August 28, 2024 • 39 mins
Schools have been competing with cell phones for quite some time now. It’s gotten so bad with students being distracted by their phones while trying to learn, that many schools in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and across the country, are now banning phones in the classroom. Newly imposed cell phone bans have become a point of contention with students and parents alike. Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor, joined us to discuss why he believes cell phones “must be” banned in schools.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm WBZ Koston's new radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm delighted to welcome back a guest who hasn't been
with me for at least two or three years. Dr
Marty McCarry and doctor McCarey, welcome back to Nightside.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Hey, good to hear your voice. Good to be back.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thanks Dan Well, I remember you very well as one
of my favorite guests. You've just written in a new book,
which we will talk about, but we're here to talk
about cell phones. The book is called blind Spots, When
Medicine Gets It Wrong and what it means to our health.
I do want to reserve some time to talk about
the book, if you'd be so kind, But I also
(00:41):
want to talk about the subject at hend, and that
is cell phones in school. You're pretty clear on this.
You believe that cell phones really should be banned from schools.
I tend to agree with you on that.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Tell us why well.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Two thirds of teenagers say that they are distracted during
class because of their cell phones, and there's a secondhand
smoke effect. From the research, fifty percent of teenagers who
are not using their phones say they're distracted by other
people checking their phone. Constantly during class. Now, these are
(01:19):
highly addictive substance devices, and we wouldn't allow addictive substances
in class. It's stealing their attention by design. As how
the phones work, the average kid is getting two hundred
and seventy three notifications per day. There's no way teachers
can compete with that. These absent phones are designed to
(01:39):
steal their attention and hold on to it as long
as possible. It is creating impulsive behavior in some kids,
and the kids don't like being addicted to the phones
if you really get down to it. A study found
that forty four percent of children say that their phones
make them anxious. We have an anxiety and depression epidemic,
(01:59):
we have a mental health crisis, we have learning loss
that's severe after COVID, and we have a teacher retention problem.
And in part they are citing the culture around the
cell phones and social media. So we can address all
three in part by making doing this one simple thing
(02:19):
that says, when you're in the classroom, you got to
focus on the teacher and the learning.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You know, it's funny. I'm sure you're familiar with the
acronym fomo fear of missing out and I'm sure that
secondary impact the fifty percent who are distracted by other
students being distracted when they see the other student reaching
for their cell phone and reacting in some form or fashion,
they probably have a little fomo moment. They feel that
(02:46):
they're missing something out at that moment because they're not
using their cell phone, which is I can see that.
I can understand that explanation. This seems to be a
trend in schools as classes begin in high schools that
that schools are now saying keep the cell phone separate.
(03:08):
I guess they put them in some sort of package.
The kids can drop them off pick them up at
the end of the day. Do you think that that's
a trend we're going to see happening more often.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, I think so. And I don't know the perfect solution.
There is no perfect solution. We've got these kids addicted,
and forty percent of kids will have a mental health
diagnosis by the time they turn eighteen. So the epidemic
is already pretty bad. Of impulsive behavior, depression, anxiety, addiction
to the cell phones, a lack of human connection. You know,
(03:45):
some kids don't even know how to shake your hand
or look at you straight so I do think we're
going to see moving in this direction. Banning the cell
phones in this classroom, by the way, in the ways
that you describe locking them up or putting them in
a palace or something, is entirely feasible. School districts have
already decided to move in this direction. It's bipartisan. In
(04:08):
the world of everybody disagreeing and the polarization of politics,
both Governor Kathy Hoschel in New York and Governor Glenn
Youngkin in Virginia have both made announcements saying they want
this done. A matter of fact. Virginia, where the Youngkins,
the governor and I have advised him, he assigned an
(04:29):
executive order saying that he wants to move towards a
self free, cell phone free school classroom K through twelve.
So it's doable. This is something we can do, and
I think hopefully we can move in this direction. Because
kids meet help, they're begging for help.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
There was a time not so long ago when the
advent of cell phones, when my children were young, and
there was a lot of pressure because one kid would
have a cell phone, or two or three kids would
have a cell phone, and then all the other kids
wanted a cell phone, and I think a lot of
parents of my generation, baby boomers, felt like, well, we'd
(05:11):
be denying our children access, and we made up excuses
in our mind that, well, they have to have a
cell phone in case they need to reach us during
the day, all of which I think was phony and flawed.
Do you agree that there was a period of time
where parents allowed young children third and fourth grade children
(05:32):
to make really important decisions that the parents should have
recognized that the decisions that they were being i think
forced to make were wrong.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, I do agree. I think there's multiple components. Number one,
Big tech has been lying to us for decades. They've
been telling us that more technology is always good and
if there's a problem that it creates, more technology on
top of that can fix those problems. And we've ushered
in a giant mental health crisis. Suicide is increasing. We've
(06:06):
got fifty percent of children now are obese or overweight.
Some can't even run a couple of blocks. We've got
a depression at an epidemic level. So big tech has
been lying to us. The second thing is some parents
don't want to be parents. They want to just give
their kids a screen and not have to spend time
(06:26):
with the kids. Kids don't want the screens, they don't
want your money, they want your time. And so there's
that factor in some cases. And then finally, the phones
and the apps are creating a culture right now, and
there's this sense of I need to do what everyone
(06:48):
else is doing. I don't understand it, but it's everyone
else is doing it. And so that peer pressure is
creating the dogma out there that, oh, I have to
give my kids a phone. You don't have to give
your hit a phone. My sister did not give her
kids phones. They're both in their early teens. They still
don't have phones. They're doing great. They can shake your hand,
(07:11):
they can talk to you. They're wonderful kids. They got
great manners, they're engaged. And you don't have to do
it just because everyone else is doing it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
You know, everything that you said to me has just
ring so true. It's funny. Last Hour during our first
hour at night of the eight o'clock hour in the show,
we now talked to four a different guests about various
a wide variety of subjects, and two of our guests
Last Hour, doctor Gregory Jans, research at Harvard University Graduate
School of Education is found it's not adolescentines that are
(07:42):
struggling most with their mental health, but college aged young adults.
And then we talked to a doctor from Canada, doctor
Rob Frasier, with a group called Molecular You Millennials and
jen xers facing higher risk of certain cancers seventeen cancers
than boomers, which means the boomers who were born in
(08:05):
the late forties and into the fifties are theoretically more
healthy in many respects than those regenerations that came after
millennials and gen xers. And he ascribed a lot of
it to the idea that a lot of the millennials
in gen xers sit in front of screens, cell phone screens,
do not get out, do not interact with other people,
(08:26):
do not exercise, and their diet is also poor. So
all with this, what I have tonight is a chorus
of doctors who are all saying in effect the same thing,
particularly as it applies to these cell phones. And by
the way, as you say, a lot of big corporations
Meta amongst most, they've made a lot of money off
(08:51):
of cell phones and off of the misery that young
people now are experiencing and isn't that iron.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You're absolutely right. We've given kids the impression that they
can get a dopamine surge if they swipe one more time,
if they check one more time, there's going to be
some amazing message. All your friends love you and they're
going to throw a party for you tomorrow and they'll
get to bite off these people. And so there's this.
(09:22):
We've messed with their minds, right, We've played with the
minds of these children. And it's not you and I,
it's Meta and Instagram and TikTok and all these companies
that have figured out the psychology of stealing their attention
and holding on to it as long as possible.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
And if you think.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
About what we're doing, if you take a step back, Dan,
look at what we as a society are doing to
our children. We wake them up before they're Shircadian rhythm.
