Reclaiming Medicine And Biotech From China

Summary

Podcast Summary: Federalist Radio Hour

Episode Title: Reclaiming Medicine And Biotech From China
Host: Matt Kittle, The Federalist
Guest: Dr. Jeremy Levin, Executive Chairman of Ovid Therapeutics, Author of Biotech in the Balance: Saving a Strategic Industry in an Age of Distrust
Date: July 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the past, present, and especially the future of America's biotechnology sector, focusing on growing strategic challenges posed by China’s ascent in biotech. Host Matt Kittle is joined by Dr. Jeremy Levin, who offers an insider’s perspective on the evolution of biotech and the urgent need for the U.S. to reclaim global leadership—both for national security and the future of medicine. The discussion also covers the roots of public distrust in medical and scientific institutions and paths to renewal.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Jeremy Levin’s Journey (02:16–08:26)

• Dr. Levin describes his entry into biotech after a career in medicine and science in Europe:
  • “I finished my PhD in the structure of DNA at Oxford and then went over to Cambridge...practiced medicine in Europe until I heard about what was going on in America, which was the birth of the biotech world.” (02:43)
• He emigrated to the U.S. to be at the epicenter of biotech innovation, working in both startups and large pharma companies (Novartis, Bristol-Myers Squibb).
• Describes a pivotal achievement: pioneering immunotherapy approaches by acquiring Medirex at Bristol-Myers, which led to breakthroughs in cancer treatment.
  • “Nobody really believed the science was going to work, but I did… And we did it. It was remarkable.” (07:25)

2. What Is Biotechnology? (08:26–12:05)

• Biotech described as a revolutionary shift from chemistry-based drug development to leveraging the human cell and its components (genes, proteins) for therapy.
  • “Biotechnology is the evolution from that moment… understanding its components, and then turning them into medicines.” (10:23)
• Explains how modern biotech can now reprogram human cells to fight diseases like cancer and lays hope for future treatments for conditions like Alzheimer’s.

3. The American Advantage & the Threat from China (16:34–23:20)

• Levin details why America led the biotech revolution: encouragement of risk-taking, failing and trying again, and robust regulatory science through the NIH and FDA.
  • “It is okay to fail. You just have to learn from the failure and then try again… People in America take chances and that's remarkable.” (17:29)
• Warns: China has methodically studied, copied, and now rivals the U.S. in biotech by viewing it as a strategic industry.
  • “China created an incredible environment… If history is to teach us anything, in the next five years, we will see them as the greatest producers of new medicines that we've ever seen.” (22:11)
• China’s sequential five-year plans:
  • First becoming the world’s largest producer of chemicals
  • Next, excelling at medicine testing and development
  • Then replicating and surpassing drugs—now, pioneering innovation

4. Intellectual Property and Strategic Risks (24:50–31:41)

• Levin notes that China didn’t just copy but often stole patented technologies.
  • “Copying sometimes is a generous word, a more benign word that China uses for stealing patented technologies in the biotech industry.” (24:52, Kittle)
• Recent developments: China now values patents, outpaces U.S. in filings, and actively lures U.S. talent and capital.
• If current trends continue, future disputes could leave the U.S. hostage for basic medicines and antibiotics:
  • “We wake up in five years time and we have a dispute with China and they say, well, do you want your antibiotics? Yes or no?” (31:32)

5. Policy Solutions: “Bio Build” (25:29–42:41)

• Levin repeatedly insists the solution is not more government money, but robust, nonpartisan policy and regulatory reform:
  • “No government money is required…What biotech needs is… every single legislator needs to stand up and understand… that biotech is what will save our children’s lives in the future.” (25:39)
• Key policy ideas:
  • Reinvest and protect engine of innovation (NIH)
  • Remove politics from scientific decision-making
  • Modernize and depoliticize the FDA (embracing AI, process reforms)
  • Mirror real estate tax policies—align long-term biotech investments with realistic development timelines
  • Implement a “bio build policy” for serious, forward-looking biotech development
    • “We are going to build for America the single best biotechnology capability that we possibly can… It requires the legislators to have the imagination and foresight to say we're not going to let somebody else decide… which medicine my children can take.” (41:25)

