Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
MAKARY (00:04):
You know, I wanted to talk about Covid
and I, and I, I felt like I was watching a
horror movie that I was forced to watch, and Iwasn't allowed to close my eyes. So I'm happy to
talk about Covid and point out things that are,that were so wrong and so arrogant, and how it's
resulted in so much distrust. But it, thereality is most people are sick of covid and
(00:26):
it's become so tribal. So I wanted to reallyfocus this book on what we saw over the last 10
years in the medical establishment that mirrorsexactly what we saw during Covid misinformation
put out by the government group Think heardmentality by the medical oligarchs, how a small
(00:48):
group of medical priests at the top tell everydoctor what they should believe.
PROFT (00:59):
Welcome to another episode of
Counterculture, the show that stands at the
intersection of reason and faith in the battleagainst sentimentality. The covid response was
the most pronounced case of the madness ofcrowds this century, but not the only one in
public health. From peanuts to processed foodsto opioids, our vaunted public health experts
have gotten it wrong time. And again, thesefailures and others are taken up by Dr. Marty
(01:25):
Macari in his new book, blind Spots during COVIDMacari became one of America's leading voices of
reason, in my view, offering expert assessmentsof the covid response policies pushed by CDC and
NA and NIH, as well as public pronouncementsfrom the likes of Dr. Tony Fauci, though unlike
Fauci, Macari never claimed to be the livingembodiment of science now with perhaps a renewed
(01:50):
public interest in making America healthy again.To borrow a phrase, Dr.
Macari is well positioned to continue guiding usaround the politicization of medicine and the
attendance sloganeering, and two sensible publichealth policies that actually follow the
science. Dr. Macari is a professor at the JohnsHopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School
of Public Health, chief Medical Advisor atSesame Care, the author of the award-Winning the
(02:14):
Price We Pay, what Broke American Healthcare andHow to fix It. And again, his new book, our
bestseller, is entitled Blind Spots WhenMedicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means For Our
Health. Dr. McCarry, thanks for joining us onCounterculture. Appreciate it.
MAKARY (02:28):
Great to be with you, Dan. Thanks for
having me.
PROFT (02:30):
So, I mean, w was covid I the last straw
for you is that what prompted the book? You
know, as I mentioned, you go through a number ofhealth crises that turned out to be largely
expert generated, you know, or at least insubstantial part. And I just wonder if Covid was
the, the final, like we have to stop this, thiscycle that we're in with, with the public health
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community.
MAKARY (02:56):
Well, COVID was a peak into how a
broader medical establishment works and
functions. And you know, I wanted to talk aboutCovid and I and I, I felt like I was watching a
horror movie that I was forced to watch and Iwasn't allowed to close my eyes. So I'm happy to
talk about Covid and point out things that are,that were so wrong and so arrogant and how it's
(03:21):
resulted in so much di distrust. But it, thereality is most people are sick of covid and
it's become so tribal. So I wanted to reallyfocus this book on what we saw over the last 10
years in the medical establishment that mirrorsexactly what we saw during covid misinformation
(03:41):
put out by the government group think herdmentality by the medical oligarchs. How a small
group of medical priests at the top tell everydoctor what they should believe, the sort of
mind control of controlling all the mediachannels on what people should be thinking
about.