We have them sit in a sedentary classroom for hours
on hours. We give them screen time as the enjoyment
for or break from that classroom time. We give them
(10:07):
food that's highly addictive, ultra processed foods that's got all
sorts of chemicals. It messes the microbiome is deplete of nutrients,
and then we're wondering why we have an epidemic of
childhood depression and fertility is going up, and chronic diseases
and pcos. So it's not hard to figure out. It's
(10:27):
just somebody has to stand up for kids.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And it's almost when you think about it, it's almost Pavlovian.
We know what their reaction will be, just as when
the dog that has been kicked is going to cower
in the room, when someone walks in the room that
does young people just want that hit, that additional hit
from the cell phone. My guest is doctor Marty McCarey.
(10:52):
His new book is called blind Spots. We want to
talk about that when medicine gets it wrong and what
it means to our health. But if we like to
talk about cell phones. I hope you'll take a few
phone calls from my listeners. Doctor you bet, okay, we'll
open up the phone line six one, seven, two, five,
four ten thirty six one seven nine three one ten thirty.
(11:13):
That'll get you through. We were talking initially about cell phones,
and then I do want to get to this book,
blind Spots, When medicine gets it wrong and what it
means to our health. I have watched doctor mcarey for
many years. I have had him on my show previously, UH,
and he is an independent thinker. If you look up
(11:34):
the word independent thinker or the phrase independent thinker in
the dictionary, his picture is most likely going to be
there back on night Side right after this. By the
by the Red Sox have just one three zip. They
they finally snapped out of their their slump with Toronto
great pitching performance tonight by Bao their young pitcher. We'll
(11:54):
be back on night Side right after.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
This now bet to Dan Way live from the Into
World Life Side Studios on Dumb and Bzy News Radio.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
My guest is doctor Marney McCarry. He's been a guest
on this program UH in the past. He is an
independent thinker, and I hope you understand, Doctor I I
cannot offer higher praise to anyone than to call them
an independent thinker in this UH day, and I hope
take that as the ultimate compliment trust me, UH, because
(12:27):
there are too few independent thinkers in my opinion at
this point. Let us get to the phone. It's gonna
go to Bud, who is in onset. I assume that's onset, Massachusetts. Right, Bud.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Oh, I'm sorry, Todd.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
It's it's what Hello, Hi is Todd Todd? Okay, Bud,
but but it's written Bud, but it's Todd. That's no.
We're gonna make you Todd what you are? But you're
an onset? Is that down the cape?
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Yes? It is, well not quite the cape? So all right,
well you're on with Talktor. We don't cross the bridge.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Okay, that's why I don't know it. Okay, you're you're
on with Talk to Bonnie maccari and mccarrey excuse me.
And we're talking about basically having kids go to school
the old fashioned way, sitting in class, listening to the teachers,
interacting with the teachers and fellow students. Yeah, no cell phones,
Thank you very much. What do you think?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Yeah? Yeah, so I am forty six years old. I
believe like my generation, if you want to call that
was on the cusp of that technology. You know, when
I was in sixth seventh grade, eighth grade, there was
no such thing as cell phones. Maybe the occids from
person had one of those old fashioned car phones, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You were born in seventy eighth then if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Yeah, okay, fine, yeah, yeah, seventy eight. So while I
graduated in nineteen ninety six, okay, and I felt like
I was an old soul. I was one of the
last of my friends to use text messages. You know,
why would you text message somebody when you could just
talk to them? You know, I couldn't understand that.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And then over the years, weekly, weekly, do you have
a question or that Doctor McCarry might want to respond to?
Speaker 4 (14:08):
So, so, okay, I'm sorry. So I believe we can
fight this. I think that's this is a technology that's
just going to always be a part of our lives.
And I totally agree with the doctor about, you know,
getting these phones out of kid's hands and trying to
like listen to human beings. But I almost thinking we're
(14:31):
shooting ourselves in the foot because I don't see how
this would ever change. This is the future. It's it's
almost like we don't Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So you think that you think we've lost the war.
Not only have we lost the battle, let's say, yeah,
we lost the war.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
We we we want to hold on and fight. And
I get.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
If doctor McCarry has a less dystopian view of the circumstances,
Doctor McCarey, can we can we turn this around?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Well?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I appreci Todd's comments because I'm also from that generation
where we went to school, we interacted with people, we
had a human connection, and when the teacher was teaching,
we would listen. Today it's very different, and I do
think there is a recognition that the promise of big
tech has failed us, and that the idea that free
(15:22):
internet and free information with unlimited apps and constant access
would be good for child development and learning has backfired.
And they don't need more internet access. What they need
is more human connection. So there's a lot of parents
now who are saying we've gone too far and we
go back, and people have said it's not possible, but
(15:44):
I'm encouraged.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
And then then I'm telling you we can't go back.
There's no going back. There is no way that whatever
can go back. I don't believe that there is only
going to get more and more invasive. It's going to
make more and more easy. It's you to go back.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
God, I'm telling you we got to fight it. To
come on.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
I get it. I agree, I do. I have so
and this is this is if you got a minute
so I again, I grew up like that. I I resisted.
I like to think that I'm old school. I have
older friends. Anyways, I was the last one of my
(16:25):
friends to join. And now I'll be honest. And my
son's eighteen. He just graduated high school. He made it,
but I'm telling you it was fighting with the phones
and the homework and everything that doctor said is absolutely correct.
And and I'll make one more other comment, which really
kind of bothers me, as my sons are very responsible,
(16:48):
like very lucky with this young man. And I noticed
and more and more he's doing the text whay he's
driving and I try to remind him that he can wait.
And I'm that is just a whole other issue. I
believe that, Oh God, yeah, absolutely. And you know what,
it's happened in more and more these young kids, they
(17:10):
really the whole don't texted drive thing is just not
getting them, you know what I mean? Just like that.
You know, I'm finally scared to drink in less than driving,
thank god. But I don't know what's worse. I mean, well,
I know it's worse, but you know what I'm.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Saying, Immortality when you're eighteen is a lot stronger.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah, I mean, and you know he's always responsible, So
there's a lot of We're going to.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Have doctor mccarrey in here for one second and let
me try to have him try to pick up your
mood here, because you can't. You can't quit here, doctor McCarry,
What would you say to Dodd here?
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Well, I think I look, I appreciate what I's saying,
because there are there are times in human development in
modern history where we thought there's no way we'll be
doing things differently. We thought there's no way we'll go
back to a shared economy where people share a ride
(18:02):
like with an uber or lyft. We thought there's no
way people would stop subscribing to cable. Now we've got
a record number of cord cutters. So I am optimistic
because ultimately the truth prevails. And when people see the
terrible consequences of cell phone and app addiction, the mental
health epidemic of anxiety and depression induced by TikTok and
(18:26):
Instagram and Meta and all these companies, people will say, hey,
we want to have a school that restores human connection.
So we're starting to see that, and I'm gonna be
optimistic and hope that things improve.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
All right, Todd, I appreciate it. Stick with us, don't
give up. You've got a great eighteen year old son.
Emphasize to him all the things that you believe in.
