Ask Dr. Drew - NBC: Infection Immunity “As Protective” As mRNA. Dr. Aaron Kheriaty (Bioethicist FIRED For Saying This 1 Year Ago) w/ Dr. Kelly Victory – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 186

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

“Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds,” proclaimed NBC News in a headline published on February 16, 2023. “The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.” In the past, similar statements have resulted in the deplatforming of countless medical experts – including bioethicist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, whose refusal of a COVID-19 vaccination (after recovering from a past infection) led to the loss of his job at UC Irvine medical school. Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a psychiatrist, the director of the program in Bioethics and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and the director of the Health and Human Flourishing program at the Zephyr Institute in Palo Alto, California. He formerly taught psychiatry at the UCI School of Medicine, was the director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health, and was the chairman of the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals. Dr. Kheriaty’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Atlantis, Arc Digital, Public Discourse, City Journal, and First Things. Follow Dr. Aaron Kheriaty at https://aaronkheriaty.substack.com and https://twitter.com/akheriaty. 「 SPONSORED BY 」 • BIRCH GOLD - Don’t let your savings lose value. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Claim your free, no obligation info kit from Birch Gold at https://birchgold.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get 10% off with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. Hundreds of millions of people have received a COVID-19 vaccine, and serious adverse reactions are uncommon. Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician and Dr. Kelly Victory is a board-certified emergency specialist. Portions of this program will examine countervailing views on important medical issues. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 GEAR PROVIDED BY 」 • BLUE MICS - Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue • ELGATO - See how Elgato's lights transformed Dr. Drew's set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/ 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everybody to our Wednesday show with Dr. Kelly Victory, and today we are being visited by a friend of the show, Dr. Aaron Cariotti, who is a psychiatrist, whom we originally met when he was a professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine, where he was also the head of the bioethics department. And as a bioethicist, he felt compelled to stand up and walk the walk of bioethics when he saw

there being certain excesses perpetrated by his institution. And he no longer works for that institution. Imagine that, canceled. Now he is with the director of, he's director of the program in bioethics and American democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. Also a director of health and human flourishing program at the Zephyr Institute in Palo Alto. So I would say, I think he's had an upgrade and he's had an opportunity to live the life of bioethics, uh, uh, sort of properly understood as Alexis to talk for used to say, and it's not easy. It's not easy. And, uh, I sure he has learned a lot and we have learned a lot from him. So we're going to revisit things again today. Of course, Kelly victory will be

in here with me as well. Reminder tomorrow, we'll be here at 3 o'clock Pacific. Michael Malice. But let's get to this show now. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre. A 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'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.

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As I said, the great, the one and only Michael Malice in here tomorrow, 3 o'clock Pacific Time with the book, The White Pill, which is, I've been sort of white-pilled by Michael Malice a couple of times, so maybe you all can join me with that. Quick aside before we bring my guest in, we were talking before the mics heated up that I've been asked to speak about Britney Spears a couple of times, and I've not had an opportunity to do that today, but I, since I have this outlet, I will do it here very quickly, except to say you, she is well-known quite public to know that she's had a substance issue and bipolar one, which is Frank mania, a bipolar disorder with Frank mania. And the family has been increasingly

concerned by some of her irritability and impulsivity and there was a post yesterday that caught my eye immediately showed it to susan and said here we go and that's going to get more and more and more bizarre uh most people have never seen this brand this flavor of bipolar in the full-blown state it usually doesn't happen publicly occasionally you'll see people running around without clothes on the street usually males uh but you know uh the fact that she had a conservatorship kept this all under control for decades and now you know she deserves a chance if that's what she wants to do without that i'm not saying she had to have had a conservatorship there are i can look out my window in los angeles and see people that are more

deserving and more in need of a conservatorship than she. But you will see what happens when these things aren't carefully managed. So as we said earlier, Dr. Cariotti is a psychiatrist and a bioethicist. He is with the American Democracy at Bioethics and American Democracy with Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. And he's got a lot of stuff he's been doing and it's on his mind. And we've been following him all through this pandemic and the excesses and the bioethical violations. Please welcome Dr. Aaron Cariotti. Thanks, Drew. Always good to be with you. It's good to be back with

you, Drew. Yeah, it's good to be back with you as well. Tell me about the two, these new jobs. I did not, I had not really spoken to you about them. Tell us what you're doing there and, you know, where we should look for you and what you're up to. So the Ethics and Public Policy Center is an independent think tank in Washington, D.C. And as the name suggests, they're very policy oriented. My work there in the Bioethics and American Democracy program right now is really focused on public health and reform of our public health agencies. So if we look back at what

happened during COVID, I think most Americans, or at least many Americans, would agree that our public health agencies, the CDC, which is responsible for tracking pandemics and doing research, making public health recommendations, the FDA, which is sort of the federal gatekeeper for new drugs and new vaccines, and the NIH, which is responsible for funding of biomedical research in the United States. I don't think there's any American out there who thinks that all of these agencies got an A grade over the last three years. And many of us, myself included, think that they performed more in the D, D minus range, that they're in need of really quite serious reform. I believe that these agencies have been compromised by conflicts of interest with big pharma, financial conflicts of interest, personnel conflicts of interest, structural

issues. And so my work there now is really focused on coming up with policy proposals and reform proposals that can be implemented practically whether executive orders or legislative proposals to try to reform those public health agencies because there's a real need for These agencies to Acknowledge what they got wrong and make meaningful changes the only the only knowledge meant from the CDC, for example, in terms of things that they could have done better during the pandemic was Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, came on TV and said, well, we did a careful self-examination of what happened during COVID and our performance during COVID. And we decided that we need to improve our communication skills, improve how we communicate with the public. And I found that, and many people who have been following the work of the CDC closely found that to be a rather shallow assessment of the CDC's failures. And so I think if an agency like the CDC is going to

regain public trust, they're going to have to go a lot deeper than that. And that reform is actually going to have to come externally from political pressure and from whether it's the executive or the legislature, which controls the purse strings, the executive, which controls the sort of policy making for these agencies. I think the only way that an institution like the CDC is going to see meaningful reform is if there's political pressure in that direction. And I think from from the population, we're seeing that that desire and that need. We're starting to see some buzz in Washington from the politicians. And when they when these politicians are prepared to actually do something, we want to have meaningful policy proposals ready to go. That's great. That is great. The idea that the extent of their self-analysis suggests some attuning up in their media training, it's hysterical.

