The David Pakman Show - 9/14/22: Republicans Push for Abortion Ban, Mike Pillow Raided

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

-- On the Show: -- Doctor John Abramson, Harvard Medical School faculty member and author of the new book "Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It," joins David to discuss our broken healthcare system. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3RH356X -- As predicted after the reversal of Roe v Wade, Republicans are now pushing for a national abortion ban, and Senator Lindsey Graham has a new bill to do just that -- Bill Maher and Aaron Rodgers try to out-compete each other for dumbest statement about COVID -- MyPillow CEO and Founder Mike Lindell is raided by the FBI, who allegedly seized his phone while he was at a Hardee's fast food restaurant -- MyPillow CEO and Founder Mike Lindell is furious that failed former President Donald Trump hasn't yet been reinstated -- Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is asked about the economy, and his response is the verbal equivalent of an inkblot -- Donald Trump's lawyers make a shocking admission in their latest legal filing -- Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' new lawyer does an impression of Jones during the early days of the next defamation trial against Jones -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert brutally slams "wonton" killing -- Confused voicemail caller wrongly seems to think that David claimed Donald Trump might already have been arrested on an earlier show -- On the Bonus Show: Clinton Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr dead at 76, Alabama might use nitrogen hypoxia for executions, inflation is now more broad-based than before, much more... 🌳 Use code PAKMAN for 20% off HoldOn plant-based bags at https://holdonbags.com 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman ⚠️ Use code PAKMAN for a free supply of BlueChew at https://go.bluechew.com/david-pakman 👍 Get 20% off an Allform sofa or armchair at https://allform.com/pakman 🔊 Try Blinkist for FREE and get 25% off at http://www.blinkist.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to the Pakman Live YouTube Channel: https://www.davidpakman.com/pakmanlive -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

We have a really packed program today, so I'm going to do everybody a favor and not spend five minutes talking about how it's a packed program and just get into the substance. They're now trying to ban abortion nationally. I told you this would happen. It wasn't just me. It's not a pat on the back. It was very obvious. And many of us were predicting after the Supreme Court made a decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, overturning the fundamental right to an abortion in most cases for in the United States. We had this prediction that this was only the beginning. Now, why was it such an obvious prediction? Well, you don't get your biggest win and then stop. I mean, you know, even Michael Jordan won three championships before he temporarily retired and then came back and then won three more. Would have been weird to just win

that first one and then say, see everybody later. On the one hand, there were the sort of more obvious predictions. Well, once you overturn the right to an abortion, the next thing is you try to ban it outright. You go beyond just overturning it as a right. You say, let's make this illegal. And then beyond that, it's maybe they'll try to overturn the gay marriage decision from 2015. And on the far end, it's well, do they want to try to overturn interracial marriage? Much more far fetched. But the point is, you don't stop after your biggest victory. And now, indeed, Lindsey Graham has introduced a nationwide abortion ban just weeks after he said, well, that's something that should be left up to the states.

Lindsey Graham is a hypocrite, of course, but that's not really what this is about. This is really about the obvious predictability that this is something they were going to try to do. As Rolling Stone writes, Lindsey Graham introduced a federal abortion ban Tuesday, weeks after declaring it's an issue that should be left to the states. I think we should have a law at the federal level, says Lindsey, that would say that after 15 weeks, no abortion on demand. Now, on demand is another one of these propaganda terms. What does it mean on demand?

It's like you could just add it to anything. Well, I don't know. What about knee replacement on demand? the exact same process by which you consult with a doctor and then a decision is made and a procedure is either done or not done at the agreement of the doctor and the patient on demand is another one of these phrases that's just meant to make things seem completely out of control. Anyway, as Rolling Stone writes, Graham wants to overrule the right of states to set their own abortion laws, despite having said on several occasions, it should actually be decided by states, not the federal government. Just last month, he said, quote, I think states should decide the issue of marriage

and states should decide the issue of abortion. So they're trying to do it. Talking Points memo article, Republicans move to ban abortion nationwide. And it also this particular article goes on to talk about the bigger picture strategy. And there is some risk to this strategy. And this is kind of where I want to focus in, because we we knew they were going to do this and how they're going to do it is obvious. OK, it's all totally predictable. When you look at polling, abortion being legal in most cases is quite popular with Americans. In fact, Americans are very divided about so many different issues. But abortion being legal in most cases is one of the issues on which Americans are relatively united. You see significantly more than 60 percent support for that. And so there's a risk.

And we'll see in November whether that risk ends up damaging Republicans. There's a risk that if you focus too much on banning and preventing abortion, that you will lose support and that you will lose elections. So there is a political risk here for sure. When you are loudly running against something that is popular nationally, there's a couple of possibilities. Now, one possibility, and this is very dark and I hope that this isn't the case, is if Republicans are so sure that now they've got it successfully rigged, because remember, in 2020, they tried to steal it, but they failed while accusing the left of trying to

steal it, which, of course, the left wasn't doing. If for 2022 and 2024, they're feeling more confident in their ability to take elections that the will of the people doesn't actually show them winning, then they could say, well, but we know how to win regardless of what people want. So let's go ahead and try to ban abortion. That's one possibility. The other possibility is that this is a terrible miscalculation because because they correctly recognize that being against abortion is still a great way to raise money from certain groups. But it has become decoupled from support out in the general population. So they're interested. They see, oh, if we if we do this, if we try to ban abortion, these money groups will give

