Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #186: Prescription for Truth: The Hidden Side of Pharmaceuticals

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Episode #186: Prescription for Truth: The Hidden Side of Pharmaceuticals · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: 2015 study found that emergency and pediatric doctors correctly identify medications with black box warnings only 36% of the time.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: So they just really don't know.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: And only 13% of those doctors could recall the specific details of those warnings.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it, you know, it means that these high-risk drugs are being prescribed without doctors or patients fully understanding their dangers.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, everybody.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Stina McCullough.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I'm accompanied by our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Joel, today we have a fascinating program.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to discuss this topic with my good friend.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have Sheremy Ty on the program today.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Cheremy is a health journalist and a registered nurse.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's passionate about stories that connect health with our food.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: She's a Johns Hopkins trained nurse.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: She lives in Vermont with her family.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And she says she's guided by faith.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: She celebrates the beauty of living simply and well.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Cher is a solid researcher.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's an amazing storyteller.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And she is my good friend.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cher, welcome to the program.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Sena.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm happy to be here.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: That was quite the introduction.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So my first question is you went from nursing to journalism.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what inspired that transition?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you think your background in healthcare has shaped the way that you investigate and report on stories, particularly pharmaceutical issues, which is what I'd love to chat about today?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thanks.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, um my journey to writing started long before becoming a nurse.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um I got my undergraduate degree at Middlebury College, where I got a degree in political science and I minored in English.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Middlebury is a very writing-intensive school.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was there that I sort of really began to hone my love for writing in words and storytelling and all of that.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, after leaving Middlebury, I went to Johns Hopkins and got a degree in nursing.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: And over the past 20 years, I've worked in various capacities of nursing.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: I've been a PACU nurse, like that's the recovery room.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I have worked in nurse management, I've been a school nurse, and I've been a hospice nurse.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: I've done a lot of nursing.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, early on in my, even in my training at um nursing school, I began to sort of see this rigidity in um healthcare and in medicine that was very interesting to me.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's very much a hierarchy.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so I remember being in nursing school and seeing how, like, you know, the doctors would rank.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember also being a nursing student and, you know, this feeling like like the nurses eat their young was familiar to me in the sense that you really um, the more the longer you were in the field, the more you knew theoretically.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: And as a new nurse, I was so curious, but I remember feeling like this skepticism.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like I was naive if I asked these big questions.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: I remember sitting in my pharmaceutical class and thinking, well, are is this the is this the only way to treat high blood pressure?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: Or is this the only way to treat cholesterol?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, why aren't I take a nutrition class in nursing school and it wasn't required?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: It was just, here's the pharmaceuticals, memorize them.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um anyway, fast forward, and my youngest child was a toddler, and I just began to be getting not feeling well.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: I was having symptoms of like dizziness, neurological stuff.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: And at the time I had returned back to work, my my baby was just four months old.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: I was trying to breastfeed.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: I was like trying to be a full-time mom and a full-time nurse manager.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I just began getting really sick.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, just neurological things, things like that.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I stepped back from work.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: I took a medical leave and um I started writing while I was on my leave because it was just something that I could do while I was sitting there.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: I began writing for Mothering Magazine and I began really exploring some of the natural sides of um parenting and things like that, which was already a big passion of mine.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then from there, I just sort of have grown my writing career.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it was a natural transition for me because I feel like I understand the medical industry quite well from working in it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and now I'm able to combine my passion for healthcare and nursing into this one thing.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: So about two years ago, I began health journalism with the Epoch Times.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that's been a really amazing transition for me because now I'm able to really investigate and look into a lot of these questions that I've had over the last 20 years, like things that I knew were not quite right.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but you know, the problem with healthcare is there's many problems with healthcare, but one of the problems with healthcare is everybody is so busy.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: So when I'm handing out these medications to my students as a school nurse, intuitively I know it's not right.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, or that there's gotta be a better way for some of these medications, but you're just you think about it and then you move on because the next emergency is in front of you.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: There's no time to really delve in.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so now I feel like I'm so blessed to work in health journalism because I can investigate some of these things.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I feel like now I'm helping many, many more people than I ever did in my 20-year career at the bedside because I'm able to bring information forward to many more people instead of just trying to troubleshoot in the moment.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Cher, that's such a such a profound.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want, I don't want our listeners to miss that idea that you just mentioned about just being so busy, you're on to the next thing.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, this this is what this is what the manual says.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is what the manual says.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: You just do it and you just go on to the next thing, and there's not enough time to sit and think.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you, um in farming, I I see the same thing.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's um uh you know, why do farmers use chemicals and and indeed whatever uh you know 80% of all medications, uh pharmaceuticals in the US are administered to livestock, not people.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So as bad as you think it is in people, it's it's just as bad or worse in livestock.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: But again, uh, you know, I get well, what do you do about this?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you um you you'd be amazed what you learn when you sit on a five-gallon bucket and just observe, you know.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: One of one of uh my friends in in in our you know, pastured livestock movement, Ian Mitchell Enns from South Africa, he says, and when he be uh asked when people ask him questions, uh he says, Well, you you get a you get a case of beer and you go out with the cow, with the cattle, he says, with the cattle, South Africa, and you and you sit with the cattle and you drink all beers, and that makes you take long enough to observe the cattle.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure that would be allowed in the hospital, but I love that idea.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, it it it it's such a wonderful, you know, you can just see it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: It it's such a wonderful uh thought.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh and and your your rendition of that reminds me so much of of farmers I know who who just, you know, busy, convenient, you know, it it's on the shelf, and we just you know, just and and nobody sits and and observes.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I want to make sure our folks caught that, that um that the health practitioner community is actually a lot like we are, you know, you're you're you're grabbing something easy for the kids, you know, for their school lunch or whatever.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and and we just man, our our harried, hurried, frenzied, frenetic life um in this in this world now, it just goes so fast that nobody nobody sits and takes time to observe and and uh you know sit on a five-gallon bucket and think.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: I like that perspective because it's really easy.