Ask Dr. Drew - Doctor Is Charged With “Unprofessional Conduct” After Prescribing Ivermectin For COVID-19, Responds With LAWSUIT Against Medical Commission w/ Dr. Michael Turner & Dr. Kelly Victory – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 278

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

The Washington State Medical Commission charged Dr. Michael Turner – a Stanford and Harvard graduate – with unprofessional conduct after he prescribed ivermectin to an older telehealth patient. Should licensed physicians be allowed to prescribe medications for off-label uses without fear of punishment from medical boards? Dr. Turner is now part of a lawsuit seeking to have the Medical Commission’s proceedings against himself and three other doctors halted. Dr. Michael Turner is a board-certified physician in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. He’s a graduate of Stanford University and received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed his internship and residency at the Mayo Clinic. Follow him at https://drturner.substack.com and https://michaelturnermd.com. 「 SPONSORED BY 」 Find out more about the companies that make this show possible and get special discounts on amazing products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew • PRIMAL LIFE - Dr. Drew recommends Primal Life's 100% natural dental products to improve your mouth. Get a sparkling smile by using natural teeth whitener without harsh chemicals. For a limited time, get 60% off at https://drdrew.com/primal • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get a discount on your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician with over 35 years of national radio, NYT bestselling books, and countless TV shows bearing his name. He's known for Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Teen Mom OG (MTV), Dr. Drew After Dark (YMH), The Masked Singer (FOX), multiple hit podcasts, and the iconic Loveline radio show. Dr. Drew Pinsky received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his M.D. from the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. Read more at https://drdrew.com/about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thank you all for being here. Of course, I'll be watching you on the restream and over at the Rumble Rants. Today, it's Dr. Michael Turner and, of course, Dr. Kelly Victory here with me as well. Dr. Turner is a board-certified physician, a graduate of Stanford and Harvard. I believe his medical school training was at Harvard. Physical medicine, rehabilitation doctor, as well as regenerative medicine. He, let's see, Stanford undergraduate, Harvard Medical School, That is correct. And residency at the Mayo Clinic. So he is well-trained. He dared to use a little improvisational medicine when he was approaching some patients.

And for that, his license is being challenged by his state medical board. And he is suing along with three other, I believe, with three other physicians who are in a similar situation. We're going to talk about that with Dr. Turney. You can follow him on his website, MichaelTurnerMD.com. Substack is drturner underscore substack.com. And Instagram is Dr. Michael Turner MD. Let's get to it. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. Psychopaths start this way. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction.

Fentanyl and heroin, ridiculous. I'm a doctor for. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real.

We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. You have trouble, you can't stop, and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. I think everyone knows the next medical crisis could be just around the corner,

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It's an insurance policy that you hope you're not going to need, but if you need it, you sure as heck are going to wish you had it if you need it. Be ready for anything. This medical emergency kit contains an assortment of life-saving medications, including ivermectin, Z-Pak. The medical emergency kit provides a guidebook to aid in the safe use of all these life-saving medications. From anthrax to tick bites to COVID-19, the Wellness Company's medical emergency kit is exactly what you need to have on hand to be prepared. Rest assured, knowing that you have emergency antibiotics, antivirals, and antiparasitics on hand to help you and your family stay safe from whatever life throws at you next. Go to drdrew.com slash TWC. That is D-R-D-R-E-W dot com forward slash TWC to get 10% off today. Just click on that link. Welcome, everyone. As I said, we'll have Dr. Kelly Victory in here in just a mere moment.

And for now, we are introducing Dr. Michael Turner Turner who's going to tell us the story of how it was. First I want to hear about his training and what his sort of practice has been and how his ability to practice medicine has been interrupted by a weaponized state medical board. Dr. Turner as I said a graduate of Stanford University, MD from Harvard Medical School, residency at Mayo Clinic, board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation, I think also in regenerative medicine. As I said, you can follow him on Instagram at drmichaelturnermd, drmichaelturnermd. And let's welcome Dr. Turner to our program. Oh, thank you so much, Drew. Thank you. Thank you, Drew. Glad to be here.

This is a blessing. Pleasure to have you. So tell us a little bit about your training first. I want people to understand sort of, I just want to frame what it means when regulatory organizations, state medical societies, organizations that have no business involving themselves in the practice of medicine per se get involved in medicine. So you went to Stanford undergraduate, correct? I did. I studied human biology. Very, very fantastic career. Enjoyed it very much. Met a lot of great people. Worked hard. I had a backstory to that of being raised in California by a mom with a lot of naturalistic emphases. So for example, I could rarely to never have sugar cereal growing up. I wasn't allowed to have video games. I was encouraged to go outside and do team sports. I did Boy

Scouts. We used to read together at night for family entertainment. We always had dinner around the table. So some traditional, I would say very healthful concepts. And just growing up in California in the Bay Area, it was a healthy zone of mind as you may be familiar with. So I kept that emphasis all along. As I went through Stanford, as I went to Harvard for medical school, I kept my naturalistic emphasis.

I was sort of the strange guy who was taking supplements. I remember I had a Ziploc bag of supplements that I'd tuck in my scrub pockets when I was on call. I'd pull out my vitamin C, my ashwagandha, my ginkgo, whatever, take my supplements. I was a guy, when I was on call in the hospital, I was doing yoga in the break room, doing some up dog, down dog, side plank, whatever, just stretching. And I never felt like I had to be limited by what I was learning in those institutions as august and venerable and fantastic as they are. I never felt like I was limited to that.

I felt like my job was ethically to respond to the patient with whatever the best stream of information would be. If it means you need to get an MRI, then that's great. If it means you need to put blueberries in your smoothie because they're good for cognition, then that's great. Right? If it means you need to take ginkgo biloba because it improves cerebral blood flow, if it means you're overdue for colonoscopy for colon cancer screening, whatever it is, my job was to pull the best piece of

information and provide it to the patient. So I had that mindset as I went through, I was tremendously well-trained on all the traditional sides of medicine, but unfortunately a lot of the more naturalistic or holistic aspects were self-taught self-motivated you know continuing education courses and such but as i then finished up let me let me i want to stop you if you don't mind yeah right there so so your postgraduate training was in physical and rehabilitation medicine correct is that accurate yes at mayo exactly okay and so were you doing the traditional path then of stroke patients and post-HIPs and

post-acute hospitalization stuff, or was there something else going on? Yes, traditional. So I got recruited by a hospital here in Washington State to work in an outpatient neuroscience center. So I was doing a lot of neuroscience rehab, also mixing in a bit of orthopedic rehab with that. But I had my interest in integrative medicine and wellness all along. And that actually, we could talk about it, but turned out to force me into a career change because I just felt boxed in essentially at the hospital. And then you, am I correct that you have another board certification in integrative medicine?

Is that true? No. To the extent that there is such a thing? Yeah, there are some. Is there such a thing? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know to what level it's risen in terms of being an official subspecialty or something like that.