us a ton of money, but we're going to lose a lot of the people. So it could be a miscalculation. And then the third one, which I don't think there's really evidence for, is they're intentionally sabotaging themselves. I mean, I'm including it in the list, but it doesn't seem particularly likely that that's what's going on. And then the fourth possibility also is they just disagree with the polling. They might just say, we don't agree that two thirds of Americans, as every poll shows, believe abortion should be legal in most cases. We think the polling is wrong and we think this

is a winning way forward. Now, whether they will even get a vote on this remains a question. Mitch McConnell was asked about it yesterday, didn't really answer. So we're going to continue following it. But not a surprise to anybody who's been paying attention after overturning Roe v. Wade. The next step is let's see about a federal ban on abortion. We'll see where it gets them. I have video for you today of two guys who are really confident that they know a lot of different things and that they are right about whatever it is they choose to talk about. I'm talking about Bill Maher and NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Now, this is a clip from I believe this is Bill Maher's newish podcast. And to be very clear, I think Aaron Rodgers is not a bright guy.

And he said a lot of really wacky things about covid and other things. And I also find his entire worldview completely uninteresting. Bill Maher, on the other hand, sometimes does say things that I find prescient and compelling and accurate. But also Bill Maher, particularly when it comes to medical stuff like I remember when I was this is a really long time ago. I remember an episode of Bill Maher being interviewed by Larry King, the late Larry King. And Bill Maher took a position against aspirin by saying, why would you take aspirin? Your body is not in an aspirin deficient state. So why would aspirin ever be the thing to take, which kind of misunderstands medication completely? So he's always been a little weird on medical stuff. Regardless, here is a clip of Bill Maher and Aaron Rodgers repeating some of the most tired lines about

science sometimes is wrong. Medicine sometimes is wrong. So therefore, you know, the covid conspiracy theorists should have been listened to just as much as everybody else. Let's jump right into this first clip. That's my problem with with society today is why does everything have to be so fucking bipartisan? OK, now, right. First of all, Aaron Rodgers means partisan. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. He doesn't mean why do things have to be bipartisan? He means why do things have to be partisan? Like every issue is not a partisan issue. There's right and there's wrong. There's things that make sense and things that don't make sense.

You don't have to toe the line on what your party is saying to, you know, and that's the only stance you can take. Can you not rationally have a conversation about things that make sense and be able to not be swayed by whether you vote red or blue? Not in America anymore. No, you can't. And to me, the ultimate issue that should not be political or partisan is medicine. Health. Yeah. What is more personal than what I, you know, you do you to how you want to treat your body. Now, if the argument is, well, if you don't do our pharmaceutical answer, then you're going to risk other people's lives. First of all, that's not true. That's a red

herring argument. Well, sometimes it's true and sometimes it's not, but it doesn't actually relate to the bigger issue that they're building to. So this this really is hard to follow because it's such a mishmash of different issues. There's whether science becomes partisan. And of course, I mean, look at what's going on with climate science. One side just denies the science. So you've got that issue. You then have issues of public health. You have issues of bodily autonomy. And they're just mixing everything together with a big dose of confidence. And what comes out is total nonsense. Maybe that's true with other things at other times or with this before they knew that the

vaccine does not prevent infection and does not prevent transfer. So now that we know it doesn't do either one of those things, it shouldn't matter what I do. So, again. If you really want to have a nuanced conversation, this is not accurate, and I'm the first to tell you that there is this very big period in the sort of meat of the pandemic, at which point the variants that were floating around in public were predominantly not variants that were well handled by the original vaccines in terms of infection. That's absolutely true. Very early on the first when the first vaccines

came out and you still had a variant out there that was much more similar to the original variant for which the vaccines were tailored. The ability to prevent infection was very high. And if you're not infected, you don't have anything to transmit. That was the case early on as the variants diverged from the original more and more. The vaccine's ability to prevent infection and therefore transmission declined. And that's absolutely true. We now have this new vaccine that is tailored to Omicron. And it seems, although we still need more data, that the ability of that vaccine to prevent infection is higher. And of course, if you don't have an infection, you don't have anything to transmit. So the overarching broad statements about this don't really help anybody, but they're determined to moralize about it. And so they have to make

such black and white statements. Okay. So that's first, but beyond that, what could be more personal than how I choose to treat my body? I mean, like Jokovic can't play. It's so annoying to me. I'm the US Open now yeah last night Serena oh I didn't see she won she lost last night oh well but the best player in the men's side can't play and

one of the most fit guys in the world that's who's had COVID at least once if not twice it's you can't come to New York. Is a complete compendium of what a Potemkin village, this whole arsenal of nonsense they've thrown at this disease is. You know what's even worse than that, though?

Kyrie Irving attended a basketball game courtside, but couldn't play for his team. Right. Are you f***ing... How is you how is that possible? Well, also, he attended a basketball game. And got to watch it in the stands, but couldn't play on his team because he wasn't vaxxed. So understand that this is this is basically outrage porn, because if you sit down and you go, so what exactly is the point you're making? Is the point you're making that science is sometimes wrong?

Well, science by its nature is a self-correcting process and figuring out where you were wrong is actually revered. And it's a good thing. So that's not really breaking news. Is your argument that corporations don't have the right legally to require vaccination because they do? And so it's just a mishmash of stuff. It's sort of Herschel Walker, like in a way more coherent to just make people mad.

