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. Another person
who works here. His name is Christopher Hassiotis. He's on
(00:47):
the research team at stuff Media. I guess how stuff works.
Stuff Media, and he sent us something that we He
sent it to us yesterday I think, or maybe the
day before, and Ben Nolan I all just went, oh,
this is an episode that we are producing right now
and we can't wait to get you into it. But
(01:08):
we're not going to spoil it. The first thing we're
gonna do is just talk about health. Yes, health, medicine,
What does it mean? Yes? Panaceas? Did they exist? What
is the cure for what all ails? You? I do
want to say if you would like to hear some
(01:28):
of Christopher's other works he is he is consistently recommending
some great stories for us to share on social media
under our various conspiracy stuff monikers. Uh. You can also
hear Christopher semi live and definitely in person behind a
hot mic by tuning into an excellent show that Lauren
(01:52):
Vogelbaum produced called How Stuff Works Now. And it's sort
of a cavalcade a very interesting stories, So do check
that out. In the meantime, as Matt said, healthy and
I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt,
when we when we think about health in this day
(02:15):
and age, you know, it's no secret that there are horrible,
horrific things going on in the world. Zimbabwe, as we
record this is currently on the tread even closer to
the brink of destabilization. Earthquake in Iran Iraq border. They're
just killed some thousand or people. Puerto Rico also devastated
(02:41):
by a hurricane. Killings in the United States, the Pacific,
the Pacific region, the Pacific theater is inching closer and
closer to a nuclear exchange. But despite all of these
horrible things, Oh and someone keeps making Transformer movies, Paul
looking at you. No, no, no, actually I watched Transformer
(03:06):
movies too. But despite these horrific things, which are not jokes,
and the terrible jokes we make about terrible things, you
have to sit back and admit overall, we as a
species have it pretty good right now, especially in a
medical sense. I mean absolutely. Can you imagine getting sick
five hundred years ago, even a hundred years ago, getting
(03:29):
sick to the point of needing let's say, a surgeon,
Oh boy, yeah, And depending on kind of how far
back in the timeline we go, needing a surgeon becomes
increasingly disturbing. It's the worst. You know. It's like the
old story about barber poles and how they came about.
You remember that, right, Yeah? Yeah, So, way back in
(03:54):
the day in Western Europe, there was this concept that
barber were also inherently qualified to be surgeons, the argument
being that, well, if they can figure out how to
cut your hair, they should be capable of cutting anything else. Yeah.
A lot of a lot of people died, a lot
(04:14):
of good people, probably some bad ones too. Yeah, street
razors could be used for a lot of things. Absolutely,
And if we were to attempt to describe all the
medical advancements made from just nineteen seventeen to twenty seventeen,
we would have to start an entirely different show, and
Paul Matt and I would have to go somewhere and brainstorm.
(04:38):
Uh title that was better than all the medical advancements
made from nineteen seventeen to seen. I don't know. I'm
kind of digging that, you know. I think it's a
cool idea, But that name is way too long. I
think that's what makes it special. There you go. Uh,
it is nomenclature aside, it is an important perspective to
(05:02):
consider when we think about this. We can look at
it another way too. We can look at it in
a different direction and ask ourselves, what will people living
in twenty one seventeen think of the medical technology and
techniques used today in our time here in good old WHOA,
What essentially will be the future of medicine. Well, I mean,
(05:27):
I have some ideas, but you know, you know me,
it gets a little dark. Uh, But but that's okay.
I'm always thinking about integrating man and machine and how
that's going to become the new normal. But just to
get this out of the way, up front. Sure, we
know that this can be a touch of subject anytime
(05:48):
you're talking about health, because you're also inherently talking about mortality, absolutely,
and you know that is the one thing we all
have in common. But we want to be clear. We're
not doctors. But and I have no physician background anything
like that. We don't have degrees in any of that.
So we're not dispensing any kind of medical medical advice
(06:10):
to you. We're not trying to tell you how to
think about this stuff. We're just gonna telling how it
is pretty much. Well, for the record, I do know
first aid, so oh hey, me too, CPR and everything. Yeah,
so if you meet, if you meet us, and I
assume Paul does as well, No, okay, all right, Okay,
if you're choking, no, it's cool because we hang out
outside of work. And so if you if you happen
(06:32):
to see this in person, we can you know, reset
your disjointed or dislocated arm or make us splint for
you or something. But yeah, we are not giving anyone
medical advice. And if you have a compound fracture, don't
call me. Okay, go to go to bed with compound fractures,
all right, so we've established that here are the facts.
(06:58):
Here's here's the weirdest thing. Over the span of human civilization,
we have been making scientific advancements that later become medical
advancements or medical breakthroughs. Right now, every time we make
a mistake in some field, in some way, we learn
from it and we don't do it again. Well in theory,
and the weird thing is that these discoveries do not
(07:20):
exist in a vacuum. There's a bit of a positive
feedback loop that took a long time to get running.
There's a bit of a snowball effect that started rolling
very slowly at first. But now it is no secret
that the pace of medical advancement itself just what some
of our bosses like to call the cadence of this advancement.
(07:41):
It's accelerating, it's increasing. In an article for Forbes, Scott
Godly notes and got a quote here, the pace at
which fundamental discoveries of basic science are being uncovered is accelerating,
as is the speed at which medical practice is being
transformed by these inventions. Metamorphics changes, Gottlieb says, are sweeping
(08:02):
a wider breath of clinical areas more regularly than at
any time in the history of science. Wow, that's inspiring.
It is in a in a very real literal way.
Time is accelerating in the medical field. I mean saying
that does have sort of a buzz feede headline to it,
(08:25):
but it is true in the past. You know, the
first question is, well, well, what gives what made us
such a plotting Peters or stumbling Stevens earlier? Just making
up names, No worries. The plotting stumbling Peter Stevens had
a lot to do with communication and how much it cost,
(08:46):
both in in real time and in materials to send
messages to someone, especially if you're sending it further away
than inside your town for something. Right, Yeah, we've we've
mentioned this in past that episodes. Long time listeners are
probably familiar with this concept and Matt's Matt spot on.
When we say costs of communication, we don't necessarily mean
(09:10):
how much did it how much whatever the currency at
the time was, did it take for you to send
a message? Or it's not just that, it's not about
your ex affinity account costs, right, it's it is, as
Matt said, time and materials, and time is the primary
factor here. So not only could people not learn about
(09:31):
a treatment on the internet, which is its whole, other, whole,
other sacic cats. But gosh, for much of human civilization,
books themselves were also incredibly rare, and literacy rates were
tremendously low. So even if you could communicate like easily
and effectively, maybe the person you're writing to can't understand you,
(09:54):
or maybe you can't understand. And most people lived and
died within a relatively small number of miles from where
they were born. So so let's imagine that you're a
patient back in these days, and you were trying to
get information about, you know, what's wrong with me. My
leg really hurts and there's some kind of hole in there,
(10:16):
but I can't figure out what's going on. I don't
know what it is. How do I find out? Well,
that whole thing where you can't communicate very well doesn't
only apply to you, the patient. It applies to the
physician that you would want to go and see. So
here's the other thing. These physicians, you know, they're across
the world, and their medical advancements happening in different pockets,
(10:37):
in different you know, parts of civilization. And when you
can't communicate between let's say Britain and Italy. They're not
going to know the advancements that are occurring on the
other side. They can't compare notes exactly, so it's having
to develop almost in isolation until you have you know,
someone who takes the ship, let's say, across from Italy
(10:58):
to Britain and spend some time in London or something, right,
or some sort of emissary is exploring for a different
for different reason than they also happen to know something
very obvious to them that is unknown to the people
at the time. For instance, uh, the idea that consuming
citrus fruits were impossible on a long maritime voyage will
(11:21):
combat scurvy, right and there. I'm sure that there were
a lot of people at the time who didn't know that,
many because they would never write about exactly. But the
you know, that's that's neither here nor there. The important
part is just as you said, Matt, which is that
these things are developing in isolation, and the pace of
(11:43):
communication did exist, but it was galacial compared to what
we have today. Physicians might also, it must be said,
be bound by spiritual or religious explanations for an ailment.
You did not get the plague because of a bite
from a flea that was carried by a rat. You
(12:04):
got the plague because you ate meat on Friday and
are therefore ungodly because you could have bought an indulgence
or dispensation but you didn't. So for you, for the
sin of not participating in extortion, you have the plague.
But we put a disclaimer here. We're not telling you
(12:26):
what to believe. But you know, think with your head,
all right, boy, well this is that's not a ding on.
That's not a ding on the concept of spiritual religious
explanations for an ailment, which you know in some cases
exist today. It's historical, right. People are as a species.
We are explainers, we are classifiers. We seek to understand
(12:50):
the inexplicable and the incomprehensible, and so we have to
find a cause. We have to have an If then
the other thing that would happen is physicians might aside
from any ideological beliefs, and ideological is probably a better
word than spiritual religious at this time. Aside from that,
and in a more secular way, they may cling to
(13:12):
traditional beliefs despite indications that other treatments might be more effective.
Not to mention less dangerous like like. For a long time,
there was a concept that, uh, just by overwhelming evidence
to the contrary, the consumption of mercury could possibly, um
could possibly allow people to live for a longer span
(13:35):
of time. As we know, and as was fairly apparent
right to many observers even in the time when this
belief was prevalent, especially after trying it for a little while,
especially after trying it, as we know now that consumption
mercury has the opposite effect in a to an extreme degree.
