The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.10 The Ugly Truth About This Human Experimentation Scandal, Organ Transplant Waiting Lists, & Fentanyl

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/phil to get 50% off your first order of Sundays for Dogs! https://BeautifulBastard.com Get 15% off the best tees and hoodies out there with CODE: "PDS15" & select 50% OFF sale items. Subscribe for New shows every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday @ 6pm ET/3pm PST & watch more here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQfrYKwp_qg&list=PLHcsGizlfLMWpSg7i0b9wnUyEZWI-25N3&index=1   – ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ – 00:00 - Medical Company Claimed its Device Could Cure Cancer. Then Patients Started Dying 9:27 - Sponsored by Sundays for Dogs 10:23 - What Hospitals Aren't Telling You About the Money Behind Organ Transplant Waiting Lists 17:38 - Sponsored by Beautiful Bastard 18:25 - Cartels are Poaching College Students to Make Fentanyl Cheaper & More Potent ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Chris Tolve, Star Pralle, Jared Paolino Associate Producer on Exthera: Star Pralle Associate Producer on Organ Procurement: Chris Tolve Associate Producer on Fentanyl: Jared Paolino ———————————— For more Philip DeFranco: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-philip-defranco-show/id1278424954 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ESemquRbz6f8XLVywdZ2V Twitter:   https://x.com/PhillyD Instagram:   https://instagram.com/PhillyDeFranco Newsletter: https://www.dailydip.co TikTok:   https://www.tiktok.com/@philipdefranco?lang=en ———————————— #DeFranco #DonaldTrump #China ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The secrets that the organ procurement industry doesn't want you to know are getting exposed. You've got a medical company now being accused of one of the most disturbing human experimentation scams I've ever heard of. And you've got drug cartels pulling chemistry majors from colleges to make fentanyl easier to synthesize and wildly more potent. We're deep diving into all of that on today's brand new Philip DeFranco show. You daily dive into the news, how it's being covered, and how people are reacting to it, starting with this. We need to talk about a secret offshore clinic, cancer patients desperate for a cure, and a billion-dollar medical experiment with no published proof it even works. Because today we're talking about Xthera,

the startup accused of turning human lives into test subjects. Right, and where I'll start is with two words, human experimentation. Those are the words used by a member of this company's own staff to describe their offshore treatments of cancer patients. And the reason we're learning about this is thanks

to a massive report from the New York Times that was recently published about the startup Xthera and their former partner, the billionaire Alan Kwasha. So you see Xthera, it has exactly one product, a device that works with a dialysis machine to filter blood. And this filter came into being thanks to a military contest. You see back in 2012, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

asked for proposals for new medical devices that could remove pathogens out of blood. With the idea being to have something to deploy in the field to treat soldiers exposed to infections or biological agents. And Xthera, they won that contest with their 3x9 inch transparent cylinder containing more than 20 million tiny beads. And how it works is that the beads are coated in a substance that's similar to the molecule in blood vessels that pathogens bind to. So the blood goes through the device, the beads capture the bad stuff

like pathogens and bacteria, and then the blood is sent back into the body. And so Xthera's filter got the stamp of approval from the EU to treat bloodstream infections in 2019. And then when the pandemic came to the US, it was approved by the FDA for COVID patients on the cusp of respiratory failure. But as the pandemic eased, Xthera ran into a problem. Hospitals had stopped buying their filters. In fact, according to the New York Times, Xthera's sales peaked at a few million dollars and then began to drop. So they start looking for a way to repurpose the filter with one idea being, hey, maybe it could be used to filter out tumor cells in cancer patients' bloodstreams. Because circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, are a big factor in cancer metastasizing or spreading. You know, there were some pretty encouraging signs at first with a German lab study reportedly finding that CTCs were sticking to the beads inside the filter, at least in test tubes. And so Xthera, they took their research further with Dr. Sanja Illic, who would later become

