During the pandemic, Dr. Marty Makary was one of a few, very reasonable voices often featured on The Armstrong & Getty Show due to his common sense approach to challenges of living with COVID. Now, Dr. Makary has written a new book in which he deals with the idea of improving health within our communities.
Blind Spots: When medicine gets it wrong and what it means for our health
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Episode Transcript
You probably recognize the name doctor Marty mccarrey if you
watch Fox News, read the Washington Post or the Wall
Street Journal. Doctor McCarey, and we played quite a few
clips of him during and after COVID was a refreshingly
independent voice about both COVID the responses to it. And
(00:23):
one of my favorite aspects of doctor McCarry and what
he does, and we're going to talk to him in
just a second, is that if he didn't know, he
would say, we don't know that yet, which we need
much more of fan six feet apart science. All right,
all right, I trust the science. Doctor McCarey is the
author of a forthcoming book, Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets
(00:43):
It Wrong and What It Means for Our Health New
York Times bestselling author, healthcare expert at Johns Hopkins.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Doctor McCarey, how are you, sir.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I'm doing great, looking forward to opening day for the
NFL tonight and watching the Ravens. Good to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Awesome, good team to root for, the Mighty Ravens. So,
the book I'm Guessing, Blind Spots When Medicine Gets It Wrong,
was inspired in large measure by the response to COVID.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Well, I actually don't talk much about COVID in the book.
A lot of people are become very tribal about it.
You have a lot of conversation. But COVID was a
sneak peek into how a broader medical establishment works and
when they issue broad recommendations, be it the food pyramid
or the wrong advice on how to prevent pened allergies,
(01:36):
and you go down the list, many of our modern
day health crises have actually been caused by or hastened
by the medical establishment giving wrong information out there. So
there's a lot of misinformation in health and science, and
that's why I wrote this. People need to know the
truth about the obesity epidemic, why autism is going up,
(01:59):
the real cause of heart disease. So I present the
latest research on all these topics in the book Blind Spots.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Wow, I had what I thought was a really good
follow up question. But I find myself wanting to know
the answer to all of those things.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
You just need each one of them.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
As a parent of a kid on the autism spectrum,
for instance, what clues do we have for what's going
on there?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, autism is going up fourteen percent every year over
the last twenty three years, so it's up three hundred
and seventeen percent over that time period. No one in
the medical field is stopping and putting their head up
and looking around and say, what's going on here. No
one's asking these big questions. And it turns out that
(02:48):
we've got some good preliminary data that when the microbiome
is altered, that is the garden of millions of different
bacteria that line the GI tract. When that or system
is altered, that appears to be associated with autism. And
there's a lot of things that alter the microbiome, from
(03:09):
the ultra process foods and potentially the pesticides, the heavy metals, microplastics.
We're understanding that kids born by C section have a
different microbiome, and now that has been associated with the
rise in colon cancer that we're seeing in young people.
So there's some incredible scientific research out there that when
(03:31):
I look at these studies and share them with my
colleagues other doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital, they're shocked by
that research. And so I thought, why not share this
research directly with the public in a book.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Okay, well, I'm going to go back to my at
least reasonably high quality follow up question, which was going
to be We're fairly familiar with the history of the
food pyramid and the influence of the serial companies in
the fifties and sixties. But Margarine, yeah, oh my god,
lots and lots of carbs, always carbs. We kind of
understand what the motivation was there. What are some of
(04:08):
the other things that motivate the medical establishment to push
things that are, you know, not entirely true or not
true at all.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well, look big pharma and the food industry that is
profiting off of these highly addictive foods that are engineered
to not make you feel full, but to make you
want more, and you sort of never feel like you're
you're full, Your you're hunger increases as you eat, which
is backwards and big ag These industries have captured not
(04:42):
only the regulators and the government in their recommendations, but
also the medical profession. Heck, most of our funding for
research comes from pharma, and so the only thing we
really study our drugs, and we make people sick. We
ignore all the poisoned food and environmental exp and we
just medicate people. And we've got a terrible thing to doctors,
(05:05):
We've told them, just put your head down and prescribe
these medications. Every time you see these things. We've got
the most over medicated population in the history of the world.
And at no point is anyone saying, what's going on here,
what's the big picture? But I think it's a lot
of the big industry. It's a medical industrial complex, and
(05:25):
a group of doctors now are pushing back. We're pushing
back and we're going straight to the public and bringing
the case directly to them.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Well, there'd be a cultural aspect to this too, obviously,
the profit motive and everything like that. But then there's
a cultural aspect of doctors aren't supposed to tell anybody, hey,
you're fat and you need to start eating different because
then they're going to get a bad review and all
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So that's its own problem.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yeah, there's a consumerist culture, there's a there's groupthink in medicine.
