Trump's Health and Human Services Agency, with Dr. Rick Sullivan

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:17 Thomas: And welcome to serious inquiries only this is episode 468 I'm thomas smith and I'm joined by special guest lydia smith how you doing how

0:00:26 Lydia: I'm doing well how are you I don't know what to say yeah

0:00:30 Thomas: Much time do you have yeah oh boy you don't want to know what's going on at home for me but uh uh, yeah, no, uh, action packed holidays, but, I'm um, excited for this because I think we're answering questions. I certainly have, um. Into what's obviously not my first choice of president. Um, I've been wondering, yeah.

0:00:40 Lydia: You're right I don' t want to know don't tell me it's fair to say mm

0:01:00 Thomas: Like how they're, they're talking about going after or some of the health, science, medical, whatever related agencies. And I have really wondered how much can happen there. Like can what they ruin? I really, honestly, I couldn't tell you. Like just prior to doing any research, if you told me they could go in there and ruin all of Medicare somehow with administrative whatever, I'd probably believe you if they told me, oh, no, they're going to get Dr. Phil. No, which shitty doctor. Doctor, which ass asshole? No, nothing.

0:01:08 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Dr.

0:01:34 Thomas: Yeah, Dr. Oz, they're going to get him in there, but then there's nothing you can really do because it's all bureaucracy and red tape that just perpetuates itself. I kind of believe either way, you know, and so I really wondered, I don't know how much to be worried about this. And not only have you researched it, but we've got a return guest, a fantastic return guest. We're so excited to have on Dr. Rick. I always want to say Dr. Rick Niveira, which I think a patron took that name, didn't they? From the Simpsons. But, uh, yeah,

0:01:28 Lydia: Oz tv doctor yeah yeah yes oh I don't know that. Oh,

0:02:00 Thomas: Well, I told you it last time, but it's okay. That's fine.

0:02:03 Lydia: I just laughed. I didn't get it. No.

0:02:06 Thomas: That's my life, everyone. It's fine, how many things have I said that she's ever understood? I don't know. Has she ever gotten a single joke or has it all been lies?

0:02:14 Lydia: One will ever know I'll never know yeah

0:02:21 Thomas: Anyway, Dr. Rick, so um, we're going to get into all that. But Uh, first we got to take our usual break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/seriouspod. And it's really important to the support show. It's getting harder and harder to do this kind of work, to be honest with you. I think there's a lot of burnout. There's a ton of podcast now. There's a ton of saturation. And that's great. Good That's that there's more good things. It also, it just makes every step of this that much harder. Uh and especially with the burnout it's you know it's it's vital to have support from people from the good people like you folks who want to keep this kind of media alive want to Keep This Kind of Podcast Going so we really really appreciate your support and we hope to give you occasional goodies as well so patreon.com/seriouspod and of Of course, the best goodie of all, no auto ads. All right. After this break, we'll get to it. Joined by dr rick famous vampire sandwich burger something hot dog yeah something in my brain a sequence of terms that don't make any sense is

0:03:22 Lydia: Well Hot dog.

0:03:24 Rick: Dogs yeah what I'm here for that

0:03:29 Thomas: My memory now have I had a stroke or was that the recording we did oh

0:03:36 Rick: Oh, I still have such fond memories of doing that that was a lot of fun and I I hope it was valuable I would love to be talking more about love in the immune system today, but here for other reasons.

0:03:39 Thomas: Thank god yes yeah

0:03:46 Lydia: We have different plans.

0:03:48 Thomas: Talk about something a lot worse than that what are we going to talk about today to

0:03:53 Lydia: So over on opening arguments, I've been kind of leading through discussions of Trump's cabinet picks for the next administration. And I thought it would be really helpful to, you know, there are so many and there is a specific area that I think is really, really important to talk about, but feels more like the right avenue like for this particular audience. And so today we're going to be talking with Dr. Rick about all of the nominees in the health and human services area. So, you know, everyone from RFK Jr. to, yeah, to Dr.

0:04:29 Thomas: Some of the ones the less good ones our favorites

0:04:33 Lydia: Oz.

0:04:33 Thomas: Like RFK, no, yeah, that's all a pile of shit yeah

0:04:36 Lydia: Yeah it is.

0:04:36 Rick: Or other Fox News hosts.

0:04:38 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. But I'm certainly not an expert in the health and human services part of all of this stuff. But Dr. Rick has some direct knowledge of how all of these various entities might impact the of our lives, essentially, with these changes that they're looking to do with Project 2025.

0:04:59 Thomas: What can they actually do like how bad can this get well

0:05:04 Rick: Mean, I think we all know it's going to be bad, right? In Jr. at Health and Human Services, that is just RFK.

0:05:08 Lydia: RFK Jr.

0:05:10 Thomas: JFK Jr. I don't think exists or is dead yeah

0:05:13 Rick: I think he's dead. Sorry about that.