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: As I was sort of thinking about our conversation today, it's so easy to vilify healthcare and pharmaceuticals and things in general, but I've rarely, rarely worked with a health practitioner that didn't come from a good place.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so I really like that you're making that point because I think in this world, because exactly like you said, we are so go, go, go, you know, intuitively we know some of these things, but we don't slow down enough.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: And not because we don't even want to, but the healthcare, you know, the hospital is busy or the schools are busy, and you just have to move on to the next thing.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we don't stop and think, but I really I resonate with what you just said.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: And it's interesting to see the parallel.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's also so important.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's why it's so important for us to have good health journalists like you, Cher, that are bringing out these balanced opinions and boots on the ground perceptions and insights.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's also why I'm grateful that Joel joins me on this podcast so that we, because we take the time and sit down and think about what's going on and then share our thoughts.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: We need more people doing that around the globe.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Cher, now that you've had the time to sit and really think about the pharmaceutical, the medical industry, what are some of the most eye-opening or maybe shocking realizations that you've you've uncovered or you've you've realized?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, the most shocking thing I've uncovered is how many people are suffering from pharmaceutical injuries and how little recognition they get.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: So the pharmaceutical industry is enormous, as we know.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: I believe, and don't quote me on this, but it's like a$600 billion industry.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's projected to pass a trillion by 2033.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a massive, massive industry.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it shouldn't surprise us given how many people are taking pharmaceuticals, that there are many adverse reactions or injuries, but I think we don't really recognize them, you know, um, as much as they're out there.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I've written a few stories about particular drugs.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that I do when I'm reading the, when I'm researching those stories is I go into the, it's called the um the FAIRS, F-A-E-R-S.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's the FDA's adverse event reporting system database.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: And this database became public um so that anybody could go in there and search um adverse events that people report.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: I was really blown away by the number of adverse reactions to drugs that were reported.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we know for from research that those uh medications tend to, those adverse events tend to be under-reported.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: So we are seeing a huge amount of adverse events, but we're only touching the iceberg of really what's probably there.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: Most people don't even know this system exists.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: And most people aren't reporting, you know, small side effects, right?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: So um in 2017, which is the most recent data I could find, the FDA received over 1.8 million new adverse event reports.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and the total number of reports now exceeds 16 million.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I think that in and of itself is shocking.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: But what's even more shocking, or I guess more, you know, upsetting for some of these people, is when I've interviewed people who have made reports into the system, they don't feel like people understand them or fully believe them.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they use the word gas lit a lot.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: They're told their symptoms aren't real, that they're not connected to the drug.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I saw this firsthand when I covered um the topic of fluoroquinolines.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: So fluoroquinoline is an antibiotic that's given, it's um given for various things, but like urinary tract infections, respiratory infections.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's a very strong drug.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: And they've recently found that, well, not recently, over the last couple of decades, people were reporting neurological symptoms and tendon rupture.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: So people were taking this antibiotic and all of a sudden their Achilles tendon just burst, and they've never had tendon problems in their lives.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so people, you know, are beginning to report these.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: And um I think, you know, I think I'm going on a little bit, but I I'm very surprised at the number of pharmaceutical reactions there are and reports.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm really curious how many more there really are, since I don't think many people know to even utilize this system.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have do you have a sense?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you were if if you were going to um to give a percentage of the adverse reaction reporting, I mean, obviously you don't think it's 50%.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you think it's 20%, 10%?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh by I mean, you're throwing out some big numbers there, 16 million um uh you know, cumul cumulative cumulative.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, what does that represent?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in your in your opinion.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Just just yeah.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like I remember it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's definitely under 10%, if I remember that the people who report it.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like it could be one to two percent.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'd have to go back and pull those numbers, but they are very low.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, there's a similar database for vaccines.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the FAIRS is the FDA reporting system for um medications, and then VARS is the vaccine adverse event reporting system.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that is a similar problem.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: People don't know to report them.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the database, as is a as is the case with many government um, you know, run initiatives, is sort of poorly constructed.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, for example, you know, I know that the class is fluoroquinolins, and what falls under that is cipro and many other drugs.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: But when you report this um drug adverse reaction, there's so many different ways to report it as well.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: Are you reporting it as fluoroquinoline?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Are you reporting it as cipro?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, are we using the generic name?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: So, and there isn't really a great way to um see all of these reactions.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um I guess the best way to say it.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: There's not one way to collate them all because of the drugs having different names and different doses.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so some one person might report it one way and another person might report it another way, you know.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: So it's interesting.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is is the reporting by individuals or through a doctor?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: It can be either, but it's generally reported by individuals.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I will say that I do think a lot of the reporting is going up recently because social media has really allowed for much more communication about these issues.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: So if your tendon ruptured after taking a fluoroquinoline, you might think it's just a crazy coincidence.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm sick, my body's run down.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, this happened.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: But now that social media is out there, um, people are really starting to talk about these things.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so, for example, on the fluoroquinoline um article, um, like a lot of Facebook groups are popping up about these adverse reactions.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so the, I believe the fluoroquinaline group has like a, there's a fluoroquinoline group on Facebook.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: People who have had adverse reactions, it has over a hundred thousand people in that group.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so people will go and join this group because they're having an adverse reaction, and then you'll see people on that site be like, you know, oh, okay, have you reported this?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: There's like a lot more guidance from person to person to report some of these reactions.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we call this the the this is the uberization.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is the uberization of healthcare.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Where the the um the internet democratizes the ability of information spread so that you bring back the the village voice of 500 years ago.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: That that that's how they knew, that's how they knew who the good shoemaker was, you know, who the who the good uh uh you know practic uh skilled, you know, uh craftsman, plumber, whatever, potter.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it it spreads by word of mouth.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and until and as as we as we industrialized, we ran ahead then of the village voice without a commensurate uh way to industrialize our our conversation.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, now social media, the internet has caught up with the industrialization of healthcare, of of everything, and and has get and has returned the village voice to the people um to be able to democ democratize the information.