Trump's Health Nominees Are a Steaming Pile of Grift

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 470. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is, she's hijacked the show, she's taken over it's Lydia Smith, how you doing? Oh, god speaking of doozies. Yay.

0:00:24 Lydia: I did. I'm doing OK. I'm going to see you in court, I guess, because I've taken over the show. So sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a ton more nominees to talk about in this episode. So honestly, like, I just want to get straight to it. Like there. Gosh, there's there are gems. There are gems in this. Really And eager to walk you through some of these fine, fine folks that Trump has decided to nominate to some of the most powerful positions in the Health and Human Services Agency. So after this

0:01:03 Thomas: Well we gotta go through it and we will so after this break Wait, is anyone using the "after these messages we'll be right back"? Like, is anyone using that? Is that like a domain? You know, can we just steal that? I'm going to check.

0:01:09 Lydia: Break. Good question. Not sure.

0:01:20 Thomas: There's no way anybody like, nobody uses it. Does anyone care about it? It's great. What if we could just take that? It'd be great.

0:01:26 Lydia: That would be great.

0:01:27 Thomas: I would use it every time. I'm gonna look into that. So I know what I'm doing during the break.

0:01:33 Thomas: Everyone else should sign up at patreon.com/seriouspod. And then we'll meet back here in a little bit.

0:01:39 Lydia: Do it. All about the Food and Drug Administration, who's been nominated there. His name is Marty Makary, or Marty Makary. He is a surgeon, professor, author, medical commentator. He's very, very well known, very well respected for decades until a certain point in time, which I'll talk about. Surgical oncology, gastrointestinal laparoscopic surgery at Johns Hopkins. He created the surgical checklist because there were a lot of issues in hospitals with surgeons not very effective, providing quality care. And so he developed something to help guide surgeons across the country to provide better care for patients. Born in Liverpool, moved to Baltimore, so we have an immigrant here. Also got a a master's of public health with a concentration in health policy. Now, as I kind of alluded to just a second ago, he has been a fierce proponent of the culture of safety for hospitals, and he wants hospitals throughout the country to make their results of this culture of security questionnaire offered to patients, to make those publicly available so patients know, make more informed decisions about as long as they have the option to make more inform decisions about where they go for care. He also is a big proponent of price transparency and has publicly defended and advocated for low income patients that get sued by hospitals because they can't pay for their bills. And he has gone on record and has said that that is incredibly wrong and has stepped up where he can to help them. Was supportive of COVID lockdowns. He shared his thoughts that universal masking is the way to go before the health agencies called for it. However, we're going to get back to some kids stuff, right? So he was concerned about myocarditis risk that we were seeing with some of the teenage age groups with vaccines. And so he said, let's just do the single vaccine for the kids. No need to boost them. And he actually is kind of opposed to boosting in general. He refers to himself as an unboosted male. He's like the opposite, Tom Curry. I don't know.

0:03:48 Thomas: Unboosted male? What?

0:03:49 Lydia: An unboosted male, yes.

0:03:50 Thomas: So is he doing the like, come get some of my semen because I'm not. Why would you refer to yourself in that way? Why not just be like, I'm not boosted?

0:03:54 Lydia: I don't know. Is very strange. Yes. I

0:04:01 Thomas: Why?

0:04:01 Lydia: Didn't get the boosters.

0:04:02 Thomas: Why are you bringing?

0:04:06 Lydia: And then he opposes vaccine mandates. So he doesn't have problems with the vaccine, but he doesn't think anybody should be forced to get them. He has a lot to say about blindly believing science and medicine. He had a book that just came out this year in 2024 called Blind Spots. And it highlights cases where he says that medicine, the medical industry got science wrong. For example, opioids are not addictive. Foods that are high in fat. And I want to take them.

0:04:35 Thomas: He's saying? They thought that?

0:04:37 Lydia: Thought that, yes, and that that ended up being wrong. And we need to be more critical and skeptical of claims like that when they first come through. But I do want to point out, and we've talked about this a lot on Where There's Woke, that opioid misinformation was like harmless doctors getting the science wrong, saying it wasn't addictive. That was driven by capitalism, basically, and finding people with medical degrees like Sally Sattel who were willing to spread misinformation.