0:05:15 Thomas: So that would be a better pick maybe maybe was he the one that they thought was going to come back yeah we're just saying something

0:05:19 Rick: More benign. Yeah. Fewer brain worms. Right. And Human Services is just a massive organization and oversees like so many things in our lives that very tangible, boots on the ground, helping out in public health emergencies to the NIH is under it. You have so many organizations or agencies under it and of those have a pretty profound effect on our lives.

0:05:51 Thomas: But on the other hand I guess the other preliminary thought is like well massive organization hopefully there's I don't know some fucking rules or something like the bylaws what you know like is it the kind of thing some this is the kind of thing that I think most people know nothing about or I know nothing about and everyone else knows everything about it and I should pretend 10 that I also did but I don't know like what do they actually do what what can change can they can these people just be like we say no to vaccines and then there's no vaccines like what's going on like

0:06:26 Rick: Yeah. Yeah. So how about I just run through exactly how many organizations we're talking about just under the Secretary of Health and Human Services. So you're talking the Administration for Child and Families, the Administration for Community Living, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, something we need more of, the agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the CDC, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, Health Resources and Services Administration, Indian Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, as well as the National Institutes of Health and Research, which basically funds all of our scientific research in the biomedical and disease space in the United States.

0:07:14 Lydia: That's a lot. And do you guys remember like like early on before Trump was elected, RFK Jr. was going around saying, you know, Trump said I could be like in charge of all of it. Like he was going to be the person in charge of literally every single entity under health and human services, which is a joke, especially when you hear it all laid out like that. And then obviously we know that that's not the case because we have some other nominees we'll be talking about, too.

0:07:39 Rick: But yeah, it is wild. It is just a massive, massive agency that oversees a lot of important things. Of the things I want to kind of dive in, I actually want to pull out a couple of these different agencies that most people probably haven't heard of we may not even I'm not even sure what the nominees are but you

0:07:57 Thomas: The center for brain worm control I didn't know that existed and I feel worried about its future actually

0:07:59 Rick: Well I think that's going to get canceled pretty quickly uh yeah but even well kind of along that line the the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease registry you is know a an agency that you know is going to to understand what happens if a train derails and spills a whole bunch of chemicals in somebody's backyard. What do you need to show up in?

0:08:13 Thomas: Where

0:08:27 Rick: You know, do you needs to, yeah.

0:08:26 Thomas: Do you bury the survivors I've heard that one yeah yeah

0:08:29 Rick: Yeah. How do you treat the survivors? What is going to happen? You how do we respond to something in an emergency? You know, obviously that's quite important when you need it and you don't have time to rebuild something. Right.

0:08:40 Thomas: Well wasn't somewhere recently wasn't they didn't we have a bunch of god when was that shit I'm having a moment I'm Having a senior moment remember all the like derailments there's like two or three, East Palestine, there's Like two or Three in a row or something and people like hey I thought the trains were correct me I'm wrong supposed to go on the rails and then they're like oh yeah it turns out the government was why the trains go on The rails instead of going off of the rails, which is not as good.

0:08:49 Rick: East Palestine yeah yeah yeah the whole time yeah

0:08:51 Lydia: East Palestine. Yeah, off the rails. Else. Yeah.

0:09:10 Thomas: And then the part where I started getting afraid for my life was like, wait, was that before COVID? And that's why I can't remember. And then I was like if that's true, it's been a thousand years or did that just happen?

0:09:11 Lydia: I Yeah, I could have sworn it was under Ohio. Yeah East Palestine, Ohio I'm looking.

0:09:31 Thomas: Yeah, when? Give me a date. I want dates

0:09:34 Lydia: Yeah oh yeah, okay. Well, this is going to freak you out February 3rd 2023.

0:09:39 Thomas: That was wait what no that's not right there's

0:09:42 Lydia: That's what it says.

0:09:42 Rick: I that was less than two years ago.

0:09:43 Lydia: Yeah an explosion and fire occurred following the derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train.

0:09:43 Thomas: There's no chance that's correct that was yesterday okay no

0:09:50 Lydia: Yeah Yeah. Yeah, I know. So I said I was going to freak you out because what is time?

0:09:55 Thomas: That's even yeah you're like it's actually 2025 you saw it to the future we need to warn them so so like the point is there's a lot lot of different, I think actually one of the things I might've read talked about, there's all, there's so many different agencies that go into all this stuff that, you know, people on our side of the aisle tend to be like, yeah, maybe we should, you guys, you knows, we should let those agencies exist and try to do their jobs maybe a little bit. Yeah. There's going to be, like, uh, inefficiencies and maybe they're not always amazing at it, but like in general, they're going to try to be amazing at their stuff. And then the other side of this, like never heard of it. Don't need it. Who cares?

0:10:18 Rick: Good.