But there are certain certification programs. No, I'm not board certified in integrative medicine, but I use that title because the title of integrative medicine, because it most aptly describes what I do essentially. Okay. And would it be accurate to say that, you know, the, the, I don't know how to frame this in a way that's accurate, that, that the evidence basis for a lot of the recommendations in integrative medicine these days has risen to a standard of evidence-based practices would it be accurate to have said that said it that way that there's oh this is not 1980s like when kelly and i were training when there was almost no it was the

wild west but now there's a lot of when i you know for instance when i talk about a supplement i and the first thing i ask for is get me the data and there's usually a whole stream of good studies that they can provide for me so is is it accurate to say that the evidence basis for your recommendations is is up to a reasonable standard of of quality now certainly uh i pride myself on that i try to be evidence-based and everything that I do you know and because that's my integrity and that's also the patient's time and energy and money and health risk right I don't want to be chasing every bandwagon or some MLM scheme or something I read about on the internet I

have to recommend it in a good conscience but you know what's interesting a lot of things that used to be considered alternative medicine are now very mainstream for example vitamin that vitamin D. That's right. Vitamin D, right? Vitamin D is a great example. Is vitamin D alternative medicine? It's gotten more and more mainstream. The literature is off the charts in terms of what it does to the immune system, musculoskeletal health, et cetera.

And so now it's almost mainstream. You know, your primary care should check a vitamin D level just like he or she should check a cholesterol, right? It's true. I do do that. I'm a primary care guy and I do that all the time now. And there's even some other sort of interesting data on vitamin D sprinkled throughout.

For instance, it's one of the only thing that is shown to do the, if I state this accurately as I can, decrease the risk of progressive metastasis in outside the capsule disease of prostate cancer, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I know, I know how striking anti-cancer properties. Absolutely. Yeah. So, all right. So your regenerative medicine, how long have you been in that field? Um, basically since 2009, uh, I was working at the hospital, but doing a lot of integrative medicine sort of within that job, right? So patients would come to me for their back pain or their post-surgical rehab,

but then they would also have complaints like, I don't have enough energy, or I want to lose weight, or I wonder what my thyroid's doing. So me trying to pull together integrative solutions goes back to the beginning of my career in 2009, but really jumped off in 2020 when I went into business for myself. Okay. And then COVID hits. And what did you think of that whole experience? Forget what the fall that was for you. As it hit, what were the kinds of thoughts you had as we walked into this extraordinary circumstance? Yeah. Well, first of all, bewilderment, desperation. All those. Sounds about right. Right?

Desperation, you know, strong drive to figure out an answer, right? I had patients calling me, I don't want to get this. I heard it's pretty bad. I got grandma or somebody in the hospital. You know, how do I prevent this? Which was my first question. Is there a way to prevent it? And then came the early treatment questions. I'm coughing. My sats aren't great. I don't want to go to the ER. You know, what do I do? Or somebody went to

the hospital, got remdesivir and didn't come out. I don't want to be that person. What do I do? And sometimes people coughing and being quite acutely ill on the other side of the telemedicine visit. So it was like my time to rise to the occasion. I felt like, you know, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country, kind of a concept. So it was our time as healthcare providers. This is what we're trained to do. We need to step up. Well, I think, you know, you're in good company here with myself and Dr. Victory. We sort of had a similar kind of feeling, like what is going on? Now now you got to stand up and ask questions uh it's kind of a scary circumstance but uh you know like like i said i don't know if you got to see that

there's a little stream we play ahead of the show i was in this particular when i was interviewing megan kelly and i said you know i felt like i was part of the french underground we were talking you know we were sending out information that was forbidden just to ask questions about what is going on here. And so you ended up getting into the early treatment world, I guess, or offering early treatment. One of the cases went bad and you have now a situation with the medical board. Tell me about that. Sure. Well, I got into early treatment through utilization of the FLCCC protocols, which were game-changing for me. Saved a lot of patients' lives, most assuredly. People come back and tell me that. Kept a lot of people out of the hospital. And things were going swimmingly. And

then some anonymous complaints would have started to be filed, which is interesting. You mentioned a case gone bad, a case never really went bad. I'm under investigation for a few things, but not, not any of them relate to a case going bad. The case that went bad, quote unquote, in the eyes of the medical commission is a gentleman who had very severe COVID. I did everything I could to help him, including ivermectin, including other appropriate forms of medical care. He unfortunately died of COVID several days later in the hospital. And they tried to pin my use of ivermectin as being causal in some of the pathophysiology that led to his death. I would more aptly say that he just died of severe COVID. And unfortunately, I couldn't help him with what I did.

That's the most sort of egregious, you know, or aggressive concept that the state has. Other than that, it's simply people, basically they're prosecuting me for violating their COVID misinformation statement, which your, I, your producer may be able to pull up for us, but they passed this statement similar to what they did in California, which you very familiar. You may want to talk to that point. They passed the same thing in Washington, right? Here it is COVID misinformation statement and right in there it says you know physicians who generate and spread quote-unquote COVID-19 misinformation or disinformation erode the public trust in the medical profession and endanger patients okay well fair enough that sounds all good but let's go figure out how do you define that right and they go down a little bit farther

and here's kind of the kicker it says the wmc which relies on uh which stands for washington medical commission relies on the u.s food and drug administration approval of medications to treat coven 19 to be quote the standard of care interesting wow i guess we can't use the vaccine then we can't use the vaccine then can we isn't i know isn't that funny because you know what else was not approved by the fda the vaccine why wasn't that on here yeah in fact dr drew i'm gonna thank you for mentioning i'm gonna put on my fact in fact oh hang on a second michael you're not able to use aspirin or tylenol ever because those aren't fda approved treatments of anything ever good point i've got i've got a covid test kit right here buy an ax now all right i i bought this thing from cbs the other day drew you're gonna get

kicked out of this here's what it says this product has not been fda cleared or approved but has been authorized by the fda under an emergency youth authorization the ua so right this thing is not fda approved either this should be on this information statement why are we allowing people to take this terrible stuff it's not fda approved uh the since when does the fda this is the thing i can't get people to understand i was doing a nightly newscast um here locally trying to help people make sense of covid and stuff and the anchor who's a great, and we had a great relationship, and he started going, well, what about what the FDA is telling you to do? And I go, the FDA can't

tell me anything. The FDA has nothing to do with the practice of medicine, literally nothing, except it tells companies that are bringing medical products to market how they can market them. That's it. Other than that, I can do anything that is in the best interest of the patient. And if you want to talk about misinformation, I mean, Dr. Walensky talked about stopping the spread of COVID and then she went, oh, no, no, we can't stop the spread of COVID. Well, which was the misinformation? Back and forth. Misinformation is one of the most egregious terms. Had you ever heard of misinformation before 2020 in the practice of medicine?

In the 40 years I practiced, not a word. No. We talked about disagreements. We talked about alternative opinions. We talked about alternative practices, but we did not talk about misinformation. The idea that science has misinformation, no, I reject that completely, completely. Galileo was presenting misinformation in the eyes of the

Spanish Inquisition and the Pope. That was misinformation. So where do we stop, everybody? Who decides what you can and can't talk about with your patients? This is insanity. I hope you have good lawyers that can scream about it the way I'm screaming about it. Thank you, Drew. I appreciate the passion. I do. I've got some great lawyers.

I agree. Here's what's interesting. How can you have immediately a standard of care, first of all, by the FDA, which has got nothing to do with anything, because as you said, they don't have the mandate nor the authority nor the expertise anything to determine whether a particular patient should get a particular medication at a particular point in time that's called medical decision by the way that's why you by the way if they ever if they ever do uh sort of uh claim that privilege well now we can sue the shit out of them when they make

mistakes. So good on them for getting into this practice with us. It's hard work. Enjoy it. So go ahead. Keep going. Sure. No problem. But apart from that, let's say you had organization of doctors, X, Y, Z, that said, this is a standard of care. And what you're doing is outside of that. It's misinformation. I just, I have to ask the question, right? Critical thinking. How can you have a standard of care so quickly in the midst of a novel and evolving pandemic that the world has never seen? I agree. I mean, come on.