It's comedic if it weren't so tragic. How about just a simple comeback? Like, how'd you do with the testing? How'd the testing go for the CDC? You guys did a good job testing the outbreak, the initial outbreak? Oh, good for you. Now, my thing, you know, my question, though, all along, and I had thought you were pursuing this in the courts, and maybe you still are, which is it it one of the sort of glaring phenomenon that seemed to jump out at me was the fact that there's kind of a wrinkle in the

constitution where these people can override everything which seems completely ridiculous uh there's there needs to be some due process, some justification, something, or at least advise the people that are exactly elected and let them do the dirty work of health advising to the people that we elected. Is there any movement in that direction to try to curtail that? Yeah, that's a great question. So my policy proposals exist on two levels. One is what could we do with these agencies? And then the deeper level, which you sort of alluded to a moment ago, is what was the legal mechanism that made every bad policy during the pandemic possible from lockdowns, school

closures, to mask mandates, to the ignoring of natural immunity and other issues. Well, the underlying legal mechanism that made all of that possible was the declared state of emergency at the federal level and at the state levels. So the person who's empowered to declare a state of emergency at the federal level is actually the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a man named Javier Becerra. Californians will remember him as our former state attorney general. So he's a lawyer, a man with no public health experience and no medical training. And we're still operating under an ongoing state of emergency at the federal level, which was declared by him with the endorsement of the president and which has been renewed every

90 days for the last three years. And the president indicated that it's going to continue at least until May. Why he can predict when the emergency is going to be over in the future, why he's not acknowledging that it's already over, I think becomes clear when you realize that under a declared state of emergency, the president gains 128 additional extra constitutional powers that he wouldn't otherwise have. So the executive branch, which is the same branch that declares the emergency, is the same branch

that gains additional powers. And the executive is the only one empowered to decide when the emergency is over. So really you're asking the president and his unelected appointee, the secretary of HHS, to decide when they are going to voluntarily relinquish power. That seems like a setup for abuse. That seems like something that runs quite contrary to the system of checks and balances that's supposed to undergird federal power. So what

I'm proposing is one of two things or both. Number one, some kind of judicial check on the system. That would be made possible by defining in law what constitutes an emergency, some sort of threshold. And of course, we can argue endlessly about what those threshold metrics should be, but coming to some sort of decision about what constitutes an emergency would allow the courts to do a periodic review and say to the executive, no, these additional accrued powers that you've gained that the president can delegate to unelected bureaucrats need to be relinquished because the COVID pandemic is no longer meeting the criteria defined in law for a state of emergency. So that's one potential mechanism to put things in check.

And the second would be a legislative check. So rather than having the president renew the state of emergency every 90 days, have the legislature do that. Have the elected officials that are going to have to answer for them do that. And keeping in mind that they're not necessarily the ones that are gaining those additional powers. So some combination of either a legislative or judicial check on that system, I think is necessary to avoid these kinds of abuses. We've also noticed, you've been paying attention, efforts to kind of create new emergencies, right? Whether it's redefining climate change

from being primarily an ecological or an environmental issue to being a public health issue and now a public health crisis or trying to grab on to new potential viral threats from you know monkey pox to the triple pandemic over the winter that never actually happened you see this push to try to kind of find the next emergency what's going on behind that politically? Well, as COVID loses its plausibility, you know, for maintaining emergency powers, you see a federal push on the part of these public health agencies to find another excuse to maintain those powers.

By the way, this also gives the executive... The collusion from the press, too. That's the part that's sort of extraordinary. That's right. The press that's supposed to be the fourth arm that's going to speak truth to power colludes with and amplifies and drives things into the la-la land. It's crazy. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that's a function of this new censorship regime that's grown up really since about 2017 that's another issue i'm working on in the federal courts is that you know we now know

both from the twitter files and from this lawsuit that i'm a part of missouri v biden that there is a huge federal censorship regime a public-private partnership that involves now at least 17 different federal agencies, basically colluding with social media to censor the free speech of Americans. This was done throughout the pandemic. And by the way, to that end of censoring your free speech, you were, and it's so crazy to me how institutions and regulatory agents and professional societies start to fall in line with the press and the excesses of the government. But we shouldn't be that surprised because the exact same thing happened with the opiate epidemic. But you lost your job because you dared to say something that

was in print just a couple of days ago, which is that natural or post-infection immunity has benefit and it compares well to vaccine immunity, maybe better, which we've known for quite some time. And that was forbidden. There it is. That's an NBC News publication right there. Immunity acquired from a COVID infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death study finds. Not the first study to suggest something like that, but the first one to be reported by NBC News. And the first one that we can all go, oh, we can say this now without losing our jobs or being vilified. It's just where, I don't know, I'm through the looking glass all the time. But anyway, you're the one that has suffered

the consequences. What are your thoughts on that? Well, you're exactly right. So this was the central claim in my lawsuit challenging the University of California's vaccine mandate, which at the time that was my employer. And as you mentioned, that cost me my job. I had spent 15 years there, my entire academic career, planned on retiring. I was the director of the medical ethics program, full professor in the School of Medicine. And what I was trying to say in that lawsuit was precisely what that headline just showed. And there was plenty of evidence at that point. There were 150 studies on natural immunity for COVID when I submitted a lawsuit two years ago. But just going on interviews like this and talking about that central scientific claim in the lawsuit got videos pulled down from YouTube.

So I was censored for saying this thing that NBC News said last week that was published in The Lancet. But as you said, this is not... It says news at the top of that graphic, but it's not exactly news. It's two years old. But for whatever reason, the powers that be, whether the CDC behind the scenes gave the green light, now you're allowed to start talking about natural immunity, you know, because we need to acknowledge it, acknowledge it because the

vaccines don't stop infection and transmission or whatever sort of political calculation they made. Now it's okay to say this thing that two years ago would get you pulled off of social media or canceled if you were doing a television interview. And in my case, actually, more than that cost me my job and tens of thousands of other people lost their job. They had already had COVID. They didn't see a compelling reason to subject themselves to the risk, however small they might be, the risks of the vaccine, if they weren't going to benefit. And there was this really unjust form of discrimination that the media was- We still are not really, there still isn't, there has not been an announcement yet,

I'm sure it's coming, about risk-reward diathesis. You know, this is what I've been asking about from the beginning. It's like, I don't understand them pushing in populations where the risk-reward is not clear. The reward, in other words, you know, the 12-year-old who has essentially such low risk from COVID that we couldn't do the randomized controlled trial because there are not enough sick kids. You couldn't do the study practically. And by the same token, you're seeing a lot of anecdotal concerning data and people argue about how bad and how often, but it still seems more than what you risk from the illness itself. So why push that? Except as you said, and I know Kelly feels this theory to be true, concerned that they're

pushing to try to get it on the standard vaccine protocol for children so they have permanent liability coverage. Well, the CDC actually did that a few weeks ago. So the COVID vaccine is now on the CDC recommended childhood vaccination schedule, which does indemnify the companies against liability. They were they were protected from all liability while the products were approved under emergency use authorization. And the state of emergency is going to end. The products are going to have to pursue full authorization. And now they're going to have, now they're going to have immunity because they've been added to the CDC schedule of recommended vaccines for children.