0:10:30 Thomas: Cause like, if you can't name all the, yeah. Like it's like, like if you can't name every part of the airplane that you're flying in then it must be useless like I've never heard of this part oftheairplane so get rid of it get

0:10:30 Lydia: Oh, yeah.

0:10:30 Rick: What, mental health? Right, right, yeah

0:10:40 Lydia: Well, let me share with you guys on Project 2025 side, despite how complex and huge health and human services is for our country of hundreds of millions of people. Project 2025 focuses on five goals, five goals for this entire agency. The first goal, protecting life, protecting life, conscience and bodily integrity. What do you think that's all about?

0:10:58 Thomas: Ridofitcompletely oh god how are they related to abortions? Yeah.

0:11:07 Lydia: Yeah. So the fundamental right to life that life is from the moment of conception to natural death, that in quotes, abortion and euthanasia are not not health care. That is specifically in Project 2025, like first couple pages. They also want to uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities. So none of that, you know, transgender stuff. Yeah. Then conscience protection laws and religious freedom is kind of the other thing that they talk about a lot. Again, you don't want vaccines for your kids and it can't be be mandated, all that kind of stuff. Empowering patient choices and provider autonomy. Really They're focused trying to make healthcare market -based for whatever reason. It's patient centered and market - based is their drive there for goal number two. Goal number three, married families. Specifically say a married Married mother, father and their children is what makes a family and

0:11:28 Rick: They them right right

0:12:03 Thomas: Their brain worms, we're

0:12:04 Lydia: Their brain worms and that they are concerned about the current administration's focus on LGBTQ plus equity, that they subsidize single motherhood. They disincentivize work and they penalize marriage. What? What?

0:12:05 Rick: And their brain norms wow

0:12:20 Lydia: Fourth The goal preparing for the next health emergency. They said that they said that excess excess deaths not due to covid -19 skyrocketed because of forced lockdowns, isolation, vaccine related mass firings and colossal disruptions of the economy and daily rhythms of life.

0:12:19 Rick: Yeah

0:12:25 Thomas: Not doing it yeah

0:12:26 Rick: Pass yeah

0:12:39 Thomas: Mass firings when tell me one mass firing, tell me a firing like, uh, fine, like, like that we've know about, like a like a real what

0:12:44 Lydia: I don't yeah, I don' t think they would be would be fired. But folks in the military, right, if they weren' t getting vaccinated, then but they weren't fired, were they?

0:12:58 Thomas: Think they just had to do it or some of them might have been I mean but like a mass firing there wasn't I oh yes I remember the head coverage it was just Just a line of people walking out of a building that we're all fine. That didn't happen.

0:13:10 Lydia: And then the last item, instituting greater transparency, accountability and oversight. And I hold won't my breath for that. So, yeah. Yeah.

0:13:19 Rick: Right I'm like wow they think that's gonna happen that's kind of funny that they wrote that in

0:13:22 Lydia: I do think it's because of what what kind of thing they're talking about with what they want to be transparent and what they want to oversee. So, for example, they want to collect data via the CDC on all abortions in every state. They want every state they want to know how many abortions took place, the gestational age of the child, what the reason was for the abortion, the mother's state of residence and what method was used for the abortion.

0:13:49 Thomas: Oh, so they want us to have transparency. They want. Yeah.

0:13:52 Lydia: Yeah. Because they want to

0:13:53 Thomas: We're all about transparency of your health care. What?

0:13:53 Lydia: Oversee women's bodies. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:13:58 Rick: And not when it comes to vaccines, because that's different somehow.

0:14:03 Lydia: Yeah. Incredible. So who's behind all of this stuff? You know, taking that massive agency, all of the various entities you talked about and distilling it to those five goals that are incredibly just conservative talking points. It was written by Roger Severino, and he previously served in the Trump administration as the director for the Office of Civil Rights and Health and Human Services. While he was in that role, he's very proud of this. He removed non -discrimination protections for LGBTQ folks in the Affordable Care Act. So health care providers could they were technically permitted to deny coverage based on a person's sexuality or gender identity. That was no longer a protected class of people within the Affordable Career Act. Act. He's a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He's very, very, very Catholic. And he's married to Carrie Campbell Severino, who was a former law clerk to Clarence Thomas. She leads the Judicial

0:14:58 Thomas: And the bass player for Creed. No.

0:15:04 Rick: Wow. That so

0:15:04 Thomas: Drum roll. Creed.

0:15:09 Lydia: Crisis Network. It's recently been rebranded to the a Concord Fund. And Open Secrets has said that it has unmatched influence in shaping the federal judiciary. It's affiliated with Leonard Leo. And honestly, I'm probably going to do a deep dive in the Judicial Crisis Network and Carrie Campbell Severino for a full breakdown on WTW because there's a lot going on there. I mean, they're They're behind, like, Gorsuch coming in, Amy Coney Barrett, like the amount of money that they're raising, a lot of dark money. Like, it's just it's a really, really, Really messy space. And obviously outside of the purview of today's discussion. But I just want to flag that we'll probably be talking about that again at some time.