Xthera's chief regulatory officer, meeting with a doctor from Croatia and deciding to test the filter on actual cancer patients. With the Times reporting that this study had 12 patients and became the basis for all of Xthera's promises regarding the efficacy of this filter for treating those with cancer. They also said they reviewed phone recordings from Xthera,

saying that the study yielded extraordinary results. With John Preston and Xthera board member even claiming that three patients had been cured and Dr. Illich saying that another recovered so well from inoperable colon cancer that the patient started training for a marathon. But notably, the Times reports that even the doctor who conducted that study says

it was just too small to draw any reliable conclusions with them even calling it, quote, highly suspicious to describe the filter treatment as effective at such an early point in the research process. And none of the company's claims were reportedly backed up by published data. Now, notably, the FDA has allowed Xthera to test their filters

on five pancreatic cancer patients in Oklahoma, but that is just the first step in a years-long process of clinical trials. And so Xthera, they took things offshore. You see, Preston had a business partner by the name of Alan Quasha, who was interested in becoming Xthera's partner in the Caribbean. And the Times even reporting that Quasha was so impressed with the data from the Croatian study that he invested $3 million

and then created a subsidiary of his investment firm called Quadrant Clinical Care, which paid Xthera another $10 million to become their distributor in the Caribbean. Now, notably, with this, Quadrant made a deal with a clinic on the island of Antigua, where the government had given them the okay to use the Xthera filter on cancer patients, which is something that gave them a chance to rake in crazy amounts of money, with the Times citing a source saying that Quadrant paid Xthera $1,000 per filter, and they needed three filters per treatment cycle. But this also is they were reportedly charging patients $45,000 per cycle. And when Xthera employees rolled up to this clinic in Antigua early last year, some of them got very concerned. For example, Xthera's former director of medical affairs,

Dr. Jonathan Chow, reportedly seeing a lack of modern medical equipment, patients bleeding profusely and screaming in pain, and even heard that patients were forgoing chemotherapy in favor of this treatment. Dr. Chow reportedly voiced these concerns to the higher-ups at Xthera, saying that the company was taking undue risks with patients and subjecting them to human experimentation. He even reportedly called the Antigua Clinic a dubious foreign operation and said that it amounted to an unethical and unsafe experiment on patients

and urged Xthera to shut it down. But as pleased, they went unanswered and Dr. Chow resigned from Xthera. And so with all this, you had the company bringing in patients, roughly two dozen flying to Antigua for treatment and among them was David Hudlow. You see David, he was suffering from late stage esophageal cancer

when he and his wife, Kim, heard about Xthera and their blood filter. And so the Hudlows, along with Jamie Baskin, the wife of another man with metastasized cancer, got Preston on the phone to learn more about this treatment in Antigua. And on this call, Preston reportedly sang the filter's praises, bringing up the study in Croatia,

and saying that by taking out the tumor cells circulating in the blood, the immune system would be able to more effectively fight the tumor itself. And again, this, even though there is no published data to back that theory up. He also reportedly mentioned three patients who had previously gone through the Xthera treatment in Antigua saying the improvement

in how those patients felt was remarkable. With the meeting claiming that one woman was doing so well that she didn't need her pain meds anymore. And you know, with that, it is worth noting here as the Times does that it is illegal to promote a drug or medical device in the US that hasn't been approved by the FDA, which some have said is worth noting here, as the Times does, that it is illegal to promote a drug or medical device in the US that hasn't been approved by the FDA, which some have said is exactly what Preston was doing here.

But with that, Preston says that what he told the Hudlows and Jamie was, quote, true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and took place at the request of the treating physicians. That, even though reportedly there was no doctor involved in setting up this call. You know, after that call with Preston, Kim Hudlow, being a former nurse,

decided to dig a little deeper. So she spoke with Dr. Illich, as well as an oncologist that had previously consulted on her husband's care, who had been referring cases to Antigua. Notably, he has since changed his stance, saying there isn't enough data to determine what's real or otherwise.

