Ask Dr. Drew - Dr. Joycelyn Elders – Bill Clinton's Controversial Surgeon General – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 50

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

In 1993, Dr. Joycelyn Elders was the 15th Surgeon General of the United States – the first African American and the second woman to be in charge of the US Public Health Service. As a pioneering advocate for sex education and addiction treatment, many of Dr. Elders' views were so controversial at the time that she was forced to resign as Surgeon General by 1994 – even though today, most of those same "controversial" views are now accepted as facts by the medical community. She joins Ask Dr. Drew to discuss her historic work in medicine and to offer insight about vaccine hesitancy, safe sex education, and community health issues.  Currently she is a professor emerita at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Dr. Elders is a trained pediatrician, biochemist, and a Vice Admiral. Dr. Joycelyn Elders was born Minnie Lee Jones on August 13, 1933, in Schaal, Arkansas. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation ( https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/FirstLadyOfLove). THE SHOW: For over 30 years, Dr. Drew Pinsky has taken calls from all corners of the globe, answering thousands of questions from teens and young adults. To millions, he is a beacon of truth, integrity, fairness, and common sense. Now, after decades of hosting Loveline and multiple hit TV shows – including Celebrity Rehab, Teen Mom OG, Lifechangers, and more – Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio in California. On Ask Dr. Drew, no question is too extreme or embarrassing because the Dr. has heard it all. Don’t hold in your deepest, darkest questions any longer. Ask Dr. Drew and get real answers today. This show is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All information exchanged during participation in this program, including interactions with DrDrew.com and any affiliated websites, are intended for educational and/or entertainment purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with the sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. A sportsbook

worth a slam dunk. An authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I am really excited. I want to get right to my guest. This is somebody I have loved for many years. Dr. Joycelyn Elders, 15th Surgeon General of the United States, first African-American, second female, second woman in charge of the U.S. Public Health Services, advocate for sex education, addiction treatment. At the time, I think she invented fake news and mob action. She was the first victim of somebody twisting into a fake news and then the mob doing

their thing before social media. She was in 1994 in the Clinton administration. And the controversial views so-called that she had back then are, strictly speaking, mainstream today. She is currently a professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas School of Medical Sciences. She is not to be trifled with a pediatrician, a biochemist, and a vice-ad. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre. The psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media

and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f***'s sake. 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. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want to help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. I want to give a shout out to our good friends at Blue Mics.

If you've heard my voice on this show any time over the past year, including right now, you've been listening to Blue Microphones. And let me tell you, after more than 30 years in broadcasting, I don't think I've ever sounded better. But you don't need to be a pro or have a fancy studio to benefit from a quality mic. You may not realize it, but if you've been working from home or using Zoom to chat with friends, you probably spent a lot of time in front of a microphone. So why not sound your best? Whether you're doing video

conferencing, podcasting, recording music, or hosting a talk show, Blue has you covered. From the USB series that plugs right into your computer to XLR professional mics like the mouse or the blueberry we use in the studio right now. Bottom line, there's a blue microphone to fit your budget and need. I can't say enough about blue mics, and once you try one, you will never go back. Trust me. To take your audio to the next level, go to drdrew.com slash blue. That is drdrew.com slash B-L-U-E. Anyone who's watched me over the years knows that I'm obsessed with Hydrolyte. In my opinion, the best oral rehydration product on the market. I literally use it every day.

My family uses it. When I had COVID, I'm telling you, Hydrolyte contributed to my recovery. Kept me hydrated. Now, with things finally reopening back around the country, the potential exposure to the common cold is always around. And like always, Hydrolyte has got your back. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity, my new favorite, starts with their fast-absorbing electrolytes and adds a host of great ingredients. Plus, each single serving

easy-pour drink mix contains 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C, 300 milligrams of elderberry extract. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity comes in convenient, easy-to-pour sticks that rapidly dissolve in water, make a great-tasting drink, has 75% less sugar than your typical sports drink, uses all-natural flavors, gluten-free, dairy-free, caffeine-free, non-GMO, and even vegan. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity is also now available in ready-to-drink bottles at the Walmart next to the pharmacy, or as always, you can find it by visiting hydrolite.com slash drdrew. Again, that is h-y-d-r-a-l-y-t-e dot com slash d-r-d-r-e-w. Be sure to use the code drdrew25 for a special discount. Welcome, Dr. Joycelyn Elders. It's a pleasure to be here. It is such a joy to see you. You have no idea.

Dr. Elders and I knew each other 20 or 25 years ago. We were working for a company. No, no, no. I won't say it. Okay. We knew each other. Oh. We knew each other.

I loved working for Trojan. Well, this is what happened. We were working for the Trojan and the sister company. Really, it was the heels of the AIDS epidemic, and we were trying to get more widespread and regular use of condoms. And, you know, both Dr. Elders was there in Washington during the AIDS epidemic. I was training and cut my teeth in the early part of my career, was working on the AIDS epidemic. And it's interesting to me, Dr. Elders, that, you know, the younger physicians today don't have that perspective of a pandemic that we worked with that had a 100% fatality associated with it. And that, I don't know about you, but that affected everything else that followed in my career.

There's no question. We look upon AIDS when you've got the diagnosis of AIDS, it was a death sentence. And it was, you know, now it's been converted thankfully to the progress that's been made to a chronic disease. That does not say that, you know, there is no problems, but it's now more of a chronic disease as opposed to being a death sentence. That's absolutely right. And I would tell people, yeah, that's right. I would sit down. I was late in medical school, early in residency.

I'd sit somebody down, first diagnosis, and just tell them they had six months to live, and I was never wrong. It was just ridiculous. A horrible illness, one of the darkest periods. And unfortunately, only the caretakers are left now with the memory of it because so many people were lost during that time. But talk to me a little bit about what it was

that happened to you. Because I think, am I right in framing it as fake news and the first victim of the mob that is now commonplace? Cancel culture. Let's put it that way. It was fake news and cancel culture. Joycelyn Elders invented it.

Well, I'm not sure that's quite true, but there's no question that there was an awful lot of fake news going on. There was a lot of things going on. I was accused of, you know, a lot of people still remember me all over the world as the condom queen, you know, that I was, and well, the reason I was called the condom queen is

because I felt so strongly, I wanted so strongly to prevent HIV AIDS. I didn't want our young people getting it. And it seems that our young black men was getting really like the diseases we have now. People of color are far more likely to have a higher prevalence. And I remember going to a church and the pastor said that HIV AIDS only occurred in white gay men. And of course, well, you know, so that was obviously very, very, very fake news. The most common cause of death for a very long while for young men between the ages of 15 and 45 was HIV AIDS. And so I would tell young girls, you know, we've got to stop this. Because the only place you can go and find a husband,

you've got to go either to the graveyard, you know, or to jail. That was because of the drug epidemic. So it was really a very trying time. And of course, as I said, so I didn't mind being called a condom queen. And again, unfairly judged by some for that moniker that now you can hold up with pride. Now, one of the things, I'm going to go back and forth a little bit between, you know, back then and now. That's okay. One of the things that I have been saying since the beginning of the present pandemic is Dr. Fauci has been my leading light through five pandemics, HIV, one of them, H1N1, SARS-1, MERS, and now SARS-2. And I keep saying that, first of all, you can rely on his judgment.