But it's not exactly completely clear what they mean. Let's just look at one more clip from this. To me, the frightening thing was never the disease itself. The frightening thing was how much you could you could get people so quickly to change their way of life. Stay home, wear a mask, you know, don't touch. It was altruistic at first. It's like, all right, yeah, we'll take two weeks to flatten the curve, right? And then just about, well, every conspiracy theory came true. Vaccine mandates, vaccine

passport. Now, understand this is, again, more outrage, sowing more fear. What does it mean that a conspiracy theory came true because there were vaccine mandates? We've had vaccine requirements in the United States going back at least to 1903 out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, if not even be, I believe, Washington's army. Right. So it it's not. What does he mean that it's a conspiracy theory that there were going to be vaccine mandates? We have all sorts of vaccine requirements. What does that even mean? But people hear it and they go, that's right. Aaron Rodgers is right. And I should be furious. Right. And it turned into like away from doing your job to stop the the spread to like lockdowns. And that's my whole problem. You know, by the way,

remember, the nobody was locked down in the United States. It's an absurd statement to use. Now, they'll go, well, it was effectively a lockdown because when everything's closed, most stuff didn't close. There was there was no lockdown. I grew up in a small town, very little cases up in Chico, California, but all the small businesses gone. I mean, our favorite restaurants in L.A. and New York and across the country, not just in big cities, but some crazy percentage will never open again. Yeah. And of course, that's absolutely true. And I think there are many criticisms, fair criticisms to make about how COVID was handled. There's no problem with that. But these mishmashes of so-called open and unfettered conversation, they're obviously

these are perfectly fine, not saying anybody should be censored, but they just make people angry without even knowing what they're angry about. And that is exactly the way that this stuff works. Remember that on 919 Monday morning, we'll be doing the next David Pakman show one day membership special. Get on my mailing list at David Pakman dot com to be notified of how to sign up. Plastic is everywhere we look and not enough is being done about it. One hundred billion plastic bags are used and thrown away every year, but you can help make a change. Our sponsor,

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All right. You knew it was coming today. You knew that today I was going to tell you that my pillow CEO and founder, Mike Lindell, known to us as pillow, the guy who wants to sue the machines. We're doing a class action lawsuit against all machines. Speaker 1 His phone has been seized by the FBI at a Hardee's drive through. You really cannot write this stuff. This is unbelievable. You play with fire. You might end up getting burned. Daily Beast reports Mike Lindell feds seized my cell phone at Hardee's.

They took my phone. The FBI did look at this video. This is Pillow himself explaining the situation last night. The FBI, you're going to hear this and you're probably already hearing in the news. The FBI came after me and took my phone they surrounded me at a hardy's and uh took my phone i run all my business everything with um um they could have just what we've done is weaponize the fbi um it's disgusting i don't have a computer everything i do have that phone everything was on there and. And and they told me not to tell anybody.

Here's an order not to don't tell anybody. OK, I won't. I am so. Yep. So there it is. Mike Pillow raided by the FBI. Here he is on the Lindell report, which is hosted by someone else explaining exactly what happened. And again, you cannot write this stuff. And Pillow's ability to destroy his own reputation, his own financial future over nonsense is really incredible. And we go through a Hardee's drive through. We pull around the back and we're just about going through. We pull through the drive through to take the order. We pull up and she says, pull ahead, you know, because they had to make the order. It wasn't done.

We pull ahead and a car comes perpendicular and parks a little ways in front of us. And I and I've been around the block. And I said to my buddy, I said, that's either a bad guy or it's FBI, which I guess now is one in the same for these guys. So anyway, as you know, I have not been to fast food restaurants in 20 years other than that emergency Starbucks stop a few weeks ago that I told you about. I have to imagine that even within the fast food space, Hardee's is not exactly the best, but I did look it up. I found that Hardee's has a hand breaded chicken biscuit, which sounds pretty good. Hardee's is not exactly the best, but I did look it up. I found that Hardee's has a hand breaded chicken biscuit, which sounds pretty good. But let's put that aside for now.

Pillow reportedly worth three hundred million dollars at a Hardee's and gets his phone seized by the FBI. Now, I think it's important to mention. Mike Pillow says that this happened. We don't at this point have independent confirmation that the FBI actually seized his phone, but let's assume that he is telling the truth about it and not making the sub whole cloth. And on that basis, Donald Trump is absolutely furious. Donald Trump posting to truth central breaking news. Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, was just raided by the FBI. We are now officially living in a weaponized police state, rigged elections and all our country is a laughing stock all over the world. The majesty of the United States is gone. Can't let this happen. Take back America. And Pillow is furious about other things as well.

Let's talk about that next. Not going to spend a ton of time on this, but Mike Lindell is really starting to get frustrated that Donald Trump still hasn't been reinstated. Here he is on this same program where it's his show, The Lindell Report. But he often calls in as a guest, in this case from a car. And he says he's got the royal flush and somehow Trump still hasn't been reinstated. And he's very frustrated. Speaker 4 When you when I'm sitting on the kind of evidence we are and that I am and you can't it's like having a royal flush in a poker game, but you can't play your hand. I'm tired of it. You know, you have a royal flush.