Everything from, you know, taking the hepatitisB shot at birth, you know, upon delivery to the
(04:08):
flu shot, to the food pyramid. We don't talkabout these important topics like gut health and
the microbiome. You know, I wish the medicalestablishment would take maybe 5% of the
absolutism they have about newborns getting thehepatitis B vaccine as opposed to getting it
later in, in, in life and talk about our poisonfood supply and our chronic disease epidemic. So
(04:34):
for the first time at now, we're seeing somemomentum where through the Make America healthy,
again, movement through a lot of sort of momsout there who can tell, Hey, my, I'm doing
everything I should be doing, and why is my kidgetting an autoimmune disease? Autism, cancer,
why is my kid obese? All of these chronicdiseases are surging in our generation, and
(05:01):
we've gotta ask why that's something the medicalestablishment is not doing. It's in their blind
spot
PROFT (05:07):
On those misinformation piece. Since
that's such a popular word. You testified, or I
remember when you testified before the selectcommittee on Covid in the house with Dr. Jay
Bachar and others, and you said the governmentwas the largest purveyor of misinformation
during covid, which is, you know, it's a, apretty stark statement, but, but it's true. And,
(05:28):
and I wonder if this repeats itself too, inother instances of expert generated public
health crises, one of the things that you talkedabout a lot, I remember we talked about a lot
with you is like, discarding things we know tobe true, like natural immunity. Well, so how,
how do you, how do you discard like a basictenet of science that you know to be true that
(05:52):
has stood up throughout the annals of history.You just discard that. Is that, I mean, like
this I think is what people have a hard timegetting their mind around. And so conspiracy
theories enter that. It's, it's about, aboutalliance with pharma and it's about control, and
they're trying to do this and they're trying todo that because it just, it doesn't, there's no
logical explanation to do what they did just on,just to use that as one example. And so I I I
(06:17):
wonder how you understand how something likethat happens, and if you're seeing this repeated
in other instances as well.
MAKARY (06:25):
It was really remarkable to see, I
couldn't believe what I was seeing smart doctors
sort of pledging this allegiance to a broadergroup, think almost like you see people in China
pledging allegiance to the Chinese Communistparty in order to get promoted in their careers.
And they were so intellectually dishonest. Andwhen we started talking about natural immunity,
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people were, some people were asking me, how didyou come up with, how did you discover natural
immunity? And I'm thinking, gosh, it's beenaround since the Athenian plague of four 30 bc
right? So many,
PROFT (07:00):
Yeah.
MAKARY (07:01):
But you almost saw this sort of naked
partisanship, this sort of surrendering your own
ability to think critically just to support acommon, broader political endeavor. And that
was, it was so, so hard to watch. I mean, justthe dishonesty of it. People had circulating
antibodies that neutralized the virus throughnatural, through natural immunity, but they were
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antibodies that government did not recognize.They only recognize the antibodies generated by
the vaccine. So it was so frustrating. Andreally group think is a powerful force in so
many areas of medical dogma outside of Covid.There's a psychology to group think the doctor
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who first described this, the psychologist LeonFestinger, basically said as a part of the human
condition, we'll just surrender independentthinking to what a majority believes, especially
if we like that majority's message on otherunrelated topics. We believe what we hear first,
not because it's more logical or scientific, butjust because it settles into the brain first.
(08:10):
And then we will subconsciously dismiss newinformation or reframe new information to make
it fit what we already believe so we don't haveto let go of our belief. And you see that in
politics all the time. You see it in businessdecisions and you see it in science as well.
PROFT (08:27):
But I mean, it was, it was, it's like,
it's like if, if a bunch of math professors got
together and declared that two plus two is five,people would ask questions, people like, wait,
what, what is, what is the motivation here? And,and I, and I guess, I mean sort of po politics
like you're saying, and this sort of massdelusion, I mean this is, you know, another
concept that is a couple hundred years old, wasit Mc McKay, right? Who wrote the book in 1840
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popular delusions and the madness of crowds. Andso it's, and and, and it, and the, the dynamic
it seems too, and we've talked to psychiatristsabout this, is the delusion happens a group at a
time, and the deprogramming happens one at atime. And so it just, it takes so long to get so
many people back to both feet firmly planted onthe ground.
MAKARY (09:18):
That's right. And that is, that's
exactly what we saw. It was the sort of
popularity of delusions and the madness ofcrowds and you wanted to say something and it
was like, no, no, you're not a physician or thenyou're not a public health researcher, or you
didn't, you're not at one of the big academiccenters. And they would just find a way to
dismiss every single person that was usingcommon sense until they got to me. And all of a
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sudden it's like, I had every credential thatyou're supposed to have. And then it was just
like, well just cancel, just censor 'em. Samewith Jay Bot. So the most dangerous thing a
government can do, Dan, in my opinion, is firethe two top experts at the FDA that oversee a
vaccine because they disagree with its emergencyuse authorization for young, healthy children
(10:10):
and then mandate that vaccine booster for younghealthy children and then silence the doctors
who disagree.