And secondly, when this all settles, he's going to look pretty good. I'm just going to say, just based on my previous experience with him. But you were there with him during the AIDS epidemic, I imagine. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. We had to fight through lots of things, and lots of things were, you know,

we were accused of lots of things. Lots of things were wrong, and, you know, we had to really fight through the gender crisis. In fact, I always felt that told people that one of the things that helped me out the most when the LGBT group went and stood on the senator's desk and stopped about the problems that was going on. And so, you know, I'd been fighting hard with tobacco, but now I was really out there fighting hard for HIV and health care. And, of course, I was always about sexuality, teenage sexuality probably. Yeah, the echoes of that pandemic for me still ring true today. And I'm sort of, I find it curious that because of that experience, I feel like the younger physicians today, this pandemic affected them differently. I don't know.

I don't, I don't, it's when the dust settles. Well, I'll have more to say, I suppose, when I look back on this, but that whole experience, um, yourself, Dr. Fauci were such incredible guiding lights during what was an unbelievably dark era. I mean, people have of course seen the, you know, Dallas buyers clubs, you know, shows and stuff, but you don't remember there was a period where we had treatments and there were groups out there undermining the treatments. Much the way people are doing right now with the antivirals that are coming.

I was there when the first boxes of AZT were opened at LA County Hospital. I was like, oh my God, we can do something for these people. But you couldn't get anybody to take it because there was fake news everywhere about how the AZT or whatever antivirals followed were causing it. There's no question.

You know, with each time, you know, we go through these epidemics which turn into pandemics. And then we go through, we get drugs. And we're all so grateful, at least I am, and I think everybody I know, that we've got a vaccine that we can really in some ways head off this pandemic. And it was, I remember, you see, I grew up even doctoring through the periods of when polio was causing massive problems all across the country. So that was a real problem. We did at least have a vaccine, immunization for smallpox. You know, I was a student, but I remember when we came and we lined up like little ducks and the public health department came in and just went down our road. We were lined up against the wall and while they were doing smallpox immunizations and heaven knows everybody. No, I don't remember people being upset and not wanting smallpox vaccinations.

Of course, you know, now we're hollering about immunizations. But, you know, you couldn't go to school if you didn't have the immunizations. And now, unless children have their immunizations, you know, the childhood immunizations, they can't go to school. And we had another outbreak of measles just the past two or three years because there were certain people who would come in and who didn't have and who did not want their children immunized. So, you know, so we've always had immunizations. We've always given and mandated immunizations. And we're all, and I think most scientists that I know, we're thrilled when we finally get the vaccines, the immunizations, the head off, the epidemics, the pandemics.

And, you know, whereas, you know, we were all very hurt and concerned about the HIV epidemic. But at least we developed a drug. So we've got to convert it into a chronic disease. Exactly. Or an endemic illness of some type that we can manage, which I see coming with the antiviral. It just all, you know, again, the experience with HIV and AIDS was so vivid for me as a physician that, you know, I see how, you know, we're going to get this thing. I see it. I see how it works. And it also informed, I know a lot of people are very critical of Dr. Fauci, but I have not been because he's got a crazy position he's in. And I imagine you can relate to that. I think, I say thank all the time. Thank God for Dr. Fauci.

I think that, you know, he's had to stand a lot, stand up and fight against a lot. And heaven knows, I don't feel I had to fight nearly the kinds of fights that he's had to fight over and over again for so long. You know, i remember fighting the fight in in regard to marijuana i've you know it's just we've just had many fights but we've got to better educate our people and i think that's part of the problem yeah we've not educated to be be healthy. Medical education, you know, basic medical education. I agree with you on that. Science education, too, is the other thing. So, yeah, shoot, I had some, oh, gosh darn it. What was I going to get?

My aging brain. Oh, I know what I get into. Since, since. Don't talk about our aging brain. You don't know about that yet. I do, unfortunately, but it seems mine seems to be a well, I mean, ahead of you in terms of its advanced state, but, but as it pertains, when you said the drug epidemic that you were fighting as,

as surgeon general, I, after we were together, I ended up going deep into addiction world and running a big program and getting a lot of board certification expertise. I was just starting that stuff when I knew you and I became deeply involved in that. And I look back at, I was, I treated a lot of crack patients and I looked at it at the time as the illness it was. I didn't, I didn't have any, I didn't, I just knew what this disease was. I didn't care what the drug of choice was. I knew how this thing worked. I mean, there's a natural history with each drug and there's psychiatric concomitants with each drug, but I didn't care which drug it was. But when you look back now at the way we sort of,

I don't know if it's the press or the public, I don't know what it is, who sort of made it like this. But the opioid epidemic, we treated as an illness while we tended to treat, at least some of the powers that be, treated the crack epidemic as a criminal problem. But in fact, it was just the same disease, different biochemistry, different biology because of different pharmaceutical agent. What was that like for you when you were in the midst of all that? Well, it was very difficult for me. You know, I thought, well, you know,

even with the higher level class opioids, they treat crack very different the amount of crack you needed to get arrest or sent to prison for years and was very different from the amount of pure cocaine

so I'm just saying that I was very I was very bothered about this. I felt that there were so many young black men whose lives were really being

destroyed about by a small amount of what I call like marijuana. And this was the most common cause of their arrest. This was the cause of most young black men being sent to prison because they couldn't afford any of the other higher

more expensive drugs. And reasoning with politicians was difficult because as far as they were concerned, they could not accept the fact that I felt, you know, I felt what we should study. You know, I recommended, you know, I didn't know what to do about marijuana, but I thought we should study. I didn't know what we should do about marijuana, but I thought we should study it. Well, I was kind of shot down and said, we aren't going to study it. We aren't going to do research. We aren't going to do anything.

Well, of course, we're doing that now. But we all go to those places. Yeah, the National Institute of Drug Abuse has gotten into it. Nora Volkow came in right about that time. I think she must have been coming in like, certainly when we were together, she was already in the position at NIDA.

And again, another person that's a guiding light in all this trouble. So, you know, but we just have to fight through and do the best, best we can about the problems as we, as we, as we see them. And so, and of course I was fighting at the same,

at the same time when we were talking about the drugs, then one of our, one of our attorney generals i i'll think of his name as i go along my brain won't follow it up now but he's on a lot and he's done he's changed a lot and he's made lots of progress was he was he very he was criminalizing the crack thing that was happening then? Oh, yes. Very much so. Oh, he was very much so. Yeah.

I'm embarrassed by how the medical profession jumped on that. I thank God I was not. I was treating it as an illness. But I feel like the medical profession did not stand up, did not push back hard enough to really. Oh, no. No. Yeah, I know. I think that's a shame.

And then the opiate thing is a whole other, you know, I've talked about it many times here on the stream, that's something I had to live with. I thank God we're moving towards the other side of that. So how has COVID been for you? Have you been okay? Has your family been okay? Well, luckily, and I'm very thankful thankful that I've had even my booster shot.

So I've had my shot so far. All my family is, no one is in my immediate family has had COVID. But my children are, you know, in the school system. And so they were, two of them had COVID, but my children are in the school system. And so they were, two of them had COVID. My son is a principal, and so he had COVID, but he had very few symptoms and he did very fine. And his wife had COVID and she did, you know, she was sick. I mean, my son wasn't very sick, but they both recovered.

They're both doing fine. They've had their boosters and they're both working every day, you know, she was sick. I mean, my son wasn't very sick, but they both recovered. They're both doing fine. They've had their boosters and they're both working every day, you know, back at school, working every day and encouraging everybody to get their immunizations. But we still have lots of people, you know, ignorance is not bliss. Right. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. How do you persuade people that are resistant? I feel that the shaming and all that is just a terrible approach.

