# Peter Hotez & Eric Topol - Discuss “Science Under Siege” book

An episode of [Ground Truths](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1728526108), 8 Sep 2025, 53 min.

Audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/172589898/aa7bf5d9d3283b49d1cd25b4d6389fb9.mp3

Thank you Sara Garcia, Andrew O'Malley BSc PhD, Sam Hester, Julie, Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, and so many others for tuning into my live video with Peter Hotez! Join me for my next live video in the app. Peter Hotez and I discuss his new book, co-authored with Michael Mann, SCIENCE UNDER SEIGE, on the anti-science superstorm culminating from the climate crisis, the Covid pandemic, and a vast interconnected network that has waged a direct assault on scientific truth. During our conversation we trace history of priors in civilization, such as Lysenko and Stalinism in the last century. And acknowledge the future role of A.I. for promoting infinite disinformation. Beyond human suffering and direct health outcome consequences (such as Red Covid), the toll this is taking on the career of young scientists, universities, public health agencies, and loss of public trust are reviewed. The interdependent role of the media and the wellness industry is touched on. The book and our conversation puts forth a call to arms, potential solutions, including the need to move away from invisible scientists and political activism. Thanks for listening to Ground Truths podcasts and reading the analytic posts. In case you missed any, these are a few recent and related ones: Podcasts with Michael Osterholm and Sanjay Gupta on their new books—The Big One and It Doesn’t Have to Hurt, respectively. Next up is Charlotte Blease and her new book Dr. Bot on where we are headed with medical A.I. If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! That makes the work involved in putting these together especially worthwhile. All content on Ground Truths—its newsletters, analyses, and podcasts, are free, open-access. Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don't hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

## Transcript

[0:00] SPEAKER_00: So I am just absolutely thrilled to have my friend and colleague,
[0:06] SPEAKER_00: Dr.
[0:06] SPEAKER_00: Peter Hotez with me today.
[0:10] He has a book with Michael Mann,
[0:12] which is extraordinary,
[0:14] Science Under Siege.
[0:15] SPEAKER_00: The timing is beyond belief.
[0:18] SPEAKER_00: And we're going to get into that book.
[0:21] SPEAKER_00: I think it's exceptionally important given where we are right now.
[0:26] I'm going to just talk a little bit while we get people joining
[0:28] because lots of
[0:28] SPEAKER_00: people are joining this.
[0:30] SPEAKER_00: It's such an important discussion.
[0:33] SPEAKER_00: Peter and Michael describe an anti-science superstorm.
[0:38] SPEAKER_00: with the three things coming together,
[0:40] SPEAKER_00: the climate crisis,
[0:43] SPEAKER_00: the pandemic,
[0:45] SPEAKER_00: and the anti-science,
[0:47] SPEAKER_00: which is just getting stronger and stronger,
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: and it isn't being helped at all by the world of AI,
[0:54] SPEAKER_00: leading to,
[0:54] SPEAKER_00: as what they say,
[0:55] SPEAKER_00: a potential for infinite disinformation.
[0:59] SPEAKER_00: So now that we're getting some folks on board, Peter,
[1:03] Why don't you tell us a bit about your sense of the
[1:07] anti-science superstorm and
[1:09] SPEAKER_00: what motivated you and Michael to put this book together,
[1:13] SPEAKER_00: which is obviously a prescient piece of work.
[1:18] SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, Eric, thank you.
[1:19] Thanks for having me on and thank you for all your support over
[1:23] the years.
[1:24] SPEAKER_02: Many people don't realize this,
[1:26] but we've been doing a weekly Zoom together with good
[1:32] colleagues like Mike
[1:34] SPEAKER_02: Osterholm and Peggy Hamburg and Penny Heaton and Bruce Gellin and
[1:40] and and ruth berkelman and and i've learned so much from you
[1:44] because from all of us
[1:46] from all that group because of this and and you've been a great
[1:50] help in explaining
[1:51] what the heck is going on right now because it is um so
[1:54] extremely dark so first of
[1:56] all i wanted to say again how grateful i am for all your
[2:00] support and what's been
[2:01] SPEAKER_02: some dark times too often um
[2:04] But,
[2:04] you know,
[2:05] I think the reason for writing the book is because it's taking
[2:09] lives.
[2:09] SPEAKER_02: And,
[2:10] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[2:12] the big 30,000-foot overview for the book is humanity is facing
[2:16] two existential
[2:17] SPEAKER_02: threats right now.
[2:18] One of them is from pandemics like COVID,
[2:21] like H5N1,
[2:23] and we're going to have—
[2:24] SPEAKER_02: New ones coming down the pike, right?
[2:26] SPEAKER_02: We're going to have other zoonotic influenzas.
[2:28] We're going to have other coronaviruses and vector-borne
[2:32] tropical diseases where I
[2:34] SPEAKER_02: am in Texas and the Gulf Coast and maybe bioterrorism threats.
[2:38] SPEAKER_02: And then the climate crisis, which is equally important.
[2:44] SPEAKER_02: But now there's a third leg to the tripod, Eric.
[2:47] SPEAKER_02: And the third leg is the vast...
[2:50] disinformation machine that's blocking us from addressing
[2:54] either pandemics or the
[2:55] SPEAKER_02: climate crisis.
[2:56] SPEAKER_02: And that means that anti-science itself is an existential threat.
[3:00] And we wrote the book to really highlight that and to help
[3:03] people understand where
[3:05] SPEAKER_02: it's coming from.
[3:06] SPEAKER_02: Because I think too often people
[3:08] SPEAKER_02: You know,
[3:09] you see the language out there that it's all misinformation or
[3:12] infodemic like it's
[3:13] SPEAKER_02: just some random junk out there on the Internet.
[3:15] SPEAKER_02: And it's not.
[3:15] SPEAKER_02: It's organized.
[3:17] SPEAKER_02: It's politically motivated.
[3:19] It's financially motivated because of the wellness and
[3:23] influencer mindset.
[3:25] grifting an industry and also,
[3:27] you know,
[3:29] in part the fossil fuel industry and the climate side.
[3:31] SPEAKER_02: And so that's why we wrote the book,
[3:33] SPEAKER_02: to help people understand it and explain it,
[3:35] because our premise is you can't hope to chip away at it unless
[3:39] you can understand
[3:41] SPEAKER_02: what the monster is and how to defeat it.
[3:45] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it's not a happy, cheery book, although we try to
[3:50] One of the things that Michael Mann taught me in the book is
[3:54] this concept of
[3:54] SPEAKER_02: doomism,
[3:55] that it's almost as dangerous to just throw your hands up and
[3:59] say there's nothing
[4:00] SPEAKER_02: we can do.
[4:01] SPEAKER_02: It's fated.
[4:01] SPEAKER_02: It's inevitable.
[4:02] SPEAKER_02: And neither of us believe that.
[4:04] SPEAKER_02: I know you don't either.
[4:05] We tend to be eternal optimists and trying to find a way to
[4:09] carve a path of light
[4:12] SPEAKER_02: through all the darkness.
[4:13] SPEAKER_02: I think that's the other major thread of the book.
[4:16] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, it's quite a remarkable piece of work.
[4:19] SPEAKER_00: And,
[4:20] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[4:20] SPEAKER_00: you describe so well the spiderweb of malevolence,
[4:24] SPEAKER_00: whereby you get these five forces,
[4:27] SPEAKER_00: the five Ps,
[4:29] SPEAKER_00: the plutocrats and the petrostates,
[4:32] SPEAKER_00: the propaganda,
[4:33] SPEAKER_00: the press,
[4:35] SPEAKER_02: And the pros, you got it.
[4:37] SPEAKER_02: That's pretty good, yeah.
[4:40] SPEAKER_02: I have to give credit to Michael on that one.
[4:42] He was the one into the alliteration,
[4:44] and it sounded good,
[4:46] so I went with it.
[4:47] Oh,
[4:47] because what you do so well is you bring these two existential
[4:51] threats together.
[4:53] SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
[4:53] SPEAKER_00: the climate crisis was a potentiator for not just this pandemic,
[4:59] SPEAKER_00: but for future pandemics.
[5:01] SPEAKER_00: And the same players that are involved in the background
[5:04] like Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers and the same tactics
[5:10] in the Heritage
[5:11] SPEAKER_00: Foundation,
[5:12] SPEAKER_00: the bad actors,
[5:12] SPEAKER_00: the political action community.
[5:14] SPEAKER_00: You bring it all together.
[5:15] SPEAKER_00: So it isn't just like, you know.
[5:17] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[5:18] SPEAKER_02: Well,
[5:18] SPEAKER_02: one of the things we say,
[5:19] SPEAKER_02: Eric,
[5:19] is that if you think of them as two different circles of the
[5:23] Venn diagram,
[5:24] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[5:24] SPEAKER_02: the attacks on climate science and scientists,
[5:27] SPEAKER_02: the attacks on biomedicine and vaccines and pandemics,
[5:31] SPEAKER_02: and the scientists linked with that.
