Ask Dr. Drew - Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong: LA Times Owner on CA Wildfire Disaster, Ending Newsroom Bias Against Conservatives & Why He Supports RFK – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 454

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

As owner of the historic Los Angeles Times newspaper, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has said its endorsement of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was a mistake, suggested that his newsroom should add AI “bias meters” to ensure objectivity, and vocally supported RFK by saying Kennedy “knows more about the science than most doctors.” His push to diversify the LA Times’ political viewpoints led to multiple resignations by editors and columnists, who were uncomfortable with his intention to balance the paper’s opinion section with more centrist and conservative writers. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is a physician, surgeon, and biotech entrepreneur who has pioneered treatments for diabetes and cancer. In 2018, he became the owner of the Los Angeles Times. He serves as Executive Chairman of ImmunityBio and holds over 675 worldwide patents. In 1993, he performed UCLA’s first whole-organ pancreas transplant and developed Abraxane, an FDA-approved cancer drug. Soon-Shiong is Chairman of NantWorks, recipient of the 2016 Franklin Institute Bower Award, minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, and healthcare advisor to Botswana’s President. Read the LA Times at https://latimes.com and follow Dr. Soon-Shiong at https://x.com/DrPatSoonShiong 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • 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 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • 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 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are very privileged today to welcome Dr. Patrick Soon-Shong, a physician, transplant surgeon, biotech entrepreneur, pioneered treatments for diabetes, cancer. In 2018, he became the owner of the LA Times. And as he said, some of his posts on X create a lot of excitement. He doesn't understand why sometimes. He is the executive chairman of immunity bio and holds over 675 worldwide patents 1993 he performed at ucla first whole organ pancreas transplant and he developed a braxane which uh as a lynch patient i'm glad they have available

uh it's an fda obviously cancer medication uh He is chairman of Nantworks, recipient of the 2016 Franklin Institute Bauer Award, and a minority owner in the Los Angeles Lakers. So we've got a lot to talk about. I'm very anxious to hear his story, and we'll get right to it with Dr. Patrick Soon-Shong right after this. 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*** 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.

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Dr. Pat, S-O-O-N-S-H-I-O-N-G, Dr. Pat Soon-Shong, and he would like you to read the LA Times if you go to latimes.com. Dr. Soon-Shong, thank you and welcome to the program. Welcome, thanks for being... Excuse me, I've got this going. Times if you go to latimes.com. Dr. Sun Chong, thank you and welcome to the program. Welcome. Thanks for being... Excuse me, I've got this cold.

I'm anxious. I know. I'm sorry. And you've been very kind to come out even with this thing going on. He was going to come into our house, but now we have a baby in our family, and so he very graciously agreed to do it by Zoom, so appreciate it. I did not have a baby. We have a granddaughter in our family.

If she did have a baby, you could read about it in the journals. But especially since I've had a prostatectomy and exactly how would that happen, I don't know, but be that as it may. So I'm anxious to hear, first of all,

I also have Lynch syndrome. I'm also, I'm an MSH6 Lynch. And so I know some of your recent research has benefited those of us with this syndrome. You want to address that quickly before we get into everything else? Well, that was, as you were making the introduction, I was fascinated to hear that. I didn't know that. Well, it's exactly why, actually, I'm working like crazy now.

Because, you know, we have 100 patients now already accrued in this trial. And the molecule that's been tried for the Lynch syndrome patients will literally be the first cancer vaccine that's been developed. What's exciting is that the drug got approved last year for bladder cancer. And we can talk about it a little bit, you know know because what i wanted to present is pretty simple but pretty profound and we can get into that of these molecules we put into patients with lynch syndrome because what we are activating is in your body all of us have nature's first responder called the natural killer cell and so far far, nobody's ever tried to go and activate that

with a single jab, which will ultimately be a cancer vaccine. So those of us with Lynch, we essentially have an inefficient DNA repair system. Our cells divide, DNA has to replicate, errors happen. We have this whole system to repair those errors. Those of us with Lynch, our system isn't so great. Once the error gets through, you have a cancer cell. Your next line of defense is the immune system and the natural killers in particular. They're the ones that have to go out for that,

correct? That's correct. And you explained it perfectly, whether you have Lynch syndrome or not. Unfortunately, one in 280 Americans have Lynch syndrome. And because you have this deficient repair mechanism, there's an 80% chance higher risk of the cancers, colon cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer. But if you take the normal American or human being,

we all actually produce these incorrect, mathematically incorrect cells. And otherwise, we'd all be walking around with cancer. And why not? And the reason being is because these natural killer cells that float around in your body recognize these abnormal cells. Whether they're infected with COVID, a virus, or cancer, these natural killer cells would kill it. And that's the work I started in 1990 at UCLA, and that got evolved from my understanding of transplantation, that got involved in my work in cancer.

And now, excitingly, we're on this verge, literally on this verge, because of the approval in 2024, of creating a molecule that activates what we naturally have to fight cancer, to prevent cancer. So the fact that you are so deep into biochemical, biological research, and you're a transplant surgeon? Am I getting your history right? I'm not used to those two things going hand in hand. Well, again, you hit on the right thing because the fact that I was a transplant surgeon is why I got involved in immunology. You know, you look at immunologists and the other word called virologists and oncologists, they don't talk to each other.

They're actually different disciplines. And the fact that I got into immunology was as I was transplanting my patient with the organ, the body was trying to reject it. But I was also a cancer surgeon and doing these things called Whipples. And as the patient has cancer, I was trying to find a way to reject that. And what I realized is that we have in our body this yin and yang cell called the natural killer cell that's been around for hundreds of millions of years.

And nobody recognized the cell until 1970. And by 1990, I did an experiment to show that if I protect the transplanted organ from the natural killer cells, I could protect the cell. Or if I activated the natural killer cell, I could kill the cancer. So here I was in the schizophrenic position looking after patients on my transplant ward, in the other hand on my cancer ward, and realizing that the linchpin in this whole thing, in your body, is this natural killer cell.

So if I could activate this natural killer cell in your body with a single jab, and other cells, like T-cells, we could drive what I call memory, and if we drive memory, we'd have a cancer vaccine. And what I was driving at was not just that schizophrenic relationship between immunology and cancer surgery, but the head, the brain of a biologist and a cancer surgeon

are kind of different. They don't usually coexist in the same skull. So I'm wondering, did you have, or at least, did you have a PhD also? I don't know. Explain that one to me because, again,

surgeons have a way of thinking, as you know, and biologists have a way of thinking and they're not in the same person usually. Well, I went to medical school, I think it was age of 16, 17. And I came to this, was an MD and I did a master's of science, fully an MD, did my entire surgical training and then a big research lab at the VA in Los Angeles.

So this combination of curiosity and this ability, a desire to do something quickly and get accomplished results as a surgeon really drove what I think I wanted to do here. Now, then the other sort of curiosity to me is to go forward and buy a major newspaper in a major city. Those, again, it's not the usual fare fare of our peers how did you come to that and what surprised what has been the most surprise not the most surprising but i imagine there's a

million surprises you've run into as a result of this well look i i first of all i grew up in south africa during apartheid the only thing that kept me alive literally in terms of knowledge and what was going on was the newspaper i literally went to the printing press i was a newspaper boy sat there and pulled out the first newspaper it came off the press and to me that was a form of not only education inspiration and staying what's going on in the world and look i i lived the american dream when we made all this, the fortune out of the work that we did in pharmaceutical company.