He deserves that. Okay, thanks, Todd. I think we met
a lost Todd there, down and down. I'm sorry you
(19:00):
didn't respond. Uh, doctor McCarry, let's we gotta take a
quick news break. We'll take another call or two, and
then I want to talk about your book and I'll
let you go at nine forty five, I promise.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Okay, sound's good.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
That's a deal. Great, Okay, take a break. Coming back
on Nightside right after the news at the bottom of
the hour.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on w BEZ,
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
My guest is doctor Marty McCarey. He's with John Hopkins.
He's a brilliant physician, written a book, Blind Spots When
medicine gets it wrong and what it means for our help.
But we're going to take a couple more calls here
on cell phones in schools, in school Robert in Wellesley,
You're on with doctor McCarry. Go right ahead, Robert.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Could he mean Dan could even to your guests, Doctor
Marty McCarry, I hope I'm pronouncing the name correctly.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
You are correct, go right ahead.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Well, I have a comment which could also be a question,
and I think that I one thing, I'm sympathetic and
a respectful the knowledge of comments of doctor McCarey, and
also sympathetic to the comments of your color Todd. And
I think that there is already made solution that that
(20:11):
may well have been overlooked, something that exists. I think
it's a solid idea, and that is that cell phones
are a special purpose two way radio and they fall
in the under an actual science subject, the study of
radio and and two way radio. It was actually a
(20:32):
prototype for cell phones were developed by amateur radios operators,
as you maybe may be aware, the and this can
my feeling is that faculty and students and family parents
included really need to be trained in the in the
study of of radio needs there needs to be a
(20:53):
curriculum approach to it.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I get, I get the idea I got doctor McCarry's time.
Doctor McCarey, I think that could be a subject in school,
but I think it has to be a subject that
is designated, you know, Junior year senior year as one
portion of a curriculum. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Robert's comments. Because communication is not that communication is good.
It's the highly addictive nature of some of these notifications
and apps. So some alternatives that parents have used are
phones that don't have apps, that don't have internet access,
or where they can control remotely whether or not the
(21:37):
child who they can call. So some phones are set
up so they have no internet access, they have no
social media apps, but they can call nine to one
one and they can call their parents. For very young children,
that may be a reasonable option. What's not working is
when the kids are checking their phone every five seconds.
(21:59):
And look as adults get in this scenario too. There's
a lot going on, there's information, you're waiting on a
call or a text, and you find yourself more jittery.
That doesn't make sense when a teacher is trying to
teach math or English.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Absolutely, Robert, appreciate your calling, your observation. I just got
to get one more in here before I have to
let you doctor McCarry go. Thanks, thank you, Robert, thank
you much, thank you. I would go to ed and
Wooster Edward tight on time with doctor mcarrey. You got
a question or comic right head ed.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah, Mike comments.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
And I've been saying this for several years. I think
the smartphones are the cigarettes of our era, and they
even look that way. Fifty years ago you would have
seen people holding a pack of cigarettes and lighting up
a cigarette, and here you see everybody with a smartphone
in their hands, tapping away.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
And I think apps are the cigarette vending machines of
our era, and I think we've got to start by
curving those and getting the getting.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
The tech CEOs up in from of Congress. I don't
know if you remember thirty years ago. I think in
the early nineties there was a hearing where they got
all the tobacco CEOs up in front of the sent
of hearing at the same time, and that was really
the beginning of the end for the tobacco company that
a year ago.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
They did that a year ago with Zuckerberg and Adam
Maurici of Maressi, the head of Instagram. Yeah, I remember
that clearly was last summer. I don't think it resulted much.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
Well, you got to keep after it, and I think
instead of just studying it in schools, why don't they
just have technology that disables the signal in schools.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Let's get a quick comment from doctor McCarey. Doctor, that's
not a bad suggestion.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Well, first of all, most of these big tech CEOs
don't let their kids on some of these highly digative
apps and devices. That should tell us something. And I
do think there's a real issue here that we don't
talk about, and that is, if they're so highly addictive,
why do we believe all things are okay in moderation.
(24:08):
That might be okay for cupcake, but it's not okay
for cocaine. We would never say cocaine and moderation is okay.
And so we're not seeing the cardiovascular harm of cocaine
with social media apps, but we are seeing the same
addictive potential. And when school is designed to keep the
(24:28):
kids' attention on learning and growing and developing, we've got
to recognize that these distractions are taking away from their
human connection.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Perfect, perfect answer, and as always, thank you. I'm just
a little bit crammed on time here. We will talk
again soon, my friend.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Okay, thank you, thank.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
You, Good night. Doctor McCarey. Blind spots when medicine gets
it wrong, and what it means to our health. That
is that that book has just recently been published. I believe.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
It's available for pre order. I'm very excited about it.
It comes out in three weeks.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Oh and okay, so we're run the cusp of this.
We're ahead of the curve. I always like that. So
tell us what the thesis of the book.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Well, in modern medicine, we have giant blind spots. Issues
we're not talking about that we need to be talking
about that are central to health. Maybe we need to
treat more diabetes with cooking classes than just throwing insolent
at people. Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs,
not putting every six year old on ozepic when we
(25:35):
diagnose obesity. Maybe we need to treat more high blood
pressure by talking about sleep medicine and stress management, not
just throwing anti hypertensives of folks. We need to talk
about food as medicine, general body inflammation, and the underlying
problems that cause disease, not just the whack a mole game.
(25:57):
On the tail end of treating, operating and medicating, we
have the most medicated generation in the history of the world.
Pharma has a tight grip on American medicine. They are
funding most of the research going on on disease management.
They are essentially very tight with regulators. Now some say
(26:23):
they've captured regulators at the FDA, and we saw the
very cozy relationship just in the last few years. So
we've got to recognize that our performance as a medical
establishment is atrocious. Fifty percent of our kids have obesity
(26:44):
or overweight, twenty five percent have pre diabetes in childhood
or diabetes. Seventy five percent of Americans have some chronic
disease or diagnosis. And we're seeing all these conditions. Cancer
and young people, autoimmune diseases, autism, learning disabilities are all
(27:05):
going up. At what point do we stop and ask why?
And I'll tell you I love being a doctor. I'm
a busy physician at Johns Hopkins. Nowhere, at any point
in our training or education does anybody stop to ask
what is going on? We take care of pancreatic cancer
(27:29):
in my research team at Johns Hopkins and in our
clinical work we take care of more pancreous cancer patients
than any hospital in the United States. We've got great experts,
I'm one of them, but at no point has anyone
stopped and asked why is pancreatic cancer doubled over the
(27:49):
last two decades. Maybe we need to look at the
environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo therapy
to treat it. And I think doctors are good people. Nurses,
anyone in the health field is attracted to the profession
out of a sense of compassion. These are good people.
But we're working in a bad system. And what we've
(28:11):
done to American doctors, in my opinion, is terrible. We
put them on a war path to stomp out disease
at the very end of a patient's journey, and we
treat and medicate and operate, and we don't give doctors
the time and the resources to actually dig deep into
(28:33):
the root causes that bring people to care. Instead, we
only talk about the care itself. We put doctors on
these treadmills where they're supposed to build and code and
diagnose as much as they can, and then we evaluate
them at hospitals by how much they bring in revenue wise,
(28:53):
and how high their throughput is and how many diagnoses
they've assigned or how many operations they perform. And that
is not healthy for a good system. We spend four
point five trillion dollars on healthcare. What are we getting
for it? We have the worst health outcomes. We're seeing
cancer rates go up, infertility go up, mental health diagnoses
(29:17):
go up, and so we've got to stop and zoom
out and ask what are we doing, what is going
on here, and start looking into food, is medicine, seed oils, microplastics, toxins,
heavy metals. What are we doing in the environment that's
affecting health? And I think right now there's a renewed
(29:41):
interest in these topics like we've never seen before, and
there's strong sentiment among young doctors and medical students who,
let's be honest, they have more of an anti corporate mindset,
who are saying, we don't want to have anything to
do with traditional medicine of just diagnosing, treating, diagnosing and treating.
