← That Can't Be True with Chelsea Clinton
That Can't Be True with Chelsea Clinton
Measles Outbreak, TrumpRx & Mass Firings at the FDA with Elizabeth Booker Houston
00:43:05
Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:02]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Lemonada.
- [00:07]
Chelsea Clinton
Welcome to that Can't Be True, a show that sorts fact from fiction, especially on issues impacting our health. I'm Chelsea Clinton and today we're going to get a little political because it's hard not to when kids lives are at risk in schools. We're eliminating health data that can actually make America healthy. And apparently we're letting Big Cherry have as much or more influence as experts do at the fda. But as maddening as all of this is, sometimes the best way to confront it is with a lot of information, also a little bit of levity. And today I think we have the perfect guest who does both. Elizabeth Booker, Houston brings humor and conviction to every room she's in. She's a privacy lawyer with a master's in public health. She's also a stand up comedian and a political commentator. Her viral moments, from her rebuke of conservative pundit and Coulter at the 2024 Democratic National Convention to her public resignation from the FDA only a couple months ago have made her someone to listen to at the intersection of politics and public health in America. I'm so happy to bring on Elizabeth. Hi.
- [01:25]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Hello.
- [01:26]
Chelsea Clinton
Thank you so much for talking to me today. I'm certainly one of your legion of fans and incredibly grateful that of the many hats you wear, kind of public health and science communicator is one of them. You've also been a privacy lawyer at the fda. You're a standup comedian. And I'm just so curious, like how all of this fits together for you.
- [01:52]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yeah. I think the only piece missing that I think is going to be relevant for today's conversation. Most of the time people book me to just talk about legal things, but I'm also a social scientist and I've been a social scientist with hhs. So I've worn two hats sort of as both a lawyer and a scientist in different agencies. And they all inform each other. It's all a journey that goes together with stand up. You'd be surprised how many lawyers dip their toes into stand up. I feel like.
- [02:19]
Chelsea Clinton
Really?
- [02:20]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yes. So my co host, Jasmine Burton, she is fantastic. We have a series series called no Distractions. She is also a lawyer and a stand up comedian.
- [02:29]
Chelsea Clinton
I'm now very curious. Like in law school, were your friends like, all right, we're setting torts and also we're thinking about great jokes to tell.
- [02:36]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Oh, absolutely not. Law school is hazing. Its hell. You, you don't even have time to think about anything other than getting through. Right. Law school is, I mean, I would walk barefoot across hot coals before I went back to law school. And God bless all of my law students because I am an adjunct law professor. Y' all are, y' all are doing great. I love all of you. Hang in there. But I would never want to go through it again. I think it's more so once you leave the profession and you're actually finding your journey into wherever you're practicing in the work you're doing, you also have to find this journey back into yourself and into into hobbies and things that make you happy. And so many of my friends and myself included who got into stand up comedy, it was because we just wanted to try something fun. And then it just became this whole other part of ourselves.
- [03:23]
Chelsea Clinton
I love that. I also love that a hobby is also just another job too for you. You're like, in my free time, I just work my brain in different ways.
- [03:32]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yeah. My husband was like, someday you're gonna find a hobby that doesn't become a second career. Posting on social media was a hobby. Telling jokes was a hobby. All of these things were hobbies. And now they're careers.
- [03:45]
Chelsea Clinton
Some people knit or cross stitch and you just keep acquiring, thankfully, new skills that also really, you know, are engaging the public in important ways. You know, one of the things that we do here on that Can't Be True is discuss certain news clips of recent vintage that at least I have a hard time either believing them to be true or while I know they're true, just desperately wishing that there weren't, you know, and as we're chatting here in October, not quite yet Halloween, we're depending on where you live in the country a month and a half or two months into the school year. And there are hundreds of students in South Carolina and Minnesota who are not in school, who are quarantining at home because they've been exposed to measles and they're not vaccinated. So I want to just share a recent clip from an NBC News report about this tonight.
- [04:47]
NBC News Reporter
Mounting measles cases are driving concerns in classrooms and forcing hundreds to quarantine. In South Carolina, the state's health department reporting today, five new infections nearly doubling an October outbreak in Spartanburg county where Dr. Chris Lombardozzi works.
