← The Dr. Josh Axe Show
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- [00:00]
Gardner Harris
Johnson and Johnson is the largest, costliest, and deadliest criminal conspiracies in American history. Nothing else is close. They caused or contributed to the deaths of 2 million Americans. Johnson and Johnson, according to grand jury documents that I have, which, as you know, Josh, is really rare to have. They are very secret. Johnson and Johnson sales reps then went to psychiatrist with two messages. One was, don't worry about killing your patients. No one will ever catch you. And the other was, if you want to hide your tracks, diagnose these patients with late onset schizophrenia. You and I both know that there is no such thing as late onset schizophrenia. And that's when I realized, oh, my God, this company is totally different than what I thought. Because, of course, Johnson and Johnson has been selling itself as the baby company for more than 100 years. Johnson & Johnson itself has spent $35 billion since 2011 on lawyers and litigation. I knew many of the top experts in the country and I called them about these stories and they would immediately go off the record and say, gardner, are you out of your mind? Do you know what kind of lawyers these people have?
- [01:17]
Dr. Josh Axe
You know, when I think back to Johnson and Johnson for myself, the thing I remember most is the commercials with no more tears, right? You've got a baby and a bath. But the reality is, is that it's good marketing and it was a lie. All right, so we all grew up trusting the company that made baby shampoo. We thought they were keeping us safe. But what if I told you the same company was knowingly harming babies, women, cancer patients in the elderly for decades and they got away with it until today? Well, today we're going to expose the truth behind the brand you thought you could trust. This is probably the most popular brand for babies when I grew up and probably even today. And our interviewer is going to bring out the truth. My guest today is Gardner Harris. He's a Pulitzer nominated investigative journalist who gained access to secret grand jury documents, something almost no journalist has ever had. And what we uncover here is going to shock you. It might make you a little angry, but it's going to open your eyes to the truth. And you might be surprised to hear how this company and these products and you need to know about these products, how they have harmed cancer patients, babies, the elderly, numerous people with medical conditions. And of course, we're going to talk about COVID the shot, some of those things, and how this company lied over and over again and again. This is an absolutely incredible episode here with Gardiner Harris. We're going to be Uncovering the lies. Welcome to Dr. Josh Ax Show. Man, I'm so excited you're here. You know, I actually just got back from. I was in Washington, D.C. and we were there for banning of food dyes, which I am incredibly optimistic about the new administration at the hhs. I've known Marty Makery for quite a few years, had him on the show, and so I got to meet with him. We actually went to this great organic Italian restaurant in Washington D.C. after the announcement with Mark Hyman and Mehmet Oz and just a whole great group of people. Vani Hari. And you've got some nice contacts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, great people. And these are a lot of people, I think, share our heart for, you know, wanting the truth, you know, wanting to protect our kids, wanting this nation to be healthy. And I was so excited to have you on the show when I saw you had a new book coming out because I've been talking about sort of the deception that's been happening for years around, you know, big pharma and big agricultural industries. And, you know, you just have such an amazing story of how you went. And by the way, your credentials are amazing. I know you worked at the White House. You written for the New York Times. I mean, you, you know, were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. So just a really amazing background. But I know you've been a person that's been really intent on discovering the truth, getting it out to the public and talk me through. I guess, first and foremost, what were. What were some of the most surprising? Like, one, why is that part of your mission? And two, what were some of the biggest things you started to discover as you became a journalist and started looking into the pharmaceutical industry?