The opportunity to get a newspaper that would actually provide information, a voice to the public, was something, not as a give back, but something really would be an opportunity to really inspire and inform and also speak truth to power so to me that was the the opportunity um that i couldn't resist uh i experienced ben well i recall very well phil and shoots was a partner of mine in lakers and he

came to me that night at the game and he says says, you know, Patrick, I always thought you were a smart guy until today. And look, it's not a money-making business. It clearly is not. Clearly, clearly it's not. In fact, I wonder how you keep it going. But I'm curious about that, too. I mean, when do you say uncle? Well, you know, look, we've put in

close to, what, maybe a billion dollars into this entire enterprise. We bought the business, we built the buildings, and the first two or three years, we thought, okay, you know, what we want to do is increase the newsroom. But the platforms

have been very successful in usurping the ad revenue. Without the ad revenue in the business, you can't really live by subscriptions. You need to sort of find a way in which to support it. Which means now we need to change again. We need to figure out how we can reach audiences like audiences you're reaching, the audiences of podcasts, the audiences of mobile, the audiences of live streaming, sports. So we're going to try that and I've just released to you now that we're going to create an organization

called L.A. Times Next. It'll be an experiment. We'll have studios in Los... We do, we have studios in Los Angeles and one in Washington and one in Nashville. And we'll do podcast live streaming and hopefully create engagement to a younger audience than we currently have, and a broader audience than we currently have. And so it seems like you've been more vocal lately about uh paper and politics and things one of the things that's maybe it was maybe this was the tweet that got you the 35 million views when you um started taking aim a bit at our current mayor for some of the

extraordinary failures during the fires what What are you doing? What's happening? No, it really was, you know, it's come a time, really, you're right. I've been a relatively quiet person, a typical Asian, quiet, do your thing. But I just began to feel that as a newspaper owner and somebody who literally loves Los Angeles, what happened here was completely outrageous. And it is something that really I think we're going to live against for decades to come. So it was in my mind, look, you can't, you have these climates, but the idea of the actions that you could have taken to prevent some of the destruction was very real.

So, look, I apologized very much. We had, in fact, endorsed Karen Bass. But I had to speak out that, look, we need to move forward with real leadership even now of understanding operations logistics the dangers of the of the toxins the pfas the lead the lithium um and really take that not only seriously but expeditiously you know to me it was not a surprise i mean mean, I don't feel like there has been anybody governing in this city for quite some time. And I look no further than the streets where it's littered with... I ran an addiction recovery program at a freestanding psychiatric hospital for about 25 years.

And those patients are now littered all over the streets. And all I hear from the city is, oh, it's income inequality. Oh, it's capitalism. It's like, these are untreated psychiatric patients. And if you were governing, we would have no problem. We would take care of them. I know exactly how to do it. We're not allowed to get anywhere near them.

So to me, if they could allow six people to die every day on their streets, why would they attend to water and wind and reservoirs? That must be much lower on the list. Well, it's not surprising. We had a fire. I mean, in the Woolsey fire in 2018, our place got involved and was burned.

So we knew the fires were coming. It's getting worse. And yet the brush is a regular brush. So, you know, in Laguna, they use goats. I mean, it sounds crazy, but it's not. In Europe, they use goats. Listen, we have a place that we go to Laguna all the time, but the goats are all over the hillside all the time.

But, you know, I grew up in Pasadena, and when I was growing up and I would look out at the San Gabriel Mountains behind me here, there would be fire crews there working 24, well, certainly seven days a week, 365 days a year clearing it. And these same people that are telling us that their grave concern is carbon, what our state contributes from the standpoint of carbon emission, we undo it all every time there's a fire. It's completely undone. And there's no reason for these fires to be out of control like this. They could easily manage it, but they're not governing. They're not doing it. Let me ask this.

Is the paper addressing it? Are you going at it in a kind of proactive way to try to raise the question of what are you people doing? Or are the people that write for the LA Times too much on team Aaron Bass that they wouldn't dream of it? Well, the good news is they are now truly investigating. As early as this morning, I had a conversation with the executive editor and investigating all these issues, not only these issues,

but the people involved in actually managing these issues. And that's coming out. And so that's the role of the paper. The papers help people accountable, and I think they're going to do that. Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that, because it feels like journalism has become a cheerleading organization rather than an organization that asks good questions and tries to penetrate the veneer of whatever they're trying to keep you from understanding. And there's so many things in this town.

I was talking to somebody the other day. Do you know the city council in L.A. takes the position that the reason we're having an outbreak of catalytic converters being stolen from cars, right? To take a catalytic converter. I don't know if you know this. There's an outbreak of this where everyone's getting their catalytic converter stolen. And to steal a catalytic converter, you have to jack the car up on a jack and go under it with a sawzall, an active saw, and saw it out of the car. City Council's position is it's Toyota's fault because they made it too easy to steal a catalytic converter. That's the city we live in.

Well, that's exactly when you talk about operational skill sets or running a real-world operation. And unfortunately, I think that's the problem with the politicians that now run the country is when I talk about competence matters, I think that's what really got a lot of views. I mean, something's common sense, like how about hiring people that are competent? Not left, not right, but just competent. That's a hate crime, Patrick. That's a hateful statement, and it's racist.

And I don't know what's wrong with you to dare to say that we have to have people who know how to govern and who are competent. And I would argue that California has lost track, not just Los Angeles, but California has lost track of that. Are you guys going to be doing investigative work with Sacramento as well as our local paper? Well, I don't think Gavin Newsom's happy with me either, right? So, you know, I've called him out,

and he and I text on several issues that I call him out directly. You know, whatever I say out publicly, I say to them directly, so both Karen and Gavin Newsom. So because I don't believe in, you know, voicing my concerns publicly without having invoicing them privately, which I do. So no, I think, look, we really do have concerns. And you're right. People then call me. I'm not sure. At one point I'm racist, next point I'm left, next point I'm right. It'd be really hard for somebody of Chinese origin, born in South Africa

under apartheid to come to this country. I'm so sorry, but I feel your pain. I don't want to hear this either, but I get the same service myself. I understand. But good for you, good for you, because I think if you're going to try to make, if you're trying to do good right now, you've got to speak up. And if you speak up, you're going to get whacked. That's just the way it is. But I'm curious, though, is it really just you? I'm laughing because the way you described yourself is this. You're not as timid as you. I don't believe it. You've hid behind that, you i don't believe it you know you're you've hid behind that but i don't

believe it but but have you changed to be more assertive or have you actually changed your feeling about what's going on are you just in other words are you just telling us more about your thoughts or have your thoughts actually altered changed evolved no i think look to be honest i was way sort of i when i was in south africa as a be honest, I was always sort of, when I was in South Africa as a student, you know, I was so sort of that they basically put me in prison because I was stopped and they asked me, where's my ID card, you know, the policeman, and my response, where's yours? And he didn't take on that too well.