I think that decision was disastrous. It does not take account of age stratified risk. We're talking about an illness that did not harm or kill healthy children a very small number of children that harm were harmed by covid were children that would have been harmed by any respiratory virus from a common cold to influenza anything could have been the tipping point for them and perhaps it just happened to be you know i saw i saw a there's a study by the way this morning that was on uh gosh i've got it on my my email chain here uh medscape topic alert covid versus flu which is deadlier and it it showed that again obviously in very elderly people the fatality rate from flu was about four and a half percent and from covid was about seven percent and their conclusion was be alarmed about covid and i thought well yeah i mean it's worse than

flu but everyone's been already saying for three years that flu is a zero and here's a head-to-head flu versus covid here overall seven percent of covid patients died compared to 4.4% of flu patients. And what age bracket was that? Oh, it was all very elderly, very elderly, of course. But the point is, I'm not even sure that they did not do a statistical analysis that I saw, at least in this little review, that tells me whether that difference is even statistically relevant, which is astonishing to me. They just said, oh, this is terrible. It's nearly twice as bad. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, it's worse. Yes, probably it's worse. My experience has been it's worse. It seems worse to me. But my God, worse enough to mandate vaccines that we've got some concerns about,orse enough to shut down the world?

And why isn't that kind of a headline being reported? It's like, whoa, it's not as bad as we thought. Remember when people thought they had a 50% probability of dying when they interviewed people out in the world, what the press had done to them? Literally, the average person they interviewed thought you had about a a 50 50 chance of survival from covid which is insane well people have been subjected to military level propaganda during this pandemic that's not an exaggeration we know that now we know that in in western nations there was an effort to deliberately increase the level of fear in order to gain compliance for for what happened and so again now it's okay to say that masks don't work we have the we have the cochran review we have some other studies that you know should have your times

yesterday there it is there is the new york times was able to say it right there in an op-ed. You are you. I can't believe I was so shocked when that when they when I saw that I just retweeted and I just went NYT. There you go. They're they're saying it now, too. Finally. Jesus took a while. Yeah, but this again, this is the kind of thing that would get you censored a year ago, two years ago. This is the kind of thing that you would be vilified for and branded as an uncaring, callous, antisocial person for not wanting to wear a mask. Grandma killing, wanting to harm other people, don't care. Exactly. Just wear it. Just wear the mask. What's the big deal?

It's like yeah i would if it worked happily do so but i know that it doesn't work but but the other thing is now we're still pushing it on kids in the in the is that going to come around now are we going to get that out of the mix here which is the most uh uh sort of um impactful recommendation that is deleterious from the standpoint of harming people. There, it's actually harming development. That's exactly right. Masks, I think masks are not benign for anyone, but they're especially harmful for children. We're seeing studies now on children's language development, their cognitive development, their emotional development that relies on

secure attachments. And the human face is the most emotionally expressive part of the body. It's the place where we form those interpersonal connections. It's so important for neurological and brain development. And you cover that up. Here's another interesting finding, Drew. So positive emotions are conveyed mostly by the bottom half of the face. Negative emotions are conveyed primarily by the top half. If you think of anger, you get that, you know, the characteristic sort of V on the forehead, the squinting of the eyes,

sadness, you're looking at tears tears whereas positive affect or positive emotion so we're covering up the part of the face for children that conveys positive affect we're highlighting if this were if this were a brain science if this were a brain science experiments being done on cats covering up an eye or covering up their mouth, there would be an outrage. People would go nuts if we were putting the old crosshatches on the eyes of the cat or something. You couldn't even do the experiment. But we just, hey, just wear it.

Just think about what we did. Oh, just do it. Just do it. And we just did it. We got to think about that. I have to take a break because I'm anxious to bring Kelly Victory in here. Dr. Aaron Cariotti is here aaron your twitter handle uh it's a carriotti so pretty easy to find k h spelled with e r i a t y that's right all right

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This is uncharted territory, Drew. And Dr. Victory, I give you our friend, Dr. Cariotti. Terrific, Aaron. Thanks. Great to see you. And thanks so much for being back with us. Drew, by the way, what you were just talking about with regard to COVID versus influenza is this issue of relative versus absolute risk. And we probably ought to do a segment of a show to explain that to people because downright, you know, sort of Shakespearean that the head of bioethics ends up getting relieved of his duties for, you know, it is so unethical. What has happened to you is so morally reprehensible as to be downright. I mean, it's comedic, I suppose. And there's a reason that you got to use stronger language to the shit. Kandem. Yeah, exactly. No, no. And honestly, you know, these institutions have departments of bioethics for a reason, because it's more than tacit acknowledgement that we have issues of moral and ethical importance that need to be addressed. And I find it just

remarkable. But, you know, before when you came, I'm impressed you were speaking with Drew very confidently and authoritatively, and I think correctly, about the intricacies, the nuance and the granularity at the federal level of these institutions and the regulatory agencies and how they're structured. Is that something, is this a learning on the go thing? Do you have a background also in poli sci or in government, or is this something that you have learned by necessity since you've been thrown into this? Yeah. So I do have a background in philosophy and I've studied political theory,

but in terms of the actual day-to-day inner workings of these agencies, that's something that I've really done a deep dive into. Did some of that for the research for my book that came out this year called The New Abnormal. I have sections in there both critiquing these public health agencies and their policy response, but also in the last section, trying to end with positive proposals

about how they could be reformed. So that's more of a sort of recent acquiring of interest on the fly because I saw them failing so miserably. I saw talking heads from these agencies getting on TV and saying that we should follow the science, which became sort of a meme. But when I actually looked at the study, I took the time to read the studies on these things and I was looking at the science and what the talking heads on TV were saying was just not lining up with that. So then I realized I had to dive deeper to see what are the what are the inner working mechanisms of these agencies? How are they being compromised by financial or other political conflicts of interest? And what I found there was actually quite troubling. I mentioned just one of the issues, this unilateral power to declare a state of

emergency. But I also discovered, for example, that a majority of the funding for the approval of new drugs that the FDA does comes from the pharmaceutical companies that the FDA is supposed to regulate in the form of user fees. So the FDA is compromised by that conflict of interest and by the revolving door of their personnel going to work for pharma for big paychecks after they leave the FDA. But then I found out that the CDC and the NIH also found ways to do an end run around federal law that prohibits those agencies from receiving pharma money directly. What they did was they set up these quasi-private foundations that people could give money to, and then that money could be funneled

to the federal agencies. So there's something called the CDC Foundation, something called the NIH Foundation. If you look at who sits on their boards, it's primarily pharmaceutical executives. And if you look at the funding of those foundations, it's primarily pharmaceutical executives. And if you look at the funding of those foundations, it's primarily pharmaceutical funding or funding from large foundations like Gates, who themselves have a large financial state in the outcomes of certain vaccine research and other things that they're heavily invested in. So a lot of people, I think during the pandemic, when they realized that these policies weren't making sense, there was a tendency to point a finger at the leadership, which is perfectly understandable. I am no fan of Anthony Fauci. I'm no fan of Rochelle

