How Deep Does the Corruption Go? | FDA Director Dr. Marty Makary Tells All

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “How Deep Does the Corruption Go? | FDA Director Dr. Marty Makary Tells All”

Podcast: Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Host: Alex Clark (Turning Point USA)
Date: November 25, 2025
Guest: Dr. Marty Makary, FDA Commissioner, with co-interviewer/guest commentary by Bobby Kennedy Jr.

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Overview

In a groundbreaking episode recorded at the FDA headquarters, host Alex Clark sits down with the new FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and co-leader Bobby Kennedy Jr. to expose the inner workings, past dysfunctions, and ambitious reforms happening at the highest levels of American health regulation. The discussion explores the impact of bureaucracy, special interests, and entrenched dogma, as well as the overhaul spearheaded by the Trump-Kennedy administration. The episode dives into pediatric cancer, transparency in vaccine approvals, food policy, women's health, pharmaceutical pricing, and the implications of decades of regulatory failure.

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Major Discussion Points

1. Uncovering Dysfunction and Corruption at the FDA

• “Fiefdom Culture” & Lack of Accountability

  • Dr. Makary describes the FDA before his tenure as a series of “empires that made their own rules” with independent revenue, law departments, and little oversight.

    “It was a fiefdom culture here, a series of centers functioning on their own, as if there was no accountability to Congress, accountability to the White House...” – Dr. Makary (03:01)

• Past Regulatory Failures:

  • Discovery that prior administrations approved processes where American cancer patients’ cells were gene-edited in China, then re-infused in the U.S.

    “I found out that in the previous administration they had approved cancer patients … having their cells sent to China to have Chinese labs gene edit the cells of Americans.” – Dr. Makary (25:33)

• Suppression of Dissent:

  • Employees who tried to innovate were stifled; dissenters faced punishment or their ideas ignored.

    “Was dissent punished? … I think it's been stifled.” – Bobby Kennedy Jr. (10:10)

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2. Overhauling U.S. Health Regulation

• Daily Collaboration and “Big Ideas”

  • The heads of FDA, NIH, and CMS (Dr. Makary, Kennedy, and team) hold daily talks to align health policy and funding on “actual cures” and root-cause research.

    “We talk every day about how to make healthcare better, because the problem with healthcare is it's so fragmented...” – Dr. Makary (04:15)

• Accelerated Approval Pathways

  • Rewiring application and review processes to get pivotal decisions out in weeks, not years.

    “We have this new pilot program to get decisions out in weeks.” – Dr. Makary (18:58)

• Transparency and Public Input

  • Radical data disclosure policies, new guidelines for food ingredients, and calls for live-streaming meetings.

    “Every piece of data that we can legally release, we are legally releasing ... the amount of stuff that we found that was hidden, that was essentially designed to be kept from the public...” – Dr. Makary (57:49)

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3. Food as Medicine & Big Food Accountability

• From Starvation to Disease

  • The U.S. food system, designed for caloric mass, now produces ultra-processed, addictive food driving disease rates.

    “We’ve done something to result in 40% of our nation's kids having the chronic disease...” – Dr. Makary (39:07)

• National Guidelines, SNAP Reform & Industry Commitments

  • Defining “ultra-processed food,” removing funding for junk food in SNAP, pressuring manufacturers (Tyson, Mars, Walmart) to eliminate harmful additives.

    “We have now for the first time ever waivers in the SNAP program so that states don't have to use taxpayer dollars to fund these ultra junk food items and sugary drinks.” – Bobby Kennedy Jr. (46:19) “Tyson ... getting rid of high fructose corn syrup, all non petroleum based food dyes, titanium dioxide ... Mars company, the biggest candy maker removed it.” – Dr. Makary (72:20)

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4. Drugs, Vaccines, and Medical Dogma

• Rethinking “Safe and Effective”

  • The dangers behind the “safe and effective” slogan—scientific nuance vs. marketing bait.

    “Our charge from Congress is to approve drugs that have a substantial amount of evidence that they are safe and effective. Well, what if it's extremely safe but has a very little effect size?” – Dr. Makary (12:22)

• Vaccine Policy & Safety Transparency

  • Commitment to releasing raw trial data, supporting more flexibility in vaccine schedules, and considering studies comparing vaccinated/unvaccinated populations.

    “We believe in radical transparency, and it will penetrate every area of that field.” – Dr. Makary (58:35)

• Issues with Drug Approval and Pricing

  • Pushing for lower pharmaceutical prices, cutting regulatory red tape, and eliminating unnecessary requirements (e.g., animal testing for drugs already used abroad).

    “We're getting rid of regulations, we're cutting red tape ... We were requiring animal testing at the FDA even when a drug was already approved in humans in Europe.” – Dr. Makary (11:19)

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5. Spotlight on Children’s and Women’s Health

• Pediatric Cancer Moonshot

  • Launching AI-driven research and fast lanes for treatments, including rare/early-phase drugs, targeting real roots of childhood cancers and chronic diseases.

    “We're going to use AI to try to research cancer differently when it comes to cancer that affects children... we're moving fast.” – Dr. Makary (05:48, 07:01)

• Hormone Therapy and Medical Myths

  • Reversing harmful dogma on hormone replacement for women; recognizing prior bias and promising new guidelines.

    “Maybe the biggest screw up in modern medicine is the demonization of hormone therapy for perimenopausal women ... The study they presented showed no increased risk...” – Dr. Makary (48:21)

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6. Candid Insights on Conflicts of Interest & Culture

• Corporate Influence

  • Both Kennedy and Makary emphasize the role of moneyed interests in shaping research, dietary advice, and drug deployment.

    “There are really two political forces ... it's the people who are lying to you and people who are trying to tell you the truth.” – Dr. Makary (28:31)

• Medical Paternalism

  • The tradition of concealing data from the public (“We have to tell you, you can’t handle this information.”) is called out repeatedly.

    “Medical paternalism has done tremendous damage. And now ... medicine is more democratized.” – Bobby Kennedy Jr. (61:07)

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7. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Pace of Reform:

  “Things happen in weeks where it normally takes years.” – Bobby Kennedy Jr. (05:37)

• On Pharma Advertising:

  “We took the biggest action in a generation to crack down on pharma ads ... I sent 108 enforcement letters a few weeks ago and another 1,500 letters to the industry.” – Dr. Makary (74:46)

• On Autism & Tylenol

  “Twenty-seven studies have found some association between prenatal acetaminophen use in pregnancy and subsequent ... ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.” – Dr. Makary (34:41)

• On Root Causes:

  “Almost everything comes back to insulin resistance and general body inflammation, the two things we talk least about.” – Dr. Makary (40:17)

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Key Timestamps

• Fiefdom Culture & FDA Dysfunction: 03:01 – 07:19
• New Era of Coordination at FDA/NIH/CMS: 04:02 – 05:41
• Pediatric Cancer Focus & Fast Lanes: 05:41 – 07:19
• Suppression of Dissent, Checklist Transparency: 10:10 – 11:16
• True Meaning of ‘Safe and Effective’: 12:21 – 13:19
• Drug Pricing & Access for Average Americans: 13:19 – 16:26
• Shocking Discovery: Gene-Edited Cells from China: 25:33 – 26:18
• Autism, Leucovorin, & Tylenol Controversy: 30:31 – 38:12
• Big Food’s Role in Disease; Addictive Foods: 38:12 – 41:24
• Ultra-Processed Food Guideline Launch: 45:36 – 47:41
• Women's Health and Hormone Therapy Dogma: 48:21 – 52:12
• Radical Regulatory Transparency/Vaccine Data: 57:39 – 59:35
• Modernizing Vaccine Schedules & Funding New Trials: 64:23 – 66:14
• Pharma Ad Crackdown: 74:46 – 75:05
• Cosmetics Safety, Adverse Event Reporting: 77:57 – 78:36
• Makary’s ‘Remedy’ for Healing Culture: 78:51 – 80:11

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Closing: Remedy for a Sick Culture

Dr. Makary’s Prescription:

“Drink water, healthy water, filtered water, and eat foods from good soil or meat from good farms or fish that are raised in a healthy way… you can't overeat if you try on turmeric… Your body will naturally respond with that satiety reflex.” (79:30–80:11)

Bobby Kennedy Jr.:

“The spiritually part is important... It’s behind all the mass depression and drugging our nation’s kids.” (78:51)

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Tone & Takeaway

The episode is brisk, candid, and sometimes confrontational—marked by frustration with decades of regulatory inertia and energized by the new regime’s commitment to transparency, speed, and public health-first policies. Both guests interweave technical insights, policy reforms, personal anecdotes, and pointed criticism of past failures. Listeners hear both the challenges and the bold steps being taken, making this a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of medicine, government, and cultural health.