0:05:06 Thomas: Also, I don't know how much, I researched this. I don't know how much scientists or doctors got the diet stuff wrong so much as, I don't know, the public and like diet book people and like, yeah, like I don't actually know. I'm not sure either way, but because like what here's I do know. There's no way that the data changed. It's not like they had a bunch of studies, you know how science works. It's not like they had like a bunch of studies that said, hey, actually low fat, high carb diet is super great. And then they realized like, whoa, now it's changed for some reason. And we were wrong about that. It's probably like either they didn't have that data or by the way, whenever I look into diet stuff, there's just too much. Cause there's so much stuff that's like funded by whatever.

0:05:17 Lydia: Marketing and yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah,

0:05:50 Thomas: And you know, it's probably the correct science was in there somewhere, but it's amidst a bunch of misinformation or, you people trying to make money. That's been my experience. I don't know for sure, but I don'T really think it's a case of, well, the entire scientific community, the medical community came out and said, yes, this is great. And then they were wrong for some reason.

0:06:11 Lydia: And I do think that some of this is to protect scientists who, you the opposite way from consensus. Right. It's like, well, here are some cases where where doctors were telling you this and they were wrong. And these other people, everyone said was crazy. And so, like, we need to apply that exact same thing here now for anything that comes up with regard to, like current medical issues of concern. Seems to have kind of this this approach where he kind of like decides he wants to make a claim and then finds a way to get there. Right. Another example of that is in 2016, he co -authored an analysis that said medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Right. Exactly. Your spidey sense is tingling.

0:06:57 Thomas: Kind of don't think that could be

0:06:58 Lydia: You're like, I don't think so.

0:07:00 Thomas: I mean, for falling out of tackle boxes, this has got to be somewhere in that neighborhood.

0:07:06 Lydia: And this received quite a bit of criticism. And I was reading through a study that, yeah, cancer.

0:07:11 Thomas: Heart disease, car accidents. Other What ones? Cancer. Yeah, I feel like those are going to be higher.

0:07:18 Lydia: Was read through a a commentary regarding the analysis that he did saying this. And they said, you know, this is like kind of crazy extrapolation. What he and his co-author did was they averaged four different estimates of death, including one from a for-profit company of quality and safety ratings. It was like two peer-reviewed studies, something else, and then this for-profit company. And then he was saying, based off of those averages, let's apply that to 700,000 deaths that occur in the United States hospitals annually. So over 250,000 of those people died from preventable or medical error. And there's just no way. I mean, every would be like, what is that? Almost over a third of patients have died from something that was preventable. And this is going to like so distrust.

0:08:12 Thomas: What What Are the Odds? Like, that would be so hard to, would mean you were in the hospital for some, like, that's just bad luck.

0:08:20 Lydia: If that's happening, we have to shut down like all the hospitals like that's it's preventable that like, you know, 40 percent of people that have died in the hospital was all preventable. We should probably stop with the hospitals and figure out what's going on, because that's a serious problem. Know, it's like it's these things that are just it becomes almost this weird, like self -serving thing for him and like this group of people. And I can't really figure out exactly what it is. I do think he is distrustful of medical establishments. I mean, again, from all of his work with the seen some things that are very problematic over time. And I feel like he's still kind of seeking that out and then wildly exaggerating it. It. So try and make sure that people talk about it still maybe. But it ends up like hurting that case more than anything, because then people just brush off. They're like, well, that's obviously fake. And then they don't care about like the one to three percent of deaths in hospital that were preventable and like actually pursuing things that could fix

0:08:23 Thomas: Yeah, there's a murderer on the loose. Yeah!

0:09:26 Lydia: Those things.

0:09:26 Thomas: One to three percent sounds like a more reasonable number just back of the envelope just totally just uh off the dome as they say yeah

0:09:34 Lydia: At Harvard Medical School who's really familiar with Makary's career and scholarship. His name is Peter Cohen. He says that he would have been wholeheartedly supportive of his nomination if it had occurred before the pandemic. And what we have to expect with him in this FDA role really depends on how closely he's going to align with Kennedy. As of right now, via media, he is supporting Kennedy's positions on everything. But of course, we won't know exactly how that'll all shake out unless he's unless they're both confirmed and in those positions and we kind of see things as they go. One of the biggest things that I think people are concerned about with regard to the FDA is the potential to pull Mifepristone, which we talked about. This And is not looking great based off of his position anyway. If you want to play that clip, he talks with Tucker Carlson regarding what he has witnessed in in the clinical field providing abortions.

