The Highwire with Del Bigtree - BIG PHARMA BACKLASH: J&J AND BAYER CRUMBLE IN COURT

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Big Pharma is under fire. A judge just rejected Johnson & Johnson’s $10 billion talc settlement offer, and Bayer faces a stunning $2.1 billion loss in a Roundup lawsuit. Now, both companies are scrambling for immunity from future legal blowback across the U.S.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

We remember just like a couple of weeks ago, Trump cut funding to the WHO. Now we see the headlines here out of Reuters. WHO is going to look to maybe cut some of its staff, proposing to cut jobs and slash budgets by a fifth memo shows. And that's not all. So we know that the USAID was also cut. A lot of those programs were cut. Well, the World Economic Forum received tens of millions of dollars of United States money over the years.

And one of the things we're seeing now is guess who's stepping down? Klaus Schwab is stepping down as the World Economic Forum's chair. So we step down as their lead, and now he's out of there. So if those things are related or not, I'm not sure. But boy, the timing seems really coincidental at this point. But right now, let's move domestically. There's a lot of stuff happening. There's massive moves happening right now in America to really turn the health around for our citizens.

And one of those things we're looking at legal and also state-level movement. So one of the big legal stories coming out was Johnson and Johnson, they're back in the news. This is something we've covered for years, you and I, even before COVID. Johnson and Johnson shares Tumble as judge rejects $10 billion talc settlement. They basically, Johnson and Johnson said, we're going back to court to fight these, which seems like a terrible move because they were trying to have like a class action just to settle all of this. $10 billion put this on a table. They could all go away. And this is the cancer causing, the baby powder was causing cancer, especially for women.

but they're going back to the courts now and they've had some big losses in the court. So that's happening on the consumer base then. But also our friends at Bear, Bear Agriculture, they just had another huge loss in a Georgia court. $2.1 billion is the latest roundup weed killer loss. And again, this was related to the non-Hodgkins lymphoma. We see a lot of those court cases centering around that. They've been hit, Bear's been hit with nearly 200,000 cases. They set aside $16 billion for these cases, but at this rate, it doesn't look like it's going to be happening.

I'm not going to hold up very long. I mean, they're blowing through it. They're blowing through it. Absolutely. And they have some massive problems because so glyphosate obviously is just the one active ingredient, but the entire formulation's never been tested for cancer, for long-term safety effects. And these court cases are just keep coming. And as you talked about, we were in Washington, D.C., we had Zen Honeycut, the head of moms across America. There's a slew of legislation now in the United States happening. It just started last year.

And this is the headline here because you see those court, you see those court cases, these billion-dollar losses. Well, Bear, Bear's effort to block Roundup lawsuits kicks into high gear. So they're modeling this after the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, zero liability for the manufacturers codified in a bill. It says in here, last year, Bear lobbied lawmakers in Idaho, Iowa, Missouri to push the immunity bill. but the bills failed to pass. The company then ramped up its campaign heading into 2025.

It created the modern ag alliance to promote farmer's support for the bills and began across-country ablitz. Since the beginning of this year, lawmakers have introduced similar immunity bills in about a dozen states. Bills were defeated in Montana, Mississippi, and Wyoming, but they came back and are still pending in Idaho, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Iowa. So this thing is gaining speed in a massive way. It's really amazing, isn't it?

you have a product that's causing cancer that's determined both by these court cases and the WHO ruling that we've talked about, IARC back in 2015. But just every time I think about this, the fact that Bayer Monsanto, this gigantic mega corporation, thinks that instead of making a better, safer product, let's go back to the drawing boards, that their best way forward is to use government to give them liability protection. If that doesn't just, the fact that anyone would even think that that could work in this country, I think shows you just how far off course we've gotten with our government. And, you know, obviously we're going to do everything we can. And by the way, everyone out there, you better fight like hell right now. We can never allow liability protection of a