(13:56):
Oh side note, Matt, I feel you already know this one,
so stop me if you've heard it. Do you remember
do you know why the mad hatter is no alice
in Wonderland? Do you know the story of mad hatters? No? No, no, no,
just the phrase mad hatter? I do not. So when
(14:17):
these habit dashers would create or form hats, get historically
they would use chemicals like mercury to assist in the
you know, solidifying the shape, right, And what happened is
that over time, exposure to these chemicals started affecting the
(14:42):
mental faculties of these hat makers, these haberdashers, and then
the phrase mad as a hatter originated from that it's
not a it's not just a funny joke. March Hare
by the way of course, being like spring repert to madness.
But the the interesting thing to me is that now
(15:04):
was some point in time where somebody, probably in Europe,
looked at someone else and they're like, hey, man, I'm
worried about Steve, like he's been acting real weird, and
they're like, yeah, but his hat game is so on point. Yeah,
And that's how you end up with stuff like mustard.
Don't let's be Silley. That's perfect. That is a direct quote. Yeah, Mustard,
(15:30):
that's not a serious condiment. Can you imagine we don't
really believe that. Don't send us hey mail about Mustard.
So you see the problem here, folks. You see the dilemma.
The There are multiple completely understandable reasons why the pace
of medical treatment and medical breakthroughs is slow at this
(15:50):
point in time. And we can journey through history and
explore this relationship between just the what we would call
the pure scientific discovery and the medical applications. Paul, can
we get like some sort of time travel noise. Okay,
(16:14):
here we go. We're in century, We're in the sixteenth century.
That's like everything looks so assassined, creety. Right now, I
can hear the horses, and you can smell the smells right, potent, yes, potent. Indeed,
my friend, we are actually at the exact, well, the
(16:37):
approximate moment in time where the concept of germ theory
was first proposed. Germ theory this is, this is the
idea that somehow disease whenever your body gets sick, it's
somehow linked to these tiny little things that we now
know are micro organisms, right invisible to the naked eye.
(16:59):
So over the next few centuries, now we're now we're
traveling through centuries really quickly. Over the next few centuries
there would be additional discoveries that lent further credence to
this concept. However, it wasn't until the nineteen century that doctors,
(17:20):
or the western ones at least, even began washing their
hands at all. Check it out. Matt In Hungarian physician
named Ignaz Philip Samuel Weiss proposed that maternal death death
during childbirth could be sharply cut when obstetricians washed their
(17:41):
hands before conducting you know, before uh, the before that's right,
you have Specifically, they recommend a chlorinated lime solution. You
can't use that coal? Oh man. Yeah, okay, I just
(18:03):
had a flashback of work. We're good. But it seems
so simple, right, Yeah, it does seem pretty simple. Uh.
Here's what happened to Ignaz. Well, nobody took this guy seriously.
He was ridiculed for having this belief and for in
his mind figuring out, oh, this might be the problem.
(18:24):
His colleagues just just ribbed him the whole time. He
died in an asylum in eighteen sixty five, where he
was put involuntarily. Yeah, because he was crazy telling people
to wash their hands. You tell me to wash my
hands like some kind of peasant doing laundry. Get out
of here, simil vice. Go back to your room. But
(18:46):
there was only two weeks after guards. Let's just say
they beat him up. They beat him up to the
niche of his life. Look, I think we should use
an accurate description. And it's fine to beat if you want.
They beat the ever living out of him in eighteen
sixty five. He died two weeks after this vicious beating.
(19:07):
Only later, much later, did history acknowledge his prescience. Yeah,
his understanding, And man, this guy could have saved a hole.
He did to save a whole bunch of people in
a way, but ultimately he was just persecuted for it.
And Louis Pasteur around somewhere at the same time, confirmed
(19:27):
the germ theory in the eighteen sixties, and then few
years after that, Joseph Lister began introducing sterile techniques into surgery.
And ah, you don't have to just wash your hands,
you wash your implements too. You mean, like a peasant
doing laundry. I'm just imagining, why would you get so
angry about this idea, because you know, we have the
(19:49):
privilege of retrospect now, and it is an immense and
powerful privilege because you know, the average person living in
the US washes their hands multiple times a day, right,
thanks to Pasteur, And I wonder if it's just the
At the time, it was the implication that this physician
(20:10):
is dirty in some way, or this physician, you know,
this physician's tools are unclean. Right. So it wasn't until
much much later that these original findings began to significantly
impact medical practice and the experimental methods, the lab tools,
the scientific insights were finally at hand, not only to
(20:31):
explain how germs caused disease, but to explain how this
how this process could be mitigated or somewhat controlled to
help patients and all at all, this took about three
years from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. And
this is just one discovery, and each single one leads
(20:55):
to other discoveries. And so as long as there aren't
you know, any kind of giant at asteroids that impact
your Earth or some other catastrophe, and we'll just cross
our fingers that nothing's going to happen in the next
few hours here, it makes sense for our species to
discover and apply all these new technologies at an increasingly
rapid pace. Especially you've taken to that communication thing. Now,
(21:18):
now that I can get on this laptop here and
shoot an email email off to anybody anywhere in the
entire planet that has access to the Internet, I mean,
we can do this, right, So, yes, okay, It's true
it took three years for the world to agree that
doctors should wash their hands, But by way of contrast,
(21:40):
it only took thirty years for modern scientific work on
immune cells to translate into the development of some of
the world's most powerful, most efficacious drugs. However, this is
not all uh warm fuzzies, hugs from Grandma, fresh cookies,
unicorns and rainbows. It's not even rickshaws, stiff drinks and
lava lamps, no, sir. As you see, along with the
(22:02):
increase in effectiveness, we are also as a species seeing
unequal access to medicine, rising cost especially in the field
of proprietary biotech or drugs. And we're seeing increasingly disturbing
possibilities for the future of patient privacy. And we're not
even getting into healthcare costs in the United States, which
(22:25):
is a whole other thing. Will inevitably be called to
make an update for that one pretty soon too, with
what's going on. But these concerns that men's talking about
about privacy, they they are particularly strange. Yes, longtime listeners,
fellow conspiracy realist, you've heard us explore the erosion of
privacy of multiple fields, from the world's governments to its
(22:49):
grocery stores and even unto the phone you may be
using to listen to this podcast right now. But it
goes deeper than that. The future of medicine, you see,
is upon us digital medicine. Welcome to the rabbit hole.
Don't worry, will monitor your vitals while this handy message
(23:11):
from our sponsor invades your headholes. Here's where it gets crazy.
In a recent article for The New York Times dated No.
Actually of this year, right before we recorded this podcast,
a journalist named Pam Billock Bellock Let's Say explores the
(23:34):
u s. Food and Drug Administration the f d a's
decision to approve a quote digital pill, Oh boy, a
medicine containing a sensor that can tell doctors when and
if a patient is taking their medicine. You may be
asking what sort of pill are we talking. This choice
was very interesting to us because the pilling question is
(23:57):
a variant of a name brand anti psycho day Abilify Yes,
and this product is approved for the treatment of schizophrenia,
acute treatment of mannequin mixed episodes associated with bipolar one disorder,
and for use as an add on treatment for depression
in adults. The FDA granted the approval of Abilify my
(24:21):
site to Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company Limited, and the sensor technology
and the patch are made by this company called Proteus
Digital Health. What's that, you say, a smart pill? Well,
how does it work? Well, let me tell you. The
patient takes a pill. You see that makes sense. Then
the pill sensor tracks that it's been ingested. Okay, Then
(24:45):
that pill sends a signal to a patch worn by
the patient. Then the patch sends a signal to a
mobile application that allows patients to track their medication use.
And here's where it gets really interesting. Um for people
who are thinking already, oh my god, my alarms going off,
I don't like this concept at all. I'm not even
ever going to use this, but I hate this idea. Well,
(25:08):
the patient has to give permission to the caregiver or
to the physicians to access the information, and they do
that through a web based portal. But in theory, your
privacy is not immediately being hacked just by taking the
pill itself for now. However, if you are a patient
going through you know, schizophrenia, mannequin mixed episodes, bipolar disorder, um,
(25:34):
serious depression, making those kind of decisions become a little
harder and uh it's a little more gray. M hmm. Yeah, agreed.
And for proponents this pill, this specific variant of abilify,
is just one more contribution to the growing wave of
monitoring techniques and technologies used to address one of medicine
(26:00):
primary woes. Which I was not fully aware of. Man
I didn't understand this either. Patients, you see, apparently have
a real devil of a time taking their medication on
a schedule and in the manner prescribed by their doctor
or a health provider. What does that mean? That means
that let's say you have poison iving, got poison iving
(26:21):
really bad, and they they prescribed to you a blister
pack that is essentially a steroid treatment, and you have
to take X number of pills the first day, Why
number of pills the next day, and so on and
so forth until your poison ivy is gone. You have
learned your lesson, go in peace and do not touch
(26:41):
strange plants. A getting yes, well yes. And this is
a like Ben said, a big issue for the healthcare
industrial complex. Let's call it um so what they call
it patient non adherents to prescribe to medication. That's like
the long way about it. And it's associated with all
(27:02):
kinds of things, UM, poor outcomes for you know, being
prescribed prescribed medication that's supposed to do something well, it
doesn't happen if you don't take the medication correctly. UM.
It's associated with progression of diseases because again, it's not
being treated properly, and it's got a huge estimated burden
of billions of dollars on the healthcare industry, Like, it
(27:26):
costs billions of dollars because people don't take their medications correctly.