That is like the most dangerous thing a, asociety can do. Now, the, the vaccine didn't
kill everybody that took it. So, you know,overall with a harm was, you know, not as
catastrophic as it could have been. But that isa very dangerous thing a government can do,
(10:35):
especially government that values free speech.And we watched it, and by the way, we watched it
over the weekend. Dr. Jay bot organized aconference to evaluate covid policy at Stanford.
I was a part of that conference. I was on apanel with about seven people, I would say most
of whom were traditional covidian sort ofmainstream thinkers in supporting the Covid
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restrictions and covid government policies ofDr. Fauci. I was sort of one doctor with a
different opinion, and it's like, you're notallowed to have this discourse. The Stanford
Daily or whatever that newspaper is at Stanfordsent out a, an article in their newsfeed that,
you know, Stanford president gave openingcomments to a conference of that included
(11:26):
controversial people.
PROFT (11:28):
Well,
MAKARY (11:30):
We didn't, we wanted, we wanted schools
to be open after six months. That's the
controver those are the people who arecontroversial or the people who insisted on
shutting down the schools for a year and ninemonths.
PROFT (11:42):
Right? No, I mean, I a hundred percent,
but, but they have to cover their tracks too. I
mean, they have to stick to the story they'vetold, because otherwise, if what you're saying
is true and what you're saying about what theydid is true, then there's a lot of culpability
there, if you know, morally and professionallyat minimum.
MAKARY (12:02):
I, I think you saw sort of a broader
story of America come out a ruling class telling
the everyone else what they should be doing. Andfor the ruling class, look, life was not bad. I
mean, for most people in America, in that rulingclass, life was good. You just wore pajamas and
jumped on your zooms. Your kids were at thecountry clubs, you had your private tutors, they
(12:25):
were in private schools. I mean, life was notbad unless you lost a family member during
Covid. Overall, it was like a liberating, almostfun experience for some people in the ruling
class. And, but come to inner city Baltimorewhere I practice medicine and it was brutal,
right? And the untold story of the ruling classis, restrictions on America is its
(12:50):
disproportionate heavy impact on poor andminority communities. And to this day, that
story is rewritten by politicians. I can'tbelieve it's not a bigger issue in the election,
to be honest.
PROFT (13:01):
And so based on that conference at
Stanford, you recently attended, do you get any
sense that there are any recriminations comingfrom the, the, the great swath of public health
experts such that the next time a virus likeCovid or something, you know, something that,
that's contagious like that and potentiallydeadly that will do anything different?
MAKARY (13:25):
I have, well, for, I don't know about
you Dan, I have not heard a single apology from
any of the public health officials during Covidwho
PROFT (13:33):
Made any, I think the clo the closest,
the closest we got maybe is Redfield at CDC.
MAKARY (13:38):
Yeah, I mean Redfield, I mean, look,
we'll give 'em all the grace in the world when
Covid initially hit this country. But thendigging in, telling toddlers two year olds to
wear cloth masks for three years, insisting onschools to be closed for a year and nine months,
not allowing family members to visit their dyingloved ones in the hospital, A cruel human rights
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violation that persisted for two years. I mean,I have not heard any apologies from any of these
folks that really dug in deep and to this day, Imean, I don't know if you saw the Kamala Harris
campaign is continuing to ignore naturalimmunity by requiring the covid shot for anyone
(14:20):
who wants to work on her campaign regardless ifthey just recovered from Covid.
PROFT (14:26):
How about, how about fema? The, the news
out just the other day, fema, you know, am amid
the natural disasters that we're supposed to betending to in the Southeast. Of course, they
spent $4 billion on covid related covid relatedmatters in September last month, $4 billion.
(14:47):
That's the most they've spent in a month onCovid since October of 2023. What are they
spending it on?