And by the way, yeah, I agree. And by the way, if people, you know, I've always felt like professional societies could get involved with this, right? I mean, your physical rehabilitation, I'm sure you're part of some professional society with that. If they want to ask questions, they're entitled to ask questions. I think that's a reasonable,

but those organizations don't seem to have gotten involved with any of this because they know how challenging this all is. So go ahead, finish your thoughts, and we're going to bring Dr. Victory in here. Go ahead. Sure. Yeah, I appreciate it. Well, my other thought was to say that ivermectin is not FDA approved to treat COVID is really to say nothing. It's an absurd statement on many levels, right? Because let's just ask the question, how could it have been even FDA approved, right? I mean, the FDA approval process takes time. It takes money. It

takes years. So here we are into a novel novel pandemic who has studied ivermectin for years that has gone through the full FDA regulatory process to get FDA approval and who would be willing to bankrupt roll it since it's a generic medication right I mean of course it wasn't FDA approved that was it's a kind of a nonsensical statement the question is does it work yeah and was it plausibly helpful to keep your patients from going to the hospital and dying? It's kind of funny, I use example. Let's say there was a raging wildfire

sweeping through your community, right? And you got in your car and you punched it and your car was up to a hundred miles an hour and it was getting near the red zone, right? This would be like saying, oh, the National Highway Safety Administration has not approved your car to drive at a hundred miles an hour for more than five minutes at a time. That's right.

You're like, okay, but it might, and I need to go for it right now, and I don't have time for these people to rule on something that they don't have the situational awareness to talk to me about anyway. You're right. And listen, I was saying that if nothing else, I'm, once you prescribe to somebody sick, you follow up carefully. And one of the things that was not happening during COVID was people were told just, you know, take an O2 finger monitor, go home, come back when it's 87. That is not medicine. I know what that is, as opposed to, I'm going to give you something tylenol you know and then let's talk in 24 hours and 48 hours and see how things are going uh we we i don't know maybe it's that we when we prescribe we follow more carefully i think perhaps or we're involved in the treatment

of the patient at that point and it changes our follow-up practices a little bit we were doing the opposite of that during co we were so i wonder sometimes if just the act of being engaged with the patient therapeutically was enough to monitor them more carefully and keep people out of trouble just by itself. I mean, I'm prepared to say that. But anyway, let's stop right there. I want to bring Dr. Victory in. I've used up all my time by myself with you here. Let's see. Is there any place you want to send people?

How about michaelturnermd.com if you want more information? And the sub stack is drturner, undersourced, subscat.com. We're going to take a little break. We're going to do some business and we'll bring Dr. Kelly Victory in here. Susan and I have been looking for a nutrition-packed,

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It is the mandate of public health to consider the impact of any particular mitigation scheme on the entire population. This is uncharted territory, Drew. Dr. Victory, I've had my fun with Dr. Turner. Now I turn to you. Michael, great to see you. I'm so glad to get in here with my hair on fire. You guys got your hair on fire really early on. I got to get in here too. Normally we wait a little later in the show until we get quite so fired up. I want to give a little bit of backstory here. Dr. Turner and I met Drew at a recent conference up in Spokane, Washington, where we were both speaking to a group of people, a medical freedom conference. And before it's a group of physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, pharmacists, all of whom who have decided to really get out of the

system because of the perverse incentives of the system and the algorithmic thinking and the pressures to behave in a certain way. I think that this COVID debacle, frankly, has fueled what was sort of an underground movement for a while. And I think that what we've seen in the last three years has added tremendous energy to this movement where people are saying, see, this is why I want out. And I really want to spend some time getting into the weeds with you, Michael, with regard to treatment and the use of what they are calling repurposed drugs and then get into that.

But before I do, I really want you to take a few minutes and go back because there's a part of your story that I don't think we fully exposed to our audience, which is the egregious nature to which you were persecuted. And you were. And many of us, by the way, it was sort of an informal competition at that conference in Spokane. People saying how many complaints they had filed against them and how many... I've had seven and Mary Talley Bowden had had five and other people have had... We were comparing

how many people have been attacked, but you had a story that I found particularly heinous with regard to what the board did in terms of trying to fundamentally assist people in filing complaints against you. So just talk a little bit more about what happened and then what you did, where you ended up going and working, what you've been doing, where you've been practicing yeah sure well thank you

Kelly I think it dates back greatly to a TV article that our TV report that was done so one day I was in clinic and my secretary said hey there's a reporter here wants to talk to you she, but here's her business card. This was a Friday afternoon. I had a busy clinic the rest of the day. So I figured I'll call this person back on Monday and I'll get my side of the story, whatever the story is. I don't even know what it's going to be, right?

That night, I'm at the gym and my phone is just blowing up. It's ringing off the hook. And I was working as an independent contractor contractor leasing a space in a larger clinic And this was the owner of the larger clinic. He's like your name's all over the paper our clinic names all over the news Rather what's going on? What's this deal? Are you prescribing ivermectin? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about I am prescribing ivermectin but news story. I have no idea what you're talking about. I mean a reporter dropped her card off I don't know is that what you're talking about? He's like go check the news out right so I went on the news and

They aired this free package. hit piece is the only way to characterize it about ivermectin saying, Oh, poison control calls are up. And it's veterinary medicine and it's horse paced. And they literally had cutaways to horses installs, and then cutaways to very concerned looking news anchors and then cut away to a Washington State Public Health official saying by no means should any human being be getting ivermectin that's a ridiculous you know concept and then dr. Turner couldn't be reached for comment and then by the way if you want if you want to file a complaint you think there's been a violation of the

standard of care you know here's where you do it and they published the phone number and this also was in their print piece. And so it was kind of a very unfair in my mind characterization and a takedown piece with this blatant invitation to click this link and call this number to file a complaint. Well, not surprisingly, I had a number of complaints roll in over the next six months, but here's what was curious. None of the complaints were actually from people I treated. None. Nobody said, oh, Dr. Turner treated me. He didn't do a good job.

You know, he was hasty. He didn't talk to me. He didn't follow up. Nobody said that. Nobody's close family even said that, that he didn't take good care. The complaints would come from like an ER doctor who had an incoming patient and they noticed that they were prescribed ivermectin and they did a little sleuthing and found out that Turner prescribed ivermectin.