(30:03):
They want to do something larger. They want to spend
time with people and dig deep into the underlying issues
that bring people to care, not just the care itself.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I count wait to read this book Blind Spots, when
medicine gets it wrong and what it means to our health.
I just want to take one more minute and run
a theory that I have by you, and I'm going
to really be interested in what your response is. And
I am convinced that we need to open more medical
schools in this country, that in a country that has
(30:37):
an an expanding population, more kids are going to qualify.
Kids are going to offscore, offshore medical schools, and they're
coming back doing their internships and becoming doctors. But I
believe that somehow, some way, the number of medical schools
and the number of seats in medical schools. For example,
(30:57):
at the University of Massachusetts. We're a state with seven
million people, there are one hundred and twenty seats every
year at UMass Medical School. And it seems to me
that that is insane. Now we have other medical schools
in Massachusetts. Don't get me wrong, but do you at
any in any sense agree with me that there are
(31:19):
too many of our young people who want to become doctors.
We talk about the shortage of doctors in rural America,
and sometimes even now in urban America, it's tough to
get a PCP these days. Am I way off based
on that, doctor McCarry, And if I am, please tell me,
because I firmly have advocated for more medical schools and
have been critical of the MMA because I think they
(31:41):
have a role, either direct or in direct in keeping
medical schools the number of medical schools suppressed. If I'm
way off based, I'll take the.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Criticism now, Dan, what you're saying is entirely logical. But
we don't just need more doctors. We need a better
geographic distribution of doctors. We need doctors in rural areas
and doctors caring for poor and minority communities. We need
high quality doctors. Right now, we do something atrocious in
(32:12):
modern American medicine. We take these highly creative, bright, altruistic
young people and we beat them down and tournament into
robots with this rote memorization be forcing them to recite
the names of every molecule in the CREB cycle for
an exam, even though you never need to know that
(32:34):
on the fly, you can look it up. We beat
them down with rote memorization and regurgitation. And we have
all of our medical education controlled by one private company
called the Double AMC. Nineteen board members and an executive
director who's been there for a long time decides what
(32:54):
every medical school will teach and teach for the exam
that they write. That's not good. It's not good to
have central planners like that because I'll tell you what.
Some of them are dinosaurs. I hope the new batch
is different. But we're not training doctors to listen, to
connect with individuals, to ask why diseases are on the rise,
(33:16):
to get into the underlying drivers of illness, to see
the connectedness of all eighty specialties. Turns out a lot
of things cause most of our chronic diseases. Insulin resistance,
the lack of micronutrients, metabolic dysfunction, food, and so we're
(33:40):
missing the big picture here, and what we have are
people passed around in the system like a hot potato.
No one's in charge sometimes, and we're not seeing the
forest from the trees. If you can't be diagnosed and
medicated in a quick ten to fifteen minute visit, sometimes
we don't know what to do with you. In the
(34:01):
healthcare field, that's not right. So we're seeing a revolution
in medicine to say we're going to do this entirely differently.
We're going to spend time with people. Call it medicare, advantage,
relationship based medicine, concierge medicine, employer based primary care, direct
primary care. There are many ways this is now being
(34:24):
offered for people who can and cannot afford it at
different levels medicare and non medicare. And it's exciting because
now we're spending time with people and they're getting deeper
into these issues. But we need the NIH to fund
research on these blind spots of modern medicine. For example,
the microbiome is the lining of bacteria in the gut,
(34:46):
and I get into this deep in the book Blind Spots.
It is one of the giant blind spots of modern medicine.
It's an organ system basically the GI systems microbiome, that
is the millions of different bacteria that live in a harmony.
They digest food, they produce serotonin involved in mood, They
(35:07):
train the immune system. So it does so many things.
And we know that when we alter that microbiome with
giving say an unnecessary antibiotic, some of the bad bacteria,
if you will, will overgrow and that may cause more inflammation,
it may cause different diseases. There's a study that just
(35:29):
came out sound showing that the colon cancer and young
people that we're seeing go up was associated with individuals
born by C section. Where we know that the microbiome
is different when you're not born through a vaginal delivery.
With a birth canal bacteria seed your microbiome. So the
microbiome is something where we need a lot of research.
(35:51):
So Mayo Clinic has a study that a kid takes
an antibiotic early in life, it's altering the microbiome and
the kid is more likely to be obese and have
a learning disability. Farmers have noticed this in animals for
many years. That's why they give antibiotics to animals. So
we're starting to understand the central role of the microbiomes.
(36:13):
And it is one of the many blind spots of
modern medicine where there's amazing new research. And when I
would share this research with my colleagues at Johns Hopkins Hospital,
they would be like, Wow, Marty, this study is amazing.
I had no idea, and I thought, well, why not
share the amazing new research on medicines blind spots with
(36:34):
both the medical community and with the general public in
this book. And that's what I tried to do.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
So the book is available for pre order. Blind Spots
When Medicine Gets It Wrong and what it Means to
our Health by Dr Marty Macarry. I'm looking forward to
reading that I'd love to have you back at some
point later on next month and talk focus on the book,
because there's so much that you just hit, all of
(37:02):
which I've heard different people talk about. But to have
you put it together in one book, it may have
it may be tremendously impactful. I thank you so much
for it's been too long since you've been on my show.
I now remember how much I enjoyed you as a guest.
I hope to have you back soon.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Well, it's good to be with you.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (37:21):
Dan.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
We'll talk more absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Doctor Marty mccairy, Johns Hopkins, and we're going to take
a quick break here a little bit late on commercials,
but that's okay. And if you want to offer a
quick opinion on whether or not cell phone should be
banned in schools. Some schools, private schools do it? Why not?
Should why not all schools. We'll be back on Nightside
after this.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Now back to Dan ray Mine from the Window World
Nights Night Studios on w b Z News Radio.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
We will be changing topics next hour. Last week, I
think I guess it was on Thursday. I had during
the eight o'clock hour. Actually it was Friday, excuse me.
Friday the twenty second, I had an amazing guest, Scott
Alan Curley. He's an ex convict with nine convictions. He
talks about you thought you were having a bad day.
(38:13):
He served nearly a decade behind bars. His life is
a roller coaster fill with drugs, abuse, incarceration, and homelessness,
so he's had many bad days. He's going to join
us after the ten o'clock News to share history of
how he turned his life around upon leaving prison and
became a self made millionaire. If you're thinking you're having
a bad day or a rough patch, Scott has some
(38:34):
encouragement for you, and I hope you'll want to call him.
I think he would be an amazing guest, just as
doctor Marty McCarey was an amazing guest. So stay with
us a little bit later on tonight. I don't know,
I may do some open lines where I may talk
about Bill Belichick's comments about the millionaires tax here in
Massachusetts and how is affecting our Major league sports teams
(38:55):
in their apparent inability to attract high aid free agent superstars.