product like that. That's just insane. Yeah, it's time for all those people, the Marjikens-Monsanto people to reactivate here if you really want to defeat this bill, if people really care about this bill and we have former Florida Congress and Matt Gates. A lot of people aren't in this conversation a lot when it comes to this immunity bill because it kind of came out of nowhere, all these bills and all these states. Well, he took the X because he saw a glimpse of it and he said this. WTF, question mark, explanation point. Why is the Florida legislature advancing a bill to give immunity to pesticide makers? So a lot of people are kind of really now activating going, wait, this is happening. And it's interesting because when you read into these lawsuits, when they

lose these lawsuits. There's always a statement by the company that says, we stand behind the science, we stand behind our products, they're safe, they're effective. Well, if they are, why do the need for these bills? But let's move forward into the agricultural space because there's also a new, there's a complete shift happening here. And this brings us in RFK Jr. So this was a headlight out of Bloomberg. RFK Jr. helps underpit a $25 billion pivot from farm chemicals. There's a new kind of category called biologicals. And this can be anything from bacteria to old corn, Huss, but companies are now focusing on this because of, to shift away from the herbicides and the roundups and the glyphosates to do a more natural-based products called biologicals to keep the

revenue stream going. So this is a movement that, obviously, in this article you go in here and they're saying, well, we hope Kennedy with his mindset and his, because that was one of the things he was put into HHS on is his work with the farmers trying to get these pesticides out of farming and off the farmland. So this is a move that may be happening. It's happening slowly right now, but it seems to be supercharging. And then also on the RFK Jr. kick here, because Utah just became the first state to remove fluoride from the water,

we see now RFK Jr. coming forward and telling the CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water as the EPA reviews new scientific information. So he has signaled he's going to tell the CDC to stop recommending fluoride. So that is a federal level move that is gigantic. And we're really hoping to see that, obviously. We have Miami-Dade was the biggest county at this point waiting for that signature to end fluoridation there. But now let's move. We're staying at the state levels here. We're staying with the new science, the new movement's happening.

And there's a new study that just came out with the COVID shot. And this leads into some of the states now trying to ban this shot. So there's a lot of reasons that people don't want this mRNA technology. One of being injected into children is still happening right now because it's still being recommended by the CDC. but there's a new study out from Japanese researchers, and they looked at the brain tissue and the cerebral artery tissue of 19 people who suffered a hemorrhagic stroke between 2003 and 2024. That's the study right there. And one of the results, they said this. Spike protein expression was detected in 43.8% of vaccinated patients predominantly localized

in the intima. That's the intermost coating, the innermost layers of the cerebral arteries, even up to 17 months post-vaccination. Delle, this point, builds on the conversation that we've had before showing this spike proteins almost in the body for two years. And the people that, mostly females, by the way, in this study, which is an interesting point, but none of them had active infections. They were able to determine that. And the researchers said this, we suggest, based on the results of the study, that global replication study should be conducted to verify the true safety profile of MRNA vaccines. Shouldn't you done that before you run out? And here's where we are. So we have Nicholas Holscher. He works with Dr.

to McCullough and he put this post out on X. This is a picture of now Minnesota has become the 11th states. We have 11 states with legislative efforts to ban mRNA injections. And that is what's happening. This is a big movement now. It's a big groundswell. No really signaling at the federal level this is going to happen yet. But states are, again, just taking the ball and running with this. That's fantastic. I mean, that's what that's what has to be. The more I look at these things, right? We want the federal government involved. But it really is that localized government. The closer you can get it to you, the more work you can get done faster. You have more power.

Your vote matters more. And we're just seeing this incredible moment where these states are feeling empowered to do the work that the federal government should have done a long time ago. And as we've said before, once those states start breaking apart, you create this uneven playing field for the market. And someone's got to write that ship. They've got to figure out how do we get back to a product that works for everybody. Safety testing might be a good place to start.

and let's get these MRNA vaccines, you know, off the market, get them out of our kids. I know a lot of people are waiting with big breath to see what Robert Kenney Jr. is going to do about that.