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Speaker 1: Okay, everybody take their soma. Everybody check their their pills,

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Speaker 1: make sure you're on schedule. Whatever I think of this episode, man,

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Speaker 1: the first thing I think of is how normalized it

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Speaker 1: is to have very weird commercials for prescription drugs here

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Speaker 1: in the US that doesn't happen in like most other

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Speaker 1: countries except New Zealand. I think I don't often watch

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Speaker 1: television shows that have commercials in them anymore. But I

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Speaker 1: happened to be on a popular streaming service watching a

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Speaker 1: television show you know that aired on TV, and then

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Speaker 1: they put them on these streaming services, and I sat

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Speaker 1: through so many pharmaceutical company commercials. I I had no

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Speaker 1: idea they were going so strong, but so many weird

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Speaker 1: ass names. I thought the same thing. You're reading my mind, man.

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Speaker 1: I always I have this strange fascination with those commercials.

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Speaker 1: Like you, I don't watch a lot of television either.

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Speaker 1: I just love I love the idea that someone is saying,

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Speaker 1: how do we tell people that this drug could help

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Speaker 1: with a very specific condition and possibly have some terrible

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Speaker 1: side effects? And then someone's like, you know what, we

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Speaker 1: should have just uh people frolicking in a park? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and just say the name of the thing, but don't

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Speaker 1: say what it does. And the call to action without

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Speaker 1: fail in every one of these commercials is ask your

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Speaker 1: doctor if this drug is right for you. That is

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Speaker 1: so weird to me, followed immediately after by like the

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Speaker 1: micro machine man going through boboutrain is not allowed for

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Speaker 1: the left handed the Welsh, you know, like if he

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Speaker 1: goes on and it goes like you know, it sees

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Speaker 1: you immediately if you have bouts of mystical revelations, the tingles,

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Speaker 1: the shingles, the shankles, the cankles man, it seems like

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Speaker 1: they're taking their cues from Illumination Global. In my opinion,

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Speaker 1: I feel like I contractually cannot comment on that. But

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Speaker 1: this episode is all right, let's say, let's take our drugs.

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Speaker 1: Here we go from UFOs two ghosts and government cover ups.

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Speaker 1: History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back

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Speaker 1: now or learn the stuff they don't want you to now.

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Speaker 1: Dear Ben and Matt, I don't think you guys have

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Speaker 1: covered this, but I think it is a pretty interesting topic.

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Speaker 1: As a slave to the pharmaceutical industry, I think the

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Speaker 1: big pharmacy is holding back cures for diseases since everyone

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Speaker 1: worships the almighty dollar. I feel that it's much more

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Speaker 1: profitable to keep billing people for treatment rather than finding

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Speaker 1: a cure for said disease. I would love to see

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Speaker 1: here you guys cover this topic, Sean. Oh And, ladies

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Speaker 1: and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. I'm here, I'm

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Speaker 1: Ben no Ah, you're here here, and most importantly you

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Speaker 1: are here Sean. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody in the US,

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Speaker 1: across the world, We're coming semi live. To your ear bles,

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Speaker 1: ear holes, yeah, to your ear jumps maybe. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 1: Today we're tackling something that was inspired by a listener

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Speaker 1: mail and that we have talked about extensively off air before,

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Speaker 1: just in our conversations when we hang out after work. Right,

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Speaker 1: So we're talking about big pharma conspiracies. A little bit

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Speaker 1: of background. We did a video series on this way

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Speaker 1: way back. And then we also did I don't know

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Speaker 1: why I did a goat noise there. No, it was good,

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Speaker 1: it was appropriate. Does it work, Okay, we'll keep it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then we also did in January an episode about

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Speaker 1: the legal drug trade, which will be pharmaceuticals. This episode,

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Speaker 1: we are going to focus on more of the conspiracies

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Speaker 1: and the conspiracy theories surrounding big pharma. So first things first, well,

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Speaker 1: we'll look at it this way. As we said before,

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Speaker 1: legal drugs are a big business. We'd like to give

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Speaker 1: you some industry statistics. So I M. S Health reports

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Speaker 1: that overall drug spending weighed in at about three twenty

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Speaker 1: billion dollars in UM. Through the f d A and Congress,

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Speaker 1: the US works to ensure access to safe, effective drugs.

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Speaker 1: At least that's the idea, um. So, but at the

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Speaker 1: same time, critics say that quote unquote big pharma has

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Speaker 1: paid Congress to turn a blind eye to predatory and

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Speaker 1: shady dishonest practices like price gouging. So what is again

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Speaker 1: the big air quote endquote, big pharma exactly right, um,

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Speaker 1: other than just a convenient catchphrase. Right. So, nowadays big

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Speaker 1: pharma has become this umbrella term for the world's largest

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Speaker 1: multinational pharmaceutical companies. These are the corporate goliaths, the corporate

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Speaker 1: behemoths that own patents on life saving name brand proprietary drugs,

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Speaker 1: and they work to prevent generic knockoffs from replacing these

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Speaker 1: different markets. So in nineteen, from nine to two thousand twelve,

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Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical industry spent around two point six billion dollars

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Speaker 1: just to lobby lawmakers, legislators, and for for some perspective,

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Speaker 1: if you haven't read that number against other things, that

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Speaker 1: means that they've spent more than the defense and aerospace sectors. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I'm naive, but I always have a

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Speaker 1: hard time imagining what day to day lobbying actually looks like.

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Speaker 1: Can you fill me in and the listeners just a

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Speaker 1: little bit about specifically what a pharmaceutical lobbyist might do influence. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: that's a great question. We should mention a shout out

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Speaker 1: to our own Matt the Madman Frederick, who is with us,

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Speaker 1: who is with us in spirit on his vacation, because

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Speaker 1: I'm about to talk about one of Matt's favorite shows.

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Speaker 1: Longtime listeners, you've heard this before. There was a show

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Speaker 1: called K Street. I believe it was right. Definitely mention

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Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, and this gives a not completely accurate,

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Speaker 1: but pretty close to the bone look at how lobbying works.

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Speaker 1: Lobbying is a legal activity in the US. Technically or theoretically.

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Speaker 1: Listeners know all of US could get together and we

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Speaker 1: could start you know, the American Association for stuff they

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Speaker 1: don't want you to know being known or something like that. Right,

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Speaker 1: and we could go, uh, we could do the following things.

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Speaker 1: UH take take lawmakers out to lunches is or to

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Speaker 1: galas two benefits on trips to persuade them that the

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Speaker 1: case we are making is the best case for the

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Speaker 1: US in some way, right. Uh. And and every industry

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Speaker 1: does this to some degree in there and and countries

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Speaker 1: do it as well. There are, for example, like the

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Speaker 1: n r A, you know, gun lobbyists short, yeah, or

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Speaker 1: oil lobbying groups or the a r P uh, the

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Speaker 1: Association Retired Persons. Uh. And this, this two point six

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Speaker 1: billion dollars is a huge slice of pie. Uh, there's

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Speaker 1: a huge slice of legal drug pie. And this is

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Speaker 1: not counting the money that drugmakers spend to influence doctors.

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Speaker 1: And again, since lobbying is not illegal, there's nothing inherently

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Speaker 1: criminal about these actions. It gets sticky pretty quickly because

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Speaker 1: legally speaking, a lobbyist can't just go up to UH

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Speaker 1: representatives Jane Nuion of you know, South Wisconsin or something

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Speaker 1: and say, Jane, here's eight hundred thousand dollars. Please vote, uh,

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Speaker 1: please vote against f DA regulation of this thing or

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Speaker 1: something that that is legally can't just give people money

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Speaker 1: and tell them to do that. But I have said

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Speaker 1: lobbies is like, hey, Jane, you want me to take

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Speaker 1: you out to a nice, nice lunch. We'll have some

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Speaker 1: chats over some martinis. Yeah, let's talk about campaign contributions.