0:15:49 Rick: Much dark money for people that want so much transparency.

0:15:52 Lydia: I know. I know, OK, so what agency do you want to start with? How are we going to go about doing this, Dr. Rick? Yeah

0:15:59 Rick: Well, I think, can you talk through a number of different things here. I think there that certainly worry me in hearing you talk about these goals, I think there's going to be probably the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services is going to be one of those areas to really watch with Doc Oz. An area where so much of health care and the standards of health care and what insurance companies will and won't pay for come from what does Medicare care and medicaid pay for or provide and what sort of guidelines are they issuing um know kind of combined with that certainly the surgeon general uh as has a very large amplifying uh in which to set a lot of medical standards so So those would be the areas that I would really watch for when they're trying to fiddle with healthcare and change what people, you are know, able to get covered things. Obviously what you mentioned with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, you know that is something that they absolutely do right now. So when somebody comes down with like a transmitted disease or other stats that we have federally, a lot of those are reported to the CDC by local health authorities, not the person's name and home address and tracking

0:17:15 Lydia: Wow

0:17:16 Rick: Them like Big Brother, but just like so we understand, hey, is this stuff on the rise or not? So when we hear rates of all this, that's because your local public health is typically reporting. There are certain reportable events that are useful to understand what's happening from a public health standpoint. Point, and you know that's actually where, you know, Surgeon General as a whole, you know, six thousand, seven thousand person almost army, like they are actually a uniformed force, they are non-combatants but they are one of eight uniformed, uh, in our, in our government yep

0:17:27 Thomas: Useful. Is

0:17:49 Lydia: Just hence the name then I guess yeah wait

0:17:51 Rick: The surgeon generals they are an admiral

0:17:52 Thomas: There uniform like bondage gear oh no okay just

0:17:55 Lydia: They're an admiral?

0:17:56 Rick: Well, typically they, well, they can can be an admiral, or a vice admiral, they are modeled after the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. So they look very military -like. So in times of public health crises, they actually have basically like a public health army to deploy. Employee uh are on call 24 hours a day and can be dispatched by the the secretary of yeah well except for that's abortion right can't do that anymore it's definitely no it's not gonna be soon definitely is another I I'm a little bit off topic but that is Another area of just like wow wow, like the Surgeon General actually has like a 6 ,500 member force that they can deploy based off of the what Secretary of HHS says. The parts of my mind goes to like, you know, there's more boots on the ground if you're going to try to deport a whole bunch of people and you want to call it a public health emergency. Things You like that that I

0:18:21 Thomas: Like put condoms on people nah so it's not though is the thing

0:19:00 Rick: Think people are really aware of we this is also something where we build these things in the hopes to never really need it. But if you need it, it has to be ready to go. And

0:19:09 Thomas: Oh that's specifically what republicans don't give a shit about and want to do fun yeah

0:19:15 Rick: And that's a huge problem, between Surgeon General, I think the Office of Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the CDC, those are all going to be areas where our health is going to be manipulated and reported, as you're saying, tracked in a different way to kind of be used potentially against us. That would be my fear. Want to sound too conspiracy theory -like there. Also worried about, with the we think of that, they're based out of Atlanta, but that that really is a worldwide organization and it's pretty critical for frontline detection of disease outbreaks. I actually, I had a personal story with that. While I was doing my postdoctoral work, I was working on malaria and it took me to Eastern Uganda to a pretty remote village and Tororo. And it's kind of near the Kenyan border. And it's one of the areas of the world with the highest rates of malaria anywhere, which is why we have a field site there. And we were studying sort of the effects of this chronic malaria on people. And while I was there, we had run out of some pretty basic supplies that we needed to carry out our research in the lab. And it was kind of, well, where do you get dry ice in rural Uganda?

0:20:31 Rick: You just go down the block to get that. And somebody said, well why don't actually you can, you can go down the block and go down to the CDC outpost. And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, oh yeah, there's a CDC out post here. That's really strange. And so I went down there and they were happy to oblige and helped us out and gave us some supplies that we could use until we got ours and would bring it back to him. But I was chatting with the, with people working there. It was a small, small of office lab. And it's just like, why, why are you guys out here? You know, what, what's going on? And they said, well, you know, this is an area known to have Ebola outbreaks and Ebola is terrifying. And so we're here monitoring sort of what's going on because the infrastructure in these other countries isn't really great to do that. And something like Ebola, we want to know if it's going to be spreading or flaring up pretty bad, because that's something that you have to contain at the source. You never want a global pandemic of something like that.