[5:34] SPEAKER_02: There are two separate circles that,
[5:37] And there is a lot of overlap,
[5:39] although they're not completely overlapping.
[5:41] SPEAKER_02: And so we spent a lot of time talking about the overlap.
[5:44] SPEAKER_02: And as we were working on the book together,
[5:48] SPEAKER_02: we found a lot more overlap than we would have expected.
[5:51] SPEAKER_02: And that was really interesting.
[5:55] SPEAKER_02: For instance,
[5:56] SPEAKER_02: you might say,
[5:56] SPEAKER_02: well,
[5:57] why would people attacking fossil fuels want to attack vaccines
[6:01] and COVID?
[6:02] SPEAKER_02: And
[6:04] SPEAKER_02: And there the answer is the whole Great Barrington Declaration,
[6:08] SPEAKER_02: which,
[6:09] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[6:09] was put out at the American – written at the American Institute
[6:14] for Economic
[6:15] SPEAKER_02: Research,
[6:15] SPEAKER_02: which is in Great Barrington,
[6:17] SPEAKER_02: Massachusetts,
[6:18] SPEAKER_02: which is supported in part.
[6:20] by Koch Philanthropies,
[6:23] and one of the officers there has a past connection.
[6:29] SPEAKER_02: By saying it's business as usual during a pandemic,
[6:34] even though the people are piling into ICUs and emergency rooms
[6:38] and overwhelming
[6:39] SPEAKER_02: them and shooting up mortality,
[6:41] SPEAKER_02: it keeps...
[6:42] SPEAKER_02: the oil and gas going.
[6:44] It keeps everything moving forward,
[6:46] even though it makes absolutely no sense epidemiologically.
[6:49] SPEAKER_02: So that's an example where there is direct,
[6:56] SPEAKER_02: mutually reinforcing,
[6:58] SPEAKER_02: ultimately self-defeating,
[6:59] SPEAKER_02: but mutually reinforcing interest between the attacks on climate,
[7:04] SPEAKER_02: on fossil fuels and the attacks on COVID.
[7:07] Yeah,
[7:07] I mean,
[7:07] this is a direct assault,
[7:08] as the words you use,
[7:10] on scientific truths.
[7:11] SPEAKER_00: And for the pandemic,
[7:14] these were the people that said that we would have herd
[7:17] immunity by the spring of
[7:20] SPEAKER_00: 2021.
[7:21] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just can't believe this stuff.
[7:26] SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
[7:26] I want to go back to in history because there's some really
[7:30] important lessons that
[7:31] SPEAKER_00: you bring up in the book.
[7:34] SPEAKER_00: This really is framed the strategy with Stalinism.
[7:40] SPEAKER_00: So back in the 50s and earlier in the 20th century,
[7:45] SPEAKER_00: there was Lysenko and all the things that were going on there.
[7:50] And for those who are not familiar with Russian history,
[7:52] can you just give us a quick primer?
[7:55] SPEAKER_02: Sure.
[7:55] SPEAKER_02: So the reason we looked into this is,
[7:58] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[7:59] SPEAKER_02: when has a society or a government,
[8:04] SPEAKER_02: in this case the United States government,
[8:06] SPEAKER_02: ever attacked science and
[8:09] SPEAKER_02: and portrayed scientists with such ferocity and,
[8:12] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[8:14] SPEAKER_02: working to portray us as public enemies or even cartoon villains.
[8:18] SPEAKER_02: Has that happened before?
[8:20] SPEAKER_02: And pretty quickly,
[8:21] SPEAKER_02: you can move towards Stalinism in the Soviet Union,
[8:26] SPEAKER_02: in the USSR in the 1930s.
[8:27] SPEAKER_02: And there, you know, what
[8:30] they attacked the Mendelian geneticist Vavilov and actually
[8:35] threw him into the
[8:36] Gulag where he ultimately perished in the 1940s from starvation
[8:41] and exposure in a
[8:42] SPEAKER_02: Gulag hospital in favor of the theories,
[8:46] the discredited theories of a man named Trofim Lysenko who
[8:50] believed in these
[8:51] SPEAKER_02: Lamarckian approaches where he would soak the Russian wheat in snow and
[8:58] SPEAKER_02: and say he was toughening it up.
[9:00] SPEAKER_02: There was a term at that time called vernalization.
[9:03] He was toughening it up,
[9:04] and it would make the wheat hardy for subsequent winters.
[9:10] SPEAKER_02: It was all BS.
[9:12] SPEAKER_02: And he and Lysenko himself...
[9:14] SPEAKER_02: was untrained in science,
[9:17] whereas Lysenko had trained at the best universities and was a
[9:20] world-renowned
[9:22] SPEAKER_02: geneticist.
[9:23] SPEAKER_02: But Stalin,
[9:24] SPEAKER_02: it fit with Stalin's confirmation bias and the fact that he was...
[9:31] SPEAKER_02: Lysenko came from modest means,
[9:33] SPEAKER_02: being a peasant,
[9:34] SPEAKER_02: he liked that as well.
[9:35] SPEAKER_02: And even though it was a theory that didn't work and ultimately...
[9:40] help precipitate the collapse of the wheat crop in Ukraine and
[9:45] Russia and led to
[9:46] SPEAKER_02: famine,
[9:47] SPEAKER_02: it was still practiced for purposes of authoritarian control.
[9:52] SPEAKER_02: And Stalin did the same thing with Russian physics, Soviet physics.
[9:56] You know,
[9:57] you weren't allowed to talk about Einstein's theory of
[10:00] relativity because he
[10:03] SPEAKER_02: for seemingly arbitrary reasons,
[10:05] SPEAKER_02: decided that that didn't fit with his communist worldviews either.
[10:11] So you saw this complete collapse of Soviet science to the
[10:17] detriment of the society
[10:18] SPEAKER_02: for purposes of authoritarian control.
[10:21] SPEAKER_02: And in a different way,
[10:22] SPEAKER_02: this is what happened in Weimar Germany during the 20s and 30s,
[10:26] SPEAKER_02: where Einstein's theory of relativity,
[10:29] SPEAKER_02: again,
[10:30] SPEAKER_02: in this case,
[10:30] SPEAKER_02: it was called the Jewish fraud.
[10:33] Because it was laced with anti-Semitism,
[10:35] as was the theory of psychoanalysis.
[10:39] SPEAKER_02: And ultimately,
[10:41] SPEAKER_02: by attacking modern physics at the time,
[10:45] SPEAKER_02: it probably helped lead to Hitler's defeat.
[10:49] So even though these are such self-defeating enterprises to
[10:53] attack science...
[10:55] SPEAKER_02: We found a quote from Maxim Gorky who said,
[11:00] SPEAKER_02: without science,
[11:01] SPEAKER_02: democracy is impossible,
[11:03] SPEAKER_02: or you can't have democracy without science.
[11:06] SPEAKER_02: And we believe that as well.
[11:08] SPEAKER_02: And tragically,
[11:09] it's happening now with the attacks that we're seeing play out
[11:14] now in this current
[11:16] SPEAKER_02: administration,
[11:17] SPEAKER_02: both against climate science and
[11:21] against vaccines and everything our friend,
[11:23] Mr.
[11:23] Kennedy's is doing right now.
[11:25] SPEAKER_02: And, and how do you, um, you know, counteract it?
[11:30] And,
[11:30] and I talked some in the book about my long history with,
[11:34] with Mr.
[11:34] Kennedy.
[11:35] SPEAKER_02: Um, I was, um,
[11:38] SPEAKER_02: I'll never forget it.
[11:39] SPEAKER_02: I'm a scientist,
[11:43] SPEAKER_02: a vaccine scientist and pediatrician,
[11:45] SPEAKER_02: but I also have a daughter with autism and intellectual disabilities.
[11:50] SPEAKER_02: And of course, the original assertion against vaccines was,
[11:54] false claims that vaccines cause autism that was put forward in
[11:58] the late 1990s and
[11:59] SPEAKER_02: amplified by Mr.
[12:00] SPEAKER_02: Kennedy,
[12:01] SPEAKER_02: who wrote about it in Rolling Stone magazine,
[12:03] SPEAKER_02: claiming it was thimerosal.
[12:05] SPEAKER_02: And many years ago, I was in my office and
[12:10] SPEAKER_02: And my assistant said to me,
[12:12] SPEAKER_02: hey,
[12:12] SPEAKER_02: Dr.
[12:13] SPEAKER_02: Hotez,
[12:13] SPEAKER_02: I have these two gentlemen on the phone who would like to speak to you.
[12:16] SPEAKER_02: Their names are Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins.
[12:22] SPEAKER_02: Can you speak with them?
[12:23] SPEAKER_02: And I was like, yeah, I think so.
[12:27] SPEAKER_02: And, you know, they get on the phone.
[12:28] SPEAKER_02: They say, Peter, you know, listen, we got a job for you.