So, yeah, the question of being able to take on power and speaking truth to power is inherent there. What has changed in my mind is this level of incompetence is now very dangerous, actually. And as you talk about, for example, you talk about the mental health. Look, I walked down Skid Row in L.A., understood what you saw. I tried to take over the poorest hospitals in Los Angeles, St. Vincent's and Francis Hospital in the poorest areas of the city. There are solutions, real solutions for these mental health patients.

But not only absence of action, but a waste of funds. I just tweeted the other day about bullet train, right? How do we spend $13 billion without a single track being laid? And why do we even need it? So it's like, where? how do we spend $13 billion without a single track being laid? And why do we even need it? So it's like, where? And so people are going nuts with this doge. But it's the right question to ask.

Where's this money going? Dr. Sunshong, how dare you say we do not need a fast train between Bakersfield and Modesto, which is the only planned part of the of the 13 billion dollars that they are working on and of course done nothing but uh also let's make note patrick is a troublemaker it's it's true he's he's revealing himself he's he he uh he's uh anti-cop that's what we've learned today no i'm just kidding uh but but i listen i appreciate you speaking up my question also i guess would be do you have a different feeling about the um with the what the paper's been doing versus what it's going to do well look you know when i bought

the paper i literally had no idea how a paper runs. I didn't even know what these rules were. You know, there's op-ed, opinion column, news reporter. You don't cross over from one side to the other side. And I asked people, show me the rule book. Who wrote these rules? But okay. And I had Norm Pil staying for about two years.

And then COVID hit. We had hired Kevin Merida and unfortunately I had no time then for the paper and let Kevin manage the organization as we hired. And then with post-COVID and with the approval of our drug,

I finally had some time to pay some attention. We were deep into the election between President Biden and Trump and then Kamala Harris and Trump and the time of endorsements was coming. And this was October and I began to ask about how we're going about this. And I realized, just as you said, have we become an echo chamber? And I just had to take some actions. And we didn't endorse Kamala Harrison for that, I suppose. I became another racist.

Right, right. And yet again, a racist. And so, which is so comical on a certain way but but the other thing i think i've noticed it feels like the it's is it right to say that the employee your employees haven't been used to being run like a business? Like there's some sort of an endeavor that is sort of outside of normal business practices. You know what I mean? Like they can just do what they want to do, come what may. Yeah, and it's even more difficult because of the unionization of it.

But I think now they're beginning to understand how papers have all now gone under. And we've supported this paper, and we'll continue, and I want to make it clear. I think this is too important because I think there needs to be a voice for the public. And so we'll continue to support it, but we have to change, and we have to increase engagement. I was just thinking about engagement is there i i wonder if you could imagine a way to create a paper that has a x-like response system attached to the stories it's i guess it would have to be online right to do that um is that the kind of thing you guys are thinking about? In addition, of course, to the podcasting.

What's that? I'm going to break some news for you now then. So when I bought the paper, I saw we were approached by Washington Post that had this software that they do called Arc. And I looked at the paper software called WordPress. And I come from healthcare where the medical records is such a mess.

And I said, this is as much a mess as the records. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the risk and build a content management system that's completely unique, that could integrate video, podcast, movies, streaming, paper, press, magazines. And we've built that. It's called Graphene.

And in about two weeks, you will see we will release, openly release live streaming, anytime studio, studio, press, comments, and a perspective meter, meaning you'll read an opinion which will now be called voices and when you see that article, you can hit a button as perspectives. It'll give you the perspective of where that article is written, not the person but the way the article is written. It's either center, left, or right.

And then it'll give you right immediately other perspectives the opposite perspectives opposing perspectives but each of these perspectives that will that will come up will be linked to actual links of data that you can go review so my view is always you allowed to have an opinion everybody's allowed to have an opinion but at least you should have an opinion based on facts. That would be sort of nice. Now you could have a left to right opinion. And so one way for me to help engage a diverse audience,

and California is moving between right and left, and 100 years ago it was more center right, and now it's more center-left. So if we could create a system that everybody could participate in that article and read on it, to me, that would be sort of a revolution, and we're about to launch that in about two weeks that sounds amazing because one one of the frustrating sort of experiences of the newspaper of print these days is we're used to engagement like you said you use that word and and the other thing when whenever i've had an article written about me it's particularly by the la times i'm sorry to tell you I won't do any print at all ever. Actually, I just did one recently,

but I just have a policy of no print because it's so distorted and you're helpless. It's just, there it is. And you have no way to respond to it. In fact, I had a terrible article written by LA Times after you were owning it where I was asked by Catherine Barger to consider coming in to be on the

allocation committee for homelessness. And I told her, I'm not, no, it sounds like painful. Oh, is this that, is this the article? And, and, and I, I, she begged me. I said, okay, I'll do it. I said, and I said, you know what? I should, I should do it. I'll go with an open mind, open heart. I will keep my mouth shut and I'll just see how they do this., I'll do it. And I said, you know what? I should do it. I'll go with an open mind, open heart. I will keep my mouth shut. I'll just see how they do this. Maybe I'll really learn something. So what's the name on this article, Caleb?

This one is just by the Times. I've been waiting for this for a long time, Dr. Schoenstrom. This one's the Times editorial board. The other one was from Jacqueline Cosgrove, staff writer. Jacqueline Cosgrove wrote an article without calling me or asking me any questions, and her assessment of my abilities for this position was, I'm

supposedly, according to the state of California, I'm licensed by the state of California. And then they, the rest of the article was a homeless advocate in New England, and what he thought of me. Forget my teaching positions. Forget my fellowship with a barren college physician.

Forget my positions of leadership in a psychiatric hospital. Forget all that. I'm licensed by the state of California. It was the most disgusting. And she had nothing. I called her. I said, what are you doing? What am I supposed to do?

What are you supposed to do? Do your damn job. Anyway, this makes people like me not do print. But if I have a way to sort of respond, like in your engagement thing, well, now I'm back in the game again. Much like this is an engagement

today. It's the same thing. I'm sure you've had these articles and things written about you, too. But I think it allows you to comment. So not only you'll have a comment button, you'll have a perspective button. So I think you're right.

You know, the unfairness of, and that was supposed to be then a news report rather than an opinion. Yes, that's right. And that's what I also think is wrong about media. You have to be fair. And that's all you ask, right? Fair and honest. And to call you on some of these things. I mean, you know, the decisions we made with regard to non-endorsement of Kamala,

nobody's called me on that, but made assumptions. And then you make assumptions and you make opinions based on your assumptions and then you just keep on going. And then you call that news. And that's what I said. We have to stop that. We're going to stop that. And in two more weeks,

I think the date we've set is two weeks from now. And that'll come out. I'll write a dear reader letter, try to explain it. It'll be AI driven. So That'll come out. I'll write a deal, read a letter, try to explain it. It'll be AI-driven, so it'll be objective. You'll see something. What makes me so hopeful,

aside from your assessment, which I completely sign on to, is that you tell me if this is true. Do you anticipate that other outlets, other newspapers could use your platform? Because if newspapers should have shifted generally in this direction, it could be really exciting. It really is. And that's what we've offered.

