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Metabolic Disorders' Effect on Cancer, the Ozempic Era, and the Crisis of Trust in Science with Michael Seen
20 Plays4 days ago
In this episode, Gerry speaks with Michael Seen, clinical coordinator and researcher, about the troubling intersection of metabolic disease and cancer disparities.
They explore how metabolic dysfunction fuels cancer aggression, the societal and environmental roots of the obesity epidemic, and the compex role of the infamous "wonder drug" Ozempic.
The conversation also touches on the challenges of public health communication and its important role in rebuilding trust in an age of rampant misinformation and skepticism towards science.
Despite the sobering realities, Michael shares a hopeful vision for rebuilding public trust. If experts are willing to step out of the lab and meet people where they are, true progress can be made.
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Transcript
Metabolic Disorders and Cancer Aggression
00:00:00
Speaker
So Michael, tell me from your experience, kind of what of the most outstanding or worrisome features of metabolic or cancer disparities that you've seen, both as a clinical coordinator, a patient navigator, and in the different environments in which you've seen these things?
00:00:17
Speaker
So that's a very broad set of issues. um I think one of the most concerning, at least in terms as a bench scientist, is seeing just how severe are the effects of these metabolic disorders can have on cancer. So you know in our lab, of course, we were treating cancer cells in a dish with bloodborne particles from metabolically disturbed patients.
00:00:45
Speaker
And what we saw is in both prostate cancer and breast cancer, it caused a significant increase in how aggressive they were. So functionally, one of the measures we looked at is migration. So literally how well these cancer cells can crawl across the dish.
00:01:01
Speaker
or um through you know a membrane. And that can, in the human body, translate to how well these cancer cells can either crawl out of the tumor to escape into the bloodstream, or ah sort of anchor down and form METs in the patients.
00:01:17
Speaker
By that, you mean like a brain metastasis or a lung metastasis? Brain, lung, liver, um sort of the common sites.
Obesogenic Environment and Lifestyle Challenges
00:01:26
Speaker
And we also mirrored that in mouse models.
00:01:29
Speaker
So that's extremely concerning because there's, believe, between fully diabetic individuals and pre-diabetic individuals in the United States. It's about 100 million people.
00:01:42
Speaker
So that's a huge, huge number of people. And that's only projected to continue growing. So, what's concerning as far as growth as well is you know Americans are becoming increasingly unhealthy. We live in a very obesogenic environment.
00:01:57
Speaker
um Most people, if they're not living in a city, have to drive everywhere. So, they're you know not getting very many opportunities to get even low levels of exercise they walking. On top of that, our food environment is absolutely just terrible. All of these very heavily preserved foods, you know if you want something to be shelf stable, you're going to be loading it up with fats and salts.
00:02:21
Speaker
Both of those are going to be making you much more vulnerable to stuff like heart disease, metabolic disease. Even in the cities where it's walkable, there's a lot of places where you just don't have access to anything other than these heavily preserved food items. So it's sort of reminding me of the dystopian future in this movie, WALL-E, where the entire passenger population is morbidly obese and floats around. Nobody walks anywhere. Nobody can walk anywhere. yeah And they're just fed constantly.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, if if you look at a lot of patients in the US, you're seeing just an increasing number of people who are have multiple comorbidities. um it It seems like kind of almost the baseline in a lot of areas of the US is to be obese. You feel it's worse in the South?
00:03:08
Speaker
Oh, almost certainly. What do you what do you see? So generally in the in the South, you see much higher rates of obesity. i think part of that is because people tend to live more scattered.
00:03:20
Speaker
So you don't have the option to bike or walk to work. You're you're going to have to drive. And so that's already... losing out on some opportunity to you know get in some physical activity. And then on top of that, sort of the traditional foods of the South, which is you know what people have been growing up on for you know decades, it's very rich in fat, very rich in salt, very rich in sugar. What a deep fried with syrup. Yeah, deep fried with syrup or if you're having vegetables, you're going to be either boiled in salt with some bacon or you know smothered in cheese or stuff like that. And so that's a difficult issue to address because, I mean, there's very few things, I think, that are more personal than food.