6. American Distrust in Science—Origins and Remedies (32:18–39:51)

• Kittle and Levin discuss the eroding trust in public health during COVID and earlier controversies (e.g., Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent vaccine-autism paper in 1998).
  • “This distrust is corrosive and very damaging. But you know, it started in 1998, believe it or not.” (33:57)
• Argue that clear, nonpartisan, and unified scientific communication is crucial.
  • “We just needed clear, clear scientific results without any people stepping forward and saying they knew the answer.” (37:54)
• Endorse the need for strong, scientifically credentialed leadership (e.g., a true Surgeon General or 'COVID Czar') during crisis response.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Why America Led in Biotech

  • “What is characterized in America is something which is remarkable. It is okay to fail. You just have to learn from the failure and then try again.” —Dr. Jeremy Levin (17:29)

• On the Strategic Shift

  • “China…articulated a dream…that by 2035, China would become the center for producing new medicines. That was step number four.” —Dr. Levin (21:35)

• On Policy Solutions

  • “What biotech needs…is…every single legislator needs to stand up and understand…that biotech is what will save our children’s lives in the future. It is a strategic asset.” —Dr. Levin (25:39)

• On U.S. Vulnerability

  • “We wake up in five years time and we have a dispute with China and they say, well, do you want your antibiotics? Yes or no?” —Dr. Levin (31:32)

• On the Root of Distrust

  • “This distrust is corrosive and very damaging. But you know, it started in 1998…” —Dr. Levin (33:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:16–08:26: Dr. Levin’s career path and history of biotech
• 08:26–12:05: What is biotechnology? The science and its future
• 16:34–23:20: U.S. innovation advantages & China’s rise
• 24:50–31:41: Intellectual property, U.S.-China tension, future risks
• 32:18–39:51: Trust, COVID, and institutional credibility
• 39:51–42:41: Policy blueprint for reclaiming biotech leadership

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Tone & Language

The conversation balances urgency (the real threat from China’s strategic maneuvering), hope (American capacity for innovation), and clear-eyed critique (failures of leadership, miscommunication, politicization of science). Dr. Levin is thoughtful, grateful for America’s openness, but insistent on reforms. Kittle maintains a friendly but probing journalist’s tone, inserting both humor and concern.

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Closing Note

Dr. Levin concludes with a challenge to America’s policymakers to craft a “bio build policy,” to ensure America shapes the future of medicine rather than being dependent on rivals like China. The conversation closes with an optimistic wager that both he and Matt Kittle will still be running strong at 150 years—testament to biotech's promise.

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Recommended for anyone interested in innovation, the geopolitics of science and medicine, and the policy crossroads facing America’s most strategic industry.

Transcript

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[B]

And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the Federalist, and as always, your experience Sherpa on today's quest for knowledge. And as always, you can email the show at radio the federalist.com follow us on XDRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast and of course to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is Dr. Jeremy Levin, executive chairman of Ovid Therapeutics and author of the new book Biotech in the Balance Saving a Strategic Industry in an Age of Distrust. Thank you so much, Dr. Levin, for joining us in this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

[C]

Matt, it's a complete pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

[B]

Absolutely. And an extremely important topic it has been for some time. It is becoming more and more urgent. Before we get into the urgencies of the American biotech industry and the battles therein, give us a sense of how you got in this business so many years ago and how it has evolved over that time period.