I want the game to end and get back to it. You know, get our country back here. Let's get this. Get this evidence out in the open for the whole world to see. And I get ran. Yeah, he hasn't actually shown anyone the evidence in his post. Remember, last week, Mike Pillow was posting all over our Facebook page. He said that the evidence in his posts. Remember last week, Mike Pillow was posting all over our Facebook page. He said that the evidence is as follows. They captured packets from China. They presented

everything at the symposium and China was caught red handed. Not exactly an overwhelming case. Here's another one of these examples from a few days ago. Lindell said his cyber guys went through the data and they found it. They found everything. And if you listen closely, you'll probably come away saying they found what I have really great news. Well, I'll call it great news is four percent. There's only four percent of those counties so far that I cyber guys have looked at that are not compromised. In other words, 96 percent of all the counties we've went through already, which is hundreds of them, have all been machine manipulated. Yep. And and this is 100 percent evidence. So that's it's evidence, as he calls it. Also,

another major declaration from Mike Pillow. Hello, I'm Mike Lindell. And due to your incredible support, the original my slippers are almost completely sold out. OK, so anyway, I consider the slipper news basically as important as his claims there about about the evidence. This guy is furious that Trump hasn't been reinstated and it's all absolutely and completely pathetic. And we're going to watch whether anything actually ever happens. But it seems what's happening now that his phone has been seized by the FBI is the so-called evidence is going to be evidence in a potential trial against Pillow than evidence that Trump should be reinstated.

Incredible how the tables have turned. Herschel Walker, our friend Herschel Walker, was asked about the economy and his answer was completely unintelligent and unintelligible as well. Now I want to kind of remind you guys of the context here. Herschel Walker is the Republican Senate candidate from Georgia. He's running against incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Recently Walker weighed in on such issues as 9-11 foreign policy as well as education,

and none of his opinions made any sense. And yet he is now leading against Raphael Warnock. Most recently, Walker appeared on the Newsmax show Spicer and Company. Yes. With Sean Spicer, Trump's short lived, sort of short lived press secretary when he was president. And his answer doesn't make any sense about the economy. Take a listen to this helping spend more and Democrats spend more voting on some of those bills. How are you talking about this spending? And is it a winning issue in Georgia? Well, it's a winning issue. This economy is a winning issue because I think anyone with any types of sense, and I hate to say that people on the left don't have sense, but you know you don't spend what you don't have.

And that seemed to be what the left has gotten good at, is continuing to spend the people's money. And there's supposed to be good stewards with people's money, and they seem not to do that. And also crime. You know, crime has really gone know, crime has really gotten terrible. And, you know, I'm running against a man that called our officers, our men and women in blue thugs and helping. So his view on the economy is don't spend what you don't have and crime as well. Now, this guy is winning this race and that's completely outrageous. But I want

to I spotted a very interesting comment on our subreddit from user Mr. Why Debon? OK, Mr. Why Debon sort of tried to explain why Walker is doing well in his race. And what Mr. Why Debon said is Herschel Walker is expressing the human mental state after consuming thousands of hours of right wing media. And when we hear these word salads from Herschel Walker, according to this Reddit user, it resonates with this frenzied mental state of the target audience, the people that are just furious. They don't even know why, but they're furious and they're scared and they're angry because they've been watching Fox News and Newsmax, which is designed to agitate. It's designed to make people agitated and angry by pressing these buttons. And all you need to

do to press the buttons is to say these things. And if you want to interpret it that way, when Herschel Walker goes money, we don't have and crime. It's a crazy thing. It's just it's all over the place. It's frenetic, but it's just pushing those buttons of the very people that it's designed to. And I think that that's a very it's an astute comment, quite frankly. Herschel Walker also talking about how he's not doing this for money. He's not running for money. Who does that remind you of? Speaker 4 them and I get to Washington, I'm not going to go to Washington like Senator Wynette has done and try to double my income. I've been blessed through the Lord Jesus to make money. So I'm not going to Washington and make money. Yeah. Sounds a lot like what

Donald Trump was saying in 2016. I don't need this. I don't I could just hang out and be fine. I'm I don't need the money. I won't even take my salary. And we know how that worked out, raping and pillaging all sorts of institutions and resources of the United States. So when I hear I don't really need the money from doing this to me, it only raises red flags because it's so Trumpian. If you're listening today and you want to see these clips in their full glory, we'll have them on our Instagram. That's at David Pakman show on Instagram. One of our sponsors today is Blue Chew, a unique online service delivering the same active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis in a chewable form and at a fraction of the cost.

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The link is in the podcast notes and they'll give you an entire month's supply for free when you use promo code Pacman. That's P-A-K-M-A-N. All you do is pay five dollars for shipping. One of our sponsors is all form the easiest way to design your own custom sofa. I have one from all form. Unlike other companies, all form lets you choose the fabric, the size, the shape, color, even the color of the legs. I have not one but two all form sofas. I've had them for years. They look The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. space by adding on to it or rearranging its elements. That is definitely not something you get from your typical sofa company. All form has everything from eight piece sectionals to love

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appreciate your time, David. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thanks. So, you know, when we talk about the modern state of American health care, there's many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. And we can talk about insurance companies. We can talk about big pharma. We can talk about our political system. And there's all of these different factors in your book. You talk specifically about big pharma. Talk to us about why, as a doctor, that's where you decided to focus in this book. Right. So I think the biggest American medicine has enormous problems. Our costs are way off the charts. The health of Americans is so inferior to the other wealthy countries that about 480,000

Americans die in excess each year. There's trouble all over the place. I think the biggest cause of this trouble that is unrecognized is the extent to which the pharmaceutical and device industries control the knowledge that doctors rely upon to formulate their ideas about the best way to treat their patients. So explain how that leads to particular outcomes and disease management, which is often what it is that the doctors are doing. Quite quite frankly, how what is that relationship? So let's look at the cancer moonshot issue, which is in the news now with President Biden.