That was mind blowing to me. Didn't you have the
didn't you dig up the stat there the estimate that
between one hundred and three hundred billion dollars have been
attributed to this. Yeah, yeah, that's that's just in the
US specifically, and you're talking about a privatized health care system.
(27:49):
But still that represents three to ten of the total
United States healthcare costs. So what are the top reasons
that people don't take the the medicine they're prescribed. Well,
according to this one academic paper that was referencing several
different I Guess polls, um number one is forgetfulness. Number
(28:14):
two is side effects or perceived side effects. Uh. Number
three is high drug costs, Like it costs way too
much for me to take all these pills. I'm gonna,
you know, I'm going to separate it out a little
more than what's prescribed. And that statistic is probably going
to increase in the US. Oh absolutely. And then um
number four was just that the drug does little to
(28:34):
nothing to actually affect what I'm going through. Is that
is that a self report on the patient's part. These
are all self reports. Yeah, this is what patients say
about why they're not taking their medications. So maybe just
to be completely clear with everyone, maybe maybe we should
say the patient believes the drug does little. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah,
(28:58):
that is all. Yeah, patient belief all that stuff. The
patient believes the drug cost is too high according to
their budget. The patient believes the side effects are happening
to them, you know, according to them. You know, it
seems strange, doesn't it, Because while we know that there
are multiple cases of terrible situations happening when people are
(29:24):
over prescribed. You know, when someone takes a drug for
a condition a but it produces a side effect and
they have to take a drug for that side effect
and then have to take another drug for that side effect.
With this giant cocktail of drugs are taking in side effects.
And although we know that happens, in my case, I
(29:46):
feel like if I already went I don't want to
sound too Larry David about this, but like if I
already had to take some time off from work, and
I had to go to a doctor's office and it
might have had to pay the park. It was this
whole thing, you know. And and then they prescribe some
sort of medication for cold or whatever. I'm going to
(30:07):
trust them and I'm gonna probably take it unless it's
something really weird, you know. All Right, we're gonna We're
gonna do the first ever episode of Honesty Corner with
Maddie Fred And here goes. I have a bad back.
I've had it for a long time. I just have
back pain. It's it works fine, it does everything I
(30:27):
needed to do. I can still lift heavy stuff. But man,
does it hurt. It's the only bad thing about you.
By the way, I'll stop it. Well, Well, I've been
to several physicians and talked about this, finding ways to
help me. And I was once prescribed this drug called Soma,
which is a mule a muscle relaxer, and I was
(30:50):
told to take it and and then come back and see
them and see if anything happened. But I chose not
to after researching the drug um and its side effects
and what it does to you. But you know that
in this case, it was a physician trying to give
me a medication that would make me feel better for
my ailment. But I, as the patient, chose not to um.
And I wonder, I wonder, Oh gosh, I just contributed
(31:13):
to the several billion dollars Oh yeah, healthcare costs. That's
on you now. So it's true, though, there are there
are these honest concerns, and they come from a very
valid place, right. And it's not only is it very
(31:33):
difficult and ill informed to call one group of people
in this argument the bad guys quote unquote and another
group the good guys, it's also unethical because there are
situations where uh, okay, just a little bit of a
weird comparison, if you're cool with it, Matt. So, I've
(31:57):
always thought that your body, you're listening to this specifically you,
your body is a lot like a car. And you know,
if you own a car for a while, you are
probably and you drive it every day. You might not
be a mechanic, but you know your particular car very
(32:19):
very well, and you know and you know second gear
slips a little, uh, you know that you might have
to give it a little extra gas on a cold day,
and when to check the tires and that one door
doesn't quite line up. But you remember what you know
that you hit something in that parking lot or whatever.
You know your car and the thing is in many ways,
(32:43):
even if you are not a mechanic, even if you
are not a doctor, your body is going to be
the body you know the best, the car you know
the best, because you only get out of it once
when you die. Okay, okay, okay, you're right, and I'm
glad you said that. All right, so some people will
(33:05):
tell you you can sneak out of your car occasionally
right circumstances. Yes, yeah, well, I think it's I think
the concept of remote viewing or accidental astral travel as
an experience, a subjective experience. I think it's way more common,
and it's often reported. And in fact, if I recall,
(33:26):
we did a couple of episodes on this or aspects
of it. Anyway, you know you're the car that you
only get out of permanently once. Yes, And with the
advancement of technology, perhaps we'll be able to just jump
cars whenever we feel like it, or get a flying car.
(33:47):
Oh yeah, how you want to ride this comparison? So,
before we take the body as car analogy on a
on our long road trip. We should talk about um,
the opponents here. I mean we we just did that
extended comparison to say, in defense of of people who
(34:11):
have decided that they are not going to take a
particular medication because you know, they have any number of
valid reasons. One might be that they have an incurable
condition that um, they would rather live with than uh
suffer from the side effects of the medication they're supposed
(34:32):
to be taking, right uh, And it goes back to
their perception of their own quality of life. But again
they are not They are not medical professionals often right.
But now that we've established that, we should look at
the opponents of this um, of this emerging technology, specifically
(34:54):
of digital medicine in general. You know, one of the
one of the biggest issues I've seen is that the
amount of money that this would save and the benefit
I guess benefit to cost ratio and all the varying
ways this will cost us as humans and you know,
(35:15):
as a private company selling a technology as well, it
doesn't balance out. Like they don't think this is the
solution to get people patients to take their medicine just
just by having the ability to track the medication doesn't
mean that the person is going to take it. It'll
mean it'll help the physician know if they get access
(35:35):
to the information that the patients not taking their medicine.
I see, because for right now it's opt in on
the part of the patient. It's often and it's you know,
and then it will turn into opt out. And then
a few years from now, um, maybe even before your
son is in his twenties, it's going. Yeah, it's going
(35:57):
to be strange if it doesn't have some if the
medicine doesn't have some sort of tracery, it's possible. It's
it's quite possible. At this point, opponents do argue that
this is another case of the erosion of privacy and
one of the big sticking points is um going to
(36:18):
be familiar to a lot of people in any medicine
related field. One of the big sticking points is the
sale of your the most personal of your personal information
to third parties. These could be advertisers, These could be
insurance companies, These could be employers, These could be banks. Yeah,
(36:41):
that's another good call. Uh, this could be these could
be any number of people, and unless laws change, you
will never know until maybe your uh, maybe your bank
turns down alone, or maybe you suddenly get a higher
interest rate, or a number of things that would be
(37:04):
seemingly inexplicable or out of the blue begin to occur
to you, and then you have to sort of be
like what's his name, Guy Pearson Memento and work backwards
and just put the pieces together to figure out what happened, who,
who sold this and why? And again, unless the laws change,
(37:25):
you will also not be given a cut of what
they sell. And we we do want to be clear
right now, right now, the party line is that this
information is going to be somehow anonymous, right and it's
just too it's just to aggregate data set to build
(37:47):
better predictions you see general trends. I think it goes
a little further than that, Ben, I think it's a
system that we set up to where only your phone
is going to get the information unless you send it
out to anybody else. So I guess it would be
kind of like I'm trying to find an analogy for this,
but taking a picture. Every time you take one of
(38:08):
these pills, it's like taking a picture, and unless you
decide to send it to you know, your doctor or
your friends. Nobody is going to know about it unless
they hack your phone, I guess, is the way I'm
imagining it, or the server of the company Proteus that's
making the software. Right, That's that's the question, you know,
And that's that's the concern. Whether it's a government or
(38:31):
whether it's a private entity, the question remains the same.
Who watches the watchers, who holds the powerful accountable? And
this may seem like a little bit of alarmism. Perhaps
this may seem like a little bit of a doom
(38:51):
and gloom for something that is inarguably a good thing, right,
especially according to the proponents, because the you know, it
goes back to the idea that this could save lives.
And we know that continual monitoring has already existed, right
for anybody with a fit bit or some sort of
(39:13):
app on your phone that tells you to um quit smoking,
or to count your calories, or to make sure that
you take a minimum of ten thousand steps a day,
we know that this stuff already exists. This is a
step to put it inside you, and right now it's
a simple check in system. Right It's so, for instance,
(39:35):
right now, there is nothing to stop someone if they
for some reason said, you know what, I'm gonna take
six of these pills because woo whatever, I'm going to
share it with my doctor, and they need to know that,
you know, I'm I'm taking them this way. There's nothing
physically stopping it, you know what I mean, Like, there's
not a mechanism to prevent the release maybe of the sure. Yeah,
(40:00):
like what if what if this sort of technology became
mandatory and not opt in and was applied to legally
prescribed opiates, right, which are very dangerous and addictive substances.
So then it would be in a situation, especially if
(40:21):
you had a past history of abuse, where you would
be monitored to make sure that not only did you
take it at whatever pill your proscribed, that three PM
or something, but that you only take it then and
that you don't take two or three or whatever. And
then also to make sure that that ping happens every
(40:44):
number of times one per pill, right, so that they
know you're not selling it on the black market. And see,
what starts as a very little helpful thing does indeed
have wide reaching implications. Oh yeah, I've got two examples
right here. So if each one has a specific let's
say mac address. It's not address, but each one has
(41:06):
a specific serial number or something each pill. Then you
will know if someone sells their pills and to whom
sells those pills. If you, you know, are tracking the
ingestion of these, that could get really interesting in the future.