00:04:10
Speaker
um Just because you know that's that's one of the ways I think that a lot of people connect with their cultures, just sort of the food. Because you know when you're eating something that reminds you of you know your parents or your grandparents, that means a lot to people.
00:04:24
Speaker
So it's difficult to say like, oh, you need to change your eating style to something you know you've never eaten before. It's probably offensive to have some Yankee show up on your doorstep and say you need to eat more spinach. Yeah. you know like you know More collard greens, less husk puppies. Right. like People like what are like, what business do you have telling me and my family how to eat? Exactly, yeah. um So I think that's definitely one of the challenges in the South. um I mean, also a lot of people in the South are struggling, you know might be working long hours, difficult jobs. And in those cases, you're not going to want to... you know
00:05:00
Speaker
get home and the first thing you're doing is dicing an entire butternut squash or trying to cook something that's going to be 30 or 40 minutes just cooking and then you got to clean up or something like that. so It just takes too much time for people's busy. It's rather microwave a pizza. Yeah, you'd rather a microwave a pizza or you know stop by a fast food place on the way home. So I mean, I think that's one of the challenges. And i think that also makes it very challenging to formulate sort of a an achievable treatment strategy. you know Everyone likes to talk about like, oh, simple lifestyle changes, like increased workout or adjusting your diet. That'll help resolve this obesity or you know it'll help you have better glucose control or better blood pressure, that sort of thing.
00:05:50
Speaker
And sure, in a vacuum, lifestyle changes, they're great. but They're not always realistic. If you're working long hours, you're not going to have time or energy to go to the gym to you know cook a healthy meal, that sort of thing. So a lot of these things that are portrayed as choices, right? So like it's a choice to go to the gym or not. It's choice to eat healthy or not. They're not really choices if sort of your environment, life circumstances are making these quote unquote healthy choices unfeasible.
Medications and Trust in Health Expertise
00:06:24
Speaker
What do you think about all of the new GLP-1 inhibitors? um The idea that an injection, a medication, something regular can cause you to lose weight without too much more, effort well, actually changing your lifestyle all that much or like suddenly taking out a gym membership, but like a pill or you know a shot, was going to it's going to fix it out all for you, which is very American, by the way. yeah like What do you think about that? I have a lot of thoughts on them. I think it's amazing the results that they can show, improving glucose control, helping people lose you know insane amounts of weight.
00:06:59
Speaker
But I think there's also a couple concerns I have, one of which is pricing. so I think with medications like Ozempic or weight loss medications, um there's always the risk of almost commodifying health, making it so if you're in the wealthy upper class, it's very easy to just throw money at your problems and have them start to resolve.
00:07:25
Speaker
There's also the risk of sort of seeing it as a silver bullet to your issues. So of course, like if you just take Ozempic, you are very likely to lose weight without having to adjust your lifestyle very much.
00:07:39
Speaker
The issue is, you've almost certainly seen the studies, and a lot of these patients, once they cease taking Ozempic, within about two years, they've gained back I want to say the figure was something like two thirds of the weight they'd lost.
00:07:55
Speaker
So that kind of suggests that, you know for a lot of people, once they're on these medications, they're sort of stuck. And it's costly. And it's costly. Yeah. you know I'm reminded of the you know the Dr. Seuss story about the Sneetches, the Sneetches? Yes. Where you know they get a star put on to go through the machine and they get a star taken off and they come back out of the machine because it's It's just a way of the guy who owns the machine of making money. And so it feels like, let's make people really obese with lots of food, and then let's... Almost the same corporation is going to sell them the weight loss medication so they can gain more weight and then lose more weight. And then everybody makes money except people end up multiply medicated. Right. right
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it also sort of feeds more into um this sort of a pervasive culture, especially on social media, of...