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Transcript

[Alex Clark]

What has been something that you discovered taking over the FDA and you had to call the President and say, you're not gonna believe what I've uncovered.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I found out that in the previous.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Administration they had approved cancer patients in the United States having their cells sent to China to have Chinese labs gene edit the cells of Americans. The last commissioner, I think his number one stated goal was fighting misinformation. I don't even know what he was talking about. Probably people like me.

[Alex Clark]

What if the FDA has been quietly operating with its hands tied until now?

[Narrator/Host]

What if those safe and effective labels that you trusted were more political than scientific? Today's guest walked into the chaos of.

[Alex Clark]

That agency and decided to rewire it from the inside.

[Narrator/Host]

Dr. Marty Makary is the newly confirmed commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, a surgical oncologist and public health researcher with over 300 peer reviewed publications and three New York Times best selling books including Blind Spots, which is my favorite. Before the fda, he oversaw novel surgical programs, co developed the global surgical safety checklist and held tenured roles at Johns Hopkins. In this episode we pull back the.

[Alex Clark]

Curtain on what Dr. Makary discovered when he walked into the FDA.

[Narrator/Host]

What's gotten him angry? Why safe and effective has often been more a slogan than science. The hidden conflicts, the internal pressure and when dissent was punished. What he and President Trump and RFK Jr are doing to overhaul regulatory practice, rethink food, drugs, vaccines and transparency. His take on controversial commercial topics like Tylenol and pregnancy, hormone therapy, misinformation over vaccination, and what true accountability looks like. This is a fantastic episode to watch. We filmed it at the actual FDA in Washington D.C. that was like one of the coolest moments of my life.

[Alex Clark]

And also shout out to the fda.

[Narrator/Host]

You guys have a beautiful podcast set up like that was stunning. One of my favorite sets I've ever filmed on. Watch this with the entire family. You can find it on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel or culture Apothecary on Spotify. Pause before we get started. Leave a five star review for this podcast. We are going where nobody in the.

[Alex Clark]

Conservative movement has gone before in terms.

[Narrator/Host]

Of health and wellness. Discuss this episode in the Cute servatives Facebook group and share it all over social media. This was a big deal to interview Dr. Marty. Please welcome FDA Director Dr. Marty McCary to Culture Apothecary.

[Alex Clark]

You are President Trump and Bobby Kennedy's newly appointed FDA director. What is the most egregious thing that you discovered about how the FDA was allowed to operate before you took over.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, first of all, it's a huge privilege to be able to have this job. The FDA is an amazing place, but it was a fiefdom culture here. It was a series of centers that were functioning on their own, as if there was no accountability to Congress, accountability to the White House. It was sort of a series of. Of empires that made their own rules. They had had its own revenue stream from the user fees, that is, the postage stamps, essentially, they would sell for applications. So they were autonomous with their funding, communications, lawyers. And so a lot of commissioners would come through and realize, hey, the place kind of runs itself. There's a lot broken. I might make suggestions to change some things. And we took an entirely different approach. So it's been a wild ride, but the place is much better. The culture is great. The FDA is strong, and there's teamwork that you'll see here that you've never seen before.

[Alex Clark]

Now that the fda, the nih, and CMS are finally aligned under Trump and Kennedy, what are you guys specifically doing behind the scenes to kind of unwind that damage from the old regime?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Well, the most important thing is we talk every day.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We talk every day about how to make health care better, because the problem with health care is it's so fragmented and.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And the government's the same way. And so what we do is we.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Talk about a massive public health need, a problem that's not being addressed right now in healthcare. And we talk about how we could have NIH fund studies that are different from the typical studies. We're not talking about modifying a chemo a little bit, and then maybe you live a week longer, but we can argue about whether or not it's even statistically significant and if we should approve that new chemo. No, we're talking big ideas. We're talking, can we study environmental exposures that cause cancer?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Wow.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Can we study why young people are getting cancer at an increasing rate when other rates of cancer are going down? Can we talk about how a new therapy that's been a generic, where there's not an incentive to go back and do big studies to get a new approval for some new indication? How we go into the pipeline and say, hey, research shows that this existing treatment that's been around might actually be effective. And then we talked to center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to say, hey, we think this is a meaningful treatment.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Will you pay for it if we.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Announce we're gonna approve it?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And things happen in weeks where it normally takes years.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

So that's exciting.

[Alex Clark]

And speaking of cancer you guys just announced that there's gonna be this new focus on pediatric cancer.

[Narrator/Host]

Right?

[Alex Clark]

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Ye personal for me, because I'm a cancer surgeon from Johns Hopkins and gastrointestinal surgery, that's been my background. And so we're going to use AI to try to research cancer differently when it comes to cancer that affects children now, it's going to apply to all cancers, but it's.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's one of those new approaches. We have to try something new.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We can't just keep going down this road. We're going on and the population's getting sicker.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We're not seeing major breakthroughs with a.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Lot of that giant debilitating and terminal.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Conditions that affect the country. And what I love about the FDA.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Is we go deep into the pipeline of medications that are being proposed. Early animal studies, preclinical phase 1 studies. Not after they've had their big giant randomized trials in phase three, but the early.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And we ask our reviewers and our scientists, are you seeing anything that looks amazing? And if so, bring it to our desk.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so we're getting away from the receive only mode.

[Alex Clark]

Are they used to that? Are they like, oh, my gosh, wait, this is so fun. My job is fun now, whereas before maybe it wasn't.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

A lot of them love it. We're moving fast.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We do need more scientists, and we're actively hiring because there's a normal turnover where 5% of our scientists leave every year. Normally that's just the turnover. We're in a growth mode on the science side here.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But, yeah, I see people come up.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

To me all the time, hey, I.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Heard about that new program. I've got a drug that I'm reviewing that might be a good fit. And so we can't just be a stingy librarian.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

As a regulator. Our goal is not to, you know, have everybody go through our application process properly. Our.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Our goal is more cures and meaningful.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Treatments for the American people and healthier food for children. That's very clear. The last commissioner, I think his number one stated goal was fighting misinformation. I don't even know what he was talking about. Probably people like me.

[Alex Clark]

Well, I saw Chelsea Clinton today announced she's coming up with a podcast that's going to be dedicated to fact checking. I don't know, health and science coming out of this administration or something. What do you think about that?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Oh, right, yeah. So we're going to. The government's going to tell you what's correct and not correct with you. Your health information. Look at our track record. Look at the medical establishment's track record when it senses and silences people that disagree. And you're seeing it now with child mutilation and puberty blockers. You're seeing it with holistic medical care.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Basic things that make sense.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You're seeing it with mom comes along and says, hey, I don't. I don't want to follow the entire US Vaccine schedule. I'm looking at the UK vaccine schedule, and that one seems a little more reasonable to me.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Can we use that vaccine schedule? And the reaction has been, no, bad, disobedient. We're going to kick you out of our pediatrics practice. Or instead, we can listen to people and say, what are your concerns? Oh, aluminum. The lower aluminum content with a.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

With a European vaccine schedule, we can listen.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We just.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We just had a baby, my wife and I, and congrats.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Thanks.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And of course, they're out there, you know, with the needle, ready to, you know, vaccinate them with hepatitis B at birth. And I was a pain in the butt, you know, as a. I would.

[Alex Clark]

Have been nervous being a nurse with you. I would have been like, oh, my.

[Narrator/Host]

Gosh, this is the FDA director's baby.

[Alex Clark]

I cannot make a mistake.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, the vast majority of the clinicians were amazing, and the nurses were amazing. Nurses are always amazing. I've learned that in the hospital. But, you know, it's like, no, we.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Don'T need a hepatitis B at birth.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

My wife was hep B negative when she tested.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So what are we doing? We have to listen to people, not just treat them like they're a fugitive. And so we're taking a whole new approach to health. The F. And FDA stands for food.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It's been ignored.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

People think it's just a drug center.