[C]

Well, that's a great question and one that actually I'm thrilled to sort of walk through because I think it exemplifies many parts of why America is remarkable in this. My own background is somewhat unusual. I finished my PhD in the structure of DNA. That's the things that make genes that at Oxford and then went over to Cambridge in England and finished my medicine there and practiced medicine in Europe until I heard about what was going on in America, which was the birth of the biotech world. And I felt very strongly that this was a revolution in its making. We're talking about now the mid-80s. And so I flew over to the town that I knew most about, which was Washington dc. And there I was in Washington DC, at the first company I'd ever been in, which was actually in the Watergate building.

[B]

A lot of history there.

[C]

A lot of history there, indeed. And from there we take the story. It was a company called Focus Technologies. It was in the early days of biotech. And very quickly I had the chance to visit companies in California which were just tiny companies at the time, like what was then the innocent Genentech, which became a giant in years to come. Others Chiron, which came and was bought subsequently. And through this period I began, I fully understood that what I was seeing in front of my eyes was a remarkable evolution, an evolution of what was pure science in the 1950s, 60s and 70s into an engine which was delivering medicines and was not even remotely present. And let me repeat, that wasn't present anywhere else in the world. And so I, with great gratitude to the United States, emigrated here and decided that this was where I could bring all what I'd learned in medicine and science at Oxford and Cambridge and the different places I worked and help build this extraordinary industry. And in that period of time, starting in that little tiny company, focus, I then had the great privilege of evolving through several other companies, always in the United States, first of all with a giant company called Novartis, and then from there to another company called Bristol Myers Squibb, always climbing up the many years of hard work, which was fun, tremendous fun, working with Novartis, for example, at its new headquarters of research in Boston, they also recognized the need for investing in the United States in the research here. And then Bristol Myers Squibb, which was really at a turning point in its career. It needed to come out of what had been a doldrum, to be perfectly honest. And I felt a wonderful name like that, Bristol Myers Squib, was somewhere where I could really put my shoulder behind and help them become something remarkable. And grew up again in Bristol, a thoroughly enjoyable organization where, quite frankly, they would have vanished, they would have been bought by another company had they not taken the step, which was incredible, actually, really brave. Here they bring in this chap from England with his MD PhD, really intent on science driving medicine. And they listened and they listened well. And I have to compliment them that. So that in 2006 and 7, while we were working hard to make sure that the financials were stable, they helped me do what my dream was, which was to buy a company called Medirex. And we bought it for about $2.3 billion. The money is less important than what we did. We opened up the whole new field of how you get the white cells in a human being to attack a cancer is very clever. It hides from the white cells. It's really an evil disorder, but it hides. And it's learned how to trick the body and hide its badness from us. So here you were for the first time, Medrex had understood that you could just maybe bring out the covers and show the cancer to the white cell. The white cell would then attack it and you'd win against it. Nobody really believed the science was going to work, but I did. And then I managed to persuade the folks at Bristol that it would. And they were brave enough to follow that really seemingly crazy idea, which was the real foundation of what all biotech is, taking crazy ideas and really focusing on them. And we did it. I have to confess, it was remarkable. We bought this company and within 10 years, half of all of all research in the entire pharmaceutical industry was focused on this, because Bristol opened that door and we were showing great results in terrible diseases like melanoma, lung cancer, really bad disease, which was starting to be knocked back. Very exciting moment, very exciting moment.

[B]

I mean, as we speak, I'm thinking about today. A very dear member of my family is at a university health facility now. They're trying to figure out why white blood cells counts are, are going down as he goes through chemotherapy for a very, very serious form of cancer. All of this is related to what you're talking about. And I think we have this kind of nebulous sense or just and oftentimes a vague sense of what biotech is. And I think there's for that you just explained so many different facets of this, but it may sound like a stupid question, but I think it is time that we get a full understanding of what biotech is. What is biotech?