00:08:47
Speaker
everyone's trying to sell something. And a lot of times they do that by feeding on insecurities. Well, that's the nature of sales. yeah You don't have this thing, but you really want this thing, or I'm not going to convince you that you want it. Right. And so I think you can especially see it, I think a lot of it is sort of attacking people's insecurities about their personal appearance. So, you know, how do you look? What's what's your weight? How much fat do you have? How much muscle do you have? All sorts of things like that.
00:09:18
Speaker
And as a byproduct, it sort of assigns a sense of morality to one's personal appearance. So you know if you're nice, if you're thin and muscular, it means that, oh, you must be you know morally strong. You must be better than whoever's around you that isn't 10% body fat and Well, and I think in America, you can never be too young, too beautiful, or too wealthy. Oh, absolutely. So this is the first problem. The Canadian journalist Pierre Burton wrote a book long ago, i think even in the 60s, called Fast, Fast, Fast Relief, which was basically, if there's a pill for it, people will take it. If we had a pill for exercise, all the gyms would be out of business. Like if there was a pill to make you lean and healthy, people would take it, and rather than go to the gym.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yes. Right. Anything, whatever it is, you can medicate it. Thank you very much. I'll take that. I'll take 10. Yeah. So I think that's the thing. I think a Zimpik, when you're using it to treat medical issues like obesity, type two diabetes, which is what it was originally marketed for, I think that's great. You're sort of directly improving people's lives. But when you get into the realm where you have people who are metabolically normal, healthy weight,
00:10:34
Speaker
um and they're all of a sudden desperate to get Ozempic just to lose, you know, five, 10 pounds. Well, maybe their only affliction is that they're a Hollywood starlet, right? Right. Of normal weight. They just want to be slightly more lean and slightly more beautiful. Right. Right. I think that's when you start to have issues. Would you call that drug abuse?
00:10:54
Speaker
In a literal sense, yes. That that is sort of abusing a drug, um using it in a way other than... it was ever intended to be used. I recall, i think it was last year actually, blanking on the the man's name, but he was the head of the lab that first discovered GLP-1s and sort of helped create Ozempic. And he was very passionate talking about it. You could tell he cares a great deal about his research and having his research used to improve people's health.
00:11:28
Speaker
But I don't think he could have ever imagined that it would be used by multimillionaires just because they want to look a little bit thinner, little bit younger. so I think that's where things can get very tricky.
00:11:40
Speaker
Are we suffering here too from a failure of trust in expertise, like the idea that calorie balance and exercise and these things that we've known are good for you all the time, are being overwhelmed by either influencers or you know fashions and fads? And I'm thinking here of RFK Jr.'s inverted food pyramid with like lots of beef on the top. Have you followed this thing? Yeah, yeah absolutely. I think that's i mean that's a huge issue.
00:12:11
Speaker
i think it's been simmering for decades. I think that the COVID pandemic really brought it to bear though, because i mean the average American doesn't like being told what to do, especially not by someone who's speaking based off of their academic credentials.
00:12:31
Speaker
i think that's i mean I think that's part of the reason why influencers have been... Well, it's several issues. I mean, for one thing, the average scientist doesn't really do that much public speaking. They're not active on social media.
00:12:43
Speaker
Most academic scientists prefer to stick into the lab, do their bench work, that sort of thing. Or if they're speaking to other people, do it at an academic conference. And I think the big issue with that is there are...
00:13:00
Speaker
thousands of brilliant academic scientists who could not for the life of them talk to an average person and convey what they're doing, why they're doing it, why it's important.
00:13:12
Speaker
And that's a huge issue. ah Whereas, you know, if you have an influencer, And they're, you know, very muscular, very good in shape. And they tell you the measles vaccine is bad for you Yeah, they tell you that the measles vaccine is bad for you. They tell you that you can fix your diet if all you eat is meat and butter.
00:13:31
Speaker
um And because they are in a physical shape that, you know, your viewers want to be in, you're going to trust them over, you know, some scientist who...