- [05:03]
Dr. Chris Lombardozzi
We've never seen this before.
- [05:04]
Chelsea Clinton
I hope not to see it again.
- [05:06]
NBC News Reporter
There have been exposures to the disease in the region at a fitness center, plus two schools, according to officials, forcing nearly 140 unvaccinated students to stay home right now and watch for symptoms fever, cough and rash.
- [05:21]
Chelsea Clinton
So we Have a vaccine that make measles infections essentially entirely preventable, that protect kids from getting horrifically sick, from possibly dying of measles. We were declared measles free more than two decades ago, and now outbreaks in America are happening across the country. How is this true, Elizabeth? Then are you surprised?
- [05:48]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I cannot say I'm surprised. I feel like this has been an ongoing battle. I mean, even when I was an undergrad, just the battle against anti vax sentiment, the battle to educate people about vaccines. And this passion of mine came from the fact that I was very sick as a kid from the age of two on severe asthma, immune issues, caught pneumonia all the time. I ended up in the hospital from the flu a few times. And so I had always been very passionate about vaccines and what they could do to save lives and protect people and prevent communicable diseases. Unfortunately, we have seen what they refer to as the wellness industry, which is a broad label for a number of things that could be everything from things that I support, like, oh, let's get some more, you know, folate into prenatals, because we know that not everybody can process folic acid. I love that. I love that side of the wellness industry. But then there's this whole other side that's taken advantage of people and their fears and their concerns about their children and put out complete disinformation. And we're seeing that specifically with the measles vaccine being tied to autism. That has been a rhetoric that has gone around ever since Andrew Wakefield, who published the false studies linking the MMR vaccine. Autism proven to be false. He, you know, has been stripped of everything. I mean, we know that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism. And yet this is still such a pervasive rhetoric in the wellness space. And you'll often find that this is something that companies are using to prey upon to make money to sell things like, oh, well, this essential oil will protect you. Or, well, actually, if you just take this wellness supplement, this will actually, no, it's just another way for folks to prey on people's insecurities and fears to make money. And as a parent of an autistic child, it especially upsets me because, you know, I know the phrase has been said over and over again, but it rings so true. I would much rather my child be safe and beautiful and sleeping in his bed every night even though he's autistic, rather than having to put him in a box from a preventable disease. And I just. It's so upsetting. But I can't Say it's surprising to see that we have these measles outbreaks when we see that there's an administration in power that is pushing this disinformation. And really again, I mean, the guy who's running hhs, he's one of those people who preyed on folks insecurities by using the quote wellness industry and trying to sell snake oil.
- [08:18]
Chelsea Clinton
You know, I was asked an interview once many years ago when Charlotte, my oldest, was a little over a year and I had become increasingly publicly engaged in supporting vaccines and vaccinations and pushing back against mis and disinformation as it relates to vaccines. And this journalist interviewing me asked me if I would ever let my child play with an unvaccinated child. And I said no. And the journalist then said, well, isn't that judgmental? And I said yes. Like she's whatever she was like 15 months at the time. So I'm like, she can't make judgments on her own. Like it's my job as her parent. How lucky am I that I have the privilege of making choices to help keep her safe? Love a playdate, want her to have lots of playdates, want those playdates to be safe. And you know, as you talked about kind of the current leadership at hhs, it's not only Elizabeth, you or me who are saying we know based on hundreds of studies looking at millions of children, that vaccines are safe and effective at preventing measles and all sorts of other vaccine preventable illnesses and that they don't cause autism. But we also now have Republican leaders effectively saying the same. So I want to just play a quick recent clip from Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who was recently on with MSNBC's Ali Vitaly.
- [10:00]
John Thune
Is what your party is driving towards the potential for a party of no dissent and is that a healthy party?
- [10:06]
Dr. Chris Lombardozzi
No, and I don't think that's true. I mean, I would argue, and I've dissented a number of times just in the last few weeks, for example, on, well, on Tylenol, for example. Okay, fcc. I mean there are. Go back and check the record.
- [10:20]
John Thune
Do you feel the way RFK Jr is talking about that is dangerous?
- [10:22]
Dr. Chris Lombardozzi
Well, I've said that I think that if I were a woman, I'd be talking to my doctor and not taken advice from RFK or any other government bureaucrat for that matter.