[C]

That is a great question. And actually to understand what biotech is, perhaps we should understand where medicines came from and then I'll unpack that concept for you. Medicines originally came actually from the dye industry, believe it or not. People were making dyes and then they saw they had an effect and they took these dyes and they were chemicals. And you gave a chemical to a human being and something happened. And this was the principle. The bottom line was that this built up an entire industry where you took a chemical, you gave it to a human being, and something happened. And enormously important drugs came along that way. But something else was happening at the same time. Because the United States had funded the nih, had grown this enormously important research area, People began to say, well, wait a second, maybe we should better understand how the very cells, the billions and billions and billions of cells that we have in our own body, how they work, how do the genes work, how do the proteins work, how do we unpack what they do? And for the first time in 1973, the remarkable founder of Genentech and others decided they could unpack the cell and figure out how you could make the cell, the parts of the cell, be a medicine itself. And this was different. This is not throwing a chemical on the cell. It's not throwing a. And it was basically saying, how could we extract from that cell something that could be a medicine? So biotechnology is the evolution from that moment. It says the parts of the body that we just take for granted, the antibodies that we fight against bacteria, the cells themselves, the genes themselves could really be medicines rather than waiting for a chemical from the outside. Now, chemicals are still very important, but the concept of biotechnology is unpacking the cell, understanding its components, and then turning them into medicines. And today we are in a revolution. Today we can take cells from your body. We can change the gene. We can make that cell start to produce incredible proteins that have the ability to knock back cancers and potentially knock back lupus, Other disorders that we know so well and that are so intractable. And hopefully in the future, we'll have the ability to knock back diseases like Alzheimer's.

[B]

It is a fascinating, fascinating, brave new world to say the very least. Because as you mentioned, before the early 1970s, this was kind of the stuff of, if you will, Star Trek. At least in the biomed field. It was, it was seemed, science fiction and out of reach.

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[B]

So within the last 50 plus years this has become not only a reality, but a reality that has dramatically extended the life of the average American and the average citizen around the world. That said. Yeah, that said it. It begs the question, how far can this go? How far can it go? Can do do you expect? I have heard it said that within the last 15 years the first person who will live to 150 years old has been born. Is. Do you believe that is the case? And, and again on that question, where does all of this go? Where will it take us?

[C]

I absolutely believe it. But it's less how long people live than how well they will be when they are that age. I think there is obviously in all our genes there's probably a finite number of years that we can live. We see that, we see many old people who get more and more and more disabled as they get old, but they keep on living right. There is a clock which says we're going to live this long. But that clock doesn't mean that you can't be incredibly well fit, healthy during that period of time and then maybe in the future could extend that clock even further. But for me, for me, the fundamental thing, Matt, is that when I'm 150 I want to be running as fast as when I was 50 and maybe, maybe as fast as when I was 25. But that's a hope.

[B]

But I also, I would hasten to point out that I hope you're running faster than yours truly, a 50 something year old guy. I'd like to run as fast as I could when I was 40, but that seems to be a little bit out of reach right now. But no, your point is well taken

[C]

and we see it today. You know, there's whole new classes of medicines that are coming along that deal with our weight. Well, I have to say to you, they have remarkable impact. Not just do they have an impact on our weight, they improve our cardiac environment, they improve our thinking. This is a whole new set of medicines which are beginning to be unpacked. We never knew about how they worked before, but now we do and we'll start to have a very robust set of new ideas being pulled into the whole area of biotech. Including for example, how do I affect the genes that are so important for our day to day living? How do I. If you have. And Matt, almost certainly you and I have mutations in our genes. We know that that's what happens when you have a DNA. It gets mutated. Well, there could be ways of fixing this in the future so that you are remain fit, you remain healthy. We don't know yet. But it's going to happen. It's definitely going to happen.

[B]

You said something very interesting at the outset of the conversation and not surprising. America is the innovation center for so many things and has been and I think that has everything to do with what we are celebrating. 250 years of a concept that was absolutely foreign to the world. And within that concept of liberty and self governance came the idea of you can go as far as you want to prosperity wise, whatever your discipline is without the government constantly on your back. Now it feels that way in a lot of occasions for a lot of entrepreneurs. But it is a little different climate than than a lot of places around the world. But you mentioned America was the only game in town for this back when you started. That is no longer the case.