Walensky. I don't think these people are competent. I don't think they're honest. And yet I, what I found when I was researching these agencies was also, look, you could replace Fauci with someone else. But if there aren't meaningful structural changes as well, and these perverse incentives are going to be still in place, he's going to be replaced by another bureaucrat who's just as bad, if not worse. And by the way, if you want meaningful change, you got to deal with that. I'd love to just quickly point out just a brief sidebar. I don't want to interrupt your guys flow here, but, but I, I, you pointed out the excesses of these something far more dark which is if you think about what was the in in the history of humanity what is one of the aphoristic statements by a dictatorship leader that that typifies the excesses of extra of an extreme monarchy or an extreme dictator, except I am the state.

L'état c'est moi. That is precisely the same as I am science. That is not materially different. That is l'état c'est moi. And six years ago, if I brought up l'état c'est moi, you would have said, oh, yeah, this is an example of an example of the the colossal excesses of dictatorships and monarchies. We have that in our federal government amongst the ossified bureaucracies. That's who is there. It's people who say, I am the state. I am the science that

to me that should ring in our heads and certainly motivate the people you're talking to, Aaron, to make some change. Drew, that is exactly right. And in fact, I wrote a piece on this in American Mind. Folks can find it online called Technocracy and Totalitarianism. And what I was describing was the totalitarian conception of science, what I call scientism, which is different from science.

And what anyone who says, I think all of us know who we're talking about. Anyone who says, I am scientism, which is different from science. And what anyone who says, I think all of us know who we're talking about. Anyone who says, I am the science, I represent the science and criticism of me is actually, you know, criticism of science is in the grip of this ideology of scientism, which has nothing to do with science. Science is an open-ended and humble way of exploring the world, right? Science is always open to revision. Science does not bring us dictates from on high that are unchanging and unassailable. If you take a group of honest scientists or researchers and you put them in a room together,

what are they going to do? You've seen this before. They're going to argue, right? They're going to back and forth. And what does the upshot of the research show? And what are the pros and cons of this study methodology? And what do these findings suggest? That's how science proceeds. It proceeds by conjecture and refutation and hypothesis and the intellectual humility to say, yeah, I used to think X, but now I think Y because I continue to try to be open-minded and follow the data. And I've recognized that I was

wrong or there was new information that came along that finally persuaded me or whatever. If I can say so, I was really impressed just to hear you take that approach in your recent interview with Naomi Wolf to acknowledge, hey, look, I've learned some new things and I've changed my mind in some things. That should be routine among anyone who's talking publicly about science. I hope that I could do that if I discover I was all wrong about natural immunity. I hope I have the humility to go back and say, oh, the university was right and I was wrong. Because it's very rare, unfortunately, that we've seen that over the last three years. What we've

seen is people getting ahead of the science, making these diktats that then, you know, when they're contradicted or when new evidence comes out, rather than walking them back, they just continue to double down on bad conclusions or bad policy to the point where, you know, it almost becomes absurd. And then, you know, and then the New York Times publishes something on masks and suddenly it's okay. And it's sort of like, you know, we're going to drop that and we're not going to say anything about what happened to what we've been telling you for the last three years. We're going to sort of pretend that doesn't happen. That does not engender trust.

It feels to people like a pain in the switch. Yeah, I think one of the insidious things that's happened here during this pandemic, Aaron, is that they have somehow propagandized the public. Although the three of us here understand that robust, vigorous debate is a cornerstone of medicine. It's a cornerstone of science. It's really what solid science is predicated upon, debate, discussion, you know, the differing opinions and coming to the best conclusions. Somehow the American public, at least, and I think perhaps the global public, has been led to believe that number one,

there is an answer. Science has an answer to everything and that our scientific journals are very, very solid and should be trusted and that anyone who dares that some people at the helm of these institutions must, by their very definition, by their position, there must, in fact, be the authorities and on and on. And so we've really led people to believe, you know, the number of people who say to me, well, you can't do that because the CDC has mandated this or the CDC has said that. And trying to explain to people, the CDC is not a governing body. It is supposed to be a guide. You know, it is an advisory body. They don't make laws. They don't legislate anything. There is no such thing as a CDC mandating. And I've said before, and I would say again, that if I had a dime for every time I called a consult during my clinical practice, every time I called someone within my specialty or someone outside my specialty for a second opinion or advice, I'd be a wealthy, wealthy

woman. I have never in my entire career, I don't know about you, I've never called the FDA. I never called the CDC. I never called the NIH. Never thought about the FDA. Never occurred to me. They were not the people to whom physicians would look for direction. So that's not a regulatory issue. That's a kind of a softer issue. That's a perception issue. How can we change that piece? Because yes, we need to change the regulatory part, but it's people's perception of what

the CDC and FDA and NIH are that's so important. Yeah, no, that's a really good point, Kelly. And you're absolutely right. What I've been telling people to try to help them understand what you just described is the CDC is not a super doctor. They are not the physician on COVID for every American. Your doctor is your doctor. And as you said, a doctor may get a consult from another doctor. They may look to federal guidelines. They may look to other professional association guidelines as guidelines informing their clinical decision, but their clinical decision is always about you as an individual patient, right? They're under no obligation to follow CDC guidelines as it applies to this or that

patient because every patient is different. So regaining the appropriate, what I call the discretionary latitude, the appropriate ability of each physician to tailor his or her recommendations to the needs of the specific patient and not have the government sort of intrude on that with one size fits all proposals, I think is really important for the survival of good medicine. And there's a bigger kind of picture issue here that this brings up, which is also the relationship between politics and science. And one of the problems that we saw during the pandemic is that you've got a governor, especially early on.

People, you know, they're scared. They don't know what to do. And they want policy answers. And it's really easy for politicians to say, we're just going to follow the science, you know, and to hide behind experts as though scientists had all the answers. But anyone who has done science knows that the answers that science gives are usually provisional. They're nuanced. They're complicated.