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: I call it uberizing, you know, um uberizing everything.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the reason Uber works without any government oversight is because of real-time accountability.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can you can rate your driver, you can rate your rider, and if you're a if you're a problem writer, nobody picks you up, and if you're a problem driver, nobody wants to get in your car.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it self-regulates due to the accountability of the villa of the real-time village, village voice, which becomes a self-auditing.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fascinated by this this um social media uh influence.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this this this is what's this is what enables um the powerless to join the conversation.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's right.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: And beyond just the utilization of sharing of this information, it sadly has become, or well, not sadly, oh, it's a wonderful thing, but sadly that our society has come to this, it's become such a source of support for so many people, right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: So you feel so isolated when you experience an adverse reaction and no one really understands what's going on.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: And now you go to these social media sites and all of a sudden you have, you know, 20 other people who are like, oh my gosh, I had the same problem happen and I'm so sorry this happened to you.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: And it also becomes a form of therapy and support beyond what you can get.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: And most of these people are feeling really desperate and alone and unheard, you know, like they will have an adverse reaction and they'll go back to their doctor and they're like, I had this and this and this.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: And the doctor will often, you know, and again, not because the doctor doesn't care, but because they may not be aware.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: They're treating so many different things and so many different people.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a lot to keep up with the information.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: And the doctor will say, Well, you know, I don't necessarily think that it was caused by the drug.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: It could be caused by this, this, or this.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: And now these people have a community to go back to because it can be very isolating when you have one of these reactions to feel like you're heard and understood.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what some of these online community communities provide.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the floor quinoline is a great example.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: Also, Miralax for children.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really big um drug that has caused, that has many people have said have caused a lot of problems.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: So most people don't know this, but Miralax, which is used for constipation in children, in humans, um, is not FDA approved for kids under the age of 17.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: However, it is very widely given to children and kids under the age of 17.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of parents began um noticing that their kids were having behavioral issues that they didn't have before taking the Marillax.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: So a child would begin on Marillax because they were constipated, and they would all of a sudden um be in school and they would be having a lot of behaviors that the school would label as, you know, attention deficit or um, you know, just behavioral issues.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, many, many parents began coming forward and saying, there is something in this drug that's making my child was, you know, would go to school and would follow the rules and would do well and would get good grades, and all of a sudden they're throwing their paper on the floor and they're violent and they're pushing their peers and things like that.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: And as it turns out, um, there's an ingredient in Miralax called PEG 3350 that some people believe, um, and there is research to support this, that PEG 3350 produces some neurological problems.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's another Facebook group for parents who have suffered whose children have suffered from this Miralax um side effects.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: But what's so crazy is they began reporting all of this to the FDA, to the to the FDA um reporting system that I just discussed.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: And the FDA decided, okay, yeah, we've gotten it, and they got some petitions from some groups, and they said, okay, we're gonna look into this.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: We're seeing that there is quite a bit of reports here.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: So the FDA gave a substantial amount of money over the last 10 years, around a million dollars to CHOP, which is the Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania, to study Miralax.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the um study began in 2014.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: So we are now in 2025.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously 11 years later, that report, that research has never been completed.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's no reports.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know where that million dollars has been spent.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: And parents are, you know, they're worried about their kids who have had many, many side effects.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just, I, you know, I can't, I tried as a health journalist to contact Chop and the two researchers and say, hey, what's going on?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: You you got, you know, a million dollars from our federal funds.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: Where are we at with this study?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: And CHOP refused to answer any questions.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, people are really left with no answers.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: And even if the government is responding and offering funds to study issues, I can't figure out why 11 years later we still don't have any direction for these families.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Cher, this really resonates with me because when my oldest son, he's now 15, but when he was like around between the age of one and two, one of his first symptoms was chronic, excruciatingly painful constipation.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the pediatrician um prescribed Miralax or, you know, recommended we go get the mirror.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to the store, I got the mirror's, I looked at the back, I read the ingredient label, and I said, there's no way I'm giving this to my son.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like there has to be a different way.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So then I started telling my friends, hey, this is what the doctor recommended.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look at this, isn't this crazy?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I kid you not, about half of all my friends at the time were giving their small children Mirlax for chronic constipation.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was floored.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody had said anything.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I there's no way I would have known that until I brought it up and they said it.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, this is crazy that this is so widely being used in these young children.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about children under the age of five.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they're all having this chronic constipation.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's excruciatingly painful for them.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're crying out loud as they're trying to have a bowel movement.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the solution was the mirror.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in my case, that ended up, you know, being uh that was not a solution for us.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: We did not go that route.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this was uh actually one of the earlier signs that he had autism and other things, you know, other conditions.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, grateful that I didn't just take the mirror.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: But this brings up another seemingly not every mom has a has a PhD in biochemistry either.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you you had a you had a little privileged, privileged uh head start there.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, I yes, I did have a little privilege there, but that worked to my favor.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: I tell my son nowadays, you should be thanking me.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's right.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's 15.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's not at that point yet.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like but um, but but Cher, this brings up another question in my mind.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we hear we hear some of the rumored interactions between medical doctors and pharmaceutical companies.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, um, that the physicians rely on drug reps, uh, medical journals, andor continuing education courses that are sponsored by these pharma companies.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: Is that true?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that definitely used to be true.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: We have certainly moved away from that.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, at least in Vermont where I live, the physicians are not allowed.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: I believe it's called the Sunshine Act or something like that.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: The physicians are not allowed here in Vermont to receive things like we used to.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: But back in the day, certainly, there would be huge luncheons in the office.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: There would be um lots of funding that went to physicians directly.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: I do believe that the far that the medical industry is receiving those funds in just different ways than where it's not as blatant anymore.