- [10:32]
Chelsea Clinton
Elizabeth, you shared earlier you've had different jobs throughout the federal government working to ensure that people have access to high quality information. How do you feel when you hear the Senate majority Leader saying, yeah, he understands effectively why people are listening to the CDC, aren't listening to HHS, and then aren't listening to RFK Jr.
- [10:58]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
It's extremely upsetting. And I, I, he is so incredibly reductive in what he has said about women should listen to their doctors and not bureaucrats. And that language is very dangerous, especially when it comes to the dismantling of hhs, because they use that term, oh, bureaucrats to describe everybody. But what he isn't touching on is if you stand against this, why did you allow RFK Jr to fire doctors, fire scientists, fire researchers and experts who again, they just label broadly as bureaucrats, but those are the experts that are needed in order to get the information to people's doctors. I just went to a fired Fed workers rally the other day where a woman spoke and she said the entire communications shop for cdrh, which is the center for devices and radiological health in the fda, the entire comm shop was completely cut. And now there's no one there to give recall information to the doctors, to the hospitals, to the very people who are supposed to be talking to these women. Right, the women that he says, you need to talk to your medical professional, but you're sitting here watching this man and other folks within the administration completely dismantle all of the supports and research and services that allow our medical professionals, not just in our country, but around the world, to be able to make really sound and informed decisions and then actually help their patients. A doctor is not going to be able to get a drug approved. A doctor is not going to be able to be aware and go out and inspect facilities and make sure that if there's some sign of contamination that they put out a recall notice. A doctor's not going to be able to collect all of the information about adverse event reporting and then compile that and interpret that. That's what HHS is for. That's what FDA is for. The CDC is for NIH research, all of that. And so I, I feel like he's trying to have his, you know, feet on both sides of the line. He's trying to say, well, you know, act like he's against this whole anti science take that the administration has adopted that. Oh, I, I want women to talk to their doctors. But on the other side, he's confirming people who are helping with this dismantle. He's not stopping the administration, he's not taking a stand. So his mouth is saying one thing, his actions are doing another. And it really bothers me, I think that's understandable.
- [13:22]
Chelsea Clinton
I mean, you were at the FDA seven years and you left in August, and you clearly, you were speaking with so much passion about even just some of what the fda, the cdc, the nih, you know, do to try to help keep us safe and to help inform and empower us about, you know, how to make healthy choices for ourselves and our family. What do you think, though, from your time kind of working at the fda, from just the conversation we were having moments ago, are some of kind of either the biggest misconceptions around the FDA or what do you wish people understood about what the FDA does that people may not know?
- [14:05]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I, I want people to understand how incredibly, incredibly efficient the FDA is. So just looking at the fda, which is located in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the White Oak campus, that's the main campus. They are not the largest health employer in Maryland. That is Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins in Maryland has roughly 30,000 employees. The FDA at its full capacity, all around the world, at every site outside of Washington, D.C. and in the D.C. area, 19,000. That's 19,000 people all around the world regulating 20% of this country's GDP, roughly $5 trillion worth of goods. Like, I really get bothered by the way they keep saying we're cutting out unnecessary individuals. And I'm just sitting here thinking, what other industry do you know that was able to work so incredibly efficiently with 19,000 employees at its full capacity? And I was one of six people working in my most recent position in the data privacy office, again handling data privacy for the entirety of the fda. I also want people to understand that roughly half of the FDA's budget is funded by user fees from pharmaceutical industry, tobacco fees, that sort of thing.
- [15:22]
Chelsea Clinton
And explain that, Elizabeth, because I think a lot of people don't understand that.