[Alex Clark]

Well, it kind of has become that.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I mean, before you dominate, it's become dominated.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah, yeah. What has historically happened inside the FDA when someone has tried to challenge the consensus? Was dissent punished?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I think it's been stifled. So, for example, we are going to.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The scientific reviewers and the people that work in food and inspections and our law enforcement division. We have about 16,000 employees here, and.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We ask them, what big ideas have you had that you've never been able to do? And a couple people might say, you know, I just do my job here.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I evaluate this on the application.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But then you meet somebody who says, you know what? The whole process here is broken. We don't need to farm out the application to 12 offices.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We can convene the 12 offices, we.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Can create incentives to get the application.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Done ahead of the target date.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

You hear things like, you know, why.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Do we have a checklist to review, an application that takes us two months to go through, but we don't make the checklist available to the public. So companies are. They can't go through the checklist themselves. So it's like the FDA has your application, now they're going through the checklist. Nobody knows what's on it. Hopefully you don't get a gotcha. Just making the checklist available to the public.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

There's a million things like that.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We're getting rid of regulations, we're cutting red tape. We're using idle time in the drug development process. We're eliminating animal testing requirements for a lot of situations. We have to use common sense. We were requiring animal testing at the FDA even when a drug was already approved in humans in Europe.

[Narrator/Host]

What?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yeah.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's insane. It's. It's like if. If you explain that on a course.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

In logic, you would fail. Right.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It makes no sense. So there's a lot broken and there's a lot. But I think in the past, somebody's.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Been told, well, this is the way we do it here. And now we're saying, give us your big ideas and go bold. Because that's the charge I have from President Trump.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Do what's right.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Go bold, and don't worry about the.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Lobbyists and the corporations.

[Alex Clark]

Before, when the FDA would say things like, this is safe and effective, was that really a scientific phrase or just a marketing phrase?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Well, it's.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It's tricky, right, because our charge from Congress is to approve drugs that have a substantial amount of evidence that they are safe and effective. Well, what if it's extremely safe but has a very little effect size? That is the effectiveness is minimal? Well, that's a different situation than a drug that's dangerous but has a small effect size. So we have to just use our best judgment, common sense. Our biggest thing is when you're talking.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

About rare diseases, you can.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You have to have different standards than you are for a blood pressure medication.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And you can't even do trials sometimes.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

For conditions that are so rare there's not enough patients to enroll. So we have regulatory flexibility for a lot of those situations.

[Alex Clark]

What has been the most fun idea that you've had so far as FDA director that you brought to President Trump? And he was just as enthusiastic about it.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Gosh. First of all, he pushes us.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

As much as we present ideas to him, he wants lower drug Prices for everyday Americans. And he put us on this charge to get the drug companies to agree.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

To cut their prices by 50, 70, 85%.

[Alex Clark]

Can I actually stop you right there? Can you speak to aoc? You know, saying President Trump wants kids to die and really he's just making care more affordable. He's lowering drugs prices. He's also expanding the child tax credit. Can you, can you speak to that at all?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

This is a study from, in, from my field in oncology that came out. 37% of cancer patients say that after their cancer care, they would avoid or delay any other cancer care because of the financial toxicity.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

They get burned so bad.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Endless bills, GoFundMe campaigns passing the offering.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Plate around, resending reminders for people to donate. For what? For a drug that cost 10 times.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The United States, what it cost in.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

England or Germany or France. That is the great American ripoff. And that's what the President asked us to end. And the way to end it is.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

To go to these companies and say.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Hey, we're the largest purchasers of drugs.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We want the best price, we want the lowest price. And in a developed, wealthy country, they're called OECD countries, it's well defined. We're not asking for the same price Zimbabwe gets. They can get lower prices for. It's a poor country, but that was.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The charge we got. And so Mehmet Oz led this effort.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And Chris Clamp at the center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, we have our own set of tools that we can use here at the fda and we.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Worked with these companies and we've got a series of announcements now that we've never heard of before. So the high price of drugs is an access issue, if you believe in bridging access. Because remember, the ruling class in the United states forgets that 50% of Americans have less than $500 of cash on hand. And if you're One of those 50% of Americans, life can be brutal. Your car breaks down, you decide, maybe I can't pick up my car.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I don't have the money to pick it up from the shop.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Life can be brutal. There are decisions made every day by single moms about whether or not to buy certain foods, healthier foods, or any food at all, versus pay expenses that.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

They have no control over as they.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Work like crazy, two jobs. The ruling class in America forgets about them. And we are laser focused on improving.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The life of the forgotten Americans, the everyday Americans.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And that means when you lower the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Price of drugs, you're helping them. There's another myth put out there that you'll hear among the sort of political partisans that this administration cut Medicaid. Not true. Medicaid is going up by about $200 billion. Medicare and Medicaid going up by $200 billion.

[Alex Clark]

So why do they have that so wrong?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Well, because the rate of growth of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Medicaid and Medicare, sorry, I should say Medicare and Medicaid, the rate of growth is unsustainable.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so we said we're going to.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Cut waste, fraud and abuse and reduce that rate of growth to about, say, 3% instead of, you know, letting it just run wild with waste, fraud and abuse. And so more money will be in next year's budget for Medicare and Medicaid. But you'll hear these false narratives that it was cut.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Same thing.

[Alex Clark]

What about cutting cancer research?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Same thing. Exact same thing. You're gonna hear the same thing. Oh, the Trump administration cut cancer funds. No, they didn't. The budget is the same. It's more next year. And what we said is that when.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We all came into office and remember we all talk a lot and the.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

NIH was a mess. They were funding a lab in Wuhan that brewed up a virus that killed.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

20 to 25 million people.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

14% of NIH grants went to descriptive studies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Descriptive studies are not helping that 50%.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Of Americans that live with $500 of cash or less.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's not. You're not helping them by funneling money to Harvard and then writing a descriptive.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Study presented at a high end conference where the doctors all go out for a steak dinner the night before.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We're not making a difference doing these descriptive studies. So we said we're going to move.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

That money to actual research studies that are making a difference to find cures for diabetes and pediatric renal failure and blindness and deafness.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so that's the exciting thing going.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

On at NIH right now.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And what we're doing is we're partnering.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

With drug developers and with device makers and we're saying, what is it game changing technology that you've got in any stage that you can tell us about? And you know, everybody thinks, oh well, this is going to change the world and that's going to change. But we're scientists, we can see right through a lot of the fluff.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And when we see something that's truly.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Mind boggling, then we start saying, hey, we're going to have constant communication. We're going to figure out what makes sense and what doesn't in this normal pathway that we have. We're going to get a decision out. Once everything's all teed up, we at the FDA will get a decision back to you. Instead of the normal year, we'll do it in weeks.

[Narrator/Host]

Wow.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And so we have this new pilot program to get decisions out in weeks. The FDA had a system where they.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Would take two months just to tell.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You whether or not they were going to review an application called a supplemental bla, which is a sort of another indication for a drug. That's right.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

You know, it's a joke. Other countries were laughing at us. I really think, Alex, with this new approach, that we're taking a very proactive.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Approach on cures and meaningful treatments.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

In the next year or two, you are going to see a cure or meaningful treatment. Some powerful treatment for type 1 diabetes, for neurodegenerative disorders, for some forms of pediatric deafness and blindness.

[Alex Clark]

Wow.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

For some types of stage one and.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Stage two cancer, where the tumors, for qualified individuals, that is, they have a.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Certain genetic composition of the tumor. It's a minority of patients.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But the tumor we've seen now shrink into thin air. You don't even need surgery to remove it. There's nothing to remove. They don't need chemo, they don't need radiation.

[Alex Clark]

How are you guys, in less than a year of this administration being in the White House, how are you guys able to do this so quickly and be on the trail of all these hot new things when for decades we've not had any of this, like, what was going on? I don't understand.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Because we're telling the companies we're not going to have you go through a.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

10 to 12 year process to bring a new cure to market.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

That's the average time it takes.