Yeah. The anti-cancer drugs dominate clinical research. They're very expensive. We could cut cancer deaths in half in the United States by attending to preventive therapies, preventive interventions, stop smoking, obesity, environmental risks. So what we're doing, because the money's to be made in developing new drugs and marketing them, what we do is create a body of so-called knowledge that's the result of research that's commercially sponsored that's about drugs, drug therapies for cancer. And the preventive side gets virtually no attention because there's no money to be made in it. What we've got is a market failure where the money is invested in high cost therapies, whereas the benefit could be reaped much more quickly, less expensive, more effectively by attending to preventive approaches.

So at the primary care level, often an idea is floated that you could compensate doctors not based on the number of things that are done, for lack of a better term, but instead for the sort of successful management of a patient and actually keeping them healthy rather than sick. And of course, the devil would be in the details in terms of exactly how you do it and how you measure and how you compensate. But that's an idea that's mentioned to put the focus back on prevention rather than treatment. Does that not if you could do that, does that not even really do enough because what you're describing is so widespread and established? Yeah, it doesn't do enough. It's a good idea. I think that paying primary care docs to take care of people instead of performing units of work would be a good idea.

And I think trying to minimize the number of procedures that are done by changing the payment for those procedures is a good idea. And that would be more effective with specialists than it would be with primary care docs. So you could capitate specialists for geographic area and they would make so much money on salary. And if they did extra, say, cardiac surgeries, they wouldn't make money. You know, if they did extra breast biopsies, they wouldn't make money. So that that doctors are trained to trust is invested in because it's going to maximize financial return to the drug companies. It's that knowledge that's the problem. And the idea that the research projects get turned into articles in medical journals that are mostly written by the drug companies that are peer reviewed, but virtually nobody in healthcare understands that peer reviewers don't have access to the data and the guidelines that are written that set the standards

for good community practice and can be produced as evidence in malpractice cases if you don't follow them. Those guideline writers don't have access to the clinical trial data. And having spent 10 years in litigation, I know that what's in that clinical trial data, the real data, is often very different from the data that ends up in medical journals. So what we've got is doctors who are compelled to practice so called evidence based medicine, which is means the bottom two lines of the abstract in the medical journal. That's what they said without understanding that the whole research enterprise is biased towards making money, that the results aren't peer reviewed, that the guidelines aren't peer reviewed. And what the doctors have been trained to, that the guidelines aren't peer reviewed and what

the doctors have been trained to trust as the information that's going to best help them take care of their patients is not trustworthy. There's this example that I haven't read about, admittedly, for a little bit. So I hope I get the details mostly right. And I think maybe it's related to exactly the mechanism you're talking about, which is when it came to cholesterol. There was a point in time and again, I don't know if it was a couple of years ago or more like a decade or 12 years ago where the sort of line at which point one might consider

recommending a statin to a patient was lowered. So basically just the threshold was changed. Nothing really changed about one's likelihood of a cardiac event. Nothing, nothing really changed other than instead of saying, I don't know if it was from 210 to 200 or 222, just a change was made. And it was now if the patient is above this level, consider a statin. I don't know the origins of that change. I don't know if that change was based in what we might call good, good science or as you talk about kind of profit driven science or something else. But would that be the type of thing

that is influencing doctors to make certain decisions that can be very profitable? That's exactly right. And there are two aspects to that. One is there's never been a study that compared statin therapy to lifestyle intervention. So the drug companies don't want to do that study because they can only lose because they have all the statin business. The other part is that I was the lead author of an article in the British Medical Journal in 2013, which was exactly the time that you're talking about when the standards were changed. And the numbers for cholesterol, the study results are not transparent. Docs don't have them. Guideline writers don't have them. But there's an organization in Oxford called the Cholesterol

Treatment Trialist Collaboration that has the data. They made a Faustian bargain with the drug companies that they would receive their patient level data and do meta-analyses on that data. And by combining the statistical power of all the different statin drugs effects in clinical trials, they would be able to show that statins worked for more people. Excuse me. So the CTT receives the primary data, but part of their Faustian bargain was they wouldn't release the primary data. So they control what doctors think they know about these things. So I wrote, I was the lead author of this article in BMJ, and we recalculated the CTT's numbers that they had published in Lancet that justified lowering the threshold for treating people with cholesterol-lowering medication. And we showed that for people at low risk who don't have heart disease,

who have less than 20% 10-year risk, that there was not a mortality benefit, that their data didn't show a mortality benefit, and that you had to treat between 100 and 140 people for five years with a statin to prevent one non-fatal heart attack or stroke. So we wrote that. And unfortunately, we made a little mistake in interpreting the frequency of side effects in a complex study, but it had nothing to do with our conclusion. And the head of the CTT went absolutely ballistic, charged into the BMJ editor's office and demanded retraction of our article. It was an international kerfuffle. It didn't get much coverage here in the United States, but it sure got coverage in Europe and it was pretty stressful. The editor appointed a six

person panel to independently evaluate the demand for retraction. The panel voted unanimously that there was nothing about our article that required or deserved or merited retraction, and on we went. But the CTT, being about a million times more powerful than me and my three co-authors, had dominated the press, the headlines, so long about this attack on statins that we couldn't get our message across to the public, which is, hey, if you are a low risk person, you may want to take statins, but you got to understand it's not going to improve your longevity. And you have to treat 100 to 140 people for five years in order for one to avoid one nonfatal cardiovascular event.