0:10:32 Clip: Marty Makary is at Johns Hopkins University of Public Health. He joins us tonight. Doctor, thanks so much for coming on. It'd be interesting to kind of take the politics out of it, Roe v. Wade out of it, whether it should be legal or not out of it. Just to the science of it. We know that children in utero, fetuses, whatever you call them, the developing human being in uterus feels pain, correct?

0:10:52 Thomas: What?

0:10:53 Clip: That's right, Tucker. Somewhere between 15 and 20 weeks, babies will actually resist the instruments of abortion. Now, Ro was based on viability, but viability has been changing. Babies survive now at At approximately the halfway point of pregnancy, at 21 and 22 weeks, babies have survived outside the womb. So ironically, we sometimes do fetal surgery on a baby inside the womb of the mother to save the baby's life. And yet, at the same age, in other settings, surgical instruments are used to abort a baby.

0:11:25 Clip: So there's a great irony. And now, you can barely talk about it. I witnessed it as a medical student. I'll tell you, it doesn't matter which side you protest on around this issue. If you see the actual images of what's happening and a baby resisting an abortion, it'll weigh on your conscience. But today you can barely talk about it. Nurses can get fired if they don't participate. Students are ridiculed. Most of the professional medical associations have taken a political stand now supporting abortion right up until the third trimester. The

0:11:25 Thomas: That's, it's almost like sometimes you want to have a baby and sometimes you don't.

0:11:30 Lydia: Unbelievable. A surgeon. And that's what he's going to come down with. So, so, yeah. So that is Marty Makary of the FDA. Talk about the Institute of Health Director nomination, Jay Bhattacharya. So Jay Bhattacharya is a name that a lot of folks probably know the name because he became kind of a folk hero during COVID for the right. Is someone who opposed lockdowns and mask mandates. He's a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which would have lifted restrictions for lower risk groups and encouraged widespread infection in order to get herd immunity. Said that there was little evidence to support quarantine shelter -in -place. He was saying this kind of stuff since March 24th, 2020. So

0:12:17 Thomas: All right. I know I know that name yeah wow

0:12:50 Lydia: It had been like 10 days since I think, not 10 days, since we We went on our shelter in place over here in California, and he was saying like, oh, just, you know, we shouldn't be doing this. Just let the lower risk groups, you out and well and to get sick and see what happens. And some of them will die and and then we'll get herd immunity and then everybody can get out.

0:12:51 Thomas: I hadn't even heard of covet by then die yeah Sure, yeah.

0:13:12 Lydia: His bachelor's and master's in economics from Stanford. He got his medical degree and his Ph.D. in economics at Stanford as well. He's been there for a very, very long time. He is still teaching. He's a professor of medicine, economics and health research policy. And his research focuses on the economics of health care. He But got very, Very, very popular with COVID and saying that herd immunity is the way and we should all just get sick instead. Dead. All of this stuff was happening, he actually worked with Hillsdale College and co founded a program there called the Academy for Science and Freedom. Has said since he was nominated for NIH, director, that he plans to prevent grants from being made to universities that fail to support academic freedom. This guy has a bone to pick. Right. I mean, he has said something that he just deemed as against the scientific consensus at that particular point in time and was probably talked to about it from Stanford because he's a professor there and he represents them. And now he has a bone to pick with what he viewed as infringement on his academic freedom. Very dubty dub kind of feel

0:14:26 Lydia: Here. He has something to share with, you know, what he wants folks at the NIH, FDA and CDC to do kind of first thing talking about regaining public trust.

0:14:26 Thomas: 40

0:14:39 Clip: It's completely reasonable to distrust them now. I distrust him now. But it's not reasonable to say they shouldn't be trustworthy. And so my view is we should figure out how to make them trustworthy. Worthy. So first of all, all of them need to go apologize to the country and to the world. That would be a good first step, rather than gaslight people into thinking they did a good job. Let's just leave that aside. Let's talk about, in principle, how one might fix it. So take the National Institute of Health. The central problem there was concentration of power in the hands of a relatively small cadre of scientists, a cartel of scientists who controlled tens of billions of dollars of funding. You know, Francis Collins, he's the head of the National Institute of Health for almost, I think, a decade or so. Tony Fauci, almost 30, 40 years head of NIAID. They don't just control money, the billions of dollar, they also control the reputations of the scientists that they fund. Like, I have tenure at Stanford Medical School in part because I've been successful at getting NIH funding. It's the way you climb the ladder of the field, right? That turns out to be a tremendously corrupting thing. And so what happens

0:15:49 Clip: Then is scientists that know better, that should speak up, stay silent because they're afraid they're going to lose their social status. And they're funded that, right, yeah. And the fun, they can't do their experiments and they can't look fancy in front of their colleagues because they don't have the NIH money. So the The way you fix that is decentralization.