They're typically not one size fits all, right? But that's not what politicians want to hear. Politicians want clear cut, what do we do answers, right? And should we vaccinate, you know, should we vaccinate people or not? If you say, well, it depends on their age group and their co-occurring conditions, and it's complicated, they're going to tune you out and they're going to call, you know, another quote unquote expert until they get a clear answer. So this dynamic creates a situation in which the people who are most maybe overconfident and bold and willing to oversimplify complex issues, they tend to get listened to by means listen to the people that I, as the

governor, happen to appoint among the, you know, hundreds of different people that I could look to for advice and, you know, do whatever this person says. And that tends to foreground people that are not very nuanced. Right. And I i'm wondering i've wondered this midstream in the pandemic because what i thought i was seeing i think suggested this that i don't think we're training people with masters in public health i don't think we're training them properly first of all relating people without any clinical experience obtain these things and behave as though they were clinicians and secondly it seems like it looks like they're being trained in equity uber alice, equity overall, not in good medical practice. And I think there may be a problem in the training

of public health officials. Do you agree with that? Oh, I agree with that completely. I mean, God save us from people with a master's in public health degree who want to use that to change the world. I mean, I remember sitting on both the vaccine allocation committee and the ventilator triage committee while I was still at the university. This is a committee making policy for all the UCs, not just UC Irvine, where I was a faculty member. And there were well-meaning people on the committee who wanted to prioritize these resources, not based on what kind of medical outcome you would have with them, or not based on need, who is at highest risk if they got COVID, but based on skin color, essentially. And fortunately, there were several of us sort of pushing back against that. And, you know, trying to rectify past historical injustices against people of color by practicing bad medicine is just adding insult to injury. But that mentality, I think, is rampant, certainly in higher education. I think it's totally infected schools of public health. And I would like to see medicine and individualized patient care foregrounded during the next epidemic or pandemic, rather than an approach to public health that sees it as a way to kind of instrumentalize these crises in order to change the world or remake the world.

I think that's a recipe for disaster. There's perhaps something, nothing more egregious, I think, than this recent California AB 2098 bill that fundamentally criminalizes a physician speaking out or saying anything against the prescribed narrative of the state. I know that you've been very involved in legislation, in lawsuits related to 2098. Where do you think that bill stands? What do you think the likely outcome is going to be? So thanks for asking about that.

I'm part of a lawsuit called Hoag v. Newsom, H-O-E-G. You can find information. It's been reported in the national press. We've got articles about that lawsuit, LA Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. And we're challenging this Assembly Bill 2098 in federal court on constitutional grounds. So AB 2098 basically would empower the medical board to discipline, including removing the license of any physician who contradicts what the law calls the quote unquote current scientific consensus on anything related to COVID. And our lawsuit is challenging it on first amendment grounds, that this is intruding into the doctor patient relationship and the free speech of physicians.

Patient asked me about masks or asks me about vaccines or anything else related to COVID. And I have to, I don't know, read a script from the California Department of Public Health out of concern that I might be contradicting what the medical board would consider, quote unquote, the scientific consensus. We're also challenging it on 14th Amendment grounds. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires that laws be sufficiently clear so that I can know, you can know, whether the thing I'm about to do does or does not violate a law. And what we're saying is that this current scientific consensus, which is not a legally well-defined phrase of what is it,

how would you ascertain what it is at any given moment, especially on science that's constantly evolving. We worry that the law itself, even if it's never used to discipline physicians, will simply have a chilling effect on physicians and that they will fall back on, I have a gag order on, and I just need to refer you to this public health website, and I can't actually give you any advice because I don't know whether or not it's going to get me into trouble. And this is an untenable position for patients and doctors. Our lawsuit, fortunately, just real quick update on that lawsuit.

Our lawsuit, fortunately, the judge just granted our request for preliminary injunction, which halts the law while the case is being heard. That's a very good sign because that's the court saying, even before we go to trial, just on the merits of the arguments you submitted in your initial documents, the court thinks you have a good chance of prevailing, that this law looks like it plausibly could be struck down. It's a very good initial sign. I think we're going to win this case. I think this law is in fact unconstitutional and will be struck down. But it's frightening and it's kind of chilling that our governor and our legislature here in California thought that this would be a good idea, thought that this would be good for medicine and good for patients.

Well, that's my, you know, I'll tell you, I have called it the worst piece of legislation that's been passed in my lifetime. And I really mean that. Not only will it have a chilling effect on what physicians can do, but think of how terrifying this really should be from the perspective of patients, because a patient now needs to wonder when your doctor, when Dr. Smith tells you, I suggest this, or, or if I, you know, given everything I know, my experience, my reading, my understanding of the literature, and you know, this is what you should do. The patient now needs to wonder, is that truly what

that physician believes? Is that truly what that physician believes? Is that truly what that physician's experience is? Is it truly their understanding of the literature or are they simply in fear for their license? You don't want to go to somebody who's a physician who has a gun pointed at their head and that you have to wonder, are they giving me really good, solid advice? I think from the patient's perspective, this is, this is nothing less than terrifying. I agree. I agree 100%. But, but, but Aaron, I want, I want to point something out that I don't know if I expressed you before is I actually called the board and I spoke to the president of the board,

who's a lovely attorney. Her dad was a urologist. She really intends to do good. I mean, I believe that is her intention. I've shuddered to think how it's going to go when somebody else is president of the Board of Quality Medical Insurance in California. But the one thing I want to tell you is she said to me, and you should be aware of this because you may have to take your lawsuit further than just striking down AB 2098. She said, you know, we already have this authority. If this is what we want to do, we can do it. No problem. We just are making it more explicit in the law. And I

thought, wow, you have the authority to interfere with our rendering of informed consent. Incredible. And so keep that in your thinking as you pursue this case. Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for that. That's quite an admission for them to make. The medical board can easily become politicized. Every single member of the medical board is directly appointed by the governor. And only about half, I have nothing against any current member of the medical board. But like you said, who's going to constitute the medical board in the future? So they may say, well, we're only going to apply this law to the most far out cracks and quanks, people who are recommending you ingest bleach or something like that. Well, okay, that's fine, but a future medical board might not apply it so narrowly. And in that case, the physician's only defense is what is actually in the language of the law and the language of the law and by the way as as with with many enforcement organizations i

actually met with a larger group of the board and i was saying look from the position of the physician this is very scary and and they were like why all you have to do is address it you just have you know respond to us it's like that's a week it takes a week and it's scary and you have to go through medical records and you have to research them you know it's like what they have no understanding of what they're holding over our head and i repeated to this group like five times they couldn't get it they couldn't get it so that's another problem as i as someone who is as i say i i have defended myself seven times, seven times during this pandemic. I've had to go in front of the medical boards between Ohio and Colorado. And it doesn't just take a week. It takes unbelievable amounts of time, money, resources to prepare the response. And each time I've been successful, but it's really just debilitating. It's upsetting, it's debilitating, and you feel some vindication when you get that letter that says, okay, well, we didn't find anything this time, but we'll do it. We didn't find anything this time. Okay, so we're dismissing the complaint, but, you know, and you think, but what? But, you know, so you really are constantly mincing your words and wondering what to say. I'm sorry, Dr. Aaron, go ahead.