- [04:46]
Gardner Harris
Well, Josh, thanks so much for having me on the show. You obviously are playing in quite a really interesting space right now. And I think it is an exciting time for those of us who have been trying to call out these dynamics in our healthcare system for a very long time. I mean, it's clear that there is a lot of corruption in American healthcare. And there's been a lot of voices like yours who have talked about this and really haven't been heard. And I think that this is an exciting moment when those voices might be heard. So I first joined the Wall Street Journal in 1999 and started covering the pharmaceutical industry. Really, when it was the tech industry of the day, it was the most exciting thing going on. It was where it was the seat of American innovation. And as I started digging into it, obviously, I started finding really disturbing patterns and and what I want to make clear is that not everybody is the same in this industry. There, there are really some good players, there are great drugs, there are great treatments. There are really good people. But there are also these very dark strains where things have happened that really shouldn't happen. And as I started to dig Josh, you know, I had been in Hazard, Kentucky, before coming to the Wall Street Journal, and as you know, people in that part of the country are wonderful, but there are also dark strains there. And so I brought that same sense of questioning to the Wall Street Journal and the pharmaceutical industry. And I had spent part of my growing up years in New Jersey, where Johnson and Johnson is revered. It's where the company is headquartered nearby in New Brunswick. Many of the top executives live in Princeton, send their kids to the private schools around there. I went to the public schools, but I knew a lot of them. And the kids, the parents on my football, my football games and all that had the J and J logo on their shirts and hats and. And I just thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it took me a while covering Johnson and Johnson as a reporter to start seeing that this image may be very different than the reality and in fact, maybe the opposite of it.
- [07:39]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, you know, the single biggest word that I think that comes to my mind when I think about the pharmaceutical industry and even Johnson Johnson, is just deception. You know, there is so much deception that's taken place and, you know, and all for the sake of money and the sacrifices, first and foremost, our kids. And, you know, it's funny, because what happened historically to not just myself, but pretty much anybody who spoke out against the pharmaceutical industry, it was. Well, you're a conspiracy theorist, or what you're saying is, you know, made up. And I think that anybody who wants to know the truth, it's not hard. You can find it. I mean, you know, in terms of, like, if you. If you read enough and if you're smart enough to just be able to connect dots, you're going to start to realize that there are. There's a lot of corruption going on. And one of the first things that I remember that. And by the way, I. I think I got first turned onto this when my mom, when I was in junior high, was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through the traditional medical system and had a mastectomy and went through chemotherapy. But I think for myself, seeing my own mom go through chemotherapy, just the way the doctors treated her, I remember the doctors saying, you have less than a 40% chance to live. I Remember just how harsh those treatments were and just how cold the whole system was. And just thinking something doesn't feel off to me. And I grew up in a Christian household and really focusing on sort of a lot of these what we call fruits of the spirit. A lot of positivity, a lot of joy and hope. And what I saw from that system was the exact opposite. It was like, we're going to strip you of hope. There's no faith. This is like a. You're a piece of machinery. And that always just discouraged me. And that's sort of what initially started leading me into the field of natural medicine. And then, you know, when I started reading some of the just, you know, numbers that were out there in terms of the amount that a lot of these companies have had to pay out in lawsuits. And I'd love for you to touch on that a moment, just in terms of dollars and cents. What, you know, what a lot of these, you know, like Johnson and Johnson, what they're responsible for?
- [09:57]
Gardner Harris
Well, Josh, I had a similar journey. My son. My first. My first son spent almost a week in the NICU unit after he was born, had a variety of little crises that kept him in the hospital and short. And as you know, that is one of the worst things that can happen to you as a person. Is your child be at risk. And shortly after that ended, I ended up getting these sealed documents in a court case that showed that Johnson and Johnson for years had sold this heart, met this. This stomach medicine called Propulsive, and marketed it secretly and illegally to premies. So they had marketed it for primies, to neonatologists, even though the company knew that the drug did not work it in children or babies and in rare cases could actually kill them because it caused a heart arrhythmia. And as you know, small babies are particularly susceptible to any kind of heart problems. So I got these documents, saw that this company had been targeting this very awful situation that I'd been in. And that's when I realized, oh, my God, this company is totally different than what I thought because, of course, Johnson and Johnson has been selling itself as the baby company for more than 100 years. And so what this book really is about, Josh, is the largest, costliest, and deadliest criminal conspiracies in American history. Nothing else is close. And just 3 of the cases that I discuss in this book, and I go through nine of them, cost roughly 2 million Americans their lives in the point that's.