I mean, think about what we did during HIV. We never did anything like that. We never did. Never. Isn't that weird that we're doing that now? It does the opposite. It does the opposite. And I just think I really think that most of the problem that we have is because of lack of knowledge.

People just don't know better. And if they really knew and understood and appreciate, they wouldn't be involved in all of this fake news. They wouldn't be hearing all of these things that they hear sometimes on TV. If they had more education, that they would do a lot better. And I always go back to those old quotes. Benjamin Franklin said, you can't keep ignorant people healthy. And so, you know. But it's interesting. But I tell you where we i think we got off the and you as a public health official i'm curious in your thoughts we we got off badly by using panic and fear

and intimidation and shaming from the beginning we did that with the compliance of public health mandates we've done it public health mandates. We've done it with vaccine mandates. And we've been obfuscating. We've been obscure with the data. You know, as you say, educate people. I feel like one of the ways you have to educate them is give them all the data we have on the vaccines. Let them see everything that's out there. Because, look, we as physicians, we always do stuff that have adverse effects, everything, and let them see it. Show it all to them. Everything. Yeah. Show it to them and help them understand how we make these decisions. The whole decision, the two things that have been so absent for me in this pandemic are decision

making around risk reward and the public health messaging that we did so well during HIV and AIDS that seems to have been abandoned during this pandemic. Do you agree? Well, you know, I think that the problem we go through, have gone through, has really been a lack of education and lack of getting patients as involved. You know, rather than, you know, we've got to get patients, more patient-centered. You know, I think that that's one of the things is medicine is moving away from being primarily doctor-centered. You know, there was a time we didn't want patients to know anything.

You know, we wanted to carry it all around ourselves. And more and more, we're getting patients involved, letting them be involved in decision-making. But you know, you can't make decisions if you don't know how. And we've not educated our patients. And, you know,

right, and then given the information they need to make those decisions. Absolutely. I think, and we've not always done that. We've not given them all the decisions, all the information they need to make informed decisions about, you know, we'll say, well, what do you want to do about it? How can you decide what to do about it when you don't know what to do? So I'm saying that we have a responsibility, too. And that's why I feel so strongly that we really need to have comprehensive health education in our schools from kindergarten through 12th grade or even up through college.

But certainly we've got to have it from the beginning. We've got to teach them how to be healthy, teach them about their bodies, teach them about the importance of good nutrition. You know, don't wait until I have a stroke. Right. And then start teaching me that I shouldn't eat certain things. Yeah. And since I start early, you know, we took physical education out of schools.

But we really need to have our young people early on start with good physical, you know, good nutrition and exercise. And, of course, we've got to teach the importance of mental health in good relationships. Because, you know, if we don't have that and relationships with other people and really our mental health, well, then we wonder why we have so much Alzheimer's. Well, they are showing the best things we can do for Alzheimer's. Now we need to start very early with good nutrition, with exercise, and, of course, good relationships. Well, let me shine a light on what you're saying here. I've talked to a lot of Alzheimer's specialists, and they always say the number one people, I think, out in world thing, doing crossword puzzles and learning new things. No, number one thing, socializing. Number one, number one. That's how we use most of our brain is in a social interpersonal context. I, I certainly believe that. And I, and I, you know, it makes us use our brain.

Yeah. If we never really had any social interpersonal relations, you know, we don't have to. You can just sit and stare all day long. So let's go back to COVID for a second. If you were a historian, a medical historian doing a sort of a post-mortem, it's a little early to do that because we don't know. It's hard to – you really have to look way past before you can look back on something. Any suggestions on what to do differently? What should we have done?

What went well? What didn't go so well? If you were a surgeon general now, what are the things you'd do differently? Those kinds of questions. You tell me oh well you know you know we can out we can always stand back but sometimes frequently stand back and second guess i think would obviously if we had gotten everybody with the vaccine earlier we certainly would have markedly reduced we wouldn't have had 700,000 deaths. I don't think we might have, but I don't think so. If we had known about things like wearing masks,

we wouldn't even accept wearing masks. Social distancing. We were fighting about what we didn't feel we needed to do that. And, of course, you know, isolations. And that we needed to make sure that we got the vaccinations out to everybody. And that we were all involved. So I'm just saying, you know, and we start again with blaming. Blaming the poor.

Blaming the people of color. Blaming, you know, how can you, how can you socialize? How can you isolate somebody if you live in a, they're eight or nine of you living in a three room house. So I'm just saying that there are just things that I think that we, we could have done. We could have done some things better. We were not prepared. Well, that's true.

We don't often think about that as a criticism of what happened, but that is why things happened the way they did, because we were not prepared. That's a great point. Yeah. And then for me, you mentioned isolation, which I thought we managed the traditional tools of infectious disease really poorly. Isolation and testing should have been much better done.

We could have done that so better. We always do. To me, the confusing thing was why we abandoned the things we know how to do well. We know how to persuade. Yeah, we know to do well. We know how to persuade. Yeah, we know how to isolate. We know how to test. We know how to make risk rewards for a given patient analysis. You know, we know how to enhance mental health while making a decision on behalf of the medical condition. And we know how to do this testing. And we know how to, and what we did do well, you know, of course we knew how to we knew how to respond from a biotechnology standpoint and create a vaccine, which was extraordinary.

I knew we would. I just knew we'd come up with stuff. I'm a little mystified why it's taking so long to get the antivirals to market because those are looking really good. And that's the final sort of technological instrument we need for this thing. Our scientists have worked hard, developed a lot of good drugs and the fact that we developed the vaccine so quickly you know there were complaints that well we developed it too quickly well you know i think there was a big big push on our part of government and on the part of scientists and and drug companies to really get a vaccine and to get it to market.

What if it had been 10 years? What if they had taken a zone for that? If it took for, let's say, even smallpox. Oh, it would have been 100 years. And smallpox was a rapid medical advance. I mean, let's just talk about syphilis. That was around for 400 years before you figured that one out. Yeah.

That's why I remember back in the AIDS days when people would go, oh, I can't believe there's been no attention to this, and it took so long to come up with treatments. There has never been anything like that in the history of medicine, how fast they've come up with a new causative agent, isolated the illness, came up with treatments. It's just uncanny in the history of medicine. Right.

Only to be rivaled by this one, really. So this one was pretty quick, too. How did you get involved in government? I don't know that history. How did I get involved? I didn't plan in any way to get involved in government. I was a pediatric endocrinologist on the faculty doing bench research at the university. So that's where I started.

Then I was asked by Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, to be the director of health for Arkansas. Well, I wasn't really trained in public health. I didn't quite know public health. And, you know, but I felt well. And I told somebody, I said, and I certainly didn't know politics. I was not involved in that. I said, but, you know, I said, I've been training bright, young medical students for 20 years. I said, I know I can learn to talk with these old politicians and learn. And so it was a matter of learning. But then, you know, when he asked me to be the director of health, I want you to know that I thought that it was, you know, why would I give up a professorship at the university with a research program going on and fellows working in my lab to go be the health director. Well, my mother called. She knew Bill Clinton. And so she told, she said,

oh, you need to just go, you just got to go over and help him. Well, I want you to know that I went over to be, I didn't really plan to go to stay. So I just said, I told him, I said, well, I'll take it as a health director. You allow me to run the health department. And I get a 10%. I get an increase in salary. I didn't get the increase in salary. But I did. He said, all right. Oh, the other thing, I tell people I was so smart back then I didn't realize I was being smart I said I want to keep my appointment as a professor but I

have at the university I was a tenured professor I said I want to keep my tenured professorship at the university. And I said, and then I want to be, if anything happens, I want to be assured that I can come back to my job. He went to the board of the University of Arkansas, and he called me up. I told him that that was the only way I would take the job. He said, well, I got it all done. Will you take it?