And that's your decision. It's not you know, I'm not saying yes or no. I'm saying doctors should tell patients that that's what the situation is and make let the patients make a decision based on their own values. Right. To talk about something a little more maybe superficial, as it might be within the big pharma space. No, but my dad's a psychiatrist and he will often talk to me about pharmaceutical reps

come to visit and they bring little footballs and they bring pens and they bring, you know, notepads and all of this sort of thing. And they drop off literature and sometimes there's invitations to lunch and sometimes there's other things that kind of go beyond that. And of course, there's this very strange dynamic where, on the one hand, if it were straight up said, the idea of the reps is to encourage the prescription of medications. Many people would say that that's obviously bad. The doctor should simply be deciding on the merits, whether there's a medication that's appropriate for an individual or that it isn't.

And then the pharmaceutical companies will typically say that's not why the reps are there. But at the same time, if the presence of these reps made no difference, it doesn't seem like a worthwhile expense for the pharmaceutical companies. So there's this kind of weird dynamic where what are we to interpret to be the point of these representatives? And what does what do we know about the impact on the rates of prescriptions of drugs when there are versus are not pharmaceutical reps?

Well, that's an easy question. We know if a doctor accepts a lunch that is valued at twenty dollars, single lunch, that will significantly change his or her prescribing patterns. So obviously the drug companies aren't stupid and they engage in this activity because it makes them money, that makes them more than it costs them. The core issue here, it makes no sense on the surface, but the core issue is that doctors in general like to reciprocate politeness and kindness and warmth. And they're not in of its informational value, because that's the information that's selected that will most likely convince the doctor to prescribe or consider situation where the drug reps are playing one game. They're taught how to shake hands. They're taught how to look in the eye. They're taught how to keep notes about the kids' birthdays and their wives' anniversaries.

And they ask all those questions. And the doctors are trying to get the best information they can as quickly as they can to best serve their patients. And it's not a fair fight because the drug reps know that their job is to increase prescriptions. They get bonused on that. They get evaluated on it. They have minders that go out and watch them perform their sales spiel and they get graded on their sales spiel. So it's a situation that exploits doctors' desire to have good information and innate reaction to be polite where politeness is offered to them.

The drug reps know how to exploit the politeness. What's the lowest hanging fruit here? If we were to be able to make some changes to the way the system works, as you talk about a lot of the information on which doctors are making decisions is information controlled by or created and generated, funded by the pharmaceutical companies. All these different things that we've talked about, we haven't even touched on the direct advertising of drugs to people via television, which is almost completely unique to the to the United States.

What's the lowest hanging fruit that would give us the most dramatic improvements? Yeah. So the lowest hanging fruit is so low that it's a stunning commentary on the power that's controlling American medicine. When a manuscript is submitted to a medical journal, usually the company has played a role in preparing that manuscript. And the manuscript contains a very brief summary of the data from that study. The peer reviewers and the medical journal editors don't get the data to see if the manuscript is accurate and complete. But the manufacturers produce what's called a clinical study report. It's an official document. It's often two or three thousand pages long of tabulated data that purports and usually does present the outcomes that the researchers said they were going to study. So they can't pick and cherry pick their

outcomes. This is a two or three thousand page document that is prepared and it's searchable. And the drug, the medical journals, they complain that they can't do transparent peer review because they don't have the resources to go through the primary data and get statisticians to line up the data with the way the drug company coded and all that. And there's truth to that. But this clinical study report exists. It would cause nothing, nothing for the journals to say, when you submit your article, your manuscript, you must submit a clinical study report. If you want to redact a little bit about how we make the gel code or whatever, you can do that if you think it's a corporate secret. But you must submit that. So why don't the journals do this obvious thing? And once you learn how to get around the clinical study reports, as I did in litigation, it's

pretty quick to figure out what's going on. Why don't they do it? They don't do it because they're in an enormous conflict of interest position. They make a lot of their money from selling reprints back to the drug companies for the drug reps to hand out to docs like your dad. So if the New England Journal is going to make $900,000 selling reprints of the Vioxx article that misled doctors and had convinced them that it was safe to prescribe and didn't increase the risk of cardiovascular death. The New England Journal wants to have that article published in its pages and sell 900,000 reprints.

If they had the clinical study report, they would have known that the article was misleading, would be too kind a word, but misleadingly omitted three heart attacks and didn't present the data on cardiovascular risk. And the New England Journal would have understood that this was a bad drug. It never should have been on the market and it should have been withdrawn immediately when the results of that study came out. But the New England Journal won't do it because they're going to miss their reprint sales and the Lancet and JAMA. And it's that's the way it works. They miss the reprint sales. Their advertising revenues will go down. Their impact factor will go, MGH Brigham, they're fabulous world-class hospitals. They spend a fortune on advertising for their branding. And the journals are in the same business of maintaining their branding for their journals.