And another thing was overdoses. You if you could find
a way to control the release mechanism, you could prevent
(41:26):
overdosing of practically anything that isn't injectable. Yeah, and like
that's the silver lining I'm I'm saying totally because for
proponents of this trend, and make no mistake, it is
a trend. This is not the last you're going to
hear about this technology. In for proponents of this, that
(41:49):
just seems like another good thing, another tick in the
box of pros because you're saying, oh, we could stop
drug dealers, we could maybe comb at some level what
are they called pill mills. Yeah, it's tough for me
to say that because different accents I have come out. Yeah. Um,
so the of course, I just have to say at
(42:12):
that point, if you wanted, I'm telling people how to
mark itself, but you were just depending on what the
pills made out of I'm assuming it can't be indestructible
because you have to process it through your body. But
you just get the pills and then break them up
and then you know, leave out the sensors. Oh, I
see change the method of delivery. Just saying that there is.
(42:34):
But I think that's a problem that humanity a lot
of times forgets when we're trying to solve these huge
problems when you're trying to deal especially with substance abuse
of any kind. Mankind is very inventive. Sure, and we'll
find a way. I mean, that's just all right. They
(42:55):
you you owe it to everybody. Paul and I included
to do a gold bloom version in that one, a
gold bloom version of that one of that line. I
don't know if I have a gold bloom. I don't
think I can do it. Yeah, gold blooms like life,
Uh finds a way. There's something I think it's worth
at the cadence you do that? Could you do that one?
(43:17):
That was it? That was it? Swinging a miss whift
pretty hard on that. I enjoyed it a lot. That's
very kind. You're a very kind person. So there's another
thing we could say here to Matt it's the question
would be, so we're talking about changing the means of
delivery or we're talking about somehow removing the sensor. Right.
(43:39):
Another option, at least in this case this variant of abilify,
would be to remove the patch, because the patches the
means of transmission for the app on the phone and
later the web portal. That might work. However, this variant
of abilify is only one instance of a larger see
(44:01):
change your medical advancement. Right. That is probably past the
point of no return at this time. So what else
is out there? We'll tell you after a word from
our sponsor. Okay, so let's say, hypothetically, Matt, you said
(44:22):
you don't know me, you can't run my business. I'll
take the drugs I want what I want them, may Man,
you don't know me. I'm gonna take drugs I want
on my time, in my schedule. All right, Yeah, that's good.
I didn't want I was going soft on a Southern
accent there because I didn't want to offend you. But
(44:43):
I think you nailed it. You know. Just it lives
inside me and sometimes it escapes. That's how I feel
about some things too. Moving on, there's no need to
get get into uh those sorts of episodes. Yet, we'll
wait until next Halloween. Maybe. So you're you're telling me
you left me on a cliffhanger. Here, it's true. You
(45:04):
said before we went to the break that there are
other people making digital drugs. Oh yes, yes, of course. Uh.
A Florida company named detect are X is making another
sort of sensor, inguestable sensor. There's is called the I
D CAP and as we record this, it has already
(45:26):
been tested or it's being tested on a number of
different drugs, including opioids and HIV medication. Here's all it works.
It's made of magnesium and silver chloride, and it's encapsulated
with pills and you don't need a patch because the
entire time it's inside the body as it's being ingested,
(45:47):
it generates a low power radio signal that can be
picked up by a little antenna if it's near you. Yep.
And that's that's according to Harry Travis, the president of
attacked our X. They are currently seeking FDA clearance for
this application. In and of course f d A applications
(46:10):
are notoriously difficult unless you know the right people and uh,
you know, have the right, political connections. Hold on a second,
I just thought of something. With these new digital pills,
does that mean we will all be pooping out tiny
little sensors every time we go to the bathroom. I mean,
(46:33):
that's the dream, right, Like especially I'm kidding, I'm kidding, kidding,
that's not the dream. But especially if you're taking multiple medications,
each of them having a sensor, your bowel movement is
going to be metal and and microelectronics. I mean depending,
(46:54):
because you're talking about a period anyway. All right, Well,
I'm just saying we're pooping a lot of metal stuff out.
So this might sound comedic of us, and to a
degree it is. Right we're talking about pop Yeah, the
future of weird defication, that's that's something that concerns a
lot of people. Uh. And I think we earned that
joke because we talked about fecal matter transplants once years ago,
(47:16):
and we both kept a like a straight street a
serious tone the whole way through. Seriously, I don't even
think we mentioned pooping back and forth forever we we
have now and Uh. But even even though it does
feel comedic, and to a degree it is, what we're
(47:36):
seeing is that every time there's a medical advancement, there
are inherently going to be ripple effects, many of which
not all, but many of which are going to be unpredictable,
right and some of which may be very dangerous. Now,
back when it took us as a species three hundred
years to figure out things that seem simple today, we
(47:59):
have had a little bit more buffer time. Collectively, we
had a little bit more of a of a margin
in which to experience these implications and these ripple effects
as they rolled out. But now with this increasing frequency
of medical advancements, which again barring an asteroid at gamma
ray burst, a coronal mass ejection, then unless something destroys
(48:25):
civilization as we understand it, this pace is going to
continue increasing, and there are going to be um smaller
and smaller windows of time two analyze, address, and if necessary,
mitigate these ripple effects. We are right now on the
(48:47):
bleeding edge of not only the future of medicine, but
also the future of monitoring. Absolutely, and I for one,
have played entire early too many video games to be
okay with this. Looking at you, d a sex specifically
looking at you, I I completely understand the goals set
(49:10):
out by the health care industry reduce costs and get
patients to take their medicines so we can actually help people.
Um But and I would argue that the cost is
probably the most important thing for the health care industry,
at least in the United States. UM But I'm not
sure that trackable medicine really is the answer. But and
I do agree with you, Ben, like this is a
(49:31):
good stepping point in you know, the way we're going
to get to the better future, the better medicine. It's
that you can definitely see the linkage there to how
it can help. But right now, I guess you just
have to take that step in order to get there.
I think you do. Yeah, you have to. But it
still bothers me because it feels like it's something ripped
(49:52):
out of the science fiction novel or again day a
Sex that I don't want to be a part of
what happened. That's just where humans are becoming androids and
replacing different parts of their body and upgrading and humanity,
the state of humanity is really looked into. You're not
gonna do that. You're not gonna take some cyber implants.
I you know, I haven't decided yet. Philosophically, I think
(50:15):
it's if I could just take my brain my nerro like,
if you could map my brain out and then send
that as a piece of software into a robot. I'm
okay with that, I think really, because I feel like
I could live forever. But having pieces of metal integrated
into my body, I don't know. I wonder if Paul
would uh like get electric eyes or something. He's he's
(50:40):
saying maybe he's giving a probably not shrug. Yeah, he's
pointing to his chest and saying, pacemaker. Okay. See you're
saying that pacemakers already exist. So this is to some
extent already happening. Wow, we're like miming to each other
through this is great. Well, off air, Paul did, Paul
did chime in, and we'd love you to chime in
(51:02):
on air sometime. We'll see if we can convince him
in a future episode, don't let him see behind the curtain. Well,
let us know if you want to hear what Paul
sounds like, and if he is amenable to it, we
will we will see. We will see. But right now,
we are not fans of things being mandatory. We think
that people should have agency and the ability to make
(51:23):
their own decisions. And it is true. Look, it is true.
This is not an inherently evil thing. It just has implications.
Not to sound too much like Dennis the implication on
always Sunny in Philadelphia, but yes, yes, it is true.
And I just want to list something that would be
a very good aspect of this. Imagine if we're talking
(51:47):
about an elderly patient who maybe has memory problems right,
and then has a regiment of multiple drugs that they
must take. This could save their lives. This could easily,
without a doubt, save their lives and maybe increase the
quality of their life at the at the same time.
(52:07):
But it's still doesn't address the larger question, which is
at what price progress we have established the frequency of
significant medical advances is increasing, and you know, unbalanced. Overall,
this looks to be a wonderful phenomenon. It has the
potential to save lives, which is what medicine is supposed
(52:31):
to be about, saving lives and increasing the quality of
those lives until everybody finally hops out of their cars.
Diseases that once ravaged entire communities can now be fixed
with something as simple as a once a day pill
schedule or a shot in the arm. But the problem
is that with this stellar progress in the field of medicine,
(52:53):
we do not see the same amount of progress, the
same increasing advances, or the frequency of the senses in
the halls of government, right, the people making the laws
are still moving at the same pace. We don't see
it in the field of bioethics or academian philosophy. There
are people who are tackling these problems conceptually right and
(53:15):
in an applied manner. But the medicine is evolving faster
than the social constructs that we have to address it
or to handle it in the best possible way. And
we want to hear from you. Are you for this?
Are you against it? Do you think, on balance this
it's better for this to exist, or do you think
(53:38):
it could be misused abused somehow, and if so, in
what way? Do you think it could benefit your life
in some way to be able to tract the medications
you take? Or are you nervous about metal in your poop?
I mean, honestly, I am. We didn't We didn't prove that. Though, yeah,
I know, maybe the sensors are made out of something else,
something biological that breaks down. I didn't see anything about
(54:01):
that in the messaging from the website, but you know,
for us, so we want to hear from you. This
is typically the time where we would do shout out Corner. However,
as we are missing our our third half where we're
going to hold because this this letter that we were
(54:24):
going to read is is a very meaningful one and
I think we may have teased in a previous episode
solving some of the mysteries of Georgia guide Stone. So
we will wait until we are voltrons together. Captain planted
it up in full force for that letter m for
our shout out Corner. In the meantime, you can find
(54:44):
us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook, you
can find us on Twitter, and you can write to
us on all of those avenues with suggestions for stories,
with reactions with stuff that you think your fellow listeners
would be intr did in hearing it's really simple conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
our compatried Noel is away at the moment, but never
fear he will be returning very soon. In the meantime,
they still call me Ben. We're here with our super
producer Paul Deck and you are you and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. Another person
who works here. His name is Christopher Hassiotis. He's on
(00:47):
the research team at stuff Media. I guess how stuff works.