That was when I was going to be. I said, oh, I said, I don't want to lie. He said, thank you, bye. Oh my goodness. So the next morning, we didn't talk about it. So the next morning it was in a paper that I was the health director. Wow. I get the feeling sometimes that we would be better off with some straight up clinicians and medical educators sprinkled through the leadership of public health without all these public health experts.

I'm not sure that, I don't know. I feel like unless they spent years or decades in the clinics, they don't quite have the right perspective. So my question to you, A, am I right? And B, was it something you could learn on the job? Well, I think both. If you want to learn, but see, when I went to the health department, I inherited 2,600 bright young people who weren't set in their ways and who was wanting to make the health department succeed and do well. And then they had, they felt that they had a health director. I'll never forget the deputy director said, told all, and he really had control for the most part over the health department.

He said, he said, we've got a health director that walks on the edge and we have to make sure she's always razor sharp. And I want you to know, I felt that that was the most delightful, wonderful six years of experience working I ever had in my life. Because every time I would be testifying at the legislature or something and they could tell when I was stumbling and didn't know what I was talking about. I would feel a piece of paper coming up under my arm, and they had taught me well. Say, Dr. Ellison, you don't know.

Just say, sir, I'll get back with you tomorrow. I'll look it up, and I'll get it back with you tomorrow. I'll circle back to you. I've heard that before. That's right. I learned to do that well. And that's really funny. And what would be the measure of success as the health director? Was it just the metrics improving in a positive direction? Is that what you're looking for, a trend? Well, I think there's no question. The metric improved in a very positive direction. The people that worked there, you know, I think they just suddenly became very proud that they

worked at the health department and made a difference in their communities. And then, you know, we had a centralized health department. So all of our small communities, even the legislators who was there, they was always the people that worked for the central, but they would go back and make sure their legislators knew what was going on. And then they would say, now, you've got to have our new health director down, you know, out in the Delta. So I was going out all the time. And they were out there making sure

that I was always welcoming and I knew what was going on. And I remember one time, if you can imagine, I was testifying about abortion, a teenage pregnancy. And we invited a speaker to come in and he kept talking, and then

these were legislators who weren't necessarily they weren't necessarily wild about me. And so this legislator finally got up and he said, sir, I live in that community. I left that community just this morning.

He said, I know what you're saying is not correct. And I really know that what our health director just said is what the facts are. And so he started again. He started again. He said, sir, are you finished? And he started just reading the same thing. He said, thank you. This was a very high-paid consultant that the other side had had to come in. But, you know, it was putting out a lot of false facts.

But this was because the people, it wasn't because of me. It was because of the people who lived in that community, who worked in that community, who made a difference and kept their legislators informed. That really was the thing that really made the real difference. My daughter, Paulina, is a big fan of yours. She and I wrote a book we've been out on the campaign trail with right now. It doesn't have to be awkward. You get it now.

And I've invited her up to the podium. I haven't read it yet, but I want you to know that I'm looking forward to getting it read and also thank your daughter. Well, she's coming on the line right now. Paulina, are you there? Hello, Dr. Elders. Hello. I'm so proud of you and what you've done.

I haven't read your book yet, but I'm just waiting to get it. I was trying to get it before I came on today so I could be informed, but I'm not informed yet. Thank you so much. But I know it'll inform me. I'm not. That is such an honor. I heard your episode of 70 over 70, and I was so moved by your interview. And I begged my dad, I was like, do you know who Dr. Elders is?

And he was like, oh, yeah, I know her. And I was like, you know her? My cred just, you know, my cred just went up, Jocelyn. Thank you for that. So I was elevated in her eyes. Yeah, I don't get starstruck for anybody else. Here it is. So, yeah, I

would love for you to retell this story about the little girl and her purse, if you'd be willing to, because I just think it's a really funny story. And I think it's a testament to the work that you were doing back in the 90s. Well, okay. Well, I had always gone around and talked a lot. And this little girl, she was in elementary school or even earlier.

She was about eight years old or less. And they were having a program or a poem, a dance or something. And so she said she was going and her mother, her grandmother, who was a minister, was getting her ready. And so she had went out, you know, they really went out and got involved. She went out and she said she wanted to go. They wanted to go who they wanted to be that day. And so she went out and got the material and everything and made her a surgeon general's uniform. And so she was going to go as Dr. Elders.

And so she got, so she'd all dressed up and she was ready to go and get ready. And so her granddad came into the kitchen. She said it was pouring down rain. And again, I told you that the grandmother was a minister, but he came in. And so when he came in and getting ready, she says, oh, oh, granddaddy, I need a condom. I mean, he said his mouth dropped, threw up. Yeah. She's eight years old.

The mother was a grandmother was a minister of a very large church. And so she said she, you know, she kind of put her hands on hips and looked at him and in very strange kind of ways. Well, daddy, granddaddy or whatever, I'm going to be Dr. Elders. And Dr. Elders said you should never go out with somebody like without a condom in your purse and so she needed a condom for her did he get her one we just got to shelve that for a minute no she said no she said she said he stood there he he said he looked at his wife and he says, honey, give me the keys. And he took off in the rain to go get her the condoms.

Fantastic. To have a condom in her purse. Fantastic. Wow. I love that story. Thank you for telling it. When is Dr. Elder? And it was shown around.

It was a special day for school children who went. And I think she may have gotten a prize or something for her dress and a purse. And on her purse, she was labeled that she was Dr. Eldridge. That's fantastic. I wonder what she's doing now. Do you have any follow-up with her or anything? Did you ever hear? I see her grandmother about every week or two at the beauty parlor.

And I haven't, and she was the one who bought me the pictures and gave permission for them to be used. And I was just, she's doing well. Fantastic. Pauline, anything else? I, you know, I'm just deeply curious about just, you know, how it must have felt to be asked to step down from a position in which you were very suited for and we as a nation needed you and i you know i just i'm i'm heartbroken over the fact that we as a nation didn't get your full tenor and i wonder what it would have been like had you had not stepped down so the question

is what did it feel like to step down and were you, you know, relief, relief to a certain extent, or was it a more challenging experience? I'm going to put you in back to the audience while she answers. We have to take a break in a minute. So here we go. Joycelyn.

Well, go ahead. Well, you know, you know, it's painful to be a, it's always painful to be asked to step down, even if you wanted to be, you know, wanted to step down.

But I really, I felt I was right. I felt that I knew why I came to Washington. You know, I knew why I came to fighting for young people. That was my, to me, was my big fight, if you will. And I was fighting about, I wanted every child born in America to be a planned and wanted child. And I wanted all young people to get the best education that they could. You know, my mother had always said, don't, you know, if you want to get out of the cotton patch. You know, we were born, I was born in rural Arkansas, very poor. So you've got to get something in your head.