- [15:25]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yeah, so we have something called the user fee amendments that are attached to the food, drug and cosmetics acts or the fdca. That is the law that created the FDA and gives the FDA its authority. And the user fee amendments are how the FDA gets funded in order to bring on more employees to properly regulate, review, approve drugs, that sort of thing. And the user fees are paid by industry. So, for example, if Pfizer wants to put in a new brand name drug application, it's a little over a million dollars just for one of those filing FEES for the FDA. That means that about half of the FDA's budget is not coming from taxpayer dollars. I actually never had an FDA position that was funded by taxpayer dollars. So even when there was a government shutdown while I was at the fda, I continued to work and be paid because I was not paid by taxpayer dollars. So what you're seeing is the smoke and mirror where the administration is lying to Americans and saying, we're saving you money by firing all of these people at the fda, firing that comm shop, all of that. When really what they're doing is they're firing people who were funded by other sources, not costing the taxpayers any money, and who were using that money to then protect all of these taxpayers, all of these Americans with things like I said, drug recalls, making sure to do reviews and approvals and to get a drug approved and put on the market is extremely difficult. This is not something where they were just approving everything that came through. And yes, there have been missteps, the opioid crisis, for example. And the FDA has acknowledged there is a huge mishandling when it came to how to handle opiates. Absolutely. But the FDA is an administration that was learning from those mistakes and making sure to bring people on board and always continually work to better cutting and slashing and burning all of these experts. One, we're losing a ton of institutional knowledge. I mean, I was there for less than a decade overall. My service at HHS and other optivs was almost 10 years. And I felt like such a bab in, in in that work. I mean, really and truly. And I just achieved a level of subject matter expertise. They're losing people who have decades of experience and you can't just shove somebody after this is all said and done and say, oh well, go learn, go learn 20 years of, of food and drug science and law and information and go forth and protect the American people. No, that was a long term investment that we have now seen completely slashed. And Americans, to be very blunt, will, will die. We will see people die from this. This is why the FDA was created in the first place, because people were dying. Yeah. People don't realize, like the history of the fda. There were, there were women going blind because of contaminated mascara. There were people dying from contaminated foods getting sick. That was why the FDA was created in the first place. And now we're seeing ourselves go back in time. And I'm very afraid, I'm very, very afraid for the state of our, our food and drug safety.
- [18:30]
Chelsea Clinton
And Elizabeth, are you making different choices now as a parent or as a consumer?
- [18:35]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I'm trying my best, but I'm going to be honest with you, I don't know even how to navigate this myself, even with the expertise that I have, because I can only do so much. You know, I had folks say, well, you guys let, you know, were let go or. Or you left the FDA or were forced out or whatever happened to you, why don't you put your skills to good use elsewhere? But I'm like, how can we possibly have people just go start inspecting facilities without the authority to do so? How can we possibly have people just go start asking questions of big Pharma? I mean, again, going back to this whole idea of the wellness industry and all of this, and people thinking, well, you know, big pharma is the enemy, and going more to the wellness side, this has all been such a bait and switch to get rid of the people who were the watchdogs of big Pharma, who were the people in place to make sure they weren't getting away with things, that they weren't putting unsafe things on the market. It's actually the opposite. And people who are doing it for so little money, and I mean truly for the love and passion of the work, because I have the number of pharma companies that tried to poach me over my seven years and offer me triple, quadruple my salary because they love to get a former FDA regulator in there who knows all the tricks and all the trades. And I stayed in my position because I loved it. And that's so many people at the FDA. I'm not even allowed to buy stock as an FDA employee in most things. There's a list of almost 10,000 stocks that it's on the significantly regulated organization list, or SRO list that we had to review every single month and couldn't even own stock. And like, if I wanted to, I don't want to. But in Target, for example, couldn't even have Target stock as an FDA employee because of how they are in the industry that we regulate. Right. But members of Congress can have whatever stock they want. That's how passionate FDA employees are about our work. And it's so heartbreaking to see people just paint this as, oh, a bunch of bureaucrats who just wanted to siphon money off the American people. No, we were doing this job for less money than we could have. We could have gone to other industries, private industries, and made more, chose not to be able to have stock options, all these other things. Purely doing it because we were so passionate about the mission and protecting the American public health.
- [20:45]
Chelsea Clinton
Elizabeth, was there one event that prompted you to leave in August, or was it a collection of kind of different situations over the preceding months?
- [20:55]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I just was at my breaking point, and I said it's time. I have to go. And I always knew that that was gonna be the case when Trump took office earlier this year. And I lasted as long as I possibly could and. And then I left. And I hope, I hope I go back one day. I just cannot stress to people enough that even if all of these things I do as a political creator and commentator bring me more money and more success and all of these things, I just want to be a girl who's doing my job and my passion at the fda. That's all.
- [21:31]
Chelsea Clinton
Sounds exactly like the type of public servants that we should have in this country.