MAKARY (14:52):
So FEMA will call you if, let's say your
family member dies and said, you know, if they
died from covid, we will cover their funeralexpenses up to $9,000 and 30,000 plus dollars
per application or household. And so they'resort of out there on the prowl with staff
aggressively reaching out to individuals to seeif they can give them money for the covid for
(15:18):
their funerals if they died from the Covidvirus, not from Cox AKI virus or pneumonia or
Avian flu or influenza or rhinovirus or HIV orany other virus. But only if you die from Covid,
then they were gonna, they want to want to giveyou thousands of dollars. And they, on their
website, I just tweeted this out, are gonnacontinue that program at FEMA until 2025.
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Meanwhile, they're given $750 to a householdthat loses their home to a flood and is homeless
and in despair. That's an American tragedy. Andthe myorca is saying FEMA's outta money, they
just can't pay for, you know, they're just, theydon't have enough money to get through the
season. This is incompetence, it's governmentcorruption. And people need to know exactly
(16:05):
what's been going on with fema.
PROFT (16:07):
Is that, is that just them patting their
stats? Is that what they're doing?
MAKARY (16:11):
So it's unclear what their motivation
is, but it was just a program they set up a long
time ago, and it's supposed to run untilSeptember, 2025 that they're gonna cover the
funeral expenses. So if you die of breastcancer, you know you're on your own. But if you
die from a number of causes and covid is listedon the death certificate, the government's gonna
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pick up all those funeral expenses.
PROFT (16:34):
Well, this is what they were doing though
from the outset, right? I mean, you have the,
the famous cases of a guy dies in a motorcycleaccident, but he had covid, so that's a covid
death, you know, for example, you know, sort ofan extreme example, but you get the point of
them really, they're, they're looking to justifythe position they've taken sort of, regardless
of what the, you know, underlying rationalityis. Yeah,
MAKARY (16:57):
Look, if you overcount covid deaths, you
make the virus look more dangerous than it
really is. And if you under count vaccineinjuries, you make the vaccine look safer than
it really is. Covid was real and it hurt a lotof people, but if folks are angry, you should be
angry at the dishonesty with the data or maybeget angry at the mad scientists that brewed this
up in the laboratory, the entire nightmare of 20million deaths worldwide and the restrictions
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and the impact on poor and minority communitieswas entirely avoidable. Had a bunch of
scientists not been messing with a backcoronavirus in a laboratory. So a lot of folks
are angry that somebody was not wearing a maskor, you know, if, if, if you go back four years
ago to the state, Dan, the prevailing attitudeamong this sort of party of science politically,
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the, the Democratic Party that claimed to be theparty of science was basically saying, if only
Donald Trump would wear a cloth mask morefrequently, we could beat this pandemic.
Remember that that was actually going, yeah,that was a major election issue like in town
hall with Savannah Guthrie. She just pressed himand pressed him on why you don't wear a mask
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more. And you know, it, it's amazing. Peoplewill be so angry during Covid, but they're not
angry at the scientists that gave us Covid.
PROFT (18:21):
Right? And they, they're, and they're not
angry at politicians in this country who are not
getting to the bottom of what happened in Wuhanor or holding the Chinese government, you know,
accountable. They're not angry about thateither. Part of,
MAKARY (18:35):
Part of my book Blind Spots is about the
importance of civil discourse and using science.
The worst thing you can do in medicine is to putsomething out there with such absolutism as if
it's scientifically supported when it's not.It's just a gut feeling you have. And we've seen
that not just during Covid, but with so manyhealth recommendations. And by the way, the
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censoring of doctors may explain why we have TimWalls, because Tim Walls was elected in
Minnesota as governor after running against aphysician who ran advertisements. And those
advertisements were taken down by Facebook formisinformation. This Dr. Scott Jensen disagreed
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with Tim Walls on his C policies, campaigned onthat, and his social media account was closed
and Facebook took down all his campaign ads. Andnow if you look at the timing, I just talked to
Dr. Jansen, those campaign ads were taken downjust two weeks after Mark Zuckerberg had
acknowledged the pressure from the White Houseto censor people. And so his campaign ran with
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no, no steam in those ads at all, many of themcensored. And he ended up losing by seven
points, Tim Wal in that gubernatorial race.
PROFT (19:53):
Right. Well, I mean, it's another area
where there's just the declaration that the
science has settled, meaning there is nodiscourse allowed or certainly no, no pushback.