So we thought there was always a big push about education. She always said, you've got to tell the truth. So the day you see the truth and cease to speak out is the day you begin to die. And this was just kind of a philosophy that went on in our family. All of my sisters and brothers felt the same. I think felt the same way. And I think if you'd ask them, they'd all say, stress education, stress the truth, and always do your best. That's good enough. Because that may not be as well as somebody else could do it. But if it's the best that you can do, that's good enough. Of course, my children, you know, sometimes, you know, my children say, oh, mom, I'm doing the best I can, you know, and that's not always the best

they can. You have to know they're doing the best. I think those are lovely, poetic words, frankly. And let me just put a coda on them with a joke that uh my friend adam coroll always tells people which is that if um if he doesn't sense they're doing their best he goes look don't do your best do my best do my best forget your best let's do my best that's almost the kind of thing that my husband didn't say but you're pretty dead he started paying uh you start paying them smart so much for a's b's c's super smart people people are uncomfortable with that that works i'm telling you something that that it's all the behavioral studies show clearly it works.

You pay people not to do drugs. You pay people to do the right thing. You pay people to do good and great. It works. Not always, but it does work. So true. Well, listen. Sometimes it certainly works.

Joyce, we're going to take a little break here. So I'm going to ask you to sit tight for about three minutes. We have to do some business here. And then we'll be back with Dr. Joyce and Eldress. Thank you all. You vary impatiently on Clubhouse. I see you there. Raise your hand if you want to come up.

Reminder that you will, if you ask a question, you'll be streaming out on YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, and Rumble all at the same time. And of course, in Clubhouse. And I'm seeing people also on Restream. I'm watching the Restream. So I see you there. Let me just clarify a couple of things before I go to break. Well, I'll clarify when I get back.

We'll be right back. Here with my daughter, Paulina, to share an exciting new project. Over the years, we've talked to a ton of young people about what they really want to know about relationships. It's difficult to know who you are and what you want, especially as a teenager. And not everyone has access to an expert in their house like I did. Of course, it wasn't like I was always that receptive to that advice. Right, no kidding. But now we have written the book on consent.

It is called It Doesn't Have to be Awkward, and it explores relationships, romantic relationships, and sex. It's a great guide for teens, parents, and educators to go beyond the talk and have honest and meaningful conversations. It doesn't have to be awkward. We'll be on sale September 21st. You can order your book anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and of course your independent local bookstore. Links are available on drdrew.com. So pre-ordering the book will help people, will raise awareness obviously, and it'll get that conversation going early so more people can notice this and spread the word of positivity about healthy relationships. So if you can, we would love your support by pre-ordering now. Totally. And as we said before, this is a book that both teenagers and their parents should read.

Read the book, have the conversation. It doesn't have to be awkward. On sale September 21st. You can get the book at premiercollectibles.com. You get signed copies there. Also at premiercollectibles.com. You can get the book there. Also at drdrew.com. We are going to bring in Dr. Elders in just a second again. She, of course, is the 15th Surgeon General of the United States

and was embroiled in a lot of controversial stuff unnecessarily back in the days, but even before social media, it was possible for the press to create crap storms for people. Speaking of crap storms, I've been watching you guys on Restream here, and I want to address a couple of things really quickly. Somebody asked the issue of that natural immunity has 27 times more efficacy than vaccinated immunity. That is not the way biology works. I would just be careful of those kinds of quantitative. Well, I'll ask Dr. Elders the same question if she agrees with me on this.

It appears that natural immunity is broader and more sustained than most of the vaccines alone without boosters. How long and for whom is still an open question. We still don't know how to standardize immunity. We don't know how to make measurements of immunity just yet. I have some ideas because I've been working with aditics for a while. I have some ideas about what that would look like. We have not yet standardized it. One day, you'll be able to take a test that says, aha, you're still immune.

You don't need a booster or you've had natural immunity. You're good. You're neutralizing antibodies or whatever. The other thing that was flying around was my opinion on Dr. Fauci. As I've said repeatedly, people find him very controversial right now. I'm just telling you, I've been through five pandemics with this guy. He has been my guiding light on four of the five.

And I suspect when this, just because he was so good in those four, my experience, particularly during HIV, my bet is that you'll feel differently about him looking back once this thing all settles. I may be wrong. I could be wrong. But he has been a leading light for me. He's the reason I got involved in radio. He was telling us back in the day to get out there and educate about HIV and AIDS, and I took it to heart. So it was really because of him. And then finally, people seem to be confused about my vaccine

position, which is, you know, I'm pro-vaccine. I couldn't wait to get the vaccine. I was in a hurry to get it. I got sick first. All my family's been vaccinated fully. But however, I am concerned about mandates. I worry that forcing people to do things where the risk-reward is not that clear. I much prefer always patient and physician making those decisions individually.

I understand we have to do something collectively to get this virus replication down so that no new variants develop. But I'm concerned about that. And I do believe the whole landscape will change once we have the new antivirals available. So this whole landscape is going to shift a little bit. So I'm looking forward to that. So those are my opinions. Dr. Elders, welcome back.

I'm bringing Joyce and Elders in here. We, she and I, again, were working on, for the Trojan folks back in the day to try to get people to use condoms more regularly. And we both felt very passionately about that and had a really interesting think tank where we tried to help do that. I think we did some good, in fact.

And if no other good came of it, then I got to know Dr. Elders. That was well worth the experience. I thought the Tayshack was a wonderful organization. I thought we worked very hard, had very good people. I thought we made some good decisions decisions and I think we helped the company. So it was, I think, I think we helped people and, you know, and I thought you were most helpful in creating what I called our,

you know, our, our, our condom Bible. Right. I remember that. I forgot about that. Wow. That's right. That was your idea. That was a great little document. Oh, my gosh. And I was saying, you know, one of the things that I find that I thought was really one of the most useful things, and I've told Condom that I really, Tayshack, a Trojan, that they should do this is, you know, they have made, you know, Kotex put out a little, you know, they didn't, we didn't have sex education, didn't have books like you and your daughter just put out, written.

So, you know, we really had very little education, especially, we didn't have health education in school. So we had very little of that going on. No, yeah. We were trying to, we were, go ahead, so we had very little of that going on. No, yeah. We were trying to— We were—go ahead, Kotex. What? I'm sorry.

Oh, I was just going to say, Kotex had a little pamphlet that was, you know, it was more than a pamphlet. It was the only sex education that we in the country got is what they had in that little pamphlet that came out. And I still feel very strongly about it. 12th to 14th birthday, I feel that they should make a little pamphlet and for their 14th birthday, mail them a sample of the condoms and the condom Bible. And just so they would know that there are different sizes, different colors, different tastes, all of those things. And,

you know, they have it, it wouldn't cost them very much, but you know, the reason, and they said, well, they really would,

but parents wouldn't accept it. So yeah, I know how difficult that is. Well, and you were important guiding light with us, trying to figure out how to make it digestible for people so they wouldn't react. So, you know, this was a different time, man. Condoms had just come out from behind the counter.

You used to have to have the pharmacist go get the condom. That's right. And we were a think tank that was trying to help establish the use of condoms in a more regular way to save lives. I mean, really, it was like an emergency. We were people dying. And I think we did a pretty good job. I think we did a pretty good job. Let me, I'm going to get some questions off Clubhouse, if you don't mind. I know some of our restreamers, I've seen Kristen, I'm going to put you up here first. I saw your concern there. Hold on a second. Joshua, I didn't mean to plug you. I'm trying to get.

Hi, Dr. Drew. Joshua, I've got to put you back because I need Kristen in here. You're going to be up after that. Okay. Kristen, you've been asked to come up. Or Joshua, you just want to hold for us. Gosh, I can't get. Oh, my God.