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Speaker 1: Campaign contributions are one of the ways that money can

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Speaker 1: be donated. Right. So, if there is a real big pharma,

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Speaker 1: if we want to get past the umbrella term and

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Speaker 1: talk about what this actually is, then it's most likely

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Speaker 1: an association called the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Right.

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Speaker 1: So this is basically a trade group that represents forty

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Speaker 1: eight of the leading biopharmaceutical researchers and biotechnolo g companies um.

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Speaker 1: Possibly the most notable victory of pharma was the two

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Speaker 1: thousand six Prescription Deal, which extended prescription coverage while actually

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Speaker 1: preventing the Medicare program from collectively bargaining for lower prices. Right,

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Speaker 1: And this stuff this stuff changed in the wake of

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Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act, which for people outside of the

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Speaker 1: US might sound kind of arcane, but everyone in the

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Speaker 1: US is familiar with it. It's also been called Obamacare.

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Speaker 1: It's a romney mit romney helms program in Massachusetts that

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Speaker 1: was later taken to a national level by the Obama administration,

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Speaker 1: and it has a wealth of critics and a wealth

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Speaker 1: of supporters. I think it's a story for different show.

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Speaker 1: But the pharmaceutical industry definitely had input on this, you know,

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Speaker 1: and you can see articles from the Wall Street Journal

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Speaker 1: saying that the pharmaceutical companies made a benefit of like

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Speaker 1: thirty five billion dollars some other astronomical number from the

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Speaker 1: A c A or Obamacare there there. There is something

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Speaker 1: that we have to say at the top, though, because

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about a lot of murky, just diabolical

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Speaker 1: stuff here. So first I want to say there's no

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Speaker 1: question that research by scientists at pharmaceutical companies has led

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Speaker 1: to amazing breakthroughs curing or most often treating conditions that

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Speaker 1: a hundred or maybe even ten years ago would have

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Speaker 1: been a death sentence. So let's get that out of

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Speaker 1: the way first. We're talking about better treatments for cancer,

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Speaker 1: better treatments for sexual diseases, not necessarily cures, but treatments,

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Speaker 1: and one of the things that inspired you and I

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Speaker 1: to look at this today was Shawn's letter and other

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Speaker 1: comments from people on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. I'll go

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Speaker 1: ahead and put the plug in here. Now you can

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Speaker 1: follow us. We are a conspiracy stuff on all of

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Speaker 1: those and you'll you'll see episodes that may not make

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Speaker 1: it to the air for one reason or another or

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Speaker 1: topics so we talked about. You can also talk with

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Speaker 1: other listeners and you can suggest stuff to us directly. Anyhow,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that inspired us to look at

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Speaker 1: this was the recent news report, which I guess we

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Speaker 1: should mention, but we'll get into later, right, the case

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Speaker 1: of the pharmaceutical startup tycoon. Yeah, the farmer bro. Is

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Speaker 1: that what they're calling him on Twitter? Oh Man? Uh

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Speaker 1: Martin Screlly Yeah, and uh I heard you off air

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Speaker 1: jokingly refer to him as Shrek. Well, you know, he's

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Speaker 1: a bit of an ogre oh Man Scado indeed. All right,

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Speaker 1: So there are critics of big pharma, and they often

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Speaker 1: fall into one of several camps. First, there are the

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Speaker 1: people that, if we're going to make up a name

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Speaker 1: for him, I would call them suppression adherents. These are

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Speaker 1: people believe that pharmaceutical companies have something like secret treatments

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Speaker 1: or even a secret cure for everything from cancer to lekemia,

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Speaker 1: HIV other chronic terminal conditions, but have covered up this

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Speaker 1: knowledge in the interests of continuing to make money off

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Speaker 1: halfless consumers. When I was reading Shawn's letter at the

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Speaker 1: top of the podcast, um, you know, he obviously mentioned

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Speaker 1: this idea of you know, drug companies having these secret

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Speaker 1: cures and holding them back, um because it benefits them

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Speaker 1: more to be able to continue to treat these existing

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Speaker 1: diseases rather than to cure them. And it occurred to

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Speaker 1: me that there's an interesting parallel between that and the

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Speaker 1: idea that, like, technology companies already have a million terabyte

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Speaker 1: hard drive that they have developed that they're just you know,

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Speaker 1: sitting on because why roll that out when they can

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Speaker 1: just keep selling us one terabyte hard drive for you know,

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Speaker 1: two hundred bucks or something like that, right yeah. Or

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Speaker 1: this also maybe ties into alternative energy ideas, the concept

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Speaker 1: that there is a water powered car, or there is

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Speaker 1: a even consumer products like a toothpaste you only have

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Speaker 1: to apply once, or something some serious like Willie Wonka stuff,

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Speaker 1: right yes, uh when and I will I will add

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Speaker 1: that this is just my opinion, but I feel like

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Speaker 1: there's strong circumstantial evidence that there is on some level

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Speaker 1: at least classify technology several years in advance of what

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Speaker 1: the public has access to, especially in the aerospace field,

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Speaker 1: especially in in military applications. Now, does that go all

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Speaker 1: the way down to drugs? Are there miracle cures that

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Speaker 1: only a select few of the world's population have access to.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna look at that in a little more detail.

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Speaker 1: That's one of the biggest, most consistent classifications of conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theories we hear about big pharma. This is another one.

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Speaker 1: If I was going to make up a term for

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Speaker 1: these folks, know, I would call them the invention theorists,

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Speaker 1: taking it a step further and arguing that pharmaceutical companies

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Speaker 1: are not just suppressing cures, but actually inventing new diseases,

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Speaker 1: either by renaming them to make them sound more serious,

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Speaker 1: or by creating new ones and spreading them through the population.

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Speaker 1: An arguable example of this is called restless leg syndrome.

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Speaker 1: I definitely got that got restless leg syndrome right now? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean after a couple of drinks, I have a

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Speaker 1: serious case of happy feet for sure. Uh And I'm

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Speaker 1: under the impression that I could both whip and I

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Speaker 1: believe that you could really have faith in your ability.

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Speaker 1: I really feel like it will be a personal failing

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Speaker 1: on both our parts if I ever get to that position.

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Speaker 1: And let's hope there's not a camera around. But this,

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Speaker 1: this idea is this idea will be familiar to a

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Speaker 1: lot of people in the u US when you'll notice

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Speaker 1: the prevalence of uh prevalence of vaguely named drugs that

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Speaker 1: are meant to treat mental or emotional conditions that in

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Speaker 1: the past would not have would not have been treated.

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Speaker 1: It might be specific, but without going into that yet,

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Speaker 1: we'll just say that that's another group. So they are

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Speaker 1: the people who think things are being suppressed, cures are

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Speaker 1: being suppressed, and a group of people who think either

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Speaker 1: fake diseases or being marketed or real diseases are being spread.