0:15:49 Thomas: He must be corrupt then. How

0:16:12 Clip: You allow there to be competing scientific schools, even within a single field. What

0:16:18 Lydia: So so number one, he thinks that and he's going to do this day one, if he gets confirmed as NIH director, he will issue a public apology to not just the United States, but the the world yeah doesn't happen I'm gonna be writing to him but um other piece of it too is like this decentralization I was trying to track what he meant there because this is something that is um brought up and some of the other agency discussions as well that we'll be getting into, decentralization of, you the agency is. It sounds like it's decentralization in order to fund competing scientific thoughts. Because when he first said decentralization for the NIH, I thought it was going to be that funding should come from a variety of sources. And it does. I mean, you look look at at research projects. It's not they're not necessarily only funded by the NIH. That's a huge source of funding. But they also fund a lot of projects and they have a huge number of areas of research that they look into. Seems like to me that it's still kind of lining up with that academic freedom sort of perspective, like maybe.

0:17:24 Thomas: Sounds states-rightsy to me. Hmm.

0:17:26 Lydia: Like if the NIH has declined to fund a project that it might be from his perspective, because it's a competing scientific theory from the consensus and should be funded through something else. And that that opportunity should be there still. So I don't know. Yeah, it's just kind of this interesting, interesting thing he had going on there. But that is Jay Bhattacharya, who should mention he is a deacon at the First Presbyterian Church in Mountain View, and he is the head of the Church of the United States. He is a church elder for the last 27 years there. So he is very, very connected to his faith. And calling out Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, who's an evangelical Christian. Yeah.

0:18:02 Thomas: He's a christian famously a christians yeah I was gonna

0:18:12 Lydia: Battle of the Christians.

0:18:12 Thomas: Say that it's kind of weird yeah

0:18:14 Lydia: So. Right. Center for Disease Control, CDC. Dave Weldon has been nominated to this position. Dave Weldon is a former representative from Florida. But before that, he actually was a doctor. He was a physician in Florida in private practice and had received his medical degree from University at Buffalo in 81, served in the Army for a number of years, Army Reserve as well. And after he was a position in Florida, he ended up serving 14 years in Congress as a Florida representative. He's one the that's responsible for the Weldon Amendment from 2004, which has been included in appropriations bills since 2005. And what that amendment says is that health care programs that receive federal funds are not allowed to require health care entities to provide, pay for or refer for abortion services. And so what you have are health care entities that are not telling patients what kind of options they have. Right. Because there is no requirement that they even mention abortion as a potential for that patient. Has some really, don't want to say crazy. He has Some really interesting beliefs. Did not believe that Terry Shivo was in a vegetative state, even though he's not her doctor. He is not there reviewing her chart. He just

0:19:32 Lydia: Decided that she wasn't. And he introduced legislation as a representative to force the federal government to

0:19:32 Thomas: Bring Terry Schiavo back from the dead

0:19:40 Lydia: Force The federal government to intervene and review her case before they were able to decide to let her go. Is a major anti-vax ally. He believes that the MMR is part of the increase in autism, which has been found to be false over and over and ever again. He questions the safety of the MMR vaccines to this day, the Gardasil vaccine, which has been really remarkable for preventing HPV in folks and the potential for cancer cervical as a result. He's very against those things. In April of 2001, he invited Andrew Wakefield to Congress for a briefing titled Childhood Vaccines and Autism. Is there a link? And yeah, 2001. he is still, like I said, to he questions the safety of MMR and Gardasil vaccines. They have called him out and said like, hey, you're anti-vaccine, he's like, listen, my kids are both fully immunized and I immunized, Yeah. And I have vaccines done as well. So it's kind of like, you know, he finds a way to to try and like tame the rhetoric there.

0:20:34 Thomas: He immunized he's like I gave them all hpv and now they're immune.

0:20:51 Lydia: Yeah, it's just interesting. Um, him in this role with the CDC, uh, now the CDC has the vaccine safety, um, entity is housed under the CDC. Uh, this is something that's actually kind of, um. Agreed to on both sides of this conversation that really the CDC shouldn't be shouldn't be reviewing the safety of vaccines because they are the ones that are in charge of, you know, like funding the research behind it and distributing them.