And then they pulled up the Washington State misinformation statement, which we just read and said, voila, I'm going to report him, right? Or it'd be from somebody's distant relative, like an aunt who was a nurse and the nurse thought that her relative should not be subjected to the hands of somebody

so irresponsible and ridiculous as to give them ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, I must report him. Those were the context of the reports, honestly. And that is 100% consistent, by the way, with my own experience. Not one of my complaints was from a patient, not one. It all had to do with things that I said on air or things that either that I said on radio or television or wrote in op-ed pieces in the newspaper. Not one was a patient complaint and they all were done anonymously. Same thing with Mary Talley Bowden and all of the other physicians and clinicians who

I spoke to at that conference who had complaints against them. These were not complaints to the medical board in the way we normally expect where a patient is saying, I went to see Dr. Turner or Dr. Victory, and this is how I was mistreated and I think the board needs to investigate. So I think people really need to understand that, that physicians are being attacked, but we are being set up with these hit pieces in a way that has never happened before in the history of medicine. I've got a couple of decades on you, and I can tell you it has never happened before, Dr. Turner. Now, make a segue, if you would, to talk briefly about then where you went after that. How did that, you were renting space or leasing space in a larger

clinic? What was their response and where did you go? Well, interesting, you know, so the owner of the clinic was quite irate, um, exercised, you know, would be a fair word. I had to talk them down a little bit. We had a meeting of the minds. Um, interestingly enough, I was still open to the vaccine at that time and i was pro-vaccine and i had actually been vaccinated and that kind of helped smooth the waters a little bit he's like well you're not anti-vax are you i'm like no i just got the pfizer you know last month so he that bought me a little bit of room in his mind that i wasn't a wackadoo that needed to be you know disassociated from immediately thankfully and so he actually took out a position

that I respect very much. He prepped his staff. They came out and they made a public statement and said, Dr. Turner's an independent contractor, rent space in our clinic. He's free to treat patients as he sees fit. We don't see that he's done anything wrong. And so we, I stayed there for another year, actually entirely. So that, that ended up working out all right. But to your point about the investigations you know what's interesting too is they would say okay send they would subpoena all these documents essentially and say send me all the records for this patient I'd send them all in then I would not hear

anything from them months would go by no response and then I get another one oh there's been a complaint about patient so-and-so send us all information again no response these things would stack up they would give you no response. And then when they did respond, it's like tentacles, they would keep asking for other things that weren't really even relevant. And so at one point, my lawyer's like, we're not giving you any more documents,

we're gonna have our day in court, like let's adjudicate this matter, but you beating us over the head endlessly with requests for documents is not a game that we're gonna play anymore. And I thank him for having the chutzpah to do that. Yeah, I think another thing I want to interject here, and I hope it's not lost on our audiences. When I sit here talking to you, Stanford trained, Harvard trained. For me, I'm Duke trained, went to Oxford. For Drew, it's, you know, Amherst and USC.

You know, not exactly, you know, we didn't exactly go to, you know, make-a-wish programs, you know, on the back of a matchbook cover. Truly, I mean, you look at the people who we have on this show, whether it's Peter McCullough or, you know, Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford, you know, people from, you know, Oxford, you Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton. These are some of the most preeminent universities in the country. We are all, to a person, extraordinarily well-trained, highly educated, well-trained. We are not a bunch of wackadoos. We are all doing what I and you, I know from my extensive conversations with you, Michael, have, what we

were trained to do, which is critical thinking, to actually do decision-making, to be capable of inductive and deductive reasoning, and to apply what we've learned clinically and apply it to the individual patient. Somewhere along the line, and this is what I'm most interested in right now, somewhere along the line, we want to stray, and that has fallen by the wayside, not just in medicine, by the way. Critical thinking is absent as AWOL in a lot of parts of our society, but certainly very obvious in medicine. Talk a little bit about that piece, and I'd like to hear your thoughts about that and hear what your experience was with your coworkers, colleagues with regard to what you were choosing

to do thinking. I don't even think outside the box. I just think thinking, you know, critically. Yeah, good point. Glad to do so. Well, you know, the critical thinking is so necessary, we must preserve that role as somebody who's independent and has the patient's best interests in mind and their sole interests in mind, right? And I'm very motivated by a quote from William Mayo, one of the co-founders of the Mayo Clinic, and he said, the best interests of the patient are the only interests to be considered, right? And that's part of what made Mayo Clinic great, and I respect them very much, and I had a great education there, and I carry that forward. But what that means now is you also have to get your critical thinking cap on, right? The best interests of the patient are the only interests to be considered, not the political pronouncements of the FDA, not the political position of some current administration, not what the Washington state governor says, what's in the best interest of the patient. And the problem is that the doctor, the healthcare practitioners typically operating at the underside

of a big, large structure, this massive pyramid, right? That's very conflicted that has heavy ties into pharma and insurance and the federal government because federal government through Medicare is the biggest insurer. You know this, we could talk about these kinds of things, but essentially we've lost the voice and the space to be the unbiased guardian of the patient's best interests. We are at our worst now just seen as slavishly obedient or enactors of larger policy interests that many times collide with the patient. And that's where we have to stand up and take our stand,

but we can't many times in these structures. It's a big, big problem. We've got to get unconflicted there, Kelly. We've got to break away or we lose what's at the heart of healthcare. This is vital this is way bigger than ivermectin this is way bigger than covid this is about when i go see my doctor can i trust him or her to think about me and me only and me first or are they thinking about prosecution from their state political commission of god knows what or i actually i i could not agree more strongly with Michael. I really think we need to come up with systems of delivery

outside of the traditional systems, like some other models that physicians who can use their brain still and are willing to do so and are properly trained to do so can represent the patient exactly as Dr. Turner is suggesting. Kelly? Well, no, Drew, that's exactly what this conference was about because I would submit to you, you work for whoever pays you that's it's a fact and 80% of physicians are employees of large hospital systems large medical

groups or insurance companies you work for who pays you which means if you are employed by a large hospital system or a physician group or an insurance company, you are not working for the patient. You may say that you are, but you're not. You're working for United Healthcare or Anthem or Aetna or Kaiser, whoever's telling you what you're going to do. And the electronic medical record is part and parcel with this. The electronic medical record is not actually a medical record. It's a billing template that incidentally captures a few pieces of clinical data.

That's all it is. Okay. I'm sorry, but that is a fact. And the dropdown boxes that tell you what you're going to order and what the order set's going to be and what prescription you're going to give. And this is a perfect segue because this is why we have started to call these things quote repurposed medications medicines because the system would like you to use the newfangled medications that make somebody a lot of money and it's only if

there's nothing else in the expensive bundle of new toys that you can use that then they will allow you, okay, you can use the one that only costs two cents a pill that we've known about for 50 years. Oh, okay. Because they'd rather have you use the other one. I remember I grew up in a big family, big Catholic family, and when we'd wrap presents for Christmas, my mom always wanted us to use the little scraps of stuff that was left over, but it was way more fun to pull out a brand new roll of

wrapping paper and use that because that's the easier stuff and it's prettier and no one's used it before. And it's really fun. No one wants to use the little scraps that are left over, but those are very valuable. And I'll tell you in the medical system, this whole thing is corrupt. And so they want you to believe that these other things don't work like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or vitamin D. Yeah. But Kelly, there's a kind of a pernicious element in here that I'd love to see you guys, you two talk about, which is a large number of our peers feel entitled to centralize the decision-making

I'm thinking of a friend of mine that was doing some very creative work with pain management and he was very nearly lost his job and now the protocols he was advocating have become entire West Coast-wide systems protocols because they finally, after years of vilifying this guy and God knows how many patients being improperly served, they went, oh, you have a point now. I think of the opioid crisis. The opioid thing was exactly the precursor to all of this. What do we do with our peers who feel a value, who feel not just entitled, but it's valuable to centralize in these huge bureaucratic systems that I think the three of us believe is anathema to proper care? I mean, this is a worldview issue, right?