You know, I've met with some of the most major newspapers of one name, and we've actually made it free for the small local newspapers if they want to. Oh, my God, that's amazing. But then we'll start this whole thing. This could change everything. Yeah. This is the opportunity to do that. I have to take a little break. When we come back, I want to talk about RFK Jr., if you don't mind.

I want to talk about vaccines. I don't know if you saw that tape that rolled into this interview. It was with Joseph Freiman who did an evaluation of the Pfizer research. And one of the things he pulled out of that was that they excluded everyone that got lost to follow-up during the two-week window after vaccine, which is when all the vaccine reactions occur, which is astonishing,

but that was part of the Pfizer study. And they were talking to the heads of the FDA in that interview. And they had the study group that wrote the big study. And one of the physicians there had a kid die of the vaccine. I still don't think he's had a callback from the VAERS system. There's just a complete lack of willingness to look at the fact that there are some adverse events out there. And it still feels very

reticent to pull this together and I'm hoping RFK Jr. has something to, you know, bringing the level of science up to something a little more what's the word I'm looking for? To the standard of what science should be held.

Trigger, yeah. I mean, yeah. I've been very supportive of RFK and we can talk about that and i'm really worried about long covid right so we'll talk about that look forward to yes i want to talk about that we'll talk about let's talk about all that well i'll be right back after this with dr patrick shun xiong and uh we'll be right with you well you've heard me praise paleo Valley's grass-fed finished beef bone broth and the delicious meat sticks. I now want to turn it over to Paleo Valley founder and CEO, Autumn Smith, to tell you about her company's food philosophy. I'm here to help create the products that make healthy food convenient in our modern world.

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and then it's going to be grass-fed and finished or pasture-raised. It's going to be raised. It's going to be tested for pesticides. And then it's going to be grass-fed and finished or pasture-raised. It's going to be raised on regenerative American farms. The protein sticks that come in eight varieties are likewise impeccably sourced and prepared. And the fermentation process came about because there was an ingredient that I didn't like in meat sticks that's pretty widespread. It's called encapsulated citric acid. And it's derived from GMOs and then hydrogenated oil and it just melts into the beef stick and you don't have to label it. That's the thing. You can label it citric acid. Make 2025 a year to cut out the chemicals

and feed yourself correctly. Go to drdrew.com slash paleovalley for 15% off your first order, 20% off when you subscribe. That is drdrew.com slash paleo valley if there was ever a time to be rationally ready it is now i urge you to consider getting one of the emergency kits from the wellness company because twc has seven different kits that are customized for a variety of situations wouldn't be a bad idea to take a look at each considering say what we've just been through in californ California with the fires, I was happy to have the field kit on hand. And the contagion kit in particular is suited for what is being predicted to be the next outbreak,

or avian or bird flu. Of course, the same experts from the COVID era are freaking out about this potential pandemic. But don't panic. Just arm yourself with the meds you might need if this comes to pass. The contagion emergency kit contains ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, Tamiflu, and budesonide, an inhaler that is good for airway reactivity and tightness, as well as reducing viral replication in the airways. Go to drdrew.com slash TWC for 10% off your purchase. Dr. Drew said the best way to quit drinking is by going cold turkey and he's a doctor so why would you question doctors dr drew called me unfixable

and susan grabbed me she says show them the field kit show them the field kit all the different materials that we have thank god have on hand when we have needed it so we recommend it most highly susan or something else you want to say to have on hand when we have needed it. So we recommend it most highly. Susan, there's something else you want to say? Great to have on hand in case of emergency, in case your CVS burns down. You never know. Well, that was the thing. You don't realize how lucky you are to have a CVS around the corner.

No, it is what motivated us to be involved with TWC. We first had the excesses of the government interfering with our ability to interact with patients and patients to get to doctors and then we have failure of government around natural disasters where people are stuck at home we could we were stuck here the fire was right next door and we had thankfully had our kids so they lost a lot more in the palisades i mean no adam can't even go home so i think today he might be going home somebody told me oh so it'd be interesting all right dr patrick soon shiang physician surgeon biotech entrepreneur he's very kind owner of the la times very kind to join and spend time with us here today in spite of being ill i i am so so grateful for you to be here tell them again about what's coming in two

weeks and where they should go to get it well i think what we're going to do is literally put it live. And we've been beta testing it. So it'll be on your app. It'll be on your.com, where the paper will be the paper, except the homepage and everything else. You'll have live camera streaming. You'll have news. You'll have perspectives.

You'll have a button that allows you to see different views. You'll have comments. And it'll basically be a platform media really a platform into for you to interact with do you need to be an la time subscriber to to go on to it or everybody be able to go on tell tell me about that part no you'll be able to see this the streaming and everything else that'll be it'd be nice if you're a subscriber, but really it would be available in open so that you could access that. There'll be certain things like newsletters, etc., for you to be a subscriber to.

You know, I really wanted this in a funny way. One of my dreams is to create what you call a health vault. You would be amazing for you that if you knew where all your medications are, where your doctors are, and your life history, not just last week, of your history and physicals, and that wherever you go, you could press a button and that would be available to you in the cloud, but real time. It would be even more amazing that my view is that every patient should be an astronaut.

Today, we know we can do that. Think about that, that we can measure your heart rate in real time, measure your EKGs in real time. If you're in the ER or the ICU, the doctor could have the waveform in real time. We could actually monitor that through AI and predict whether you're going to have heart failure or not, sepsis or not. That's what we've been developing quietly. It's in the hands right now of providers. We're putting it in, we have over a million patients

on Medicare Advantage on that kind of system. The question is, how could we make this available to every American walking around on their phone as a utility in the LA Times app? That's a dream that I'm still pushing and I think I'm going to get there. Let's drill on that a little bit

because when I was first hearing about the electronic medical record, that was sort of the idea. I mean, it wasn't quite as clear as what we were describing. That was sort of supposedly where it was headed. It has not been anything like that in reality. The other thing, though, is people are getting very, I'll use a strong strong word kind of paranoid about their information going out you know to the world i i don't have any problem with that but i don't have an imagination

about what can happen with those things do do people push back in any way on the biometrics going out to the world no i so let's talk about that a little bit because you know when president obama was president i actually presented this idea to him, actually. And the idea was, well, we're going to fund electronic medical records and specifically companies like GE and such large companies. The problem is he's fought three different medical records where in old software they don't talk to each other. And I said, what are you going to do now? He's really going to create what are called concrete in the united states where you don't know where your records are you can't get your records if you have if you go to ucla in the next week you go to see the sign in

the next week you're in florida there's no chance right no i know the issue the issue is what you needed was interoperability of complete access in real time. And this was doable. The other issue I was exactly what you brought up. You need security. You need to make sure that your information, what we call high trust information, is secure. But the most important information is you want your doctor to have real-time information of your status in real-time as if you were an astronaut to make a decision at a point of care.

And all of that is available in real, if we can actually all get together and create an interoperable system. We spent $40 billion in electronic medical records in those four years. Nothing's happened. We've just gotten work. So, you know, I got criticized by saying the Accountable Care Act is neither accountable nor affordable. And because of all of this, you can't measure outcomes.