And that means that they're willing to sacrifice the quality of the information that doctors get when they read their journals in order to maintain the branding factor of the journals. Eye opening stuff, much of it not the most exciting to read about, but it is important to know what's happening. We've been speaking with Dr. John Abramson, who, by the way, we just lost your video, but we could hear you find the entire time and it couldn't come as a better time at a better time since this is the end of the interview. There you are. You're back.

The book is sickening. How big pharma broke American health care and how we can repair it. We're linking to the book and we really appreciate your time today. Well thanks very much for having me. The David Pakman show's longest running sponsor is Blinkist, the app that takes thousands of nonfiction books, boils each of them down into an explainer you can read or listen to in 15 minutes. Blinkist also condenses episodes of popular podcasts into 15 minute explainers. I've been using Blinkist for years to supplement the books I read. I love reading. I read all the time.

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We just listened to Robert Greene's The's The 48 Laws of Power, the new version. Robert Green, super interesting writer. Find his books fascinating. You can try Blinkist free for seven days and get 25 percent off a premium subscription at Blinkist dot com slash David Pakman. That's B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T dot com slash David Pakman to get Blinkist free for seven days and 25 percent off a subscription. The link is in the podcast notes. All right, let's keep going and get caught up on a whole bunch of other stuff. There is a new filing from Donald Trump's attorneys related to the search warrant raid served on Mar-a-Lago, the documents

that he had in his house, et cetera, et cetera. And if you look through the legal argument, the filing from Donald Trump's lawyers, they make a shocking admission in the filing. And it has to do with some quotes. Quotation marks are effectively a shocking admission here. David, how is that possible? How is it possible that quotation marks are a shocking admission? Well, the use of these quotation marks expose the level of desperation that these lawyers

are now exhibiting. And it has to do with quotation marks around the word classified. In a number of spots in this legal filing, Trump's lawyers put quotes around the word classified when talking about classified documents. And they decry in the filing that the government has unilaterally determined that these are so-called classified documents. Think about that. Think about the level of desperation that you have reached when your legal filing attacks the fact that the government and the government alone has determined documents are classified

and you call that classification into question with quotation marks. Who else determines the classification of documents? Who else gets to decide? And when you are experiencing it's one of two such brain rot. Or such desperation that in order to assemble what is an attempted defense of your client's actions, you have to put in quotes the word classified and act as though it's illegitimate or wrong that yeah, the government.

When we talk about classified documents, we're talking about the government. What does Apple get to decide? What are classified documents? No corporations can have trade secrets. Sure. government. What you does Apple get to decide what are classified documents? No, corporations can have trade secrets. Sure. But of course, it's the government that has decided what is a classified document. And here the entire legal filing is based around the idea. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. It's just to kind of let you know where things stand. The legal filing is based on the idea of trivializing classified information.

Now, remember, at first it was the FBI planted the stuff. This wasn't even stuff Trump had. And then it was, well, Trump had declassified all of the stuff. And then, of course, that fell apart because it just doesn't work that way. Even William Barr, Trump's own former attorney general, said you can't just go declassified and everything's declassified. It doesn't work that way. Then we determined that, in fact, the classification status of many of these documents is not relevant

to the statutes under which Donald Trump is being investigated. But put that aside. They don't seem to care about that. Now they've moved on to trivializing the concept of something being classified and whether the classifier is legitimate when the classifier is obviously the government. This is obviously chaos, all created by Donald Trump's actions, but they are adding to the chaos. Trump's lawyers added to the chaos by requesting a special master. And then now they're telling the judge, you got to stop this chaos. Well, this is chaos of your

own creation. These are absolutely and completely total clowns. By the way, the word that should be in quotes is lawyers, not classified. And we'll see whether this works out or whether it goes anywhere. Going to another court case that we're following, the second Alex Jones defamation trial has now started. There's a great article on Reuters, which we are linking to. It's an explainer. What's at stake in Alex Jones? Second, Sandy Hook defamation trial. Now, we interviewed plaintiff's attorney Mark Bankston a few weeks ago who already obtained a nearly 50 million dollar judgment against Jones in the first defamation case and now is representing plaintiffs in the second case as well. Very important items here about this case. This is the Connecticut case, as it's being called. It started this week. Thirteen family members of

Sandy Hook victims, as well as one FBI agent, are seeking damages from Jones and free speech systems for claiming they were so-called crisis actors lying about their relatives death as part of a gun grabbing conspiracy by the United States. That's what Donald Trump, Donald Trump. That's what Alex Jones claimed initially about Sandy Hook. That's what this is about. OK, then we get to the next trial, which started yesterday. And in yesterday's trial, Alex Jones, new attorney, did an impression of Alex Jones himself. Now, I am not a legal scholar. I am not a legal expert. I don't know that this early in the trial, doing an impression of your own client shows that you're heading in a good direction. Maybe later in the trial,

the impressions are appropriate. Check out this wacky video. You'll see a video of the rubbing on here. So I killed the children. I killed them. I went to school and shot each one of them. Yeah, that's right. When I go out on the street, people forget.