[Alex Clark]

Unbelievable.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We can run more continuous trials.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We can run more combination trials.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The most important thing the companies want is some communication with us instead of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know, they put a hundred thousand page application. That's not a joke, that's a real thing.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

These applications, thinking, oh, the FDA is going to pull a gotcha. So let's just put the kitchen sink in there. And they spend so much time putting that together and then they don't know where to go next. So they do all these experiments that just purely guesswork that waste time. And then the phase three trial gets done and everyone's twiddling their thumbs waiting and waiting for the results. Well, we can review all the manufacturing stuff and everything in the application before your clinical trial finishes. And once it reads out, those are pretty simple results, we can get the readout and then the decision out quickly. PTSD is a big thing too. We got 8, 000 veterans a year.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

That die of suicide.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

That's more than the entire Iraq and.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Afghan wars combined over their entire spans.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So the wars are over, but the men and women are still dying at a high rate. We have a duty, we have a. We owe it to them to get.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

A decision out on potentially promising treatments for ptsd. And so that's one of our huge priorities. We're using that streamlined, modernized regulatory pathway for these potentially promising treatments.

[Alex Clark]

Could it involve psychedelics by chance?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It could.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, yeah, I've heard a lot about that. Do you want to finish? Because I interrupted you and got and took you off track, but do you want to share anything about, like a crazy. You told President Trump and he was really stoked. Like a funny thing.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

When we meet with him, first of all, the guy is super high energy. I mean, he will call at 7 in the morning or at 1am on the same day. Okay.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The guy's a phenom.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Okay.

[Narrator/Host]

Literally three hours of sleep.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I don't know. I have no idea.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But I know not only is he.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Working all the time and of course he takes little breaks. You see him on the golf course.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But he is constantly.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Managing like 500 ideas and projects by calling his people and his staff and telling people, hey, where are we on this? Where are we on lowering drug prices? So cool.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So, yeah, you know, I, we do.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Talk a lot of ideas with him. It's. It's invigorating. The questions he's asking are the questions.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The American people are asking.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And so our job as medical scientists is to give him the medical science perspective on things.

[Narrator/Host]

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[Alex Clark]

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[Alex Clark]

What has been something that you discovered taking over the FDA and you had to call the president and say, you're not going to believe what I've uncovered that they've been doing here. Can you share anything like that?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, we work through a lot of staff, so I don't, I don't just pick up the, the phone and call the President.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But I found out that in the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Previous administration they had approved cancer patients in the United States having their cells sent to China to have Chinese labs gene edit the cells of Americans. Literally change the gene in the cells of American patients and then send it back to the United States where those genetically modified cells were then reinfused into American patients. In my opinion, I don't understand how anybody would properly give consent to that.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Something like that. But literally we're having the Chinese gene edit American cells.

[Alex Clark]

That's really freaky.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

That's just like Tuesday.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And we're like, what? No, we're shutting this down.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But that's the kind of stuff we.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Find all the time. There was lawfare going on here in the last administration.

[Alex Clark]

RFK Jr. Is one of the most controversial voices in health. Some call him courageous. Others say he's dangerous. What do you think of him as a leader?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

He's an amazing leader. Look, he is pushing the field of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Health care in a way we've never seen from any Secretary of Health and Human Services. Look at the last Secretary of Health and Human Services. First of all, nobody knows who he is. He presided over one of the greatest increases in healthcare spending in modern history. We're throwing good money after bad into the broken system. Nobody is talking about the root issue.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And that is the health of the population. They're just talking about different ways to.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Finance the broken healthcare system. We don't need to just talk about how to finance the broken healthcare system.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We have to talk about how to fix the broken healthcare system. And the way you do that is.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

By talking about the health of our nation's kids.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Who else has done that except our.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Nation'S foremost environmental health attorney, and that is RFK Jr. Now, I love meeting with him. He's got a lot of ideas.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And what I love the most about.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Him is that he's engaged. His motives are entirely pure.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Everything we talk about, almost everything comes.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Back to the health of children.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And could this help children? And how fast can we help children?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And what do you guys think as medical doctors about this potential thing that could help children?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And those are the conversations we have. We have him every few days.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I walk into his office.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's nostalgic. You know, he's a part of American history. He.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

He'll tell me about how the. The government was involved in assassinating his uncle. And it. I can't believe I'm. I'm having these conversations because the man is a treasure trove of wisdom on the American system.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And one thing that made him so.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Popular, especially when he sort of teamed up with President Trump, was talking about the undue influence of corporate America.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I think there are really two political.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Forces in the United States, and it's not what people think. It's not the left and the right, and it's the people who are lying to you and people who are trying to tell you the truth. And he is trying to get to the truth. And he is asking the questions that so many Americans are asking.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Why are 40% of our nation's kids sick? Why do 31% now have insulin resistance?

[Narrator/Host]

Right.

[Alex Clark]

But then the criticism he gets is, well, you're not a medical doctor. Well, you are Dr. Marty, so what is your response when people say, Bobby Kennedy doesn't know what he's doing? He's not a doctor.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So is he not allowed to ask questions?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

First of all, no Secretary of Health in recent time has been a physician.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so is he not allowed to ask questions? The questions he's asking are incredibly piercing questions. And so he will pose those questions.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

To his large team of doctors, that includes myself, and we will talk about.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It and we'll take it back to.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The shop here and we'll run it.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

By our subject matter experts. What I find is the best part about working for Bobby Kennedy is that he will say, Marty, you know, this seems concerning, or it seems like there's something there. You're the medical expert.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Ultimately it'll be your decision what to do about it at the fda.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I mean, you talk about an incredible collegial relationship. Never once has he said, I need.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You to do this.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so how amazing is it that we have an American at the head of HHS with an intense interest and moral compass to help children asking big questions. And he's got doctors who like to think outside the box. We believe in scientific standards and we believe in common sense, and we can use both.

[Alex Clark]

Speaking of thinking outside of the box, Bobby just dropped a bombshell claiming that Tylenol use during pregnancy may be linked to autism. As a physician and now FDA director, can you walk us through the science behind that connection?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

First of all, no one was talking about autism and what's causing the epidemic of autism. Until President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, this was never a national priority from the government. Now moms were talking about it, parents were talking about it, teachers, counselors, they're just saying how many cases there are. You didn't see a generation ago kids that were completely non verbal. At this rate, kids with repetitive motions.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

With these tics, you still don't see.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

People in their 60s and 70s with these repetitive tics. Completely non verbal from birth.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It was ultra rare. Something is going on. It's now like 1 in 12 boys in California.

[Narrator/Host]

Right.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And some of that may be increased.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Diagnoses, but that doesn't account for this.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Mass epidemic that's expanded in our generation. So something's going on. It's been off the radar of the medical establishment in terms of understanding the root cause.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Now medical field loves to play whack a mole and just treat, diagnose, treat.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The billing, coding machine of the hospitals and the clinics. You know, the churn mills of, yeah, your kid has this, you know, ICD9. You know, I'm going to add this.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

CPT code for my bill and, you.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Know, it's just a billing coding machine. What? Stop. What are we doing? What are we doing? Adhd, similar or drugging our nation's kids at scale, and no one has asked what's actually causing it.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And you saw our action to remove the non petroleum based food dyes. I know you were an advocate for that.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So with autism, we said we're going to take a comprehensive root cause approach. We're going to scour the literature and we're going to see everything out there that looks legit. And as we were doing that, we saw two things that we thought the public has a right to know as.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We are doing this expedition to study it.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I think the most exciting good news.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Story was that leucovorin, which is a prescription form of folate, can be incredibly therapeutic for a subset of kids with autism.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Because autism for some kids, maybe half.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

A third, you know, you'll hear different estimates.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Maybe an autoimmune disease whereby the folate.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Receptor in their brain is blocked by this autoimmune response and the brain is.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Starving of folate because of this blocked receptor. Well, the medication that we just gave.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The green light for called leukovorin bypasses.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The blocked receptor and delivers folate directly.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Into the brain of a child.

[Alex Clark]

I just saw this video of a mother who has a severely nonverbal autistic child. She had her son take that for the first time after that press conference that Bobby and Trump did and said he was talking within 48 hours.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Oh, my gosh.