00:13:44
Speaker
probably isn't going to speak that much. Just being like, oh, no, I have a study that shows you objectively they are wrong. And who probably dresses like a nerd. Yeah, and probably dresses like a nerd. um So, I mean, I think that's, it's a huge issue, but I think sort of there's been an increasing skepticism of the scientific community.
00:14:08
Speaker
And just by virtue of not participating in the conversation, that issue has only been getting much worse. Like I can tell you in recruiting patients, There's been a couple of times where I had patients essentially tell me to my face, i think you guys already have a cure to cancer and you're just hiding it because it's more profitable for the drug companies to not cure cancer. I think that that sort of level of skepticism is one of the issues that made it so easy last year for them to start just slashing everyone's budgets. Did those patients that told you that, did they refuse to consent? Did they were like, I don't want to give you my samples because this is a conspiracy? So that was actually a surprising thing for me. i had a the majority those patients still consented.
00:14:57
Speaker
i think that really, to me, my interpretation that speaks to the level of trust that a lot of patients still have with their doctors. I'm not sure if that would have been the case for you know every patient with that belief, but um at least at BMC, the physicians at BMC are extremely dedicated and you can tell and the patients can tell they care a lot about the community they serve.
00:15:23
Speaker
And so I think even despite the skepticism in science, the fact that I was being introduced by a physician that they trust,
00:15:33
Speaker
meant that even though they didn't think, you know, had distrusted me, or at least um distrusted that research was going to lead anywhere was going to be fruitful for them, they trusted their physician enough that they're like, I'm going to put aside my skepticism and participate.
00:15:51
Speaker
And I think that really that really does say a lot about the role of physicians especially, and sort of rebuilding trust in the biomedical community.
00:16:08
Speaker
Do you think that there's a tension here between a lack of trust or a sense that there's a conspiracy out there or that, you know, the COVID vaccine is going to turn you into a zombie or something? And inter intersecting with a poor memory like we've forgotten how bad polio was oh we've forgotten nobody's seen a case of smallpox in this country in a century oh absolutely like we've forgotten what it looks like to die of whooping cough yeah right well i mean
00:16:40
Speaker
There was public celebration when the measles vaccine came out, and people have forgotten about that. um It used to be- And polio. Polio, yeah. Dr. Stock was a hero overnight. Yeah. Right? ah I think part of the issue is that people forget how bad- A lot of these diseases can be when they no longer have to deal with them.
00:17:02
Speaker
In the past, you know polio ah was crippling hundreds, thousands of children each year. And that's part of the reason why people were so adamant and excited about the polio vaccine rollout. And I think that the skepticism about vaccines nowadays sort of speaks to how successful they were in eliminating many of the cases of these diseases.
Cultural Conflicts and Public Health Communication
00:17:32
Speaker
But how do we get from there to calls for the arrest and incarceration of St. Tony Fauci, right? Like, this is real. yeah People want to throw him in jail. I think his life's in danger, too.
00:17:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I think a lot of it is just people don't like being told what to do. they i think a lot of people really resented it when they were told... oh, ah you can't go to the gym or get a haircut for a couple months.
00:17:56
Speaker
ah You might want to wear a mask so that you can limit the spread. And the reason you're being told to do these is because even though you don't understand the reasons for this,
00:18:09
Speaker
There's someone else who does, and they're making these recommendations. So I think some of it is sort of anger at being told there's things that they don't understand the reason for, but they need to follow these directions.
00:18:22
Speaker
And is it worse for Americans because Americans are so obstreperous and so cantankerous and so unwilling to be told what to do, unwilling to buckle their seatbelts, unwilling to turn off their phones on the airplane? Is it just Americans are just rebellious all the time and don't want to be told what to do ever? Is that what it that is? Because Europeans were more compliant. Yeah, I do think sort of the American ideal of, you know, individualism,
00:18:50
Speaker
heavily contributes to it. Because you know there's the whole idea of you know the rugged individualistic American who went and tamed the West.