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Speaker 1: And there's another one. And Matt, I know you're listening

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Speaker 1: to this man, this will be your favorite one. The

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Speaker 1: political theories, the idea that big farm has purchased the

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Speaker 1: conscience and the vote of allegedly elected representatives, using them

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Speaker 1: to force industry friendly laws through at the expense of

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Speaker 1: the American public. In other words, putting profits over people. No, well,

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Speaker 1: those are like, those are some of the accusations. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the truth stories, right. So,

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Speaker 1: aside from the recent news, history is absolutely filled with

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Speaker 1: these kinds of shenanigans. Here are some actual examples of illegal, corrupt,

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Speaker 1: and or unethical things pharmaceutical companies have done in the past.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let me set you up for this. So,

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Speaker 1: how does pharma actually influenced legislation? That's a tough one,

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Speaker 1: but the answer to that question lies partially with the

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Speaker 1: American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC a l e C. ALEC,

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Speaker 1: like Baldwin indeed strong chin that one. So this secretive

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Speaker 1: group basically connects private interests and lawmakers to approve what

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Speaker 1: are called model bills, and these model bills reflect the

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Speaker 1: desires of the parties involved. Um. Yeah. So defenders of

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Speaker 1: ALEC say that it provides a forum for legislative and

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Speaker 1: industrial partnership, but critics say that it's not so much

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Speaker 1: the case that the public is basically completely cut out

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Speaker 1: of the entire process. So like a smaller version than

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Speaker 1: of the t p P. So there, it's true, these

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Speaker 1: these model bills are not necessarily intended. And I hope

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Speaker 1: you guys can hear the air quotes I'm laying down

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Speaker 1: thick over there not necessarily intended. Yeah, figure too to

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Speaker 1: become the verbatim bill, but or the verbatim law rather,

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Speaker 1: But several legislatures have introduced bills that can be traced

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Speaker 1: directly back to meetings of ALEC. But Pharma and again

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Speaker 1: that's just our shorthand for pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of

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Speaker 1: America does contribute to ALEC, and it is and we

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Speaker 1: know this because it is legally bound to disclose this spending. ALEC, however,

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Speaker 1: is not bound by the same laws. In fact, ALEX

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Speaker 1: membership list is secret. And big pharmaceutical associations don't just

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Speaker 1: keep their spending to the hallowed halls of Congress right now,

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Speaker 1: not at all. Been Uh. These companies actually interact directly

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Speaker 1: and pretty extensively with physicians, um, basically incentivizing them to

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Speaker 1: recommend specific brand name drugs. Right. Yeah, It's it's funny.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a hospital knoll or in

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Speaker 1: the doctor's office when a pharmacy rep comes through with

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Speaker 1: all their pens and their mouse pads. Yeah, their swag

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Speaker 1: and they look like models or something. They travel around

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Speaker 1: convincing various doctors medical professionals that name brand drug X

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Speaker 1: is superior and should be prescribed for the following conditions

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Speaker 1: aggressively and assertively. So and it goes beyond that too,

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Speaker 1: because there's a process used called ghostwriting, and ghostwriting is

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Speaker 1: a really weird thing. So these companies would pay a

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Speaker 1: doctor and say, hey, let's say you're a doctor, Neil,

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Speaker 1: what kind of doctor are you? I'm a doctor of funk. No,

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Speaker 1: I'm kidding, um, I'm an oncologist. You're an oncologist. So

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Speaker 1: they would say, we have this perfect drug coming out

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Speaker 1: and it's gonna be it's gonna be coming out in

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Speaker 1: the next six months or it's been out for six months,

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Speaker 1: and we want to spread the words. So Dr Brown, uh,

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Speaker 1: you agree with us? Right, we're at dinner. Now you

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Speaker 1: agree with us that this is a superior treatment. Well

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Speaker 1: that depends. Can't I get the Crime Bruley? You can

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Speaker 1: have Crime Bruley for here and to go. I'm on board.

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Speaker 1: Sign me up. Great, here's the best thing. We want

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Speaker 1: you to write a review and we want it to

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Speaker 1: go like this, at which point they hand the review

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Speaker 1: that they've already written there, and they say, and we're

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Speaker 1: just gonna put Dr Brown according to Dr Brown, lead

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Speaker 1: oncologist at ex Hospital. And then this glowing review happens,

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Speaker 1: and we've used your name. Nothing weird about that, Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: I know. Ten doctors agree crimberly at the restaurant and

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Speaker 1: to go is awesome, visa v This drug is awesome, right.

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Speaker 1: And you know this might sound strange to some of

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Speaker 1: our listeners outside of the US, but televised ads for

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Speaker 1: prescription drugs are a common thing in US channels, US

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Speaker 1: TV channels, and and we commonly bizarre, Yeah, commonly bizarre

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Speaker 1: because legally there's a lot of stuff they can't say.

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Speaker 1: How would you describe one of those ads? So it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like this weird trippy Alice in Wonderland vibe

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Speaker 1: where there's somebody prancing through a meadow, you know, just

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Speaker 1: feeling good, just just colors, lots of pastels, there's butterflies everywhere,

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Speaker 1: the sun is shining. There, maybe children playing in a playground.

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Speaker 1: There's probably instrumental music. You don't really hear the people talking,

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Speaker 1: probably like some slow motion reaction shots of happy smiling

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Speaker 1: face and laughing. Yes, like the vague, vague, vague, vague

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Speaker 1: voiceover just about just you want to be happy, right

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Speaker 1: and you want to feel good about yourself and your

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Speaker 1: loved ones, don't you. You want to get the most

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Speaker 1: out of every day on this planet. And then the

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Speaker 1: voiceover was shift right over to the name of the drug,

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Speaker 1: which would be like heliometrics, and and they'll they'll say,

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Speaker 1: ask your doctor if heliometrics is right for you, without

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Speaker 1: really naming a lot of the symptoms till the very

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Speaker 1: end where there is tiny, tiny fine print, uh, something

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Speaker 1: that our lead sponsor, Illumination Global Unlimited, is legally required

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Speaker 1: to do them. You know. They they are still around.

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Speaker 1: They I I don't know. They contact us when they

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Speaker 1: want to contact us. They don't even use email. They

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Speaker 1: just slip an envelope under the door. One time that

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Speaker 1: was volunteering in a nursing home and they just sent

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Speaker 1: one of the residents of the nursing home to tell

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Speaker 1: me what our next ad campaign just gonna uh huh.

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Speaker 1: It turned around and she was gone, yeah, So you know,

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Speaker 1: que the smalty ultra music, ask your doctor if the

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Speaker 1: heleometrics is right for you. Side effects may include drowsyness,

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Speaker 1: business nauseais, chap nation, weird, shoe footedness, wrong headedness, who knows,

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Speaker 1: one knows, scro double think of brain fever, consumption, sold deaf, squamishness, impertinence,

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Speaker 1: in continence, offensive punctuality, offensive punctuation, punctuad grammar America. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Yeah, you know now that, now

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Speaker 1: that I hear it, that that's spot on. But it

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Speaker 1: sounds a little silly, ladies and gentlemen. We mentioned this,

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Speaker 1: I think in our Legal Drugs podcast. But the US

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Speaker 1: accounts for about five percent in the world's population and

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Speaker 1: also forty two percent of the money spent on prescription drugs.

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Speaker 1: That statistic can be a little bit strange because these

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Speaker 1: drugs are often much more expensive in the US than

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Speaker 1: they are in other countries. And uh, let talk about

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Speaker 1: let's talk about this idea that there was a propagation

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Speaker 1: of disease, or that these false diseases were created and marketed. Right,

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Speaker 1: tell me more. Oh good, I'd love to so Bear.

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Speaker 1: Everybody's familiar with Bear, maybe through aspirin sprint. Yeah, Bear

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Speaker 1: did sell HIV tainted medicine, and so millions of dollars

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Speaker 1: worth of an injectable blood clotting medicine called Factor eight concentrate,

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Speaker 1: which is intended for hemophiliacs to Asian, Latin, American, and

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Speaker 1: European countries. In the mid nineteen eighties, the company stopped

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Speaker 1: selling the drug in the US, but continued selling it

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Speaker 1: overseas for another year. And so how did this happen?