[Alex Clark]

And that. I mean, she was just in tears, ecstatic.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Wow. Well, you know, people have said, how dare you make this available without clear instructions on, you know, this. The science has not matured to the point where we know exactly who benefits.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

First of all, it's safe.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It's been around for a century.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Second of all, yes, have a physician provide guidance and prescribe it, because many physicians will first test for the antibody.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

To the folate receptor to see if you have the autoimmune sort of reaction before they prescribe leucovorin.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But what are we gonna do? Just do nothing while all these kids. We have a whole different approach now. The medication is in generic form. So what big pharma company is going to go back and say, I'm going to do a giant study on an existing generic and try to get another indication. We are proactive. We go into the pipeline, we identify this medication. We called the companies and we said, we're going to expand the indication and we're going to do it in weeks. And that's how we roll. And so I'm glad to hear some.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Kids are having therapeutic benefit.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Now, the other thing that we discovered.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

In that, learning about what's involved in autism was that some studies, 27 to be exact, have found some association between prenatal, I.e. acetaminophen use in pregnant during pregnancy and subsequent neurodegenerative disorders, I.e. aDHD and autism spectrum disorder.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Now, it was mixed, but do we have a duty to let the public know? Yes, we do.

[Alex Clark]

What's your response when people say to that, well, I took Tylenol and my child doesn't have autism? Like, how do you explain why some people wouldn't?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I mean, if we're going to use anecdotal experiences like that, then snake oil cures cancer and, you know, ice cream causes hiv. And I mean, that's not the scientific process. Now, I do believe you can learn from individual cases, but the effect size, when I say the effect size, that is if 100 women take acetaminophen in pregnancy, a very small subset may have an increased risk of autism in their children.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's not a direct one.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

For one, if you take it, there's going to be a hundred percent correlation.

[Alex Clark]

Did you and Bobby see the viral videos of people in protest on the left downing Tylenol while pregnant after this announcement?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I heard about them because.

[Alex Clark]

What was your reaction to that?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, remember, so I was involved in transplant surgery and I had been involved in liver transplants for people with liver failure from Tylenol overdose. It's well known overdosing on Tylenol can result in complete liver failure and death. And I've been involved in two cases in my life where we've tried to do an emergency liver transplant to save somebody's life after them overdosing on acetaminophen.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So it is sad.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know, it's sort of the ultimate partisan contrarian mindset that is dangerous and.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I hope we can have less of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

A sort of reactionary culture and people can listen more. Turn off the echo chambers of some of the social media that just affirms what you already think and be open minded.

[Alex Clark]

How do you explain Tylenol rebuttaling all of this and saying this is ridiculous. It's perfectly safe to take this while pregnant when they themselves were tweeting for years and years and years. Oh, we don't recommend you take Tylenol while pregnant.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

What's up with that, well, and it.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Came out that there were discussions years ago that they were aware and they described the evidence of an association between acetaminophen and autism as, quote, unquote, somewhat consistent. Those were internal communications within the company. Look, I want American companies to do well. I want companies that do business in the United States to do well. I think there's a role for acetaminophen in so many settings in medicine. But look, Bobby Kennedy and President Trump and everybody else who has put this warning out there, they have a right to an opinion whereby they can agree with the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health who has said that there is a causal relationship between prenatal acetaminophen. I'm quoting. There's a causal relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and the neurodegenerative disorders of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. When the, when the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health says that, do we have a duty to let people know?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I believe we do.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I believe we do.

[Alex Clark]

How has big food manipulated science the way Big Pharma has?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Well, big food is, gosh, it's a big.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It's a big tent. And so what we've been able to do is work with individual companies to say, look, you're not.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We don't think you're bad people. We think what happened was in the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

60S and 70s, you had a charge to address starvation and food insecurity. And so just focus on pure production.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Didn't matter if the food was micronutrient.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Poor, didn't matter if it was loaded with refined carbohydrates. Didn't matter if all the grains were.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Stripped of fiber and you chopped it up and it functioned like sugar in the body. It was just pure mass and maybe.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Calories to some degree.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so the food companies did what they were told to do. Now that we see the result of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

That food supply, we've got to pivot. We've got to say we've done something to result in 40% of our nation's kids having the chronic disease.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's not their fault. You know, in the medical textbooks, between the lines, it kind of suggests the kid has diabetes, you know, type 2 diabetes or obese.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It's their fault. It's lifestyle. You know, there these broad terms.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Could it be food has been engineered.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

To be highly addictive? And by the way, the vibrant colors that came with these petroleum based food dyes mess with the developing mind of a child, whereby they're full and they still want these foods.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so it's messing with their minds. And we've all been there as kids. We remember eating foods that we craved and craved. They were ultra processed, they were loaded.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

With sugar, sometimes high fructose corn syrup.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So they could pack more of the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Sweetness in, you know, the same animals.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And you eat, eat, eat, and then you're full and you still want to eat it. And that is the basis by which.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We'Ve had so much chronic disease in the United States because almost everything comes back to insulin resistance and general body.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Inflammation, the two things we talk least about.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

When we talk about disease, almost everything's related to general body inflammation. When we talk about health, in 100 years you might be around. I won't, I won't be. But let's say 80 years, we're doing this podcast.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We're going to be talking about health.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

In terms of how's your inflammation?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And we'll have better tests of inflammation.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I can actually sense my body's inflammation. I'm very sort of aware of my physiology.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, 100%, yes. I think that when you start totally changing your life, you know what you're eating. Especially you notice when the slightest thing is off, I can, I can tell immediately something is not right. And I can attribute to like, well, I was traveling and I had that for lunch guarantee, you know, because you become so in tune and you're such a well oiled machine with what you're eating that if you, you know, go against that in any way, you can usually pick up on it pretty quickly.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yeah.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So I think we're going to, we're.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Going to understand more about the role of inflammation. And you know, inflammation is entirely manageable by what we eat are high inflammatory foods and low inflammatory inflammatory foods. Matter of fact, True Food Kitchen was based on the concept that these are low inflammatory foods and it's not hard. Right. These are whole foods and things from good soil and, and natural foods.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

If you think about what we're doing.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

To American kids today, we rattle them in the middle of the night when their circadian rhythm says, no, leave me alone. We put them on a school bus while it's still dark. Not because it's good for their health, but because it's convenient for adults.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We hit them hard with a high glycemic load with grains stripped of fiber.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And chopped up so it functions like sugar.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We put them on a sugar high, they're tired already, they're sleepy. They sit in class at a desk. We hit them hard again with another set of Ultra processed, highly addictive, refined carbohydrates. They can't pay attention after lunch. They're dozing off. Kids were not made to sit still at a desk for seven hours a day.

[Alex Clark]

Amen.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And when they can't do it, what do we do? We drug them at scale. This is an American tragedy. We have got to start talking about natural light exposure and the inflammatory reaction that kids are experiencing from all these chemicals that go down their gut.

[Alex Clark]

I'm so excited that you're talking about natural light and wake up start times for school. Have you ever heard Bobby talk about. Hey, that's something we also need to address is just like national guidelines for hey, we recommend school starting at this time for these age groups or anything like that.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah. So we talked about it and included.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It in the MAHA report where we outlined our agenda. There's some grants at NIH to to work on it. We're very excited. Casey Means is passionate about this.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Yay.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yeah. So we look, we're at the beginning of just now recognizing what we're doing to our nation's kids. We've got to now talk about real ways to make changes.

[Narrator/Host]

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[Alex Clark]

You just launched an initiative to actually define what ultra processed food is and create national guidelines for food. So what is the definition of ultra processed food and what does revising the guidelines mean for American health?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yeah, so we've got processed foods and then ultra processed foods. And processed foods could mean you just cut up a cucumber or you have canned olives. And that's not what we're concerned about.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

What we're concerned about are these foods.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

That are very high in their glycemic loads.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

They're not even food, they're food like.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Substances and they are causing an inflammatory reaction when they go down the GI tract.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so we're putting it out there.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

To the world to say help us.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Craft this definition because you'll never have a perfect definition but we do know it when we see it. These ultra processed foods we've got now for the first time ever waivers in the SNAP program so that states don't have to use taxpayer dollars to, to fund these ultra junk food items and sugary drinks. Now if you want to go out and eat 50 ding dongs, you can. This is America. When it comes to taxpayer dollars. We're starting to act responsibly.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We have another meeting coming up with Pentagon.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We're talking about, you know, they are a mass consumer of food in the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

United States and they're feeding ourselves, you know, military personnel.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We can do better.