[12:33] SPEAKER_02: You're a vaccine scientist, pediatrician.
[12:35] SPEAKER_02: You have a daughter with autism.
[12:37] SPEAKER_02: You can explain why vaccines don't cause autism.
[12:39] SPEAKER_02: We're going to have you talk with a Bobby,
[12:41] SPEAKER_02: they call him Bobby,
[12:42] SPEAKER_02: Bobby Kennedy,
[12:42] SPEAKER_02: and we'll have it mediated by a,
[12:45] SPEAKER_02: another individual.
[12:46] SPEAKER_02: And I had a year of cell phone discussions with him,
[12:48] SPEAKER_02: Zooms and emails,
[12:52] SPEAKER_02: and it was very unproductive and it really went nowhere.
[12:55] SPEAKER_02: But it really helped me understand the anti-vaccine movement.
[13:00] And I wound up writing another book about that called Vaccines
[13:02] Did Not Cause
[13:04] SPEAKER_02: Rachel's Autism that kind of made me public enemy number one or two with
[13:08] SPEAKER_02: anti-vaccine groups.
[13:10] SPEAKER_02: But it gave me a front row seat to watch how this whole
[13:14] SPEAKER_02: movement,
[13:15] SPEAKER_02: this very dark movement evolved,
[13:17] SPEAKER_02: became political,
[13:19] and then converged with the health wellness influencer industry
[13:23] to make money.
[13:24] SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about that,
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: too,
[13:26] because what you're bringing up with health wellness industry
[13:28] is something a lot of
[13:29] SPEAKER_00: people are not quite aware of.
[13:31] SPEAKER_00: But this Wakefield paper,
[13:34] SPEAKER_00: which gave legs to the likes of RFK Jr.,
[13:38] SPEAKER_00: and in many ways is really the modern,
[13:40] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[13:41] SPEAKER_00: in the last few decades,
[13:42] SPEAKER_00: is really what helped build this anti-science industry.
[13:46] community which is now so organized and funded and politically
[13:51] supported of course
[13:52] another big jolt was in the climate um anti-science that in the
[13:58] late 2000s like
[13:59] 2008 2009 that you review in the book and then of course you
[14:04] know now with this
[14:05] SPEAKER_00: with the pandemic just taken to yet new heights now in this time you
[14:13] SPEAKER_00: especially, I call you the first physician scientist warrior.
[14:18] SPEAKER_00: I wrote that in your last book, and now I add Michael Mann as another
[14:23] SPEAKER_00: scientist warrior.
[14:24] SPEAKER_00: We never had a species.
[14:26] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which is very kind.
[14:27] SPEAKER_02: The Lancet,
[14:28] SPEAKER_02: by the way,
[14:29] SPEAKER_02: picked that up and wrote an article,
[14:31] SPEAKER_02: a profile of me,
[14:32] SPEAKER_02: and they used that term,
[14:33] SPEAKER_02: which was really nice.
[14:34] SPEAKER_00: So true, because you're taking a lot of hits.
[14:36] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've had death threats.
[14:38] SPEAKER_00: Many have had death threats,
[14:39] but not everybody's had people going right to their house to
[14:42] confront them.
[14:44] SPEAKER_00: and to try to, you know, personal ad hominem stuff left and right.
[14:50] SPEAKER_00: And you stood up to it.
[14:51] SPEAKER_00: You're still standing up to it.
[14:52] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I just had a horrible death threat this weekend.
[14:56] SPEAKER_02: Some guy in Florida says he's going to shoot me in the head.
[14:59] So,
[15:00] you know,
[15:00] it's no fun waking up to that kind of stuff,
[15:02] I have to tell you.
[15:03] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: Peter,
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: when you go to give lectures,
[15:05] SPEAKER_00: which you do at a lot of universities,
[15:07] SPEAKER_00: we're going to talk about universities in a minute,
[15:08] SPEAKER_00: too,
[15:09] SPEAKER_00: that are under siege.
[15:10] SPEAKER_00: It's part of the science under siege.
[15:12] SPEAKER_00: But...
[15:14] SPEAKER_00: Are you afraid for your life?
[15:15] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you don't have police protection, right?
[15:18] SPEAKER_02: Well,
[15:18] SPEAKER_02: if I,
[15:19] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[15:19] SPEAKER_02: give a lecture at a different university,
[15:23] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[15:23] I give them a heads up about the need for security and they
[15:26] totally get it.
[15:27] SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I mean, it's so, you know, we do get security.
[15:33] SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, it's, you know, it's university security, but they...
[15:37] SPEAKER_02: and they have varying degrees of capacity for it.
[15:41] SPEAKER_02: I think the hard part is,
[15:42] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[15:43] SPEAKER_02: the incoming is so pervasive because it's coming online,
[15:46] SPEAKER_02: on social media,
[15:49] SPEAKER_02: on threatening emails,
[15:50] SPEAKER_02: it's in person stalkings,
[15:52] SPEAKER_02: or at lectures,
[15:54] SPEAKER_02: or on podcasts,
[15:55] SPEAKER_02: and
[15:57] SPEAKER_02: And for what?
[15:59] SPEAKER_02: As you know,
[16:00] we made a low-cost COVID vaccine that reached 100 million
[16:05] people using an older
[16:08] SPEAKER_02: technology,
[16:08] SPEAKER_02: no patents,
[16:09] SPEAKER_02: no strings attached.
[16:12] Could have made money but didn't and reached 100 million people
[16:16] at $2 to $4 a dose,
[16:18] showing that we can bypass the big pharma companies and make
[16:22] parasitic disease
[16:23] SPEAKER_02: vaccines.
[16:23] SPEAKER_02: You would think all of this...
[16:26] SPEAKER_02: would be mom and apple pie,
[16:27] SPEAKER_02: but it goes up against these far-right libertarian ideologies,
[16:36] SPEAKER_02: so they think,
[16:37] SPEAKER_02: and it also hurts the wellness and influencer
[16:42] SPEAKER_02: industry,
[16:43] which is built on buying up what they can in bulk and jacking
[16:49] up the price and then
[16:51] SPEAKER_02: selling it with telehealth visits.
[16:53] SPEAKER_02: I mean,
[16:54] SPEAKER_02: have you ever wondered why they're all antiparasitic drugs,
[16:58] SPEAKER_02: hydroxychloroquine,
[16:59] SPEAKER_02: ivermectin,
[17:01] SPEAKER_02: fenbendazole?
[17:02] SPEAKER_02: It's because there's a bucket of it.
[17:05] SPEAKER_02: You can buy it cheap.
[17:06] SPEAKER_02: You can then
[17:08] SPEAKER_02: jack up the price, repackage it, and sell it with a telephys.
[17:12] SPEAKER_02: It's as straightforward as that.
[17:14] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right about, you know, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine.
[17:17] SPEAKER_00: These are generic drugs, but it goes beyond that.
[17:19] This wellness industry,
[17:21] I think you know,
[17:22] is pushing these injectable peptides
[17:25] SPEAKER_00: You know, one that RFK Jr.
[17:27] SPEAKER_00: really pushes is this BPC, body protection control, 157.
[17:31] SPEAKER_00: I think you wrote about it in your book, Eric, right?
[17:35] SPEAKER_00: Superagers, yeah.
[17:37] SPEAKER_00: Right.
[17:37] SPEAKER_00: Stacks of peptides that are $200,
[17:41] SPEAKER_00: $300,
[17:42] SPEAKER_00: and they're being pushed by the wellness,
[17:44] SPEAKER_00: the longevity industry.
[17:45] $500 each,
[17:46] SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting how they can inject peptides with no data, no data,
[17:51] SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand,
[17:52] they don't want to take COVID vaccines or other vaccines that
[17:56] have enormous data
[17:58] SPEAKER_00: sets of tens of thousands,
[18:00] SPEAKER_00: hundred thousands of placebo-controlled trial participants,
[18:04] SPEAKER_00: no less real-world effectiveness.
[18:06] SPEAKER_00: It's such a paradox, don't you think?
[18:09] Well,
[18:09] but it all makes sense because it's all about what they can
[18:12] make money.
[18:13] SPEAKER_02: Since they can't make money off vaccines,
[18:16] they certainly can't off of our low-cost vaccines for parasitic
[18:19] diseases and COVID.
[18:22] SPEAKER_02: It's whatever they can make money off of.
[18:24] SPEAKER_02: In some cases, it's jacking up the price of low-cost generics.
[18:28] SPEAKER_02: Another example of that is you remember when...
[18:32] We had our we've been having our awful measles epidemic this
[18:36] year in West Texas.
[18:37] SPEAKER_02: And Bobby Kennedy,
[18:39] SPEAKER_02: our secretary of health and human services,
[18:41] SPEAKER_02: gets up there on on the cable news channels.
