Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 476 - Zoonotic Metastases

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

Dr Steve and Dr Scott discuss taskforceargo.com with PA Lydia, who is dedicated to helping evacuate citizens, permanent residents, allies, and their families in Afghanistan. Also the weirdest cancer story ever, cool acupuncture diagnostic techniques, where the legends of the Undead originated, and more. [we've had some issues with audio levels being too low; let me know if this episode is easier to listen to!] Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) Get Every Podcast on a Thumb Drive ($30 gets them all!) simplyherbals.net (for all your StressLess and FatigueReprieve needs!) BACKPAIN.DOCTORSTEVE.COM – (Back Pain? Check it out! Talk to your provider about it!) Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap!) feals.com/fluid (try the new FEALS MINTS!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why did the pharmaceutical cross the road? To get to the other side effect. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Your show is better when you had medical questions.

Hey! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir, stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and glassed with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave.

I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed Then I'll have to go insane I want a requiem for my disease So I'm paging Dr. Steve It's weird medicine

The first and still only uncensored medical show In the history of broadcast radio now a podcast I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott Traditional Chinese medical practitioner Who gives me street crap With the wacko alternative medicine assholes Hello, Dr. Scott Hey, Doc Steve

And we also have in the studio, P.A. Lydia We're going to talk to her. heard a little bit about the Project Argo. Cask Force Argon. God, dang it. I get it wrong every time. This is a show for people

who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. Or if you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call 347-76-4-3-23. That's 347. Pooh-Head.

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F-L-U-I-D for 33% off, the best earbuds on the market for the price and the best customer service anywhere. And check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net. So, PA, Lydia, did you notice? I said physician assistant, not physician's assistant. I did. Thank you for not being possesses.

Were you delighted by that? I was impressed and delighted. I said it wrong. If we just read the bio for the... Oh, we had a... Oh, sorry, Sid. I had a... My partner who started the show with me was a PA, P.A.

P.A. John. And I said physician's assistant for years. And he never said a word after he left and became BM John. He became a brewmaster. Then he'd been gone for some time. And one of our listeners called and said, wife got mad every time she listened to the show because I said a physician's assistant. So, yeah, so I learned my lesson on it.

So you can teach an old dog new tricks. So anyway, so yes, so welcome physician assistant, Lydia. And don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. So Lydia, before we get into the hilarity, that is our Halloween edition of the show. Let's talk a little bit about why you're here. And so we got talking, I don't even, how in the hell did we start talking about this? You sort of reached out to me about this and this is something I'm actually very interested in. Yeah. So I actually reached out to you because I was trying to get to Joe Rogan. Oh, that's what it was. Yes. Yes. Yes. Other than the fact that you were at perhaps

one time in radio. Right, right, right. And so ultimately, I was given your clearance to learn about your radio show. And thank you very much for having me here. Yeah, just keep it on the DL. Absolutely, absolutely. Because what I do is if someone at work finds out about this or if I need to tell them about it, the first thing I do is have them come on the show, so they've got as much to lose as I do.

Well, we're even. So, but anyway, yeah. So, yes, you knew I used to have. a connection with Joe Rogan, and I haven't talked to Joe in ages. He used to have my phone number when we went to see him in Asheville. He called me to see if I got the free tickets that he didn't leave for us at the will-call office, which was hilarious. I said, you know, we were sitting in our seats. Thank God I had bought tickets.

And then he called me, and he's like, you know, Steve, did you get the tickets I left for you? And it's like, what tickets? They didn't know. They looked at me like I was an idiot. And he, well, you know, Joe's a stoner. So he just, you know, whatever. Might have been his prank for you. Yeah, maybe, maybe.

It was quite funny. But, yeah, since he went to Spotify and then we just kind of haven't talked to each other in a while. But I do still every once in a while I have a connection with Brian Red Band, who is, I don't want this to be. turned into a hostile workplace kind of situation since we do work together. But he knows that I am an expert on the science behind female ejaculation. Oh, wait. That's the wrong job. No, I wanted this one.

So, and this keeps coming up, whether it's urine or is it something else. And I've done the science on it, and I've discussed it on multiple radio. shows and stuff. And whenever it comes up again in the news, Brian Redband will say Dr. Steve covered this ages ago, which is cool. It's really cool of him to do that. So, but anyway, so what you were interested in talking to him about is something he should talk to you about. And it's this thing, Task Force Argo. So most people have seen the movie Argo, which I'm assuming that's where this got its name. So just tell us a little bit about Task Force Argo and your involvement in it.

Yeah, so I guess everyone hopefully is aware, or at least was aware at one time when it was in the media about Afghanistan and the Taliban taken back over. Yeah, you just stole one of the jokes I was going to have as what I thought it was over, right? Yeah. Everybody's gone. I thought this was taken care of. We've been told at least by the media isn't covering it anymore that there were people left in Afghanistan. I'm shocked, shocked. I know.

I think around August 31st, there were supposed to be less than more. 100, but. What's the real number? Oh, hundreds. I mean, I personally know of about 70 U.S. citizens and green card holders. Okay. So we're not talking tens of thousands of people. Not that that, I'm not trying to minimize anything, but we're talking, we're down into the hundreds to low thousands at this point? I would say that. Okay. Okay. So that's a good place to start. We don't want to leave anybody behind. So tell us, tell us about this. Sorry, I keep interrupting. And so it's a completely volunteer effort, a great mix of veterans, people in the intelligence community, law enforcement folk, who have essentially started a digital Dun Kirk, you know, where we're evacuating people through our computers and through our cell phones. Okay.