00:19:02
Speaker
And I think this mythologized version of Americans- Like the Marlboro Man. Like the Marlboro Man. Yeah. I think a lot of Americans, even to this day, sort of in their mind, that's how they are. They're this rugged individual that doesn't need help from anyone, doesn't need to listen to anyone, and know they can do anything that they want because you know that's their God-given right.
00:19:25
Speaker
And does that bump up against um a society functioning as ah as a collective, like as ah where there's a social good to look out for your neighbor? Like in Japan, for example, people wear masks on the subway and have done for decades, not because anyone told them to, but because they know that they're infectious and they want to protect their fellow commuters.
00:19:47
Speaker
Right. The idea of an American somehow doing that is just wrong. just don't see it anymore. i mean, you see it a little bit now. Right. I've seen people wearing masks in public. You think it's to protect themselves, but in some cases i they're protecting protecting other people. Yeah. Right. Because that's a societal virtue. It's like, I'm going to look out for other people. Right.
00:20:06
Speaker
And maybe that's where sort of the American idea falls down, like the idea that by taking the responsibility to protect other people from right, I'm showing civic virtue, right? Yeah. i Well, I think part of it also is it seems like America's version of individualism is also like...
00:20:26
Speaker
I show my strength by essentially not inconveniencing myself, even if it's on the path of someone else. Even if it's something as simple as wearing a mask, like I think it makes me weak if I'm doing something that's not going to benefit me.
00:20:43
Speaker
Do you think public health falls down on this communication piece, like not effectively telling people why this intervention is necessary? So for example, in in the UK, in London, you know during the choler epidemic in the next century, and Dr. Snow realizes it's the contaminated pump, right? Where the choler is spreading to all the neighbors through this one pump. And so his intervention was to remove the handle of the pump. And that stopped the epidemic. What we don't hear are the interviews with the neighbors who must have been pissed off. Like, what about my water? Now what um you take ah you took away my pump.
00:21:21
Speaker
How am i going to have water? we don't That's lost to history. you don't hear how angry the Londoners were about being some doc just like removed the handle from my pump. Right. Like, how dare he? Right. And so I don't think we know if Snow was very effective at communicating with like the neighbors, like, here's why I'm doing this.
00:21:40
Speaker
I'm sure many of them thought it was a conspiracy, too. yeah. Because at the time, people thought Collar was, you know, it was the rats. Right. It's like not the water. So there's a failure of communication there. Yeah. Right. And that's still, I think, a public health challenge. How do you communicate your best recommendations? Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that is sort of a huge issue for public health it is just the communication. Because, I mean, you know, there's always the official press releases, that sort of thing. But I think very rarely during the pandemic did you see, you know, any public health officials going on the popular podcasts or other sources of information for people. Because not everyone's watching, you know, CNN, Fox or anything like that.
00:22:24
Speaker
A lot of people are getting their news of what's going on in the world from TikTok, from Instagram, from social media. and Or Russian bots. Or or Russian bots. yeah But so I think one of the issues is there's sort of been a failure of public health officials meeting people where they actually are um and going on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and speaking with you know a lot of these influencers.
00:22:53
Speaker
Granted, I'm not sure how much of it is you know influencers not having an interest in platforming public health officials, or how much of it is you know public health officials essentially looking at these means of um media and thinking, oh, that's you know that's beneath me. Because I will say one of the issues in science and the academic community that you commonly see is there are a lot of people who sort of have this very ivory ti tower mentality of, well, I'm the expert in my field. I have PhD and I went through a rigorous postdoc that was very prestigious. And so it's beneath me to go speak on you know these platforms where you know people are just scrolling through 30-second videos, that sort of thing.
00:23:39
Speaker
I think that also sort of can contribute to the distrust that the public has in academics. Because like you you can tell when someone thinks that you're being talked down to.