[18:44] SPEAKER_02: And he says,
[18:44] SPEAKER_02: well,
[18:45] SPEAKER_02: you can either get your measles,
[18:47] SPEAKER_02: mumps,
[18:48] SPEAKER_02: rubella vaccine,
[18:49] SPEAKER_02: which is one of the most safest effective vaccines we have.
[18:52] SPEAKER_02: Or,
[18:53] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[18:53] SPEAKER_02: he points you as a viable alternative,
[18:56] he presents this useless cocktail of supplements of budesonide
[19:00] and vitamin A and
[19:02] SPEAKER_02: clarithromycin and cod liver oil.
[19:04] SPEAKER_02: And you're scratching your head and say, where does that come from?
[19:07] SPEAKER_02: And they go,
[19:07] and the answer is the health wellness influencer industry
[19:10] because they're making
[19:10] SPEAKER_02: money.
[19:11] So in some cases,
[19:12] it's low-cost generics that they're jacking up the price and
[19:16] repackaging.
[19:17] SPEAKER_02: In other cases, it's as you point out, their own high-end products
[19:22] SPEAKER_02: high-end medications that they can tell a story about.
[19:26] SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, they have a lot of bandwidth and a lot of money.
[19:32] SPEAKER_02: When you look at the health wellness influencer industry,
[19:34] SPEAKER_02: it's a half a trillion dollar industry.
[19:36] SPEAKER_02: It's not small.
[19:37] I mean,
[19:37] it's not as big as the pharmaceutical industry,
[19:40] but it's getting there.
[19:42] SPEAKER_02: And
[19:43] SPEAKER_02: they're in direct competition with it.
[19:45] SPEAKER_02: The difference is the stuff the drug companies do actually works.
[19:50] SPEAKER_00: I do want to take on one of the real issues of the anti-vaccine industry.
[19:57] I mean,
[19:59] organization,
[19:59] community,
[20:00] if you will,
[20:00] that's part of the anti-science.
[20:02] And they blame pharma for vaccines because they are exempt from
[20:08] litigation.
[20:10] SPEAKER_00: And as you
[20:11] SPEAKER_00: I mean, talk about a Nobel Peace Prize.
[20:13] SPEAKER_00: You were nominated for the vaccine.
[20:15] SPEAKER_00: You got going for 100 million people around the world.
[20:19] But this is a problem where should pharma have been exempt from
[20:25] litigation for
[20:26] SPEAKER_00: making vaccines for COVID and for that matter,
[20:30] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[20:30] SPEAKER_00: any other vaccines?
[20:31] SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts about that?
[20:33] SPEAKER_02: Well,
[20:33] the problem is there's a whole well-oiled machine that's making
[20:39] money off of suing
[20:42] SPEAKER_02: the vaccine producers for,
[20:45] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[20:46] SPEAKER_02: fake stuff,
[20:47] SPEAKER_02: including major lawsuits claiming vaccines cause autism,
[20:52] when not only is there massive evidence showing there's no link
[20:56] between vaccines
[20:56] SPEAKER_02: and autism,
[20:57] SPEAKER_02: there's an absence of plausibility because,
[21:00] SPEAKER_02: you
[21:01] SPEAKER_02: as in my daughter,
[21:02] SPEAKER_02: Rachel,
[21:02] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[21:02] we have the autism genes in early fetal brain development and
[21:06] how they are involved
[21:08] SPEAKER_02: in synaptic connections.
[21:09] SPEAKER_02: And so this is all about events that are happening in early pregnancy.
[21:15] It doesn't mean that there's no environmental effects,
[21:17] but they're in early pregnancy.
[21:18] SPEAKER_02: So, for instance, if you're
[21:20] SPEAKER_02: pregnant and not aware of it,
[21:23] SPEAKER_02: and taking an anti-seizure medication called Depakote,
[21:26] SPEAKER_02: otherwise known as valproic acid,
[21:28] it's been shown that it interacts with autism genes and will
[21:32] cause an autism
[21:33] SPEAKER_02: phenotype.
[21:33] SPEAKER_02: And I remember talking to Bobby Kennedy,
[21:35] SPEAKER_02: who's an environmental attorney,
[21:37] SPEAKER_02: and I said,
[21:37] SPEAKER_02: Bobby,
[21:37] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[21:38] SPEAKER_02: you should be,
[21:40] SPEAKER_02: back then I was calling him Bobby.
[21:41] SPEAKER_02: I don't know what he's calling me these days, but
[21:45] SPEAKER_02: You know, I said, you should be all over it.
[21:46] SPEAKER_02: This is your moment, man.
[21:48] SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're an environmental attorney.
[21:49] SPEAKER_02: You know,
[21:50] SPEAKER_02: we've identified a half a dozen chemical exposures in early pregnancy,
[21:54] SPEAKER_02: interacting with autism genes to promote the phenotype.
[21:58] SPEAKER_02: This is what you should be all... And he couldn't care less.
[22:01] SPEAKER_02: And why?
[22:01] SPEAKER_02: Because he was suing vaccine companies for frivolous stuff,
[22:06] SPEAKER_02: claiming vaccines cause autism,
[22:07] SPEAKER_02: or he says the HPV vaccine was...
[22:09] SPEAKER_02: I don't know if he was saying it or others that...
[22:11] SPEAKER_02: HPV vaccine causes infertility or autoimmunity.
[22:14] SPEAKER_02: It's all nonsense.
[22:16] SPEAKER_02: But the vaccine producers,
[22:18] SPEAKER_02: the vaccine industry,
[22:19] SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be an apologist for the big pharma players either.
[22:24] SPEAKER_02: I mean,
[22:24] SPEAKER_02: they are making money,
[22:26] but it's not nearly as lucrative as the next GLP-1 agonist or
[22:30] anything else.
[22:35] So the worry,
[22:36] of course,
[22:36] is they just pull out and then no vaccines become available.
[22:39] SPEAKER_02: So I think the compromise was by creating these vaccine courts,
[22:46] SPEAKER_02: it makes it easier for plaintiffs to actually receive financial payment.
[22:53] SPEAKER_02: Because if you have to go through a major lawsuit,
[22:56] it's going to be very expensive for the families and very
[22:58] expensive for the pharma
[23:00] SPEAKER_02: companies.
[23:00] SPEAKER_02: So nobody wins.
[23:01] SPEAKER_02: And this was a way...
[23:03] SPEAKER_02: to make it simpler.
[23:05] SPEAKER_02: And my understanding, I'm not a lawyer,
[23:08] You know,
[23:08] you could talk to people like Doreet Reese who think more
[23:11] deeply about this.
[23:12] SPEAKER_02: But,
[23:13] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[23:13] my understanding is the vaccine courts are actually working on
[23:17] the side of the
[23:18] plaintiff to give them support and awards for things that would
[23:23] not stand up in
[23:25] SPEAKER_02: most courts of law.
[23:26] SPEAKER_02: So it actually works out to their advantage.
[23:28] SPEAKER_02: The system has worked well,
[23:30] but of course the anti-vaccine lobby wants to weaponize it and
[23:34] they'll use
[23:34] SPEAKER_02: everything they can
[23:36] In order to promote their own agenda,
[23:38] which is the health,
[23:39] wellness,
[23:39] and influencer agenda.
[23:56] SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see attrition of young scientists.
[23:59] SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see,
[24:01] SPEAKER_00: we have seen the loss of public trust and anti-establishment,
[24:05] SPEAKER_00: anti-medical community,
[24:06] SPEAKER_00: which by the way,
[24:08] SPEAKER_00: also adds to the wellness industry's support.
[24:11] SPEAKER_00: But this attack on universities,
[24:14] SPEAKER_00: and the leadership of the public agencies,
[24:17] SPEAKER_00: NIH,
[24:18] SPEAKER_00: CDC,
[24:19] SPEAKER_00: FDA,
[24:19] SPEAKER_00: the HHS in general,
[24:21] we're in a very tough spot right now because there's so many
[24:25] things here that even
[24:27] SPEAKER_00: perhaps when you were pulling the book together with Michael,
[24:30] SPEAKER_00: they hadn't fully understood.
[24:32] SPEAKER_00: come to pass.
[24:33] SPEAKER_00: That is,
[24:33] a whole new administration came in and the attack on
[24:37] universities started to go and
[24:38] SPEAKER_00: we're not done with that,
[24:39] SPEAKER_00: of course.
[24:41] SPEAKER_02: So let's sort of, you know, parse this out a bit.
[24:45] SPEAKER_02: So why are they doing this?
[24:47] SPEAKER_02: Well, one of the things that the wellness and influencer industry does is
[24:52] SPEAKER_02: is in order to peddle their snake oil,
[24:54] they have to discredit mainstream biomedical science and
[24:59] portray the scientists as
[25:01] SPEAKER_02: public enemies,
[25:02] SPEAKER_02: cartoon villains,
[25:03] SPEAKER_02: that sort of thing.
[25:05] SPEAKER_02: That's part of the business model.