If you can't measure outcomes, what are you paying for? And this sum of insurance companies and Medicare Advantage, I think billions, maybe even trillions of dollars are at waste because of that inefficiency. But anyway, it's a separate subject. Well, it's good. Have you talked to my Matt Oz about this?

I mean, he would be the person we go to right now. Well, Matt came to see me in 2015. We talked about this in 2015. That's how far back. And I created this thing called the rocket ship, I'll send you one day though, of actually integrating 21st century medicine,

breakthrough medicine, which takes 17 years to get in the hands of a physician. This complete disorganized care from hospital to outpatient to specialist to the payer that actually, you don't know what you're paying for, and to the pharmaceutical company who wants to do a whole precision medicine for you. If we can integrate this as one system and have all that knowledge available to you as a patient and to your physician, that changes healthcare forever.

And that is the opportunity now to do that for the nation. Yeah, I just have this distinct feeling that we are way under utilizing home care, telemedicine, technologies that can do in the home. You mentioned walking around with real-time cardiac monitoring. How do you get a 12-lead EKG? Do we have to hook people up? Do we have a system that you put on the chest? I've not seen anything like that yet. What's exciting, you don't need 12 leads.

Now, just to get the predictive monitoring, you can get two or three leads. You know, there's a system. And then when you're in the hospital, when you're in the ICU, there's three companies now that have these ICU monitors, GE, Philips, and Neon Codon, and they don't talk to each other either in terms of the EKG waveforms.

So we've created a Rosetta Stone that actually doesn't matter which system that you're on, that we could bring it to the doctor on the mobile phone in real time, and it literally sees the cardiac waves happening, and then an AI actually inputs and predicts for him that that patient's about to go into cardiac arrest or cardiac decompensation. That is now implemented already, believe it or not.

So the idea is how do you implement it all the way to the home, as you said, into telehealth. So these are the very exciting it's not even new technology it's technology that we have today you can watch a football game that way you can do a few fans you bet that way but so so it's just application to health care let's go let's take a trip to washington and go talk to my man see see once he gets installed there let's let's go i really i a trip to washington and go talk to my men see see once he gets installed there let's let's go i really i i have so many people now in the government i want to go visit because i want to understand what they're seeing i want to hear their perspective on

what's in there and you know how brilliant my med is i'm sure he'd be all all ears in terms of doing things now another great mind in washington is rfk jr we both kind of supported him uh he to me what he brings is an ability to dissect complicated systems and look at adulterating influences what are you seeing with rfk jr well you know when only met him for the first time this year. And when I met him, you have all these preconceived notions that people put out in the media that he's an... I know, it's so crazy. Yeah, yeah. And within maybe half an hour, I was so impressed by his scientific knowledge. And he really completely said the right way.

He tries to dissect a problem and to ask the question. So I said to him, I said, Bobby, really what you should go out and emphasize to the people, all you're asking for is just ask the question. We don't know the answer. Let's ask the question. There's nothing wrong with asking the question, right? And they get all caught up about him being an anti-vaxxer.

He's not an anti-vaxxer he's not an anti-vaxxer so we saw we spent hours and hours and hours talking and i was therefore very convinced that here's somebody would not only be able to ask a critical question that is life-saving for all americans and you know it's the slogan of Make America Health Again. It really means it can. And I was concerned in my own life about some of these carcinogens because I'm a cancer doctor. So I said, let me give you a prime example. There's papers and papers and papers that red dye 12 years ago is carcinogenic.

The Europeans are smart enough, they've banned it. Banned it. If you go to Europe today and you find a candy, in fact, I've got candies on my table here, they're the European candies that are red in them, and American candies are red in them. European candies have no dye in it. They use beetroot, et cetera, plants,

and we have red dye in it. And only last month did they ban red dye. So obviously, the question that he's been asking has validity, and we are silly enough to not adopt a standard of scientific rigor of really saying, look, if this is bad for us, why do we have it? Is it because it induces us to eat more? It induces the eye to go buy that more? Maybe it does.

But that's not a reason for you to be eating a carcinogen, I don't think. Right. What I'm really worried about now is PFAS. So he and I had this long conversation of PFAS. I don't know if the public understands PFAS. I just tweeted about that this morning because we need to get that out. This is as chemical as made by companies, DuPont, 3M, etc. And it's in everything.

It's in your milk. It's in your water. It's in your vegetables. It's in your organic vegetables. It's in your land. It is not surprising that Europe does not want to buy our food. And we have an increasing rise of cancer in young people. I said, Bobby, all we have to do is ask the question why. And I think one of the things that Senator Cassidy has said, even though this is not

under the auspices of the FDA, it's under the auspices of the EPA, who is going to have the courage enough to take on these large organizations and say, why do you release PFAS in the waste? And why do you use it as fertilizers for our farmland? Think about that. For decades, we've put PFAS as fertilizers in our farmland. Think about that. For decades, we've put PFAS as fertilizers in our farmlands. I don't think this is hyperbole, but I think now our farmlands

are currently toxic dump sites. Think about that concept. So he will then have, I believe, the courage to stand up and ask that question and have accountability. And so I think, I believe, the courage to stand up and ask that question and have accountability. And so I think, you know, you're right, I am a fervent supporter. People put other

attributions of reasons why. I just think here's somebody who was asked the right questions, taken on the right organizations and big industry, including pharma, and said, let's ask the question. I completely agree with you, a thousand percent. And I've been an enthusiast of his, and I just felt like his questioning, thinking needs to be in Washington, and hopefully it will be. So long COVID was the other thing you wanted to talk about. Let's talk about that a little bit.

Most of my friends that work in long COVID end up seeing more long vaccine than long COVID in that most of the long COVID kind of resolves. But the long vaccine tends to be a little more recalcitrant. What are your concerns about long COVID? So, I mean, it goes back to a very fundamental question. And it's a very technically scientific question. Does your body clear the virus? What does that mean? The reason you have

long COVID, I believe, is because your body still has replicating virus. You may not feel it, you know it, inside your body does it because it causes inflammation in multiple areas of your body, whether it be your heart and cardiac arrest, whether it be in your colon and you get cancer whether it be in your brain and you get long you get brain fog etc again you need to ask what's going on but the question first is why do we why did we create a vaccine that does not clear the virus that is only that, Patrick, why did we create a vaccine that reproduces the most pathogenic component of the virus? Why not the nucleocapsid?

Why not the whole virus? Why do we keep pushing on spike? It's insane. Oh my God, you're singing my tune exactly. I've been saying this since 2020 think about this me too me too i've been saying the same thing and by the way and i and i i asked even a simpler question what's wrong with covaxin why can't we use covaxin it's a whole viral alternative why don't you mention it ever when you talk about vaccines. Why do you only mention two varieties, two versions, Pfizer and Moderna?

What's going on? And without breaking the news here, now is not the right time. I think that is actually a subject of real necessary investigation.

