The Highwire with Del Bigtree - NEW REFORMS SIGNAL SHIFT IN PUBLIC HEALTH PARADIGM

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

With RFK Jr. pledging sweeping reforms to pharmaceutical advertising — and the CDC reaffirming that “informed consent is back” — a new era of medical transparency may be taking shape. Yet some physicians are resisting change. Hear their arguments against a safer, more accountable vaccine paradigm.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

We're watching the old scientific paradigm changing. So what's happening now is the public is involved. They're educated. They're sharing this information and this blind trust in experts, this kind of information coming from on high saying trust us and these simple slogans, safe and effective, one in a million. It's gone. It's over. People are not believing this anymore.

And it's that's come to term because the pharmaceutical company has wielded lots of power and influence. Let's be honest. Yeah. So they've used media, they've used government policy, and even trickled down to the individual doctors and pediatricians. So let's look at why this is changing. Let's start with the media, us. Well, we're disrupting it.

The alternative media has now become the dominant media. But trust in media in general, corporate media has fallen, it's gone. Now we're down, again, we report this every month, it seems like, but we're at a new low. This is a Gallup poll, 28%. And you can see here from this graph, this is starting really in the 70s. And you see this green line from 1975 just plummeting down to 28% now. And that is a major mouthpiece for pharmaceutical companies, direct consumer advertising. We know that pharmaceutical companies give lots of money to corporate media,

so they can't really say anything bad about them. But now let's talk about direct consumer advertising because that's a problem too. And this comes into the government policy piece. So we have Trump, basically there was a presidential memorandum. He gave this to HHS Secretary Kennedy to do something about this direct consumer advertising. A lot of people want to eliminate it completely. Only U.S. and New Zealand are the countries that do that, but what they're doing is limiting it now. So they're saying pharmaceutical companies, you have to be more truthful. And you can see here in this article what it's talking about,

listen to what they did. It says the crackdown comes with serious consequences for the pharmaceutical industry. The Federal Food Drug and Cosmetics Act regulates misbranding drugs with false or misleading claims. Violations were previously handled via FDA warning letters or civil penalties. But here's a big deal. But the Justice Department has started to move these cases from its civil division to its criminal division, which could lead to executives and companies facing prosecution, not just fines. I mean, to say we're in uncharted territory here, but. Yeah, well, it's affecting people's lives.

Let's be clear. Yeah. I mean, people say, well, I don't know. Is that an assault on business and free speech? These people are lying about products that could kill you or change. your life forever. And so, yeah, I do think it's finally time we start talking about criminal charges. I love that. Right. And so they've sent out over 200 cease and desist letters. And a lot of people are asking, where's the action here? This just happened last month. The FDA is now

enforcing this. So they're going around. They're actually working this. They're actioning it. This is a new policy. So a lot of the pharmaceutical companies still aren't sure exactly what to do. So they're receiving letters, about 200 cease and desist levers, about 1,000 warning letters are in the process of going out as well. Let's look at one of those warning letters. So if you are AstraZeneca and you make a product called FluMIST, you just receive this letter. It says this, the FDA has determined that the TV ad for false or misleading.

Thus, the TV ad misbrands flu-miss and makes its distribution and violation with the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetics Act. But then it goes on to say this. Please submit a written response to this letter within 15 working days from the date. And it goes on, if you go all the way to the bottom, because it's talking about the promotional stuff, the promotional advertising. It says for flumists, that contain your representation such as those described above and explaining your plan for discontinuation of such communications or for ceasing distribution of flumist. Wow, them's fighting words.

So basically change your commercial or pull your product. Wow. Which one would you like to do? And if you go, we have time to do this, but if you go into these letters and you read them, They're posted on the FDA website. They methodically, with a fine-tooth comb, go through their commercial and say, you are putting way too many visuals, there's way too much audio going on, the viewers cannot decipher what is an adverse event

you're trying to communicate. The letters are too small. I mean, they're really going for these companies and trying to make them do right. So. Yeah, and as we've said, I mean, look, and I was in some of these conversations when we were discussing how we'd go about this.

A lot of people wanted to just end direct to consumer marketing, But really, we do believe in the First Amendment. You can't just say all these other companies can advertise on television, but you can't. But what you can say is you have to tell the truth. And if your product has major side effects, all of those side effects have to be listed, not just your favorite ones. And that's where the issue is here.