You're allowed to applaud, but you're notallowed to critique and you're not allowed to
test the hypothesis or the findings of what isbeing represented as the evidentiary support.
(20:13):
And that is the antithesis of science. I meanscience, the whole point is science is never
settle because you're always yearning to gathermore knowledge, have a better understanding of
something.
MAKARY (20:24):
That's right. The purpose of science is
to challenge deeply held assumptions. And you'd
be amazed how many things in medicine are basedon assumptions without good evidence. And I go
through a lot of those with the book. Opioidswere not addictive for 20 years igniting the
opioid crisis. Parents should avoid peanutbutter for kids until they turn three. Well,
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that ignited the peanut allergy epidemic becausekids need a little peanut butter exposure when
they're infants saying hormone therapy for paperimenopausal women causes cancer. When the
data did not support that, that resulted in 50million women and counting to this day being
denied this incredible therapy called hormonereplacement therapy. And the list goes on and
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on. The food pyramid is probably the mostdisastrous because by allowing the food industry
to poison our food supply as the sort of expertsin food medicine and, and nutrition put their
heads in the sand about ultra processed food,added sugar, refined carbohydrates, pesticides,
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seed oils, we watched American children take ona whole new era of chronic diseases in ways
we've never seen before in human history. Andthe medical field kind of blames the kids for
being obese. You know, you're disobedient,you're not following our instructions and then
medicates them. It's like, what's wrong withthis? We can't keep going down this path.
PROFT (21:53):
Well, so, so like the opioids as well as
food is, is that just a situation of agency
capture by big corporate interests of regulatorybodies? Or is there, there's something else
going on there because I mean there sort ofopioids and, and covid I intersect. So these are
sort of, there's a bit of a cascading effectthere. And then, and I also wanna fold in
(22:17):
Adderall too, because the ubiquity of Adderall,I mean people that I know in pharma are
suggesting that Adderall is going to be thenext, the next opioid crisis with, you know, all
these kids from a very young age on a scheduletwo narcotic and not a lot of research that that
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demonstrates an understanding of what the impactof prolonged use of that at a formative age,
what, what that impact is.
MAKARY (22:44):
So it's a combination of industry
capture and group think. So basically what we
saw during Covid where you saw this cozyrelationship where basically Pfizer was telling
you what to do and the government leaders justsort of falling in line and the group think and
how dare you disagree with these experts? Thatsame story is a story that's played over and
(23:09):
over again in healthcare and with the, with thefood industry. You saw the demonization of
natural fat and meanwhile they ignored all thispoisoning of the food supply and they wouldn't
talk about it. There's no research on it. NIH isnot funding research on food as medicine or the
role of these highly engineered chemicals thatare added to our food supply to make, to make
(23:34):
them more addicted, to actually increase yourhunger level as you eat something that has been
disastrous for this country.
And so maybe we need to talk about school lunchprograms, not just putting every kid on ozempic.
Maybe we need to treat diabetes with cookingclasses, not just throwing insulin at everybody.
(23:56):
And maybe we need to talk about environmentalexposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo
to treat it. We've got to start looking in ourblind spots and talk about the root causes of
what's going on because we're on a terrible pathright now. Two thirds of Americans take a
medication regularly. The average number is fourmedications. 20% of our nation's children now
(24:20):
are taking a prescription medication. And insome cases what we're medicating is the
medicalization of ordinary life. I mean, youmess up a kid's circadian rhythm, wake 'em up
early, not because it's good for their health,but because it's convenient for adults. Throw
'em in a classroom, tell 'em to sit sedentary ata desk, feed 'em a high refined carbohydrate
(24:44):
sugar load at lunch, give 'em a food coma.
They start dozing off in the afternoon and theycan't sit still. And then we say, you have a
learning disability, you have a attentiondeficit disorder. Oh, the kid disagrees with
what we're doing to them. And so we call thatoppositional defiant disorder and we give you a
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medication, we've got to stop and look aroundand realize what's happening. We're putting most
of our nation's children on medication and onthis path, that's where we're headed. And so
we've gotta start asking, can we design theschools differently? Can we make the school
lunch programs healthy? Can we not mess up theircircadian rhythm? Why does the average child in
(25:30):
America today going to school get less sunlightthan a prisoner in a federal penitentiary?