- [21:44]
John Thune
Well, hi everybody. Hi, it's Julia Louis Dreyfus from the Wiser Than Me podcast. And I'm not gonna talk about food waste this time. I'm gonna talk about food resources. All that uneaten food rotting in the landfill, it could be enriching our soil or feeding our chickens because it's still food. And the easiest and frankly way coolest way to put all its nutrients to work is with the mill Food recy. It looks like an art house garbage can. You can just toss your scraps in it like a garbage can. But it is definitely not a garbage can. I mean, it's true. I'm pretty obsessed with this thing. I even invested in this thing. But I'm not alone. Any mill owner just might corner you at a party and rhapsodize about how it's completely odorless and it's fully automated and how you can keep filling it for weeks. But the clincher is that you can depend on it for years. Mill is a serious machine. Think about a dishwasher, not a toaster. It's built by hand in North America and it's engineered by the guy who did your iPhone. But you have to kind of live with mill to understand all the love. That's why they offer a risk free trial. Go to mill.com wiser for an exclusive offer.
- [23:26]
Chelsea Clinton
Now that you're on the outside, how do you feel about what you seem to be doing so well, which is navigating, criticizing recent policy decisions and the recent politicization of the fda, which historically was largely left outside of the political arena while still supporting your colleagues who who work there today?
- [23:50]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I just try to amplify their stories as much as I can. I stay in touch with the different groups like Federal Workers Against Doge Feds work for you, which are a couple of social media accounts that people can follow if they want to keep up with what's going on in fighting for fed workers On Tuesdays, they go down to Congress as the rift and fired fed employees. And they make it known to, to speak to various members, Republican, Democrat, whoever, and let them know this is what's going on, these are our concerns so that they don't get forgotten. And so my job is to use my platform to make sure that they don't get forgotten and that we remember that this isn't just a one time slash and burn and all of a sudden everything will be okay. Things will continue to get worse as we see HHS and other federal agencies being continually dismantled and continually put under a microscope in the most unfair way.
- [24:44]
Chelsea Clinton
And Elizabeth, we have seen the FDA take some action in some areas, right? Whether it's the kind of quiet approval of a generic version of mifepristone, the quote unquote medical abortion pill. We have seen some kind of product recalls. And so people listening to us today may think, well, the FDA is still functioning, it's still doing stuff. What do you think people should be mindful of in thinking through how to absorb whatever the quote unquote news is out of the FDA on any given day or week?
- [25:20]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I think people need to understand that while you might still see these wonderful things that they're doing, like you mentioned, the generic mifepristone approval, they're working with a skeleton crew, truly. And I mean, this is not sustainable. I left. Who will leave next? Who will be forced out next? They're still trying to fire people as the federal government is shut down. They're still trying to get rid of people. And what happens when the people who are doing good work and who are passionate about it are replaced by people who are merely loyalists to this administration and will say whatever they want them to say as opposed to saying what's right? Because there is a point where it's going to come to a head if we don't stop it and reverse course on the damage that's been done?
- [26:04]
Chelsea Clinton
You know, we're talking today on October 20th. The federal government has been shut down now for close to three weeks. As you mentioned. You know, there are still ongoing efforts to fire people, even amidst the shutdown, including at the CDC and the FDA and other parts of our kind of federal government health workforce and attacks continue on kind of really important, not in a nerdy way, but actually in a kind of public information way on public data sets. Last week, Stat News reported that the Trump administration laid off the entirety of the team that runs the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. That survey had been undertaken by the federal Government on behalf of the American people for more than six years tracking everything from what our average diet is in America, what rates of obesity are, what rates of diabetes are, and kind of that data has led to all sorts of things, including nutrition labels on food. And so one of the challenges I have kind of, when kind of thinking about kind of the wellness industry, which I'm curious if similar to you, is I totally agree that more kids in America should be able to more readily access healthy fruits and vegetables at school and outside of school. I totally agree, but it's really hard to square agreement with at least the complicity of undermining the ability of the FDA to ensure, or the USDA in some instances to ensure that those foods are safe, not just ostensibly healthy, but safe for kids and adults to eat. And, and that we're actually tracking what we're eating so that we can have a well informed conversation around how to move to a healthier plate on average. You can't move somewhere if you don't know where you're starting.