You saw it during COVID and no one could talk
about obesity. It was a forbidden topic. All of the discussion.
We talked about COVID incessantly for three years. No one
ever mentioned the number one modifiable risk factor of dying
(06:11):
of COVID and that is what we call metabolic syndrome
pre diabetes, diabetes and obesity, and that is one hundred
percent modifiable as a shoot born illness.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So interesting. I'm so lucky.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
My primary guy, a care doctor, said to me the
other day, my job is to get you to one
hundred years old with as little medication as possible. And
I thought, yeah, I can climb on board that plan.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
And you said, and you said, I want a second opinion,
and he said, you're ugly too.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Beautiful, beautiful, So listen, I'm about to answer ask a
question of doctor Marty McCarey that would require another book
to answer. But in Stephen Brill's great book Bitter Pill,
he's talking about the American medical medical care system, which
is even more screwed up than it was when he
wrote the book. Are there a couple of things you
(07:06):
would recommend government do in terms of the American healthcare system?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
What would they be?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Because it feels like, is Brill put it, the government's
not involved where it needs to be most and over
involved where it ought to get the hell out of
the way.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Well, we got to get rid of a lot of
these conflicts of interest We've got to get a fresh
set of leadership. All these dinosaurs at the NIH and
these institutions, none of them have ever I've never heard
any of them apologize for any one of their twenty
major errors during COVID, and so people are hungry for honesty.
(07:47):
A study just came out showing that only forty percent
of the American public now trust hospitals and doctors. That's
down from sixty five percent four years ago. So we
need SOMEL. We need to get rid of these conflicts
of interest, we need fresh leadership, and we need to
get rid of the capture by big pharma. You know,
(08:09):
we've got we've subsidized a lot of the poison in
our food. A lot of these derivatives come from food subsidies.
Maybe we need to talk about changing the school lunch
program instead of putting every kid on ozempic. Maybe we
need to talk about environmental exposures that cause cancer, not
just the chemotherapy to treat it. We've got to talk
(08:32):
about food as medicine and a whole new approach to health.
Because we've got fifty percent of our nation's children now
obese or overweight, and a quarter are dealing with pre diabetes.
That is not a healthy prospect. And the only thing
the medical industrial complex is saying is we got to
medicate more people, and that is not the answer.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
You've talked a lot about what we eat for obvious reasons.
What have you eaten today?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Well, I'm actually going to take a break and go
to the gym here as soon as we're done. I
like to have eggs in the morning, some natural, healthy
juices with no added sugar, and then I might have
some nuts or skip lunch and then just go straight
to dinner. It's like the medical field has discovered things
(09:18):
that we've known about since biblical times. There's benefits to fasting,
whole foods, clean meats, there's nothing wrong with meat and meditation.
These are all biblical principles, but it's like we're rediscovering
them in the modern medical literature.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Excellent point. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Doctor Marty McCarey's new book is Blind Spots, When Medicine
Gets it Wrong and what it means for our health.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
It's coming out like next week.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Right, Yeah, it's coming on next week. I'm really excited
about this book. So thanks for mentioning it.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
We might have you back on again.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I we'd be delighted if we could talk again. The
book sounds terrific. There are so many topics that we
could discuss with you. We know you've got to tight schedule.
I mean, for instance, I know you're your field surgically
is transplants, correct, I mean that's your your chief.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Specialty, gastro intestinal surgery and surgical oncology and pancreas. Pancreas
ISLD transplants has been my clinical focus, but I spend
now most of my time doing public health research, trying
a challenge that deeply held assumptions in medicine. And I
don't think doctor Kauchi is going to be sending me
a Christmas card this year.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Oh yeah, nor Mark Zuckerberg, who owes you a hell
of an apology speaking of trying to silence any descent
during the COVID period, including learned and well informed dissent.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Uh, Doctor McCarey, great to talk to you. I hope
we can do it again.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
All right, guys, thanks so much.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
That whole pleasure, that whole thing you just described that
he does. I was going to do that, but I
decided to be a dis jockie.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So the uh pancreatic. Yeah, transplant gas. That's what I
was going to do. That's what I was planning on doing.
And then I became Jackie
Speaker 1 (10:59):
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