Back on Nightside, my name is Dan Ray. You have
our number six, one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty
and six one seven, nine, three, one ten thirty Scott
Alan Curley, What a story, coming back right after the
ten o'clock news on Nightside
It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm WBZ Koston's new radio.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm delighted to welcome back a guest who hasn't been
with me for at least two or three years. Dr
Marty McCarry and doctor McCarey, welcome back to Nightside.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Hey, good to hear your voice. Good to be back.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thanks Dan Well, I remember you very well as one
of my favorite guests. You've just written in a new book,
which we will talk about, but we're here to talk
about cell phones. The book is called blind Spots, When
Medicine Gets It Wrong and what it means to our health.
I do want to reserve some time to talk about
the book, if you'd be so kind, But I also
(00:41):
want to talk about the subject at hend, and that
is cell phones in school. You're pretty clear on this.
You believe that cell phones really should be banned from schools.
I tend to agree with you on that.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Tell us why well.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Two thirds of teenagers say that they are distracted during
class because of their cell phones, and there's a secondhand
smoke effect. From the research, fifty percent of teenagers who
are not using their phones say they're distracted by other
people checking their phone. Constantly during class. Now, these are
(01:19):
highly addictive substance devices, and we wouldn't allow addictive substances
in class. It's stealing their attention by design. As how
the phones work, the average kid is getting two hundred
and seventy three notifications per day. There's no way teachers
can compete with that. These absent phones are designed to
(01:39):
steal their attention and hold on to it as long
as possible. It is creating impulsive behavior in some kids,
and the kids don't like being addicted to the phones
if you really get down to it. A study found
that forty four percent of children say that their phones
make them anxious. We have an anxiety and depression epidemic,
(01:59):
we have a mental health crisis, we have learning loss
that's severe after COVID, and we have a teacher retention problem.
And in part they are citing the culture around the
cell phones and social media. So we can address all
three in part by making doing this one simple thing
(02:19):
that says, when you're in the classroom, you got to
focus on the teacher and the learning.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You know, it's funny. I'm sure you're familiar with the
acronym fomo fear of missing out and I'm sure that
secondary impact the fifty percent who are distracted by other
students being distracted when they see the other student reaching
for their cell phone and reacting in some form or fashion,
they probably have a little fomo moment. They feel that
(02:46):
they're missing something out at that moment because they're not
using their cell phone, which is I can see that.
I can understand that explanation. This seems to be a
trend in schools as classes begin in high schools that
that schools are now saying keep the cell phone separate.
(03:08):
I guess they put them in some sort of package.
The kids can drop them off pick them up at
the end of the day. Do you think that that's
a trend we're going to see happening more often.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, I think so. And I don't know the perfect solution.
There is no perfect solution. We've got these kids addicted,
and forty percent of kids will have a mental health
diagnosis by the time they turn eighteen. So the epidemic
is already pretty bad. Of impulsive behavior, depression, anxiety, addiction
to the cell phones, a lack of human connection. You know,
(03:45):
some kids don't even know how to shake your hand
or look at you straight so I do think we're
going to see moving in this direction. Banning the cell
phones in this classroom, by the way, in the ways
that you describe locking them up or putting them in
a palace or something, is entirely feasible. School districts have
already decided to move in this direction. It's bipartisan. In
(04:08):
the world of everybody disagreeing and the polarization of politics,
both Governor Kathy Hoschel in New York and Governor Glenn
Youngkin in Virginia have both made announcements saying they want
this done. A matter of fact. Virginia, where the Youngkins,
the governor and I have advised him, he assigned an
(04:29):
executive order saying that he wants to move towards a
self free, cell phone free school classroom K through twelve.
So it's doable. This is something we can do, and
I think hopefully we can move in this direction. Because
kids meet help, they're begging for help.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
There was a time not so long ago when the
advent of cell phones, when my children were young, and
there was a lot of pressure because one kid would
have a cell phone, or two or three kids would
have a cell phone, and then all the other kids
wanted a cell phone, and I think a lot of
parents of my generation, baby boomers, felt like, well, we'd
(05:11):
be denying our children access, and we made up excuses
in our mind that, well, they have to have a
cell phone in case they need to reach us during
the day, all of which I think was phony and flawed.
Do you agree that there was a period of time
where parents allowed young children third and fourth grade children
(05:32):
to make really important decisions that the parents should have
recognized that the decisions that they were being i think
forced to make were wrong.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, I do agree. I think there's multiple components. Number one,
Big tech has been lying to us for decades. They've
been telling us that more technology is always good and
if there's a problem that it creates, more technology on
top of that can fix those problems. And we've ushered
in a giant mental health crisis. Suicide is increasing. We've
(06:06):
got fifty percent of children now are obese or overweight.
Some can't even run a couple of blocks. We've got
a depression at an epidemic level. So big tech has
been lying to us. The second thing is some parents
don't want to be parents. They want to just give
their kids a screen and not have to spend time
(06:26):
with the kids. Kids don't want the screens, they don't
want your money, they want your time. And so there's
that factor in some cases. And then finally, the phones
and the apps are creating a culture right now, and
there's this sense of I need to do what everyone
(06:48):
else is doing. I don't understand it, but it's everyone
else is doing it. And so that peer pressure is
creating the dogma out there that, oh, I have to
give my kids a phone. You don't have to give
your hit a phone. My sister did not give her
kids phones. They're both in their early teens. They still
don't have phones. They're doing great. They can shake your hand,
(07:11):
they can talk to you. They're wonderful kids. They got
great manners, they're engaged. And you don't have to do
it just because everyone else is doing it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
You know, everything that you said to me has just
ring so true. It's funny. Last Hour during our first
hour at night of the eight o'clock hour in the show,
we now talked to four a different guests about various
a wide variety of subjects, and two of our guests
Last Hour, doctor Gregory Jans, research at Harvard University Graduate
School of Education is found it's not adolescentines that are
(07:42):
struggling most with their mental health, but college aged young adults.
And then we talked to a doctor from Canada, doctor
Rob Frasier, with a group called Molecular You Millennials and
jen xers facing higher risk of certain cancers seventeen cancers
than boomers, which means the boomers who were born in
(08:05):
the late forties and into the fifties are theoretically more
healthy in many respects than those regenerations that came after
millennials and gen xers. And he ascribed a lot of
it to the idea that a lot of the millennials
in gen xers sit in front of screens, cell phone screens,
do not get out, do not interact with other people,
(08:26):
do not exercise, and their diet is also poor. So
all with this, what I have tonight is a chorus
of doctors who are all saying in effect the same thing,
particularly as it applies to these cell phones. And by
the way, as you say, a lot of big corporations
Meta amongst most, they've made a lot of money off
(08:51):
of cell phones and off of the misery that young
people now are experiencing and isn't that iron.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You're absolutely right. We've given kids the impression that they
can get a dopamine surge if they swipe one more time,
if they check one more time, there's going to be
some amazing message. All your friends love you and they're
going to throw a party for you tomorrow and they'll
get to bite off these people. And so there's this.
(09:22):
We've messed with their minds, right, We've played with the
minds of these children. And it's not you and I,
it's Meta and Instagram and TikTok and all these companies
that have figured out the psychology of stealing their attention
and holding on to it as long as possible.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
And if you think.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
About what we're doing, if you take a step back, Dan,
look at what we as a society are doing to
our children. We wake them up before they're Shircadian rhythm.