0:21:22 Lydia: And it really should be an independent agency, kind of how like safety has an independent agency outside of the Department of Transportation. So that's something that that he agrees with. If it doesn't move, then we're looking at some really interesting things that are going to happen with vaccines. If Dave Walden is at the helm now, insurance the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies have to cover vaccines if they've been recommended by this organization called ACIP. Let stands for Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Now, the CDC doesn't have to agree with everything that ACIP recommends. They usually do. And then states usually implement what the CDC has recommended, which is what ACIP has recommended. And then insurance is required to cover those that are recommended. So that relationship might change where ACIP offers, you know, this is what we think should happen for vaccines. And with Dave Weldon at the helm of CDC, he might say no. And so now states might choose to still do ACIP or they could choose to do the CDC version of vaccines .And then we have insurance state by state that is, might not be offering free vaccines unless the CDC has asserted that they need to have it. So we might have this kind of battle going on within CDC vaccine opportunity and available across the nation. Just a quick little note here. He was actually the president of the Alliance of Healthcare Sharing Ministries. So that trade group for Christian organizations as an alternative to health insurance. He ended up stepping down in 2020, saying he was interested in slowing down. But here he is nominated for CDC director. Doesn't seem like he's slowing down, but got out of the health care sharing ministries kind along the same timeline when they started getting more questions at Congress. So interesting um

0:21:22 Thomas: Giving us all autism. Sure. What sucks about the second Trump administration most is I feel like in the first one, we, I know, I feel like they spotted us a few normies, you know, be like, and this person, there's a doctor that works in the thing. And now I don' think we're getting any of those. There's not, it's like, you've, you've gone through a number of people going into specifically this area that absolutely have to have these anti -scientific views and I don't know that we're going to get any that are like and that person is just uh you know that's just a normie it's just kind of makes sense jeez

0:24:03 Lydia: And the last few folks I'm going to talk about, right, definitely not normies. Uh, Mehmet Oz, Medicare and Medicaid. Um, he actually holds dual citizenship, uh, with Turkey and the United States. His parents immigrated to America. He was born in Ohio, grew up in Delaware, did his undergrad at Harvard, got his undergraduate degree in biology. He played safety on their football team, the Harvard football team. And he was also on the varsity water polo team.

0:24:27 Thomas: They must have sucked hmm

0:24:30 Lydia: And then he got his medical degree in MBA from UPenn. He was the class president while he was there in medical school, as well as the student body president. 1995, he founded this organization with a friend of his called the Cardiac Complementary Care Center while he was working at a And they did stuff that was like alternative sort of therapies for folks in the cardiac unit of this hospital. And when the hospital found out they were doing stuff like therapeutic touch, they started asking him questions about it because they were like, what are you trying to accomplish here? They ended up dropping it. But a year later in 1996, he was actually responsible in this in this care center. He was responsible for the heart transplant for the brother of the New York Yankees manager during the 1996 World Series and the Yankees won. And so like media was covering this.

0:25:05 Thomas: What does that have to do I get I get what you're saying the media attention but it's like not only did he pull this off it was in he had to pitch he was you know it was in between innings like what does that have to do the brother of the owner like he might have been like a car salesman I don't what's his job does that to do with anything yeah

0:25:34 Lydia: I know the brother Of a manager. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but he really took advantage of all the media opportunities that were happening as a result.

0:25:46 Thomas: Well nothing if not media savvy you know like obviously I'm

0:25:49 Lydia: His co -founder ended up leaving in 2000 after he had asked Oz to, quote, stop the media circus. And Oz didn't for years. And so then eventually the co - founder left. He's like, I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah. And think that is quintessential to understanding who Dr. Oz is and everything that happens after that.

0:26:01 Thomas: Leaving this fucking circus but it seems like from an early time he was into selling woo or just like bullshit shit

0:26:16 Lydia: Absolutely. He essentially has no moral compass, I think.