No, I was just going to say, it's exactly right. It's the ultimate professional guillotine hanging over your head. I mean, I lost my job. That's bad enough. But I was able to go set up a private practice and join some independent things, do uh my research but losing my medical license means i can't practice medicine in in my state it's going to be harder to get licensed in another state when i have to explain to another state medical board what happened with my license in california and so yeah this is an enormous threat hanging over the heads of busy, stressed professionals who are just trying to do the best we can for our patients. It's really. And by the way, this is I want to say this is not a partisan issue either. We have support from editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, okay, right of center, editorial board of Orange County Register, a little more libertarian, has supported the plaintiffs, our case against AB 2098,

but we also have an amicus brief from the ACLU, typically a left-leaning or left of center public organization. So I don't know any patient in California left right center of whatever political persuasion who wants to go to their doctor and ask their backer question and not get that doctors honest opinion right you said before you know I may decline their recommendation I may go seek a second opinion but I definitely want to hear what my doctor actually. I'm watching the clock wind down and

there's one other topic I wanted to ask you about, and I hope I don't blindside you since this wasn't on our talking points, but I'm guessing you know of it. President Biden, it's my understanding, has pretty much signed what he needs to do to turn over authority to the World Health Organization regarding the management of future pandemics. Now, I am not an expert in this area, but I certainly have done extensive reading, and it appears to me that what would happen is the World Health Organization would then become the authority and supersede the U.S. Constitution with regard to how things are managed if it were declared that this was a state of emergency, including pandemics, so not just pandemics, and that the World Health Organization under the management currently of

Dr. Tedros, not a medical doctor, Tedros, would be taking our direction. What's your understanding of this, the status of this? What are your thoughts about it? Yeah, I'm very concerned about this. I wrote a sub-stack piece on this last year when this actually came originally from the Biden administration to the WHO's proposal to change what are called the international health regulations that govern the WHO. And the WHO proposed this, the United States and Biden administration are wanting to embrace it. They got some pushback from African countries, I think particularly Botswana and another coalition of sovereign nations from Africa that didn't want to cede sovereignty on these issues.

And that's essentially what this amounts to. It empowers the director of the WHO to do things that right now he would need the permission of the nation state to do. Certain declarations of public health emergencies. It creates a whole new category that's below a public health emergency. It's sort of a public health event of concern that would bring to bear more oversight and kind of international scrutiny on local outbreaks and so forth. And those things can be declared under the new regulations if they pass unilaterally by the director of the WHO without the consent or cooperation of the nation states that are affected by that. So this is essentially the ceding of sovereign authority to unelected

international public health bureaucrats. The WHO has its own potential conflicts of interest at work here. If you look at who's funding the WHO, there are private nonprofit groups, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the most well-known one, that contribute more funding than most nation states. And all of that funding comes with strings attached about how it's going to be spent and what it's going to be used for. So this is really ceding authority from elected representatives of sovereign nations into the hands of unelected international technocrats that may be beholden to private interests or to financial interests or to others who have sway at the WHO simply because they're contributing a large portion of the

budget. So, for example, and again, I don't want to say something that is alarmist, but not based actually in fact. So correct me if I'm wrong, but it's, for example, it's my understanding that were this to pass, that the WHO could say, we are mandating vaccines. We are mandating a vaccine for this. And that that would then be, it would supersede anything, any federal or state constitution in the United States or in any of these other countries. And the WHO would then would be able to dictate any number of things they could from lockdowns to whatever else they chose to do, including something like mandates for vaccination. Is that correct?

Yeah. So I think the answer to that question is we don't know for sure. It's clear that sovereign nations with a lot of power would be able to push back more on the pressure that they would get from the WHO when it comes to specific policies like that. So the wording of the regulations is not entirely clear. It doesn't include information on what may happen with non-possible interventions, things like lockdowns or school closures, social distancing. My last review of the draft, I don't recall anything specific about vaccine mandates, but some of the specific policies may not be spelled out clearly. What matters is not this or that policy. What matters is the degree to which particularly smaller nations that don't have the power and the money and the authority in the international scene to push back,

will feel compromised and will feel like, yeah, if the WHO makes a recommendation on vaccine mandates, we have to follow it. Otherwise, we're going to be getting pressure from the other WHO member states to go along, you know, in order to get whatever we need in terms of development aid, whatever we need in terms of other things that are provided to us by international health agencies that we really can't do without, right? The United States can do without the resources provided by the WHO. There are certain African nations that if they want to deal with tuberculosis and malaria, they can't do without those things, without very significant harms. So that's the concern. So that's why I say, I can't do without those things without very significant harms. So so that's the concern

So that's why I say I don't know what probably depends on the circumstances I very much doubt that China and United States are actually going to fully Seed their authority to the WHO on Questions of policy, but I think that's going to be much harder to do with states that have less power and less internal resources to manage public health issues than the major world power. But if we've learned nothing else from this pandemic, so what I was saying earlier in the program, that it's the perception sometimes that these organizations have a governing or authority,

you know, so that the WHO suggests something or wants something and that turns into it's a mandate or it's a law, just like the CDC, they give guidance or it's meant to be guidance. It's our recommendation, but you know, through this game of telephone, it gets trickled down to the school that the CDC is mandating X, Y, or Z, as if it's some kind of a law. Likewise, when we're talking about the CDC adding these vaccines, the COVID vaccines to the childhood schedule, again, the CDC is not in a position to mandate. However, you know as as well as I do, that that recommendation to be on the childhood schedule will quickly get translated by schools and universities and sporting teams to be, if the CDC is quote, recommending it, then we are going to require it.