Their worldview is, I remember I gave a lecture in Bermuda and I was talking about the over-centralization and how that resulted in so much of the problems with COVID. And I could feel the audience go on, like I could feel their muscles tightening up like, oh, you're against us. We're for these big systems. And I thought, really? So help me walk through that. How do we get people back to the basic principles of what Mayo represented and Sir William Osler represented and the three of us were trained to represent? I'll throw that to Mike. Dr. Turner, you take a bite at that. Well, I think it's crucial for us as individual practitioners to reclaim our vision for who we wanted to be and why we went into healthcare in the first place. This is a lot of where it starts, right? Like we start, I think, with great motives.

We want to be a change agent in the lives of patients. We want them to trust us. We want to work in their best interest. And we have this grand vision of who we can be and the kinds of effects that we can make. So are you living that out? Do you feel that in your current structure and system, you have the freedom, the intellectual freedom, the pragmatic freedom to bring that to bear and to make it happen? If you don't and you're feeling a little conflicted, then there needs to be a change, right? It's not enough to

just say, well, I've got great benefits and a matching 401k from my hospital and I just don't want to make too much noise. It's like you're violating your conscience and you're not being your best self as a healthcare provider. So I think if we roll back. I'm going to interrupt. So you're saying stand up for what's right, which I totally agree with. But what do we do with our peers who believe that what they're doing is right to centralize it the way they have well i guess one thing would be point out the flaws of that point out where it doesn't work out well you know um it's the conflict between the collective and the individual right which is a socio-political concept but we know we have the bill of rights and the constitution

and the idea that the individual has certain inalienable rights. So that extends to the medical realm as well. It can't just be collective good and we ramrod certain medical guidelines down people, you know, that we can point out the breakdowns of that philosophically, historically even. Yeah, I think, Michael, you just hit the nail, the core of my talk about the lack of critical thinking was this pernicious sort of shift from the individual to the collective. Everything, you know, everything fundamentally, you know, things like informed consent, Drew, are anathema when you're talking, informed consent is based on the individual patient. If you now are saying that your individual rights or your individual best interest when you're talking informed consent is based on the individual patient if you

now are saying that your individual rights or your individual best interest is supplanted by the by the what's best for society what's best for the community what's best for the collective this focus all sudden on the collective and that's what happened with public health that we have conflated public health and individual health are very different I know the difference because I am both but when I have my individual practitioner hat on my focus is exactly as Michael said That individual patient and that individual patient alone nothing else when I put my public health hat on It's very different. I am now looking at the entire, you know, at the collective.

We have conflated the two and I would submit to you, there's really very little individual healthcare anymore. In individual healthcare, you know, the fundamental construct of autonomy, there is no such thing, you know, in individual healthcare as taking one for the team. The idea of you should take a vaccine, Drew, and be subjected to potential risks

because it's better for your neighbors. Sorry, that's not how it works. It's supposed to be you and your own. I hear you guys talk. I think we are going to have to come up with, we're going to have to out-compete. We're going to have to get like-minded people together that are interested in the individual patient and medical freedom and out-compete. We might end up with two parallel systems even, but we have to go out there and compete, literally.

I think that's, you know, Dr. Turner is young enough that I can still call on him to really go out there and do it. I'm not sure I'm up for it anymore, but, but I think we have to do that. We have an obligation to do that. So, so talk about that, Michael, what you, you know, you have a lot to say on that topic. I heard an interview with you and, uh, Dr. Kat Lindley, who is a friend and a friend of the show with Del Bigtree talking specifically about that.

So how do you think that we create that parallel system or retake over the individual system? Sure. So I think on the practitioner side, it's breaking away from insurance. That's the first step. Because as you said, you work for whoever pays you. Insurance dictates a bunch of things. In fact, you know, if you're a physician, you're not happy with insurance. It's not a great setup, right? They're in your business. They're killing you with paperwork. They're mucking around. You don't like them.

You want to fire them. You're just afraid to because your bottom line, you don't know what might happen to your bottom line, right? So we've got to create some systems that then welcome doctors and say, you know what? You're free of insurance. Come on over here. Let's lose these people. Let's lose United and all these other groups, and let's make decisions in the best interest of the patient. Wouldn't actually be hard. Tons of healthcare providers

would flock because you know what? Tons of healthcare providers are leaving the profession anyway, just from pure burnout and dissatisfaction, right? So we can offer them a better alternative. But on the patient side as well, I think it's very compelling. You know, again, you want to, if you were, if you were going to a financial advisor, you wouldn't want, you'd want him to be unbiased and looking at your portfolio, making your best interest, right? You wouldn't want to hear about all these backroom conflicts that he's getting paid and kickbacks and you know, all this stuff. You pay for someone to manage your money expertly and you trust in it. Same concept. Patients will want that. They'll pay for all day, left, right, and center. Most of my patients still have primary cares who they see through their insurance but that's sort

of like a second level concept to them they're not greatly attached to that they're like yeah I see my primary every six months or so you know cuz Medicare makes me and they don't usually have time they don't answer a lot of questions whatever and then I come to you and I pay you cash and I enjoy our conversations because you spend time and you care and you listen and you learn and you know what I'll do that So they'll pay money because the value is there. And so it's compelling on both sides of the equation. We just have to create that system and welcome everybody in,

which is being done. And to be fair, it's not, we're really talking about, think about it just to not to get into the weeds too deeply, but we're really talking about an outpatient system. The inpatient system, which is potentially financially catastrophic, that can be still covered by insurance. Insurance against catastrophe, insurance against excess financial burden. And then the actual people that are responsible to keep people out of the hospital can operate completely independently of that.

Yeah. When I was growing up, that's what we called major medical. You know, we paid our pediatrician or our internist cash. You know, we went, we paid, you know, we're fundamentally self-insured. But then my father carried what we called major medical in case, you know, you fell off the roof or you had a car accident or you got cancer or whatever. You got covered for that catastrophic event. But otherwise, you paid for your routine care. And I think that that's, I was shocked, Michael, to tell you the truth, at the number of people and the amount of energy at that conference that there are that many people.

And a few, by the way, Drew, real success stories of people who are primary care folks who are doing it the good old-fashioned way. I mean, they have one other person, generally a front office person, not even a nurse. We had doctors saying, I know how to take a blood pressure. I know how to ask the patient to stand on the scale. That's what I do, Kelly. I know how to draw a tubal blood. That's what I've done for years.

Yeah. That's what I have done for years. That's how I've done it. Yeah. That's what I've done for years. That's what I have done for years. That's how I've done it. And it's hard to make ends meet and stuff, but I mean, because I take Medicare and insurance. And one of the reasons, by the way, one thing you guys left out as to why we listen to the insurance and take the insurance is I don't want the patient to incur a bunch of expense

because the insurance all of a sudden says they won't cover something that was necessary. That can get awful. I don't think people understand how inexpensive primary care can be. It can be very inexpensive. It's not a costly process. Right, right. How do you manage yours, Michael? So I'm cash. Yeah, I'm cash based. It works out well for people. To give you an example though, the gentleman who spoke at our conference, Kelly, Dr. Edgerly out of Yakima, Washington, you can look him up. He has a so-called direct primary care, which is cash based membership.

It starts at $100 a month and goes down from there with discounts for families. And his guarantee is I will see you on the same day. If you are sick, you can come and I will see you on the same day. If you are sick, you can come and I will see you in person. And then by the way, he does ultrasounds and x-rays and EKGs at cost, has a lot of generic medications at cost. Yakima, Washington is not a populously thriving, economically vibrant, upper class area by any means. His practice is busting at the seams, expanding all the time because the value there is tremendous. How many people can't even get a call back from their primary care?