0:26:21 Thomas: Lydia just casually, yeah, he's what they call like pure evil, um, in a way yeah

0:26:27 Lydia: Well, everything he does is opportunistic, right? All to benefit him. He entered into an arrangement with a multi -level marketing nutrition company in 2012, which was later accused of being a pyramid scheme, but he made $50 million over five years to promote it on his show. No moral backbone. He's flip -flopping positions constantly over time based off of what he's trying to accomplish. Um um hydroxychloroquine hydroxy and come to find out he owns over six hundred thousand dollars of stock in two companies that manufacture or distribute the drug um

0:26:31 Thomas: That fits wow he's making crudités out of god knows what yeah

0:27:04 Lydia: He said regarding people people without health care coverage, they don't have a right to health, they have a right to access, wants is specific to Medicare too, he wants to put nearly everyone on privatized Medicare. He wants to privatize all of Medicare. And surprise, surprise, he owns shares into privatized Medicare providers, including United Health Group, which United Health Care is their insurance subsidiary. The vast amounts of money that we know you know, UnitedHealthcare was raking in.

0:27:17 Thomas: I mean

0:27:33 Lydia: Yeah, it continues to rake in. You're right.

0:27:32 Thomas: Was like if you kill the ceo the whole company like disappears well it was like the horcrux of the insurance company he

0:27:38 Lydia: If only, I guess. He, Sean Hannity during COVID, he said that reopening schools might be worth the increased number of deaths it would cause. He was like, it will only cost us, you you know, two to 3 % mortality.

0:27:53 Thomas: Also said quote, if they're going to die, they'd better do it and decrease the surplus population.

0:27:58 Lydia: He is so bad that, his residency at Columbia. He was a professor of surgery there for 17 years, retired in 2018 as professor emeritus. And finally Columbia decided to cut ties with him in May, 2022 and completely removed his presence from their website. Not Like just saying you're done, you're no longer professor emeritous. Like Like they scrubbed him from Columbia's Web site. Yeah. Yeah, just because of the insane pseudoscience that was he's constantly parroting on the Dr. Oz show. It ran for 13 seasons. I mean, just the amount of opportunities he had to.

0:28:34 Thomas: Gun to my head. I couldn't tell if it's still going or not, but if you told me it was still going, I'd be like, damn

0:28:37 Lydia: It's not it's not he stopped it when when he was running for Senate. Senate. Yeah, he the previous term of administration, he did have a role. He served on the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition as of 2018. When Biden took office, asked him to resign and because he was starting to run for the Senate. So he had said or his administration had said, hey, this is a violation of the Hatch Act if you continue to serve on this council while you are also running for Senate. And Oz refused to resign. And so then Biden just removed him.

0:29:10 Thomas: Good. Take your crudité.

0:29:12 Lydia: He's quite anti -abortion.

0:29:14 Thomas: Turn in your badge and your cruda. Yeah.

0:29:16 Lydia: I think the stuff that is most concerning here is, you Medicare, but also just how opportunistic he is. He is willing to kind of do and say whatever, honestly, it seems, based off of if it's going to yield him money or power or access or media, honestly. So I'm very concerned about that. I'm hoping that maybe Maybe there is an opportunity for him to not get confirmed because he's such a quack.

0:29:46 Thomas: I think RFK junior has a better chance than this guy? RFK jr. Is not a doctor. He's not anything.

0:29:50 Lydia: But I I know. But I feel like,

0:29:55 Thomas: I mean, I'm not saying you're for sure wrong. I'm just very surprised if that.

0:29:59 Lydia: I'm not sure. I'm Not sure. I will say that John Fetterman, you know, obviously had beat Dr. Oz when they're running for Senate. And he has said that, you willing to vote for his confirmation, which

0:30:12 Thomas: Yeah, well, John Fetterman said a lot of fucking stupid shit lately.

0:30:15 Lydia: Know No. And it's it's frustrating based off of like how Oz and his campaign were when Fetterman had his stroke and, you know, pursuing a debate after the fact. They like came out with a list of really sarcastic debate things. But yeah.

0:30:28 Thomas: But who cares about that? That shouldn't factor into the decision of is he fit to run this thing? Fetterment is taking an approach which made sense once upon a time and still honestly like just because of practicality has to make sense somewhat, which is you win the presidency, you get get your staff, you gets to do this.

0:30:45 Thomas: And on some level, that is true. But that's really not a reason for senators to give up their job. Then why would you have Senate confirmation? There's a reason this exists. And the reason is vet these people. And if they're an absolute horse's ass, like many, not all of these, then make noise about it and try to not let them be. Be if if is true that you win the presidency you get your uh you get your picks you get to staff up that's with a background assumption that you're picking actual human beings with any competency if you're picking a bunch of raccoons then no you don't get to do like there's a reason this has to go through confirmation do your job

0:30:56 Lydia: And make sure they're qualified. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, I don't see as much media coverage regarding any conversations he's had with senators. I just saw the Fetterman bit and, you know, some concerns about conflicts of interest. But that's from early December and a lot can happen over the course of the month. So I don' t know exactly where his nomination stands as of this point in time. Right. Right. I have one more for us. And it's the second in command, the and Human Services Deputy Secretary.