0:20:31 Lydia: Yeah

0:21:32 Thomas: Yeah and I one hand I want to say what these idiots the republicans don't realize is this stuff also is all great for us on the other hand I don't care if it is is great for us because it also could be good for other human beings to do this stuff around the world so like I want to say both those things both I wish these idiots realized that this is probably good for everybody to like have a handle on these things um not just us but also it's good for us probably I

0:21:59 Rick: It's absolutely, it's a win -win. And we're strengthening the of preventing an outbreak by being able to monitor these things or a potential outbreak and being able to alert the local authorities and say, hey, you need to take this more seriously. How can we help you set this up so that we don't have to deal with it on American soil? Oil like an obvious benefit both for that local community as well as all the rest you know everybody in the states

0:22:24 Lydia: Of the things that I was kind of noticing while I was researching this was a number of these entities under Health and Human Services, it seems like Project 2025's recommendations for them are really rooted in like retribution for COVID. The So CDC is one of them where in Project 2025, they specifically say that the CDC can't put out public health advice. And that, yeah, that's like shocking to me. Then who does? Then what group does?

0:22:49 Thomas: Thought that's like what it did the

0:22:58 Lydia: Yeah, the invisible hand, Elon, President Musk. Mask um so I that was like kind of shocking to me like what would that world look like then I mean can you even like begin to imagine yeah

0:22:56 Thomas: Free market yeah they're

0:22:59 Rick: Twitter yeah X yeah this Doge I it's silly yeah

0:23:12 Thomas: Gonna provide Provide vouchers for different right -wing YouTube channels to put out information and they'll rate how they do. And then we'll see whichever, you know, the best one wins. You know, like whoever gets the most views. It doesn't matter if the information is good. Whoever gets the best views wins.

0:23:29 Rick: I mean it's Yeah, it's exactly as you're suggesting, Lydia. I mean, this is totally retribution. You talk happened in Florida during COVID where DeSantis and others, they were manipulating the numbers on the actual death toll within state. And one of the ways that you can easily do that, and I think you kind of mentioned it in, think I the first goal was, you know, of these unexplained deaths above weren't COVID related. That is incredibly misleading language. I think that there there's so much known there and how you categorize things and being thorough can be politicized as we've now seen. You know, somebody that comes in with pneumonia and dies of pneumonia died of pneumonia, even though they might have had COVID a week before they died of pneumonia, you know, like, was that COVID induced? Yeah, they wouldn't have died if they didn't have COVID and it wrecked their lungs and then they happened to get pneumonia. And a lot of the excess deaths were people were scared. So they didn't like get those medical procedures because there was so much misinformation around. And So, that was under the Trump administration. So this retribution for like truth almost. It's, you just not taking a lot of accountability for.

0:24:48 Rick: And, you Know, I think we all experienced, I mean, I don't know if you guys did, you certainly know, I, in the early days of COVID found excess reason to have beers most nights. And, You know, when I'm sure there was a big uptake in drug use across the country and deaths that could be attributed to that, but that wasn't, a mishandling because because we were in an informational war with ourselves, that wasn't the only potential outcome for dealing with a, with pandemic, you know, like not every country had these huge spikes like that. Their, their public health systems were, and, and their like between the government and its people and the people with each other was more harmonious instead of what we had to deal deal with for the first year of this global pandemic when you know there's a lot of evidence that we could Have done things that would have prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths um yeah

0:25:15 Lydia: You'll

0:25:40 Thomas: Yeah, did we ever get like a 9 -11 commission on that? Like, why not? Seriously. Seriously, I, well,

0:25:48 Lydia: Get the right wing version of it

0:25:49 Rick: I mean I think because it's so political right yeah

0:25:51 Thomas: I guess, but we had control of stuff like in the immediate aftermath of COVID. So maybe we did. Are we sure we didn't do, would they not do a commission?

0:25:56 Rick: Well and that's that's the I don't think it was like 9 11 style There was probably some report. Bet the CDC and others. I've heard some stuff that I think it was like 250,000 to 300,000 excess deaths that could have been prevented just had the Trump administration been more forthright in the early days of the communication in the first few months and shutting things down a little bit more thoroughly or getting to mask mandates and other things more quickly. Even stockpiling, you know, kind of all the wrong things, you know, that there were all kinds of shortages and problems that that occurred just because a of mismanagement and, you know, things here, you know, well, I guess FEMA is not under Health and Human Services. But, you within Health and Human Services, we have stockpiles of medical and things like that. So does FEMA. And, you you know, the Trump administration, the first go around gutted a lot of that. Um, so we were left shorthanded when, again, when we needed it most, it's the problem when you, when you consider, uh, remodeling something with arson, you know?

0:27:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:06 Rick: If you just burn it all down, then you got to rebuild it all

0:27:05 Lydia: Well a great point too because like what what what we're looking at potentially with this administration, depending on what the Department of Government Efficiency, actually, department, again, quotes, it's not a real department.