But between both doctors' enthusiasm at the time and the phone call with Preston, the Hudlows had some hope, if not for saving David's life, then maybe for prolonging it. So they contacted the president of Quadrant Clinical Care to make the appointment, and they sent the company $45,000 with them,

then flying to Antigua. But then, once they got there, Kim reportedly saw several things that bothered her as a trained nurse. Right, saying the equipment wasn't being sterilized, a patient didn't have a machine monitoring their vitals, the nurses weren't washing their hands. But David, he went through three rounds of filtering,

only to feel weaker and in more pain afterwards. And once the Hudlows got back to Florida, they reportedly saw signs that David's cancer was growing aggressively. He had skin tumors growing on his back, neck, and head, and a test had shown that the amount of cellular tumor DNA in his blood rose by nearly six times over. Not to mention that he was struggling to breathe

and he had to be taken to the ER where they found fluid buildup in the lining of his lungs. And so Kim, you know, she was considering getting David back on chemotherapy, but Preston had warned against it on the call before saying the chemo worked against the filtering process by weakening the immune system.

And so she reportedly called Dr. Ilik Atikstera again, who according to the times told her not to worry about the cellular tumor DNA test results. With it being said that she added David feeling weak was a good thing saying it showed he had quote, "'Strong immune activation.'" Dr. Ilik reportedly told Kim again about the Croatia study and even about a patient that had a similar case to David

who saw his tumor shrink by 60%. She even reportedly said that British doctors had consulted her about the use of filtration for the treatment of Kate Middleton, right? The princess of Wales who she said had colon cancer. Though there, the Times reports that a source denied that. So the Hudlows, they fly back to Antigua for another round of treatments.

You know, David, he's in rough shape and during the second round of filtration, his pulse reportedly jumped way up and he started gasping for breath. The men reportedly transferred to the small ICU at the clinic where he got a blood transfusion and spent three nights on intermittent oxygen. Just five days after the Hudlows arrived,

the doctor of the clinic told Kim that David was dying. And he recommended that they get on the same commercial flight that he would be on the next day, headed to Florida. Saying if David was struggling to breathe on board, the doctor would declare a medical emergency and pull down the oxygen mask. But Kim reportedly dismissed that idea, instead trying to get an air ambulance from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville.

They couldn't accept an international transfer, and so she begged the clinic in Antigua to sell her a few oxygen tanks and then search to find a charter jet that would fly them back to the States with the tanks on board. When they eventually landed in Jacksonville, Kim reportedly rushed David to the Mayo Clinic

where they reportedly admitted him within five minutes of their arrival. Doctors draining more fluid from his lungs and they found that the tumors in his liver, adrenal glands, bones, and soft tissue had multiplied and grown. There wasn't anything they could do and David died days later.

And looking back on it, you have Kim telling the Times that she believes that the filtration treatments accelerated his cancer's progression and made his end of life so much worse than it had to be. And notably, David Hudlow is just one example that the Times gave saying that they identified at least six patients who died of the 20 plus

who were treated in Antigua, with at least two other wives echoing Kim Hudlow's opinion that the filtration treatments supercharged their husband's cancer. So there, you have Quadrant's president saying the company, quote, has no reason to believe that the therapy had a negative impact on any patient's health. With them saying that many of the patients they've treated

were terminally ill before coming to them and adding that the perceptions of grieving family members, quote, are simply not reliable when compared to sound medical review and judgment of their care. But with that, it is worth noting that after the Times sent them a big list of questions, Xthera told them that it had since split from Quadrant,

though they reportedly didn't give any specific reason. And Quadrant is reportedly continuing to treat patients in Antigua with the Xthera filter and has several thousand in storage on the island. With this saying, Alan Quasha saying that the mutual decision to split ways, quote, had nothing to do with our belief in the efficacy of the filter treatment. And this is Xthera posted a statement in response to the New York Times piece calling it a misleading picture and saying that they refute the characterization of their company. Also noting that neither John Preston nor Dr. Illich work for the company anymore.

But ultimately for now, that's where we're at. And there's just a lot of unanswered questions here. So we're gonna have to keep an eye on it. And just maybe we'll get more information as more eyeballs turn to Xthera and Quadrants Clinic in Antigua though. For now, in the meantime, I'll just pass the question off to you.