So we have this huge network where we're able to connect 24-7 on messaging apps and arrange these gigantic evacuations. You know, we arrange mass transit of people between cities. How? Can you say or should you not say? So it's a collaboration between people who are on the ground in Afghanistan and people in America. Yeah, so there's funding involved and then ultimately we're able to connect with all of our refugees or the people who need evacuation. So whether they're U.S. citizens, green card holders, their families, or allies. So people who have worked with the United States government and are now at risk for being beheaded by the Taliban.

So, you know, the lay volunteers, which there are about 200, well, 160 of us in Argo right now are in constant communication with the families or the people who need to be evacuated. And then our leaders are able to arrange different transit and housing. Are you all chartering the planes and stuff too? We are. Yeah. So we work through an airline, achieve funding, which has been the most difficult thing of late, because we do not get any help from that from the State Department for various reasons. So once we achieve the funding, we are able to coordinate efforts through the airline company. And we have all of the people's documents. We put them on a manifest. That manifest was already vetted by us, so we know we're not bringing terrorists to outside of Afghanistan. And then that's sent to the State Department for final clearance.

And then they're evacuated to a lily pad country for further processing. Okay. So do you have planes on the ground in Afghanistan or they have to get across the border somehow to then get flown out? It is. So we primarily partner with an airline company that will land in Afghanistan. And so we fly out of Afghanistan to another country. Wow. Incredible.

Yeah. It's pretty bizarre. How'd you get involved in this? I saw a Facebook post, right, at a time when a ton of veterans, like I knew a veteran who actually committed suicide over this, who had spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and knew that the people that he worked with, whose interpreters, were being beheaded and had essentially no hope that the U.S. government would honor the promise to get them out for many reasons, right? It's perhaps not all malicious. Yeah, well, I'm assuming it's not malicious. just there are other words for it. Yeah.

So anyway, I saw a post saying, hey, if anyone need or if anyone could give a little time and help with some paperwork for Afghans who need to get out or U.S. citizens who need to get out, you know, send a signal to this number. And I had no idea what signal was, so I just texted the number and said, this is a signal that I am here to help, right? Signal being the secure app. Yeah. Yeah, which, you know, there are various apps that are utilized.

So anyway, I ultimately figured out what encrypted apps were, and now I'm in this world. So I got in and I very quickly realized that these people are in communication with people at the Kabul airport who are trying to get through gates and being beaten and tear gassed by the Taliban, U.S. citizens. And so quickly realized this is not paperwork. Yeah, and not just, it's not playtime. No, no. I mean, you're committing to something that's real. Absolutely, and I think there are four of us civilians in the group right now. There might be a couple more, but at the time I was one of the only civilians,

or at least someone who was not married to someone in the military. So the mill speak or military speak is really fascinating to me. Yeah, lots of acronyms and stuff. Yeah, they very kindly explained to them. So now I would really like to just use the word copy and Roger and Wilco in everyday life, but I can only do that in my accepting message. Yeah, I assumed you were a veteran when I first heard you talking about this. No.

Because you have picked up some of that. A lot of it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's 24-7. Yeah. Wow. So then I quickly got a family of my own to shepherd or be a handler for. And after a series of very crazy setbacks was eventually able to get he and his family to to another country.

They're in Abu Dhabi right now. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well done. Give you one of those. Yeah, it's, I mean, we're talking about real human beings. Sure. And it's, you think of, it's just hard to imagine. We, in this country, we have no idea.

And the thing is, what's scary to me, and it's because we were there, what, 20 some years, right? Yeah, 20 years. There are people that were born there that are now 20 years old that have never known anything different than what they had. And now this is a big shock. Oh, yeah. And, you know, that's most of the people are pretty young that are getting out, or that are trying to get out. So, I mean, these are people having babies. We've had several women have babies during this where we're arranging their medical care and sending midwives over.

And at the same time, you know, that first family that I mentioned, they had a two-week-old son with Bullis and Patigo. And I'm trying to tell him, hey, I need you to get on this mode of transportation, go over some mountains, and go sit in a place that is unfamiliar to you for two weeks in one room until I can get you out. Yeah. And get your baby formula. And you're doing this directly. Yeah. It's not like you're just raising money and they funneling it and somebody else's doing this stuff. I'm chatting with them.

They call my cell phone text constantly. You know, when I have to tell them, sorry, the plane's not going to take off today because of some problem with the Taliban. Talban's fighting one another. And, you know, we have to delay a whole other day. Go back to the family and say, I'm sorry, you have to stay in this room another day.

You know, we'll try to keep you safe another day. And they say, God, maybe this is our fate. Sorry. No, it's okay. No, it's okay. This is the real deal. Yeah. And it's not just the Taliban,

And, of course, it's, you know, he got ISIS K. Sure. Yeah. So it's very interesting. Poverty. There was a two-year-old that recently starved to death where our team member just had no idea that the family was hungry. And so there's a big initiative right now to support getting blankets for people. We're constantly trying to find safe houses because the Taliban does frequent raids throughout all the districts and looks for anyone with any involvement.

or ties to America. And if they find that, it is not good. Yeah. So when do we know that the job is done? Well, that's a little bit difficult, right? Because we can't get everyone out of Afghanistan. Can we not? That would be nice.

Apparently not. Okay. You know, there are a finite number of people who qualify for the special immigrant visas. There are a finite number of relatives of American citizens. So we are hopeful. that there would be some end point. Yeah. Okay.

So if people want to help with this, let's say they don't necessarily want to be on WIC or texting with somebody trying to get them out, but they want to help. Yeah. You know, what do they do? So first thing, we just started trying to get some support for after people get out. So we're trying to build up some immigration attorneys. So feel free to contact taskforce argo.com.