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it is true that I believe it's 70% of all research done, pharmaceutical research done is sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it is true that that the vast majority of the research being done on symptoms or diseases or things like that are being sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry because they're the ones who have the money to sponsor it.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there is not money to ask if a salad is going to help, you know, cure a disease.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um, you know, with the Miralax situation, it's again as circling back to how we even started this conversation in the beginning is I don't think that physicians are, you know, wanting to cause harm to these children.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: They have a very short amount of time to meet with these kids.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And Miralax, we know it works.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the problem with a lot of these drugs.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: The same thing with the fluoroquinolines.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: We know they work.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: They work for that one particular issue, um, but they may cause many, many, many other issues.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I was always, when I was researching this Miralax story, I was really blown away by the fact that most people who I spoke with for the article never received any nutritional counseling or any lifestyle interventions.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's not to say that that would fix the problem for some of these children.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's obviously some underlying issues, but very, very few people, other than, you know, your child needs to increase their water intake, maybe.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: But um I think our chronic constipation in children is a very big chronic problem right now.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: And we're not getting to the root cause.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's the problem.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: We can throw Miralax at it and it will work temporarily, but what other problems are we causing?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Our biggest our biggest constipation problem is constipation of imagination.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, sir.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's you joke, but it's all linked to stagnation of our minds and our bodies and not moving, and children sitting more and more in front of their devices and not getting out on the land.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, it all this perpetual cycle that feeds each other.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: And you have children sitting in a classroom, not moving all day, and we wonder why our children are constipated.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, our bodies are meant to move.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot that goes into it.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's not, that's not the one cause, but there's so many things that are contributing, and we're not willing as a society to, you know, stop and take a hard look at our lives.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and in terms of the of the doctors, I was just thinking about this as you were speaking.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the did you say about 70% of the studies are likely funded by the pharmaceutical industry?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there's going to be most likely some inherent bias in those study results.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: So even if the doctors paused and started to do the research to look into what is the research saying about X, you know, drug and what is it saying about Y drug?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's already going to be some bias that they're up against, right?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was thinking, how many different pharmaceuticals do they learn about?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And did you learn about in nursing school or them in medical school?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So to think like, are there hundreds of them?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Are we talking thousands?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because how would you possibly sit down and look at all of those for yourself and realize, like, and take a real hard look and say, what do I think about this one medication?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do I feel good about prescribing this one?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are the potential side effects?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let me analyze all the studies, like something that you and I may do now when we're looking at um as like as a health journalist, when you're looking at this.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is this an unrealistic expectation to assume that a medical doctor can achieve?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely unrealistic.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: There's no room in their lives to research the amount of medications that come out each and every year.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, like we just said, 70% of clinical trials are funded by the industry.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: And the industry controls how these studies are structured.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: And um, if they, for example, if there's a negative trial result, they can bury those um results and they're never published.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so um, you know, I think that, you know, by the time a drug even reaches the market, there may already be risks that are being downplayed.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then even after, you know, there's approval, you know, these pharmaceutical companies sort of control the narrative.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: And it's so easy to blame the physician for handing out a medication, but they don't have the time.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: I remember speaking with a doctor to tell me that when he was in medical school, he remembered reciting or memorizing the vaccination schedule.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: And he was just like, I did not take one nutrition class.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't learn about, you know, all of the things that go into this.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: But he he said, I remember sitting there and trying to memorize this um vaccination schedule.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought to myself, isn't this going to change over the next five or 10 years?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like they're just right from medical school.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like it's sort of stacked against the odds of any health practitioner, not just doctors, you know.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I remember I had an entire course on pharmacology in nursing school.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember having to try to memorize, you know, what are the anecdotes to this particular drug?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: And you there's no way you can stay on top of it all.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's an unrealistic expectation and just uh for me, it's just another um indicator that the system is not sustainable.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and, you know, I've said on this program before that one of the reasons why the sicknesses that I had perpetuated was because I had a misplaced expectation on medical doctors and our modern healthcare system.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I expected it to be something that it's not.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as these things are becoming revealed, like you are on this interview, I think more and more people are coming to that conclusion that we have expected it to be something that it's not.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's an empowering thing, right?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because now you can say, okay, so that's not what it was.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna stop putting so much effort into that and I'm gonna find other solutions.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like we talked about more holistic solutions.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: One story that I'd love for you to share is one that you've been doing a lot of research with, and that is the black box.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us about the black box?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: So um the so drugs have some, some some drugs have something called a black box warning.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's named a black box warning because on the pamphlet, or that, you know, those very big pharmaceutical um, you know, pullouts that you get with your drug at the top is a warning that's that's sort of um surrounded by a black box.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's where the name came from.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: They were first introduced in 1979.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's the FDA's strongest safety warning indicating that a drug carries serious or life-threatening risks.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the first one was put out for an antibiotic that was linked to a rare but fatal um blood disorder.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the latest numbers I could find that there are about 400 drugs right now with black box warnings, covering a range of conditions and drugs from antibiotics to antidepressants.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: And they're drugs that you and I have all heard of.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: So the latest craze of the semiglutide, which is Ozempic and Wagovi, that has a black box warning for thyroid cancers.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: Umulair, which many, many people take for seasonal allergies, has a black box warning for mental health and suicide problems.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, many of the SSRIs, which are given for anxiety and depression, have a black box warning for increased risks of suicide.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Acutane, a very popular drug that parents give their teenagers for acne, has has a black box warning.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then as we talked about the fluoroquinolines like Cypro and things like that, um, have actually they've had four or five updates to their black box warning that include tendon rupture, neurological problems, things like that.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um the problem with black box warnings, uh, the intention is good.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: So enough people reported that these particular drugs were causing side effects, and the FDA responds by saying, we're gonna put a warning on this drug.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: And this warning is going to alert people, physicians and pharmacists, that sort of like a pause, take a pause.