[25:06] SPEAKER_02: Otherwise,
[25:06] they couldn't sell their snake oil because they have to claim
[25:10] that the biomedical
[25:13] SPEAKER_02: scientists are on the take from pharma and this kind of stuff.
[25:16] SPEAKER_02: So what they're doing is not only attacking the pharma companies—
[25:20] SPEAKER_02: but they're trying to say that the academic health centers,
[25:23] SPEAKER_02: the medical schools are in bed with the big pharma companies.
[25:28] SPEAKER_02: And, and therefore we have to take that down too.
[25:32] SPEAKER_02: So what are they doing?
[25:34] So one of the things that you're seeing is an attack on
[25:37] biomedical journals.
[25:39] SPEAKER_02: And you saw,
[25:40] SPEAKER_02: and you saw this from Mr.
[25:42] SPEAKER_02: Kennedy,
[25:42] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[25:43] SPEAKER_02: trying to attack JAMA and New England Journal of Medicine and,
[25:47] SPEAKER_02: and,
[25:48] And trying to stride on them into declining or retracting
[25:57] papers that don't fit his
[26:00] SPEAKER_02: confirmation bias.
[26:02] And also,
[26:03] at the same time,
[26:03] promoting his own alternative reality journals.
[26:07] SPEAKER_02: I mean, these are WordPress documents.
[26:10] SPEAKER_02: that are made to look like real journals.
[26:12] They even have editorial boards comprised of anti-vaccine
[26:17] activists and that sort of thing.
[26:18] So it's trying to create that parallel universe and then
[26:22] attacking the support for
[26:25] it from the National Institutes of Health or the National
[26:28] Science Foundation.
[26:29] So there was a proposal from the Trump administration to cut
[26:33] the budget of the NIH
[26:34] SPEAKER_02: by 40%,
[26:34] SPEAKER_02: I think,
[26:34] SPEAKER_02: from...
[26:37] SPEAKER_02: 47 billion down to 27 billion to really eviscerate the NIH.
[26:47] SPEAKER_02: And you might say, well, this is so self-defeating.
[26:49] SPEAKER_02: Why would you do something like that?
[26:51] SPEAKER_02: Well, this is why.
[26:52] SPEAKER_02: The Maha Movement is a pseudoscience enterprise that
[26:59] It's meant to be an economic stimulus package for the wellness
[27:04] and influencer industry.
[27:05] SPEAKER_02: But to be effective, it's got to dismantle mainstream biomedicine.
[27:11] SPEAKER_02: And it's devastating.
[27:12] SPEAKER_02: And as you point out, it's tough for the young scientist.
[27:17] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm...
[27:18] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[27:19] SPEAKER_02: in the senior end of my career,
[27:21] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[27:21] SPEAKER_02: we've made vaccines,
[27:22] SPEAKER_02: we've reached 100 million people.
[27:24] If I had to shut down my lab,
[27:27] you know,
[27:27] I'd be sad,
[27:28] but it wouldn't be catastrophic.
[27:32] SPEAKER_02: What I worry about are the young scientists who look at me like,
[27:35] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[27:35] SPEAKER_02: Moses in the desert,
[27:37] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[27:37] SPEAKER_02: why did you bring us here?
[27:38] SPEAKER_02: And
[27:40] SPEAKER_02: And,
[27:40] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[27:40] how do you encourage them to remain optimistic to become the
[27:45] next Eric Topol,
[27:46] SPEAKER_02: right?
[27:46] SPEAKER_02: I mean,
[27:46] SPEAKER_02: this is,
[27:47] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[27:47] SPEAKER_02: this is what we need,
[27:48] SPEAKER_02: our next generation of physician scientists and biomedical scientists.
[27:54] SPEAKER_02: There's nothing more precious than that.
[27:56] SPEAKER_02: So how do you, what do you say to them?
[27:58] And you don't want to just say,
[27:59] well,
[27:59] move to France or move to Belgium or
[28:02] SPEAKER_02: or Singapore, you want to find ways to do this.
[28:05] SPEAKER_02: So I've been writing a couple of articles on maybe some of the private
[28:12] SPEAKER_02: philanthropy,
[28:13] SPEAKER_02: some of the private sector biotech can fill some of the gap.
[28:17] SPEAKER_02: And I wrote this up in Plus Biology,
[28:21] and it will mean biomedical scientists would have to become
[28:25] more entrepreneurial.
[28:26] SPEAKER_02: Maybe we need to
[28:28] SPEAKER_02: shift graduate education,
[28:29] PhD education to allow our graduate students to spend more time
[28:34] in biotechs or
[28:36] SPEAKER_02: learning that whole world.
[28:37] SPEAKER_02: And actually,
[28:41] SPEAKER_02: as I submitted the paper,
[28:43] SPEAKER_02: I realized it actually has a fundamental flaw,
[28:46] SPEAKER_02: which the reviewers didn't catch.
[28:49] And that is if,
[28:53] you know,
[28:53] government cuts to science or prolong or sustain.
[28:57] SPEAKER_02: And eventually the innovation pipeline even dries up for the biotech.
[29:01] SPEAKER_02: So it's not really a long-term solution, but at least... It's notable.
[29:06] SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm trying to find ways to...
[29:11] SPEAKER_02: creates some paths to move on.
[29:12] Because I think too often what you're seeing from the academic
[29:15] health centers is
[29:17] SPEAKER_02: too much happy talk in the sense that,
[29:19] SPEAKER_02: hey,
[29:20] SPEAKER_02: don't worry,
[29:20] SPEAKER_02: hunker down.
[29:22] SPEAKER_02: Everything's going to go back to the way it is in a couple of years.
[29:25] SPEAKER_02: And this is just a temporary glitch.
[29:27] SPEAKER_02: And I don't feel that way.
[29:28] SPEAKER_02: I think this feels to me more enduring.
[29:31] And so I think it's a matter of not hunkering down,
[29:35] but leaning in,
[29:36] but in productive ways.
[29:38] SPEAKER_02: ways and find new paths.
[29:40] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're going to get into that future path in a moment.
[29:43] SPEAKER_00: But before I do,
[29:46] SPEAKER_00: and by the way,
[29:46] SPEAKER_00: one of the quotes in the book is so telling,
[29:49] SPEAKER_00: anti-science is quite literally killing us by Katona and colleagues.
[29:55] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, the media here isn't helping.
[29:58] SPEAKER_00: We're talking about traditional mainstream media, social media.
[30:03] SPEAKER_00: One of the things I really highlight is this false equivalence,
[30:07] SPEAKER_00: the both sides-ism that you see all the time.
[30:09] This is beyond the Fox business model and Newsmax and Alex
[30:14] Jones and whatnot.
[30:15] This is some of our best media that gives equal weight to
[30:19] something that's
[30:20] SPEAKER_00: completely bogus,
[30:24] SPEAKER_00: wrong,
[30:26] SPEAKER_00: And something that is obviously remarkably intact true.
[30:31] SPEAKER_00: So any comments about how the media, that's part of your five Ps.
[30:36] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[30:36] SPEAKER_02: So one of the last five, the last of the five Ps is the press.
[30:40] SPEAKER_02: And you're right.
[30:41] SPEAKER_02: I mean,
[30:42] it's relatively easy to throw stones at the Murdoch media
[30:46] empire and what Fox did
[30:48] SPEAKER_02: during the Delta wave to convince Americans not to get vaccinated.
[30:52] SPEAKER_02: And
[30:53] SPEAKER_02: 200,000 Americans died because they refused COVID vaccines.
[30:57] SPEAKER_02: And,
[30:58] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[30:59] SPEAKER_02: in their zeal to push back against vaccine mandates,
[31:02] SPEAKER_02: which I didn't agree with,
[31:03] SPEAKER_02: but I could understand,
[31:05] they unfortunately went the next step and falsely discredited
[31:08] the effectiveness and
[31:09] SPEAKER_02: safety of vaccine.
[31:10] SPEAKER_02: And we document how Fox News did this.
[31:12] every night during the Delta wave and 200,000 Americans lost
[31:16] their lives or what.
[31:17] SPEAKER_02: And then Michael documents what Fox News did,
[31:20] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[31:21] to climate science and also News Corp in the Wall Street
[31:24] Journal opinion section.
[31:26] That op-ed that you mentioned was in the Wall Street Journal,
[31:29] which is Murdoch owned and
[31:31] SPEAKER_02: You know, we'll have herd immunity by April and this kind of nonsense.
[31:34] SPEAKER_02: So that's pretty easy to discredit.
[31:40] But the next piece to this is what some of the major news
[31:47] outlets that ordinarily
[31:49] SPEAKER_02: we depend on has been doing now.
[31:51] SPEAKER_02: To,
[31:51] SPEAKER_02: as you say,
[31:52] SPEAKER_02: and as we say in the book,
[31:53] create this false equivalency between the pseudoscience and the
[31:56] real science.
[31:58] SPEAKER_02: And that has also become very discouraging.
[32:02] And,
[32:03] you know,
[32:03] we saw this with both the New York Times and the Washington
[32:07] Post.