So the transition from a recommendation, whether it's by the CDC, the FDA, or the WHO, that transition gets codified through a series of events that is very dangerous. That's it. That is the anatomy of coercion in a nutshell. Somebody wants to define a bureaucracy as an institution that has enormous power over you, but with no locus of responsibility. So with vaccine mandates, I went through this, right? I went to the University of California and said, why are you mandating this for people with natural immunity? And they said, well, we're just following the CDC. So then you go to the CDC and the CDC says, well, we don't mandate

anything. We just give recommendations. We don't make policy, all of which is true. So then you go to the CDC and the CDC says, well, we don't mandate anything. We just give recommendations. We don't make policy, all of which is true. But then you, you know, it's like going to the DMV, you go round and round and round in circles trying to figure out, you know, who can troubleshoot this problem for me. And it's this institution with enormous power over you, but with no locus of responsibility. Nobody finally took responsibility for vaccine mandates. There was no individual or even institution that said, yeah, we're responsible for this decision. Everyone passed the buck around. And exactly as you just described, you end up going round and round and round in circles. And sometimes it's the perception that

we have to do this because the WHO or the CDC is recommending, maybe we're going to be more liable if we don't do this, that drives a lot of this bad policy and a lot of this kind of public perception that the CDC or the WHO is, is a kind of Uber doctor for every person in the country or every individual on the planet, which is a terrible model of providing health care. Well, you are far too reasonable and have far too much common sense. But I would love to see you elevated to some very important level in public health policy, because you certainly can articulate it well. Thank you. Drew, other questions, other things we haven't touched on?

You know, I'm wondering, we have a couple of minutes. I wonder if we should try to take some questions from the Twitter spaces. Susan, does that sound like a reasonable idea? I know Dr. Cariotti has spent quite a bit of time on Twitter Spaces trying to moderate and answer questions there. I've been on some of those with you. It's kind of an interesting experience. I'm not quite sure where Twitter Spaces is going, but it does seem to be something people are very interested in. Yeah, you can just press, there you go, unmute your call when you're answered. And you just press the microphone at the bottom of the when you're answered and uh you just press the

microphone at the bottom of the page and that's all you got to do to come up and if you do come up you'll be agreeing to stream on multiple platforms we're out everywhere let me just take this young person and see who this is uh this is uh bubba see if he has any question here. Bubba? Yeah, we have these little glitches in Twitter Spaces, and I know Aaron just saw that. Yeah, Twitter Spaces is still working out the technical. Yeah, the glitchy stuff. Bubba, if you unmute your mic, maybe we'll get you there. Otherwise, I'm going to have to put you back.

All right, I'm going to put him back. And let's talk to Janice. See if I can get her up here. Just give us a second here. You're on with Dr. Cariotti. Janice? Hi. Can you hear me okay?

We got you. Yeah. Okay. Hi. My problem through this whole pandemic and since mental health is kind of your specialty, I had an incident as a very young child that I had flashbacks of and I was like under two years old. when the mask mandates came around and happened to wear them. And people saw me just as being rebellious and defiant when it was actually flashbacks of me being suffocated with hand over my mouth and nose as a child. And I to go on an airplane, I had to be heavily medicated. Yeah. I understood. Let's see what Dr. Curiata has to say.

Thank you for bringing this up. I'm really glad you brought this up because masks were not benign for a lot of people. So you're not the only person or patient that I've heard this from or that I've tried to help with this issue. Again, masks became this one size fits all. Everyone has to do it. If you don't do it, you're stigmatized or you're a bad person. And in fact, people with anxiety disorders, people with a history of trauma. And you think about the horrible trauma that Janice just described, and it's not difficult

to see how placing something over your nose and mouth that makes breathing more difficult would be a trigger for precisely that trauma and that sort of horrifying re-experiencing that can happen with PTSD. Physicians have to be able to write appropriate exemptions. And in fact, people need to be able to setting aside exemptions. Policies need to take account of individual circumstances and allow people the freedom to exercise prudential judgment. Most people want to do the right thing, right? But asking someone with a history of trauma to wear a mask, asking someone who's going to require heavy anti-anxiety medications, anxiolytics, just to fly on a plane because they're wearing a mask, that's harmful. That's clearly harmful.

And whatever tiny marginal benefit to others the mask may have produced obviously is outweighed by that level of harm and so and that's just and that's an adult imagine what we're doing to children you know it just it just goes on just so on yeah and i you know i was riding a subway today and i i just thought to myself oh it is such a pleasure to see people's faces and to be close to humanity and then i thought they were telling us we'd never be able to shake hands again and we'd have to wear eye goggles. They were nuts. This was an insanity.

It really was. You've got to think back on all the things that were said. What's up, Susan? There's worse things that happen on a subway these days. Trust me. It's not a mask. Something happened to you? No, you were on the subway already risking your life.

No, no, it's back to normal is it okay really it really is quite lovely well the news makes it sound like it's terrible and it's not everybody catherine hi doctor um hi catherine back to the who since trump took us out of the who agreement we had with them can a new president overturn this if this passes, or is this getting ratified? What is the legal status of this? So what Trump did, in fact, was to withhold some of the funding from the United States to the WHO. And so he didn't remove our membership temporarily or permanently. He just said, you know, we're not going to continue

funding this agency that's mishandling the pandemic. And that was, you know, that would have been leading up to the election very early on in COVID. And Biden reversed that right away. So the United States went back almost immediately to its previous level of funding and contributing to the WHO. So the U.S. is now the largest financial contributor to the WHO. For a while, the number one contributor to the WHO after China, it was actually the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. True. Somebody can fact check that. There was a time when the Gates Foundation outpaced the U.S. government temporarily because we withheld, it wasn't even all of the funding, just some of the funding that we would otherwise earmark for the WHO.

So, yeah, the new president reversed that almost immediately. And we're now back to being the WHO's largest supporter among any of the member states or any of the private but can it be reversed again were we to re-elect uh trump let's say comes along and a future a future president privilege a future president could through an executive order order, change the funding to the WHO because that has to do with basically foreign policy. That's sort of a department of state issue. Domestic funding, the people who control the purse strings on domestic funding, that's Congress, right? But the people who control the purse strings on international funding, that's largely in

the hands of the president, in the hands of the president in the hands of the executive so yes a new president had a different approach could change that catherine that is thank you you bet thank you thanks um we we are sort of running down on time here um and i do appreciate aaron you're you're not just your time with us but all the time i see you dedicating out there on twitter spaces and other places where your level-headed, thorough approach is much appreciated. He's a good moderator. Oh, you moderated some of his spaces? He is because he's so… Oh, he moderates is what he does.

Yes, he's good. He's very measured. When Steve Kirsch starts yelling. Oh, I love Steve. Very measured. When Steve Kirsch starts yelling. That's what I was thinking of too. Oh, I love Steve. Steve's a friend, but he's passionate. Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly.

When I was hosting one of those, I had to say, Steve, we're going to have to be more democratic here. I'm going to have to put you on hold. I'm sorry. And God love him. And he's been important for, I would not turn him down one tick because we need those voices out there. Those are the ones that really, and especially now that we can start to talk again. We're actually, these are conversations we could not have had six, 12 months.