[C]

No. I think what is characterized in America something which is remarkable. It is okay to fail. You just have to learn from the failure and then try again. Now if you in Europe early on this was completely not right. If you failed then you were a bad person. In America if you failed, well, you tried. Let's keep on going. It's much like the battlefield. You know when Americans go to the battle, they are really going in well planned but they learn and they fight a war based on learnings of what went wrong previously. So this is very. It's across business as well. People in America take chances and that's remarkable. But it is under threat right now because what we built after the second World War in this country was unique. For a time we built an extraordinary engine of innovation out of the NIH and the academic centers. We became the world center of science and biology. And people poured across from different parts of the world to learn and then stay and continue to grow this area. That was one thing that happened. The second thing that happened was that recognizing that Americans needed to be safe when you built new medicines very wisely the FDA was put in place Food and Drug Administration. This was a really brilliant concept, well thought through that other countries didn't have and were behind us and that administration. While everybody sort of shudders at the idea of administration, it wasn't an administration in the sense of, well, we're going to sit on your shoulders. It was something different. It was, let's make sure that what we're giving to the American public is safe and effective, real simple and set a gold standard for the entire world. And this was remarkable. Now people started to pay attention to this around the world. Europe built its own regulatory administration, the emea. Then slowly, slowly they started to build biotech. But they still are nowhere close to us. However, there's one country in the world that studied us very carefully. That was China. 25, nearly 30 years ago actually they started to say, well, wait a second, we need to learn this industry because biotechnology is incredibly strategic. It's just like defense, it's just like education, it's just like building batteries. It's like this is a strategic industry. That's what they said. And we had a huge economy. Biotech grew up in this huge economy. We didn't really look at it as a strategic asset. We looked at it just as another business. And it grew and grew and grew. China took a different role. They said, nope, the future of humankind requires incredible technologies that enable you to dispel disease, make productive people, let families continue to live their lives and be contributory factors in economy. We didn't look at it that way. We thought differently. Well, the Chinese, Matt, did something remarkable. They put a five year plan in which said, well, we've got to figure out how to make these medicines. First of all, we'll make chemicals. They figured that out. They became one of the world's largest producers of chemicals. Then they said, okay, we've got that. Let's take another step. Let's become the world's best tester of medicines. Took another five years, did it? Absolutely did it. They are the single best in the world. The fastest, the cheapest, the best. Then they said something different. Another five years went by and they said, let's make sure that we now have a system where we can replicate look alike drugs. And by golly, they did exactly that. In the meantime, their whole society was, their economy was growing. But they kept on with the central strategic view that biotech was core to their future. And they then articulated a dream. Their dream was that by 2035, China would become the center for producing new medicines. That was step number four. Many Chinese and other nationals and the large pharmaceutical companies saw and understood what was going on. They started to migrate back to China. China created an incredible environment. And while they haven't yet overtaken the United States, they're now beginning to produce for the first time, highly innovative brand new medicines. And if history is to teach us anything in the next five years, we will see them as the greatest producers of new medicines that we've ever seen. In the meantime, something different has gone on in America. So people have learned from us, they've copied us. And I think it's a very high likelihood that unless we actually change our course of direction and think about biotech as a strategic asset of the United States by 2035, we will most certainly have to deal with the consequences of allowing China to become far more competitive and essentially removing us from the field of play. This is as if we had decided that the Astros were never going to be there in the, in the basketball and in fact, the Knicks were just going to play against themselves. They played pretty well, by the way.

[B]

Just yes, yes, they did. I know a gentleman in political polling who told me it would be the Knicks in five and we'll see how his, his political polling compares to that. But, but, but, but there you have it. It does remind me as you were talking about China and its strategy, its strategic movements of the old Credence Clearwater Revival song, Five year plans and new deals wrapped in golden chains, which we'll discuss here momentarily. Our guest today is Dr. Jeremy Levin, executive chairman of Ovid Therapeutics and author of the new book Biotech in the Balance, Saving a Strategic Industry in an Age of Distrust. I want to get to that distrust part here because I think it's critical. But first, back to back to China. You mentioned how China decided many years ago that biotech was the place to dominate. And they learned and learned and learned.

