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April 30, 2025 113 mins

What’s in our medicines? There are active ingredients, and there are excipients, which is everything else. From colorants to emulsifiers to adjuvants, excipients hide many horrors, and it’s not even possible to know which ones are in your meds (or foods). Dairy that has been fortified with vitamins A & D also has seed oils and emulsifiers, but those things aren’t on the label. The government database that should have all the information is full of errors. Polysorbate 80, a common emulsifier in food and drugs, is so complex that it hasn’t been fully characterized, and is known to be cytotoxic generally, including being hemolytic—it breaks apart red blood cells. Meanwhile, Moderna’s Covid “vax” has even more contaminants than previously recognized.

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Mentioned in this episode:

FDA to ban petroleum-based dyes: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/hhs-fda-phase-out-petroleum-based-synthetic-dyes-nations-food-supply

Milk fortified with seed oils and Polysorbate 80: https://x.com/strong_sistas/status/1906085634357236222

Abrantes et al 2016. An overview of pharmaceutical excipients: safe or not safe? Journal of pharmaceutical sciences, 105(7): 2019-2026: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022354916004470

Betty Pezzimenti on DarkHorse, Nov 26, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qA0wZD0iPw

Kinsella et al 2024. Inconsistent excipient listings in DailyMed: implications for drug safety. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology, 397(9): 6851-6854: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00210-024-03067-x

RFK on Dr. Phil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZofNzZ8UoPk

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee: https://amzn.to/3EFZBAj (commission earned)

Sun et al 2017. Component-based biocompatibility and safety evaluation of polysorbate 80. RSC advances, 7(25): 15127-15138: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2017/ra/c6ra27242h

More contaminants in the Moderna vaccine: https://x.com/kevin_mckernan/status/1917252562442506303

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