Not in any political statement. Not in necessary investigation not in any political statement, not in a gotcha type of statement, but really looking at investigative facts and sadly I was right in the middle of that

I was part of Warp Speed and I got de-warped and that is a subject of future discussion which i think you were because you weren't but hang on i'm gonna i'm gonna ask a couple questions you can't drop that bomb and i'll get a little bit of follow-on uh you were dewarped because you didn't want to cut corners on the research or the the development or were you dewarped because you didn't want to cut corners on the research or the development, or were you de-warped because you didn't sign on to the spike,

I guess would be the question, really. And you don't have to tell me the answer. You can answer as you've been answering. Time something for a later date, as I'm getting used to you saying. Because it's so complex. It requires, you know, I think these are the danger when you have, and that's why I love these long forms, because the danger of short sound bites where people then take the wrong impression.

I think the thought long discussion, I think, you know, a couple of hours of congressional hearing should happen with facts. Yes. And I'm willing to... Put it on your platform. Patrick, put it on the platform when it comes out. I mean, it'll be a great way to drive traffic. Let's have the discussion there.

Yeah, but it's scientifically, technically very complex. So we need to actually first have it with all the scientists because I'm so deeply involved with this idea of covet and long covered i'm not only worried about long covert i think i understand why we get on covered your idea about spike this thing called spikeyopathy the idea that the the spike could come either from the vaccine or from the covert virus itself and if it comes from the vaccine does it break off and does it actually replicate if it replicates does it persist if it persists the vaccine, does it break off and does it actually replicate? If it replicates, does it persist? If it persists and replicates in a certain part of the tissue, does it reduce what they call P53?

Is it then a harbinger of cancer? Is it going to act like hepatitis and HPV, God forbid, where in fact five years or ten years from now? Is it potentially the explanation why I'm seeing eight-year-old, 10-year-old, 11-year-olds with colon cancer? Why are we seeing, why did I see patients with 13-year-old metastatic pancreatic cancer? These are questions

that need to be very importantly asked. And by the way, is it COVID? Is it vaccine? Is it both both is it all or possible is it red dye is it pfas is it all of the above um is it all preventable and is it all treatable at the end of the day i'm a surgeon i want to treat it i don't want to know, okay, fine. What can we do to prevent it? How can we treat it? And now we come back again to the cancer vaccine or come back to treatment of HIV, come

back to treatment of autoimmune diseases, which again was what I spent my last 25 years of my life trying to do. And to answer the fact that we are close, which is exciting, is too complex and it's not something I can do over soundbite. I try to do this over Twitter where I call connecting the dots.

And there's too many dots to connect. And the idea is I'll try to put this over X and connect the dots. But let me tell you something profound and very simple. Something profound is as follows when you get chemotherapy let's talk about cancer for example when you get chemotherapy the first thing it wipes out is your red blood cells you have anemia and there's a drug for that called epigen the second thing it wipes out is cells called neutrophils that prevent infection, and there's a drug for that called Neupogen. But the most important thing it wipes out is your NK and T cells, and that's called

lymphocytes. So, Drew, I'd like you to test this with your oncology friends and say, when you do a CBC, which is a standard blood test, what do you look for to treat your patient? Well, we look for anemia and we look for neutropenia, which, and well, do you look for your lymphocyte count? No. Why? We don't bother about it because there's no treatment for that. It turns out the only thing that protects your body against cancer is your lymphocytes,

meaning the NK cells and T cells. And there was no treatment for that for 35 years until last year, 2024, when I got approved, ANGTEVA. That's now being used in Lynch syndrome, where we have bladder cancer patients now free of disease and complete response over nine years. Patients were about to lose their bladder, BCG unresponsive, free of disease over complete response over nine years. Patients were about to lose their bladder BCG on response of free of disease over 54 months because we've driven memory T cells. The reason I'm able to say this to you is because it's in the package insert. It is actually in the label. It is the

first drug to activate your NK cells, your T cells, and your memory T cells. So that's why I'm saying what is simple and profound, meaning that we now know that anybody getting chemotherapy, anybody getting radiation, within a day or two, you wipe out the only cells that matter, i.e. the cells that kill cancer. And for 35 years, we've never had a treatment for that. That is where I'm going down the line when we talk about long COVID. Because when you have viral infections, the first thing you wipe out, the virus is smart, it wipes out the T cells and NK cells.

Yeah, yeah. But you can see the complexity of what I just said to you is a science lesson. No, I get it. I get it 100%. And you know, of course, what the oncology friends would say is like, wow,

I got to make sure they don't die of an infection in the meantime. That's why I'm worrying about the neutrophils. And if they get so anemic, they're hypoxic. I got to get the blood count up and by the way i remember the day when neupogen was they worried about the oncogenic effects of neupogen that that was always a concern back in the day so i don't hear anybody ever talk about that anymore and epigen would cause blood clutting yeah yeah so but you know the irony is that they need epigen and neopigen because of what we've done to the patient. We've given them chemotherapy.

And the same thing we've done to that patient is actually wiped out the cells that matter, the NK and T cells. So my fight for the last 20 years is here's a surgeon from South Africa, this doctor, working on pancreas transplant and talking to oncologists and says, everything we've been doing so far has been wrong. We've actually treated cancer wrongly. We should use, when I tried to develop a Braxane, I wanted to use the lowest dose possible. Because a Braxane was to actually convert these macrophages called M2 to M1s, which are killer macrophages. So when you ask, am I an immunologist? Am I a surgeon? Am I an oncologist? Am I a virologist?

By the way, if you're a virologist, you'll only think about these antibodies. You never think of T-cells. So this problem with medicine, we have siloed ourselves into these little blocks. Oh, my God. Yes. And therefore, our thinking is so myopic. And if you have a broad-scale scope of comprehensive thinking of the biology of the human being, you thought it was a quack.

And here we have people like RFK who are really asking the right questions. And I agree with those questions, and I sure hope it's confirmed. I'm not sure when the vote is, but I sure hope it will be confirmed. I live in the world of primary care, and I have my time in psychiatry and have my time in primary care, and that view of the human from the general and the whole system, nobody gets that anymore. You're not allowed to do medicine and do psychiatry and do this and do intensive care and all this stuff. I did all that stuff.

And it really, I value it so much. And it affects your thinking and your judgment when you have those experiences. And you're right. It's so siloed it's wild i by the way you mentioned the m1 macrophages i'm kind of convinced they're involved in the endotheliitis associated with spike is that something you're looking at well it's it's the overkill right so when you actually have this ongoing chronic basically persistence of a inflammation then that's like cytokine storm right and now when you have its ongoing inflammation that's why with hepatitis you get liver cancer and that's why

with hpv it's persistent cervical cancer god forbid this this virus is everywhere it's in the colon it's in the pancreas it's in in the brain, it's everywhere. So this is something we really, really over the next four, eight years must really, really worry about and can't fix. And the good news is we are through this. Hopefully we can. Again, and stop hitting people with the spike over and over and over again. I don't get it. It's just like okay um but but um i don't know if you saw the data on the long fog um there's some suggestion that spike in non-classical

monocytes is causing the monocytes not to go through their normal cycle of apoptosis when they enter the central nervous system and they sit there and cause inflammation is that something you does that make sense and what you understand or is that a theory you've heard no no it makes very much sense because what happens is what spike does it hijacks a thing called the h2 receptor the h2 receptor is on the blood vessels of everything on your body so now because it hijacks that it yet it penetrates the blood-brain barrier. So there's now some side effects of mitochondrial dysfunction inside that. And with mitochondrial dysfunction inside the brain,

you truly have almost the equivalent of early Alzheimer's because you really forget stuff in different areas. So the immune system is a very complex system and it tries to fight it. And you're right, and these monocytes ultimately are the source of, as they mature, they become things called dendritic cells. So the problem is,

you totally understand this, you really need to be a very deep immunologist, not a virologist. So we have the wrong discipline addressing this issue of the COVID pandemic. And that's when I think I got dewarped because I was looking at it from a position of email rather than on-