Stuff Media, and he sent us something that we He
sent it to us yesterday I think, or maybe the
day before, and Ben Nolan I all just went, oh,
this is an episode that we are producing right now
and we can't wait to get you into it. But
(01:08):
we're not going to spoil it. The first thing we're
gonna do is just talk about health. Yes, health, medicine,
What does it mean? Yes? Panaceas? Did they exist? What
is the cure for what all ails? You? I do
want to say if you would like to hear some
(01:28):
of Christopher's other works he is he is consistently recommending
some great stories for us to share on social media
under our various conspiracy stuff monikers. Uh. You can also
hear Christopher semi live and definitely in person behind a
hot mic by tuning into an excellent show that Lauren
(01:52):
Vogelbaum produced called How Stuff Works Now. And it's sort
of a cavalcade a very interesting stories, So do check
that out. In the meantime, as Matt said, healthy and
I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt,
when we when we think about health in this day
(02:15):
and age, you know, it's no secret that there are horrible,
horrific things going on in the world. Zimbabwe, as we
record this is currently on the tread even closer to
the brink of destabilization. Earthquake in Iran Iraq border. They're
just killed some thousand or people. Puerto Rico also devastated
(02:41):
by a hurricane. Killings in the United States, the Pacific,
the Pacific region, the Pacific theater is inching closer and
closer to a nuclear exchange. But despite all of these
horrible things, Oh and someone keeps making Transformer movies, Paul
looking at you. No, no, no, actually I watched Transformer
(03:06):
movies too. But despite these horrific things, which are not jokes,
and the terrible jokes we make about terrible things, you
have to sit back and admit overall, we as a
species have it pretty good right now, especially in a
medical sense. I mean absolutely. Can you imagine getting sick
five hundred years ago, even a hundred years ago, getting
(03:29):
sick to the point of needing let's say, a surgeon,
Oh boy, yeah, And depending on kind of how far
back in the timeline we go, needing a surgeon becomes
increasingly disturbing. It's the worst. You know. It's like the
old story about barber poles and how they came about.
You remember that, right, Yeah? Yeah, So, way back in
(03:54):
the day in Western Europe, there was this concept that
barber were also inherently qualified to be surgeons, the argument
being that, well, if they can figure out how to
cut your hair, they should be capable of cutting anything else. Yeah.
A lot of a lot of people died, a lot
(04:14):
of good people, probably some bad ones too. Yeah, street
razors could be used for a lot of things. Absolutely,
And if we were to attempt to describe all the
medical advancements made from just nineteen seventeen to twenty seventeen,
we would have to start an entirely different show, and
Paul Matt and I would have to go somewhere and brainstorm.
(04:38):
Uh title that was better than all the medical advancements
made from nineteen seventeen to seen. I don't know. I'm
kind of digging that, you know. I think it's a
cool idea, But that name is way too long. I
think that's what makes it special. There you go. Uh,
it is nomenclature aside, it is an important perspective to
(05:02):
consider when we think about this. We can look at
it another way too. We can look at it in
a different direction and ask ourselves, what will people living
in twenty one seventeen think of the medical technology and
techniques used today in our time here in good old WHOA,
What essentially will be the future of medicine. Well, I mean,
(05:27):
I have some ideas, but you know, you know me,
it gets a little dark. Uh, But but that's okay.
I'm always thinking about integrating man and machine and how
that's going to become the new normal. But just to
get this out of the way, up front. Sure, we
know that this can be a touch of subject anytime
(05:48):
you're talking about health, because you're also inherently talking about mortality, absolutely,
and you know that is the one thing we all
have in common. But we want to be clear. We're
not doctors. But and I have no physician background anything
like that. We don't have degrees in any of that.
So we're not dispensing any kind of medical medical advice
(06:10):
to you. We're not trying to tell you how to
think about this stuff. We're just gonna telling how it
is pretty much. Well, for the record, I do know
first aid, so oh hey, me too, CPR and everything. Yeah,
so if you meet, if you meet us, and I
assume Paul does as well, No, okay, all right, Okay,
if you're choking, no, it's cool because we hang out
outside of work. And so if you if you happen
(06:32):
to see this in person, we can you know, reset
your disjointed or dislocated arm or make us splint for
you or something. But yeah, we are not giving anyone
medical advice. And if you have a compound fracture, don't
call me. Okay, go to go to bed with compound fractures,
all right, so we've established that here are the facts.
(06:58):
Here's here's the weirdest thing. Over the span of human civilization,
we have been making scientific advancements that later become medical
advancements or medical breakthroughs. Right now, every time we make
a mistake in some field, in some way, we learn
from it and we don't do it again. Well in theory,
and the weird thing is that these discoveries do not
(07:20):
exist in a vacuum. There's a bit of a positive
feedback loop that took a long time to get running.
There's a bit of a snowball effect that started rolling
very slowly at first. But now it is no secret
that the pace of medical advancement itself just what some
of our bosses like to call the cadence of this advancement.
(07:41):
It's accelerating, it's increasing. In an article for Forbes, Scott
Godly notes and got a quote here, the pace at
which fundamental discoveries of basic science are being uncovered is accelerating,
as is the speed at which medical practice is being
transformed by these inventions. Metamorphics changes, Gottlieb says, are sweeping
(08:02):
a wider breath of clinical areas more regularly than at
any time in the history of science. Wow, that's inspiring.
It is in a in a very real literal way.
Time is accelerating in the medical field. I mean saying
that does have sort of a buzz feede headline to it,
(08:25):
but it is true in the past. You know, the
first question is, well, well, what gives what made us
such a plotting Peters or stumbling Stevens earlier? Just making
up names, No worries. The plotting stumbling Peter Stevens had
a lot to do with communication and how much it cost,
(08:46):
both in in real time and in materials to send
messages to someone, especially if you're sending it further away
than inside your town for something. Right, Yeah, we've we've
mentioned this in past that episodes. Long time listeners are
probably familiar with this concept and Matt's Matt spot on.
When we say costs of communication, we don't necessarily mean
(09:10):
how much did it how much whatever the currency at
the time was, did it take for you to send
a message? Or it's not just that, it's not about
your ex affinity account costs, right, it's it is, as
Matt said, time and materials, and time is the primary
factor here. So not only could people not learn about
(09:31):
a treatment on the internet, which is its whole, other, whole,
other sacic cats. But gosh, for much of human civilization,
books themselves were also incredibly rare, and literacy rates were
tremendously low. So even if you could communicate like easily
and effectively, maybe the person you're writing to can't understand you,
(09:54):
or maybe you can't understand. And most people lived and
died within a relatively small number of miles from where
they were born. So so let's imagine that you're a
patient back in these days, and you were trying to
get information about, you know, what's wrong with me. My
leg really hurts and there's some kind of hole in there,
(10:16):
but I can't figure out what's going on. I don't
know what it is. How do I find out? Well,
that whole thing where you can't communicate very well doesn't
only apply to you, the patient. It applies to the
physician that you would want to go and see. So
here's the other thing. These physicians, you know, they're across
the world, and their medical advancements happening in different pockets,
(10:37):
in different you know, parts of civilization. And when you
can't communicate between let's say Britain and Italy. They're not
going to know the advancements that are occurring on the
other side. They can't compare notes exactly, so it's having
to develop almost in isolation until you have you know,
someone who takes the ship, let's say, across from Italy
(10:58):
to Britain and spend some time in London or something, right,
or some sort of emissary is exploring for a different
for different reason than they also happen to know something
very obvious to them that is unknown to the people
at the time. For instance, uh, the idea that consuming
citrus fruits were impossible on a long maritime voyage will
(11:21):
combat scurvy, right and there. I'm sure that there were
a lot of people at the time who didn't know that,
many because they would never write about exactly. But the
you know, that's that's neither here nor there. The important
part is just as you said, Matt, which is that
these things are developing in isolation, and the pace of
(11:43):
communication did exist, but it was galacial compared to what
we have today. Physicians might also, it must be said,
be bound by spiritual or religious explanations for an ailment.
You did not get the plague because of a bite
from a flea that was carried by a rat. You
(12:04):
got the plague because you ate meat on Friday and
are therefore ungodly because you could have bought an indulgence
or dispensation but you didn't. So for you, for the
sin of not participating in extortion, you have the plague.
But we put a disclaimer here. We're not telling you
(12:26):
what to believe. But you know, think with your head,
all right, boy, well this is that's not a ding on.
That's not a ding on the concept of spiritual religious
explanations for an ailment, which you know in some cases
exist today. It's historical, right. People are as a species.
We are explainers, we are classifiers. We seek to understand
(12:50):
the inexplicable and the incomprehensible, and so we have to
find a cause. We have to have an If then
the other thing that would happen is physicians might aside
from any ideological beliefs, and ideological is probably a better
word than spiritual religious at this time. Aside from that,
and in a more secular way, they may cling to
(13:12):
traditional beliefs despite indications that other treatments might be more effective.
Not to mention less dangerous like like. For a long time,
there was a concept that, uh, just by overwhelming evidence
to the contrary, the consumption of mercury could possibly, um
could possibly allow people to live for a longer span
(13:35):
of time. As we know, and as was fairly apparent
right to many observers even in the time when this
belief was prevalent, especially after trying it for a little while,
especially after trying it, as we know now that consumption
mercury has the opposite effect in a to an extreme degree.