0:27:20 Thomas: The club, the club of douchebag, douche bag club.

0:27:22 Lydia: Elon and Vivek's thing. Douchebag Club. Yeah. If Douchebags Club is able to lobby Congress to potentially like gut more of the budgets of these entities, then it's potentially putting us in an even worse position. Mean, not even potentially, it is putting us in an Even worse position to be able to respond effectively in another crisis. It might not even be in health and human services and like in a pandemic and everything like that. It could be in another agency as well. Like there are so many reasons that there's money spent for particular things because you are preparing for the potential of a crisis and need to be prepared to deploy resources and materials and people on day one. And that that is concerning, thinking that like, you know, their idea of like, we're going to cut two trillion dollars from from the federal budget. But seeing like even if they're able to make some headway with that and get Congress members on board with that as well um again on board I keep saying that and thomas has brought up a good point that a lot of times it's not that they're on board it's because they're being threatened uh being primaried so with

0:28:35 Lydia: People with a lot money so um yeah it's just it's even more concerning to me because it puts us honestly like potentially even in a worse spot um the the next one comes around. Yeah.

0:28:45 Rick: Absolutely and and that's when the next one comes around we talk about that and you know the you know some people will say oh that's once in a hundred years you know whatever we don't know climate change is gonna cause a lot more of it and

0:28:56 Thomas: I know if there's anyone I trust less to see through the gambler's fallacy, it's got to be Republicans. Republicans they're gonna be like well we had it's once every 100 years and we did it so should be a hundred years from now like we're what are you talking why would they cancel all this and wait a hundred yes yeah

0:29:07 Rick: Yeah so we're done yeah yeah that's that's just not how this stuff works I mean I think the way I think about a lot of this is you know we're still suffering the housing effects of the housing crash of 2008 and that's because we lost lost a generation of apprentice construction workers because there weren't any jobs for them. And then it takes a long time to build those back. So as a country not building as many houses today. I don't believe, I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding is we're not even back to pre -2008 levels of house building. And yet, you know, we have this huge housing crisis all over the united states that is driving people to vote in very strange ways you people are saying

0:29:28 Thomas: Sorry

0:30:01 Rick: That they just can't afford everything and it's true in all these other ways you know in the nih you know national institutes of health like that funds all the research at at that like like vaccine research, cancer research, genetic diseases, all kinds of disease and health, and how do we make that can cure people's lives? A lot of that research is done at universities, and it's funded through grants by the NIH. You know they want a eight -year pause on vaccine research you is so stupid it's so crazy on so many levels but like let's just entertain that for a second like that's just going to put us in the exact same place as as the housing shortage you're going to lose the builders for a generation you know because this are are not skills that you can just read in a book

0:30:35 Lydia: That's crazy.

0:30:52 Thomas: So they don't all just freeze first like okay they like have the test tubes and they're like and then they freeze and then you unfreeze them and they'll They're like, oh, okay, right back to it.

0:30:55 Lydia: Yeah I did

0:31:02 Rick: Right exactly and that would be fine yeah because you're fine to just take an eight -year break in your career and you pay bills and all that you know

0:31:09 Thomas: I can't take an eight -hour break in my career. Oh,

0:31:13 Lydia: See with relation to NIH I saw that the Biden administration it was like over the summer I think that they were trying to set up some various I don't know regulations or or executive orders or something or just administrative direction to try and make it harder for Trump to like ruin a lot of these entities. And again, we're talking about COVID retribution, specifically Anthony Fauci with the NIH.

0:31:39 Lydia: I think, ran a piece on this and they interviewed Roger Severino, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter. And he said they want to put their thumbs on the scale in favor of preserving the woke tendencies that already exist at NIH. We can't have an unelected fourth branch that's able to do their own thing. And in Project 2025, he wrote to make it easier to fire employees at the NIH, to remove DEI programs, of course, to stop funding stem cell research. There's that Catholicism coming through.

0:32:05 Lydia: And then also like stop promoting equal participation of women. In. Specifically, he says that NIH became so focused on the Me Too movement that it refused to sponsor scientific conferences unless there were a certain number of women panelists.

0:32:15 Thomas: I bet. Oh, yeah. Sure. And now, in their view, is that bad? So we need to sponsor. So what you're saying is sponsor more scientific conferences. So that, okay. And sponsor more. And not just that, I imagine. Like, if that's something they're worried about, probably sponsor a lot of science -y stuff. Like vaccine research, other things. I love how they just pick and shoot. Like they have these obviously stupid fucking insane points and then they pick and choose that for a moment to argue in bad faith well and they were so concerned with sexism that they stopped doing the thing we're trying to stop doing oh so you don't care about that then why would you care about that