We have them sit in a sedentary classroom for hours
on hours. We give them screen time as the enjoyment
for or break from that classroom time. We give them
(10:07):
food that's highly addictive, ultra processed foods that's got all
sorts of chemicals. It messes the microbiome is deplete of nutrients,
and then we're wondering why we have an epidemic of
childhood depression and fertility is going up, and chronic diseases
and pcos. So it's not hard to figure out. It's
(10:27):
just somebody has to stand up for kids.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And it's almost when you think about it, it's almost Pavlovian.
We know what their reaction will be, just as when
the dog that has been kicked is going to cower
in the room, when someone walks in the room that
does young people just want that hit, that additional hit
from the cell phone. My guest is doctor Marty McCarey.
(10:52):
His new book is called blind Spots. We want to
talk about that when medicine gets it wrong and what
it means to our health. But if we like to
talk about cell phones. I hope you'll take a few
phone calls from my listeners. Doctor you bet, okay, we'll
open up the phone line six one, seven, two, five,
four ten thirty six one seven nine three one ten thirty.
(11:13):
That'll get you through. We were talking initially about cell phones,
and then I do want to get to this book,
blind Spots, When medicine gets it wrong and what it
means to our health. I have watched doctor mcarey for
many years. I have had him on my show previously, UH,
and he is an independent thinker. If you look up
(11:34):
the word independent thinker or the phrase independent thinker in
the dictionary, his picture is most likely going to be
there back on night Side right after this. By the
by the Red Sox have just one three zip. They
they finally snapped out of their their slump with Toronto
great pitching performance tonight by Bao their young pitcher. We'll
(11:54):
be back on night Side right after.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
This now bet to Dan Way live from the Into
World Life Side Studios on Dumb and Bzy News Radio.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
My guest is doctor Marney McCarry. He's been a guest
on this program UH in the past. He is an
independent thinker, and I hope you understand, Doctor I I
cannot offer higher praise to anyone than to call them
an independent thinker in this UH day, and I hope
take that as the ultimate compliment trust me, UH, because
(12:27):
there are too few independent thinkers in my opinion at
this point. Let us get to the phone. It's gonna
go to Bud, who is in onset. I assume that's onset, Massachusetts. Right, Bud.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Oh, I'm sorry, Todd.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
It's it's what Hello, Hi is Todd Todd? Okay, Bud,
but but it's written Bud, but it's Todd. That's no.
We're gonna make you Todd what you are? But you're
an onset? Is that down the cape?
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Yes? It is, well not quite the cape? So all right,
well you're on with Talktor. We don't cross the bridge.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Okay, that's why I don't know it. Okay, you're you're
on with Talk to Bonnie maccari and mccarrey excuse me.
And we're talking about basically having kids go to school
the old fashioned way, sitting in class, listening to the teachers,
interacting with the teachers and fellow students. Yeah, no cell phones,
Thank you very much. What do you think?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Yeah? Yeah, so I am forty six years old. I
believe like my generation, if you want to call that
was on the cusp of that technology. You know, when
I was in sixth seventh grade, eighth grade, there was
no such thing as cell phones. Maybe the occids from
person had one of those old fashioned car phones, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You were born in seventy eighth then if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Yeah, okay, fine, yeah, yeah, seventy eight. So while I
graduated in nineteen ninety six, okay, and I felt like
I was an old soul. I was one of the
last of my friends to use text messages. You know,
why would you text message somebody when you could just
talk to them? You know, I couldn't understand that.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And then over the years, weekly, weekly, do you have
a question or that Doctor McCarry might want to respond to?
Speaker 4 (14:08):
So, so, okay, I'm sorry. So I believe we can
fight this. I think that's this is a technology that's
just going to always be a part of our lives.
And I totally agree with the doctor about, you know,
getting these phones out of kid's hands and trying to
like listen to human beings. But I almost thinking we're
(14:31):
shooting ourselves in the foot because I don't see how
this would ever change. This is the future. It's it's
almost like we don't Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So you think that you think we've lost the war.
Not only have we lost the battle, let's say, yeah,
we lost the war.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
We we we want to hold on and fight. And
I get.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
If doctor McCarry has a less dystopian view of the circumstances,
Doctor McCarey, can we can we turn this around?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Well?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I appreci Todd's comments because I'm also from that generation
where we went to school, we interacted with people, we
had a human connection, and when the teacher was teaching,
we would listen. Today it's very different, and I do
think there is a recognition that the promise of big
tech has failed us, and that the idea that free
(15:22):
internet and free information with unlimited apps and constant access
would be good for child development and learning has backfired.
And they don't need more internet access. What they need
is more human connection. So there's a lot of parents
now who are saying we've gone too far and we
go back, and people have said it's not possible, but
(15:44):
I'm encouraged.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
And then then I'm telling you we can't go back.
There's no going back. There is no way that whatever
can go back. I don't believe that there is only
going to get more and more invasive. It's going to
make more and more easy. It's you to go back.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
God, I'm telling you we got to fight it. To
come on.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
I get it. I agree, I do. I have so
and this is this is if you got a minute
so I again, I grew up like that. I I resisted.
I like to think that I'm old school. I have
older friends. Anyways, I was the last one of my
(16:25):
friends to join. And now I'll be honest. And my
son's eighteen. He just graduated high school. He made it,
but I'm telling you it was fighting with the phones
and the homework and everything that doctor said is absolutely correct.
And and I'll make one more other comment, which really
kind of bothers me, as my sons are very responsible,
(16:48):
like very lucky with this young man. And I noticed
and more and more he's doing the text whay he's
driving and I try to remind him that he can wait.
And I'm that is just a whole other issue. I
believe that, Oh God, yeah, absolutely. And you know what,
it's happened in more and more these young kids, they
(17:10):
really the whole don't texted drive thing is just not
getting them, you know what I mean? Just like that.
You know, I'm finally scared to drink in less than driving,
thank god. But I don't know what's worse. I mean, well,
I know it's worse, but you know what I'm.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Saying, Immortality when you're eighteen is a lot stronger.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah, I mean, and you know he's always responsible, So
there's a lot of We're going to.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Have doctor mccarrey in here for one second and let
me try to have him try to pick up your
mood here, because you can't. You can't quit here, doctor McCarry,
What would you say to Dodd here?
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Well, I think I look, I appreciate what I's saying,
because there are there are times in human development in
modern history where we thought there's no way we'll be
doing things differently. We thought there's no way we'll go
back to a shared economy where people share a ride
(18:02):
like with an uber or lyft. We thought there's no
way people would stop subscribing to cable. Now we've got
a record number of cord cutters. So I am optimistic
because ultimately the truth prevails. And when people see the
terrible consequences of cell phone and app addiction, the mental
health epidemic of anxiety and depression induced by TikTok and
(18:26):
Instagram and Meta and all these companies, people will say, hey,
we want to have a school that restores human connection.
So we're starting to see that, and I'm gonna be
optimistic and hope that things improve.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
All right, Todd, I appreciate it. Stick with us, don't
give up. You've got a great eighteen year old son.
Emphasize to him all the things that you believe in.
He deserves that. Okay, thanks, Todd. I think we met
a lost Todd there, down and down. I'm sorry you
(19:00):
didn't respond. Uh, doctor McCarry, let's we gotta take a
quick news break. We'll take another call or two, and
then I want to talk about your book and I'll
let you go at nine forty five, I promise.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Okay, sound's good.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
That's a deal. Great, Okay, take a break. Coming back
on Nightside right after the news at the bottom of
the hour.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on w BEZ,
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
My guest is doctor Marty McCarey. He's with John Hopkins.