Oh my God. I have required these things six months ago. Yeah. I have required the occasional valium blow dart myself. You may recall. I mean, I think part of the phenomenon is it's pent up energy, right?

People, people are ready to say things that it was hard to say for three years. So, right. It's good. Not hard to say it was hard to say for three years so right it's good not hard to say it was dangerous to say it was dangerous yeah that's right not just your work but your life that people would come after you in these crazy ways it was just really people and i hope anybody that was part of those mobs really thinks about what they did i mean you should you should be most of them are

probably not listening here but they should be checking themselves and thinking about this but we'll see so aaron thank you so much and we'll stay you know in touch with you as we go along here and i appreciate it and you did see we have at a cariotti of course is the twitter handle and kelly you want to give anybody any uh places to find? Well, you can, I'm, I'm on Twitter, relatively active on Twitter at Dr. Kelly victory, as you know, and you find me here at least on Wednesdays. And then we're adding a show every month now to sort of address the, how do we unfuck it bucket? Um, which, uh, Kelly, Dr. Kelly's unfuck it bucket. How do we get ourselves out of this, um, morass? Um, so here, and, and then I'm working on a, uh, I'm, I'm working with a group

of other, um, experts, household names. I think people like Harvey Reich and Paul Alexander and David Weissman and many others, Jessica Rose, many who I've had as my guests on this show with you, Drew, on a book, on a book specifically about the mRNA vaccines. We're hoping that that book's going to come out early or in the spring, hopefully by May, because there is some significant concern that these vaccines, despite the paucity of safety data and their lack of efficacy, because they've now been added

to the childhood vaccine schedule, there's significant concerns that they will be mandated in schools going forward. So we're trying very hard to get this book about the dangers of these mRNA vaccines. We're trying to get that out to the public. And you heard from Dr. Kiriati how that happens, how it is. We're just following the dictates.

We're just following the recommendations. We're avoiding liability because, you know, if we, you know, something could happen. Yeah, I totally get that. And I think we had to do another round with everybody, with Weissman and Riesch and, you know, somebody else I was thinking about, just because things are changing and evolving and we just need a Dowd. We need to get his numbers back out there and see what he's seeing. Oh, and he's ready. He's ready in a couple. Yeah, Ed Dowd's ready to come back.

Byron Bridle is very much a part of this co-author on this book. So there are folks who have really got their numbers together. Dr. Ryan Cole, as you know, is finishing up some more autopsies and some more review of pathology slides. So again, the evidence is mounting. We have hard scientific evidence now that explains really why we are seeing the increased incidence of all of these things, not just myocarditis and pericarditis, but cancers, autoimmune issues, fertility issues, neurologic issues. So lots to discuss.

So I am working hard. Even when I'm not on with you, I am still working hard getting these documents all pulled together. It is much appreciated. So I have some great news. Okay. Hillsides is having a benefit this weekend, and we have an auction that I just put up through Monarch Grove 2023. You might see it.

Hillsides.org is an organization that we've worked with for 15 years or more. It's a therapeutic living environment for kids. And it's a great organization. They help people all over L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley. Traumatized, that are abandoned, that are abused. And then keep them going into their adulthood. But we are having this benefit. And if you click on the Monarch Grove link that I put up on all your Rumble

and YouTube and Twitter and everybody out there, check it out. We have a meet and greet with Dr. Drew. We've already sold one for $1,500. You get a half hour and we'll even make it longer for you if you're one of our fans. And we'll be putting three more up, so just keep checking back.

We'll get one for Kelly. You want to be in there? Yeah. You have a Kelly one, too. Maybe Kelly can come on with you. There you go. It's a really good organization. And also, if you want to contribute to hillsides.org, you can go to the website.

Do it there, or you can come to the benefit. It's Saturday night at the Bonaventure Downtown LA. And Dr. Drew and I will be there. Oh, yes, we will. You want to come, Kelly? Unfortunately, I'll be in Colorado this weekend. No, I would. I would because I'm in California today.

But I will be in Colorado, unfortunately, over the weekend, where it's going to be bitter cold and snowing sideways. So I'd far rather be at your event in Southern California. Uh-oh, I think we've, Drew has frozen up. Just one moment. Okay, well, I will see. There you go. There we are are we're back yeah do you ski kelly i yes i do i have not been skiing this year despite the fact that we've had

unprecedented amounts of snow it is it is biblical we need to go skiing yeah i know it's remarkable so anyways head on over to hillsides. Yeah, I know. It's remarkable how much snow we have. Head on over to hillsides.org, please, and make a contribution or look at the auction items. It's the best we can do since COVID. Now we have this online auction, which is awesome. We made a lot of money during the pandemic, even though we didn't have a benefit. But if you want to put on your ball gown and come on down to the Bonaventure, it's a fun group.

It's a really fun group. Great band. Elton John's people are there. Oh, that's right. Tomorrow, Susan? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm missing it. I know.

I'm sorry I didn't think of you sooner. Okay, we'll see you soon, Kelly. See you next Wednesday. I'll see you next Wednesday. Is Brooke Jackson coming next week? Next Wednesday. Let's look at what it says there. Michael Malice tomorrow? Not yet, huh?

Viva Frye. Not yet. Yeah. We don't have... Not tomorrow's Michael Malice. We'll see her on Tuesday. We're on unfuck it Tuesday with Kelly. Okay. Yes.

Or is it Monday this week? I don't know. I'll see you next week. All right. See you then. Okay, Kayla, put that book up there again. Or is it Monday this week? I don't know. I'll see you next week. Cheers. All right, I'll see you then. Okay, Kayla, put that book up there again. So we have Michael Malice coming in tomorrow, the famous anarchist. We have February 27th, which I believe is Monday, which Lauren Boebert, our representative.

Who Drew is in love with. Not in love with Lauren. I just think she's- Cracks you up. She cracks me up. She's entertaining. And what I like most about her is i like when people surprise you and when you talk when you hear her talk you will be surprised and she she is she got a lot going on and february 28th which is the

tuesday last tuesday of the month and then kelly with meryl dr meryl nass dr meryl nass right and then we're gonna have some more great guests the next week as well. And as I said, I'm going to try to get a recurrent visit from some of the people that have been very popular. Booked? We're booked going forward? Okay.

All right, well, tomorrow, regular time, 3 o'clock Pacific, 6 Eastern, for Michael Malice. He's a really interesting guy to talk to. You've maybe heard of him on Lex Friedman or Joe Rogan or whatever, but he and I mixed it up in an interesting way. And so look forward to that tomorrow at three o'clock. We'll see you there. Ask Dr.

Drew is produced by Caleb nation and Susan Penske. 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.

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