This thing doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Sometimes I'll move you right. Save a life, buddy. All right. Hi there. There you are. Hi there. Hello, Dr. Eldridge. This is truly an honor. Thank you so much. How are you? I am very well. Thank you. I have a question that is geared towards mental health support within our public schools for elementary and other students. Right now, the way that No Child Left Behind and IDEA law, and especially laws concerning the needs of special

kids that fall into the special education arena, there are a lot of gray areas, especially in regards to mental health that can occur within the public school. Right now, at least in my experience, it is not offered as a service. It is offered almost as a add on where insurance and everything is still billed. And I guess my question is, when you were acting Surgeon General, did you encounter a particular set of challenges in regards to special education, special education law, and what would you like to see in regards to changing of our currently current policies to allow for more transparency and communication between physicians who treat the children and educators there you go um but put you back in the room, Kristen. So thank you for that.

I know you're dealing with this personally. So go ahead, Jocelyn. Kristen, I thank you for asking a very important question. And I think that we've come a very long way in taking care of children with special needs and their special education, such that we're designing curriculum and designing programs that are up and right for them and making sure the relationships. And we're also making sure that we involve not only their sexuality, because before we couldn't talk about it. We couldn't even, you know, not only their sexuality, because before, you know, we didn't, we couldn't talk about it.

We couldn't even, you know, that was just taboo. And so we're taking our blinders off and we've developed, we're developing 20-20 vision. So hopefully we can see what we need to do and do what we need to do to make a difference. And I think doctors are learning that they could really do more and, you know, and not make all everything. So doctor-centered, but making patient-centered education, not only in regard to their sexuality, their relationships, their education, and get parents involved. And so I'm pleased that we're doing as much as we are doing,

and I'm glad we're developing a real core curriculum that fits the children. And so I'm very proud of that. Dr. Eldridge, what was your research when you were a bench researcher? When I was a bench researcher, I was really looking at factors that control growth in children. You know, we had a lot of problems with growth retardation. The most common cause at the time was things it was malnutrition, you know, in Arkansas, being in the Deep South.

But then things like hypothyroidism, you talk about the most common cause of mental retardation. That was before we had the, you know, the TSH test, where we can really test and know when children are born that they're hypothyroid. We know that most brain growth occurs very early. So, you know, so they really lost a lot sometimes before we even diagnosed. So let me explain to people what Dr. Elda is talking about. She was doing research and practicing a time before we could detect on a blood test hypothyroidism. And if you were born with a suboptimally active thyroid, you developed something called cretinism. You became a cretin, which is a severe brain disorder from hypothyroidism.

Am I getting that right? It's a little medical history there, but I think that's right. That's absolutely correct. And you had severe mental retardation and you had severe growth retardation. And I'll spun you that severe constipation, you know, so so that so it was a real it was a real severe problem. So so I really am pleased that we're able to diagnose it early. And this is no longer a real crisis in our community. No, I mean, the people that they don't, I'm so glad you bring that perspective because the current, the modern world doesn't understand the amount of medical

progress we made during the 20th century, how astonishing it all was. And you were there. You had a corkside seat. That's right. I saw two children with creatinine. I saw this going on. So I'm very pleased that we can do diagnoses of adrenal hormone, all kinds of hormone deficiencies, and other kinds of deficiencies, and things like metabolic disorders.

Now that we can diagnose them on screening tests, there are probably 24, 25 or more tests we can pick up on newborn screening. And that we just didn't have any idea before. We had to wait until they got in trouble and then we would recognize that it was a problem. So I want to ask you if you agree with me what I said. There's a little bit of data flying around in the press that natural immunity is 27 times more efficacious than vaccinated immunity. I don't like that. That's a construct that I don't think people know how to apply, that kind of quantitation. So you as a bench researcher, help us help people understand. You talk about research. People are, I mean, talk about education. People don't really understand biology that well. I say that a lot because biology is a probability equation.

It's a giant probabilistic phenomenology. But go ahead. I'll let you answer that about this immunity question. Well, when we talk about immunity, if you have a disease, you know, we have a certain amount of immunity. You know, if you have a severe disease, you may have a certain amount of immunity. If you have a severe disease, you may have a higher level of immunity. I think having the disease conveys the same

kind of immunity, but immunization shots. People give you the vaccine, you develop immunity. We don't know how to measure you've got, you know, 25% or 50% or whatever.

We haven't standardized it. We don't know what percent you even need to prevent disease. I think we've learned that a certain amount will reduce the severity of disease. I have a hunch. May reduce the likelihood. I have a hunch that a certain level of neutralizing antibodies will be the number once we get to the point that we understand this. Josh, I brought you back up here to ask Dr. Elders a question. Go ahead. Yeah. Thanks for taking my call. Well, I have a lot to say, but I would just want to start by what you guys had said and also the book that you wrote with your daughter about, I guess,

effective communication. And I want to know how we can communicate better. I want to know how we can listen to each other, attune to each other, have empathy for each other. I noticed that France just authorized payments for therapy for all of its citizens. And I think they're going in that direction. I think we need to go in that direction too. And therapy seems to be the obvious route to that. But I'm wondering if there's anything we can do now for people who don't have access to therapy, how we can sort of get together more and talk to each other more. If social media can help. I mean, we're on Clubhouse. I'm on Clubhouse. This is great. And it's just, I just wanted to know the

comments on sort of relationship i'm gonna i'm gonna ask dr ellen i have my own sort of idea about this what do you say what's sort of your instinct on this because i have a specific one well and that's you know you're you're the scientist on this and i and i'm doing more on instinct. But I think that we need to. Relationships are very critical. I think we don't really listen. You know, sometimes when other people are talking, we're waiting for them to shut up so we can get started. And we don't really listen to what they've got to say. And we have to learn to listen and know what they're talking, understand what they mean.

And some people don't always say exactly what they really mean or what they're saying is not what they were really thinking. And so I think we have to be able to interpret that. And we have to learn to listen to our children. You know, the old folk say, see, I'm an old folk now, but children are to be seen and not heard. But I think we need to listen to our children because I think that they really have a lot to say to us and a lot to teach us. And we need to listen.

I think we could really learn lots of things. I think our children need to listen, too. I'm not suggesting that they not listen. to really learn lots of things. I think our children need to listen, too. I'm not suggesting that they not listen. But I really feel that we as parents can do a better job sometimes of really listening. Sometimes there are important truths. I would say not social media, not anything special. Back to basics, bodies in space, relating time spent with people who actually care about one another in proximity, near each other. If you

want to use scripture, everything that is thousands of years old tells you the same thing. It tells you the same stuff. And Dr. Elders is telling you the same thing. We're all saying the same stuff. Family is important. Education is important. Spending time, people that you care about each other in person, time invested, caring, listening, being present. You will eventually, your body naturally develops the capacity for attunement. That's how we're wired up that way. We don't spend enough time doing it. And all these things that get in our way are doing just that. They're getting in our way. They're not solutions.

They are the problem right now. And keep it really simple, I would say. Say it again. Our body language talks. Our body language talks. Sometimes it's more than our words. Oh, there is so much information going back and forth between two bodies in space we have not even scratched the surface on how much stuff goes back

between our autonomic nervous systems and our central part of our brains and all this stuff that we're not consciously receiving we're getting a ton we open this conversation talking about alzheimer's and how socialization is so important for Alzheimer's because we use our whole brain and our whole body in order to socialize. We're not aware of it. We think we're using language. That's a tiny, that's a silly little piece of what's really going on there. So yeah, I think that's a really important, important point. And it's all, it's been, you know, as they say, it's been written a thousand times before.