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: This is not to say the drug necessarily needs to be pulled from the market because there may be some people who really do need some of these drugs.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: But it's meant to cause pause and let the doctor know we should let the patient know the possible side effects.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where we um get into problems.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: Many of the doctors have no idea that there are black box warnings on any of these drugs because they don't necessarily, just like a doctor won't see the bottle of pills they're giving you because it's sent to the pharmacy and the pharmacist fills it, they don't see the big handouts that they open up.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: They don't know.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's no one communication system for physicians to know that a drug has a black box warning.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: So what we rely upon most in hospitals or doctors' offices is when you're putting it into the EMR, the electronic medical record, when a doctor's putting an order in, something, an alert will pop up and say, Heads up, you know, flashing light, this drug has a potential dangerous side effect.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: My experience and what I've heard from many physicians is we are sort of click fatigued, right?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: We click on so much in these medical records that they tend to just, oh, yeah, okay, okay, okay, oh yep, there's a warning, okay, no problem.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: And they move on.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: So what's happening with black box warnings is the responsibility is sort of shifting all over the place, right?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: The doctors are thinking, well, well, if they even know about the drug, that there's a black box warning.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: We're assuming that the pharmacist is going to alert the patient.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: The pharmacist might be assuming, well, the doctor wouldn't prescribe it if they didn't think it was necessary, right?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the pharmacist doesn't have a time to call the doctor and say, hey, did you know there's a black box warning?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like, are you sure this is the drug you want to give?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and the patient is just assuming no one's going to give them something that could be dangerous.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: So these black box warnings, you know, despite the serious risks, patients often don't even know that they're taking a black box warning drug.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're buried in these long inserts, as we talked about.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, um a 2015 study found that emergency and pediatric doctors correctly identify medications with black box warnings only 36% of the time.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: So they just really don't know.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: And only 13% of those doctors could recall the specific details of those warnings.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: So it, you know, it means that these high-risk drugs are being prescribed without doctors or patients fully understanding their dangers.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, another interesting thing about black box warnings, they're a double-edged I've got I've got to interrupt, right?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's just so amazing that that something that that can have those kinds of life-altering side effects can be treated so cavalierly, um, so cavalierly within the medical community, it it you know, as a farmer, um where we wouldn't it be cool if we could put a black box on a homemade chicken pot pie.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: So if a person wanted to come to my house and I make a chicken pot pie for them from my kitchen, I can put a black box on it and say, now this hasn't been government inspected, you know, it could it could kill you, eat at your own risk.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the but but the the food community, the the food industry does not allow anything anywhere close to that.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't, you can't uh anyway, it doesn't allow anything close to that.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: And here we are in a medical community uh with this with this little you know, this little uh kind of a uh well, you know you know, cap, okay, we've done it, we've done our due diligence.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: We've you know we've put the black box on.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um now go ahead and play.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and so so that's where we are in the health.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm just struck by the I don't know, the the protocol philosophical policy difference uh between the food and between the pharmaceutical in this respect.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good point.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've never I've never heard it or thought of it or seen it.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Brand new thought, everybody.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: So you'd not heard of black box warnings.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I'm aware of them, but the way you describe it, yeah, um, that that it's it's essentially um uh I mean we we we tried years ago to get Virginia to allow people to buy, uh I'll be stuck on a chicken pot pie.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, uh a chicken pot pie that's that uh doesn't come through an inspected licensed, you know, government approved kitchen.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um where all of our where everybody that bought one had to sign a waiver, a waiver of understanding.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: This has not been government inspected, you know, it blah blah blah.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh your voluntary uh consenting adult exercising freedom of choice, you know, da-da-da.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and we couldn't we couldn't even get a step uh in that they just laughed us out of the out of the General Assembly on that.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I would submit that your chances of being life life threatened by a homemade chicken pot pie are far less than being life-threatened by something that came out of a Merck Lab.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I the problem with these black block box drugs is you know, the intention in the beginning was great, but as time has gone by, in my opinion, the research that I did, many of these black box drugs are just acting as a legal shield.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: They're not, they're not serving their intended purpose to protect patients, right?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because what happens is when a company, when a drug gets a black box warning, it's a double-edged sword for a pharmaceutical company because when a drug has a black box warning, you can no longer advertise that drug direct to consumer on TV.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: And these pharmaceutical companies, as you know, if you've ever watched the evening news, you know, get a lot of their um funding and people interested in these drugs from from direct to patient, direct to consumer um advertising.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: So they're no longer allowed to advertise.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: But what happens on the flip side is their um legal liability goes down, right?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: So with a black box warning in place, these drug companies can argue, well, we disclose the risks, right?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: So now it's not our responsibility anymore.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: So they're sort of shielded.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: These manufacturers are now shielded to a degree because they've done their due diligence of warning people.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then what happens is that burden falls to the physician, right?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: And the physician now needs to communicate this to people.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_03: And as we just discussed, they might not know about it.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: So that may not happen.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so what's interesting, and what one um person that I interviewed told me is that there are entire law firms now who are focused on getting black box warnings on drugs, because then people can sue the physician for you know malpractice or not or not disclosing these particular side effects, if that makes sense.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: So people now can, if there's a black box warning and the physician didn't do their job, then you know, once this warning's in place, it sort of strengths strengthens lawsuits against doctors who failed to disclose the risk.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: And we're getting right back to Cena's point here.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: The physicians are sort of set up for failure.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: How are they supposed to know that these exist?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's also there's one other piece of this.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: There, at least from um a medical perspective, what some of the physicians have shared with me is sort of the pendulum swings the other way.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, um sometimes these black box warnings make things worse.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like in 2004, the FDA added a black box warning to SSRI.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: So antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft, uh, Lexapro, uh, due to studies that they were increasing the risk of suicidal thoughts in in young adults.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: Research is now coming out that what Happened is um suicide deaths and other psychotropic drugs actually went up after this happened because physicians were now afraid to prescribe these drugs.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: So they stopped prescribing the drugs.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: And these people, because we don't have a system that supports mental health in a way that, you know, anything outside of drugs is very difficult to come by.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, we we sort of took the one tool away in this instance that doctors had in their short amount of time, like prescribing a pill is the quickest thing they can do.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so some research argue that these black, like at least for SSRIs, that these warnings cause more harm than good and that the risks were overstated.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, in my opinion, sort of, and and in other people's opinions who I've interviewed, this black box system is is broken.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, some of the high-risk drugs don't get them.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, others get them, and now we've created different problems.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think the other interesting thing about this is that many of these warnings arrive really late.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: So there was a study done in 2024 that found that 80% of black box warnings come post-marketing studies, meaning that the risks weren't known until millions of people took these drugs.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, it's um I guess the question is sort of if if a drug is dangerous enough to require a black box warning, really, should it should it be on the market?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I don't know.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know the answer to that.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I but certainly some people yeah.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: If if a black box keeps it for being on advertised on TV, Ozimpic is certainly advertised on TV.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know that it is.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen you have seen it?