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Speaker 1: How did this become tainted? The medicine in question here

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Speaker 1: was made using combined plasma from large numbers of donors

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Speaker 1: um so at the time there was absolutely no screening

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Speaker 1: test for the AIDS virus, so a tiny number of

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Speaker 1: donors with AIDS could potentially contaminate a large batch right

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Speaker 1: and reports say that, although the worldwide numbers are difficult

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Speaker 1: to calculate, in Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than

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Speaker 1: one hemophiliacs contracted HIV after using this medicine, most of

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Speaker 1: whom have died. But in May of nine five, Dr

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Speaker 1: Harry M. Meyer Jr. The f d a's blood products official,

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Speaker 1: called the companies to a meeting, believing that they had

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Speaker 1: broken an agreement to stop selling the old medicine, and this,

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Speaker 1: according to an article in New York Times, but Meyer

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Speaker 1: decided to handle the matter quietly. Instead of letting the

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Speaker 1: public know. Yeah, I wouldn't want anybody to get in

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Speaker 1: a panic about a little thing like a lethal disease,

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Speaker 1: which at the time AIDS was HIV was so that

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Speaker 1: that is a scary, real life situation. There's a another

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Speaker 1: book that you may enjoy if you haven't read it before, Believe,

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Speaker 1: called The River, in which the author details the genesis

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Speaker 1: of AIDS and how it's spread, and they allege that

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Speaker 1: they allege that pharmaceutical companies knowingly sold or experimented with

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Speaker 1: tainted batches of product on populations in sub Saharan Africa,

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Speaker 1: which sparked the rise of the HIV epidemic. It's it's

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Speaker 1: important to note that that is not consider the specific

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Speaker 1: genesis like it's not universally agreed. People are still arguing

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Speaker 1: over how this, how this happened. But you will often

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Speaker 1: hear pharmaceutical companies being being accused of this, not not

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Speaker 1: so much through some sort of purposeful thing, as either

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Speaker 1: trying as either trying to save money or being you know,

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Speaker 1: fiscally corrupt or incompetent. How do we know that Bear

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Speaker 1: knew that the HIV was in the medicine, and yet

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Speaker 1: they continued to sell it. I just don't understand how

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Speaker 1: a company of that magnitude A could come back from

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Speaker 1: a scandal like this and be good Lord. Must they

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Speaker 1: not have had a cracker jack pr team that I

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Speaker 1: have never heard of the story prior to researching this topic, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean when I think of Bear, I just think

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Speaker 1: of a little aspirin from a headache, you know, That's

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Speaker 1: all I think of. Well, in two thousand and six,

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Speaker 1: and it's a great question. Two thousand and six that

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Speaker 1: were documents that were unearthed showing that they knew it

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Speaker 1: had the high likelihood of being tainted with with aids.

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Speaker 1: They knew they could no longer sell it in the US. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The dangers of the drug have become well known in

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Speaker 1: the US market, but that news was slower to reach

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Speaker 1: other parts of the world. And it does from what

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Speaker 1: we see, it does seem that FDA regulators did collude

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Speaker 1: to keep the continued sales hidden, UH, so that this

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Speaker 1: could be solved without alerting Congress, the medical community, and

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Speaker 1: the public. And these are according to minutes of a

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Speaker 1: night five meeting between the FDA and Bear. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: I mean to me, this occurs to me as being

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Speaker 1: like an example, another example of two cozy relationships, whether

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Speaker 1: it's between drug companies and the FDA regulators they're supposed

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Speaker 1: to oversee them, or for example, you know, large banks

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Speaker 1: and the SEC regulators that are supposedly, you know, supposed

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Speaker 1: to keep them acting correctly. Um is is that it's

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Speaker 1: a similar Yeah, that's a very nice parallel because or

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Speaker 1: it's a disturbing parallel, but possibly accurate. It's nice because

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Speaker 1: it does show, you know, how how close an industry

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Speaker 1: and the government institution designed to regulate it will happen. Now.

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Speaker 1: I know we have a lot of listeners who object

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Speaker 1: to the concept of a large government right of whether

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Speaker 1: federal or whether one world. And I completely I completely

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Speaker 1: understand in many cases in the case of things like

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Speaker 1: the Food and Drug Administration, however, that has provided in

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Speaker 1: the past, especially much needed food safety things. You know,

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Speaker 1: food safety regulations are an important thing to have because

425
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:25,760
Speaker 1: if there is not some sort of standard, then we

426
00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:28,719
Speaker 1: could easily end up in a situation like Upton Sinclair's

427
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: The Jungle, which is a very gruesome, gruesome story about

428
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: I was going to say gross, yeah, gross, and grewsome

429
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:40,480
Speaker 1: story about the meat packing industry. However, uh, the thing

430
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: about this regulation, and I agree with that a lot

431
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: of people object to as well is the concept that

432
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 1: if the people who work for the watchmen are later

433
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 1: being hired to work for the people being watched or

434
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: come from that industry, you know, the r human is

435
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: always that a certain level of expertise and experience should

436
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: be the deciding factor. And it and it may be

437
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 1: true the advocates of this practice argue that you need

438
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:15,320
Speaker 1: to have industry experts. But then the opponents of this

439
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: practice will say, well, really, what we're doing is inventing

440
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:24,959
Speaker 1: a revolving door where someone can, as a regulatory power

441
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: make laws that will benefit them, specifically them later when

442
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 1: they enter private industry. And I mean, I'm sure there's

443
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:35,680
Speaker 1: some amount of well, if this person used to work

444
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:38,680
Speaker 1: for the regulatory body and now they work for us,

445
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:40,640
Speaker 1: they can probably give us a little bit of the

446
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: scoop on some of the machinations of the regulatory body. Yeah,

447
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 1: that's a good point. You know, how how far does

448
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: it go? With a little background on bear just to

449
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:54,720
Speaker 1: say you asked specifically about how this occurred. So it

450
00:29:54,840 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 1: wasn't reported as widely in US media, but French and

451
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: Italian news media we're reporting a lot of this. In

452
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, Bear just paid, had paid tens of

453
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 1: millions of dollars to end this scandal because here's how

454
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: it happened. So two thousand eleven, Bear starts compensating people

455
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: they got AIDS because in the nineteen eighties, a thing

456
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: called the Cutter biological unit of Bear ignored a federal

457
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 1: law against recruiting prisoners IVY drug users, you know, intravenous

458
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: UH and what they call high risk in terms of

459
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: sexual activity people as donors of the blood that they

460
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: used to make this factor eight UH, and that's the

461
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 1: clotting product that keeps him ophiliacs from bleeding out. So

462
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: they're paying UH. They along with three other labs, were

463
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: forced to pay tens of millions of euros to people

464
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 1: who could trace the transmission of HIV to this treatment.

465
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: So UH. Bear and the US company Baxter the two

466
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:08,400
Speaker 1: main parties to the agreement. A company spokesperson said that, however,

467
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:12,040
Speaker 1: the company accepts no responsibility in this case and continues

468
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 1: to insist that has always acted responsibly and ethically. So

469
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 1: coursing is something that you can see often occurring with

470
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: companies of this magnitude where they say, okay, we will

471
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: pay to we will pay to resolve this case. We

472
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: will admit no but no direct faults. We admit no

473
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 1: direct fault. The estimated number, even though again it's difficult

474
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 1: to estimate, is about twenty people contracted HIV from this.

475
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:42,240
Speaker 1: It's insane to me, it is it is insane and

476
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: it's uh and again I mean, like I said, what

477
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: what is the most insane to me? As a consumer

478
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:49,479
Speaker 1: of media and as someone who you know, reads up

479
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: on this kind of stuff. I just had never heard

480
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: of this before, and that this mind blowing to me,

481
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: Like how much money you must a company like this

482
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,840
Speaker 1: have to be able to pretty successfully sweep something like

483
00:31:59,840 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: this under the rug to the point where you know,

484
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 1: it's just not like the only image that you associate

485
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 1: with this company. Well yeah, again, they stopped selling this

486
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: product in the US, so it was maybe older news

487
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 1: or it was less likely to directly affect people in

488
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:20,280
Speaker 1: the US market. So that is a seed of truth

489
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,960
Speaker 1: to these things. When when we hear a lot of

490
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: the on we hear a lot of conspiratorial rumors and stuff.