00:23:51
Speaker
Well, and let's not forget the long history of medical gaslighting and medical racism. It doesn't come from nowhere, the lack of trust. Yes, that's very true. The Mississippi epidectomies, Tuskegee, and even more recently, you know, why is it that, you know, in that fertility clinic, suddenly all of the kids look like the doctor, right? Like what's going on here? Or there was a case two or three years ago of someone who had an abdominal procedure and the the doctor had carved their initials on the patient's liver yes right yeah like what right like what level of narcissistic ego trip is that like you're gonna like put graffiti on your patient's liver right so the and these think these cases end up widely through the popular press yeah like so of course people are gonna be like you want to give me an injection of what for what
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, I think there, I think, I guess if if I had to say what's, not solution, but what approach to help increase public faith in academic researchers, you know the biomedical industry, would be to have more people willing to you know start podcasts like you or sort of do community outreach, um be willing to speak on social media platforms and really try to put themselves out there. And I mean, the thing is, it it is something that's, for a lot of academics at least, I think would be very
00:25:26
Speaker
uncomfortable, awkward, but it's it's something that really needs to be done if we want to be able to have good scientific research in America.
00:25:37
Speaker
Well, so based on your experience, and you have a lot of it, what is your assessment, both of the opportunities and the risks for public health for the next five to
Healthcare Infrastructure and Response to Outbreaks
00:25:48
Speaker
10 years? Where's this all headed? i mean, there are good outcomes and bad outcomes. What are you worried about? And what are you optimistic about?
00:25:55
Speaker
Let's see. I guess what I'm most worried about is um it's going to be sort of health outcomes in more rural communities. um You know, there's all sorts of talk of you know massive cuts coming to Medicaid, um which which already is going to be bad. um But on top of that, a lot of these- Well, so what does that look like? What will that actually- Yeah. In practical terms, does that mean? In practical terms, what that means is there's going to be a lot of hospitals, especially in poor regions of the US, that are going to have
00:26:29
Speaker
the majority, if not almost all of their funding just disappear. they're going to close. They're going to close. And so what that means is- So if you have a heart attack in Shelby, North Carolina. Yeah. So if you have a heart attack in Shelby, North Carolina, so there's a regional medical center in Shelby, North Carolina. So if you're in Shelby itself right now, you're fine. But if that regional medical center closes, I believe the closest one, at least in that system, is- It can be like 45 minutes an hour away, which if you're having a heart attack, it's a pretty long time.
00:27:03
Speaker
It's a long time for your not heart to not be getting great blood flow. So a lot of people won't make it. Yeah, a lot of people wouldn't make it. um And if you're going even further out rurally, there's places where already at this time you have a heart attack, it's going to be an hour before you get treatment.
00:27:21
Speaker
If that hospital closes, it might be two or three hours. And at that point, you're turning the EMT's job from getting patient from point A to point B to probably just keeping an eye on their on their wristwatch so that they can get an accurate time of death. That's terrible. Yeah.
00:27:37
Speaker
So I think you know that's the worst case for rural environments. um Even in... even in cities, there's a lot of safety net hospitals. You're very well aware of how challenging it is, even in the best of times, to keep physicians in these safety net hospitals, because they're overworked, a lot of times very underappreciated, and the burnout rate is extremely high. Can you just take a second to describe what a safety net hospital is? Yeah. ah so A safety net hospital is a hospital that
00:28:10
Speaker
provides healthcare care primarily to lower class and underserved communities. In Boston, Boston has tons of very expensive high-tier hospitals like MGH, Dana-Farber, Beth Israel, but a lot of these hospitals don't take patients who are coming from like Roxbury, where people are very poor, don't have great health coverage. So it's class-based. It's class-based. So do you have the money and the health insurance to pay for this drug I'm going to give you? Right. So what ends up happening is all of these patients that aren't going to be taken by...
00:28:47
Speaker
hospitals like MGH end up coming to BMC. And so what that means is the clinicians at BMC are seeing huge numbers of patients and these patients tend to be very sick, have multiple comorbidities.