They can't even get a return phone call or an email or a call back. And then the next visit out is months and months, if anything, right? And then when they get in there, they're rushed. We can do better than that. And you can do better than that for a hundred bucks a month. I mean, some people spend more than that at Starbucks.

Yep. Agreed. No, and I said we you have to be careful people need to be careful not to conflate the idea of concierge medicine with this direct primary care what you're talking about Michael is direct primary care which is back to the way it used to be where you've got a physician who takes only cash and you know I paid an arm and a leg to sign up for this quote concierge program, which gets me supposedly, you know, preferred appointment times

and longer appointment times and things like that. And I'm saying what I want is a doctor who's capable of non-algorithmic thinking, you know, somebody who doesn't give blind deference to authority. Somebody who actually thinks out of the box and is willing to listen to my particular concerns and do what's best for me. And that's the kind of model you're talking about. And to be fair, sometimes that's concierge medicine. I don't want to disparage. Those are people also trying to manage this mess.

You know what I mean? I admire them trying to do it. It's just another model. But if you're still taking insurance, I would submit to you, if you're primarily an insurance based model, as I said, I will make it, you work for who pays you. And if you're being paid by the insurance company, that's, you know, that's who's, you know, you're dancing to their drum. And I think that's a problem. Yeah. And to reiterate your point, Kelly, it's a great point. You know, from the patient side, what you've done when you go see your insurance doctor, when you get insurance, you've essentially outsourced your medical care to the insurance company,

right? You've outsourced it to them. You say, I pay you and you figure out my insurance, my medical care. And they say, fine, these doctors you can see, and these you can't see, and this procedure will pay for, and this we won't, right? So by the time you go see your doctor, you think it's just you and the doctor in the room. It's not. The insurance company is sitting right there in the middle of you like the 500-pound gorilla that nobody wants to talk about, and you've some contracted your care to them. By the way, do you think they have your best interests in mind? Do they have financial conflicts of interest? Do they have massive lobbying conflicts of interest? Right? I mean, why does it make sense that you'd want to subcontract your care to them? And

the problem, the illusion that a lot of patients are under is when they're sitting in there with the doctor, they don't realize all this. And they think that the doctor's just speaking from the heart, truly saying what's in their best interest. The doctor's going, I know that this is what insurance will pay for. If I go this other route, I'm going to have to do 58 pieces of paperwork, and I don't have time for that, right? And I got to sign and fill out all these like Medicare, ABN forms and a bunch of stuff you and I know, right? Or I might get sanctioned by the hospital because it's off protocol for what they want. So I'm just going to take this easy route because I

got to move on to the next patient, right? So they're not giving what they know truly in their heart many times is in your best interest, but you'd never know that. It's, you're right, it's even more insidious than that because the recommendations that get codified into, you know, what your average internist thinks is the quote, what are the recommendations say for mammogram?

Well, the recommendations for mammograms used to be every year after age 40 okay that was it every you get a mammogram every year all of a sudden a few years ago it changed to every other year after age 50 and nothing after age 70 well was that based on some new scientific study? No, that was based on an actuarial study, a financial study run by the insurance companies who said, yes, X number of women will die, but it's worth it because we will save

this many bazillions of dollars by not doing other mammograms. That then becomes the quote recommendation. So now Dr. Smith, you go quote recommendation. So now Dr. Smith, you go see Dr. Smith and Dr. Smith says, no, Kelly, you don't need a mammogram. It's every other year. You don't need one this year. Well, based on what? Based on not what's best for me in my medical care, it's what the insurance company decided. So the big issue is that the recommendations that you then believe,

that you as a patient believe are based on science, most of them aren't based on science. Most of them are based on financial drivers. Yep, yep. Listen, you guys don't have the experience of being in the psychiatric setting, which I did for 30 years, and the egregious excesses of what, I mean, I could tell you stories about how insurances ran the show in a psychiatric hospital that was killed, it routinely killed people,

and their position was, well, we don't practice medicine. Look, there's Dr. Pinsky or Dr. Smith's, you know, his signature right there on the discharge form. We didn't make him discharge the patient. Of course they made them. There was no more resources available, even though the doctor is saying, this guy is going to kill himself.

He needs another week in the hospital. They're like, no, no, sorry. And that happened. And by the way, when I would make complaints then to the insurance commissioner, the insurance company would go, oh, Dr. Pinsky, you seem to have concerns about our business practices. I'll tell you what, we'll decertify you. In fact, we'll decertify the entire hospital.

That's the game they play. Right. No. It's real. Yes, it is. Tell me, you came to this, obviously, you know, most recently you've gone through this experience, Michael, with regard to the attacks against you and sort of coming to this. You obviously, you said you have a long history. You really grew up with sort of the holistic or

naturopathic side of you. What's your experience? What was it during your training with regard to your colleagues? Were you, do you think regard to your colleagues were you do your do you think did your colleagues have sort of the same inkling that you did that that things weren't necessarily I don't know is as transparent as they should be or are you the only one no yeah I was swimming against the grain right I was swimming upstream yeah with, right? I was swimming upstream. Yeah, with my naturalistic focus, you know, we'd be on rounds. I'll never forget.

Let's say we're on internal medicine rounds. There's a patient with C. diff, right? And, you know, you talk about these heavy drugs that you might give the patient. C. diff is colitis, toxic bacterial infection, right? And you're like, oh, well, we could give them vancomycin, this and that. And I'm like, what about probiotics? You know, i'm pretty sure probiotics would be some good right but you you get looked at like you have three eyes if you talk about probiotics you know on rounds it's just like oh here's the vancomycin dosing regimen this and that so i learned to keep my mouth shut on some of

these things oh didn't stool stool transfer come from regenerative medicine too? I mean, that became the standard of care. So later on, right. So later on, the idea of probiotics, Saccharomyces boulardia, for example, I actually heard that on rounds from one of the progressive attendings towards the end. He's like, yeah, we're going to give this patient some Saccharomyces. This has some help to recolonize their colon. And then stool transplant. So that started to come in a bit. Yes. and then stool transplants so that started to come in a bit yes um but i i was kind of swimming

against this current you know in many cases on this stuff and it hits the medical field later as i said like vitamin d being an example kind of is slow to sweep through there um but you know not only is it the question of realizing a medicine everything we're learning is not the entire truth and it's not even the entire best way to take care of a patient there's a whole world of alternative things out there that are actually very helpful and very evidence-based we're just not being told it that's one thing and that's true but apart from that we didn't realize the extent of the influence to its our minds were shaped by the whole idea of evidence-based medicine, shaking down from the journals

and the influence of pharma and all of that. And I just want to make this point and then open it up for dialogue, especially with you, Dr. Drew and Dr. Kelly, to speak further on this. But if you think about it, let's think about it from the side of the pharmaceutical company for a second, okay?