There's a contact page there. or contact link there if you'd be willing to help with some of these families and then the second would be certainly to donate because all of the funds you know it goes through a 501

what is it 501 3C or something one of those things for financial people anyway tax deductible but all of the funds go specifically to getting to supporting our allies and American citizens

keeping them safe until we can get them so no one's on salary no it's completely volunteer Here, this is the worst job I've ever had. No, that's good. You know, if you have a cause where, you know, 20% is going somewhere and the rest is going to salaries and those kinds of things, you're less inclined to donate. Scott, can you put up the screen that has Lydia's information on it? I think it's the regular two shot for the people who are watching live.

But, yeah, so, www. Taskforce Argo.com. Taskforce Argo.com. And I guess you can just donate money. Sure. If that's your thing. If that's your thing, you can donate energy. And you can actually get involved, too.

I mean, are they looking for mundane to actually help? Mainly looking for immigration attorneys interested in pro bono work. All right now. Yep. Not really. We have a lot of very good volunteers, and it takes a while to train, and I think we're okay on that right now. Okay. All right. Cool. All right. Awesome. What else you want to say about it? You said you had a hilarious story. I mean, it's funny now. It might have made me like. Put on your laughing caps. I think I was going to, like, die at the time. So back when I was a newbie at this in August, We were, you know, I had this first family, and several people had been doing it for a couple of weeks, but I was very nervous.

And so I have this guy, this newborn baby that's got Bullis and Patigo. The mom isn't producing milk. Tell people what Bullis and Patago. So he essentially had a staff infection in his groin and these huge abscesses. Newborn baby, you know, there's a little bit of a stigma even in America about breastfeeding and the mom wasn't able to breastfeed. and so I was convincing him, hey, your kid's not gaining weight at this point. Like, you got to go get some formula. And fortunately, he did.

You know, I just explained to him, man, not every woman can breastfeed. Yeah. So a little bit taboo to talk to talk with him about his wife breastfeeding, but we did it. Yeah. Anyway, so just a difficult kind of situation, and he was very scared to leave because I was asking him to travel to a faraway city and essentially wait somewhere for a plane that we may or may not have, you know, but also if he were, if Taliban came to knock on his door, he would be a goner, right? So anyway, I finally convinced him to go and then unfortunately there was no seat on the bus for him.

So I had to say, God, I'm really sorry, but you waited too long. You know, we can't take you right now. Then a bus seat finally opened up, right? So I'm like, okay, you got to get your wife, get your baby, and get out of there. So someone is telling you how many seats are on this bus? Yeah, we have a list for everything. Okay. And, you know, you send out a pass-

It's really well-organized. It's extremely well-organized. I mean, these women... Because that's the only way to do it out of ways then. And men, we call them the Holy Trinity at the top or the mean women. They're like these three women that run the show. There are some guys, too. But anyway, they're so organized.

So they give us the pass codes and the GPS coordinates to share with everyone. So, anyway, I finally tell him, hey, dude, you're in luck. You got, you got, like, a seat on this bus. Yeah. Get there. Yeah, he had to pass, like, 12 Taliban checkpoints to get from his house to the bus. And so he's like, okay, I'm going, I'm going. Then he goes radio silent for, like, two freaking hours.

Two hours. So the buses, with 500 people in them, are waiting and waiting. Finally, they have to leave. He's never, he's never there. So three hours later, he comes on. he says Lydia, I'm so sorry. As soon as I left, my mom, who the mom didn't want him to go, the mom was flipping out, my mom had a heart attack. Oh my goodness. Bullshit. Oh, really? So anyway. I was just going to say, yeah, this is a hilarious story. Yeah. So it's a little bit

like dark humor, right? So he's like, my mom, my sister called me, my mom had a heart attack. I had to take her to the hospital. Fortunately, the doctor said everything's fun. I'm like, yeah. that's great he's like well when can I go like yeah that was your trip dude oh that was that was your trip yeah fortunately a few weeks later we were able to to actually get him and get him out he just needed it's a roller coaster he was the most unlucky dude yeah yeah well he just needed to I guess either see you guys if you guys were serious or just get his his courage up well and that you know that's the thing it's impossible for us to know way how No one in this country can imagine what that would be like.

Yeah, and that's difficult, too, with, you know, talking about the State Department, who the State Department is evacuating people, right? But they're not taking the family. They're not taking the parents. And in the Afghan culture, the family unit, the immediate family includes the parents and the siblings. And in American culture, we're kind of like, well, you know. Yeah, see you granny. Bye.

Wife and kids. Hello. Well, there goes old papa. Exactly. He's old anyway. The hell with him. He's old anyhow. Exactly.

It's not as easy for them just pick up and leave their mom. Yeah. You know who may be sick. So good thing about Argo is we take the parents and the siblings and consider them immediate family. Okay. Awesome. So projectargo.com. Taskforce Argo.

God, again with the Project Argo. Keeping me on my toes. Yeah. www. Atcforceargo.com. All right. Check them out. Thank you.

All right. Very good. Thank you. Well, you know, you came. during our Halloween episode but I just got this tweet and I didn't see this. This is from September. Colin Quinn

tweeted out I got COVID again, vaccinated twice and had COVID last Thanksgiving. No symptoms, but tested positive. Apologized to anyone that came near me this week and then he at tweeted the Comedy Cellar USA

and of course like all of Colin tweets he got 86 retweets, 20 quote retweets. tweets and the 1,200 likes. And so somebody sent that to me and said, surprised. And it's like, no, I'm not surprised. I mean, the same thing happened to me.