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and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. So then next up, I've got some good news and some bad news for you. So the good news is that for the first time ever, the United States reportedly transplanted more than 48,000 organs last year. For a country with over 100,000 organs last year.

For a country with over 100,000 people perpetually on the waiting list is laudable, though there's still a lot of room for improvement. But then also the bad news is we're not totally sure all those organs went to the right people. And no, I'm not talking about a guy who was supposed to get a kidney, get in a heart or some weird Frankenstein shit,

but rather we're looking at why now more than ever, the people at the front of the line for an organ get skipped in favor of someone hundreds or even thousands of spots further back. We're in a practice which, if this New York Times investigation is correct, could completely undermine the trust and fairness at the heart of the entire organ transplant system. You know, to really get a handle on this, we need to understand how the system is supposed to work and then how it actually works. So yeah, buckle up. So the first thing you need to know is that everything is managed by a network of non-profit organ procurement organizations. There are 55 of them

across the country with at least one in every state, and they get government contracts to identify donors, procure those person's organs, and match those organs with patients, with federal rules strictly mandating that they prioritize the patients who need organs most. But the way that they determine that is a little more fluid than you might assume, because there's actually no single waiting list, even for a particular type of organ. Instead, every time an individual organ becomes available, a new unique list is generated specifically for that. Because you've got to take the whole registry,

then cut off anyone with disqualifying medical or paperwork issues. Then you cut off anyone with incompatible blood types using an algorithm, and then you narrow down the patients with other matching traits such as height and weight. And finally, you begin ranking them, prioritizing those who are sicker,

have been waiting longer and are nearby, among other factors. And then once you've got the list in hand, you're supposed to offer the organ to the doctor for the first patient on the list. Thing is there, that doctor doesn't have to accept the organ, right? If they believe it may not be a good match

because of the patient's age or the organ size or a whole host of other reasons, they can decline the offer. And so then you're supposed to go to the doctor for the second patient in line, and then the third, and then the fourth, and all the way down until you get someone who takes the organ.

And traditionally, procurement organizations would follow this process pretty faithfully, only breaking from it as a last resort to avoid wasting an organ. Because with kidneys in particular, recipients aren't identified until after the organ is removed. You know, the more time you spend calling up doctors

and organizing transport, the longer the organ is sitting outside of the body, nearing its expiration date. So occasionally, organs would go to waste, and for a long time, that was just considered a price worth paying for a fair and just system. But then, in 2020, procurement organizations came under fire from Congress and regulators for wasting too many organs, with federal officials at the time moving to begin grading each organization and firing the worst performers. And so with a kick in the ass, these organizations assigned more staff to hospitals to identify donors, get more aggressive with families,

and recovered more organs from older or sicker donors. But also, according to the Times, they started taking that list a little less seriously. So instead of calling 10 or 11 doctors before giving up to pick random numbers, they might just try two or three. Right, and then after that, they make what's called an open offer. Basically, they just pick a hospital, usually one nearby, and they say, hey, here's the organ. No questions asked. Now you

choose which patient to give it to. That way, they show the organs out of the door quicker and the hospital gets to give one to the patient most likely to survive the transplant. Now with that, according to the Times, procurement organizations only use this method in about 2% of cases historically. But now you have the outlet finding that virtually all of them do it at least 10% of the time and a few do it more than 30%. With the national average last year for transplants from deceased donors reportedly coming in at just below 20%, which is six times as often as a few years ago. So what used to be a last resort and exception, it's become common practice. You have the Times reporting that United Network for Organ Sharing and the Peer Review Committee, who are both supposed to examine open offers to make sure they're legitimate, they're actually too overwhelmed to examine each case closely.