0:31:49 Thomas: We'll see vice president wow oh oh which if we remember again we haven't done this deep dive yet but But in some of these weird situations, that person could be in office first because of the Vacancies Act or whatever. Like, who knows? Because of these confirmation thingies.

0:32:11 Lydia: I think I think he is. It might be easier to get him confirmed than RFK, like that. That's possible. But let me tell you a bit about this guy. He a doctor? No.

0:32:23 Thomas: You're asking me? I don't know. I didn't research this.

0:32:24 Lydia: I've just. Yeah.

0:32:25 Thomas: No, I'm just kidding.

0:32:26 Lydia: Is he a doctor? No. Does he teach medicine? No? Is he a scientist in any respect? No, he got his bachelor's in humanities from Yale in 1990. That's it. His name is Jim O'Neill. He is a science and technology investor. He's an advocate of anti-aging medicine. And he is very libertarian. He has experience in health and human services, though. He was the director of the speech and editorial division from 2002 to 2005. And then he served as a senior advisor to the deputy secretary from 2005 to 2007 and says that he was involved in policy formulation in that role, not citing any of the policies that he helped formulate. But he was involved. And then he ended his term in politics with the for Bush, W. Bush, as principal associate deputy secretary from 07 to 08. After that, he left public service and he went over to Clarium Capital, which is a hedge fund by Peter Thiel. And then he went and became a managing director at Mithril Capital, a venture

0:32:26 Thomas: Oh, fucking

0:33:40 Lydia: Capitalist firm co-founded by Peter Thiel. Then, yeah, then he was the CEO of the Thiel Foundation from 2009 to 2012, and he co-founded the Thiel Fellowship. He is a critic of the FDA. He believes that vaccines, drugs are safe. They should just be made available for people. It doesn't matter if they're effective or not. This is a very problematic position to take because often and as we've talked about with people having issues with like puberty blockers and things like that, like there is nothing that doesn't exist without risks. So the question is, do the risks outweigh the benefits? And you can only answer benefits if you know effectiveness.

0:33:40 Thomas: People. He does these Lord of the Rings names for stuff. Doesn't deserve it. Yeah.

0:34:28 Lydia: And so now, you know, we're talking about snake oil salesmen. That would open the door to nonsense, just everything on the market. How would you even navigate that as a consumer? Humor. He element is coming from there, as well as his thoughts on why the health care system is problematic. And he says it's because it's not a free market. And so people are suffering very significant health consequences.

0:34:51 Thomas: That's the problem. Yeah. Yeah, there's not enough free market going on with our health care system.

0:34:55 Lydia: Yeah. If if it was a free market, we would not be suffering as many health consequences as we suffer.

0:35:00 Thomas: Because like all the dead people wouldn't count in the market anymore. It would just after you died, you'd take your business elsewhere, you know, and that would sort it out. It's

0:35:09 Lydia: So he He was considered for the FDA commissioner in Trump's first term. And there were concerns about it when he was mentioned as, you know, potential nomination. Maybe RFK is just even crazier that he might fly in under the radar and get confirmed. I don't know. But he has also been on the board of the Seasteading Institute. Do you remember what that is? It's the floating cities in the ocean to escape democratic governance it's um friedman uh what's his name, Milton Friedman's like grandson or whatever, like they

0:35:47 Thomas: Oh, my God. This sounds like a bit. Are you serious?

0:35:50 Lydia: Serious this guy yeah he's all about anti -aging he wants to float on an island in the Ocean to not be governed by crazy governments.

0:36:01 Lydia: Yeah. And take Peter Thiel with him, I guess.

0:36:04 Thomas: When you don't. This is the problem with white people. When you don't have any real problems, you just invent a bunch that aren't real. Oh, yeah the government is just causing so many problems dude just pay some fucking taxes and drive on your roads and do all the others it's nothing

0:36:18 Lydia: I know. I know. It's always like really rich people. So yeah.