I got vaccinated twice. I was in the Pfizer trial. I got almost a year to the day when I got COVID. And then I got COVID. I got the antibodies and I'm fine. I didn't die. My partner, who I'm doing a video with, by the way, to promote monoclonal antibodies and early remdesivir and molenupyrovir, which are, you know, treatments that we

give people early, two of them not fully approved yet, but the one certainly is. But with my partner in, you know, at the hospital, she is half my age, has a autoimmune disorder. her primary care didn't think to send her for the monoclonal antibody she's still screwed up she got it around the same time I did we didn't get it from each other she actually had it before I did but I know where I got it from and I was fully PPE'd up so that's not 100% either nothing is 100% by the way if everybody just that's a great statement right nothing nothing is 100% yeah not even that statement but I had lost humeral immunity. So humeral immunity is antibodies. And when those wane, you're more likely to catch

the virus to be infected. But the cellular immunity never goes away. So I had B cells. Colin Quinn had B cells and T cells. And you notice he had an asymptomatic infection. He's, you know, around our age. He's probably younger than me a little bit, I guess. I don't know. Look up how old Colin Quinn is. Well, you know what? Hell with that. Let's ask Echo. Echo. How old is Colin Quinn? Colin Quinn is 62 years old. Okay, so he's older than you, but younger than me.

Yes. And, you know, he had a completely asymptomatic infection. I just probably found it because he had to do a swab for this, that, or the other. So that's the value of cellular immunity. But, yeah, we know that coronavirus antibodies, for whatever reason, fade over time. That's why you can get colds over and over and over again because a lot of them are coronaviruses. Yep. So one thing that's going to be interesting going down the pike is now that we're testing for coronavirus,

because we never did before. We didn't give a shit. We estimated about 10,000 people every year died from coronavirus infections, but they, They were just listed as atypical pneumonia or viral pneumonia. And nobody ever tested to see what it was. Now they're going to, and we'll get to see how much of a villain the quote-unquote good coronaviruses are. Yeah, I actually had a patient who had undergone a bone marrow transplant. And this was just at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and us really being able to test for it at the hospital.

You know, we do that 21 viral respiratory panel where we check for the 21 most common viruses. that could cause a problem. And so, anyway, I had a patient with a viral myocarditis that was a different coronavirus. Okay, tell me what myocarditis is. Inflammation of the heart muscle. There you go. Yeah, so a young lady with chest pain. Give yourself a bill.

Yeah, a young lady with chest pain and a runny nose. So anyway, very interesting. Fortunately, she survived. Yeah. Good. You know, respiratory sensicial virus is one that causes colds in adults. and it almost, well, there was the potential for it to kill my kid. He got it when he was five days old, had a temp of 105 as a five-day old.

But, and we're just all over the place today, his life and his lungs were saved because a lot of kids that get at that young have asthma later on or they have pulmonary problems, and the nurses where we took him said, we don't even know if he's going to survive. We have to tell you this. But he just sailed through it. You know, why? Because my wife gave it to him. And with breast milk, she gave him antibodies, yeah.

So she gave it to him on the one hand, but then gave him the antibodies on the other hand. So, you know, she almost did him in, but then she saved his life. So we'll go with the second thing. They found the COVID-19 antibodies, right? People breastfeed your kids. It's cool. Yeah, if you can. It's just for a short period of time.

If you can. Or a little bit. No judgment if you can. Not everybody can, as PA Lydia said, but if you can do because there are tangible benefits. But anyway, what are you going to say? I was just, you know, we're seeing a lot about breast milk and the COVID-19 antibodies. Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Makes sense. Those IGA antibodies. That's the ones we don't hear about. You hear about IGM and IGG, but IGA antibodies. are in breast milk and their sequitory, you know, antibodies. And, yeah, they do things. I wonder if anybody's trying to purchase it. Ooh.

Oh. For consumption. Very interesting. I don't know. I don't know, but that's an excellent question. Excellent question. We've got to get on that, Scott. That's a new business model.

So Tracy from Louisiana sent us a bunch of stories. And I know each one of you brought a Halloween-themed weird medical story. And I have one about the bloody truth about vampires. But Dr. Lydia, since you're the guest, you can. Per regulations, correct you, P.A. Lydia. Sorry, P.A. Lydia. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Give yourself a bill. If you, you, since you're a guest, you can either choose to go first or you can choose to go some at you know some other point you know i'm not normally one to go first but i will let you guys bring the rear because it sounds like if you're talking about vampires uh okay my ending would be a letdown okay okay i'm in oncology that's my primary focus hematology and oncology and so and i don't like gross uh things i don't have like a big vat of gross things i tried to read about when people used to ingest mummies back in the 16th century but uh anyway Anyway, ended up thinking about this one really good...

This mummy's kind of dry. So, yeah, there was a pretty cool oncology story that I thought was a little bit funny for Halloween. So, dude in... I hope it's as funny as the last story. Yeah. Yeah, I won't be back on the comedy show. No, you're fine. You're fine.

I'm just fucking with you. I know. So, dude in Columbia with HIV, so human immunodeficiency virus. But it's just hilarious, right? Right, right. Yeah, and not adherent to therapy, so he's not on his antiretroviral. So super immune compromised presents with a lot of lung masses and some lymph nodes in the neck, lymph nodes throughout the belly. Anyway, it looked like he has metastatic cancer, right?

Sure. So eventually through several biopsies, they found that he had cancer from a tapeworm. What? Yeah. So, uh-oh. Uh-oh. The worms. The worms.