So the result is that many more organs go to recipients who are less sick, have not been waiting nearly as long, and in some cases aren't even on the list at all. With more than 1,200 people dying over the past five years after they got close to the top of a waiting list, but were skipped according to the times. Which of course, you know, that doesn't mean that all of them would have gotten those organs if they'd been offered them, nor does it mean that they all would have survived had they gotten the transplants or that other people who did get the organs weren't saved. But it does mean that they never got the chance that they were promised by a supposedly fair and impartial system, a chance that they had been waiting for after months or years. Now with this, if you ask the procurement orgs, they'll argue that they're wasting fewer organs,

performing more transplants, and still sticking to the list whenever they can. And they say that in many of these cases, they only resort to open offers when the clock is ticking down and they practically have no other options. But this is, the Times suggested, another motive that could be responsible, and it's a familiar one, money. Because matching donors with recipients, it is a lot of work, and you know, ain't nobody got time for this. So in 2021, for example, the procurement org in South Carolina phased out its allocation team and gave their duties to other employees already busy with their own regular work. Which of course cut down on staffing costs, but it also meant that the job of allocating

organs, it wasn't getting the same dedicated attention it had before. So to streamline the process, executives reportedly created a spreadsheet with preferred doctor's phone numbers. And then if the employees were too busy, they could just make open offers to those doctors instead of following the list according to several of them. And of course, the more organs they get in the hands of doctors, the more money they get in fees from recipient hospitals. So skipping the list, it both costs less and makes more. And if you're the hospital, you want to get open offers because that means you don't have to compete with

anyone else for organs. So you have the Times documenting several ways that hospitals work to curry favor with procurement officials. With one doctor saying his boss had visited every organization on the East Coast. Another saying his hospital had agreed to accept lower quality organs. And he had an administrator adding that she had negotiated overpayments for organ transport. And then if you look at the Ohio org that reportedly skipped the list the most over the past two years, the same shit rises to the surface. With 10 current or former employees telling the outlet that it steers organs to the Cleveland Clinic, which is a prestigious nearby hospital. And this reportedly only happening after the org hired senior leaders who had worked at the clinic and signed a contract paying the hospital for medical advisors. And so now, according to the Times, hospitals expect this kind of stuff with at least 16 quietly creating so-called hot lists

of patients to call when they get open offers. And we know from the data that open offers tend to put organs in very different kinds of bodies than the traditional waiting list does. So, for example, they seem to generally go to healthier patients who don't need transplants as desperately. For example, less than 40% of hearts that were donated by skipping the line reportedly going to patients sick enough to be hospitalized in recent years. Compared to 80% or double that for the overall rate, which I don't make sense because, I mean, hospitals are incentivized to prefer their healthier patients because that brings their post-transplant survival rate up, which then puts them in the good graces of insurance companies and the government. Also, when you put the decision-making power in the hands of hospitals,

that arguably introduces greater room for implicit or explicit bias. And so another thing that the Times found is that when lists are ignored, organs disproportionately go to patients who are white, Asian, male, college graduates, and candidates at larger hospitals. And then for all of that,

there's not even evidence that fewer organs are actually being wasted. At least not according to a group of doctors and researchers asked by the transplant system last year to study the practice whose report was never released. In fact, if anything, the rate of organs being discarded appears to have increased. Or while list skipping has risen from 1% to nearly 20%,

organ waste has also risen from 19% to 22%. And so with this, you have critics saying, it's unclear exactly what we're gaining by skipping the list, but it is very clear what we lose aside from fair outcomes, and that is trust. And so the argument goes that if people do not trust the system, they'll be less inclined to donate to it, and that means fewer organs for everyone.

You know, with all that said, if you work in this field, you are a patient, you're on the list, you know anyone that's involved in this world, or you're just someone with an opinion, I'd love to know your thoughts and reactions to this news. And then I've got some more wild news that we need to talk about in just a moment. But first, I gotta sponsor myself.

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and it starts with a question, and that is, is America's fentanyl crisis finally getting better? Or is it actually just about to get a whole lot worse? Because while overdose deaths have been dropping in the United States, cartel recruited chemists are reportedly working in clandestine mountainside drug labs to reverse the progress

that's been made. And that is actually a good place to start, right? Let's talk about how fentanyl is made, which also with that, I'll say, you can put the pen and paper away. This is not a tutorial, because all I'm gonna tell you and all you really need to know here is that fentanyl trade hinges on the availability of chemical compounds known as precursors. If you got those, fentanyl is pretty straightforward to produce.

