Podcasts · The VPZD Show

Elizabeth Holmes Doc, Pope Leo Cancer, Bryan Johnson Genome

· 1 h 00 min · Episode 46

Episode Elizabeth Holmes Doc, Pope Leo Cancer, Bryan Johnson Genome

0:00 59:54

The all-new Nissan Nystagmus: Deviate your Driving! 😁

It's VPZD Ep. 46, originally streamed LIVE on YouTube.

Chronological topic list

• Housekeeping: clarifying brain death versus severe brain damage, and why a competent examiner matters • Zubin’s first travel speaking engagement in three years, a pain medicine panel in Dallas, and the Rodeo Goat burger • Vinay’s panel at a biotech conference and the longevity target question • Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, and how John Ioannidis spotted the lack of peer reviewed papers • Why you can’t run 100 tests off a single drop of blood • Zubin’s Theranos lipid panel at TEDMED and whether the numbers were real • Finger sticks versus venipuncture, and why lancets hurt • The Nathan Fielder documentary and the 35 days before federal prison • Holmes’s personality, her belief that the machine works, and “Theranos 2.0” • Puppeteer or puppet: Billy Evans, Sunny Balwani, and the men in her life • Amanda Seyfried’s reenactments and the second half of the film • Did she commit fraud, did it harm patients, and was she scapegoated for flying too high • Why Holmes picked a claim that could be tested in minutes, and the harder to falsify claims in biotech • Health influencers, creatine, and observational studies as placebo • Stanford versus Berkeley, and the CAC score as a better measured number than Theranos • A glioblastoma device and the ambiguity of its trial • Whether Holmes really didn’t understand the “Who’s on First” joke • Spiritual people, pop culture, and why VPZD isn’t cognitive dissonance • Pope Leo’s lung cancer: luck or Providence, lead time bias, or an indolent tumor • Why Pope Leo’s case gets spun as proof that screening works, and the case against scanning non-smokers • Whether adenocarcinoma, secondhand smoke, and a Peruvian mission shaped the diagnosis • The Pope’s reported equanimity, and the politics of the papal job • A New York Times Daily episode on Texas Trump voters, and why a cherry-picked anecdote isn’t a poll • Why polling is a flawed science, plus spam calls and the “right to be left alone” • Indian call center scammers and YouTube videos of people hacking them • AI car dealership calls, and medical car names like the Ford Infarct and the Toyota Tetralogy • Bryan Johnson’s post that his genome was of no use, and Anne Wojcicki’s response • Francis Collins’s promise that genomes would guide blood pressure pills • Zubin’s factor V Leiden and prothrombin findings, and what a genome did and didn’t tell him • Why reading DNA like letters in a book is the wrong metaphor, and the Lego exhibit analogy • Craig Venter’s genome talk and his “we can tell you when you will die” pitch • Bryan Johnson’s changing positions, and what he eats • Cheese fries, GERD, and a Dallas talk that felt like the whole room was talking • Pain providers, opioids, the Sacklers, and the overcorrection that followed • The parallel with SSRIs and the dilemma of taking people off a drug they shouldn’t have started • A reported 40% rate of pancreatic cysts on MRI, IPMN, and the scan industrial complex • Jalen Hurts’s blood clots: cleats to the calf, a long flight, and Virchow’s triad • Lupus anticoagulant, factor V Leiden, and oral contraceptives • Zubin’s daughter’s factor V Leiden and whether she can take the pill • Goldfinger, a Scooby-Doo clip, and how standards have changed • Next week’s topics and a plug to watch the Holmes documentary

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