- [28:13]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yeah, I fully agree with that and I'm so glad you mentioned the USDA as well, because I don't think enough people understand the joint authority in which the USDA takes control over things like they're looking at the safety of the meat that is coming from farm animals, you know, cows, beef, chicken, that sort of thing. Whereas the FDA is going to regulate process things, you know, so once you see the chicken, the beef be turned into some kind of product that's sold in the grocery stores. Right. And they're going to regulate that way. There's all kinds of joint regulation that the agencies have to work together. And when you're slashing and burning these random parts of the agency without actually considering how they work together and how they work across agencies and that interagency coordination, it's very dangerous. And so like you mentioned the cdc, you mentioned nhanes, which is that survey that has been around for so long. This survey is something that wasn't designed just to say, oh, so the pharmaceutical industry can create something so that such and such. No, it was information that anyone could access. Anyone, whether it's someone who is a good faith actor in the wellness industry who wants to try to create some alternatives to some of the more processed products out there, or someone who's in the grocery industry, I mean dietitians, all kinds of researchers who are able to access this information. And so when you're telling me that you want to make America healthy again, but then you go and you cut A team whose job it is to collect all of the data that you can use to actually make America healthy. Again, I don't believe you. I don't. Because again, this was data that anybody could use and access in order to try to make a healthier world. And we talked about things like, you know, you said, like all artificial food colorings and things like that. I want to remind people The Red Dye 3 wasn't banned by the FDA because of Trump or RFK Jr. That was before he even got sworn into office. That was work that was already being done by the experts at the FDA that was already happening and in place and trying to find alternatives. Red dye 40 is something that has been looked at and explored by the FDA for so long. But what I joke is big cherry, the maraschino cherry industry, and I'm being very serious about this, has been pushing against that for decades because they, they need red dye 40 in order to create their maraschino cherries. You know, there's all of these things that you peel back the layers and you look into it and folks want to just point the finger at bureaucracy in the government and say, oh, you're not creating healthier things for us. Where it really lies is these businesses and giant corporations are being allowed to get away with so much and not really taking into consideration our food health and our food safety. And the FDA has been fighting an uphill battle for so long to try to regulate and create healthier things. But again, remember how I pointed out how FDA employees can't buy stocks and your members of Congress can? That right there, that is your smoking gun. Where do these members of Congress have their money invested? Where do members of this administration have their money invested? Who are they friends with at these companies and they're making money off of? I can assure you that if there's anyone who's being crooked in all of this or doing something to make an extra dollar at the expense of Americans health. It's not the people who are public servants who have been doing the research and the work for decades to try to actually make the world and our public health system a better place. It's going to be the people who have been trying to make money off of the American public.
- [31:49]
Chelsea Clinton
And Elizabeth, how much do you think people understand kind of that distinction you just made? Because I think it is really important. Do you think people understand that and why that's so important?
- [32:01]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I don't think so. And I think it's because they don't have the energy. I mean, we know that the number one issue for folks right now is still the economy. And when you are watching the federal government slash healthcare by over a trillion dollars and you don't know, I mean, I got a letter in the mail, I'm on the marketplace plan now. I got a letter in the mail saying that my plan won't even be available, not even going to increase. It's just not even available as an option starting in 2026. My aunt, same thing, she was on the phone today trying to call about her Medicare plan not available anymore. Hospitals closing. You have folks concerned now about baby formula. The man who was appointed to run the human foods program, hfp, the guy they appointed to run that was the guy who was the lawyer who defended the baby food companies against parents claims when their babies were getting a fatal bowel disease from contaminated formula.
- [32:58]
Chelsea Clinton
Like, like, you can't make this up.
- [32:59]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Up. You can't make this up. And so I say all that to say I really have to temper that with putting out the information that I think is going to be most salient. And I think right now we're talking about things like, are you gonna have food stamps? Are you, are you gonna have access to healthcare? Are you going to be able to find safe and healthy foods? Can we talk about measles? It just, it's just, it's mind boggling.
- [33:24]
Chelsea Clinton
Yes, well, measles and, and whooping cough.