00:29:01
Speaker
A lot of, I think probably the majority of unhoused patients in Boston are coming to Boston Medical Center. And so that comes with you know additional challenges in treatment. If you have someone who has no home address, makes it a lot more difficult to formulate treatment strategies.
00:29:18
Speaker
And every region of the country and every urban center has this type of hospital where people who are typically low income or low medical literacy or all of the above go for their treatment. yeah And they're under the greatest stress because they're not making the kinds of money on the margins that the wealthier hospitals do. No. And I mean, also part of the burnout is that because these are patients who have fewer resources,
00:29:46
Speaker
When they're not in the office, it can be difficult for them to get their medications even, access to food that's not going to worsen their condition. So, I mean, I know at the diabetes clinic, there's several patients who they're...
00:30:02
Speaker
As hard as the clinicians are trying to help their patients, the patients are just coming in no movement on their A1C because you know they're not able to get their meds and they're able to find foods that aren't going to just drive further into diabetes. and So you're saying these are multiple interacting factors in the built environment that makes it hard for that person to control their diabetes. Oh, absolutely. Medications for sure, but they still live in a food desert. Yeah.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah. So for you, some of the warning signs ahead are Medicaid closures, hospital-related closures, and the epidemic of metabolic disease yes and lack of trust.
00:30:41
Speaker
Is there anything else we need to worry about? Like new pandemics? New pandemics? so I mean, you've seen that NEPA is... is on the rise. And i mean, trying to NEPA, is I don't think, has nearly the pandemic potential as COVID. But I mean, there is also the concern that if we were to have another COVID-like outbreak, is it actually going to be detected in the US? um If you recall back in 2020, we didn't really know that much about cases until there was a lab out of Seattle, I believe, that essentially went rogue.
00:31:15
Speaker
and went against orders and started testing for COVID. And what they found is, oh, it's spreading in our community and it's spreading quickly. And also the CDC PCR primers were wrong. yeah They used the German primers, which worked. Yes. all Right. Yeah. um And so the the concern is that even though we have the infrastructure, um whether or not it would actually be used, because, I mean, I forget what the quote was from from Trump, but it was something along the lines of,
00:31:45
Speaker
The only reason we had cases is was because we were testing. It's true. Yeah, it's true. so But the medical estimates prefer at least 30,000 excess deaths. yeah you know You can test or not, but you know the death statistics don't lie. Oh, yeah. There's 30,000 extra people in Florida died. Yeah. So, I mean, the the concern would be that if there were to be another outbreak of the disease, whether or not it would be detected. And I mean, by all signs, it looks like it's going to be now. I mean, this isn't ah infectious disease, but you know you look at Texas, the rates of maternal mortality, um those figures, like I'm pretty sure, are basically gone now.
00:32:23
Speaker
Well, and we had Americans in every state gasping their last breaths on respirators, quite sure that they did not have COVID, in denial until they died. So that's the nature of some of these belief systems. It's like no amount of evidence is going to change people's minds if they are that tribal or that emotionally invested in a belief.
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and and also just as far as like treatment of um COVID especially, um you had people deciding to just reject all scientific knowledge and eat horse paste because they'd been told on Facebook that it was going to cure COVID.
00:33:01
Speaker
Well, let's end on something more
Public Engagement and Communication in Science
00:33:04
Speaker
optimistic. And let me ask you, what what are the opportunities here? what ah Is there silver lining to any of this? Five years from now, what will we be so glad has happened?
00:33:14
Speaker
I think so. I do think the silver lining is... I think people are genuinely interested and science, um even with as much skepticism as there is. If you look online, there are people, I think part of the reason that um a lot of interest in carnivore diets and all sorts of things like that, you know, a zompic is because people genuinely are interested. They want to know, um they are interested in maintaining health.
00:33:47
Speaker
And i think so long as there are scientists who are willing to put themselves out there and be a source of verifiable peer reviewed information um and meet people where they are as far as riding with that information, i think that people will be receptive.