[Alex Clark]

There's a lot of questions about the standards for military, you know, what they're, what they're being fed, the water that they have on bases, things like that. So you have heard that we're aware that there's a problem and Things are being done, hopefully.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, they're energetic to fix it.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know, they're obviously the largest peacekeeping, you know, force in the world and managing conflicts.

[Alex Clark]

And so it makes sense to me to start with our kids in our military making sure that they have the best food and the best living environment.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

That's the exciting thing, that's what I'm.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Loving about this so much, is that.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We'Re not just sitting here as an.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Angry librarian, as a regulator, saying, well, your application had a problem with the font, so send it back.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

No, those days are over. We are a proactive pro health agency working in tight collaboration with all the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Other health agencies to try to make America healthy again.

[Alex Clark]

Let's talk about women's health, because that's one of the most neglected and manipulated areas in public health. Women were told that hormone replacement therapy was dangerous for decades. What went wrong in the way that that data was handled and communicated, and who benefited from that misinformation?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, first of all, this is maybe the biggest screw up in modern medicine.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Is the demonization of hormone therapy for.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Perimenopausal women as a carcinogen. That is that it's going to increase your risk of dying of breast cancer. It became dogma in 2002 based on.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

A study where a bunch of researchers were dead set on proving it. They had even gone on record before.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The study was done saying, we have.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

To stop this hormone therapy bandwagon that women are taking. Well, you hadn't even done the study yet. I mean, this is the problem with.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Science when it becomes so biased.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The study they presented showed no increased.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Risk in breast cancer that was statistically significant. No subsequent clinical trial has ever shown that perimenopausal women that start hormone replacement therapy have an increased risk of dying of breast cancer.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But yet, seven or eight out of 10 doctors in America today will tell you, tell women, yeah, I'd rather not prescribe it because that breast cancer thing.

[Alex Clark]

They'Re still saying it.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's starting to change. And we had a big impact in changing that culture when we held at.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The FDA a couple months ago a.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Hormone replacement therapy roundtable that every woman should watch.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know, women go through perimenopause starting mid-40s.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The symptoms may last eight to 10 years.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

But what it is is it's the body's natural estrogen production sort of dropping off.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And when that happens, the body doesn't benefit from that estrogen. Almost every cell in the body has an estrogen receptor. It's important in brain health. And Memory and cognition. It's important in cardiovascular health and preventing heart attacks. And it's important in bone strength. So women who take hormone therapy starting.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Around the time of perimenopause, they have to start before age 60, otherwise it's too late and the benefits go the other way. But women who started proper, you know.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

As it's recommended, have a 25 to.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

50% lower rate of fatal heart attacks later in life.

[Alex Clark]

Unreal.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

They have a third or half the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Bone fractures that other women have.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Their bones are so much stronger when they fall, they're far less likely to need surgery.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Or if there's a small car accident, they're not going to need that hip replacement sometimes because their bones are strong.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The cognitive strength is remarkable. In some studies it prevents cognitive decline by 63%. And in one study it prevented the risk of Alzheimer's by 35%. There's probably no medication in all of modern medicine that can improve the health of a population more than hormone therapy for women, maybe with the exception of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Of the advent of antibiotics.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's an incredible medication whereby women who are candidates, and that's the vast majority, live longer, feel better, and those are the long term benefits I talked about. There's also the short term benefits of alleviating those symptoms of perimenopause. The hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, weight gain. There's 50 plus different symptoms of perimenopause and every woman experiences them differently.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Some women have minimal symptoms.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

For other many, it's severe and it can last eight years or longer. So this is an incredible story, but tragically, 50 million women have been denied hormone therapy over the last 23 years because of a dogma that it increases.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Your risk of dying of breast cancer.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And the FDA has had black box warnings on the medication saying, you know, warning, warning, breast cancer.

[Alex Clark]

Are you taking this off?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We're taking a hard look at that.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And we're going to have an announcement very soon on it.

[Alex Clark]

What can we do about black box warnings on SSRIs? About post SSRI sexual dysfunction?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yes. So you may have heard of this topic recently. There's been some psychiatrists that have been waving a flag in the air and.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Saying, look at the high incidence of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Post SSRI sexual dysfunction and it needs to be on the label for sure. What we have is a process by which we review the data in its entirety. It is already on the label for some SSRIs. We need to go through our normal process and make sure that people know about all these risks.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Because my Fear is you just come.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Into the office saying you're feeling sad.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And within minutes you've got a prescription for an SSRI without any discussions.

[Alex Clark]

What's really scary is SSRIs are not meant to be taken for decades and decades and decades. And I don't know that there is any warning about that either for long term use, is there?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Well, most studies are done in a.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Shorter period of time.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So yeah, now we have 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 women in middle age in the United States are being treated for depression. And what's the root cause of that depression?

[Alex Clark]

And also are the SSRI labels only saying that you have an increased risk of suicidality for children, but not even necessarily adults?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I'd have to check on that. But here's something interesting. We talked about women coming, coming in with perimenopausal symptoms, say in their 40s and 50s.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Do you know that a woman coming.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

In with perimenopausal symptoms in the United States today is more likely to get an SSRI for those symptoms than they are hormone therapy?

[Alex Clark]

We need better literacy for women, women's hormonal health, I think.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Well, I think, you know, thanks to people like yourself and many other podcasters.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Who are inquisitive and intellectually curated, curious.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And bringing experts on.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You see Mary Claire Haver and so.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Many other experts out there now talking.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

About this on social she's an ob. She's an expert in this field.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

There's about a dozen of them.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We had a bunch of them here.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

For the expert roundtable.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Any woman who wants to really understand this issue, you know that that's a great resource.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But that is how we're going to educate the public because the medical establishment kind of gets drunk in its own might and develops these giant blind spots in American medicine. Opioids are not addictive. 15 year blind spot dogma. Opioids are not addictive. Natural fat causes heart disease. 50 year dogma. Not true. If you questioned it, you were sidelined. Preventing peanut allergies. You could go through the list on and on. We've had an epidemic of medical dogma and the way we manage it is more ideas.

[Alex Clark]

Is the epidemic of peanut allergies that we're seeing in the United States caused by vaccines or bad public policy?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I think the mass increase in peanut.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Allergies since the year 2000 or so is a function of a failure of the American Academy of Pediatrics by issuing the wrong recommendation on how to prevent peanut allergies in kids. They said avoid peanut butter until the kid's about 3 years of age in order to prevent peanut allergies later in life. They got it backwards. If you avoid peanut butter until age 3, then a kid is more likely, much more likely to develop a peanut allergy later in life.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Same with other eggs, milk, dog, cats, dusts, other, any allergen. If you have total abstinence in that period when the immune system is developing, you won't develop the tolerance. The American Academy of Pediatrics sort of in their haste, ignored a basic principle in medicine that has been well known. It's called immune tolerance. And that's why when our little boy is 5 months, 6 months of age.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

There'Ll be a little bit of some.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Of those allergens of peanut butter, but.

[Alex Clark]

Not peanut M M's new. Those have food dyes until those are taken out.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

That's right. And, and the truth is, if we're being honest, it's hard to find healthy peanut butter. Some of it is so processed. I know.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, my gosh. No, that is a real thing. Legacy media is claiming that President Trump and Bobby Kennedy want to take away access to the COVID vaccine and the flu vaccine. What is the truth?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The truth is anybody who wants it can get it. But I'll tell you why.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I want to back up, back up for a minute.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We're the only country in the world pushing Covid shots in young, healthy kids. The rest of the world is laughing at us. Alex. In the UK you have to be 75 years of age to qualify for the COVID booster or have a risk factor. In France, it's 80 years of age. The whole world has moved on to a risk stratified approach to say, we're only going to recommend it for people who are elderly or very elderly or have a major risk factor. So the idea that we're still saying, oh, isn't it tragic a young, healthy kid can't just walk into a Starbucks and get their shot in 10 seconds? We're the only country talking like this. The rest of the world has moved on to a risk stratified approach, and that's what we did here at the FDA with our regulatory policy.