491
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:29,960
Speaker 1: The thing to find is whether there is a seed

492
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: of truth, right, whether there is a a shining note

493
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 1: of veracity in the hay stack of bs that so

494
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: often is the internet. Uh, And that's not my most

495
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 1: graceful comparison there. But let's go to the idea of

496
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 1: withholding a cure, because Sean, that's exactly what you asked about.

497
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: At this point, it's hard to find a specific proven

498
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: case of a company completely suppressing a cure. And the

499
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: reason it's hard to find that is that we we

500
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 1: see instead, we see a lot of people saying, uh,

501
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 1: that it is more advantageous to treat the symptoms of

502
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: a disease rather than the cause. In many cases. I

503
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: know this is a sensitive subject for some people, but

504
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: in many cases, the cause of a condition could be

505
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 1: genetic or lifestyle related. For instance, like a poor diet. Yeah,

506
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: like a poor diet could create diabetes or obesity or

507
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:34,480
Speaker 1: heart conditions. And the best way to combat that is

508
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: not through a magic pill. Uh. It's through get off

509
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:43,800
Speaker 1: the couch, right, It's through exercise and changing diet, which,

510
00:33:43,880 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: of course no one wants to hear because that is

511
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: not an instantaneous cure. But what we did find that

512
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: I thought might interest you, Sean, is some statements from

513
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 1: people on Reddit of all places, Uh, if you're familiar

514
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: who we're talking about, the talking about the issues here

515
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: or the concept of a conspiracy, and we found people

516
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:09,919
Speaker 1: saying that. We found people saying that they had had

517
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:14,759
Speaker 1: experience either with drug creation or product creation or in

518
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 1: the higher level marketing stuff. The marketing people are saying

519
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 1: it is so expensive to create a drug and get

520
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:25,800
Speaker 1: through the f d A hoops that if there were

521
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 1: a magical cure, people would sell it. They would sell

522
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:31,879
Speaker 1: it for a boatload, a yacht load of money, one

523
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: might say, but they wouldn't want to keep it secret

524
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: because they would be walking away from so much money.

525
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:42,720
Speaker 1: And then there was a funny part where the person

526
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: who was a former chemists, like someone creating these drugs, said,

527
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 1: maybe chemists is not the right word. Researcher. Researcher, sure,

528
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: because we don't know exactly what this person was involved with.

529
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:01,439
Speaker 1: But they said, they said, here's the thing, it would

530
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:06,280
Speaker 1: be very difficult for the pharmaceutical companies to pay someone

531
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:10,759
Speaker 1: who discovered a cure enough to keep it secret. You know,

532
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 1: how would how would you do that? And this this

533
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:17,719
Speaker 1: goes into some darker territory when we hear allegations of

534
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:21,920
Speaker 1: you know, people being disappeared or something like that. But

535
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: in this case, so far, just because of the amount

536
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:29,720
Speaker 1: of people that would be required to keep this secret,

537
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:33,439
Speaker 1: it's we we haven't found we haven't found a case yet.

538
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,640
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear more from listeners who believe that

539
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: there is a case. And and I want to say

540
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:44,879
Speaker 1: also that often you'll hear people saying that an alternative

541
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: medicine of some sort is what's being repressed, right, or

542
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 1: that there is some maybe natural cure through a plant

543
00:35:55,600 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 1: or through a relatively simply made derivation of a plant,

544
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:07,280
Speaker 1: that pharmaceutical companies are instead trying to monetize. And that part,

545
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: that last part is pretty believable because we're seeing that

546
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: now with I'm not going to claim marijuana is some

547
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 1: sort of panacea that cures everything. It's certainly kept Taco

548
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,080
Speaker 1: Bell in business. That's that's one magic power has. But

549
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:26,839
Speaker 1: but it is true that pharmaceutical companies have worked diligently

550
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:31,799
Speaker 1: to isolate you know, functional chemicals, the the active you know,

551
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: tetracannaboids and stuff, the th HC too, make it a

552
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 1: pill form instead of something that a person would you know,

553
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: smoke or I guess ingest other ways. Yeah, it reminds

554
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: me of something I think I brought up in we

555
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: were talking about monetizing the treatment of drug addiction. I

556
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 1: think the episode was just on drug addictions, that it was,

557
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 1: and I was talking about how, you know, privatizing, privatization

558
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 1: of methodone clinics force, Oh yeah, yeah, right, and so

559
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: obviously ties into big pharma. I mean, you know, somebody's

560
00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:06,759
Speaker 1: got to manufacturer the methodone or whatever short version of

561
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:08,920
Speaker 1: that is just being prescribed, you know, for the treatment

562
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 1: of opiate addiction. UM. There's a lot of articles out

563
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:14,880
Speaker 1: there about UM. I think the most recent when I

564
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 1: saw I was on device. There is a a natural

565
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: supplement you can call it UM. It's a leaf from

566
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: Thailand originally believe it's called cretum and it it produces

567
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: an effect very similar to an opiate or like methodone

568
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 1: for example. But UM. And it is legal technically right

569
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 1: now in the US. But it is clearly, according to

570
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:36,439
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that I've been reading, very

571
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:41,040
Speaker 1: much uh, controversial, and it's you know, probably not going

572
00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 1: to be legal for long, yeah, more or less. But

573
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:51,239
Speaker 1: UM it is apparently a very good analog to methodone.

574
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: And not nearly as uh not doesn't carry nearly as

575
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:57,719
Speaker 1: many side effects, so so it can be used to

576
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:02,320
Speaker 1: treat um people have be in addiction. Absolutely okay, according

577
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 1: to you know, some of these sources, and we could

578
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 1: maybe find a few links and pirst them on social um.

579
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: But I think it's just a good example of like

580
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 1: a longstanding natural product that has been around. Apparently, this

581
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: that used to be so popular um in um in

582
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: Thailand that they it had to be banned because it

583
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: was actually interfering with the opium trade because people were

584
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 1: it was easier to get, people could grow it, you know,

585
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:36,279
Speaker 1: it grew naturally even and it was actually interfering with

586
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:38,799
Speaker 1: the opium trade. So you know, and this is you know,

587
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 1: decades and decades and decades ago. This is a very

588
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:44,360
Speaker 1: interesting story when I haven't heard and I'd like to

589
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:47,360
Speaker 1: follow up on it. So and I'm not saying that

590
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: this suppression of a miracle drug has never occurred. I'm

591
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:55,800
Speaker 1: saying that I've had this point. I've had difficulty finding

592
00:38:56,000 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: a proven case suppression that later came out. One thing

593
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 1: that could be similar would be not related so much

594
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:10,000
Speaker 1: to pharmaceutical companies, but the Tuskegee experiments where the US

595
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: government withheld treatment for syphilis. But that again, that would

596
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 1: be Uncle Sam. That would not necessarily be like a

597
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:22,400
Speaker 1: viser or a bear. So if you are listening to

598
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 1: this show, first, thank you so much. And if you

599
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: have knowledge of something like that, if you want to

600
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: be anonymous, that's fine. We won't reveal your identity, but

601
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:38,320
Speaker 1: we would love to hear more about this suppression of cures.