(13:56):
Oh side note, Matt, I feel you already know this one,
so stop me if you've heard it. Do you remember
do you know why the mad hatter is no alice
in Wonderland? Do you know the story of mad hatters? No? No, no, no,
just the phrase mad hatter? I do not. So when
(14:17):
these habit dashers would create or form hats, get historically
they would use chemicals like mercury to assist in the
you know, solidifying the shape, right, And what happened is
that over time, exposure to these chemicals started affecting the
(14:42):
mental faculties of these hat makers, these haberdashers, and then
the phrase mad as a hatter originated from that it's
not a it's not just a funny joke. March Hare
by the way of course, being like spring repert to madness.
But the the interesting thing to me is that now
(15:04):
was some point in time where somebody, probably in Europe,
looked at someone else and they're like, hey, man, I'm
worried about Steve, like he's been acting real weird, and
they're like, yeah, but his hat game is so on point. Yeah,
And that's how you end up with stuff like mustard.
Don't let's be Silley. That's perfect. That is a direct quote. Yeah, Mustard,
(15:30):
that's not a serious condiment. Can you imagine we don't
really believe that. Don't send us hey mail about Mustard.
So you see the problem here, folks. You see the dilemma.
The There are multiple completely understandable reasons why the pace
of medical treatment and medical breakthroughs is slow at this
(15:50):
point in time. And we can journey through history and
explore this relationship between just the what we would call
the pure scientific discovery and the medical applications. Paul, can
we get like some sort of time travel noise. Okay,
(16:14):
here we go. We're in century, We're in the sixteenth century.
That's like everything looks so assassined, creety. Right now, I
can hear the horses, and you can smell the smells right, potent, yes, potent. Indeed,
my friend, we are actually at the exact, well, the
(16:37):
approximate moment in time where the concept of germ theory
was first proposed. Germ theory this is, this is the
idea that somehow disease whenever your body gets sick, it's
somehow linked to these tiny little things that we now
know are micro organisms, right invisible to the naked eye.
(16:59):
So over the next few centuries, now we're now we're
traveling through centuries really quickly. Over the next few centuries
there would be additional discoveries that lent further credence to
this concept. However, it wasn't until the nineteen century that doctors,
(17:20):
or the western ones at least, even began washing their
hands at all. Check it out. Matt In Hungarian physician
named Ignaz Philip Samuel Weiss proposed that maternal death death
during childbirth could be sharply cut when obstetricians washed their
(17:41):
hands before conducting you know, before uh, the before that's right,
you have Specifically, they recommend a chlorinated lime solution. You
can't use that coal? Oh man. Yeah, okay, I just
(18:03):
had a flashback of work. We're good. But it seems
so simple, right, Yeah, it does seem pretty simple. Uh.
Here's what happened to Ignaz. Well, nobody took this guy seriously.
He was ridiculed for having this belief and for in
his mind figuring out, oh, this might be the problem.
(18:24):
His colleagues just just ribbed him the whole time. He
died in an asylum in eighteen sixty five, where he
was put involuntarily. Yeah, because he was crazy telling people
to wash their hands. You tell me to wash my
hands like some kind of peasant doing laundry. Get out
of here, simil vice. Go back to your room. But
(18:46):
there was only two weeks after guards. Let's just say
they beat him up. They beat him up to the
niche of his life. Look, I think we should use
an accurate description. And it's fine to beat if you want.
They beat the ever living out of him in eighteen
sixty five. He died two weeks after this vicious beating.
(19:07):
Only later, much later, did history acknowledge his prescience. Yeah,
his understanding, And man, this guy could have saved a hole.
He did to save a whole bunch of people in
a way, but ultimately he was just persecuted for it.
And Louis Pasteur around somewhere at the same time, confirmed
(19:27):
the germ theory in the eighteen sixties, and then few
years after that, Joseph Lister began introducing sterile techniques into surgery.
And ah, you don't have to just wash your hands,
you wash your implements too. You mean, like a peasant
doing laundry. I'm just imagining, why would you get so
angry about this idea, because you know, we have the
(19:49):
privilege of retrospect now, and it is an immense and
powerful privilege because you know, the average person living in
the US washes their hands multiple times a day, right,
thanks to Pasteur, And I wonder if it's just the
At the time, it was the implication that this physician
(20:10):
is dirty in some way, or this physician, you know,
this physician's tools are unclean. Right. So it wasn't until
much much later that these original findings began to significantly
impact medical practice and the experimental methods, the lab tools,
the scientific insights were finally at hand, not only to
(20:31):
explain how germs caused disease, but to explain how this
how this process could be mitigated or somewhat controlled to
help patients and all at all, this took about three
years from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. And
this is just one discovery, and each single one leads
(20:55):
to other discoveries. And so as long as there aren't
you know, any kind of giant at asteroids that impact
your Earth or some other catastrophe, and we'll just cross
our fingers that nothing's going to happen in the next
few hours here, it makes sense for our species to
discover and apply all these new technologies at an increasingly
rapid pace. Especially you've taken to that communication thing. Now,
(21:18):
now that I can get on this laptop here and
shoot an email email off to anybody anywhere in the
entire planet that has access to the Internet, I mean,
we can do this, right, So, yes, okay, It's true
it took three years for the world to agree that
doctors should wash their hands, But by way of contrast,
(21:40):
it only took thirty years for modern scientific work on
immune cells to translate into the development of some of
the world's most powerful, most efficacious drugs. However, this is
not all uh warm fuzzies, hugs from Grandma, fresh cookies,
unicorns and rainbows. It's not even rickshaws, stiff drinks and
lava lamps, no, sir. As you see, along with the
(22:02):
increase in effectiveness, we are also as a species seeing
unequal access to medicine, rising cost especially in the field
of proprietary biotech or drugs. And we're seeing increasingly disturbing
possibilities for the future of patient privacy. And we're not
even getting into healthcare costs in the United States, which
(22:25):
is a whole other thing. Will inevitably be called to
make an update for that one pretty soon too, with
what's going on. But these concerns that men's talking about
about privacy, they they are particularly strange. Yes, longtime listeners,
fellow conspiracy realist, you've heard us explore the erosion of
privacy of multiple fields, from the world's governments to its
(22:49):
grocery stores and even unto the phone you may be
using to listen to this podcast right now. But it
goes deeper than that. The future of medicine, you see,
is upon us digital medicine. Welcome to the rabbit hole.
Don't worry, will monitor your vitals while this handy message
(23:11):
from our sponsor invades your headholes. Here's where it gets crazy.
In a recent article for The New York Times dated No.
Actually of this year, right before we recorded this podcast,
a journalist named Pam Billock Bellock Let's Say explores the
(23:34):
u s. Food and Drug Administration the f d a's
decision to approve a quote digital pill, Oh boy, a
medicine containing a sensor that can tell doctors when and
if a patient is taking their medicine. You may be
asking what sort of pill are we talking. This choice
was very interesting to us because the pilling question is
(23:57):
a variant of a name brand anti psycho day Abilify Yes,
and this product is approved for the treatment of schizophrenia,
acute treatment of mannequin mixed episodes associated with bipolar one disorder,
and for use as an add on treatment for depression
in adults. The FDA granted the approval of Abilify my
(24:21):
site to Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company Limited, and the sensor technology
and the patch are made by this company called Proteus
Digital Health. What's that, you say, a smart pill? Well,
how does it work? Well, let me tell you. The
patient takes a pill. You see that makes sense. Then
the pill sensor tracks that it's been ingested. Okay, Then
(24:45):
that pill sends a signal to a patch worn by
the patient. Then the patch sends a signal to a
mobile application that allows patients to track their medication use.
And here's where it gets really interesting. Um for people
who are thinking already, oh my god, my alarms going off,
I don't like this concept at all. I'm not even
ever going to use this, but I hate this idea. Well,
(25:08):
the patient has to give permission to the caregiver or
to the physicians to access the information, and they do
that through a web based portal. But in theory, your
privacy is not immediately being hacked just by taking the
pill itself for now. However, if you are a patient
going through you know, schizophrenia, mannequin mixed episodes, bipolar disorder, um,
(25:34):
serious depression, making those kind of decisions become a little
harder and uh it's a little more gray. M hmm. Yeah, agreed.
And for proponents this pill, this specific variant of abilify,
is just one more contribution to the growing wave of
monitoring techniques and technologies used to address one of medicine
(26:00):
primary woes. Which I was not fully aware of. Man
I didn't understand this either. Patients, you see, apparently have
a real devil of a time taking their medication on
a schedule and in the manner prescribed by their doctor
or a health provider. What does that mean? That means
that let's say you have poison iving, got poison iving
(26:21):
really bad, and they they prescribed to you a blister
pack that is essentially a steroid treatment, and you have
to take X number of pills the first day, Why
number of pills the next day, and so on and
so forth until your poison ivy is gone. You have
learned your lesson, go in peace and do not touch
(26:41):
strange plants. A getting yes, well yes. And this is
a like Ben said, a big issue for the healthcare
industrial complex. Let's call it um so what they call
it patient non adherents to prescribe to medication. That's like
the long way about it. And it's associated with all
(27:02):
kinds of things, UM, poor outcomes for you know, being
prescribed prescribed medication that's supposed to do something well, it
doesn't happen if you don't take the medication correctly. UM.
It's associated with progression of diseases because again, it's not
being treated properly, and it's got a huge estimated burden
of billions of dollars on the healthcare industry, Like, it
(27:26):
costs billions of dollars because people don't take their medications correctly.