[32:07] SPEAKER_02: And don't get me wrong,
[32:08] there's a lot of good stuff in the New York Times and the
[32:10] Washington Post.
[32:11] SPEAKER_02: And I still...
[32:12] SPEAKER_02: I still have the apps and I still look at,
[32:15] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[32:15] the Washington Post and New York Times and I speak to reporters
[32:19] from both.
[32:19] SPEAKER_02: But,
[32:19] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[32:20] especially in their opinion section or in their editorial board
[32:24] statements,
[32:26] they give credence to a lot of discredited stuff and give it
[32:30] equal weight to the
[32:31] SPEAKER_02: real science.
[32:32] SPEAKER_02: And an example of
[32:34] SPEAKER_02: One of the examples we use in the books is the origins of COVID.
[32:37] SPEAKER_02: We have,
[32:38] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[32:38] six or half a dozen really outstanding papers in some of our
[32:43] best scientific
[32:44] journals from Cell and Science from the scientific community on
[32:50] the zoonotic
[32:51] SPEAKER_02: spillover of COVID,
[32:53] SPEAKER_02: of the SARS-2 virus virus.
[32:55] from bats to humans through secondary intermediate animal hosts
[32:59] and how that's documented.
[33:00] And basically the bottom line is SARS-2 evolved and just like
[33:05] SARS-1 did 20 years
[33:07] SPEAKER_02: before and also in China.
[33:11] SPEAKER_02: as did MERS, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, another coronavirus.
[33:14] SPEAKER_02: And it's important to know because,
[33:15] SPEAKER_02: by the way,
[33:16] SPEAKER_02: we're going to have another major SARS coronavirus,
[33:20] SPEAKER_02: likely because these viruses are all over bats,
[33:23] SPEAKER_02: and the studies show that they're jumping...
[33:26] SPEAKER_02: um, to people either directly or indirectly 60,000 times a year.
[33:30] SPEAKER_02: So every now and then one of them is going to catch fire.
[33:33] SPEAKER_02: And then of course we have zoonotic spillover from Ebola,
[33:36] SPEAKER_02: which is also from bats and,
[33:38] SPEAKER_02: and the zoonotic influenza.
[33:40] SPEAKER_02: So, um,
[33:42] SPEAKER_02: That's the reality.
[33:44] SPEAKER_02: And giving this equal weight to gain a function,
[33:48] which has been discredited by just about everyone saying that
[33:53] the virus was
[33:54] SPEAKER_02: manufactured.
[33:55] SPEAKER_02: I don't think any virologist believes that.
[34:00] SPEAKER_02: The intelligence agencies have discredited it.
[34:03] SPEAKER_02: And, you know, lab leak.
[34:05] SPEAKER_02: And again, there's not a single paper published about lab leak.
[34:10] SPEAKER_02: I think it's because it didn't happen.
[34:12] SPEAKER_02: And there's no evidence for it, no scientific evidence for it.
[34:15] SPEAKER_02: I know.
[34:16] SPEAKER_00: I think the problem, of course, is China has never been transparent.
[34:20] SPEAKER_00: They could provide the evidence that it wasn't a lab leak.
[34:22] SPEAKER_00: They never have.
[34:23] SPEAKER_00: And that just leaves us hanging perhaps forever.
[34:26] SPEAKER_00: It's so unfortunate.
[34:28] SPEAKER_00: Now,
[34:29] SPEAKER_02: Well,
[34:29] SPEAKER_02: one of the things that I say there,
[34:30] SPEAKER_02: as I said,
[34:31] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[34:33] SPEAKER_02: I know,
[34:33] SPEAKER_02: and it is frustrating as heck,
[34:35] and they were supposed to get rid of the wet markets after
[34:38] SARS-1 in 2002,
[34:39] SPEAKER_02: and they didn't.
[34:40] SPEAKER_02: And there may be some cover-up because of that.
[34:45] SPEAKER_02: And let's face it,
[34:45] the Chinese government hasn't been very transparent since the
[34:49] Qing dynasty in the
[34:52] SPEAKER_02: 1600s when they blocked all foreign commerce.
[34:55] SPEAKER_02: And it took the Brits and the Opium Wars to open it up.
[35:00] SPEAKER_02: So that's their playbook.
[35:01] SPEAKER_02: And I guess it works for them.
[35:03] SPEAKER_02: But it breeds a lot of conspiracy theories.
[35:10] SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, there's no evidence for lab leak or gain of function.
[35:15] SPEAKER_02: And as a result,
[35:17] SPEAKER_02: it leads to attacking science and scientists,
[35:20] and it ruins our pandemic preparedness because now virologists
[35:26] are thinking twice
[35:27] SPEAKER_02: about becoming virologists,
[35:29] SPEAKER_02: and that really concerns me.
[35:32] Yeah,
[35:32] now,
[35:32] so let's go towards the,
[35:34] as you run through in the book,
[35:36] the path forward.
[35:39] SPEAKER_00: You know, you've made it very clear that
[35:42] SPEAKER_00: you know, just better communication isn't enough.
[35:45] SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is important to be respectful of alternate views.
[35:49] SPEAKER_00: And I think some of that was not seen in the height of the pandemic.
[35:53] But the invisibility of scientists,
[35:57] you know,
[35:58] there are not many who are out there
[36:02] SPEAKER_00: who are trying to stand up for the science.
[36:04] SPEAKER_00: What if they all did?
[36:05] SPEAKER_00: What if a large proportion of them did?
[36:08] SPEAKER_00: You know,
[36:09] SPEAKER_00: it's a rarity for most of scientists,
[36:11] SPEAKER_00: whether it's climate scientists or life science,
[36:14] SPEAKER_00: medical researchers to get involved in whether it's op-eds and,
[36:18] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[36:19] SPEAKER_00: social media,
[36:20] SPEAKER_00: whatnot.
[36:21] SPEAKER_00: Isn't this an area that we could improve going forward?
[36:26] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely, Eric.
[36:28] SPEAKER_02: And of course, you're a role model for how to do it right.
[36:32] SPEAKER_02: I think no one does it better than you,
[36:34] SPEAKER_02: Eric,
[36:34] SPEAKER_02: in terms of really explaining what a scientist does,
[36:40] SPEAKER_02: because not enough people know what we do.
[36:43] SPEAKER_02: We're too often invisible.
[36:44] SPEAKER_02: And
[36:45] SPEAKER_02: I don't have a lot of evidence to support that.
[36:48] SPEAKER_02: I look to our colleagues at Research America,
[36:51] SPEAKER_02: which is a policy group based outside of Washington,
[36:54] SPEAKER_02: D.C.
[36:55] They do these surveys every year,
[36:57] the American people,
[36:58] and they ask two questions.
[37:00] Can you name a living scientist and can you name an institution
[37:04] where biomedical
[37:05] SPEAKER_02: research is conducted?
[37:06] SPEAKER_02: And it turns out,
[37:08] SPEAKER_02: and the numbers are pretty constant,
[37:10] SPEAKER_02: it turns out 75% of Americans,
[37:12] SPEAKER_02: three-quarters of Americans,
[37:14] SPEAKER_02: cannot name a living scientist.
[37:16] SPEAKER_02: And when they try to,
[37:17] SPEAKER_02: they usually first name Einstein or Jonas Salk,
[37:21] SPEAKER_02: not realizing they've moved on.
[37:24] SPEAKER_02: or then they'll get to Bill Nye or Neil deGrasse Tyson.
[37:28] SPEAKER_02: And I love them.
[37:29] SPEAKER_02: I think they're great and they provide an important service,
[37:31] SPEAKER_02: but they're not doing what we do in the sense of,
[37:35] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[37:35] working on reviewer two's comments of a major revision of a
[37:40] paper or revising a
[37:44] grant or the heartache of getting a grant not discussed at the
[37:48] NIH and what goes on
[37:49] SPEAKER_02: in the scientific meeting.
[37:52] SPEAKER_02: And it turns out the vast majority of
[37:55] Americans cannot even name an institution where biomedical
[37:58] research is conducted.
[38:00] SPEAKER_02: And on the list where they could,
[38:01] SPEAKER_02: the one thing our two institutions share,
[38:05] SPEAKER_02: the Scripps Institute and Baylor College of Medicine,
[38:08] SPEAKER_02: is no one named our two organizations.
[38:11] SPEAKER_02: And we're invisible almost by design because a lot of these institutions,
[38:15] SPEAKER_02: the academic health centers especially,
[38:18] don't like their docs and scientists speaking out because they
[38:21] want to control the
[38:22] SPEAKER_02: brand,
[38:22] SPEAKER_02: control the message.
[38:23] SPEAKER_02: And so the consequences are invisible.
[38:25] SPEAKER_02: And by being invisible, it allows the bad actors to weaponize this.
[38:34] And by being invisible and not seeing us as real people that
[38:37] have to either pick up
[38:39] SPEAKER_02: our kids at school in the afternoon or
[38:43] SPEAKER_02: Or pay our bills and all the other things that all normal people do.