Yeah, so Duted presented with some fever and weight loss, and they found tapeworm eggs in a stool on their check. And so ultimately, you know, they did the biopsy of these tumors, and they saw these crazy cells that looked malignant, but were ten times smaller than human cells. Yeah. That did not appear human. And they were tapeworm eggs? No, no. They were cancer. inside this dude.

So the tapeworm had lived and grown inside this dude for so long that it had developed cancer and the cancer spread to the dude. Because of his compromised immune system. Exactly. So it was actually the tapeworm developed cancer and then those cells colonized. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's, I've never heard of a zoonotic, that would be a zoonotic metastasis.

Never heard of this before. Yeah, New England Journal of Medicine, 2015. Yep, here we go. Tapeworm spreads deadly cancer to human, a parasite with cancer infected a man, and the tumor cells jumped across the species line. Holy moly. Talk about some bad fucking luck.

That's some bad luck. A lot of people have tapeworms, too. Yeah, I know. I think like 75,000 people a year. More than you think. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you would know. Take tapeworms to try to lose weight.

What I want everyone to do, since this is Halloween, two things. Google image a tapeworm. It's really, just imagine that thing up in your colon, just eating your fecal matter and, you know, nutrients out of your intestines. And then I want you then to, because if that isn't gross enough, Google Askeris, A-S-C-A-R-I-S-E-R-I-S. Dr. Scott, you may want to do that just for fun. And if you find the right thing, what will happen, Askerus are roundworms, and when you get enough of them, you'll eventually expel them through your rectum,

and you'll have this giant mass of worms coming out of your rectum. And I used to be in a grindcore band called Ass maggot, and that was the image on. our CD was this poor guy with these askerous lumber coities or whatever worms coming out of its rectum. It's horrible. So sometimes I go on shows that do video. And when I do, my only thing that's any fun

because I'm not a funny person is to have them start Google imaging stuff until they puke. Good tactic. Yeah. My other favorite one is oral myiasis. And I'm sure you know. what that is, but it's maggots growing in the

oral cavity, and that's pretty disgusting. Usually because someone hadn't brushed their teeth in the last 100 years. But anyway, yeah, that is a fascinating damn story, and I'm going to give you Give yourself a bill! The third one of those. You can only get three per show. That was, that's fascinating.

Never in my career heard of something like that. That's a good one. Oh, that poor bastard. Yeah, and he died. They figured it out through DNA sequencing about 72 hours before he died, but he also had a fungal infection. So they gave him ampheterosin B, amphaterable B. It's a terrible antifungal.

It is. Shut his kidneys down and then. Oh, my God. Then they ended up killing him. Goner. Yeah. Yeah, it died 72 hours after researchers determined that the tumors were called by H. Nana. So, yeah, the species was. what's the

okay Hymenolepsis hymenelipus Nana so well that's a good one that's a really good one

now I don't even want to do mine no me either we're not going to be able to top that that's a rat yeah that was a good one no way just that was we're not going to be able to beat that what have you got

no you know something I found was the soldier in 1782 that was doing a well it wound up being like a lithotripsy on himself. He was having excretiating pain in his bladder, and they thought it was bladder stones. Yeah. So 12 times a day, he performed this operation on himself.

It doesn't say exactly how he did it, but he was sticking a long, wired, wax-coated catheter through his penis up into his bladder, I guess, to try to get rid of some of those stones and kind of fish him out. Did it 12 times a day for a couple of months. And evidently, he did pretty well. They said he did develop quite an infection, but I guess he passed the stones. And all I could think about was you and I both having the modern version of that. Well, it's good that they put wax on it. You know, at least to make it a little slick. Yeah.

Yeah, that's actually pretty sharp. When was this? 1782. That's not bad. It sounds more humane than what they did to us. Yeah, no shit. They just took that thing and just jammed it up. And then what they do, PA Lydia, is they, they, because it's hard, listen, I know there's a lot of stuff that women go through that men can't understand, but this is one of those other things.

There's not very many of them, but this is one of them. And they take this fiber optic scope, and then they put anesthetic jelly on it and then just cram it up your urethra. and you know all that fuss at you if you wiggle or so yeah all that jelly does is make them feel better it does absolutely nothing for us now didn't we have somebody call us that I talked to a urologist recently oh no I haven't talked to um and they said that they do it differently now they actually they actually instill the gel in your penis ahead of time and then wait 10 minutes and then do it okay and then that might work Is it that much bigger than, like, getting a calf, like a straight cath?

Yeah, it's actually the tube itself is smaller, but it's got longer to go, if you know what I mean, for most of us. And much less flexible, too. The camera end is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, already rigid. Yeah, it's an endoscope. And it has to pass through, like, the prostate area. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it just felt like I had, like someone had just dragged razor blades through my breakthrough. Yes, and then when they're telling you not to move,

not to move and anyone that needs to have this ask them if they have alternatives yeah ask him if they have laughing gas

I mean we talk about it and we laugh about it because it's over and I mean it wasn't it wasn't the worst pain I've ever had it just was kind of seemed unnecessary

that it would be that uncomfortable but don't not have it because of us we're just being silly it's a very important I would do it again it's a very important test

it's just one would think there would be an easier way to do it yeah well speaking of such and then we'll get back to your story is you are you done with your story yeah okay no i like that they put wax around it though at least they were trying to do something wax eloquent on their oh stop um first move of the day a 43 year old man in south australia was the focus of a case reported in the british medical journal after he developed calciflaxis of the penis. Oh, boy, which led to a case of penile gangrene. Now, I'll tell you what

calciflaxis is. This occurs when calcium accumulates in the small blood vessels of the fat skin tissues, and what it does is it just kills the skin. You'll see people sometimes with end-stage kidney failure that'll get calcifalaxus, and it'll look like you took, I don't know, they're just sort of scooped out really dark black depressed well demarcated areas on the skin usually where there's fat

so the thighs the abdomen that kind of place and so anyway this guy the doctors had no choice but to leave him with a penile stump after the tip of his penis was removed so that's

kind of a nightmarish story I wish I had the scary music. I might add it on later to the show itself. Let's see here. Oh, I thought that was going to be more than it was. Sorry about that. I was thinking, well, they make prosthesis. We should have let him go first, right?