That was mind blowing to me. Didn't you have the
didn't you dig up the stat there the estimate that
between one hundred and three hundred billion dollars have been
attributed to this. Yeah, yeah, that's that's just in the
US specifically, and you're talking about a privatized health care system.
(27:49):
But still that represents three to ten of the total
United States healthcare costs. So what are the top reasons
that people don't take the the medicine they're prescribed. Well,
according to this one academic paper that was referencing several
different I Guess polls, um number one is forgetfulness. Number
(28:14):
two is side effects or perceived side effects. Uh. Number
three is high drug costs, Like it costs way too
much for me to take all these pills. I'm gonna,
you know, I'm going to separate it out a little
more than what's prescribed. And that statistic is probably going
to increase in the US. Oh absolutely. And then um
number four was just that the drug does little to
(28:34):
nothing to actually affect what I'm going through. Is that
is that a self report on the patient's part. These
are all self reports. Yeah, this is what patients say
about why they're not taking their medications. So maybe just
to be completely clear with everyone, maybe maybe we should
say the patient believes the drug does little. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah,
(28:58):
that is all. Yeah, patient belief all that stuff. The
patient believes the drug cost is too high according to
their budget. The patient believes the side effects are happening
to them, you know, according to them. You know, it
seems strange, doesn't it, Because while we know that there
are multiple cases of terrible situations happening when people are
(29:24):
over prescribed. You know, when someone takes a drug for
a condition a but it produces a side effect and
they have to take a drug for that side effect
and then have to take another drug for that side effect.
With this giant cocktail of drugs are taking in side effects.
And although we know that happens, in my case, I
(29:46):
feel like if I already went I don't want to
sound too Larry David about this, but like if I
already had to take some time off from work, and
I had to go to a doctor's office and it
might have had to pay the park. It was this
whole thing, you know. And and then they prescribe some
sort of medication for cold or whatever. I'm going to
(30:07):
trust them and I'm gonna probably take it unless it's
something really weird, you know. All Right, we're gonna We're
gonna do the first ever episode of Honesty Corner with
Maddie Fred And here goes. I have a bad back.
I've had it for a long time. I just have
back pain. It's it works fine, it does everything I
(30:27):
needed to do. I can still lift heavy stuff. But man,
does it hurt. It's the only bad thing about you.
By the way, I'll stop it. Well, Well, I've been
to several physicians and talked about this, finding ways to
help me. And I was once prescribed this drug called Soma,
which is a mule a muscle relaxer, and I was
(30:50):
told to take it and and then come back and see
them and see if anything happened. But I chose not
to after researching the drug um and its side effects
and what it does to you. But you know that
in this case, it was a physician trying to give
me a medication that would make me feel better for
my ailment. But I, as the patient, chose not to um.
And I wonder, I wonder, Oh gosh, I just contributed
(31:13):
to the several billion dollars Oh yeah, healthcare costs. That's
on you now. So it's true, though, there are there
are these honest concerns, and they come from a very
valid place, right. And it's not only is it very
(31:33):
difficult and ill informed to call one group of people
in this argument the bad guys quote unquote and another
group the good guys, it's also unethical because there are
situations where uh, okay, just a little bit of a
weird comparison, if you're cool with it, Matt. So, I've
(31:57):
always thought that your body, you're listening to this specifically you,
your body is a lot like a car. And you know,
if you own a car for a while, you are
probably and you drive it every day. You might not
be a mechanic, but you know your particular car very
(32:19):
very well, and you know and you know second gear
slips a little, uh, you know that you might have
to give it a little extra gas on a cold day,
and when to check the tires and that one door
doesn't quite line up. But you remember what you know
that you hit something in that parking lot or whatever.
You know your car and the thing is in many ways,
(32:43):
even if you are not a mechanic, even if you
are not a doctor, your body is going to be
the body you know the best, the car you know
the best, because you only get out of it once
when you die. Okay, okay, okay, you're right, and I'm
glad you said that. All right, so some people will
(33:05):
tell you you can sneak out of your car occasionally
right circumstances. Yes, yeah, well, I think it's I think
the concept of remote viewing or accidental astral travel as
an experience, a subjective experience. I think it's way more common,
and it's often reported. And in fact, if I recall,
(33:26):
we did a couple of episodes on this or aspects
of it. Anyway, you know you're the car that you
only get out of permanently once. Yes, And with the
advancement of technology, perhaps we'll be able to just jump
cars whenever we feel like it, or get a flying car.
(33:47):
Oh yeah, how you want to ride this comparison? So,
before we take the body as car analogy on a
on our long road trip. We should talk about um,
the opponents here. I mean we we just did that
extended comparison to say, in defense of of people who
(34:11):
have decided that they are not going to take a
particular medication because you know, they have any number of
valid reasons. One might be that they have an incurable
condition that um, they would rather live with than uh
suffer from the side effects of the medication they're supposed
(34:32):
to be taking, right uh, And it goes back to
their perception of their own quality of life. But again
they are not They are not medical professionals often right.
But now that we've established that, we should look at
the opponents of this um, of this emerging technology, specifically
(34:54):
of digital medicine in general. You know, one of the
one of the biggest issues I've seen is that the
amount of money that this would save and the benefit
I guess benefit to cost ratio and all the varying
ways this will cost us as humans and you know,
(35:15):
as a private company selling a technology as well, it
doesn't balance out. Like they don't think this is the
solution to get people patients to take their medicine just
just by having the ability to track the medication doesn't
mean that the person is going to take it. It'll
mean it'll help the physician know if they get access
(35:35):
to the information that the patients not taking their medicine.
I see, because for right now it's opt in on
the part of the patient. It's often and it's you know,
and then it will turn into opt out. And then
a few years from now, um, maybe even before your
son is in his twenties, it's going. Yeah, it's going
(35:57):
to be strange if it doesn't have some if the
medicine doesn't have some sort of tracery, it's possible. It's
it's quite possible. At this point, opponents do argue that
this is another case of the erosion of privacy and
one of the big sticking points is um going to
(36:18):
be familiar to a lot of people in any medicine
related field. One of the big sticking points is the
sale of your the most personal of your personal information
to third parties. These could be advertisers, These could be
insurance companies, These could be employers, These could be banks. Yeah,
(36:41):
that's another good call. Uh, this could be these could
be any number of people, and unless laws change, you
will never know until maybe your uh, maybe your bank
turns down alone, or maybe you suddenly get a higher
interest rate, or a number of things that would be
(37:04):
seemingly inexplicable or out of the blue begin to occur
to you, and then you have to sort of be
like what's his name, Guy Pearson Memento and work backwards
and just put the pieces together to figure out what happened, who,
who sold this and why? And again, unless the laws change,
(37:25):
you will also not be given a cut of what
they sell. And we we do want to be clear
right now, right now, the party line is that this
information is going to be somehow anonymous, right and it's
just too it's just to aggregate data set to build
(37:47):
better predictions you see general trends. I think it goes
a little further than that, Ben, I think it's a
system that we set up to where only your phone
is going to get the information unless you send it
out to anybody else. So I guess it would be
kind of like I'm trying to find an analogy for this,
but taking a picture. Every time you take one of
(38:08):
these pills, it's like taking a picture, and unless you
decide to send it to you know, your doctor or
your friends. Nobody is going to know about it unless
they hack your phone, I guess, is the way I'm
imagining it, or the server of the company Proteus that's
making the software. Right, That's that's the question, you know,
And that's that's the concern. Whether it's a government or
(38:31):
whether it's a private entity, the question remains the same.
Who watches the watchers, who holds the powerful accountable? And
this may seem like a little bit of alarmism. Perhaps
this may seem like a little bit of a doom
(38:51):
and gloom for something that is inarguably a good thing, right,
especially according to the proponents, because the you know, it
goes back to the idea that this could save lives.
And we know that continual monitoring has already existed, right
for anybody with a fit bit or some sort of
(39:13):
app on your phone that tells you to um quit smoking,
or to count your calories, or to make sure that
you take a minimum of ten thousand steps a day,
we know that this stuff already exists. This is a
step to put it inside you, and right now it's
a simple check in system. Right It's so, for instance,
(39:35):
right now, there is nothing to stop someone if they
for some reason said, you know what, I'm gonna take
six of these pills because woo whatever, I'm going to
share it with my doctor, and they need to know that,
you know, I'm I'm taking them this way. There's nothing
physically stopping it, you know what I mean, Like, there's
not a mechanism to prevent the release maybe of the sure. Yeah,
(40:00):
like what if what if this sort of technology became
mandatory and not opt in and was applied to legally
prescribed opiates, right, which are very dangerous and addictive substances.
So then it would be in a situation, especially if
(40:21):
you had a past history of abuse, where you would
be monitored to make sure that not only did you
take it at whatever pill your proscribed, that three PM
or something, but that you only take it then and
that you don't take two or three or whatever. And
then also to make sure that that ping happens every
(40:44):
number of times one per pill, right, so that they
know you're not selling it on the black market. And see,
what starts as a very little helpful thing does indeed
have wide reaching implications. Oh yeah, I've got two examples
right here. So if each one has a specific let's
say mac address. It's not address, but each one has
(41:06):
a specific serial number or something each pill. Then you
will know if someone sells their pills and to whom
sells those pills. If you, you know, are tracking the
ingestion of these, that could get really interesting in the future.