602
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:43,120
Speaker 1: We've looked at the propagation of diseases and at least

603
00:39:43,160 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: one example that is a true story. We have looked

604
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:51,799
Speaker 1: at some corruption, which is numerous examples, and we have

605
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 1: looked into the idea of suppressing a treatment there that's

606
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: such a big term. There are number of ways we

607
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,439
Speaker 1: can look at it, but we want to know what

608
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 1: you think. So write to us on Facebook, follow us

609
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,120
Speaker 1: on Twitter. We're conspiracy stuff at both. You can even

610
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 1: check out our live show that we do once a

611
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 1: week ish. Oh, which reminds me, nold, are you gonna

612
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 1: do you want to be on that? Okay? So yeah, yeah,

613
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 1: So in the WiFi game, yeah yeah, we're getting our

614
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: WiFi game back. It's it's it's much better. And speaking

615
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 1: of what you think, let's pause for a second and

616
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:39,359
Speaker 1: do some listener mail. All right, So our first letter

617
00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 1: comes to us from Matt, not Matt Frederick, not the

618
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 1: not our co host, but Matt a listener, and Matt's

619
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:53,239
Speaker 1: writing and regarding our episode on modern slavery. The statistics

620
00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: on sex trafficking are very problematic, and jurisdictions have a

621
00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: political interest in it. I was traffic to air quotes

622
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 1: can be a get out of jail card for prostitute

623
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 1: to get arrested. Maggie McNeil has written a fairly thorough

624
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: analysis of how questionable the widely popularized sex trafficking statistics

625
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: actually are, and then that goes on to say, also,

626
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:17,240
Speaker 1: there was a distinct attitude that no right thinking woman

627
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:19,320
Speaker 1: would ever want to do sex work on your show,

628
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:22,919
Speaker 1: and just isn't true. Again, quite a number of women

629
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:25,160
Speaker 1: are in the business because they choose to, not because

630
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 1: of his survival work. First time I've seen such an

631
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: obvious bias on your show. Well, Matt, thanks for writing.

632
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:35,240
Speaker 1: I noticed that you say distinct attitude, most likely because

633
00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 1: we never directly said that no one would ever willingly

634
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: be involved in sex work. However, I do agree that

635
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:46,840
Speaker 1: I do agree completely that sex trafficking statistics can be

636
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: very very problematic. Uh, statistics for forced labor in general

637
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:56,720
Speaker 1: are very problematic. And I can't remember if we address

638
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:58,719
Speaker 1: this on air, but I hope we did. You have

639
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:03,880
Speaker 1: to also question the agendas of widely inflated numbers, you know,

640
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: question the source of where those numbers come from. So

641
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:12,400
Speaker 1: it is it clearly isn't true that no one would

642
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: ever want to do sex work. But if we say

643
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: quite a number of women are in the business because

644
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: they choose to, quite a number is also a slippery

645
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: number in itself, and regardless of the ratio. Uh, it

646
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:33,440
Speaker 1: is true that now use the same word, the same phrase,

647
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:36,840
Speaker 1: quite a number of people are in sex trafficking or

648
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: forced labor of any sort against their will. And with

649
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 1: with that being said, I really appreciate this email, Matt,

650
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 1: because you're you're making an excellent point about how dangerous

651
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 1: it can be to paint with a broad brush, and

652
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:55,040
Speaker 1: that's something that I wanted. Uh. I wanted the rest

653
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 1: of the listeners to hear your take on And thank

654
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:01,359
Speaker 1: you for the recommendation of Maggie McNeil. For people who

655
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,960
Speaker 1: haven't checked out our Modern Slavery podcast, UH, please do

656
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 1: you learn some interesting facts and you'll see some as

657
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 1: Matt has pointed out, questionable statistics. One of the interesting

658
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:17,319
Speaker 1: pieces of trivia is that, according to most estimates we read,

659
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: the vast majority of forced labor or human trafficking forced

660
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:29,719
Speaker 1: modern slavery is manual labor. So things like brick building, right,

661
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:35,279
Speaker 1: like construction work, agriculture, rather than the lurid tales that

662
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: seem to get the most popular media attention. So again,

663
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: thanks so much for writing, Matt, and I appreciate your point.

664
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:46,359
Speaker 1: It was well uh, well written, well presented. Again check

665
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 1: out the book by Maggie McNeil. I guess that's the

666
00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:52,520
Speaker 1: interesting thing about statistics. I mean this idea of reducing

667
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:55,600
Speaker 1: a human being to a statistic, and they inherently have

668
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:59,920
Speaker 1: very little context, so it's hard to know the motivations

669
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: typically behind a statistic. M hm I yeah, I personal level,

670
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,839
Speaker 1: I'm sure, Yeah, I completely agree. And statistics can be

671
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:12,400
Speaker 1: so easily skewed by something as small as the framing

672
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: of a question in a poll. Right. Uh So for instance, uh,

673
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 1: if there if there was something like a pole regarding recess, right,

674
00:44:23,560 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 1: and if you if you were trying to get something

675
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: that said, uh, the majority of people agree that children

676
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:36,239
Speaker 1: should have some sort of recess, right then, or if

677
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:39,839
Speaker 1: you want you would say, you would say, um, do

678
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:44,239
Speaker 1: you believe that children should be forced to stay inside

679
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 1: all day during school despite the numerous studies showing that

680
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 1: sitting constantly has legitimate and long lasting health effects. Then

681
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: of course people will be like, no, I don't want

682
00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: children to have a sitting disease. And if you wanted

683
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 1: more people to say that they disagree with recess, then

684
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: you would say, I do you believe that children should

685
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:11,240
Speaker 1: be forced outside? Uh? And to stand in the elements,

686
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: given given the given the recent statistics on pollution, and

687
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: the long lasting detrimental health effects that can occur just

688
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:24,080
Speaker 1: from being outside for an hour. Oh and by the way,

689
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: we're making this show in a state where recess has

690
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:31,360
Speaker 1: uh consistently dwindled. I think it's like ten minutes a

691
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: day now, which is just enough time to get kids

692
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:37,080
Speaker 1: to run outside and then run back in. Did I

693
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 1: ever tell you that they kicked me out of kindergarten?

694
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: They kicked you out because I don't play? Oh no,

695
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: come on now, all right, So well, let's go to

696
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:54,879
Speaker 1: a second piece of listener mail. Okay, um, so here

697
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: is a nice letter. I just wanted to write in

698
00:45:57,280 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: to let you know how much I enjoy the podcast.

699
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 1: I've only been listening for a couple of months now,

700
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 1: but it's one of the podcasts I listened to that

701
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: I anticipate the most every week, thinking it would be

702
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:10,400
Speaker 1: an Alex Jones type Conspiracy Circle jerk. I love that image.

703
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:13,759
Speaker 1: I was very timid about listening. The level of skepticism

704
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: you show every week, though, is very refreshing when it

705
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:19,120
Speaker 1: comes to these topics. I am very interested in conspiracy

706
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:21,000
Speaker 1: theories as a topic, but it is so hard to

707
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 1: find level headed conversation about it from the outside. I

708
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: just finished this week's episode and thought I chime in

709
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:28,719
Speaker 1: with some support keep up the awesome work. And that

710
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:30,919
Speaker 1: comes to us from Ryan and Ryan, thanks so much.

711
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:35,080
Speaker 1: We sure appreciate it. We have uh we you know,

712
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 1: we get a lot of email here and this show.

713
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: You know, you might be a regular listener, and you

714
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 1: might have friends who say, oh no, we'll make up

715
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: a name of a person, Stephen Mecklenburg. Okay, And let's

716
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:53,799
Speaker 1: say you're Steven Mecklenburg and you're a regular listener in

717
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 1: this show. You might have people who going, Ah, Steve,

718
00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:01,680
Speaker 1: I can't believe you listen to that tinfoil hat bologney

719
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 1: right that bologna and uh and malarkey right. And if

720
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:10,399
Speaker 1: if you have friends who are like that, who would

721
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:13,239
Speaker 1: be hesitant to check out a show because of the

722
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:17,399
Speaker 1: topics it addresses, UH, then please let them let them

723
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: know that this this show, we will we will ask

724
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:24,160
Speaker 1: any question. We'll entertain any question. As a listener driven show,

725
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,760
Speaker 1: We'll ask any question. We'll do our best to find

726
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: the answers. Now. As Matt our listener pointed out in

727
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,480
Speaker 1: our early in the earlier email, we don't always get

728
00:47:34,520 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 1: things right. You know, we're we're human. There are things

729
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: that we need to clarify. There are some things that

730
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: we've just gotten wrong, and we rely on our listeners

731
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:49,799
Speaker 1: to help us keep this show as as honest as possible. Man.