[38:50] It allows them to portray us as shadowy figures in white coats
[38:56] plotting nefarious things.
[38:58] SPEAKER_02: And it allows them to weaponize us.
[39:03] SPEAKER_02: And so that's got to be fixed.
[39:05] SPEAKER_02: And, of course, not all scientists want to be out there in the world.
[39:11] SPEAKER_02: public domain, and we all know them, right?
[39:14] SPEAKER_02: They're great scientists, and they just don't want to be bothered, right?
[39:17] They want to write their papers and do their experiments,
[39:20] and that's fine.
[39:21] SPEAKER_02: But,
[39:21] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[39:21] SPEAKER_02: I think there is a group of young scientists,
[39:24] SPEAKER_02: especially their commitment to public service is high,
[39:27] SPEAKER_02: and we need to encourage that,
[39:28] SPEAKER_02: and we don't.
[39:30] we basically say do it at your own risk or what the Academic
[39:35] Health Center's Office
[39:36] SPEAKER_02: of Communications too often do is they'll say,
[39:39] SPEAKER_02: well,
[39:40] SPEAKER_02: you're an academic.
[39:42] SPEAKER_02: Technically,
[39:42] SPEAKER_02: you're free to speak out of whenever you want,
[39:44] SPEAKER_02: dot,
[39:44] SPEAKER_02: dot,
[39:44] SPEAKER_02: dot,
[39:45] SPEAKER_02: but don't screw this up and don't get the institution in trouble.
[39:50] SPEAKER_02: You do that with the sort of Damocles over your head.
[39:52] SPEAKER_02: Of course, if you're out there in the public domain enough,
[39:55] SPEAKER_02: like we are, you know, eventually all of us screwed up at some time.
[39:59] SPEAKER_02: And we do get the institution in trouble,
[40:01] SPEAKER_02: but we need to know,
[40:02] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[40:03] SPEAKER_02: not on purpose,
[40:04] SPEAKER_02: but it happens sometimes,
[40:05] SPEAKER_02: and you need to know that you have their backing.
[40:08] And so I think the consequence of not doing this is the
[40:12] situation that we're in
[40:14] right now that allows bad actors or things like a Maha movement
[40:19] to tell the public
[40:20] SPEAKER_02: that
[40:21] scientists are bad guys and and biomedical scientists are bad
[40:25] guys doctors are bad
[40:26] guys i mean why did we become physician scientists eric i did
[40:30] it because you know
[40:32] back in the 1980s i did my md phd in new york and i did it
[40:36] because i thought that
[40:37] was something noble something heroic to make low-cost vaccines
[40:41] for the world i
[40:41] SPEAKER_02: still do yeah
[40:44] If young people feel that's not the case,
[40:47] then there's other things they can do.
[40:49] SPEAKER_02: Science is hard.
[40:51] SPEAKER_02: It's a hard path.
[40:52] SPEAKER_02: And they need to know we have their back.
[40:57] SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
[40:58] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[40:58] I want to finish up with two quotes that you have in the book
[41:01] with Michael and get
[41:03] SPEAKER_00: your reactions or amplification of them.
[41:06] SPEAKER_00: And that's,
[41:06] SPEAKER_00: of course,
[41:07] SPEAKER_00: beyond in this path forward where you call for political action,
[41:10] SPEAKER_00: because that's obviously that what we're in the midst of is that it is a
[41:17] SPEAKER_00: politicized issue.
[41:18] SPEAKER_00: But one quote is, this book is a warning, but it is also a call to arms.
[41:25] While there is urgency,
[41:26] unlike any we've ever known,
[41:28] there is still agency.
[41:30] We can still avert disaster if we can understand the nature of
[41:34] the mounting
[41:35] SPEAKER_00: anti-science threat and formulate a strategy to counter it.
[41:40] SPEAKER_00: Comment.
[41:42] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, there's a couple of points.
[41:45] SPEAKER_02: First of all, the stakes are high.
[41:48] If we allow anti-science to go untethered and without
[41:54] accountability like it is
[41:55] SPEAKER_02: right now,
[41:56] SPEAKER_02: it dismantles our science infrastructure in the United States.
[42:03] SPEAKER_02: And eventually that globalizes as well.
[42:07] SPEAKER_02: I like to point out that
[42:09] Our nation is built in part on the strengths of our research
[42:12] universities and
[42:14] SPEAKER_02: institutions,
[42:15] SPEAKER_02: right?
[42:15] SPEAKER_02: That's what gave us the Manhattan Project and victory in the Cold War,
[42:21] SPEAKER_02: defeating AIDS,
[42:22] SPEAKER_02: defeating cancer.
[42:24] SPEAKER_02: That's
[42:25] SPEAKER_02: That's one of the signature aspects of the United States.
[42:30] SPEAKER_02: And if we take that down, what are we as a country?
[42:33] SPEAKER_02: So I think that's an important point.
[42:37] And the fact that we've had 200,000 Americans just needlessly
[42:40] die of COVID-19.
[42:42] Because they were told vaccines were safe and ineffective and
[42:45] the bad actors had
[42:46] SPEAKER_02: the bandwidth to do that.
[42:48] SPEAKER_02: That's awful.
[42:49] SPEAKER_02: So this is a killing force.
[42:52] And the climate crisis is a killer,
[42:55] as we're seeing also,
[42:57] and maybe even a greater killer.
[42:59] SPEAKER_02: So the stakes are high.
[43:01] I think the other point is to avoid doomism and not just throw
[43:05] up your hands and
[43:06] SPEAKER_02: say,
[43:06] SPEAKER_02: well,
[43:06] SPEAKER_02: there's nothing we can do.
[43:08] SPEAKER_02: There is.
[43:09] SPEAKER_02: It's hard, but I think the stakes are high and it's important.
[43:13] SPEAKER_02: That's where we also have agency as well.
[43:16] SPEAKER_02: And not only at the polls and the voting booths, but
[43:22] SPEAKER_02: Being a scientist,
[43:23] SPEAKER_02: staying in the mix,
[43:24] SPEAKER_02: continuing to do important work,
[43:26] SPEAKER_02: writing papers,
[43:27] but also explaining to people what the anti-science movement is
[43:32] all about.
[43:33] SPEAKER_02: But we don't do that enough.
[43:35] SPEAKER_02: As I say, we too often ascribe it to random junk on the internet.
[43:40] without articulating that it is politically motivated and
[43:43] financially motivated.
[43:44] SPEAKER_02: And it's not easy to talk about because as scientists,
[43:48] SPEAKER_02: we don't like to talk about that kind of stuff.
[43:50] I don't like talking about politics and Republicans and
[43:54] Democrats and liberals or
[43:56] SPEAKER_02: conservatives or the health and wellness movement.
[44:00] SPEAKER_02: I've got better things to do, but I do it because now –
[44:06] SPEAKER_02: this in itself is an existential threat.
[44:09] And now I realize that I've always,
[44:12] in one way,
[44:13] I'm feeling very fulfilled in life.
[44:15] I set out 40 years ago as an MD-PhD student to make low-cost
[44:19] vaccines for the world.
[44:20] SPEAKER_02: We've done that.
[44:21] SPEAKER_02: We've reached 100 million people.
[44:22] SPEAKER_02: We have other vaccines in the pipeline.
[44:24] SPEAKER_02: We're very excited about our hookworm anemia vaccine,
[44:28] SPEAKER_02: for instance,
[44:28] SPEAKER_02: and our schistosomiasis vaccine and others.
[44:31] SPEAKER_02: But
[44:32] SPEAKER_02: But now I realize that's insufficient,
[44:35] SPEAKER_02: that unless we do something to counteract growing anti-vaccine activism,
[44:40] SPEAKER_02: which is a tax on my field,
[44:44] none of those vaccines are going to be used or even accelerated
[44:48] and developed and
[44:49] SPEAKER_02: distributed.
[44:50] SPEAKER_02: And so, therefore, defeating the anti-vaccine activism is
[44:55] SPEAKER_02: is almost as important as making the vaccines.
[44:58] SPEAKER_02: And that's why we take it on out of necessity.
[45:03] SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
[45:04] SPEAKER_00: no,
[45:04] SPEAKER_00: I think,
[45:05] SPEAKER_00: and of course,
[45:05] SPEAKER_00: we're seeing a fair number of trolls on this call,
[45:08] SPEAKER_00: like We Patriot and others who are going into attack mode.
[45:13] SPEAKER_00: It's pervasive, you know.
[45:15] SPEAKER_02: Well, like I often say is, I mean, who are the patriots here?
[45:19] SPEAKER_02: This is a nation built on the greatness of our research university.
[45:23] One of the things that I say to my graduate students and
[45:25] postdocs and residents
[45:27] SPEAKER_02: say,
[45:27] SPEAKER_02: we're the patriots,
[45:28] SPEAKER_02: you know,
[45:28] SPEAKER_02: we're
[45:30] SPEAKER_02: help build this country.