And another thing was overdoses. You if you could find
a way to control the release mechanism, you could prevent
(41:26):
overdosing of practically anything that isn't injectable. Yeah, and like
that's the silver lining I'm I'm saying totally because for
proponents of this trend, and make no mistake, it is
a trend. This is not the last you're going to
hear about this technology. In for proponents of this, that
(41:49):
just seems like another good thing, another tick in the
box of pros because you're saying, oh, we could stop
drug dealers, we could maybe comb at some level what
are they called pill mills. Yeah, it's tough for me
to say that because different accents I have come out. Yeah. Um,
so the of course, I just have to say at
(42:12):
that point, if you wanted, I'm telling people how to
mark itself, but you were just depending on what the
pills made out of I'm assuming it can't be indestructible
because you have to process it through your body. But
you just get the pills and then break them up
and then you know, leave out the sensors. Oh, I
see change the method of delivery. Just saying that there is.
(42:34):
But I think that's a problem that humanity a lot
of times forgets when we're trying to solve these huge
problems when you're trying to deal especially with substance abuse
of any kind. Mankind is very inventive. Sure, and we'll
find a way. I mean, that's just all right. They
(42:55):
you you owe it to everybody. Paul and I included
to do a gold bloom version in that one, a
gold bloom version of that one of that line. I
don't know if I have a gold bloom. I don't
think I can do it. Yeah, gold blooms like life,
Uh finds a way. There's something I think it's worth
at the cadence you do that? Could you do that one?
(43:17):
That was it? That was it? Swinging a miss whift
pretty hard on that. I enjoyed it a lot. That's
very kind. You're a very kind person. So there's another
thing we could say here to Matt it's the question
would be, so we're talking about changing the means of
delivery or we're talking about somehow removing the sensor. Right.
(43:39):
Another option, at least in this case this variant of abilify,
would be to remove the patch, because the patches the
means of transmission for the app on the phone and
later the web portal. That might work. However, this variant
of abilify is only one instance of a larger see
(44:01):
change your medical advancement. Right. That is probably past the
point of no return at this time. So what else
is out there? We'll tell you after a word from
our sponsor. Okay, so let's say, hypothetically, Matt, you said
(44:22):
you don't know me, you can't run my business. I'll
take the drugs I want what I want them, may Man,
you don't know me. I'm gonna take drugs I want
on my time, in my schedule. All right, Yeah, that's good.
I didn't want I was going soft on a Southern
accent there because I didn't want to offend you. But
(44:43):
I think you nailed it. You know. Just it lives
inside me and sometimes it escapes. That's how I feel
about some things too. Moving on, there's no need to
get get into uh those sorts of episodes. Yet, we'll
wait until next Halloween. Maybe. So you're you're telling me
you left me on a cliffhanger. Here, it's true. You
(45:04):
said before we went to the break that there are
other people making digital drugs. Oh yes, yes, of course. Uh.
A Florida company named detect are X is making another
sort of sensor, inguestable sensor. There's is called the I
D CAP and as we record this, it has already
(45:26):
been tested or it's being tested on a number of
different drugs, including opioids and HIV medication. Here's all it works.
It's made of magnesium and silver chloride, and it's encapsulated
with pills and you don't need a patch because the
entire time it's inside the body as it's being ingested,
(45:47):
it generates a low power radio signal that can be
picked up by a little antenna if it's near you. Yep.
And that's that's according to Harry Travis, the president of
attacked our X. They are currently seeking FDA clearance for
this application. In and of course f d A applications
(46:10):
are notoriously difficult unless you know the right people and uh,
you know, have the right, political connections. Hold on a second,
I just thought of something. With these new digital pills,
does that mean we will all be pooping out tiny
little sensors every time we go to the bathroom. I mean,
(46:33):
that's the dream, right, Like especially I'm kidding, I'm kidding, kidding,
that's not the dream. But especially if you're taking multiple medications,
each of them having a sensor, your bowel movement is
going to be metal and and microelectronics. I mean depending,
(46:54):
because you're talking about a period anyway. All right, Well,
I'm just saying we're pooping a lot of metal stuff out.
So this might sound comedic of us, and to a
degree it is. Right we're talking about pop Yeah, the
future of weird defication, that's that's something that concerns a
lot of people. Uh. And I think we earned that
joke because we talked about fecal matter transplants once years ago,
(47:16):
and we both kept a like a straight street a
serious tone the whole way through. Seriously, I don't even
think we mentioned pooping back and forth forever we we
have now and Uh. But even even though it does
feel comedic, and to a degree it is, what we're
(47:36):
seeing is that every time there's a medical advancement, there
are inherently going to be ripple effects, many of which
not all, but many of which are going to be unpredictable,
right and some of which may be very dangerous. Now,
back when it took us as a species three hundred
years to figure out things that seem simple today, we
(47:59):
have had a little bit more buffer time. Collectively, we
had a little bit more of a of a margin
in which to experience these implications and these ripple effects
as they rolled out. But now with this increasing frequency
of medical advancements, which again barring an asteroid at gamma
ray burst, a coronal mass ejection, then unless something destroys
(48:25):
civilization as we understand it, this pace is going to
continue increasing, and there are going to be um smaller
and smaller windows of time two analyze, address, and if necessary,
mitigate these ripple effects. We are right now on the
(48:47):
bleeding edge of not only the future of medicine, but
also the future of monitoring. Absolutely, and I for one,
have played entire early too many video games to be
okay with this. Looking at you, d a sex specifically
looking at you, I I completely understand the goals set
(49:10):
out by the health care industry reduce costs and get
patients to take their medicines so we can actually help people.
Um But and I would argue that the cost is
probably the most important thing for the health care industry,
at least in the United States. UM But I'm not
sure that trackable medicine really is the answer. But and
I do agree with you, Ben, like this is a
(49:31):
good stepping point in you know, the way we're going
to get to the better future, the better medicine. It's
that you can definitely see the linkage there to how
it can help. But right now, I guess you just
have to take that step in order to get there.
I think you do. Yeah, you have to. But it
still bothers me because it feels like it's something ripped
(49:52):
out of the science fiction novel or again day a
Sex that I don't want to be a part of
what happened. That's just where humans are becoming androids and
replacing different parts of their body and upgrading and humanity,
the state of humanity is really looked into. You're not
gonna do that. You're not gonna take some cyber implants.
I you know, I haven't decided yet. Philosophically, I think
(50:15):
it's if I could just take my brain my nerro like,
if you could map my brain out and then send
that as a piece of software into a robot. I'm
okay with that, I think really, because I feel like
I could live forever. But having pieces of metal integrated
into my body, I don't know. I wonder if Paul
would uh like get electric eyes or something. He's he's
(50:40):
saying maybe he's giving a probably not shrug. Yeah, he's
pointing to his chest and saying, pacemaker. Okay. See you're
saying that pacemakers already exist. So this is to some
extent already happening. Wow, we're like miming to each other
through this is great. Well, off air, Paul did, Paul
did chime in, and we'd love you to chime in
(51:02):
on air sometime. We'll see if we can convince him
in a future episode, don't let him see behind the curtain. Well,
let us know if you want to hear what Paul
sounds like, and if he is amenable to it, we
will we will see. We will see. But right now,
we are not fans of things being mandatory. We think
that people should have agency and the ability to make
(51:23):
their own decisions. And it is true. Look, it is true.
This is not an inherently evil thing. It just has implications.
Not to sound too much like Dennis the implication on
always Sunny in Philadelphia, but yes, yes, it is true.
And I just want to list something that would be
a very good aspect of this. Imagine if we're talking
(51:47):
about an elderly patient who maybe has memory problems right,
and then has a regiment of multiple drugs that they
must take. This could save their lives. This could easily,
without a doubt, save their lives and maybe increase the
quality of their life at the at the same time.
(52:07):
But it's still doesn't address the larger question, which is
at what price progress we have established the frequency of
significant medical advances is increasing, and you know, unbalanced. Overall,
this looks to be a wonderful phenomenon. It has the
potential to save lives, which is what medicine is supposed
(52:31):
to be about, saving lives and increasing the quality of
those lives until everybody finally hops out of their cars.
Diseases that once ravaged entire communities can now be fixed
with something as simple as a once a day pill
schedule or a shot in the arm. But the problem
is that with this stellar progress in the field of medicine,
(52:53):
we do not see the same amount of progress, the
same increasing advances, or the frequency of the senses in
the halls of government, right, the people making the laws
are still moving at the same pace. We don't see
it in the field of bioethics or academian philosophy. There
are people who are tackling these problems conceptually right and
(53:15):
in an applied manner. But the medicine is evolving faster
than the social constructs that we have to address it
or to handle it in the best possible way. And
we want to hear from you. Are you for this?
Are you against it? Do you think, on balance this
it's better for this to exist, or do you think
(53:38):
it could be misused abused somehow, and if so, in
what way? Do you think it could benefit your life
in some way to be able to tract the medications
you take? Or are you nervous about metal in your poop?
I mean, honestly, I am. We didn't We didn't prove that. Though, yeah,
I know, maybe the sensors are made out of something else,
something biological that breaks down. I didn't see anything about
(54:01):
that in the messaging from the website, but you know,
for us, so we want to hear from you. This
is typically the time where we would do shout out Corner. However,
as we are missing our our third half where we're
going to hold because this this letter that we were
(54:24):
going to read is is a very meaningful one and
I think we may have teased in a previous episode
solving some of the mysteries of Georgia guide Stone. So
we will wait until we are voltrons together. Captain planted
it up in full force for that letter m for
our shout out Corner. In the meantime, you can find
(54:44):
us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook, you
can find us on Twitter, and you can write to
us on all of those avenues with suggestions for stories,
with reactions with stuff that you think your fellow listeners
would be intr did in hearing it's really simple conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com
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