[Alex Clark]

Will you be releasing the full unredacted clinical trial data for all vaccines currently on the childhood schedule? Why haven't we seen that before? Who's keeping it locked up?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Every piece of data that we can legally release, we are legally releasing the.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Amount of stuff that we found that was hidden, that was essentially designed to be kept from the public data on.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Myocarditis and the second and the COVID shot in young, healthy males.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We couldn't believe what we're seeing. And so we immediately made it public.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And we immediately made, you know, issued a warning about it. The data on Vaers, the kid dies, and the doctor thinks it's from the COVID shot. It's reported into vaers.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

What have you heard? Nothing. Nothing.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Literally, it's been like a lockdown of data. So every piece of information belongs in the public domain.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

You know, vaccines are like 2% of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

What we do here at the FDA, but we believe in radical transparency, and it will penetrate every area of that field.

[Alex Clark]

Is the FDA's vaccine safety surveillance system strong enough to detect rare side effects like myocarditis or neurological issues?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, it did detect myocarditis, and then they put it under the rug and.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

They did it in a clever way.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And the CDC was very involved in this sort of disguising of the data.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

What is the risk of myocarditis after.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The second Covid shot in a young, healthy male?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's actually one in 2,600. That's a lot.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And on rare occasions, somebody dies from the myocarditis. That's been reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But if you say, what is the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Risk of myocarditis in older individuals, young, male and female, and say, oh, it's, you know, it's some very, you know.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Obscure statistic, then you're covering up the true signal in the data that was.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Seen by scientists here in the data set.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so that's how they did it. They sort of broke it down in.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Their own way to kind of camouflage it. So same thing with the COVID hospitalizations among those who got the COVID booster and those who didn't, in healthy people.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Under age 50, love to see that data.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It's never been made public by the cdc. Wow.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so maybe that's because they feel.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Like you can't handle the information. There. Literally, there has been that mindset, and it's not new or unique to medicine. Back in the days when home pregnancy tests were developed, the medical field fought the ability of people to do their own pregnancy test at home. Why? Because we doctors have to tell women the information. They can't handle it on their own.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It happens like every 10 years. Same thing with HIV testing.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

People can't do their own HIV.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

They can't even get the results on their own.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

They have to schedule an appointment, and we have to tell you, you have this infection.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so you see this, and then.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

About 10 or 15 years later, the system cracks. People say this is absurd. I I demand to know.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But in some states, the United States.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

If you go and get blood work done with your doctor, it'll say the results are complete. However, your doctor has not reviewed them yet and therefore you can't see them in the MY chart. And that paternalism still lingers today. You saw it with Home COVID testing. People can't handle this information. On the other what are they going.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

To do with it? We have to tell them. And so medical paternalism has done tremendous damage. And now, thanks to the fact that information can get out there, medicine is more democratized. People are learning about health. Doctors are learning about health from people like yourself. It's not even in the textbooks. You learn about how pasteurization happens. There's no part of the medical curriculum.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

That talks about it.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

The petroleum based food diets. No part of the medical curriculum that.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Talks about its association with attention deficit disorder.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

But a lot of parts in the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Curriculum about how you treat attention deficit disorder with drugs.

[Narrator/Host]

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[Alex Clark]

Could spacing out vaccines reduce adverse reactions and are there specific shots where that change could really make a big difference?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Possibly. You know I have seen parents say I'm going to use the Denmark vaccine schedule. It's it spaces things out a little bit more.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Look, if people have concerns because the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Reality is when you co administer vaccines, you're going to get a bigger inflammatory response in a little baby, in a child. And so some people believe in spacing them out and it's entirely logical and reasonable.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We are creating some new regulatory standards.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

At the FDA to say you can't.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Just come up with a vaccine and say hey, we're going to give it all on the same day with no studies looking at the co administration we.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Want to see not just a follow up for three days or four days. We want to see some studies to give people assurances.

[Alex Clark]

Can we finally fund a vaccinated versus unvaccinated study?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah. So the companies that make the COVID.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Vaccine came to us and they said we have an updated vaccine for the latest strain and we'd like it approved by the FDA for everybody.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And we said we will only approve it for high risk individuals if you promise to go back and do a proper randomized control trial to give us the answer. Does a healthy person have any benefit from this vaccine at this point in history? That is population immunity is essentially ubiquitous.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Everyone's had Covid, they've got some BT cell immunity, what we call cellular background.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Immunity, and it's very different from 2020 and 2021, when it was a different virus, it was more aggressive and population immunity was low and the vaccine was.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

A good match at the time.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So hopefully we're going to have those results by May. The companies have told us they're going to have the results by maybe we're going to have to hold them to it.

[Alex Clark]

Bobby and President Trump have talked about taking Mrs. VACCINES off the market. What does that mean for people who have already gotten the vaccine and are concerned about spike proteins?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, I mean, there's nothing that we can do at this point for the people who have already gotten it, who have concerns. But as you did see that there was, there was an effort to change the funding of the $500 million that were going to MRNA technology for other uses and for vaccine, you know, vaccine technology.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

My feeling is, you know, people say, oh my gosh, you know, they took away funding for MRNA technology.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know what?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

If they want to do research on MRNA technology, go for it. They can do it on their own dime, not on taxpayer funding. These companies made $100 billion off of.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

MRNA shots during the COVID pandemic.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

They can afford to do their own research. Why are US taxpayers funding research on these MRNA shots when the companies have billions? So that was my view is we're not saying this research is good, this research is bad. Look, all research is worthy if the investigator has a good hypothesis. But what are we doing? We want to see research go to study food as medicine and the microbiome and the chemicals that appear in the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

US food supply that don't appear in.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Europe and you have a kid with abdominal pain, they go to France or Italy for a summer and they feel better. What's going study that problem. And so we have got to start funding research on areas that have not been getting research funding because it's not been part of the medical establishments locking.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Arms and walking in a singular direction together without really being open minded.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We're going to do that.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We're going to fund important research. We've got a project we're funding on a universal flu shot so you don't have to come in every year where we guess what the strain is going to be. There are some promising flu shots that may Provide long term protection, including protection.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Against strains that have not yet mutated. That would be a win. That would be a win. A lot of people die from influenza and this sort of annual campaign to come get your flu shot. Oh, and then in the end, what percent of people got a benefit from the flu shot? Oh, 9%. This year we didn't.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We. It wasn't a good match.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Oh, this year it was a good match.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We got 40%.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Oh, that last year it wasn't a good match. We had 32%. Yeah.

[Narrator/Host]

It's like all over the place.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's all over. What are we doing? That is exciting research to have a universal flu shot. And so that's one of the projects we're funding in lieu of, of the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

MRNA $500 million study.

[Alex Clark]

Is the Trump administration planning on doing anything in regards to kids being kicked out of public school, are not allowed to enroll if they don't follow the exact vaccine schedule?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Well, President Trump does believe in an essential core vaccine set. Vaccines. That is, you look at the story of the polio virus and the tremendous disability and death that it inflicted. The iron lung machine, one of the worst images you could think of in the 1950s, when the vaccine was implemented in 1954, I think it was discovered, and a couple years later, there was mass vaccination.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

That's a success story.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

That's a win.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

There is a view that there are core vaccines. If you look at, say, the Denmark vaccine schedule, they're given a third of the shots that we give in the United States. They don't have mass outbreaks of all these other conditions. So what's going on there?

[Alex Clark]

Do you think? President Trump's position is that there should be at least a small amount of recommended vaccines to attend public school?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

There should be a core set.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, what do you think after looking at all the data? Becoming FDA director has been the most overhyped or falsely marketed drug in the last 20 years.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Gosh, the story of my life is people come up to me and say.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Oh, you're at the FDA now.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know, we have this drug that cures cancer and it also cures Alzheimer's and athlete's foot, and on the side it cures Lyme disease and it's a natural botanical.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And the FDA is just being so.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Difficult in not approving it. So then we'll go back and look at the file. And it turns out there's no efficacy in any of the studies. Doesn't work, and there's 10 sterility safety violations at the manufacturer and so that's kind of the story of my life.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So I would tell people beware a.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Little bit when they hear like, oh.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

There'S an amazing thing. And the FDA is just being difficult.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We've got now regulatory flexibility, we've got open minded approaches, we've got new pathways, we're getting stuff done. I think we're going to be on track to approving more cures and meaningful treatments this year than ever in FDA history. We're working hard, we've got this pathway to get decisions out in weeks. It's an exciting time.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So I would say there's not one.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

That comes to mind, but certainly there are a lot of gimmicks in medicine.