They've got a real problem. The pharmaceutical companies have a real problem because first of all, they spend tens of millions of dollars and many, many years of R and D to come up with this product, but they can't bring the product to market until they first pass a major regulatory hurdle called the FDA. They've got to present their data. The FDA has got to clear it. Okay. So this is their first hurdle. You can do a bunch of product development and it can die because it doesn't pass FDA clearance. Now once you get through this owner's regulatory agency, guess what? You

don't have any physical means of getting the product to your customer. You don't. That's called the pharmacy. So now you have a whole other layer of people you'd have to depend on to try to get your product in the hands of the customer. Guess what? You don't have a sales team that can interact directly with the customer, right? The customer, aka the patient, has to go find some third party, aka the doctor, to perhaps write a prescription for your product. So you don't even have a sales force that can directly reach out and touch the customer. And besides all that, their fourth existential problem is your product is so overpriced that most patients can't afford it therefore they have to rely on financing that you have no control over aka the insurance

company right so you're leaving a part out you're leaving one part out which is that which is that because of patent laws the moment they take the drug off the shelf and identify it the clock begins ticking and they have, what is it, 15 years now to make their profit back. And it takes an average of $1.2 billion to get through the FDA and five to seven years. And so now you have eight years to make your profit. That's it. And so who does, this is another part of your story, how we fund phase three trials. This is Harvey Risch's thing and how we construct them and how we do them. Maybe big data is going to solve some of these problems, but how, you know, who is funding the phase three trial?

Only pharma has enough money to do that. And only things that are going to give them profits at the other end. So regenerative things don't get on the radar at all. No, and unless we disarticulate big pharma from all of this, that's what I was going to, you've come full circle to exactly where I wanted to be. Some of the things that you refer to as alternative medicine, things like vitamin D or ivermectin, really aren't alternative at all. If you actually look at the studies that have been done on them, if you were actually able to find the studies, we have known, apparently somebody has known for decades that vitamin

D fundamentally was the strongest anti-cancer agent we have, not just for prostate cancer, Drew, but for all kinds of cancers. It is the item. It is the thing that the pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know about, because nobody can make money off of vitamin D. So I would submit to you that

it's not that these things are alternative, it's that the information has been actively suppressed because you really have to you know how do you get to it it's not showing up in the journals they're not talking about Ivermectin it wasn't until I had a dog literally a Labrador retriever that had breast cancer that I found out that Ivermectin has been known to be highly effective against breast cancer for decades, decades. Okay, there are studies, studies, I mean, Dr. Turner, you've seen them.

You and I have swapped them back and forth. These aren't new studies. This is stuff that the NIH has known for decades, that the FDA has known for decades, the CDC has known for decades. They have actively suppressed it. And this has to do with really talk about agency capture. How do we get the pharmaceutical companies the heck out of the practice of medicine?

Right? I, I don't know exactly how we begin to do that. We're gonna have to have some smarter minds on it than mine. But to that point you know a company is going to do what a company is going to do right and they they they exist to make a profit and to stay alive and it's a dog eat dog world right so they've got those four barriers existentially to even getting their product into the hands of the customer maybe a fifth one as drew is mentioning. So what are they gonna do? They're gonna exert all possible means to control that process at every step of the way. They're gonna exert all possible means

to control and influence the FDA and the pharmacists and the providers who write the scripts and the insurance companies and anybody else who stands in their way, they've got to. It's like if you were Ford Motor Company, but you couldn't have your own showroom, nor Salesforce, nor in-house financing. You got to depend on other groups. Well, to stay alive, you're going to figure out how to influence and control those other groups.

And that was my point. I never realized quite how much I was controlled in my education by hearing and understanding just what pharma had dictated through the journals, et cetera, because I was being shaped essentially to be that direct-to-consumer salesperson for pharma. Unspoken in some senses, in some cases more overt, but that's what it is. We're the ultimate sales force that has to touch the consumer directly. They depend on us. So they figure out how do you influence us. You can bet they do.

And we need to make other healthcare providers aware of that and get them to be breaking free. No, I agree with you. And I think that Drew and I have talked about this in a lot of different, taken a lot of different approaches to this, the capture of what I call our storied medical journals. I always prided myself in being that physician who actually went to the Lancet and went to JAMA and went to the BMJ and read the article, read the study.

And now I feel sort of like an idiot because it turns out what I was reading was fundamentally propaganda. Much of it was really, the vast majority of it, funded by pharmaceutical companies. It's hard to find that out. It's really hard sometimes to understand the conflicts of interest.

They're not readily apparent, even when you read the conflicts at the end, sometimes there's so many layers, it's hard to actually know who funded the study, for example. And so somehow we have got to retake, rebuild the integrity of the scientific process within medicine, because as long as it's funded largely by a big corporation, i.e. big pharma, you can't trust, I mean, you know, I don't know who it was who said, I think it was Joseph

Freiman who said, you know, when I buy a Samsung television, you know, I don't know who it was who said, I think it was Joseph Freiman who said, when I buy a Samsung television, I don't read the reviews that are written by Samsung. I try to read, it's that kind of, but that's what it is. I'm going to push back a little bit and say that I don't want to vilify pharmaceutical companies by the same token as they do whatever they have to do. I know. I know. It's okay. I'm not going to vilify you for doing so either. But I have had the benefit of many medications, both personally as a patient and for my family and my patients, that there's been remarkable advances that pharmaceuticals have brought us and that I've been able to use. And after all, as someone who's not using a scalpel

all day, all I have is physiology and pharmacology to, well, I have a couple other things I can do too, but I'm trying to adjust very powerful biology sometimes. And sometimes things have gotten away from us and we have very, very, very sick people in front of us. And there's some good studies out there that have – yeah, I think we have to have a jaundiced eye when we look at these studies. I also am pushed back on the idea that pharmacy actively suppresses things. I think the editorial process is where things have gone off the rail. So we're just not seeing the full range of data that we should be seeing, both positive and negative, on pharmaceuticals and on non-pharmaceutical interventions and readily available molecules that don't make anybody money. The editorial process, I think, is where things have gone way, way sideways. Because as you and I know, Kelly, we've seen studies that were excellent, took two years to come to a journal, and the majors turned them down.

And there's something wrong there. Everything goes just in one direction. And yeah, that's a problem. We have to undo that, whether it's using RICO laws, like RFK Jr. says, or just exerting the pressure as a community. We have to get that improved. But it's remarkable that things are as good as they are, I guess is what I'm saying, given all these outside forces that can potentially adulterate things.

Dr. Turner, thoughts on that? Yeah, I could see where Drew's coming from with that. Pharmaceutical companies aren't entirely evil. I'm not trying to say that. I'm thankful for certain meds. I prescribe certain meds at a time. Obviously, ivermectin is a medication. It was developed and brought to market by a pharmaceutical company. So I'm thankful for that. We have to realize the limitations, and we have to be able to have an honest dialogue more than anything uh i'll use the vaccines as an example right why can't we just have an honest dialogue about the pros and the cons of this new medical technology right if this were some new cardiac stent that came out on the market and a couple years in we found serious death signals and had cause for concern, we should be able to have an honest

dialogue about the pros and cons and allow for informed consent. And if these things are terrible, let them be pulled from the market. But as soon as we try to discuss that, as regards the vaccine, it's verboten. And somehow, we're silenced, right? So that's, that's unacceptable. Anything that pharma wants to bring needs to be subject to the light of day and scientific scrutiny, just like anything else else and there needs to be some independent funding mechanisms right for all so-called alternative treatments so that they can develop an evidence

base that's as robust again you know yes I remember right certain things are not studied because they lack a sugar daddy essentially they don't have someone have someone to bankroll them through the profits. Correct. Right, so where's our public health money that's funding that stuff that's truly in the people's interest? Right, and so where I would push back on what you said, Drew, is that when you say the problem