0:32:56 Rick: Well Right. Yeah. Well, what I recall during my grad school days, it wasn't, you know, very well documented that there are more women in these PhD programs than there are men. And yet you go to these conferences and the top panelists, A lot of the top PIs, the ones that are still in the most precision, can't get that, yes, that word, are still dominated by men. And so I just think that that is, again, just good sense to say you we're going to sponsor stuff that is going to reflect the audience that is sitting in the seats. You you know, a lot of times when you're a grad student, yeah, you get to go present at these conferences, which is great. And there is a lot Of both and female and non binary people presenting, you know, I mean, the whole spectrum of people get to present. And that's why these conferences are so important is because it helps these junior level scientists learn these soft skills on how to talk about their science, which just so important but then you get these panelists or these these folks that run these gigantic labs and a lot of those are very legacy and and you do want to see that look more equitable and it's absolutely silly to it that way I mean the hypocrisy and of course as you say thomas it was all in bad faith so I took the bait to argue back in

0:33:21 Thomas: Prestigious all

0:33:23 Lydia: Think

0:34:21 Thomas: Right

0:34:22 Rick: Good good faith but

0:34:24 Lydia: Also, you know, when we're talking about the NIH in particular um funding research the research isn't necessarily like like focused on issues that only apply to like cis white heterosexual men um by having like diverse group of people at agencies that are offering grant money then it's more likely to be offered to a diverse diverse group of people across the United States that is then representing a diverse group of interests and questions and problems to be solved and things to consider that otherwise aren't like just fact of the matter is they're not like you can see that even just looking at men's issues versus women, issues historically, that you get versions Versions of like and like how to like this improvement in any sort of dysfunction that men are experiencing sexually and stuff like you're able to see the growth of that research over time and over time. And I'm granted that's, you know, the pharmaceutical industry in particular.

0:35:31 Lydia: But control pills, like a long time, like there's decades in between any sort of advancement. And that's just looking on that one like axis of diversity among the population and how women are affected disproportionately then as a result of not having access to folks that are doing that research and that experimentation. And that investigation and all those things, it just hinders then what they experience is life. It's really frustrating. So, yeah.

0:36:00 Rick: And so there is definitely that that historic disparity and and I think that that is um area that we still don't have complete parity on but the one benefit that I think we are moving more and more towards is understanding that diversity should always be seen as an asset I mean and I know I'm preaching to the choir or whatever but I mean from just a logical scientific point of view it's going to be a lot harder to develop a drug that only helps cis white men than cancer let's say than it is just develop a truck that helps everybody you know like and you can find where if you only treat you very skewed population when you're doing your clinical trials then weird weird things happen. I mean, there there, could be, you out there that would be, more beneficial to the wider population, but if you only, you in a small genetic group, you're not going to see that benefit, you know? And so I'm speaking in a very abstract forms here, but I mean it just seems diversity is, is a strength always. You're you 'r going to know truth through that that diversity.

0:37:04 Thomas: Libcuck let's uh let's move on to other areas of this this.

0:37:08 Rick: So one, one thing I am worried about with the, uh, the retribution to the NIH in particular is just the way that NIH and, and the research that we do in this country is, is funded. Of the things I fully predict is going to happen is as they want to take retribution on the NIH, they're going to push that old trope of of like, what are we spending money on researching breakfast cereals or something, you know, asinine, right? They're going to pick something.

0:37:35 Lydia: A hundred percent, actually. And this little preview for a WTW episode I'm working on. Campus Reform ran an article saying here are 10 research projects that the NIH is funding that Doge needs to take a look at. And it's like thirty thousand dollars for shrimp on treadmills. It's like the dumbest thing I've ever read.

0:37:54 Thomas: I would pay $30 ,000. I'll cover that one.

0:37:57 Rick: I mean, I'm in on that. Yeah.

0:37:59 Thomas: Are they cute? Like how cute are they?

0:38:01 Rick: Yeah. And $30 ,000 from the NIH is like, is nothing.

0:38:04 Thomas: Do they? I know that's literally nothing.

0:38:04 Lydia: So I it's nothing it's pennies yeah so

0:38:07 Rick: It's so nothing.

0:38:07 Lydia: I guess just to to yes and you like like laying that groundwork already and I'm seeing it at like that grassroots you know sort of conservative student level on campus reform

0:38:17 Rick: One of the big problems I have is, is again, it's, it's just the ,the, hypocrisy of it. Because the way that we do research and all this wasteful, wasteful ways of researching all these mundane sounding or weird things to huge breakthroughs that are unexpected. That's how we get them. It's not because we are so brilliant. We only know how to study the one thing that's going to lead to a breakthrough. It's you study a thousand things and one of them leads to a breakthrough.