No, well, there's no prosthesis when they actually have to chop your penis off and leave you with a stump. So I was just going to talk real briefly about Vomb. The blood-sucking vampires. Oh, oh, oh, scary kids. Okay, never mind. Sorry. So, um, there, so myths like vampires come from something. And particularly in the dark ages, the middle ages, and even after the Renaissance,

people are terrified of death, but they're also afraid. of people because they're afraid of death there are a lot of myths and misconceptions that arise. So if you dig someone up

after they've died but before they've just completely become a skeleton you will see some things that would freak you out if you didn't know anything about physiology and one of those is this myth that fingernails grow

they don't okay fingernails do not grow after you're dead what happens is the cuticles retract so it looks like they do and if you are very superstitious and then there's this thing called

let me see let me see if I can find it here now I can't think of the when you die you purge okay so there's this sort of oral purge where fluids from the stomach and other places as the body digest itself will come out of the mouth.

So it will look like blood on the mouth. And so now, and then the gums have retracted, so the teeth look bigger. And then you've got blood on the mouth and you've got these big long fingernails. And it looks like, oh, God, I dug this person up and they've been getting, you know, coming out of their grave in the middle of the night. and terrorizing our community. And particularly, when you don't know what causes disease and you don't know what causes cholera or other, you know, issues,

you start making stuff up. And that's where the myth of the vampire came from. They found a skull recently that was buried in, it looks like, the 1400, something like that, that they'd put a brick in its mouth. And that supposedly was to stop it from being able to eat people. Wow. Was that in Transylvania?

Yeah, no, let me see where that was. It was somewhere in Europe. It says, vampire scares tended to coincide with outbreaks of the plague. In 2006, archaeologists unearthed a 16th century skull in Venice, Italy that had been buried among plague victims with a brick in its mouth. The brick was likely a burial tactic to prevent strega, which are Italian vampires or witches, from leaving the grave to eat people. Now, they said not all vampires were thought to physically leave their grave in northern Germany. Oh, boy, I don't know any German.

The Nakh Zerer, or that would be nighttime devourers or after devours, I guess, stayed in the ground chewing on their burial shrouds. Well, who cares? Just let them chew. Is that all they're chewing on? They're just slipping little twigs, cheek and gum. There you go. Again, this belief likely has to do with purge fluid, which could cause the shroud to sag or tear, creating the illusion that a corpse had been chewing it.

Anyway, these stationary masticators were still thought to cause trouble above ground were also believed to be most active during outbreaks of the plague. At least they were blaming dead people and weren't blaming poor, you know, women running around, you know, that were, you know, herbalists and stuff. trying to help people. Which is... And then whenever something bad happened, they just go kill them. Yeah, though, which is... And in the 1679 tract,

On the Chewing Dead... Oh, that's great. Oh, we got to name a song. On the Chewing Dead. A Protestant theologian accused the Nakhzer of harming their surviving family members through occult processes.

He wrote that people could stop them by exuming the body and stuffing its mouth with soil, and maybe a stone or a coin for good measures. These poor bastards had the misfortune of being born then and then died probably a horrible death. And then now, you know, it's not enough. They've got to dig them up and put rocks in their mouth.

Without the ability to chew, the tract claimed the corpse would die of starvation. They're already dead, you dumbass. Tales of, oh, wait. Here, let's do this. Tales of vampires continue to flourish in southern, eastern European nations in the 17th, and as isn't any good. And 18th centuries to the chagrin of some leaders

by the mid-18th century, Pope Benedict the 14th declared that vampires were fallacious fictions of human fantasy. I'm going to give him one of the weeks. Thank you, sir. You know, I'm going to give the Catholic Church a lot of credit because after the whole Galileo fiasco, they really have been supporters of science.

Sure. And, you know, the Vatican astronomy program is, you know, very vigorous, and, you know, they're dedicated to just finding out the science. Because, you know, to their thinking, the heavens, declare the glory of God, so it's, you know, out there to be discovered. Worth checking out. Yeah, worth checking out, that's right. We ought to check all that out.

Anyway, all right, you got anything, Dr. Scott? We could probably take some questions. I did see something really cool that it just popped up today. It's kind of Halloween-ish. The scientist took first steps towards pig-to-human kidney transplants. Oh. Yeah, just literally, I just saw it today. Oh.

So what they did, they took a family that had, unfortunately, a female that was brain dead. Okay. And with their permission, they took a kidney. She was a renal failure. They took a kidney from a pig and put it on her leg on the outside. Yeah, that's how they did the first kidney transplant. Yeah. But, yeah, that's how they did it with a pig.