Right? So kids need to be kids and we've gottachange our school system, not just put every kid
on Adderall.
PROFT (25:43):
Well, right, and, and I mean especially
this was exacerbated during covid, but but is it
40% of kids under 18 have a mental healthdiagnosis? Yeah, I mean that number, that
number's astounding. And so, and so that, thatthat drives parents and families right into the
hands of, of pharmaceuticals and, and you know,I mean I don't what what is your take on
(26:05):
Adderall in terms of its potential impact on ageneration of kids?
MAKARY (26:10):
Well, with most mental health illnesses
in children and most medications for mental
illness in children, there are some appropriateindications. But the sort of broad
dissemination, I was talking to a PApsychiatrist, pediatric psychiatrist who I
really trust and he is trying to get kids offmedications that other doctors have put the kids
(26:33):
on, but the parents are like preventing him. Theparents are like, oh, we've been, you know, told
if the kid comes off, they may not perform wellin school. And these, the medical industrial
complex has created this fear to parentsmanipulating them, telling them, if you don't do
this, you're, you're, you know, not followingmedical instructions for your children and it's
(26:56):
not in their best interest. And this is tragic.'cause he was saying that most of the kids on
these medications do not need to be on them.
PROFT (27:06):
Yeah, I mean that it, it feels like, that
feels like the opioid thing all over again. I
mean if you, you know, if you, if you read someabout what the Sackler family did and others,
and the other thing too is, you know, it it'snot just in terms of reg the the regulatory
agents in terms of their power to, you know,administrate regulations. It's also that
(27:28):
funding, we talked about it with all the moneythat Tony Fauci had under his control at NIH,
you know, you, you compromise potentially robustindependent research because these institutions,
these research institutions don't want to bethrown off the gravy train. The federal
government's gravy train $40 billion at NIH, forexample.
MAKARY (27:51):
Yeah, look, I'm in academic medicine and
I can tell you just from my experience at Johns
Hopkins, we, our currency is research funding.That's how, that's the currency of how we do our
work, of how we get promoted. Now I've gone asfar as you can go in the promotion world, but
everybody needs research dollars. So when theguy giving out the research dollars is basically
(28:13):
putting out position statements based on hisopinion and the medical field just collapsed
like seals, what do you think's going on there?I mean, I can't tell you the number of doctors
that have come up to me and said, gosh,everything you say Marty is spot on. I couldn't
agree with you more. Keep doing it. I can't sayanything because I need to get a research grant.
So I you've raised another good point that Ijust wanna touch on, Dan.
(28:40):
The more Adderall we prescribe, the worse thesituation gets. The more antidepressants we
prescribe, the more people have depression, themore attention deficit disorder medications we
prescribe, the more attention deficit disorderis, the more pain meds we prescribe, the more
pain there is. The more antihypertensives weprescribe, the more hyper hypertension there is
(29:01):
out there. What is going on? The more ozempic weprescribe, the fatter people are getting what is
going on. It's not the medications causing theseproblem, it's that we've, we've got this myopic
tunnel vision and we've got to realize the rootcauses that we are not addressing that we need
to address. And part of that is looking at ourpoison food supply.
PROFT (29:22):
And is this, I mean, do you, do you put
the attention squarely on government? Is it on
big pharma? Is the corporate sector, is it, Imean, you know, where is it, where should people
say like if we need to change the paradigm forhow we think about public health and all of
these areas that you've described and others inyour book, then should we focus on politicians
(29:44):
and the administrative bureaucrats and how theseagencies run? Should we focus on what Pfizer
and, and the big pharma companies are doing,including buying, you know, sponsoring every
news program that's on the air, what, you know,where we, you know, we only have so much
attention span and there has to be sort of a, acore at this that we have to get to. And I, I
(30:04):
wonder, you know, where that resides?