It's not as though people from previous generations and previous civilizations didn't know what they were talking about they know exactly what they were talking about and we just and we just keep thinking we get we we magically know something different and better we don't we just do it in a different context we just do uh all right i'm gonna uh get you another question here. This is from Eve. Let's see if Eve wants to come up. Eve, how are you? Dr. Drew.

Is Eve right? Wonderful. Eve is correct? Yes, sir. There you are. Always nice to see you. You as well. And I'm always coming on trying to ask questions

relating to mental illness and things right now due to what I've been dealing with with my daughter. So as I've stayed closer with her, some of the things I thought might go away, of course, have not. There's no drugs involved, anything like that. And now it's just getting through day to day with her. I realize there's a story going on in her head,

and I'm wondering how you deal with some of that. There's a story that's going on in her head about what's happening to her versus the reality. For instance, she needed all the lights unplugged or there's strange things going on because the red light is a bad light or things like this. Do we know what her diagnosis is? I'm sorry, I forget.

We still have, have well the diagnosis that i had you know she suffers from uh some personality disorder bipolar bipolar okay okay so and and the question kind of frame it as a specific question the question is how do you break through her delusions how do you find a comfortable space of communication with it, right? Without, because it's the kind of stuff that it, it, it, it always blows up, right? Yeah. So, so I, I'm going to put you back in the audience even, and just sort of say simply, it's very complicated, but Joyce, and what I would say is, is two things. I mean, she needs proper care. She has a brain disorder, and the care has to be rendered. And, in fact, in California, it is exceedingly difficult to get resistive patient's care.

And that is to the patient's detriment, to society's detriment, to the parent's detriment. Everybody suffers. So that's a problem. So hopefully you can get her care. If she indeed has a personality disorder, dialectical behavioral therapy can be very helpful, number one. Number two, if she's bipolar, medication is essential. It's just a requisite and it's highly available now and it's very good. Mood stabilizers, these things work like crazy. And then the bigger thing though is for you. You need somebody in your corner. You have to, you can't think, I think of mental illness.

Joyce, do you remember the little shop of horrors, the plant that ate people, the musical, you remember that musical? Yeah. Well, addiction particularly, and many mental illnesses function just like that plant. If you go in the, if you go into the room with the plant, the plant's going to eat you. And that's just, that was in that movie and in that musical and it's mental illness. Many mental illnesses are that way. You have to have somebody pulling you back, somebody you can either pull you out of these, these spins that you can get into and helping sort of sound, be a sounding board for you can sort of figure out what reality is. Cause you get your, your, your, our, our tight relationships. We get in with them. We go, we go down the rabbit hole

with them and you have to be able to stand back and have to hear somebody else go, no, no, no, that's a delusion, man. Don't reinforce that. Just be firm, be fine. You'll be all right. Those kinds of things. And so you must have your own corner, right? Like a fighter has a corner to return to. You must have your own. Joycelyn, anything else you want to add to that? No. Yeah, I think that you've covered it, you know, and we don't have any slick answers. No, I think that is the important point. It is, there's no magic, there's no snapping of our fingers, there's nothing, you know, just the simple that it is, as you were just finding, it is an ongoing process. It is a struggle.

But the reality is that one thing I want to keep in your mind is that treatment works. Mental health treatment really does work. And if you can get her to engage in that treatment, which is the, really, that's the grail, the holy grail of addiction, of any mental health treatment, is getting the patient to participate. That's the hard part. The treatment itself works when the patient participates,

but getting them to participate sometime can be really, really rough. Yes, yes. Oh my goodness. The other, oh, the other topic I wanted to get into with you, and you've sort of brushed past it a couple of times, which is inequities in our healthcare system and stuff you've struggled with. Obviously we've talked, we've talked about it a couple of times already in this interview.

What do you, what do you hope for looking forward? You know, I wish I knew, you know, we've been working with the problem problems related to in medicine, disparities in medicine, all the inequities that's going on. And we've learned a lot. I think COVID has taught us a lot. It's exposed an awful lot of our, it's taken our blinders off such that we no longer have, such we now have 20-20 vision when coming to looking at some of these things that's been going on forever. You know, we felt that we didn't know them and didn't know that they existed. But I just think that as we know more, as we learn more, we're going to do better. And, you know, every year I tell people all the time, you know, we've been talking about we are going to correct all of our disparities in health care. When we started, first started out in, I don't know when we started out in 1990 or 1980 looking, and that was one of our goals. We're still there. It's still our second or third goal.

And we've not gotten there yet. We still have all of those disparities. They still exist. And I think COVID-19 made us open our eyes, get 20-20 vision, and take a fresh look. And I hope we should use this opportunity to open our eyes as clearly as we can and begin to really address some of these problems and talk about them. See, the problem is some of is we just didn't talk some of them we just didn't talk about is we talk about like sex health education we didn't talk about we

didn't teach our doctors we didn't teach our parents we didn't teach anybody we just kind of zoomed over it and and and yet we expected our parents to be able to teach our children. How can parents teach their children anything about sexuality education when they don't know how? Well, then the same is true when we talk about, we didn't talk about gender. We didn't talk about race. We didn't talk about a lot of those other isms that we carry around on our back. Hopefully, with all that we've had to stop and think about it, talk about it, and look at it, that we can begin to address some of those issues and begin to talk about them, think about them, and be made more aware of them. And I think as we become increasingly aware, better educated, and as we know more, and as we learn to talk, reason, and live with each

other, that we'll do an awful lot better job. Well, I think we should leave it right there because those are lovely words to kind of end this conversation. And it is so good to reconnect to you. If you're ever out here, you please let me know. Thank you. Are you in Little Rock right now? Are you still there?

Yeah, I live in Little Rock, yes. If I'm around there, I assure you I'll be knocking on your door. I'm going to have Felicia, Felicia, right? Your knees, I'm going to have her come get me. I want to. Remember when you called, I noticed and I watched you on TV and you've been

doing really good work. I've been keeping up with some of the wonderful things you do. And I'm really going to go out and find you in your daughter's book so I can read it. For nothing more to know what it says. We'll send you one. We'll send you one. Yeah, it's coming your way.

Don't you worry. Oh, send me one. Yeah, yeah, we'll get you one. Okay. And Susan, you're on that, yes? Yes. Okay. We also have an audio book if anybody wants to.

Oh, you do? Are your eyes good still? Are you able to read okay? Oh, yeah. Okay. In fact, I had eye surgery two weeks ago. Oh, wow. That's why I can't see quite as well tonight.

But I'm doing, I have no trouble reading, no trouble driving. My eyes see everything I want to see. My husband says that my problem is when I don't see something. He said, well, you just decided you didn't want to see that. But now my vision's. I don't even work class. He's preparing to adjust to if your hearing ever starts to go down. He's going to assume that

you just don't want to hear him. Oh, it's that. I think he already thinks that. Well, listen, Caleb, we're going to leave. Thank you for having me. You betcha. Thank you so much, and thank you for everything you've always done and for being such a joy, and we'll stay in touch.

Okay. Thank you very much. You bet. And Caleb will let Dr. Eldridge go. There we are. We're back. Thank you all for being a part of this.

The restream. I'm a bigger part on a clubhouse. We're going to wrap up that room. Thank you for spending time with us here on clubhouse. We're going to end that room. Great questions. Good questions. Also, we have a sale of a blue mic on Twitch,

and you just go to drdrew.com slash blue, and you should get a discount. Explain a little more. I don't think you need a discount code. That was not a clear pitch. If you just go to drdrew.com slash blue, you just click through, and the discount should come out at checkout.