He's a brilliant physician, written a book, Blind Spots When
medicine gets it wrong and what it means for our help.
But we're going to take a couple more calls here
on cell phones in schools, in school Robert in Wellesley,
You're on with doctor McCarry. Go right ahead, Robert.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Could he mean Dan could even to your guests, Doctor
Marty McCarry, I hope I'm pronouncing the name correctly.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
You are correct, go right ahead.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Well, I have a comment which could also be a question,
and I think that I one thing, I'm sympathetic and
a respectful the knowledge of comments of doctor McCarey, and
also sympathetic to the comments of your color Todd. And
I think that there is already made solution that that
(20:11):
may well have been overlooked, something that exists. I think
it's a solid idea, and that is that cell phones
are a special purpose two way radio and they fall
in the under an actual science subject, the study of
radio and and two way radio. It was actually a
(20:32):
prototype for cell phones were developed by amateur radios operators,
as you maybe may be aware, the and this can
my feeling is that faculty and students and family parents
included really need to be trained in the in the
study of of radio needs there needs to be a
(20:53):
curriculum approach to it.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I get, I get the idea I got doctor McCarry's time.
Doctor McCarey, I think that could be a subject in school,
but I think it has to be a subject that
is designated, you know, Junior year senior year as one
portion of a curriculum. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Robert's comments. Because communication is not that communication is good.
It's the highly addictive nature of some of these notifications
and apps. So some alternatives that parents have used are
phones that don't have apps, that don't have internet access,
or where they can control remotely whether or not the
(21:37):
child who they can call. So some phones are set
up so they have no internet access, they have no
social media apps, but they can call nine to one
one and they can call their parents. For very young children,
that may be a reasonable option. What's not working is
when the kids are checking their phone every five seconds.
(21:59):
And look as adults get in this scenario too. There's
a lot going on, there's information, you're waiting on a
call or a text, and you find yourself more jittery.
That doesn't make sense when a teacher is trying to
teach math or English.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Absolutely, Robert, appreciate your calling, your observation. I just got
to get one more in here before I have to
let you doctor McCarry go. Thanks, thank you, Robert, thank
you much, thank you. I would go to ed and
Wooster Edward tight on time with doctor mcarrey. You got
a question or comic right head ed.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah, Mike comments.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
And I've been saying this for several years. I think
the smartphones are the cigarettes of our era, and they
even look that way. Fifty years ago you would have
seen people holding a pack of cigarettes and lighting up
a cigarette, and here you see everybody with a smartphone
in their hands, tapping away.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
And I think apps are the cigarette vending machines of
our era, and I think we've got to start by
curving those and getting the getting.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
The tech CEOs up in from of Congress. I don't
know if you remember thirty years ago. I think in
the early nineties there was a hearing where they got
all the tobacco CEOs up in front of the sent
of hearing at the same time, and that was really
the beginning of the end for the tobacco company that
a year ago.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
They did that a year ago with Zuckerberg and Adam
Maurici of Maressi, the head of Instagram. Yeah, I remember
that clearly was last summer. I don't think it resulted much.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
Well, you got to keep after it, and I think
instead of just studying it in schools, why don't they
just have technology that disables the signal in schools.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Let's get a quick comment from doctor McCarey. Doctor, that's
not a bad suggestion.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Well, first of all, most of these big tech CEOs
don't let their kids on some of these highly digative
apps and devices. That should tell us something. And I
do think there's a real issue here that we don't
talk about, and that is, if they're so highly addictive,
why do we believe all things are okay in moderation.
(24:08):
That might be okay for cupcake, but it's not okay
for cocaine. We would never say cocaine and moderation is okay.
And so we're not seeing the cardiovascular harm of cocaine
with social media apps, but we are seeing the same
addictive potential. And when school is designed to keep the
(24:28):
kids' attention on learning and growing and developing, we've got
to recognize that these distractions are taking away from their
human connection.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Perfect, perfect answer, and as always, thank you. I'm just
a little bit crammed on time here. We will talk
again soon, my friend.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Okay, thank you, thank.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
You, Good night. Doctor McCarey. Blind spots when medicine gets
it wrong, and what it means to our health. That
is that that book has just recently been published. I believe.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
It's available for pre order. I'm very excited about it.
It comes out in three weeks.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Oh and okay, so we're run the cusp of this.
We're ahead of the curve. I always like that. So
tell us what the thesis of the book.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Well, in modern medicine, we have giant blind spots. Issues
we're not talking about that we need to be talking
about that are central to health. Maybe we need to
treat more diabetes with cooking classes than just throwing insolent
at people. Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs,
not putting every six year old on ozepic when we
(25:35):
diagnose obesity. Maybe we need to treat more high blood
pressure by talking about sleep medicine and stress management, not
just throwing anti hypertensives of folks. We need to talk
about food as medicine, general body inflammation, and the underlying
problems that cause disease, not just the whack a mole game.
(25:57):
On the tail end of treating, operating and medicating, we
have the most medicated generation in the history of the world.
Pharma has a tight grip on American medicine. They are
funding most of the research going on on disease management.
They are essentially very tight with regulators. Now some say
(26:23):
they've captured regulators at the FDA, and we saw the
very cozy relationship just in the last few years. So
we've got to recognize that our performance as a medical
establishment is atrocious. Fifty percent of our kids have obesity
(26:44):
or overweight, twenty five percent have pre diabetes in childhood
or diabetes. Seventy five percent of Americans have some chronic
disease or diagnosis. And we're seeing all these conditions. Cancer
and young people, autoimmune diseases, autism, learning disabilities are all
(27:05):
going up. At what point do we stop and ask why?
And I'll tell you I love being a doctor. I'm
a busy physician at Johns Hopkins. Nowhere, at any point
in our training or education does anybody stop to ask
what is going on? We take care of pancreatic cancer
(27:29):
in my research team at Johns Hopkins and in our
clinical work we take care of more pancreous cancer patients
than any hospital in the United States. We've got great experts,
I'm one of them, but at no point has anyone
stopped and asked why is pancreatic cancer doubled over the
(27:49):
last two decades. Maybe we need to look at the
environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo therapy
to treat it. And I think doctors are good people. Nurses,
anyone in the health field is attracted to the profession
out of a sense of compassion. These are good people.
But we're working in a bad system. And what we've
(28:11):
done to American doctors, in my opinion, is terrible. We
put them on a war path to stomp out disease
at the very end of a patient's journey, and we
treat and medicate and operate, and we don't give doctors
the time and the resources to actually dig deep into
(28:33):
the root causes that bring people to care. Instead, we
only talk about the care itself. We put doctors on
these treadmills where they're supposed to build and code and
diagnose as much as they can, and then we evaluate
them at hospitals by how much they bring in revenue wise,
(28:53):
and how high their throughput is and how many diagnoses
they've assigned or how many operations they perform. And that
is not healthy for a good system. We spend four
point five trillion dollars on healthcare. What are we getting
for it? We have the worst health outcomes. We're seeing
cancer rates go up, infertility go up, mental health diagnoses
(29:17):
go up, and so we've got to stop and zoom
out and ask what are we doing, what is going
on here, and start looking into food, is medicine, seed oils, microplastics, toxins,
heavy metals. What are we doing in the environment that's
affecting health? And I think right now there's a renewed
(29:41):
interest in these topics like we've never seen before, and
there's strong sentiment among young doctors and medical students who,
let's be honest, they have more of an anti corporate mindset,
who are saying, we don't want to have anything to
do with traditional medicine of just diagnosing, treating, diagnosing and treating.