[A]

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[B]

They also though you talk about copying, copying sometimes is a generous word, a more benign word that China uses for stealing patented technologies in the biotech industry. They they have done a lot of of that as well. But no matter how they got it, ultimately I think your point is that China will indeed dominate this field and already is in the process of, of doing that. So how does the United States of America, a free country as opposed to a communist nation, deal with that?

[C]

You know, the really interesting thing here is in the early days people were very and rightly worried about the transfer of technology to China. Very worried. And I'm one of those who firmly believes that dual use technologies, which are those that can be used for very bad things, should never be allowed out of this country. However, what was interesting in what you just said, Matt, was that early days the patents were kind of ignored in China. Then suddenly the Chinese understood that patents were incredibly valuable. And so guess what? Where are the most patents being filed? China. This is a whole new concept. This is just a measure of how they've come up the ladder. So how do we oppose this? Well, I think the great thing about America is America is incredibly competitive. Our engine of innovation hasn't gone away, it's just stuttering right now. And I think the way we need to do is we need to think very carefully. Number one, no government money is required. That is a very important. Any concept that one needs money to save an industry immediately means that that industry is pretty bad. Biotech doesn't need that. What biotech needs is something different. Number one, it needs that. Every single legislator needs to stand up and understand something really important and say it, that biotech is what will save our children's lives in the future. It is a strategic asset. We need it for the United States. And therefore we're going to figure out how we're going to implement policies. I didn't say monies. We're going to figure out the policies that will help this industry grow. And that's actually pretty clearly defined. We know what they can do. We know that they can facilitate a very robust engine of innovation at the nih. We know that they've been doing it for years. Nothing new there. They just need to keep on doing it. They need to remove anything to do with politics in science. We need that to happen. The Chinese are not doing it. The Chinese have figured this out. Let the scientists go and do science and they'll figure out great products. It's pretty straightforward. Airplanes fly because science works. If you introduced political decisions onto what an airplane early on, the thing that makes it fly on the wings, you wouldn't get anywhere. So we don't need that, that knowledge to get out of there. And it wasn't there to begin with in 1947. And it needs to go. The second thing is pretty straightforward. We built the best fundamental regulatory authority, the FDA in the world. It is phenomenal. But it needs reform. No question it needs reform. And it can be done. It needs the introduction of AI. It needs the reduction of rapid thinking and processes. And with the help of policymakers, this can happen. The one thing again that needs to be removed out of this is political decision making. This is a process organization. It's an organization just like manufacturing cars. It has a process. You need to follow it through. Let them do what they do well. And it needs certainty. We can't have a churn of leadership. That's not acceptable. This is not like an elected position. The FDA needs certainty. Nobody wants some bicycle manufacturing guy or gal running somebody who's making medicines. I don't want them approving drugs for me or my children. Nobody wants some completely ill equipped individual to go in there and say, what is safe for you, Matt? For me, for my children, for my friends, for my family? No, thank you very much. I want a real technocrat. Somebody who understands exactly how to build this. It's like asking somebody to go and figure out how to build a rocket that's basically never done that and is great at riding horses, has no idea how to build a rocket. We've had churn there. That's got to stop. That's a policy decision. In addition to which, we need to recruit the best people possible for the fda. Instead of which we unfortunately, at the beginning of last year, fired 20% of them without knowing what they did. This is not a good way to go. Not a good way at all. And then 90% of that group of the leadership has gone in the last one year. Now China looks at this and says, this is great. We know there's discord, we know there's confusion. We're going to simply take advantage of that and say, come to China and work with us. And if you want to know, is that happening? Absolutely. More transactions with large pharmaceuticals than have ever happened before are now happening in China because of this. More clinical trials than have ever happened before are now happening in China. All because of this. As if we're handing this whole industry over on a plate for reasons that I don't understand. I can't imagine that the anybody the average person in the street can't understand, why do we do that? Why would we do that? There's no logic. So I think, I think we can fix this easily and simply.