732
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,200
Speaker 1: You know, from where I said, you guys do a

733
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:56,160
Speaker 1: fantastic job of keeping Ben Matt and you know, to

734
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: a less you degree myself honest about these things that

735
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:01,759
Speaker 1: we very much appreciate. That obviously well so so we

736
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:05,759
Speaker 1: appreciate and I would ask you if you have if

737
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: you have some friends like that who um pride themselves

738
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 1: on critical thinking, right, but somehow make the mistake of

739
00:48:14,560 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 1: throwing everything referred to as a conspiracy theory into the

740
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:22,759
Speaker 1: same large bucket. Then uh, let them let them know

741
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,000
Speaker 1: about our show, or tell them, oh I I heard

742
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: a good one that is not what what? What's that phrase?

743
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: A conspiracy circle jerk? Do we even say that on

744
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:36,399
Speaker 1: the air. There's a there's a band called the circle Jerks. Okay, alright, yes,

745
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: so guys, if our boss is asked, that's what we

746
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: were talking about, all right, back us up, uh, and

747
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:43,839
Speaker 1: now we are going to head out. We would like

748
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:45,680
Speaker 1: to hear from you. So if you want to take

749
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:48,640
Speaker 1: a page from that list. Whoa wait, do you hear

750
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:55,200
Speaker 1: that sound cute? Yeah? You do, because you're you're playing it. Yeah. No,

751
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,399
Speaker 1: I have a thing, Ben, I have a thing. So

752
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:00,840
Speaker 1: I kind of want to use to day's moment to

753
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:06,200
Speaker 1: revisit our boys. Screlly, Martin Screlly. Um. This is a story.

754
00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: It's fascinating to me on a couple of levels, but

755
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:12,200
Speaker 1: one it really shows the power of the internet. First

756
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:16,279
Speaker 1: in that this story kind of came and then was

757
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:19,239
Speaker 1: more or less resolved in a day's time. I'm using

758
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: the term resolved pretty loosely. But a little backstory. UM,

759
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,880
Speaker 1: many of you, I'm sure we're following this along with me. Um.

760
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:29,759
Speaker 1: Martin Screlly is a thirty two I believe thirty two

761
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 1: year old former hedge fund manager, so just you know,

762
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:37,560
Speaker 1: up there in the financial world, and was topiary. Yeah,

763
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 1: I don't know what either one of those. I thought,

764
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:42,440
Speaker 1: it's like a landscaping thing, manage hedges. Yeah, I have that.

765
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 1: You know that it might as well be, for all

766
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 1: I know about what hedge fund actually is. It seems

767
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 1: like to me it's one of those things where you

768
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 1: only really know what it is, and that's what you

769
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:51,840
Speaker 1: do for a living. I'm gonna walk away from a

770
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:55,000
Speaker 1: terrible landscaping joke. I don't. You don't have to, I know,

771
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 1: let's go all right, I'll go with you. So Martin Screlly,

772
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 1: um for two year old financial whiz I guess you

773
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:05,760
Speaker 1: could call him. Uh, used to manage a hedge fund.

774
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: So left the hedge fund and it was part of

775
00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:14,640
Speaker 1: a pharmaceutical company called Retrofin. Is that right? Yeah, Retrofin

776
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:18,120
Speaker 1: and Retrofin acquired the rights to sell a drug called

777
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:23,799
Speaker 1: fiola fiolas used to treat cystinuria. That's a rare, incurable

778
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 1: condition which gives you persistent kidney stones. That's right, So

779
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,719
Speaker 1: that's a that's a pain in the kidney. Right. Yeah,

780
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 1: So we're burying the lead here a little bit. But

781
00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: the reason we bring that up is this was sort

782
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: of the first example of this guy Screlly um doing

783
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 1: some pretty egregious price gouging. Yeah, he said that Fiolo,

784
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 1: which sold for four thousand a year per patient, would

785
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: be priced closer to a rival drug called Pencilla Meane,

786
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 1: which sold for eighty thousand, hundred forty thousand a year

787
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:01,799
Speaker 1: per patient. So good little backstory there. But the lead

788
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,120
Speaker 1: that we're bearing is the news of the day is, uh,

789
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:12,239
Speaker 1: Martin Screlly has a pharmaceutical startup called Turing Pharmaceuticals um

790
00:51:12,280 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: and And just the idea to me when I first

791
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 1: heard this of a pharmaceutical startup, I mean, I think

792
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: of a startup is like building an app, you know,

793
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:20,719
Speaker 1: like something. I don't really think of it as like,

794
00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess all companies have to start somewhere,

795
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:25,480
Speaker 1: But this is the idea of a pharmaceutical startups sort

796
00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:27,160
Speaker 1: of like made me scratch my head A little bit.

797
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: But one of the first things he did UM when

798
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 1: he started this company was purchased the rights to a

799
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: very old drug called dry Prim and UH. Dry Prim

800
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 1: has actually been used for years to treat toxoplasmosis, which

801
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: is is a pretty common condition, but it's not particularly

802
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:55,279
Speaker 1: um detrimental to most people who have it, who have

803
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:58,840
Speaker 1: regular you know, functioning system. Where it comes where it

804
00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: becomes a real problem is with immunodeficient individuals UM suffering

805
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:06,360
Speaker 1: from you know, say HIV, AIDS or cancer. And what

806
00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: this drug does is it'say an anti parasite, anti parasitic drug.

807
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:15,480
Speaker 1: And for years, I believe it's sold in the neighborhood

808
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:17,520
Speaker 1: of a dollar a pill, and then it went up

809
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:20,160
Speaker 1: to about thirteen dollars at pill. Well, when our boys

810
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:23,040
Speaker 1: Screlly bought it, he decided it would be a good

811
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:26,160
Speaker 1: idea to up the price from thirteen change to I

812
00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: believe seven hundred and fifty dollars a pill. Yeah, I

813
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,239
Speaker 1: believe that's correct. Yeah. And when questioned about it on

814
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 1: CBS UH this morning, I believe it was there before yesterday,

815
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:38,880
Speaker 1: he argued that you know, they're only about two thousand

816
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:43,359
Speaker 1: people that use this drug actively it's was not profitable

817
00:52:43,640 --> 00:52:47,280
Speaker 1: for our company UM to sell it at that price.

818
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: And honestly, what we're doing by raising the price here

819
00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:55,640
Speaker 1: is actually very altruistic because it means that we can

820
00:52:55,680 --> 00:52:59,840
Speaker 1: take this money and invest it back into research and development,

821
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 1: you find a better drug UM with viewer side effects. Yeah,

822
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:08,279
Speaker 1: and also there's the question of the enormous cost of

823
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:11,320
Speaker 1: our INDE. That's something that people would bring up to also,

824
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 1: just just to throw this in there, Apparently it costs

825
00:53:14,040 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of a dollar or less to actually

826
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:20,120
Speaker 1: produce to manufacturer manufacturer one is that is that counting

827
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:24,160
Speaker 1: the soaken cost of the of you know, the the

828
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 1: overhead to research and create it. Well, I guess that's

829
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:28,800
Speaker 1: a good point, because I mean, if you'd spend fifty

830
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: million dollars to acquire it, I guess you have to

831
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:32,759
Speaker 1: figure that into it when you know you're talking about

832
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:35,080
Speaker 1: what would be profitable to sell the drug for. So

833
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:37,879
Speaker 1: I didn't know this, So the plan was to take

834
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:41,239
Speaker 1: that money and make a another thing. But that's the

835
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:42,799
Speaker 1: point that I guess that's the reason I'm bringing this

836
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: up is that would probably be the argument that any

837
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company would make as to why they're quote unquote

838
00:53:48,160 --> 00:53:51,440
Speaker 1: price gouging, They say, oh, well, our you know, biggest

839
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:53,879
Speaker 1: stakeholders are are the patients. You know, that is who