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: You've seen it oh yeah, last night.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I wasn't aware of that, but um as far as I was told, and as far as I'm aware, you can't do direct-to-consumer advertising with a drug with black box warnings.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll look into that.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I think what it really all comes down to, well, there's a lot of things it comes down to, but one of the biggest issues is informed consent.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the thing that I have heard from the patients who have suffered from miralax problems, from fluoroquinolines, from anything.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: Most of them just did not know, right?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think that we need to be able to communicate these things to the patient and let the person decide is the risk worth taking?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's not that we should not be offering these drugs completely, probably, but I think most people would have preferred to know.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, if I knew my tendons were going to go crazy, I might have asked for a different antibiotic, you know?
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think, you know, for patients, we really need to educate them.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: People need to know.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: Whenever they get a prescription, they should be opening up the pamphlet.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_03: Is there a black box on here?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, asking their doctor, you can go online, everything's accessible online, and ask sort of why is this drug being prescribed?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: What are the risks?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I think most importantly, is there a safer alternative?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the doctor may not know the answer to that.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: You might need, as you just noted to us, that you might need to find out if there's a safer alternative.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: We have to become our own doctors, sadly.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, you the the um yeah, the safer alternative might be completely outside the system.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some homeopathic thing, some uh um you know, herbal, herbal concoction, whatever.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: But um when I was thinking about this today, about just this whole discussion in general, and I was thinking through my career of all the drugs I've given and all of the medication I've given.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: And the place where I felt most comfortable giving medication that felt so appropriate was as a hospice nurse.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: And we these patients basically, you know, let's say a patient has cancer, they stopped taking almost all on hospice, almost all of their drugs, they stopped taking their chemo, they stopped taking all of these things.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: And what we're left with is just a couple of emergency drugs to keep people comfortable.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it's almost as though less is more at this point in someone's life.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and what I found, which is so interesting, is that when a lot of these patients come off their multitude of drugs, this whole concoction of drugs, they start to feel better, even in their last days.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: They're not taking like 7,000 different drugs.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's important for your listeners to know too that these drugs may be studied.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: Again, as we know, they might be studied mostly by the pharmaceutical industry, but these drugs are never studied in conjunction, very rarely studied in conjunction with one another, right?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, what is the blood pressure pill doing with the cholesterol pill, with the increasing your stomach acid pill?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: We just literally don't know what all of these things are doing together.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're never studied as a cocktail.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's the same, that's the same problem with herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizer, all the chemicals used in agriculture, they're all tested singularly and never as a cocktail.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: But farmers never apply them singularly, they're always uh paired, paired and tripled up because you know, you're trying to do a one-pass thing.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we get we'll get the bugs, the weeds, and the, you know, uh uh stimulate the plants all at the same pass.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't want to make three passes.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're constantly put together as a cocktail, but they're never never the ecological consequences are never studied as a cocktail.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Cher, I'm reminded of um when my mom got really sick, you know, and the hospital said she's gonna die tonight.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: You got to fly out here.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I flew out there, and luckily she did not die that night.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I looked at her medication, her long list of medications she was on, because at this point I wasn't um invited to help her in her healing journey yet.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: She was on 15 different medications, and it was, I just started looking them up and looking at all the side effects, and I was like figuring out biochemically what the possible interactions might be.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was checking one off the list after the next, and I was telling her doctor, this one is going to interact with this because of this, and we've got to get her off this.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And because in my situation, it was a little different because I had medical power of attorney.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I could do that and make the decision for her because she was delirious at that time.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was probably from the drugs.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly my point is that once we started getting her off these drugs, I mean, she couldn't make a decision.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: She, the nurse would come in, okay, do you want this to eat or this to eat?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't decide.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like she was just gone.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone was like, you know, let her go, kind of a put her out of her misery thing.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that's ridiculous.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is all reversible.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we got the first thing I did was get her off of those medications.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: I could not control her food because she was in the hospital.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they wouldn't let me bring food in and any of that.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was slipping food to her.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, you need a whole separate podcast on what we feed patients in the hospital.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you that.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's a nightmare.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is a nightmare.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyhow, um, long story short, I get her off a certain amount of medications, like fairly quickly, and she starts coming too, and she can start responding now and speak to us.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was incredible what these different medications were doing.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was, it was almost like she was in a coma.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: She practically should have just been in a coma because she was so unresponsive, so unaware of anything that had been going on around her.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was, it was one of the most shocking experiences I had ever been in because no one was there to advocate for her.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Her husband was also in the emergency room at the same time, different room, couldn't speak for her.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, luckily, I got there in time before they killed her and was able to start being a voice for her.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: But not everybody has that.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: No, and you think it reminds me of all of the people who died unnecessarily or alone during COVID.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't have advocates in the hospital.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Your mom was very, very lucky to have you to come speak for her.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: But that is the problem with what we did when we restricted people from going into these hospitals and nursing homes.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: People lost their voice.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so you start to respond to a drug in one particular way.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then I mean, you that story that you tell about your mom is just literally what I saw for all of my career in nursing, right?