- [33:27]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yes, yes. A poor child in Mississippi, a child died of whooping cough not too far from my hometown of Memphis. And I was heartbroken to hear that. That should not happen in America in 2025.
- [33:42]
Chelsea Clinton
Elizabeth, I am just curious for people listening who may be thinking, well, we always have people from industry in these jobs who used to have the job on the human food protection. And what was their biography?
- [33:57]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yeah, so the pre. And it's, it's interesting that you bring him up. I had to make sure that I had his name correct. His name is James Jones. He has that Double J name. And he resigned in February 2025. And it was a huge deal. I was still working at the agency and the email came through that he was leaving and we were like, oh God. And he was the one who led all the ban of red dye three. That was the thing that he was known for.
- [34:26]
Chelsea Clinton
It would be poetic if it weren't so painful.
- [34:30]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
And so he basically said in his, in his resignation that he couldn't do the job anymore. I mean, not under this administration, not under this pressure. And he was like one of the first big ones to leave. But he was formally at the EPA prior to coming to the fda, and he was the regulator of, get this, pesticides, toxic substances, chemical safety, and pollution prevention. These are all things that Maha claims they want to get rid of pesticides and foods, toxic chemicals. And that is the kind of talent and dedication and intelligence that is being lost right now. So if you are pro Maha and you say you want to make America healthy again and you want to get rid of toxic substances and pesticides and foods, I really want you to think, why would this administration force out the man whose job it was to regulate pesticides and toxins and instead replace him with the man who defended baby food manufacturers against infant deaths?
- [35:59]
Chelsea Clinton
Elizabeth on every episode we do a segment called Fact or Fiction. I want to throw out some claims that we're seeing kind of circulate online right now, and feel free to just say one or the other or to elaborate.
- [36:13]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Okay.
- [36:14]
Chelsea Clinton
All right. FDA approval means a product is completely safe. Fact or fiction?
- [36:21]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Fiction. Because there's still a risk. So we look at safety and efficacy, and it's a certain threshold. And again, that also comes into play when you're talking about that continual monitoring of facilities and the manufacturing of things. So that's why you will see something that's been approved and gone on the market. But now maybe you're seeing a recall of a certain batch because, well, the FDA went out and said, oh, something happened to contaminate this particular batch of product. Also, we have seen that there are products that are approved that are very dangerous usually, but what they're curing or treating is so much worse. The classic example is chemotherapy. Chemo is something that's very dangerous for the body, but in order to save a person's life and fight cancer, they need the chemo more than they need nothing at all.
- [37:13]
Chelsea Clinton
Certainly sounds to me like we want people in those roles with a lot of experience and expertise, for sure. The White House said it's planning to create a website, not surprisingly, called trumprx.gov that would help people buy prescription drugs directly from manufacturers, including Pfizer and Astra Zeneca. They say that'll fix drug pricing in America. From your experience at the fda. Fact or fiction?
- [37:40]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Fiction. This is all smoke and mirrors. So what has happened is they have created Trump Rx and said that they are now negotiating directly with manufacturers such as Pfizer in order to offer your drugs through this website at up to 50% lower retail cost. It's only for people who don't have health insurance.
- [37:59]
Chelsea Clinton
That's an important point.
- [38:00]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I want to remind everybody that this administration just cut over a trillion dollars in health care for Medicaid and Medicare recipients and they're now trying to cut Affordable Care act subsidies. So even if you, you purchase a private health insurance plan on the marketplace, they are still trying to cut subsidies to make that more expensive so that fewer Americans will be able to afford it and be uninsured. So I want to give you some context. An example of a Pfizer drug potentially be on Trump Rx is Lipitor. Lipitor is something that a lot of people take to prevent heart attacks and stroke, treat cholesterol, that sort of thing. It's a very common drug under your health insurance plan that the Trump administration has now slashed. Right. And slash funding for that. You probably could have gotten that for five bucks, six bucks, you know, something like that. Access to generic, what have you. Pfizer, if you go to their website through Trump Rx now has it listed for about $112 retail price.
- [38:57]
Chelsea Clinton
That's a big difference.
- [38:59]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
It's a big difference.
- [39:00]
Chelsea Clinton
Big difference. If I'm doing my math correctly, that's like a 96 or $97 difference.