(30:03):
They want to do something larger. They want to spend
time with people and dig deep into the underlying issues
that bring people to care, not just the care itself.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I count wait to read this book Blind Spots, when
medicine gets it wrong and what it means to our health.
I just want to take one more minute and run
a theory that I have by you, and I'm going
to really be interested in what your response is. And
I am convinced that we need to open more medical
schools in this country, that in a country that has
(30:37):
an an expanding population, more kids are going to qualify.
Kids are going to offscore, offshore medical schools, and they're
coming back doing their internships and becoming doctors. But I
believe that somehow, some way, the number of medical schools
and the number of seats in medical schools. For example,
(30:57):
at the University of Massachusetts. We're a state with seven
million people, there are one hundred and twenty seats every
year at UMass Medical School. And it seems to me
that that is insane. Now we have other medical schools
in Massachusetts. Don't get me wrong, but do you at
any in any sense agree with me that there are
(31:19):
too many of our young people who want to become doctors.
We talk about the shortage of doctors in rural America,
and sometimes even now in urban America, it's tough to
get a PCP these days. Am I way off based
on that, doctor McCarry, And if I am, please tell me,
because I firmly have advocated for more medical schools and
have been critical of the MMA because I think they
(31:41):
have a role, either direct or in direct in keeping
medical schools the number of medical schools suppressed. If I'm
way off based, I'll take the.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Criticism now, Dan, what you're saying is entirely logical. But
we don't just need more doctors. We need a better
geographic distribution of doctors. We need doctors in rural areas
and doctors caring for poor and minority communities. We need
high quality doctors. Right now, we do something atrocious in
(32:12):
modern American medicine. We take these highly creative, bright, altruistic
young people and we beat them down and tournament into
robots with this rote memorization be forcing them to recite
the names of every molecule in the CREB cycle for
an exam, even though you never need to know that
(32:34):
on the fly, you can look it up. We beat
them down with rote memorization and regurgitation. And we have
all of our medical education controlled by one private company
called the Double AMC. Nineteen board members and an executive
director who's been there for a long time decides what
(32:54):
every medical school will teach and teach for the exam
that they write. That's not good. It's not good to
have central planners like that because I'll tell you what.
Some of them are dinosaurs. I hope the new batch
is different. But we're not training doctors to listen, to
connect with individuals, to ask why diseases are on the rise,
(33:16):
to get into the underlying drivers of illness, to see
the connectedness of all eighty specialties. Turns out a lot
of things cause most of our chronic diseases. Insulin resistance,
the lack of micronutrients, metabolic dysfunction, food, and so we're
(33:40):
missing the big picture here, and what we have are
people passed around in the system like a hot potato.
No one's in charge sometimes, and we're not seeing the
forest from the trees. If you can't be diagnosed and
medicated in a quick ten to fifteen minute visit, sometimes
we don't know what to do with you. In the
(34:01):
healthcare field, that's not right. So we're seeing a revolution
in medicine to say we're going to do this entirely differently.
We're going to spend time with people. Call it medicare, advantage,
relationship based medicine, concierge medicine, employer based primary care, direct
primary care. There are many ways this is now being
(34:24):
offered for people who can and cannot afford it at
different levels medicare and non medicare. And it's exciting because
now we're spending time with people and they're getting deeper
into these issues. But we need the NIH to fund
research on these blind spots of modern medicine. For example,
the microbiome is the lining of bacteria in the gut,
(34:46):
and I get into this deep in the book Blind Spots.
It is one of the giant blind spots of modern medicine.
It's an organ system basically the GI systems microbiome, that
is the millions of different bacteria that live in a harmony.
They digest food, they produce serotonin involved in mood, They
(35:07):
train the immune system. So it does so many things.
And we know that when we alter that microbiome with
giving say an unnecessary antibiotic, some of the bad bacteria,
if you will, will overgrow and that may cause more inflammation,
it may cause different diseases. There's a study that just
(35:29):
came out sound showing that the colon cancer and young
people that we're seeing go up was associated with individuals
born by C section. Where we know that the microbiome
is different when you're not born through a vaginal delivery.
With a birth canal bacteria seed your microbiome. So the
microbiome is something where we need a lot of research.
(35:51):
So Mayo Clinic has a study that a kid takes
an antibiotic early in life, it's altering the microbiome and
the kid is more likely to be obese and have
a learning disability. Farmers have noticed this in animals for
many years. That's why they give antibiotics to animals. So
we're starting to understand the central role of the microbiomes.
(36:13):
And it is one of the many blind spots of
modern medicine where there's amazing new research. And when I
would share this research with my colleagues at Johns Hopkins Hospital,
they would be like, Wow, Marty, this study is amazing.
I had no idea, and I thought, well, why not
share the amazing new research on medicines blind spots with
(36:34):
both the medical community and with the general public in
this book. And that's what I tried to do.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
So the book is available for pre order. Blind Spots
When Medicine Gets It Wrong and what it Means to
our Health by Dr Marty Macarry. I'm looking forward to
reading that I'd love to have you back at some
point later on next month and talk focus on the book,
because there's so much that you just hit, all of
(37:02):
which I've heard different people talk about. But to have
you put it together in one book, it may have
it may be tremendously impactful. I thank you so much
for it's been too long since you've been on my show.
I now remember how much I enjoyed you as a guest.
I hope to have you back soon.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Well, it's good to be with you.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (37:21):
Dan.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
We'll talk more absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Doctor Marty mccairy, Johns Hopkins, and we're going to take
a quick break here a little bit late on commercials,
but that's okay. And if you want to offer a
quick opinion on whether or not cell phone should be
banned in schools. Some schools, private schools do it? Why not?
Should why not all schools. We'll be back on Nightside
after this.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Now back to Dan ray Mine from the Window World
Nights Night Studios on w b Z News Radio.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
We will be changing topics next hour. Last week, I
think I guess it was on Thursday. I had during
the eight o'clock hour. Actually it was Friday, excuse me.
Friday the twenty second, I had an amazing guest, Scott
Alan Curley. He's an ex convict with nine convictions. He
talks about you thought you were having a bad day.
(38:13):
He served nearly a decade behind bars. His life is
a roller coaster fill with drugs, abuse, incarceration, and homelessness,
so he's had many bad days. He's going to join
us after the ten o'clock News to share history of
how he turned his life around upon leaving prison and
became a self made millionaire. If you're thinking you're having
a bad day or a rough patch, Scott has some
(38:34):
encouragement for you, and I hope you'll want to call him.
I think he would be an amazing guest, just as
doctor Marty McCarey was an amazing guest. So stay with
us a little bit later on tonight. I don't know,
I may do some open lines where I may talk
about Bill Belichick's comments about the millionaires tax here in
Massachusetts and how is affecting our Major league sports teams
(38:55):
in their apparent inability to attract high aid free agent superstars.
Back on Nightside, my name is Dan Ray. You have
our number six, one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty
and six one seven, nine, three, one ten thirty Scott
Alan Curley, What a story, coming back right after the
ten o'clock news on Nightside
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