So people will get discounts on any blue mic. Is that correct? I think so, yeah. Any blue earphones and stuff too, everything? I think so. I don't know. Caleb, you know? Caleb, text Susan if indeed that's true.

I'm not sure if there's a discount code or not. I just know they go to drdrew.com slash blue. And again, all blue products. Is that correct? We don't. Was there a discount? Let's make it. I'm actually not.

I'm not sure if they have a discount set up for it or not. I just know if they go there, then they can get all the information. If it's all the blue products, I recommend you go there fast because they have these headphones that are amazing. They have mics that are amazing. They have amazing, amazing, amazing stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. But I can't promise you.

There may not be a discount. Oh, now no discount? I don't know. Oh, my gosh. I don't think so. This is the best promo I've't know. Oh, my gosh. I don't think so. This is the best promo I've ever heard. I'm not sure. I can't remember.

It's been so long. I'll have to check back with us on Friday. Well, tell us how it goes. Email me. Yeah, let us know, and we'll try to correct it. We'll try to get some. Contact. Let's try to get some discounts going, if indeed that's what people want.

So thank you, Russell. Russell and Ben have become our comedic sort of. I miss Tom's cigars today. I know. Where is Tom's? He's working. You're all making very nice comments about Joycelyn. We appreciate that very much.

Let me just quickly go back to Dr. Fauci. That seemed to be a lot of what was going on in the restream. I'm not defending anything. I'm just saying I think based on my previous experience with him, he will look better when you're looking back. That's all I'm not defending anything. I'm just saying, I think, based on my previous experience with him, he will look better when you're looking back. That's all I'm saying. And if the politicizing had never happened and we were able to just have listened to him, he would have been a pretty good guide.

When he said don't wear masks, we all, meaning my profession, thought that this virus, you remember washing everything off and washing your hands? That's because we thought it was on your hands. And masks make hand-derived infections worse because we're messing with our masks. We put it up to our face, and if it were hand-derived, masks would have been a bad idea. And we needed masks for the hospital and first responders. So there was two reasons for saying, man, don't use masks. That was the correct opinion at the time that ended up being wrong as we learned about the virus more and its transmission through the air. So that's why that happened, to claim somebody lied because they – if every time we got something wrong biologically, every scientist, every clinician on earth would be massive liars. We get stuff wrong all the time. We use Bayesian reasoning. We update our priors. It's called

updating your priors. We adjust, we look at the data and we adjust and move forward. We can still be wrong. Happens a lot. We do the best we can with an infinitely complex system called human biology. We do the best we can. So there we go. You need to start a meds. That's what I'm saying. They're asking for it. So there's that. And vaccine, I don't quite understand what all the vaccine stuff was about today. Again, I share people's concerns.

I share concerns. I'm concerned, even though I'm an advocate and a fan. I'm concerned. People were listening. And do know that when these antivirals come, trust me on this, it's going to take a little bit to figure out where to use it all

and how it's going to work, but it's going to change everything. That's when we are going to be much, much better off. I love when she said, ignorance is not bliss. That's going to be my new saying. Ignorance is not bliss. So again. That's cute. That's going to be my new saying. Ignorance is not bliss. So, again, we thank you all for being here.

Fauci said you could catch AIDS from a cereal box. Oh, he's joking. That I'd love to see, Bobby. He's joking. Project Veritas video. Somebody's saying there's a Project Veritas video. Yeah, there's another one. And that is on what?

I kind of was hearing that. Is that on masking or is that on vaccines? Vaccines, I think it was. Yeah. Yeah. So so i listen as i said joe wasn't here today when it comes to biology you can't be um what's the word i'm looking for not adamant so much as uh you know 100 confident in your position you always have to be ready to update your priors. We call that in medicine. And that's funny, Chris. Diana, what did she say? The musical as well.

Yeah. So it is just the case that you have to be constantly adjusting and updating your priors. And when people come out with mandates for anything other than listen to your doctor and you two make a decision together. Mandates worry me. They worry me a lot. And I'm worried that mandates are going to end up doing more, not more harm than good, but enough harm to be uncomfortable. I understand why they feel the need to do it. We have an issue with this virus replicating.

If it replicates too much, we will get a horrible variant that will be a freaking mess. We don't want that. Now, with the antivirals, that might be a little less of a risk. So things are getting better. So just pay attention. It's fine to have firm opinions. I don't mind defensible opinions. But don't assume. If you're 100% convinced of something, just be very, very cautious with that.

Okay, get it on. Everybody doesn't like when you said Dr drew said that fauci was going to end up looking good when this is all over people don't like i said that i mean time will go by and and it'll be you know and i and listen i may be wrong i know i may be wrong it might be worse he may look worse when it's all over like but i and i'm totally open to that and by the way at the point that if he really starts to look bad, I will adjust my priors. Trust me on that. But I'm just I'm betting on my experience across four decades with this man.

OK, that's what I'm betting on. Project Veritas video Pfizer scientists saying that natural immunity was better than their vaccine. Well, that's true. That's true. It is true. That is true. And so. But you could end up really sick and die. Yeah, I mean, you shouldn't take a vaccine. That's just true. It is true. That is true. But you could end up really sick and die.

Yeah, it doesn't mean you shouldn't take a vaccine. That's just true. Okay, let's wrap this thing up. We are not going to be here tomorrow. We will be here on Saturday, roughly. I mean, Friday. Friday, bigger pardon. 12 p.m.

12 p.m. And we may do like a local Zoom party, and I'll bring in a guest, and we'll see your beautiful faces again. So if you want to be in the Zoom party, you have to sign up at locals. Or dr. Drew doc. Wait, locals.com slash dr. Drew become a member.

And then the zoom meeting will be posted there. What's that? Did I do it backwards? It's dr. Drew. Locals.com. Okay. Dr.

Drew. Locals.com. All right. I'm. Um, and we'll see you guys. Okay, drdrew.locals.com. All right. And we'll see you guys. Well, hang on a second. Bobby, he's giving me a little history about Dr. Fauci and cereal boxes. Well, interesting.

He might have been worried about that. And then he updated his priors once we learned about the cause of the agent. No, that's interesting to me. We had a lot of crazy ideas. How could you get AIDS in a cereal box? We had a lot of crazy ideas. How could you get AIDS in a cereal box? We had a lot of crazy ideas about HIV and AIDS when we were calling it grids. We were calling it gay-related intestinal disease syndrome. We had no idea what caused it.

We had no idea how it was spread. We didn't know anything about it. And we're coming up with constant ideas about what might be something we needed to pay attention to. It makes sense to me that fomites related to food would have been something they've been looking at because it was really first diagnosed as a diarrhea. It was first, it was called Gay-Related Intestinal Disease Syndrome.

So there you go. Thanks for sharing. So interesting history and a great point in point, case in point. He updated his priors. He figured out what was going on. He was instrumental in us turning AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic illness, which was going on. He was instrumental in us turning AIDS from a

death sentence to a chronic illness, which was Dr. Elders pointed out to us at the beginning. So yes, and cat, oh, wait, cat poop won't poop. Can't poop won't poop. Can't poop won't poop says scientific process is messy for sure. Let's leave it on that. That is in fact the case, especially in clinical sciences. We'll see you on Friday at noon. Thank you leave it on that. That is in fact the case, especially in clinical sciences. We'll see you on Friday at noon. Thank you all for being here. Thank you to Joycelyn Eldridge for being here. Thank you to Caleb for producing this and we'll see you soon. 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.