Now these commercials are going to have to go beyond 30 seconds, one minute. You're going to be looking at two-minute commercials if they're going to list every single side effect. In fact, I think I just saw one of these last week during a football game, and it just went on and on and on with side effects. I just thought, you can tell them trying it. How are we going to do this? It ain't going to work. You're like, who would want that product?

So they're in real trouble. This is where it needs to be because it's just honesty. It's transparency and honesty, which is the foundational bedrock principle for freedom, for freedom. You've got to be stating, you know, what your product can and cannot do in all the harms informed consent. And there's a lot of movement in this policy space. So we saw the ASIP committee talk about the final rule on the COVID vaccine. And this is just a review. This is a law review journal.

And they're writing it up. And they're talking about the CDC saying that it's individual-based decision-making for the COVID-19 vaccine and the standalone vaccination for chicken box and toddlers. But it goes on in this article to say this, this final sentence. In support of this policy, acting CDC director Jim O'Neill stated that informed consent is back. So there it is. the wave that we took part in creating along with others, America's riding on that right now. Informed consent is back. And you're seeing states taking it even further like Florida and saying, it's not just COVID. It's all vaccines are individual decision making. So any state can do this.

But that's the federal policy, which is huge. But then we have all the way down to the doctors and we have the pediatricians and the messaging that goes to their, basically to their offices that goes to the vaccines that go into children's arms. So this is the Atlantic, and they wrote an interesting article I want to bring people's attention to. Pediatricians can't bear the costs. Were they talking about? It says pediatrics is one of the lowest paid specialties in medicine. Now the Trump administration's approach to vaccines has made the job of being a pediatrician that much more challenging. Jason Turk, a pediatrician in northern Texas told me, is that going to hasten people leaving the practice? Probably. But then he goes on to say this. Now remember,

this is trying to gain, you know, make you feel kind of bad for pediatricians because the big, bad, mean Kennedy and Trump. But listen to this. It says some of these actions are affecting pediatricians vaccine purchasing directly. In its first meeting, for instance, Kennedy's ACE voted to remove recommendations for flu vaccines that contain the preservative thymarisol. Following the council of an anti-vaccine activists, most flu vaccines in the U.S. were already thymarisol free. It doesn't say anything about why they wanted to do that because there's evidence that was creating part of mercury, chronic disease epidemic, and children. You know, we might kind of want to take that out.

But here's the Atlantic saying, but, you know, they're crazy because it wasn't even in vaccines to begin with. Well, let's go to the next sentence because the Atlantic contradicts himself. It says, but Turk in Texas told me that about 70, 70% of his practices supply of flu shots contain the component. Wow. Which. Oh, God.

It was crazy. It's crazy anti-difactors. It's got a thing with dynamo that's already been taken out. Let me get back to my interview with this guy. So how many of your vaccines in your practice or got thymarisol? I don't know, like 70%. Oh, my God. So they try to smooth it out.

This thymarisol, it prevents contamination in multi-dose vials. Oh, of course, that's why we need it. But here's the argument. Switching over to single-dose thymarosol-free vials eats up far more space and refrigerators, forcing his practice to place more frequent orders of fewer, more expensive doses. Oh, my. That's the argument. Oh my God.

Let me just take a moment here for everyone out there. I've been in media for nearly two decades now. I worked for CBS. Many of you have pointed out. I used to work, you know, essentially celebrating farm. I worked on the doctor's television show, the Dr. Phil's show before that. I want to tell you, when you're trying to figure out how good you're doing in an argument or what's going on in the world, I sit and imagine if I had to promote their side.

If I had to go, okay, now what is our talking point this week? What is it we're trying to sell? Well, we're trying to sell, you know, we're going to go with Andy Wakefield's a bad guy. All right, the same thing that hasn't worked for like, you know, the last 30 years. All right, and we're also going to go with autism's always been here, even though you can't find an old person with it. Okay, I'm really, we're running out of, what else? Give you something new. I need something fresh.

I need something fresh. Okay, here it is. If we get rid of thimerosol and we give people choice, we're not going to have enough refrigerator space. What? That's what we're going with? That's my headline. My headline is we've got to, you know, forget about children's health, forget about any danger with the vaccine. I can't worry about that because I don't have a big enough refrigerator.