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, what you want, I think, is for science to be inspiring. So you want an Apollo program. You want people to say, we're going to put astronauts on the moon and bring them back safely. Right. People can get behind that even hasn't happened yet because it's a great idea. Right. Right. And like you can make it happen. And people love backing a thing which is going to work, but takes a lot of effort. It's a heavy lift. and It's going to be very exciting when it's done. Right. Nobody wants to hear, please buckle your seatbelt.
00:34:35
Speaker
right right we know that already we need some new horizon to reach for and i don't mean mars right you know like something on earth that's going to be a great thing so the so the cancer moonshot was supposed to be that yes right whole bunch of money You know, Beau Biden's brain cancer prompted the big initiative, like let's fix cancer in the next five years.
00:34:59
Speaker
little unrealistic, but but still a great idea. Like, let's have some, let's get our national innovation behind this thing. Right. And I don't think we have that yet.
00:35:11
Speaker
No, I don't think, I don't think there's any, I don't think so far at least there's any, um, sort of major scientific projects that the public's super excited about. But I think that certainly can change. um I think a lot of it is just a matter of having more scientists who are willing to sort of leave the lab, you know take off the lab coat and meet people where they're at you know tell people about their projects, why this is interesting, why this is exciting, um and sort of why, i guess, why they should care.
00:35:47
Speaker
Well, and to get us out of our tribalism, our president, me Melissa Gilliam, went to Washington around February last year to talk about the indirect cost crisis and the attack on university hospitals and um was explaining that innovations that come from Massachusetts research labs affect the whole country, yeah the whole world, and our new drugs, new treatments, new therapies, new imaging technology, it's all good. Right.
00:36:11
Speaker
and she had a member of Congress say to her as long as what we're doing hurts Massachusetts we must be doing something right right and she was shocked appropriately and they were shameless like they believed this yeah like and so there's very little room there right to say like I have a great idea for you Yeah, but I mean, I think as ah as a counterpoint to that, though, also sort of your experience of going to DC last year with a prostate cancer survivor, it seemed like that was very impactful. And i believe you were saying there's a staffer who sort of after the presentation was very touched and willing to share that she herself had been a breast cancer survivor. Yeah.
00:36:59
Speaker
I mean, it does touch people. The chances that any American will develop cancer in their lifetime is one in two. Right. So it affects everybody or almost everybody. And so, and colds and flus, everybody gets a cold and a flu. Right. right We were all at risk of COVID.
00:37:16
Speaker
like So that's the whole point of public health is like, we it's these are not rare diseases. You're not exotic. Right. Yeah. it's very common and very damaging and so we should do something about it because you know were kind of all in it together and so maybe the hope is some new sense that we are all in it together absolutely the nature of public health yes right and it's still there going to be people who don't want told what to do right typhoid mary was very upset that they incarcerated her oh yeah he was like what do you you know like i'm i need to work here why are you putting me in jail right which the new york state authorities had they could do right right the law let them she was not happy No, no.
00:37:54
Speaker
But there's always going to be people like Typhoid Mirror who are not happy. Yeah. I think there's there's always going to be good contrarians, but I think most people are very reasonable when they understand the reason they've been asked to do, to go out of the way and convenience themselves and do something they otherwise they wouldn't, provided that you know you meet them where they're at at, don't speak down to them, talk to them you know as an equal and so explain like, oh,
00:38:21
Speaker
I understand this is inconvenient for you, but this is the reason why we think it makes sense to do this. So you have hope in sort of the fundamental human rationality, like people can be convinced.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yes. That's good. Yeah. I mean, I have to i have to believe that that that humans are reasonable and rational. Well, great. Thank you. Thanks for your thoughts and for your time. Yeah. Thank you for having me on.
00:38:56
Speaker
You've been listening to The Fifth Column, a series of podcasts documenting the intersecting stresses of our time. I'm Gerry Dennis. Please tune in again soon.