[Alex Clark]

What does success look like for you as FDA director? What is a headline that you hope to read in 2028 when this administration is no more?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know, I want people to talk about diseases like they were things of the past like rubella or polio. I want to be able to be in a position where people say, you know, back in the day I used to have type 1 diabetes and a younger kid will ask, what is that? I, I don't know what that, you know, I've never heard of that. I don't know of anybody with it.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I think if we can deliver on.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

More cures and meaningful treatments, then I think that'll be the mark of success.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

If we can make the food supply incrementally better. You know, we got a big commitment from Tyson.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You may have seen one of the largest food makers getting rid of high fructose corn syrup, all non petroleum based.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Food dyes, titanium dioxide, which is sort.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Of that second tier of chemicals beyond the nine petroleum based food dyes we've asked companies to remove. Mars company, the biggest candy maker removed it.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And BHT is going to be removed.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

From all Tyson foods.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Good.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You know, Sam's club made a big statement. Walmart said all their branded foods, they're also going to have remove a whole series of chemicals, not just non petroleum based food, diet.

[Narrator/Host]

Oh really?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah. So we're, we're seeing significant progress and we're going to keep going. We're going to keep going. We have tremendous clout. We have convening power.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The companies need us and so we.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Want to do good things for them.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And at the same time ask them to behave responsibly by committing to a healthier food supply for children.

[Alex Clark]

Would you ever support mandatory FDA approval? Live streams of meetings so that Americans can see what goes on with the decision making.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I love it. It might be in the most.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

The most boring meeting. Somebody who watches. You made it sound exciting.

[Narrator/Host]

Well, people like watch C Span, right? People nerd out over that.

[Alex Clark]

I'm like, it must be.

[Narrator/Host]

It would probably be the same.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yeah, it might be the same.

[Alex Clark]

When are pharma ads coming off tv?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Oh, yeah.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So we took the biggest action in.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

A generation to crack down on pharma ads. They're creating a misleading impression. It's distorting the relationship between a doctor and a patient. People are coming in demanding these medications. They don't even understand them because the.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Ads create a misleading impression. And just so you know, pharma ads used to be rare, but the FDA.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Over time got lax in its enforcement of pharma ads.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

They used to send out over 100 letters a year in the last administration. It trickled down, whereby in 2023 they.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Only sent one enforcement letter to pharma companies.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And last year they sent zero. I sent 108 enforcement letters a few weeks ago and another 1,500 letters to the industry warning them that we're going to take swift action if we see an ad that's misleading in any impression. The endless singing and dancing, not disclosing the side effects, online pharmacies promoting drugs without any side effects, and social media influencers paid by pharma companies to promote.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Drugs without mentioning any side effects. We're going to consider that an action by a pharma company.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And so we are going to take that very seriously.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

We've got regulations. It's just nobody's enforced it.

[Alex Clark]

So much has been accomplished. Year one, year two, what are the big exciting initiatives that Bobby Kennedy is saying? I want us to focus on these next in 2026.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Gosh, there's so many.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And we have had a major announcement every week. Yeah.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

For the secretary.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

He's laser focused on the health of kids. And one thing we talk about a lot are THC vaping devices used by children that are targeting children. It's very common in the United States. It's been off the radar and it's.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Something we have to pay attention to.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It falls under our jurisdiction because we have a tobacco center.

[Alex Clark]

Let me ask you something kind of spicy.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yeah.

[Alex Clark]

Do you think that there is a correlation between vapes and the rise in colon cancer in people under 30?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I don't know. I mean, look, a lot of the.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Vapes that are illegal, we don't know what's in them.

[Alex Clark]

Right.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

So there is a concern there, I think the rise in colon cancer and GI cancers in general in people under.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

50 is from all of the exposures that are creating a bit of an.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Inflammatory response in the gut.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And we know that chronic inflammation has always been a precursor for precancerous cell development. So I think it's all that, everything we put down.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And if you look at the one thing that's changed over the last half century, it's what we put down.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We don't value the microbiome enough. And when we had our baby, gosh.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

I was a papa bear with no antibiotics for the baby unless I approved.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

And the baby was sick.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yes, we don't want the infection to.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Rage, but just routine antibiotics here. Throw some antibiotics in their eyeball. You know, here's an antibiotic before a C section just to give the antibiotic after the C section. It's just as effective. You don't need to have it in the baby's blood system as the first.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Pharmaceutical the baby experiences.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

So we have to value the microbiome. Breastfeeding, when possible and feasible, has health benefits. It's not politically correct to say so, but we're learning more and more about those health benefits. We're going to tell people the truth. And, and that's part of microbiome health.

[Alex Clark]

And fixing baby formula.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Thank you for mentioning that. So we've had a big expert panel on fixing baby formula. It's a whole string of things that are broken. Suntan lotion, the same thing. The fda.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, gosh, yes, yes. Are you guys going to focus? Also, we talk so much about food and pharma, but beauty products for women.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Yeah, so we also regulate cosmetics. And, you know, overall, the FDA regulates 20% of the US economy. So it's.

[Alex Clark]

Our standards are awful compared to everywhere else.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

We are going to make a couple major changes. One of them that we just announced is any adverse event to a cosmetic.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Product will be available to people in real time. So you can go in there and see this product has had this litany of adverse event reports and we're making that available to the public and hopefully some third party can collate that information to make it very user friendly for individuals. Maybe on an app or something like that.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Look, it's a big project and it's something that needs to be fixed. It's, you know, one of many.

[Alex Clark]

Yep, I know you've got, you've got your hands full. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be?

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Well, I think the spiritually part is important.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

It's the biggest part. We don't talk about. It's behind all the mass depression and drugging our nation's kids. At scale, obesity and insulin resistance is an addiction. It's a glycemic, essentially sugar addiction. So we've not treated it like an addiction. We've treated it like, oh, you're just.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

A bad kid or you're being naughty or you have a willpower problem. And so I, I would often tell.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

My patients when they would come in and they had to get healthier before surgery in six months or three months.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

I'd say drink water, healthy water, filtered water, and eat foods from good soil.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Or meat from good farms or fish that are, that are raised in a.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

Healthy way, sustainable, sustainably. Raised does not always mean healthy.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

And so wild caught healthy fish, healthy meats and foods out of the ground. With good soil, you can't go wrong.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

You can't overeat. If you tried, if you want to overeat on turmeric, it's like impossible, right?

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Or steak.

[Bobby Kennedy Jr.]

It's impossible.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Your body will naturally respond with that satiety reflex.

[Alex Clark]

Well, Dr. Marty, I am so excited that. But basically, almost exactly a year later, I get to sit down with you.

[Narrator/Host]

Because the first time we met was.

[Alex Clark]

On Senator Ron Johnson's chronic disease panel at the Senate.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

You were amazing. You were amazing there.

[Alex Clark]

Thank you.

[Narrator/Host]

Thanks for saying that. Well, I was so excited to meet you and get your book.

[Alex Clark]

And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so neat. And then just to see you in this role has been incredible. We're all so proud of you and support you and I mean, what a legacy. This is just, just such a great opportunity. And I'm so thankful that Bobby, you know, saw in you what so many other people have seen in you for forever. So thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary.

[Dr. Marty Makary]

Thank you so much, Alex. Great to be with you and just keep up the great work. I've seen your podcast get so much popularity and that's because you're educating people and you're bringing on people with different perspectives. And that's, I think, how we're going to improve the health of the population.

[Narrator/Host]

One of my favorite episodes to do this season. Please leave a five star review for us for Dr. Marty and all the work that he's doing. Tell others why they must be listening to Culture Apothecary. You really can't miss an episode or you're going to be so behind. We're on a mission to heal a sick culture twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. We are trying to do that healing a state culture physically, emotionally and spiritually. I'm Alex Clark and this is culture Apothecary.