isn't the pharmaceutical companies, it's the editorial process, well, the pharmaceutical companies control the editorial process. Yes, yes. Just like they control mainstream media. No, no, I get it, I yeah when you're a fox I get it 80% of your advertising revenue comes from pharmaceutical companies you are going to promote what they tell you to it's

the same thing with the Lancet or the BMJ or you know any of JAMA they are owned by the pharmaceutical companies so if if Pfizer says, don't publish that study, Lancet's not going to publish that study. Or they say, do publish this one. I mean, I hate to tell you, but that's how it works. So I'm simply suggesting that we need an independent source, something that is not owned by big pharma, that is not owned by somebody who has a vested financial interest. And I have said many times that if somebody died and made me queen, I would make every article that appeared, any study that appeared, that before the title of the article, they should say who pays for this, who actually funded this study. That should be disclosed upfront so that it's very, very easy, in my mind, for the reader

to understand who funded this study and therefore help you to understand what the conflicts might be. Because right now, it's- I absolutely agree. I agree with that. Yep, I agree with that. I just want people to understand that the world gets into this all good, all bad kind of thinking. It's the excesses. It's the things that have gone too far that we're talking about. We're not saying dismantle everything.

We've got to come up with alternative practices, alternative competing systems, alternative ways of doing this because things have gone too far in a certain direction where it has adulterated the system i think no and i read a lot of i read a lot of prescriptions by the way i don't you know i'm not just you know of course suggesting you know i am newt and wing of bat you You know, I actually write a lot of prescriptions. That's my point. That's my point. It's all we have. We don't use a scalpel, the three of us. We use chemicals to shift physiology. And some of it has a natural, you know, well, you get to work in the ER. We're not working in that setting so much. I have a question.

But what's Kelly, Caleb, yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I'm not, I'm not advocating for this, but I think that the natural next question that some people might have is what if we take all money out of health entirely with some sort of a universal healthcare system? Is that, how does that solve or not solve this problem with money being so involved in our health? I will say one thing with that is, A, how do you think the, let's put it this way, go to building and safety or the DMV, and you want those people running your healthcare system, that's what you're going to have. And they're going to be tightening it down and restricting access. It's going to be a catastrophe. Now, if you want to have that as one system within other systems,

I have no problem with that. In fact, I think that's a good idea. But if everybody goes into it, you're going to rue the day. You're going to hate it. Yeah, I would say something similar, which is what happens then, Caleb, with universal health care is twice as much money actually gets spent, but all of it becomes administrative and very little of it trickles down to the people.

Very little of it gets spent actually on healthcare. It's all administrative, becomes very bureaucratic and the implementation of it and the bureaucracy. Government's involvement in anything has never made something more efficient or cheaper. I guess it's your best unit. Your best unit, Caleb, Government's involvement in anything has never made something more efficient or cheaper ever in the history of the world. Your best unit, Caleb, your best unit is the patient and the physician or the practitioner and the patient. You put anything on top of that, you create inefficiency immediately.

Anything. Every single thing you add to that relationship, you're making it less efficient. So we're talking about getting it back to the patients and the practitioners and letting them sort of operate as individual units. And you can do it for so much less. It's just so ridiculous that people don't understand that. It's probably similar to how whenever I was in the hospital, one Tylenol there suddenly cost $10 because of all the bureaucracy and the red tape. That's the insurance companies. Exactly. That's the insurance companies. Exactly. That's the insurance companies.

The prices will cost way more. Yes, way more. All right, we're down against the clock here. Dr. Turner, any last thoughts here? We have whirlwinded you. We've ping-ponged back and forth. What else would you like to get in there? I greatly enjoyed the conversation. Thank you both very much for having me. It was engaging.

And I always want to end on a note of optimism and positivity because I think that's warranted, actually. There's an awakening going on. There's a lot of momentum grassroots. It cuts across political spectrum. It cuts across left coast, west coast, east coast. It doesn't matter. These are people and providers waking up to some really fundamental basic questions I want to be able to trust my health care provider I want autonomy over what goes in my body I want true informed consent I want access to the best treatments I don't want other layers interfering with me getting good health care so let's keep moving together let's lock arms let's have a reformation of our health healthcare system and leave this thing

looking better in 10 years than it is today. We've all got kids and grandkids and we're all going to get old and need this system at one point as well. So let's keep working hard to make it better. I'm all for it. Amen. Yep. Amen.

And God bless you. I truly, I appreciate your, your courage, your leadership on this. I really do. I know you've been under the gun and I think what you're doing is tremendous. You've got a little more time to be doing this than Drew and I do. But I am all in. I think you're 100% right.

Let's lock arms and let's fix this thing because I think we can. I think we can and I'm with you. So God bless. I agree. Indeed. Thank you, Dr. Turner. Hope we'll talk soon.

All right. Thank you so much. Kelly. Hope we'll talk soon. All right. Thank you so much. Kelly, for you and I, you got it. We have Carrie Lake coming in here tomorrow. Next week is baby week. There are no shows that week. Oh, right. Baby nation.

Baby nation. There she is. Then on the first, second, and third, we were going to do some collar shows. Kelly, you're certainly welcome to join me on those. I think that'd be fun, actually. Is that okay with you, Caleb, if she joins me on the first, second, and third, we were going to do some caller shows. Kelly, you're certainly welcome to join me on those. I think that'd be fun, actually. Is that okay with you, Caleb, if she joins me on the Wednesday? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Terrific. Terrific. Is that okay with you, Big Daddy? I'm about to be a father of two. It's actually starting to sink in now that I have seven days left. It's finally there. It's a calm before sink in now that I have seven days left. It's finally there. It's a calm before the storm. Enjoy it.

That's right. Yeah. Well, we also have a calm. It's going to be a one-on-one defense. That's all right. You go to one-on-one now. Right. Well, I just.

No, that's exactly right. From zero to three like I did. Just think about that. Yeah, we were always in a zone and we were always out. Then you got to go to the zone defense. Yeah, you won't sleep much. I can never talk about our pregnancy because you guys already went through triplets all at once.

I just want to remind the- I have empathy though. I do. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I know. You guys have made this much easier than it- It's been as easy as you could. I just want to remind the viewers also that those three caller shows, the first one on November 1st, it's all about COVID and medical freedom topics. Then on November 2nd, it's going to be anything but COVID. So all the questions that people haven't

been able to ask, they can come in and ask it on that show. Then on November 3rd, it's callers on any topic, anything you want to talk about. We're just filling that week with caller shows. So we're off the 30th too, right? Hang on a second, guys. I tried to get that 30th. I'm looking at those dates. That seems a little off to me in terms of the dates.

We're trying to get a Monday show on. We'll talk later. Yeah, definitely the 1st and 2nd. For sure, we are doing that. For sure. The third is a Monday. We'll try to get a Monday show in. We'll talk later. Definitely the first and second. For sure we are doing that. The third is fine too. Here's our traditional. We're flying Friday. We're good. Don't do it now, Drew.

We've got to tape an ad. We'll keep you all posted. Kelly, thanks so much. See you next week. Or the week after next ta-ta take care bye uh for ask dr drew is produced by caleb nation and susan pinsky as a reminder the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care diagnosis or treatment this show is intended for educational and informational purposes only i am a licensed physician but i am not a replacement

for your personal doctor and i am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.