[B]

I'll tell you, it does not surprise me that some of these folks are in China right now based on the money, the offers, all of those sorts of things that is ironically inherently American. The free enterprise says, okay, I'm going to go over and work with the communists. There is a, there is a touch of irony there, there is.

[C]

And the, the tragedy of this is we wake up in five years time and we have a dispute with China and they say, well, do you want your antibiotics? Yes or no?

[B]

That is, that is the point. I think that is an excellent point. And, and there is a ransom effect that is already happening and it is in our future.

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[B]

That said, the distressed part of your book, I think I, I need to, to pause and talk about because none of this of course is happening in a vacuum. The COVID years were very, very difficult for trust. There were scientists at the NIH who said a lot of things that were not true. And there's a fair amount of documentation that suggests, more than suggests that they did so in a manipulative fashion. You talked about politics not should not be allowed in the decision making in this critical area. Obviously politics will always be involved in everything we do because that's what a republic, a representative democracy is all about. But, but we, we had people who were putting politics, injecting politics into the FDA and the NIH and the Centers for these Disease Control and Prevention. You don't have these concepts of, you know, if you stand six feet apart, you're not going to get a virus that is airborne. You know, if you lock down everything and call everything non essential, that, that's going to be good for even immune, you know, the, the whole, the idea of the, the, the herd notion of, of immunity. There were a lot of things that happened that the experts are responsible for that created a lot of distrust. So how do you deal with that as you move forward trying to save American biotech?

[C]

Totally agree with you. This distrust is corrosive and very damaging. But you know, it started in 1998, believe it or not. It wasn't last just Covid this is when a very, very fraudulent paper was published in a very eminent journal, the Lancet, published by a guy called Andrew Wakefield. He was kicked out of the medical profession in Great Britain. Finally, they basically said there were 12 children that maybe had a link to the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. And going further, they had possible inflammation, et cetera. 12 children. There was zero data that was valid. The whole thing was turned over. But we're talking about an eminent fundamental scientific magazine, the Lancet. Everybody thought it was the best thing. Well, the editor and his group declined to fully retract it. Investigations showed that this was fraudulent. There were undisclosed financial conflicts of interest, all sorts of things. And basically 10 of Wakefield's co authors, even with true from their interpretation. But here's the thing, Matt. It wasn't until 2010 that they retracted that paper. So by then the person in the street who was reading about this with the thousands of articles that came out in the newspapers would be extraordinarily suspicious, wouldn't you agree? Just they had a fundamental scientific paper which completely undermined fact by doing this. And now you run into a moment of COVID Good Lord. I'm sure you remember it. I do. I think it was an extraordinary moment of the most desperate confusion and people were saying things that they just shouldn't do because they'd never experienced this. I think in retrospect there should have been a fundamental covert czar who basically stood up and said one thing, but was effectively the Surgeon General. We didn't have that and we should have had it. If I had to put one thing on that, I would say we needed a Surgeon General who said this is what we're going to do. By the time the President and others who were talking about this from the NIH and elsewhere, so much confusion was out there. It was desperate and tragic because so many good things also happened then. I think you and I have spoken about this before. I think one has to admire tremendously the effort to assemble warp speed and to bring on vaccines. But the tragedy was we didn't know about what masks were doing. We didn't know about what worked with children, how children would react to this. But at the end of the day, I think it would have been very helpful if the government had basically put its foot down and put out a set of very clear messages that said exactly what they believed and that we would have followed it. And indeed, as you know, very few children were hurt by this disease. Millions died, though 1.3 million did die because we didn't know exactly how to control it. I do know one thing, that without warp speed, despite the distrust that that original Wakefield paper generated and the confusion of the statements that were made during the time of COVID without that warp speed, we would have had at least 20 million dead in this country. An unacceptable event. So if I had to change one thing, and only one thing going back to then, it would be communication, communication, communication because the American public is smart. They know how to think things through. We just needed clear, clear scientific results without any people stepping forward and saying they knew the answer.