- [11:58]
Dr. Josh Axe
So you're saying that Johnson and Johnson, per your estimates, is responsible for killing 2 million people.
- [12:05]
Gardner Harris
They. I mean, my lawyers tell me that I should say that they caused or contributed to the death of roughly 2 million Americans. And the point of the book, Josh, really, is to show people how this happens to your neighbors, to your family, to people you love, so that you can start to protect yourself. The endnotes of this book, 80 pages of tiny little type showing all the documents that I cite. I'm have a website. It's. It's actually a little bit under construction where you can go and. And see all these documents yourself. There are hundreds and thousands, hundreds of thousands of pages of these documents, trial transcripts, all the rest, you know, there. None of this is a conspiracy theory because all of it is so clearly documented. And of course, I could not possibly say something like 2 million deaths. And unless it was so clearly documented, because the lawyers simply wouldn't let me do it.
- [13:15]
Dr. Josh Axe
Wow.
- [13:16]
Gardner Harris
So that Johnson and Johnson is the reason I did the book about Johnson and Johnson is that it is the most important health care products company in the world. So, you know, we've all heard about the opioid crisis in Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers, but Purdue was this tiny little company that had really no systemic role in the health care system, whereas Johnson and Johnson is. Is the health care system. And in fact, even about the opioid crisis, you know, people think it's all about Purdue Pharma. In fact, during the early years of the opioid crisis, which was the prescription opioid crisis, you know, we're now in the Mexican fentanyl crisis. But during those early years that really started the crisis, about 10 to 20% of the bodies that showed up in morgues had a Purdue pharma product in their system, which more than 60% had a J and J product in their system. You have to ask yourself, why is it that you have been told that the. That the opioid crisis was almost exclusively the result of this small little company up in Connecticut, and you have never heard about Johnson and Johnson's more important dominant role? Why? And that's because the business that I was in, Josh, you know, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and a lot of the mainstream press just could not tell you that story and in many ways did not want to tell you that story.
- [14:48]
Dr. Josh Axe
Wow. And we see the same thing, you know, today. You know, I've covered Bill Gates on here, and it's a very similar thing. Or Jeff Bezos, they buy up the media companies, and if you own the company and you're Employing somebody they're not going to write against you or if you're the biggest donor to whatever company it is. And so we see so much of this as sort of money being spent to protect somebody's reputation or keep things covered up.
- [15:17]
Gardner Harris
Sure. I tell multiple stories in the book about journalists trying to do some of these stories and Johnson and Johnson calling up the corporate headquarters and saying, if you run that story, we're pulling all of our ads and suddenly the story gets killed. Wow. You know, the thing about Johnson and Johnson, if you look at the nightly news, of course, how many of the ads on the nightly news are prescription drug ads or consumer health care product ads? It's a huge share. And so Johnson and Johnson has managed to keep its image squeaky clean despite these clear, you know, it has pleaded guilty to criminal charges again and again and again. And no one knows this, no one.
- [16:08]
Dr. Josh Axe
Has ever give me an example, garner, of some of those charges that they've pleaded guilty to.