And they said for 54 hours, it worked perfectly. It did not reject it immediately. It worked perfectly well, so that's kind of cool. So they used a person who was brain dead to do this because you wouldn't want, it's hard to get. I mean, it's probably not even ethical to do it on a human, even a volunteer. Even someone that desperately needs it. That's interesting. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Why did it stop at 54 hours? That was probably the term of the experiment would be my guess. Yeah, I didn't read the whole thing, but that would be my guess too. Because now it would start becoming unethical if you just went on and on and on. You were keeping them alive just to see if this stupid pig kidney would survive. Yeah, they just had to, you know, if it was viable at all. But the good news is it did not reject it immediately. And the other good news was it worked.

So they had to give them some sort of drug. Yeah. Did they say what anti-rejection drug they used? Was it a new one? Or was it just one that we've used for years, like Cellcept or something like that. Let me look down here, see if they say anything. Yeah, we Lydia did more show prep than we did today, so I'm very impressed.

No, I know, I'm just saying, it's not a cut. I'm saying it about myself, too. Well, in all fairness, her stories were way more interesting than ours. Yeah, they really were. So, so thanks, Lydia. Yeah. But now we're, nothing. Nothing.

Doesn't say. Oh, wait, no, here we go, Dr. Steve. You're right. We'll get hellfire, Jr. Well, I'm reading this fast again. I know it. We'll be here until next week at that rate, then. All right, Lydia, I hope you're not busy next week at 3 o'clock.

Hey, Revivacore. Revivacore. I don't know what that is. You ever heard of that one? No, I still use cell sept. Yeah. Okay, Revivacore, the technology of regenerative medicine. I don't think that's it.

Yeah, that's the closest thing I can get. While you're raising hell at me for not show prepping. Curing human disease through regenerative medicine. I don't know. But there's a pig on here. Yeah, there's a pig. It's a cute pig. It is cute.

It's Arnold Ziffel. So do you reckon they get the bacon first in the kidney or the? Okay. That's a reasonable question. Yeah, I don't know. This is interesting. It's got pigs all over this thing. I think that's what they're doing is they're trying to, because look, it is it is really hard to get human donors for things.

And we're always begging, well, not begging, but we're, you know, kind of almost, really trying to work the system to get people to be donors. And then you're waiting and then someone has to be viable but brain dead at the same time. And there's just a lot going on trying to get donors. You know, there's still, PETA would be pissed if we started harvesting pigs for their organs for organ transplants. but we're harvesting pigs for, as Dr. Scott, so aptly noted, bacon. So this would be at least a, you know, a better use of their organs. And who eats pig kidneys anyway? I was going to say, never seen pig kidney.

No, thank you. Unless you eat in a hot dog, I would say, probably. I might have to raise them without growth hormones or something. Yeah, yeah, right. Well, there are some interesting sausages out there that have all kinds of things. And we haven't talked about souse meat in a long time on this show. if you do not know what souse meat is and you're not from the south and there is a subset of southerners who don't know what it is

just google it that's me i'm from georgia i've never heard of that oh you don't know what it is no is it penis or something well you're close um so the souse meat is meat from pigs that is encased in gelatin and then they throw some spices and like um like it looks like little pimento's or something like Head cheese almost? Sort of. Okay. And maybe it depends on what your definition of head cheese is.

But when you read the ingredients, it'll say pork snouts, pork lips, pork tails. And one time I picked up a package of souse meat, had a circular piece of meat in it with two little circular holes in it. It was a perfect cross section of some poor pig's nose. Sousy. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So anyway, so, yeah, that's very interesting. I think it is Revivacore because their website is just covered with pig stuff.

So that's interesting. That'd be cool, though. Yeah. Look, if we could have a ready source, I mean, our goal is to be able to grow organs in the lab. But if we can have a ready source of viable organs that we can do kidneys, maybe even heart, stuff like that, pigs are very similar to us. To the point, did you dissect a fetal pig when you were in PA school? No, it was a human. It was a human.

Did you do it in high school? Well, you had a human. Yeah. We did not do a fetal pig. You didn't do a fetal human. You did a human. I had a human, not a fetal human. Yeah, so we had fetal pigs.

We also had human. We had fetal pigs too. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Well, let's do at least one phone call for goodness sake. Let's see, do I have a weird one? No, I do have a Dr. Scott Miller.

question. You want to do that one, Scott? Sure. Okay, let's do it. How challenging is it? Hi, Dr. Steve. Dr. Scott, it's Tony from Ohio. How are you guys? Hey, Tony. We're great. Thanks. Good. Good. I'm not too shabby either. I have a question that's probably more of Dr. Scott's Alley, and it's about Chinese medicine. I watch these ASMR videos quite often. I notice there's some kind of diagnostic technique

where the doctor uses this dull instrument to press on a certain area of a person's ear. And when they do that, they can figure out if they have a foot issue, an ankle issue, something in their spine, or, you know, if he or she has problems internally. I guess my question is, how can one diagnose these issues just by pressing on that person's ear, like on their earlobe or the inner ear? It's really interesting, and I'm fascinated by it. How is that? And would you recommend acupuncture if, you know, I ever have some of those kind of issues? I appreciate it, and thank you so much, and keep up the great work during all the COVID bullshit. Okay. Hey, thanks, man. It's a really interesting question.

Yeah. Before you answer, I'll tell people a couple of things about you. Okay. Number one, Dr. Scott is, he practices what we call complementary medicine as opposed to, quote, unquote, alternative medicine in the sense that he complements what we do. So he and I worked together in a small rural community and all the patients that I saw that I couldn't figure out what the hell they had, but they felt bad. I'd send them to Dr. Scott, and he would make some, what we would call some God-awful diagnosis. You know, their third pulse is in Mercury or whatever. But they would come back and they would always feel better. And that's all I cared about at that point because I'd ruled out all this stuff that was going to kill him. And Dr. Scott will, and I know you'll say this, but they may not believe it if you say it, but he'll be the first to tell you, look, if you've got metastatic cancer, go to the oncologist and get that treated.