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_03: You see somebody start to have um, you know, what we use call in the healthcare industry, sundowning.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: As the sun starts to go down, sometimes these neurological things come up and people start to hallucinate.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so now we've got to give them a drug because we've got to keep them quiet.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: And before you know it, it's this whole concoction.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I'm sorry that happened to your mom.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm really sorry that this is like such a common experience for so many people.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because there's so many questions I want to ask you.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're getting short on time, but I will be remiss if I don't ask this question.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how much influence do you think the pharmaceutical companies really have over our regulatory agencies?
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's just a whole podcast on that.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oh that's a whole other podcast.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: But I will say that, you know, um the revolving door between pharma and the FDA is so disturbing.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: I hope that, you know, things are going to start to shift.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: But many FDA officials um later work for pharmaceutical companies, creating these major conflicts of interest.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: So there's this pattern.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: So someone will work at the FDA and they will learn the ins and outs of overseeing this drug approval company, uh, drug approval uh process.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: So they learn how these drugs get approved.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: They leave the FDA and they take a high-paying job in these um pharmaceutical companies and they use their insider knowledge and connections to help the companies navigate this regulatory process.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then the cycle continues, reinforcing this industry influence over the agency.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, um, I believe it was Scott uh Gottlieb, he was a former FDA commissioner, and then he later joined the board of Pfizer, which is one of the world's biggest manufacturing companies.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, um I really until we can separate out the conflicts of interests, there's no hope in my mind, in terms of really getting to the root cause of all of this.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the pharmaceutical companies spend more on lobbying than any other industry.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_03: In 2022, they spent approximately$374 million on lobbying.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, they fund political campaigns, medical associations.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, Congress and regulatory agencies, they hesitate to challenge Big Pharma because that's where their money is coming from.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: I heard this example, you know, this this is an interesting thought, and this is from me.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, you know, I heard it from somewhere.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how much this is truly accurate, but it makes so much sense to me.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_03: You watch the evening news, and I would say, I don't know, this is a total guess, but at least 50% of the commercials seem to be pharmaceutical commercials, right?
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_03: Are the pharmaceutical companies really trying to get people who watch the news to buy their drugs?
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that's part of it.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: But the is the pharmaceutical companies buying those news agencies?
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know how much money they get for those ads during the news?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: So now is the news gonna want to report?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: Are these news reporters going to want to report a neck or these organizations, NBC News, ABC, are they gonna want to report on a drug that might be harming people when their paycheck to run these news broadcasts every night are coming from these same companies?
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: We're one of I think two countries in the world that even allow online, I mean, um advertising on TV for drugs.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I can answer that really, really fast.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is yes.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when I when I was a reporter at our our local daily newspaper, straight out of college, before I came back to the farm full time, uh, I had stories spiked.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's what they call killing a story.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if the edit the editor, you know, editor kills we can't run this story.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because, well, that's a big advertiser, or that's this or that.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and so absolutely the news organizations, the journalist organizations that receive advertising are absolutely, absolutely, I mean, you'd have to be a fool to think that they're not influenced by their by their bread and butter, you know, and and where their bread and butter comes, uh, they're they're gonna be if not if not outright prejudicial, they're gonna be uh they're gonna be soft gloves, you know, kid gloves on whatever, you know, whatever story that might um uh uh disparage or uh you know cause questions to a big advertiser.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I hadn't thought of it in those terms, Cher, that are they really trying to sell it to people or just buy the journalists?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um hadn't thought of it in those terms.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll have to go rethink that a little bit.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's an interesting, it's an interesting thought.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: But listen, uh the the the return on investment of owning the journalistic platform is absolutely as big as selling product.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, you know, and I'm also struck in just the last few minutes we have here about, you know, we haven't really talked about any natural medicines, you know, like herbals and whatnot.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, that's interesting.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: I well, first of all, the problem is that there's sort of a war on natural medicine.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like the medical system prioritized pharmaceuticals because there's more money in treatment than in prevention.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I work with this one great uh medical researcher and soon-to-be physician, Nick Norwitz.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_03: He's wonderful.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: And he is doing a lot of work on metabolic health and how diets change um change our health landscape.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: But as he's pointed out to me many times, as you know, and others have as well, there's who is going to fund a study to say that, you know, increasing X amount of food will, you know, prevent diabetes?
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's no money to be had in that.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_03: But we are seeing that landscape begin to shift.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that's, I think it's probably really great to sort of, I know we're wrapping up on time, but really, I have a lot of hope because we are beginning to see, thanks to social media, and it's such a double-edged sword, right?