[45:32] SPEAKER_02: And this is the best of America.
[45:36] Let me tell you an anecdote,
[45:40] if I have one more minute,
[45:41] which is,
[45:42] you know,
[45:42] I served as U.S.
[45:44] SPEAKER_02: science envoy 2015 to 2016 and was sent by the U.S.
[45:51] State Department,
[45:51] by our government all over the Middle East and North Africa.
[45:55] SPEAKER_02: And
[45:57] SPEAKER_02: And I was in Saudi Arabia,
[46:00] SPEAKER_02: and they do these things called diwaniyas,
[46:03] SPEAKER_02: which I have to say it's the men,
[46:05] SPEAKER_02: because the men get together for drinking cardamom and coffee and tea.
[46:11] SPEAKER_02: And it happened on a day where...
[46:15] one of the presidential candidates made some pretty aggressive
[46:18] anti-Muslim statements.
[46:19] SPEAKER_02: And I'm like sitting there at this demon,
[46:22] SPEAKER_02: holy crap,
[46:23] SPEAKER_02: I hope nobody asked me about what happened today.
[46:25] SPEAKER_02: And sure enough, first question was asked.
[46:29] And the host,
[46:31] who was one of the technocrats in the Saudi Arabian government,
[46:36] SPEAKER_02: saw me kind of fumbling and stumbling.
[46:38] SPEAKER_02: He gets up and he says, don't worry about it, Peter.
[46:43] SPEAKER_02: This is a quote.
[46:44] SPEAKER_02: Honest to God, we know this is bullshit.
[46:47] SPEAKER_02: I did my PhD at Iowa State University.
[46:51] SPEAKER_02: I lived with a family in Ames, Iowa for five years.
[46:55] SPEAKER_02: I know what the real America is like.
[46:57] SPEAKER_02: Done, right?
[46:58] SPEAKER_02: I mean...
[46:59] SPEAKER_02: That was the answer.
[47:00] I mean,
[47:00] our research universities are our greatest emissaries,
[47:04] our greatest ambassadors.
[47:07] SPEAKER_02: And one of the reasons why people love the United States,
[47:09] and it's not just the MITs and the Harvards and the Scripps and
[47:14] the UCSFs and the
[47:15] SPEAKER_02: Stanfords of the world.
[47:16] SPEAKER_02: There are land-grant universities across the heartland of the country.
[47:21] SPEAKER_02: I mean,
[47:21] they are training people all over the world and fostering that
[47:26] love of the United
[47:27] SPEAKER_02: States.
[47:28] SPEAKER_02: And we have to keep that going also.
[47:30] SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
[47:31] SPEAKER_00: One other quote just to mention, we fight, you and Michael, for a
[47:37] livable planet for us,
[47:39] our children and future generations because it's worth fighting
[47:42] for.
[47:43] And I think what you do in the book towards the closing part
[47:47] and this path forward
[47:48] is you outline what the fight needs to consist of and that we
[47:52] can't give up and how
[47:54] SPEAKER_00: important it is to have the efforts that we can
[47:58] SPEAKER_00: amount to get back on track.
[48:01] SPEAKER_00: I mean, we will eventually.
[48:02] SPEAKER_00: I think both of us are optimistic about that.
[48:05] SPEAKER_00: We need to be, but it also takes a lot of action, a lot of effort.
[48:08] SPEAKER_00: And I hope that the trust in experts,
[48:13] SPEAKER_00: expertise,
[48:13] SPEAKER_00: and science,
[48:14] SPEAKER_00: and facts,
[48:16] SPEAKER_00: evidence,
[48:17] SPEAKER_00: I hope we'll get that restored.
[48:18] SPEAKER_00: It was on display at the RFK
[48:24] SPEAKER_00: Jr.
[48:25] Senate hearing last week where,
[48:27] you know,
[48:28] facts were being stated and RFK Jr.
[48:31] were telling senators their lies or the firing of Susan Menares
[48:35] who said,
[48:38] are you trustworthy?
[48:40] SPEAKER_00: Who answers the question, are you trustworthy?
[48:42] SPEAKER_00: No.
[48:43] SPEAKER_00: And of course, she was fired by Trump.
[48:47] And I've talked with Susan,
[48:48] of course,
[48:49] and she wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal
[48:52] SPEAKER_00: which tells the truth of what really happened, of course.
[48:54] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we have truth.
[48:56] SPEAKER_02: And Eric,
[48:57] SPEAKER_02: one of the things that I always say,
[48:58] SPEAKER_02: too,
[48:58] SPEAKER_02: I don't like to make it,
[48:59] SPEAKER_02: I don't even like talking much about RFK Jr.
[49:01] SPEAKER_02: because that sends the wrong message, too.
[49:03] SPEAKER_02: It's all about RFK Jr.
[49:05] SPEAKER_02: It's not.
[49:05] SPEAKER_02: He's, you know, a symptom of a much greater anti-science illness.
[49:14] SPEAKER_02: that has swept the country and,
[49:16] SPEAKER_02: as I said,
[49:17] SPEAKER_02: caused 200,000 needless COVID deaths for those who refused vaccines.
[49:22] SPEAKER_02: They were victims of a targeted health disinformation campaign.
[49:28] SPEAKER_02: And that's the problem.
[49:31] SPEAKER_02: And how...
[49:33] SPEAKER_02: We do this in a meaningful way and protect,
[49:37] SPEAKER_02: obviously,
[49:38] SPEAKER_02: freedom of speech and everything that we hold dear in this country.
[49:42] SPEAKER_02: It's tough, but it's dark right now and working hard to take this on.
[49:48] I think this podcast,
[49:50] for instance,
[49:51] and talking to you is part of that process.
[49:55] SPEAKER_02: And so I'm so grateful for your giving me a voice in this.
[49:58] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I appreciate what you've done.
[50:00] SPEAKER_02: And Michael Mann says hi, too, by the way.
[50:04] Yeah,
[50:04] I mean,
[50:04] the work you've done here,
[50:06] standing up for the science is extraordinary.
[50:09] And it's so great that you and Michael Mann came together for
[50:12] two of the major
[50:14] SPEAKER_00: existential threats of our world.
[50:17] SPEAKER_00: And,
[50:18] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[50:18] SPEAKER_00: I think it's essential that we not lose hope,
[50:22] SPEAKER_00: that we keep,
[50:23] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[50:24] SPEAKER_00: you outline many,
[50:25] SPEAKER_00: many steps that we didn't get into.
[50:27] SPEAKER_00: about how to come up with an anti-force that will get us there quicker,
[50:32] SPEAKER_00: which is restoration of trust,
[50:35] SPEAKER_00: restoration of believing in facts and the evidence that is there.
[50:41] SPEAKER_00: So thank you, Peter.
[50:43] SPEAKER_00: This has been so enjoyable.
[50:45] SPEAKER_00: This book,
[50:46] SPEAKER_00: I can't recommend it enough for those who are seeing the siege.
[50:52] SPEAKER_00: That's perhaps more intense than ever.
[50:53] And the more siege,
[50:55] the more polarization,
[50:57] the more,
[50:59] you know,
[51:00] tension that we have.
[51:01] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, eventually...
[51:03] SPEAKER_00: I hope we'll get this back on track.
[51:05] SPEAKER_00: I know you feel the same way.
[51:06] SPEAKER_00: So, Peter, can't thank you enough for discussing the book.
[51:10] It's a big week for the book coming out and everything else
[51:13] that's going on right now.
[51:15] SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
[51:16] SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
[51:16] SPEAKER_02: it's a very complicated and interesting but complicated time,
[51:20] SPEAKER_02: and great to be sharing this with you today.
[51:24] SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
[51:25] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and thanks to everybody for joining, almost everybody.
[51:29] who supported the work that Peter's doing and the science quest
[51:35] for truth,
[51:36] and the people who also defended many things that were put
[51:41] erroneously by the
[51:42] people who wanted to interfere with our conversation by putting
[51:46] up lies and saying
[51:49] SPEAKER_00: that there were no placebo-controlled trials of vaccines,
[51:51] SPEAKER_00: for example,
[51:52] SPEAKER_00: all sorts of things.
[51:55] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it all gets amplified.
[51:58] People make a misstatement and then people without critical
[52:05] thinking skills and
[52:06] people who just spend all their time on conspiracy websites and
[52:09] podcasts don't
[52:12] bother to go to the library and read a book and then they just
[52:15] amplify it.
[52:16] SPEAKER_00: Well, keep up the great stuff and stay safe, Peter.
[52:19] We all want to make sure that you're not hurt by people who
[52:22] could do something like that.
[52:25] SPEAKER_00: So we're so appreciative of everything you're doing.
[52:29] SPEAKER_00: Take care now.
[52:30] SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much, Eric.
[52:31] SPEAKER_01: Bye.
[52:32] SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.

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