[B]

Well, I think panic is a driver of these sorts of things. It always is. And then of course, you. A media, a corporate media in particular, that stirs and stirs and stirs. And now there were things to be very concerned about, but there were things that scientists, I think, understood better. They, they understood at the time. And there were scientists speaking out. And, and during that time, their voices were quieted by algorithms. Their voices were suppressed by governments. And that's the political thing. They were telling people, listen, monoclonal antibodies have worked for a long time and they're extremely successful. And then you had an administration trying to shut those down and, and other things. And so we have seen a lot of abuse of that. So just a, a few minutes left. It would seem to me that your argument here for the United States to shake off as, as you, you suggest it, it's the, the doldrums, if you will, the, the regulatory that are, that are, are needed as, as you argue in this book. It, it is going to require a fresh look at how we approach the regulatory process and as you said before, the policies. So what is it that you think ultimately that the government can do to make sure that biotech is a thriving business and that China does not overtake the United States in this field?

[C]

I think that there are some very fundamental things that the United States can do. Number one, we need to remove all politics out of science. Number two, we need to help the FDA have the resources it requires to rebuild itself into a very, very functional and remarkable institution that it actually is. Third item is that, you know, it's interesting, Matt, we have tax policy that speaks to real estate development. We do this across the country. We know that real estate is a long process. We also know that in biotechnology, when you invent something, it then takes 10 years before it turns into a drug. We need to look at policy, tax policy. How can we match tax policy with the timescale that it takes for a biotech product to come it's not like making a shoe. You design it, one year later you've got the shoe. This is not the case. You have a 10 year process here. So just like real estate, there are all sorts of ways that government has figured out how to help, not subsidize, help make sure that you have a home, that you have buildings that people can live in. All of this has been thought through. At the end of the day, Matt, they need to adopt a policy which is, I use a phrase, there may be others, but the phrase I use is a bio build policy. That is a bio build that says we are going to build for America the single best biotechnology capability that we possibly can. Built on all the years of experience learning from real estate, learning from our capital markets, knowing that what we need is long term capital, not money from the government. We need to have the best individuals in the world incented to do science in America, which is where we should be doing it. And oh, by the way, I'd love to compete with anybody in the world from America. We can compete against the Europeans, we can compete against the Chinese, but it requires the legislators to have the imagination and the foresight to say we're not going to let somebody else decide in 10 years time or 5 years time which medicine my children can take. That's not going to happen. We're going to do it here.

[B]

I would suggest that whatever policy they come up with, they don't call it biotech. Build back better. That's all I'm saying. Because we have seen some policies that have, have said a lot of things. They just haven't accomplished what they've said.

[C]

Great terminology.

[B]

That's for a different time, a critical topic. It absolutely is. Because this is the forefront of everything, you know, that, that we value in terms of our children, in terms of life itself. And I think there's so much that goes into this. I'm glad we had a chance to, to, to talk about it and have an opportunity to spend some good time talking about it.

[C]

We do, Matt. And let's agree between the two of us that we're at 150. You and I are going to do that road race.

[B]

That sounds right. And I think you're gonna win. I'm not a, you know, I'm not a betting man. I didn't say the Knicks in five. And so I'm, I'm not going to put any money on yours truly. But thanks to My guest today, Dr. Jeremy Levin, executive chairman of Ovid Therapeutics and author of the new book Biotech in the balance, serving a strategic industry in an age of distrust. You can find this book wherever you find important books. We'll be back soon with more of the Federalist Radio Hour. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.

[A]

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[B]

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[B]

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