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_03: We I I hate social media and the internet so much.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_03: And at the same time, we're seeing these researchers get out there and start to talk about their experiments online.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: And now they're starting to get some funding from independent, you know, philanthropists or people who are like, oh, we should study this.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: So we're starting to see little glimpses of this system where the only way to get something studied is through the pharmaceutical industry.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: We're starting to see it shift a little bit, you know.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I know we were maybe going to talk a little bit about um Nick Nick has done a really great study.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_03: He's very interested in um, you know, cholesterol and things like that.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he did a study in which um he does these, what he calls n equals one studies.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I love this idea.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I think we should all really be focused.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: We are all so different.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: We are all so individual.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: Our biology is individual.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_03: What works for one person might not work for another.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so Nick did this really fascinating study where he ate 12 Oreo cookies a day for a certain length of time.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was 30 days.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think it ended up being like six or seven hundred Oreos.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: And he actually saw his cholesterol go down.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and there's a whole thing behind it.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: He is, he's a, he's a what's called a lean mass hyperresponder.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: So he has an interesting phenotype.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: But the point of his study wasn't to say, eat Oreos, it's gonna make your cholesterol go down.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: His point of his story was to say that everybody is different.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: And what works for one person doesn't work for another.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, um, he did this really grandiose experiment um to show this.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, who's not reading that headline?
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: I I ate, you know, so many hundreds of Oreos cookies, and I got my cholesterol went down.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: His point wasn't to get people to eat Oreos, but it was to get people to stop to read the article.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_03: And hopefully, this is where the hope comes in.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: People read this and say, oh, wait.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_03: So here's this one particular phenotype of person.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_03: His cholesterol went down way more than statins.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: Let's look into this.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so I know for a fact that he did get some particular interest in um funding some of these, this research.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: So the hopeful note is that I think, I think the industry and the landscape is beginning to shift.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_03: And um, people are becoming more aware of the possibility that the pharmaceutical industry is not the be all end all that we have thought it has been for all these years, that there are answers beyond, you know, taking a pill.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Oreo cookies certainly beat a pill.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you that right now.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's for sure.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's that's great.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love this whole concept.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big advocate of the N of One experiments.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what I did to heal, like myself and everybody in my family and clients I work with.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's looking at them as an individual and assessing their unique story, right?
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: Piecing their story together so you can help figure out what's triggering them, what's missing in in their body, mind, and spirit.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's in stark contrast to what we do in academia and in testing these pharmaceuticals, right?
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: These are like, in my, in my opinion, these are two opposite approaches.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in this pharmaceutical and academics industry that I was a part of, um, you basically test and you you get rid of outliers from the very beginning, right?
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: We we have exclusion criteria.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we already get rid of people who um who don't fit into our model.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times this is people who you think aren't going to give you the results that you want, you exclude them.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then you run the study and then you publish it, and then it's taken by these organizations and government as, oh, this is what the general public needs, but it's really a subset, it's a subpopulation.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: And people aren't aware of that.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: They aren't aware in large part of how we run and conduct these studies.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in the study design that we exclude people.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I always tell people, you are not the average.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like these studies are reporting the averages of this subset of people.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who is really that average?
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not usually one of us, but they're trying to apply these quote unquote averages to all of us in these general guidelines that they give.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I love what you're talking about here.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love the work that Nick's doing.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that you're helping to bring this forward to the public to show them you are not average.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are all these unique individuals.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: And let's embrace and harness that individuality and look for some holistic solutions.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I applaud what you're doing, Cher.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Very good.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we're about out of time.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know you can if you're if you want to hear or read some more of Cher's work, you can go to Epoch Times.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Cher, can they find you anywhere else?
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_03: No, I think that's the best resource.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have a lot of social media that I run.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_03: So Epoch Times is where I keep most of my work.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do you want to have just send us off with one last thought before Joel poses our community question?
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I laugh because I always hand it over to Joel to do.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I just think Cena, what you said was so valuable.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we are all, we are all individuals.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I just think the the most important thing to walk away from this entire conversation is just really know what you're putting in your body.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: Be aware, ask questions.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_03: You know, um, these pharmaceuticals may not be as safe as you think.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_03: They might be necessary, but just just do your homework.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: Read that pamphlet that comes with the drug, the little insert, read it.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_03: By the time you're done reading it, your ailness will be gone since it's so long.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_03: So don't need it in the end.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: Cher, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Joel, do you want to lead us out with a community question for the week?
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: So my my question is um, have you ever had a reaction that's mentioned on a black box?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have, what was it?
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, now we're gonna have to do the research and go find the black boxes.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, so if you're if you're taking something, look and see if it does have a black box and um and and uh see see if you, you know, so um, Cher from what what I understood from some of this was that some of the reactions are minor enough, you know, I wonder why I'm feeling that way, that you wouldn't even know that it's related unless you actually looked at the black box and said, Yeah, you know, matter of fact, my what my elbow is hurting, or you know, whatever it is.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_01: But but you you you wouldn't you wouldn't even make the association uh unless you read the red box uh black box because a lot of them are mild.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: They're mild and I had a very smooth, I know we're wrapping up, but just real quick, I took Cypro for a short time for uh pneumonia that I had, and this was before I knew anything about black boxes, and I noticed my in hindsight, my I was achy.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_03: But of course you're achy.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_03: You have the flu, you have pneumonia, so your point is spot on.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_03: You just you might not know if you don't look.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so everybody, Joel gave us an assignment.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you're on a prescription, look it up and see if there's a black box warning and let us know about it.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Cher, thank you again for joining us.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh we'll have you come back and we'll talk about the food and whatnot in the net in the next time.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you to all of our listeners, and we look forward to seeing you next week.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bye bye.