Dewarped, I love that. It's the first time I've heard of somebody being dewarped, but I want to hear more about it. Do you mind if I ask a question that came in from someone uh it's it's it's going back now back to the los angeles stuff um uh a someone that when you went to medical school with dr raymond pollack whose whose son raymond pollack whose son is a journalist now and has lost his home in the fire. And so he's very concerned

about the response to the fire. And by the way, Raymond sends his regards and he's been a huge fan of yours and your work. But let me, I have like three questions. One is, is anyone asking for, is LA Times taking the position that, or is anyone within the Times, asking for resignations or any sort of consequences from some of what has happened from the fires? Resignations of the leadership, you mean? Mayor or governor. Yeah, leadership, yeah.

I don't think they've taken... Look, I can't tell the reporters what they have to say. That'll have to be an opinion piece. Right, but the report... Of course, of course. ...on that. But I personally have called out to say that incompetence matters and whatever you want to take that for.

He's asking as a follow-on. This kind of goes with it. Maybe I'll just throw this out. Does the Times support a special master to oversee federal funds that are advocated for the fires? I agree. I mean, I think the use of funds, I mean, I think you saw the controversy of the payment of the people the city hired,

and I don't know to go into that. So what we've done at LA Times is try to create what we call a hub. When we'll be releasing it the next week, an LA Times hub, where not only have best practices, you have subject matter experts, and you have a referral system of exactly practically what you have to do to actually get this done, but get it done safely.

I mean, I see people standing around and looking at, they don't realize that basically you're in a 9-11 situation where you know of all these, sadly the first responders all have cancer, and you're just exposing yourself to cellulosis, to the deep lung in terms of these particles. So I've created what we call the LA Times Hub, which will be a utility again of information sharing and you can then put in your email, put in your request and we'll direct you to an expert so that you don't go through this bureaucratic mess. What would be best for the federal government is not only to create some centralized testing lab with some centralized systems that is actually cost effective, but be honest, just give the money directly to the homeowner.

Figure out a way where they can help him with insurance, help them with whatever they need. Because I think there'll be a lot of waste. And sadly, I hope there won't be fraud and abuse. But this is not a one year. This is a two to three to five year program that's going on. Yeah. And I just want to share with you a story that sort of rings in my mind constantly when I think about the government in California in particular.

I saw an interview with, I'm not going to mention the person's name, but at the time this person was the chairman of the budget committee for the state of California. And this person was asked you know you have this huge deficit coming your mandated balanced budget but what are you going to do and she goes you know what we person says well we can't uh can't just print money we can't pull money out of thin air we can't print money but the federal government can print money so they need to print some money and give it to us i I was like, this is the head of the budget committee in California. This is what we have. This is what's running our economy.

I am speechless. $200 billion comes into the country, into California, just for health care. $200 billion. And you have these people lying in the streets. And you have, I think the Medicaid, Medicaid. $200 billion. And you have these people lying in the streets, and you have, I think the Medicaid, one is Medicaid, $160 billion. It's outrageous, actually, for us to be. And we need to talk about this one day, is why is the United States with the lowest longevity rate compared to the rest of the world? Think about that. The lowest longevity rate per capita is spent.

And these are the kinds of questions that we need to ask. And now is the time. I really honestly believe I'm very excited about this time because people can ask hard questions and not be canceled. And that's what we need to do. Right. And just ask hard. Listen, you mentioned the

you know trying to set up some hospitals it would be so I managed a treatment center for 30 years 25 years it's not hard you staff it up you get the right people in positions we get a couple hundred beds and we move people through and we send them out

to residential facilities of vocational rehab and you get them back engaged in life you bring them back to life we it'd be we could do it on a scale we got to go get rfk because rfk wants to have these farms and things but that's as you and i know that's that's something that happens after you stabilize people and got in deal with you know their medical issues um but it'd be But it'd be so easy to run a two, three hundred bed psychiatric facility in this town and move people through the treatment of addiction

and chronic mental illness and send them to residential care. Should I drive you nuts now by telling you something? Go ahead. Is there another thing another bomb you're going to drop? So when we took over the St. Vincent's Medical Center downtown, you may know the daughter of the charity.

Yeah, I remember. And we tried to, in the county, we tried to get it because there was no reimbursement for Medicaid patients. And Dr. Becerra tried to block us trying to get other people to help, believe it or not when he was here and we had to go to court and fight him and we won but eventually we couldn't win enough to the point

that the place closed down so when the place closed down I didn't want to, it's a beautiful hospital destroy it, so I've owned it empty, there's no hospital empty for about now four years. I toured Gavin Newsom, and I toured Karen Bass.

And I said exactly what you just said. Why don't we take these hospital beds, these rooms, cut a wall, one of these two walls, make them three bedrooms, whatever. Downstairs, we have the emergency room. We have this massive kitchen and we could have mental health homes, community, right there in the poorest nation part of LA. Three years ago, I've done this every year, every year, every year. Nothing. Nothing, quite literally nothing. So when you say, and the reason i'm telling you this is because i've been telling them and arguing with them over both the phone and physically touring them i don't

understand but we will spend the money and put two hundred thousand dollars per hotel room what's that going to do for you put homeless people in the hotel room and then do what so this is where we talk about competence matters and i don't know what goes on around the underpinnings when you say the budget person said don't worry fiddle we'll just print more money it sounds like my newspaper you know if we're losing money that's okay i I should just print more money and allow that to run. So that's what I meant by competence matters. Somebody's made a payroll. People understand what we need to do to help for the common good for all.

And I think that the opportunities now to make that change. And sadly, this fire really just epitomizes the need for really competent government, especially in California. I'm shaking my head because we don't have it, but they have an opportunity. Listen,

you should talk to some people that have been on the streets recently using heroin. They will tell you the same thing, is that they are given their drugs, they're given the rigs to shoot the heroin, and they're patted on their back and they are told, the problem is capitalism, and once we get communism going, you're going to be okay. That's literally what

they're telling the drug addicts on the street. Drug addicts don't care, they just want the drugs. And that is who's working on the streets right now. And they're using it as a political ploy to insist that income inequality and this face of homelessness as newsom says publicly the face of homelessness is a mother of two that just lost her job it has nothing to do with what's going on and i and i've even switched the

terminology so let's okay then shut up let's talk about chronic homelessness the people that you're seeing lying on the sidewalk i've got people living in my house who lost their house in the Malibu fire. They're homeless. He didn't lie down on the sidewalk. He came and figured things out and found a place to stay. People are lying down on the sidewalk, have brain diseases, and those brain diseases have treatment. And we have to be able to, the law prevents us from getting them and going, hey, come with me. Let's go to St. Vincent's.