- [39:06]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Exactly. And the Trump administration is saying that Trump Rex will give you up to 50% off of that retail price. So you've gone from getting a six dollar copay, right? Six dollar, maybe ten copay with your health insurance to now being uninsured because the Trump administration has slashed your health insurance options and you're no longer covered. And now instead you get to go to Trump or X and you get to pay $50 more for that drug every time you need it. And so this is not actually going to save money.
- [39:33]
Chelsea Clinton
And, and if you have health insurance, you don't qualify.
- [39:36]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yeah, you don't qualify. And if you have health insurance, you're actually better off. You're going to go through your health insurance's negotiations with your pharmacy rather than Trump Rx. Trump Rx is not going to negotiate anywhere close to the rate that you get with your Medicaid or your Medicare plan, which again has now been cut.
- [39:54]
Chelsea Clinton
The FDA tests all drugs and foods itself. Fact or fiction?
- [40:00]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Fiction. The FDA has all kinds of contractors, different facilities. They also work with state and local government to do a lot of things. International government. There's so much coordination because again, like I mentioned earlier, at its full capacity, the FDA is 19,000 folks.
- [40:17]
Chelsea Clinton
The FDA regulates all cosmetics.
- [40:21]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
This is a gray area answer. So we do have at the FDA a cosmetics branch that is going to oversee, but it's not the same process, as you would see with like drugs, for example, you don't have to go through an actual approval process with cosmetics. Instead, it's more of an ongoing oversight. And so as long as you are adhering to certain factors in your cosmetics and you're following these safety rules, it can go on the market. But if the FDA finds that there's something wrong or there's something toxic or whatever, they can then say, okay, you have to recall this or come in and shut something down. But it's not a, it's not an approval process in the same way that you would go through with a drug.
- [41:06]
Chelsea Clinton
The FDA regulates supplements.
- [41:10]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Similar situation there. So that's why you'll see on your supplements it'll say this has not been approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy. So with supplements, that's actually falls under food, not drugs in the fda. And again, you're not going to go through an active approval process with drugs. They have to be something that can treat or mitigate an illness and have a certain kind of chemical effect. You don't see that with supplements. And so again, it's not going to be the same kind of drug approval process and instead it's regulated as a food.
- [41:45]
Chelsea Clinton
I love that. Elizabeth. Well, thank you so much for just everything you have done and are doing. We're incredibly grateful, you know, for your time today and also for helping share a little bit more about what the FDA does and why it is so important and just how many extraordinary public servants that you clearly have worked with throughout your career and they're not being treated certainly as they or their service merits, particularly when so many of them have worked to help keep us safe and healthy.
- [42:18]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Yes.
- [42:18]
Chelsea Clinton
And hopefully to help always ensure that tomorrow we can be safer and healthier, regardless of who may be sitting in the White House. So really just thank you so much, Elizabeth.
- [42:28]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
I'm very thankful and thank you for having me. And I also want to give a thank you for allowing me to come speak about this, particularly from my sister India, who is a veteran army veteran who served in Afghanistan and was unfortunately was a CDC employee and was laid off. And so just thank you again for letting me humanize folks like my sister, like my co workers, all of these wonderful people who have really just dedication to our country and to serving part.
- [43:03]
Chelsea Clinton
Of what has helped America be great. Yes, Elizabeth, thank you so much.
- [43:08]
Elizabeth Booker Houston
Thank you.
- [43:12]
Chelsea Clinton
You can learn more about Elizabeth Booker Houston at Booker Squared on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week. That Can't Be True is a production of Limonada Media and the Clinton Foundation. The show is produced by Katherine Barnes Mix in sound design by Ivan Koraev. Kristen Lepore is Senior Director of New Content and Jackie Danziger is VP of Narrative and Production. Maggie Kral Shore is our Managing Director of Partnerships. Executive producers are Jack, Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Whittles Wax and me, Chelsea Clinton. Special thanks to Erika Goodmanson, Sarah Horowitz, Francesca Ernst Kahn, Caroline Lewis, Sage Spalter, Barry Lurie Westerberg, Emily Young and the entire team at the Clinton Foundation. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. And if you can think of someone who might benefit from today's episode, please go ahead and share it with them. There's more of that can't be true with Lemonada. Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. You can also listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. Thanks so much for listening and see you next week.