840
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 1: we're looking after the most. If we're doing anything, it

841
00:53:56,600 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 1: is so we can funnel this money back into research

842
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: and development, which admittedly is very expensive and you know,

843
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:05,719
Speaker 1: time consuming to to do. You know, there was there

844
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 1: was another piece of big news though, right yeah, Um,

845
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: so basically what happened is this news came out, the

846
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 1: Internet proceeded to go bananas like it tends to do,

847
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:18,479
Speaker 1: and it just became a collective lynch mob for this guy,

848
00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: Martin Screlly, just Twitter just you know, calling him hitler,

849
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 1: calling him the worst thing since pol Pot, you know,

850
00:54:24,760 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: I mean, just just really demonizing this guy. And you know,

851
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:31,040
Speaker 1: he didn't do himself very many favors because he is

852
00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:34,960
Speaker 1: also an active Twitter user and tended to respond to

853
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: Internet criticisms by quoting Wu Tang clan lyrics saying that

854
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 1: he ain't nothing to blank with and um, you know

855
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:44,920
Speaker 1: things like that, and posting pictures of himself on one

856
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 1: of those uh those the new answer to the segue,

857
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:52,360
Speaker 1: the little roly things, you know that whiz Khalifa got

858
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: arrested b of l a X or something like that.

859
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: Ye had deep cut there, um, But yeah, and he's

860
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,680
Speaker 1: kind of this kind of smirky little face this you know,

861
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:04,520
Speaker 1: kind of hipster haircut and just just you know, very

862
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:06,799
Speaker 1: easy to demonize a guy like that who just does

863
00:55:06,960 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 1: no self awareness when it comes to these things. And

864
00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 1: so I guess, um, I'm I'm going off on a

865
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:13,680
Speaker 1: bit of a tangent here. But the thing that was

866
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 1: most fascinating to me about this is here is a

867
00:55:16,719 --> 00:55:23,520
Speaker 1: quote unquote pharmaceutical startup making this incredibly contentious decision, and

868
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:28,680
Speaker 1: the Internet reacted, and in real time you could see

869
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: this guy like defending himself in the worst way possible.

870
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: You can see all the criticisms being lobbied against. You

871
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 1: do not get to see that when it comes to

872
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:38,440
Speaker 1: these large companies. This this is like a like a

873
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 1: look behind the curtain because of the size of this organization,

874
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 1: because of who this guy is, the fact that he's

875
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:46,560
Speaker 1: a millennial and he's tweeting out everything and he has

876
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: absolutely no filter. So I just think it was really interesting.

877
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:52,719
Speaker 1: I learned so much about what price gouging is, what

878
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:55,560
Speaker 1: kinds of act, what kinds of deals are going on

879
00:55:55,560 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 1: behind closed doors when it comes to these pharmaceutical companies.

880
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:01,040
Speaker 1: But it was all in this really interesting of micro level.

881
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:03,920
Speaker 1: So it was a really interesting glimpse into what likely

882
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:07,840
Speaker 1: is happening on a larger scale, but in real time

883
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:11,800
Speaker 1: in the span of a day. Yeah, and the price

884
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 1: is gonna drop. He's gonna drop. Internet shamed him into

885
00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:19,719
Speaker 1: rowing back the price, right, we'll see. Well, and also

886
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:22,720
Speaker 1: we don't know if that was the determining factor, but people,

887
00:56:23,719 --> 00:56:25,480
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like it. He said, it was

888
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 1: more or less I mean he I think, I don't

889
00:56:28,600 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 1: know what the quote was exactly, but he more or

890
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 1: less said, um, it was sort of a sorry not

891
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 1: sorry kind of where he was like, you know what,

892
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:39,120
Speaker 1: I feel like my decision to do this in the

893
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:43,040
Speaker 1: first place wasn't wrong, but clearly this is bad for me,

894
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 1: so I'm not gonna do it. So that's, you know,

895
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:51,759
Speaker 1: that's an interesting story. And we have to wonder what

896
00:56:51,760 --> 00:56:54,760
Speaker 1: what effects this is going to have on the future,

897
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:59,440
Speaker 1: right on other pharmaceutical companies, on the on the ongoing fight. Sure, well,

898
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:02,160
Speaker 1: you know, Hillary and when this happened, tweeted out, this

899
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: is exactly the kind of ridiculous price gouging that we're

900
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:08,399
Speaker 1: trying to prevent in big pharma. You know, I am

901
00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:12,000
Speaker 1: going to roll out a plan, you know, to cap

902
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:17,960
Speaker 1: uh drug manufacturing or drug sales at some set rate

903
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:20,920
Speaker 1: above what it costs to produce, et cetera. Like our

904
00:57:20,920 --> 00:57:23,400
Speaker 1: plan did come out. But I mean this created a

905
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: very large reaction again because of the echo chamber that

906
00:57:27,320 --> 00:57:29,320
Speaker 1: is Twitter in the Internet. Like, so the whole thing

907
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:32,160
Speaker 1: was really interesting to see, uh go down in real time.

908
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 1: And is this sincere on the Clinton Campaign's part or

909
00:57:36,360 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: simply opportunistic Probably both. Yeah, I think that's it. But

910
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 1: but but then this goes into the larger fight, for instance,

911
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:48,120
Speaker 1: between generic drug manufacturers in India who are making things

912
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 1: that would cost on the order of a dollar or

913
00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:52,640
Speaker 1: a pill a dollar or three dollars a pill, against

914
00:57:52,720 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical companies often in the West, who say, we

915
00:57:57,160 --> 00:58:00,400
Speaker 1: did all the legwork to manufacture or discover this, to

916
00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:04,840
Speaker 1: create it at great expense, and now you are counterfeiting

917
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:08,840
Speaker 1: or stealing our intellectual property, which goes back again to

918
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 1: the t p P, which we don't have too much

919
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 1: time to talk about now. So uh, we're gonna we're

920
00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:19,360
Speaker 1: gonna head out and as always, we hope that you

921
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode. We hope that you will follow us

922
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:26,880
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter. But more importantly than just following

923
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:29,680
Speaker 1: us or liking us, which is something that always makes

924
00:58:29,760 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 1: us a little bit less close to getting fired. Uh.

925
00:58:33,240 --> 00:58:37,000
Speaker 1: There there is the most important, most singular thing you do,

926
00:58:37,160 --> 00:58:39,840
Speaker 1: which is right to us. Let us know what you think. Uh,

927
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:43,120
Speaker 1: tell tell your friends if you feel like telling your friends. Uh.

928
00:58:43,160 --> 00:58:45,479
Speaker 1: And let's you know what, what would you like people

929
00:58:45,480 --> 00:58:48,040
Speaker 1: to write to us with? Well, I mean obviously, ideas

930
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:51,440
Speaker 1: for things to research, ideas for episodes. Um, let us

931
00:58:51,440 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 1: know what you think about how we're doing. Let us

932
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:57,440
Speaker 1: know ways that we can use you know, Noble's corner

933
00:58:57,600 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 1: to better effect. Um, I just readubbed at Millis Quarters Quarter.

934
00:59:02,120 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: Um now we just we we loved. We always love

935
00:59:04,160 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 1: to hear what you guys think because as been and

936
00:59:06,160 --> 00:59:10,440
Speaker 1: that always say, this is your show. And that's the

937
00:59:10,560 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 1: end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts

938
00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:17,920
Speaker 1: or questions about this episode, you can get into contact

939
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: with us in a number of different ways. One of

940
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 1: the best is to give us a call. Our number

941
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:25,440
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942
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:27,680
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943
00:59:27,720 --> 00:59:31,000
Speaker 1: send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy

944
00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:34,840
Speaker 1: at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want

945
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:37,200
Speaker 1: you to know is a production of I heart Radio.

946
00:59:37,520 --> 00:59:39,800
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947
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:42,760
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.