Come back and see me for, I mean, see Dr. Scott for the nausea and all, you know, the fatigue and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, so, yeah. So, oh, and the other thing is the one time I went to Scott, it was a pretty transformative experience, to be honest with you. He checked my pulse, and they have more than one pulse that they can detect. Don't understand that one. But he could tell, he said, oh, you're constipated. And it's like, you know, hell, that is true. Now, of course, in the United States, it's sort of like cold reading.

If you say, oh, you're constipated. 60, 70 percent of the time people are going to go, wow, that's awesome. But it really was true. And but Dr. Scott also, I mean, he said it was such. definitive knowledge. And then, you know, he gets you laying down and, you know, starts to, I don't know, rub on you a little bit and talk nice and soft in your ear. No, he was doing, putting the needles in, and then they turn out the lights and start playing

the spa music, and you can't help but relax. So that's always going to be good for you. Yeah, there's a huge placebo effect. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not even saying that. Yeah, well, yeah, but I'm saying it's good for it. Yeah, and it's, it is good for you. But, you know, the, but anyway, so.

Yeah, the pulse thing, the pulse thing is in there. So we, you know, we do do a lot of diagnostic stuff with pulse readings. It's a whole other, it's a whole other show topic. But what this guy is talking about, Dr. Steve, is a thing called a point locator. Okay. And it's a little machine. Oftentimes it's battery operated or sometimes they'll have it wired into a, hardwired into a machine. And it just measures electrical conductivity.

Okay. So it'll show increased activity in certain points through the skin. And that's, I mean, this is, you know, electronically and technologically, you're far more adapted to this stuff. But what they'll do is they'll poke around and they'll find where there's a greater, you know, resistance on this, on this probe. And it tells you where to put the needles sometimes. It's on the helix of the ear. Do you go all over the helix? You do it all over the body.

Oh, do it all over the body, okay. So what this guy's describing is when they do it on the ear. And the ear is interesting because there are some really beneficial terminal branches. Oh, absolutely, there are. Yes, to the ears. And just really quickly, the one that I use the most is a vagus nerve stimulator. Yeah. So I've got someone with, you know, vagus nerve issues or sent overshed.

Well, the vagus nerves in the body, how do you get that in the ear? But there is a terminal branch that's in the helix of the ear. you know, the part of the ear that you make fun of when people have ears, big ears. That's right. And that's kind of why some people use those probes. And I actually had a lady not too long ago asked me if I used it to identify

spots because she'd had a really good success in a weight loss program where they identified it with these locators and then put the needles in these exact spots. Yeah. So yeah, there's, I would say. You can stimulate the vagus nerve in the ear.

Yep. And you can shut down a thing called claudication from and claudication is when you have pain when you exercise from a thing called peripheral neuropathy. This has been demonstrated

and peripheral, not peripheral neuropathy, sorry, peripheral vascular disease so people who have poor circulation and they don't get enough blood to their muscles when they exercise because there's increased demand and the muscles will start to

cramp up. And you can actually make that better by stimulating that branch of the vagus nerve. It's not really the vagus nerve anymore, but the nerve that, you know, is connected to the vagus nerve that's in the ear. Right, yeah. And I'll use it a lot of times. I can get Medicare to pay for it.

It would be great. I'll use it a lot of times for that Vegas nerve point for gag reflexes. Somebody didn't love going to the dentist. So, yeah, yeah, this is a great question. And yes, it is a tool that we use. And yes, it does work. Yeah. Well, okay, it's a tool that you use, whether it works or not.

Oh, here we go. But there are. Here we go. I just don't. I'm going to bring it over and stick to see if I could. Okay. Any electrical points in your noggin. Let's see if there's any activity in your COVID brain.

I just got muddy water in there. Well, listen, thanks always goes to Dr. Scott. Thank you, P.A. Lydia. And go ahead and plug the, let me see if I can get it right this time. No. I keep wanting to say Project Argo, but it's Task Force Argo. Yeah. Yay.

Okay, I'll give myself one. Oh, wait. Oh, okay. Give yourself a bill. All right. Taskforce Argo.com. Sure. And donate if you can get involved, get involved.

If you are an attorney, an immigration attorney particularly that doesn't mind doing a little pro bono work to really do something good for somebody, give them a shout. Anyway, thanks for coming. Thank you, guys. Thank you. And we can't forget. And actually, all of your stories were better than ours, and you did show prep, and we didn't. So, you know, show off. We can never have you back again.

That's what P.A.s do. That is true. I think you're right. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coombe, a Jim Norton, Travis Teft, that Gould Girl, Lewis Johnson, Paul Offcharsky, Chowdy, 1008, Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Horror, PA, Lydia. The Saratoga, not that I'm calling you that, that's, I'm just saying we have a listener called the Port Charlotte Horror.

The Saratoga Skank. Roland Campo, sister of Chris, Sam Roberts, she who owns pigs and snakes, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Cardiff Electric, Matt Kleinsmith, Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf, Steve Tucci times three, the great Rob Bartlett, Vicks, Nether Fluids, Carl's deviated septum, Jen's wacky husband, and Casey's

wet t-shirt, Bernie and Sid, Martha from Arkansas's daughter, Ron Bennington, and Fez Watley, the great dear departed Fez Watley, who we will never forget, whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk

channel, SiriusXM, Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. And many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine.

Thank you, PA, Lydia. Thank you. Not you. Yeah. You know,