0:38:43 Thomas: This brainstorming is really inefficient. I think instead of that, I'm just going to think of the perfect idea. First try. Why have I been doing doing this all my life. Oh,

0:38:53 Rick: Even through that highly wasteful way of just trying a thousand things to get one to work, that into research, when was a postdoc, I was part of the postdoc union. And so I had some of these facts when we'd go talk to our local congresspeople, and I was in San Francisco, so it was friendly territory. But we were able to say, hey, every dollar of government money that comes into UCSF and is put into research provides $16 to the the economy because of the breakthroughs and that that come through so the party that wants government to be like a profit generating business this is an area where like get a lot of bang for their buck

0:39:33 Thomas: Sounds like a profit center to me. Yeah. Let's invest in that area of the business.

0:39:39 Rick: And story that I I I share when I talk to people about why we need this sort of uh spending the way that we do is there was a grad student in the 1970s that applied for a grant to go study the weird bacteria that lived in the geysers in Yellowstone National Park.

0:39:56 Lydia: That grad student's name was albert einstein

0:39:59 Rick: And that grad student, I have no idea. I don't remember who that person is.

0:40:01 Thomas: And that bacteria's name was COVID -19.

0:40:03 Rick: I'm terrible with names. Yeah, yeah. But what they did is they discovered this quirky little bacteria called Thermus aquaticus, and it lives at very high temperatures. And it has enzymes that work at very high temperatures that in any of our cells, all of our enzymes would just fall apart and melt. And so, you know, big deal, who cares? What a giant waste of government money that that grad student just got stoned in Yellowstone for a year and a half playing with bacteria, right?

0:40:04 Lydia: That's fine. Yellow stoned.

0:40:32 Rick: That was good. And in the 80s, we started to really invest in how do we sequence DNA? How do we figure this out? And in the 90s, you had this big push for the Human Genome Project. And the entire basis the Human Genome project even being possible was the fact that we could take this Thermos Aquaticus' polymerase, which is an enzyme in it, and we call it TAC polymerase. So it's T for thermos and then AQ for aquaticus. So it's TAC polymerase.

0:41:02 Thomas: Just name things normal, asshole. Nevermind. I'm on team Doge.

0:41:04 Rick: I know. I'm sorry. But this led to the revolution for us to be able to sequence huge chunks of DNA in very short periods of time and being able to amplify it. So this like totally was not the reason they were out there doing it, but it was just enough interesting, people in the field put two and two and together and eventually got to this incredible breakthrough that the reason now that people can swab their cheek and two weeks later have their entire genome sequenced you know um

0:41:35 Thomas: I mean, it really, in my America, it really like all the science research because it'd be cool is a valid reason. Like if you do your proposal and it's like I don't know it's because it's like cool to see like what that is I'd be like yep sold

0:41:43 Rick: All right yep yeah and and it's hard because you know when I started grad school in 2007 it was it was in a really tough environment for research the nih's budget was being cut under that Bush administration. And it was one of the first times that their budget had been cut. And it forced a change in the dynamic of how many of us, these PhD candidates, stayed in academia versus how many OFUS moved on to other avenues like biotech or even just left science because there really weren't jobs that made sense for we're just in a a different environment where we're not funding things just because they're cool as much anymore already. And I think that that is that tough. Think that they're going to be coming for the NIH in a big way. But it's

0:41:49 Lydia: Approved. Yeah, mm hmm.

0:42:36 Rick: Important. AndI hope that listeners maybe can use that allegory of of the the TAC polymerase, you know, a small project turned into, you know, fueling.

0:42:44 Thomas: A small polyamorous bacteria led to all that I get it

0:42:51 Rick: Exactly. Exactly. I think that's also emblematic to all these other areas too. This is why you build these big organizations that can do a lot of powerful work. It's because you cannot pick the right way out of the gate.

0:43:04 Lydia: Right. Well, I'm going to have to cut us off. We didn't even get to the FDA with Dr. Rick and our time together. So we'll be back in episode 469 to continue this discussion. And you know what? I'll even start diving into the cabinet nominees. Next one. How about that? Yeah you're welcome pinky

0:43:11 Thomas: I'm FDA. You right. Yeah, more doozies to come. We'll see you next time.

0:43:53 Thomas: It's not making... When I turn... The thing that turns me down, it works. When I'm doing the thing that's supposed to turn her up, it does nothing. It turns her up in our headphones, but not in your ears. So that's the madness that will be in my brain. Hi, I'm Thomas Smith. It we are who does the booking just really I don't want to speak out of turn but she just fucked it up I'm trying to find a way to get rid of her but she

0:44:18 Rick: All right right

0:44:13 Lydia: Hey. Okay. Oh, my gosh. That's why you've been lowering my voice in the recording.

0:44:25 Rick: Yeah this is fade out

0:44:26 Thomas: Yeah it gets lower and lowers

0:44:29 Lydia: So people won't notice. It's just a very, very slow fade out over time. Yeah.

0:44:31 Rick: Takes weeks but yeah yeah

0:44:35 Thomas: Oh man name things normal, asshole. Nevermind. I'm on team Doge.