But especially when you compare it to something like methamphetamine, for example, which requires advanced equipment and expertise to manufacture at scale. When the Sinaloa cartel began mass producing fentanyl about a decade ago, for example, it reportedly relied on uneducated workers from the countryside. These people didn't need to know chemistry, they just need to be able to follow a recipe. And in fact, we even had one of these so-called cooks who was reportedly 12 years old when he dropped out of school to take up the trade telling Reuters,

it's like making chicken soup. It's mega easy making that drug. And with all that, China has been the dominant source of chemical precursors used by Mexican cartels. The Chinese money launderer is becoming key players in the international drug trade. And it's believed by many

that the Chinese government at the very least turns a blind eye to this illegal activity. And the growing consensus here among many Republicans is that Beijing has actually exploited or even engineered the fentanyl crisis. So with that, you've had the Biden administration on the other hand saying,

there is no evidence that China is directly involved in the large scale exports of illicit fentanyl precursors. But either way, right? Getting your hands on precursors, it's historically been pretty easy. With for example, a Reuters investigation last year, finding that anyone with a mailbox, an internet connection and digital currency

can get their hands on everything that you need to make a deadly dose of fentanyl. In fact, for less than $4,000, they obtained enough material to make $3 million worth of fentanyl. With that also reportedly being a conservative estimate based on prices cited by American law enforcement agencies. Which on the note of fentanyl,

if you have no idea of like how deadly and intense it is, it has been described as 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. So unsurprisingly, it is responsible for the vast majority of overdose deaths in America. In fact, fentanyl reportedly kills more Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 than anything else. But notably, the numbers there have started to shift with a seeing, for example, between July of 2023 and July of 2024, overall overdose deaths declined by about 17% nationwide. But don't get me wrong with that. We are still talking about almost 100,000 deaths.

Of course, with those numbers, we're still waiting to see whether that decline is just a blip or the beginning of a sustained long-term trend. But still seeing that kind of drop off in fatalities, I mean, it's inspired a lot of hope that something that we're doing has been working. Or you have experts right now

citing the widespread availability of naloxone, new and improved treatment programs, and increased awareness about the risks. But then you also have people saying it's a supply side issue. For China, for example, they've moved to restrict the export of fentanyl precursors, though of course you have critics saying they're not doing as much as they could. But then also Mexico has cracked down on chemical imports as well, plus the COVID-19 pandemic slowed supply chains and made those ingredients harder to find. And so with all that, according to some analysts and experts,

the data indicates a major disruption in the fentanyl supply chain, with notably some saying international pressure on Chinese companies that make fentanyl precursor chemicals may be a factor there. And then, also possibly related to all that is Mexican drug cartels are reportedly mixing weaker batches of fentanyl.

With, for instance, us seeing in 2023, seven out of 10 counterfeit pills tested in DEA labs contained a life-threatening amount of fentanyl. But in 2024, that number dropped to 5 out of 10. Though those cartels, they are reportedly working to remedy that. With reporting from the New York Times, for example, revealing how Mexican criminal groups are recruiting chemistry students studying at Mexican universities to help them with two main goals. One, working to make the drug stronger and get more people hooked. And two, figuring out how to synthesize precursors, thereby freeing them from having to import those raw materials from China.

And if they succeed there, American officials say that it would represent a new terrifying phase in the fentanyl crisis. They're saying that it would make it more difficult for law enforcement in both countries to stop the industrialized production of synthetic opioids in Mexico. With the seeing Todd Robinson,

head of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs under Biden, noting that cartels, quote, know we are now focused on the illicit trafficking of these precursor chemicals around the world. With them then adding that those efforts are driving cartels to try to bring this thing in-house. And finally saying here, the practical result of that is their ability to more easily and quickly transfer those drugs to the United States. Which, I mean, talking about that, this is not a completely new phenomenon.