MAKARY (30:08):
Gosh, it's such a good question. Dan and
a bunch of us doctors now are going directly to
the public to try to educate them not just onthe health decisions for their own personal
lives, but also on this broader system and whatthey can do. So I've written about this
extensively in this sort of all theserelationships in the book Blind spots. Casey
(30:29):
Means is out there now. Mark Hyman has a goodpodcast. Peter Oia, Vanai Psad Zubin. So a bunch
of us are going directly to the public. In thepast, the medical establishment could really
control what you would hear about health and youwould just get all these conflicting studies and
people would be confused. And you go in andthere's whatever the doctor said, you would just
(30:51):
be told you need to do whatever the doctor says.Now we're, we're recognizing medical dogma has
loomed so large and the medical establishmenthas gotten so many things wrong.
They've actually ignited many modern day healthcrises that we've decided to go directly to the
public. So I get into these issues in a lot ofdepth in the book blind spots. And the bottom
(31:15):
line is, I think you doctors are good people.They're just working in a bad system. And you
wanna find a doc who's honest, who listens,who's willing to say, I don't know, as a
profession, we need to do that. More people inpharma are doing their job. They're supposed to
develop medications, but now they have thisdisproportionate control over our research
(31:36):
enterprise. And you can't really study anythingunless pharma also likes the idea that's gonna
support their products. The NIH is supposed tofill the gaps, but we've seen what they're
spending their money on during our, the littlesnapshot we got when Covid exposed, where they
spend their money.
It's not on food as medicine, it's not oncircadian rhythms in children. It's not on
(32:00):
addressing childhood obesity or the rise inautism. It's not on autoimmune diseases that now
affect one in five women. It's not on thedeclining fertility rates in America. It's not
on any of these true existential threats. Theywere given their money to a laboratory in China
to play with a bat coronavirus that they gotfrom a cave 200 miles south. That is what our
(32:23):
government has been doing. And that needs tochange. I think it's gonna take fresh and new
leadership.
PROFT (32:29):
Well, right, and and, and it's also gonna
change, gonna take a, a directional change
because it seems to me the problem gets worseand worse as government. You know, ha does a, a
greater backdoor takeover of healthcare in thiscountry. So the more, I mean the government was
the largest purchaser of healthcare in thecountry before Obamacare. I mean now that's
(32:49):
exponential. And so that same dynamic, thecensorship, the corruption, the conflicts of
interest, I mean it's just getting bigger asgovernment's role is more dominant in the
sector, isn't it?
MAKARY (33:02):
That's right. And we need to take our
government back, you know, the pharma, big food
and big ag, they feel that the, those agencieswork for them. They feel that they own them, but
they don't belong to them. They belong to us.People should get involved in their school
districts, school lunch programs for example.Why is, why are tax dollars being used to buy
(33:22):
this horrible food, this ultra processedpoisoned food school lunch programs should be
buying healthy food, which may need they need,which may mean they need more money to buy
healthier food. And sure, we may not like thatinvestment, but try, try spending money on
insulin for diabetes instead. I mean, we'rewatching our healthcare system engulf our entire
(33:47):
economy. It's the largest business in America asof two years ago. It grew to that size. It's
expanding at 8% per year in the commercialmarketplace. And instead of addressing the root
causes of all these medical expenses, what areour politicians doing? They're parading around,
Hey, we got Medicare to negotiate drug prices on10 commercial drugs. Well congratulations. They
(34:13):
say that savings is $6 billion in a healthcaresystem that's growing at 200 billion a year.
Don't be fooled by these shiny objects. The bestway to lower drug costs in the United States are
to stop taking drugs. We don't need
PROFT (34:29):
Dr. Marty Macari. That's always good
advice too, to act locally, your school lunch
program at the school, what you're doing withthe family, what's at the kitchen table. That,
that's always, that's, that's always a goodplace to start. Dr. Marty Macari, the new book
is Blind Spots that we've been discussing inpertinent part. Dr. mcc, thanks so much for
joining us. Really appreciate your time. Alwaysgreat insights, lot to think about and continued
(34:52):
success with the book.
MAKARY (34:53):
Always great to see you Dan. Thanks so
much.
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