I suppose they're going to change the Hippocratic oath, right? It's going to just say, do no harm unless you run out of refrigerator space. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I mean, there are, folks, we got them on the ropes. If this is the arguments they're down to, they're all but dead. This is all but over. Okay. Tackling chronic disease and children in refrigerator space. Let's go on. Let's keep going. Maybe this argument gets a little better because, you know, the vaccinators and pediatricians are really having a hard time under HHS Kennedy and these moves.

So it goes on to say this in the Atlantic. It says under Kennedy's leadership, the FDA has also restricted the approvals for COVID shots, while ASIP has substantially softened recommendations for their use, prompting, ready, weak, of scramble, oh gosh, we're big, weeks of scramble for pharmacies, doctors, offices, and patients as they have tried to figure out who is eligible for the shots and whether insurers will cover them. Who else can we charge for this thing? If not children, we can't ruin their lives, so some people we haven't thought of, is there somewhere out there we could get to? Oh wow. Now, so in response, in my opinion, there's a far more dangerous move going on here. We're seeing a literal exiting from the United States

to keep injectors and to keep the status quo in the old science paradigm. This is as radical as it can get. So in the east here, you have the northern U.S. states are forming really what's called the Eastern Alliance in response to federal vaccine limits. That's Reuters. Also in California, have the Western Alliance, Western states issue COVID guidance breaking from the CDC. So they're doing this in the guise of health care. And let's go to that guidance for the COVID shot. This is following out West California's Department of Public Health. And you can see here for the the COVID shot starting with children all six to 23 months. Just start vaccinating. Six months

all the way up to the elderly. Just go. Nothing. No contradictions. No contradictions. Just get these COVID shots in arms. As if it was 2021 in the emergency use authorization just happened. And we were in the middle of a hot pandemic. So that's where we're at. And these simple talking points are they're regurgitating. They're coming back around again. I thought we were done with these. Here's Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzner, and he took to X and he posted this. I mean, this is like 2015 stuff here. He says vaccines are safe and effective. Autism isn't caused by vaccine, and blah, blah, blah,

goes on to say, it's more important than ever to speak plainly, truthfully, and directly and simply because they think you're stupid. And here's Pritzner talking about autism. Take a look. Autism is not caused by vaccines. I want to repeat that so everyone can hear it, and hopefully anybody that's tuning in. Autism is not caused by vaccines.

It's not caused by Tylenol. Contrary to RFK Jr's bigoted evaluation, autistic people are not tragedies. They are students, they are workers, they are neighbors, artists, athletes, and thinkers who strengthen our communities. So let me be clear. Blaming vaccines or medicine for autism is not just wrong.

It's harmful. I want to just jump in on this topic. This is a very wide spectrum, very poorly defined. It has issues. One of them is there are, you know, children that get through that are affected lightly that go on to do great in college and have great lives. But to say it's not a tragedy for the adult that's at home right now. in diapers that lost the ability to speak was saying, I love you, mommy, I love you daddy,

when they were, you know, two years old and then suddenly got vaccinated, and those were the last words we ever really heard. I'm sorry, that is a tragedy. We have robbed them of a voice. We have robbed those children of a life, and they also must be considered, Mr. Pritzker, when we have this conversation.

I also want to point out, through the miracle of spelling to communicate and other things, that's giving these children the ability to come out of this shell and start, you know, using a different set of motor skills to communicate. Those that are communicating to us are saying my body is painful. I'm burning off my body. It's been so frustrating to not be heard. They're locked literally in a prison. For them, I do this work. So do you, so do you, Jeffrey. That is who we're talking about when we are

saying that this is a tragedy. And it's not right to talk about those that have, you know, a situation that is not nearly as dramatic as though those are the poster children for this incredibly debilitating illness that when we find out the cause, clearly it's going to be environmental and it shouldn't be illegal to remove that environmental problem. We're not going to keep imprisoning these poor children. It's just insane. And I get really, I hope I'm expressing the frustration adequately enough for all of those parents that live this every day. that I've met for all of you out there. That is a crime against humanity the way he just used language right there.

Yeah, I mean, you're looking at a dinosaur of public media messaging here. This is the Dark Ages of Medicine, what he's talking about. And let's recap. Vaccines don't cause autism. Autism, great thing. So he wants more of it. It's a great thing. These people are so productive. We want more of them in our society.

And if you question anything, you are causing hate and you are causing harm. And I don't know, we can see where that goes from there. Hate speech laws, harm laws, if you even question, question anything he said. So that I mean it's it's an that argument is so is so 2015, 2010, I don't know.