For example, in 2020, a hacker group leaked a Mexican intelligence assessment finding that the Sinaloa cartel appear to be recruiting chemistry professors. The aim there being to develop fentanyl precursor chemicals after the pandemic slowed supply chains. With even students now in the mix, the effort may very well be ramping up. For example, one chemistry professor telling the Times

that students have been enrolling in chemistry classes just to become more familiar with skills needed to cook synthetic drugs. And apparently with that, subtlety is not one of their strongest attributes. With the professor saying, sometimes when I am teaching them synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs, they openly ask me,

hey professor, when are you teaching us how to synthesize cocaine and other things? As far as why they may be interested, you had a cartel recruiter telling the Times that if he finds someone particularly promising, he might offer to cover the student's tuition costs, saying, we are a company. What a company does is invest in their best people.

And with that, tuition reimbursement or not, the work pays way more than many legal jobs in chemistry. For example, one second year student had chosen to study chemistry because his father had cancer and he wanted to help find a cure. But in the meantime, the treatment that his father needed was impossible for the family to afford.

That is until the recruiter visited campus and offered him $800 upfront, plus a monthly salary of $800. Which depending on where you're watching from, that may sound like so little money, but that is twice as much as the average pay for chemists formerly employed in Mexico. So of course, this guy with his dad dying of cancer,

he said he was interested. With him then saying five days later, he was picked up by cartel members, blindfolded, and driven to a clandestine lab hidden in the mountains. And after three days of work, he said that one of the men in charge told him that he wasn't there to make fentanyl, stancing that he was the newest member of a research and development lab where everyone was working to figure out how to make precursors from scratch.

And this is notably that student said that he found himself working with three other students from his class. And the student also described a cartel boss recently visiting the lab to praise his work and telling him that if he was able to produce precursors successfully, the group then give him a house or a car, whatever he wanted. With that, the recruiter and all three students interviewed by the time said they hadn't successfully produced precursors successfully? The group then give him a house or a car, whatever he wanted. But with that, the recruiter and all three students interviewed by the Times said they hadn't successfully produced precursors yet. But the 21-year-old who had dropped out of school to work for the cartel saying, we are close, but it's not easy. Saying we need to keep doing tests and more tests. Also, notably, while the precursors are still coming along, the recruiter said that the students have been helpful in one key respect, making the fentanyl even more potent. And so with that, these developments aren't only worrying for what they might mean for the progress made on fentanyl in the respect, making the fentanyl even more potent. And so with that, these developments aren't only worrying

for what they might mean for the progress made on fentanyl in the US, you know, also that they could make this drug more available elsewhere. Or when you look at the situation with Mexico, for example, it's already dealing with a meth issue. And notably, like fentanyl, meth started as a US-bound product,

but transformed into a domestic drug problem over the last decade. So now you have many fearing that the use of fentanyl, it's gonna follow the same trajectory. And the fear does appear to be warranted. In fact, I mean, a Reuters investigation even found that fentanyl use is already spreading deeper into Mexico. Although I will say the scale of consumption is unclear thanks to a lack of data and testing. But then also beyond that, you've had European officials on alert about fentanyl becoming an issue over there as well.

So for me personally, it feels like a situation that it feels like it's obviously going to get worse. But of course I could be wrong and we're gonna have to wait to see what happens from here. But in the meantime, of course, I gotta pass the question off to you. Not only what are your thoughts with the situation, but if you or someone you know has experienced something with fentanyl,

whether knowingly or unknowingly and the impacts it's had, I'd love to hear from you in those comments down below. Because of course, yes, this is a news show, but I also want it to be a conversation. But that my friends is the end of your Thursday evening, Friday morning deep dive into some news. And if you haven't watched all four episodes this week, I highly recommend it. We put a lot of time into it. I'll have links in the description so you can get to each episode. And then of course, looking forward, next week, the Philip DeFranco Show will be back to your regular normal thing.

Rebreaking and or daily news is a way for me to still get out stuff that I think is very, very important, but also have a little break. I promised my wife this time I would not spend half of the vacation in the hotel room shooting the shows. With that said, thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I love your faces and I'll see you right back here on Monday.