We got a place for you there. We can make you better. We have to be able to, we have to reopen Lantern Met Petra Short. We have to reopen those, the gravely disabled has to be a thing again. Gravely disabled doesn't exist as a reason to bring somebody in the hospital anymore. You have to reestablish gravely disabled. You have to reopen Lantern Met Petra Short, LPS, and you have to change how we treat people on the street and how we, frankly, deal with vagrancy laws.

You have to go, no, you can't. Just come with me. We're going to go into St. Vincent's. We'll move you through, and then we'll put you in a residential. We'll get you rehab. And some people will require—this is the part they really don't want to admit. Some people require constant, forever custodial care. They let people go too far where there are going to be some that require that.

That's the next level of what we're going to have to deal with. You need another St. Vincent's for that. Or maybe we open Camarillo. Is Camarillo still open? And we make that a nicer environment. The problem is people still think psychiatric care is one flew over the cuckoo's nest. That was 75 years ago. Psychiatric care is not like that

at all. It's quite nice. It's quite nice, but it is still medical care and it requires professionals to do it. Well, when I kept penetrating, I said, listen, it's a 300-bed hospital and then there's a huge tall building that the doctors used to be in, so there's many,

many rooms. What's the problem? Well, they said, you know, federal law doesn't allow 16 psychiatric patients to be more than 16 to be together. I said, what? I said, that doesn't make any sense. They said, yeah, because of whatever. I said, well, I first ever heard of that,

but I'm sure if we go to Washington, we can change that. Let's go talk to Dr. Oz immediately. Let's go talk to him. Let's go talk to Oz. Let me help you staff this thing. I know what kinds of things you need in various units and the kinds of units you should have. Please let me help you out in any way I possibly can. Because this is, it's like, for me, what it would be like for you, imagine seeing a bunch of people lying in the street that needed a Whipple's,

and they're just lying in the street dying, and they all needed a Whipple's procedure. That's what Los Angeles is like for me. It drives me crazy. No, I can understand. Well, hopefully they'll be changed, and hopefully with RFK they'll be changed. Well, I thank

you for spending time with us. I thank you for being quite an example of equanimitas. You're interested in all the things I'm interested in so this has been very fun for me and you want to take

action. You're planning to solve these things so consider me at your service Dr. Shun Sh action. You're planning to solve these things. So consider me at your service, Dr. Sun Xiong. I would like to be a part of these solutions because these are, I mean, why do we go into medicine if we're not solving stuff like this? You know what I mean? These are things that are affecting people's health on a massive scale. And it's being done by people who don't know what they're doing. And we kind of know what we're doing. We kind of know how to change these things.

The thing I think about Dr. Cassidy is that we need more doctors in leadership in the Senate or anywhere, right? And I think that's, you really do, I think, because unless you've actually seen, touched, and felt a patient, you really don't have the empathy and understanding what patients go through. So thank you for having me. And I've been saying for years also that we needed more physicians in the media

because you have all these attorneys everywhere in the media, but you don't have our, we're too busy trying to survive and help people. And, you know, so you and I are lucky enough to be able to, and old enough to be able to now start thinking about other ways to be of use. So,

and I look forward to two weeks from now when we i can interact with the la times that'd be very pretty exciting that'd be great thank you for having me appreciate you being here hope to meet you in person thank you so much okay bye-bye dr patrick soon chong again uh let's see do you have the tweet the xx um handle up there caleb or do i have to go find it again here? Hold on a second. Oh, there it is. It's just x.com slash drpatsoonshow.

Dr. Pat Soonshow. All right, pretty interesting. I hope you guys were all as taken abide as I was. To be able to talk to a peer for me is pretty exciting, and to have a peer that is doing stuff and making a difference, and it's just very, it's exciting for me. I hope I wasn't too indulgent as we talked about the spike protein

and the various aspects of biology of long COVID. Caleb, how did that seem for you? Oh, it gives me hope. It gives me hope. It's like when we talk with Nicole Shanahan, it's like, here's somebody who's mad about it and who can actually do something about it. These are the type of people we need speaking up more

because there's a lot of others like everyone, they want to talk about, when you think of billionaires, you think of Bill Gates and you think of everything that Bill Gates has done with vaccinations and programs and stuff that a lot of people don't agree with. Well, then you have these other people that are coming in, finally stepping up, using their resources, using their knowledge and their education and their contacts to actually do good things.

Their money. It's like putting their money where their mouth is. To come in and to actually give hope to the LA Times. I never thought that I'd ever actually think I could read the LA Times and trust it at any point. That was the one that I would trust the least. And so now, this is a total game changer. This is wild of a game changer to actually have hope again. And I do think that it's part of the changing tides.

People, even multi-billionaires might have been afraid to speak up because of what had happened to other people in their circles before, but now everyone's empowered. Now that cancel culture thing, it's being pushed away. People can just say what they believe without people taking it out of context. I thought he was very, very responsible the way that he didn't want

to continue a conversation with something that he knew could get cut out of context. That's very responsible for someone, especially someone running a newspaper, to be like, let's talk about this long form coming up he's learned the hard way I like him a lot and thank you Liberty Ninja

I did enjoy the conversation thank you for saying that it gives me some hope and the chance to go off a little bit on some of his writers at the LA Times it's pretty when you are shit all over by these print journalists

to be able to talk to their boss and go, what is going on here? It's somehow satisfying. Okay, so let's talk about what's coming up. And by the way, that was Joel Pollack that sent me all those good

questions for Dr. Smith-Shum. Tomorrow, let me see, we are talking about our cars. There are people trying to take our cars away from us. That's sort of the theme. Jimmy Dore in noontime on the 13th. Susan has her show on the 13th. It's about relationships. Dr. Robert Epstein, Robbie Starbuck, let's see,

Ethan Haim, Michael Franzisi. I just did his podcast today. Interesting dude. You'll want to hear those stories. They are pretty colorful. And I think that is that. We will be in here tomorrow with Jay Bieber and Mel K.

That is at 3 o'clock Pacific time. And as I said, Jimmy Doerr at noon. And if you have guests you want to suggest, it's contact at drdrew.com. Let me quickly head over to the restream and look at what's going on with you guys. Let's see.

I'm looking at the Rumble Rants as well. I'm going to subscribe to the LA Times. I never thought we would see the day that we had so many'm going to subscribe to the LA Times. I never thought we would see the day that we had so many positive things to say about the LA Times. I love it. It's giving people hope. Yeah, it gives me hope. And I didn't want to shit on his paper,

but let's reserve judgment. Let's go to this new platform that he has, and let's plan on supporting that as much as the Times. And if you like it then you know maybe and and what what better than to be able to uh sort of you know what as i think about it we ought to we ought to become at least temporarily subscribed so we can respond to them and really let them know what people are thinking about the stuff they're writing they've been writing it in a vacuum all these years now let's have our say in this let's get at them

for some of the stuff they're writing about advocating when they're unfair when they're distorted when they're giving opinion when they should be giving news let's get all over it let's just be a part of that it could be very interesting alright so tomorrow 3 o'clock we will see

you we're going to talk about keeping our cars see you. We're going to talk about keeping our cars. See you then. 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.