And Atlanta was the killer. They think it's me. It means he's go to Alex Jones. The lawyer in doing an impression of Jones seems to be using that video where Alex Jones goes nuts to show how much of a victim Jones actually is here. Now, of course, what his lawyer was referencing was this completely insane interview that Jones gave Andrew Callahan a couple of weeks ago. Remember this? Do you feel responsible for what happened to the Sandy Hook families? Yes, I killed the children. But beyond that, I mean, I went in that school,

I pulled a gun out, I shot every one of myself. I mean, I'm guilty. It's true. No, but I know. No, no, it's just Do I feel responsible that someone on on the plate, show up video games on a bunch of drugs, went and killed a bunch of kids and then the Internet questioned it? I covered that. No, I don't feel responsible and I don't apologize anymore. I'm done. I don't apologize. I killed the kids. Was there a defendant? No, I killed them. I killed them. Anyway, so that's what was being referenced there. So the trial clearly not off to a good start. And then here's another moment from the first day of the trial.

I believe this was the first day Judge Barbara Bellis sanctions Jones because, yeah, he refused to participate in discovery. This was an issue in the first trial and it was an issue in the second trial. And here is the judge saying you're not participating in discovery. Speaker 4 I'll make the following observation. This suddenly cavalier attitude with respect to their discovery obligations is what led to the default in the first place. The defendants have consistently engaged in dilatory and obstructive discovery practices from the inception of these cases right through to the trial. compliance producing the Google analytic documents, which is required by the practice book, but it was also required by my clear court order of September 30, 2021, which apparently

was not followed here. So the motion is denied for these reasons and the court hereby sanctions the defendants by precluding them from presenting evidence or argument that they did not profit from the Sandy Hook coverage. There you go. Judge Barbara Bellis, not not pleased with what is going on. So listen, in all likelihood, this will be another disaster for Alex Jones. But we're not going to prejudge it. It's just the most likely outcome. We're going to follow the case. Hey, this is amazing.

Lauren Boebert, radical and repugnant Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, apparently in her desire to complete compete with Marjorie Trader Green, is now going after wanton killing. I know I I'm saying that correctly in the sense of this is how she said it. Preaching from a Bible verse, Lauren Boebert didn't understand the word wanton and instead attacked wanton killing, taking a very forceful stand against Chinese dumplings. And then all hell broke loose. Right. Rampant evil grabbing and grasping vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy. Wonton killing. I don't know what a wonton killing is. I'm going to have to look that one up. It is hard to think of a woman more dim sum. I'm sorry, a woman more dim than Lauren Boebert is what I mean. This is actually the thing Trump does. Trump does this thing where he reads the speeches

that someone else wrote for him and he reacts to them like he's reading a news article, Trump will say during a speech. And it is once again, Democrats who a dozen times have acted to try to get us banned from Twitter. That's true. That's actually true. Well, didn't know that, but that's true. He'll read. He's doing a commentary on the speech, which makes it very hard to believe that it's actually his words. It's the exact same thing with Lauren Boebert. Wanton killing. There's by the way, you know how I talk about this theme of these right wingers who are incredibly confident about things they're completely wrong about. Here's Lauren Boebert explaining to others the right way to say inalienable. That's inalienable. Right. Unalienable. That's a very, very important declaration. So there's Lauren Boebert. These people continuing to be visibly confused at the things that someone puts in front of them to

write. And it is quite a doozy, quite a doozy. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here is a caller who is telling me I'm wrong. Donald Trump didn't get arrested. Now you might be saying, David, when did you say Trump got arrested? And of course, the answer is never. Listen to the confusion here. Hey, David, it's Frank from Florida. Yeah, I'm watching your segment on wondering if Trump got arrested.

Yeah, there's no way in the world that that happened. OK. And him being quiet about it. OK. He'd be screaming. Holy hell. So I doubt very much that's what happened. Yeah. I never said that Trump got arrested. So the story Monday was Trump's suddenly in D.C. unannounced trip. He's just there. And there's speculation as to why is he in D.C. because he's going to get arrested. He's been told you have to turn yourself in. Is he in D.C. because he is just playing. So I never said maybe Trump got arrested and nobody heard about it. Of course, if Trump had gotten arrested, we would have heard about it. The speculation was, has he come to D.C. because he has been told by law enforcement he has to surrender? And that's not what it was.

But it wasn't the claim that I made. So I'm glad to get the opportunity to clarify. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. It's really speaking of Alex Jones. This is a bonus show that's going to throw him off his rocker. Oh, the bonus show where you today. It's really speaking of Alex Jones. This is a bonus show that's going to throw him off his rocker. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else makes money to fund themselves is bad. This one's really going to send him for a loop. Ken Starr, the prosecutor of the Clinton Whitewater investigation, has died at age 76.

This is one of the earliest political memories I have. The this investigation done by Ken Starr. We're going to talk about it on the bonus show. Alabama may start using nitrogen hypoxia for executions for death sentence executions for people on death row. What is it? And does this present new legal problems as Alabama has been plagued by issues when it comes to executions. And we are going to talk about the broader based inflation that we have been seeing recently. Where is it? What sectors and what are the implications? All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. You can get instant access by signing up at join Pacman dot com. We are also now only five days away from our one day blowout membership special Monday morning, 919. We are doing a 919 themed membership discount to try to do a record

one day membership drive bigger than we've ever done before. Let's hope if you want to be notified, hey, sir or ma'am, here's the coupon code. Take advantage of it. You need only sign up for my newsletter at David Pakman dot com. And then Monday, 919, you will get that beautiful and clear email with instructions on how to do it. So for our current members, we will see you on the bonus show for our future members. Look forward to welcoming you on Monday.