0:36:22 Thomas: The department's standing in the way of his 10 million billionth dollar you know like that's the problem he only has 20 billion and he's 21 billion it's so fucking worthless fun

0:36:27 Lydia: Yeah, all talked a lot about the nominations for some of these key agencies under Health and Human Services, as well as RFK Jr.'s number two, if everything gets lined up. We've talked about what this might mean for some of the agencies like privatizing Medicare, you know, having things on the market that don't do anything, enriching the surgeon general because she owns vitamin supplements as a result. Like, you know, all those things can kind of exist in the same plane of reality. I want to end on is looking at the human impact. And unfortunately, we have a strong idea of what that is because RFK Jr. Jr. and his anti -vaccination conspiracy theories took hold in Samoa and led to a very devastating measles outbreak that horrible amount of children. And so I have a video for us to listen to, to keep that in mind. Yeah, I know. Sorry.

0:37:30 Thomas: Jesus

0:37:36 Clip: There things similar between, say, 1986 and 2019? I have no idea. Okay, I got that. In 1986, one case of measles, and in 37, 2005, zero, 2006, zero. In 2009, zero and in 2019, there were 5 ,707 measles cases. Do you know what happened in 2019? Yeah, I'm aware there was a measles outbreak, but I didn't have anything. You know I have nothing to do with um with people not vaccinated in samoa I never told anybody not to vaccinate I didn't you know go there for any reason to do that one news is a high

0:38:14 Thomas: I look I don't I actually don't know anything about this story but just the fact that this interview is happening If I was getting an interview and someone asked me, hey, do you know how many people died of measles in 2019? I'd be like, God, I have no idea. What does that have to do with anything? He's like, no, I didn't. It's already defensive.

0:38:34 Lydia: I'm like, geez, how many?

0:38:35 Thomas: Look, I, I Didn't, uh, have anything to do With all those people who died. Like, geez. Okay.

0:38:42 Clip: -level anti-vax meeting just before this deadly measles outbreak, a meeting between vaccination critic Robert Kennedy Jr. and anti-vax blogger Taylor Winterstein Publicising her meeting with the high -profile Kennedy as profoundly monumental for her movement. This so -called anti -vaxxer Edwin Tamaseze, he had promoted the use of vitamin C to cure the disease. During the country's two -day mass measles vaccination drive last week, he posted, I'll be here to mop up your mess, enjoy your killing sprees, but the government is fighting back. Edwin Tamaseze is now under arrest charged with incitement against a government.

0:39:13 Thomas: These idiots are so fucking dumb. Um,

0:39:29 Lydia: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had nothing to do with it except he continues to promote these conspiracy theories um yeah I mean like numbers speak for themselves like he doesn't have to be solely responsible for this to have played a part in this

0:39:34 Thomas: Of a coincidence. Yeah. What happens with this kind of stuff is again, you talked about it. Vaccines are sort of a victim of their own success. So you can come here in America where, you know, largely speaking, we eradicate a lot of things. And then just in general, like the public health is pretty good, you know? And so it's like, you can have all these shitty anti-scientific and dangerous beliefs, but you don't really see the consequences of it. And then you go somewhere else where the variables are a little more isolated and it's like oh no directly these bad ideas killed a bunch of people in very quickly jeez

0:40:17 Lydia: Yeah, three and a half months from what I understand um 83 people died and um 2 000 were admitted to the hospital because their their cases were so bad. What we need to keep trying to ring bells for and back against. And

0:40:33 Thomas: Like it should be a pretty easy case to make at the confirmation hearings to me but uh yeah

0:40:34 Lydia: I So. I wrong. I really do. McConnell wasn't up in arms until So RFK Jr. started coming from the polio vaccine, but maybe he's relaxed on that a little bit, RFK, to kind of appease Mitch McConnell. And Yeah, yeah, know truth doesn't happen in confirmation hearings anyway. So we've seen that with Supreme Court justices.

0:40:50 Thomas: He'll say whatever bullshit he so slimy yeah Yeah. I mean it is a different thing but yeah I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that kind of approach not

0:41:04 Lydia: Yeah, but we'll see. So that's... that's our health and human services overview. Got some doozies, some real doozys.

0:41:10 Thomas: Good not good we're in for a major do this country is going to be a doozy after these people are done with it

0:41:17 Lydia: And if you want to check out any other doozies that we've talked about, we've covered a lot on opening arguments. So go over and check that out. And I still have some other areas I'll be tackling. Stay tuned and I'll make it work.

0:41:54 Thomas: Cut everything I said. Cut everything I say.