- [16:14]
Gardner Harris
Sure. So the big one. And again, my former colleagues constantly refer to the opioid crisis as the worst public health disaster in American history. It's not even close. The biggest is the use of antipsychotics in nursing home patients in the United States. These are what are known, they were once known as major tranquilizers. And they're really used as chemical straight jackets to keep people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia quiet at night. There are certainly, sometimes families are at the end of their rope when someone becomes violent or something like that, and they use, they reach for these drugs. But in many, many, many cases, these drugs are, are used in nursing homes and in older patients just so the, the facilities don't have to have nurses on call during the night. And so Johnson and Johnson developed this drug, Risperdal. It's main use is for schizophrenia. But they realized that it was much more profitable if they could persuade psychiatrists in nursing homes to use it for dementia. Now, they did this even though the company knew that in dementia patients this drug often kills. And so finally, the FDA put a warning on the drug that says, don't use it in dementia. It doesn't help in dementia, and it often kills. And Johnson and Johnson, according to grand jury documents that I have, have, which as you know, Josh, is really rare to have, they are very secret. But according to sworn testimony before the grand jury, Johnson and Johnson sales reps then went to psychiatrists with two messages. One was, don't worry about killing your patients. No one will ever catch you. And the other was, if you Want to hide your tracks, Diagnose these patients with late onset schizophrenia. Now, you and I both know that there is no such thing as late onset schizophrenia. You get schizophrenia as an 18, 19, 20 year old or you never get it. And Johnson, and Johnson was so successful at persuading psychiatrists to do this that to this day, one in nine nursing home patients in this country are diagnosed with late onset schizophrenia. All of these diagnoses are false. All of them are intended to hide what's really going on. And it continues to this day.
- [18:54]
Dr. Josh Axe
It's wild. I mean, it's wild to hear. And also, you know that there are, there are so many medical professionals that, you know, they take a Hippocratic oath, first, do no harm, right? And this is what they're doing. I mean, you know, so many of these medications that are prescribed today for quite frankly, some diseases that are just completely made up like the one you're referencing. I mean, I think there's even things like ADHD that false someone in that category. There's a lot, there's a lot of conditions. And the other thing is, from my standpoint, I wish that we would be prescribing vitamins and supplements and lifestyle tips because we all know that that would be much more effective in most cases than a pharmaceutical drug. When I think back to Johnson and Johnson for myself, the thing I remember most is the commercials with no more tears. Right? You've got a baby in a bath. And I'm thinking right now, like, I've got a one year old, a one year old daughter. And you know, we just, we do this every night. You know, we get her in the bath, they love bubbles. And so her and my 4 year old, they love, you know, getting in there and just, you know, splashing and playing in the water together. And I think back about those commercials where you have the baby doing that and it felt like such a heartfelt message with a level of sincerity. But the reality is that it's good marketing and it was a lie. Right. I mean, in terms of a lot of the things that that company has been doing for many, many years.
- [20:27]
Gardner Harris
Sure. Another story I tell in the book, which probably your mother was subject to, is if she had breast cancer back in the 2000s 90s, she almost.
- [20:39]
Dr. Josh Axe
Late 90s. Late 90s, yeah.
- [20:40]
Gardner Harris
But okay, then she definitely got this, which was half of all cancer patients in the late 90s were prescribed EPO. Now, the thing most people know EPO for is that Lance Armstrong used it to win tours to France. But actually the biggest use of EPO was that Johnson and Johnson sold it for cancer patients as a general pick me up. So more than half of all cancer patients during the time when your mother had cancer got epo. Now, what Johnson and Johnson obviously did not tell oncologists and the FDA is that it knew that EPO was miracle grow to tumors. So while people are taking these terrible chemotherapeutics, getting sick, they're. They're also getting epo and. And it's reversing all the effects of this terrible chemo and leading their tumors to grow and killing them. And they had study after study after study that showed this, and they kept all of that information secret. And then they paid off oncologists and cancer hospitals to look the other way. And in fact, I also have the grand jury files on the EPO case. And what the investigators and the prosecutors saw is that the entire cancer world was in on the crime. Many, many, many of the cancer hospitals in these. In the country hired these compounding pharmacies to repackage the EPO vials so they could file what were clearly fraudulent claims for EPO reimbursement. There was so much money sloshing around, Josh, that it just got used everywhere. And I estimate that 500,000Americans died. And I don't know what happened to your mom.
- [22:43]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, I'll share. My mom, years later, had tumor growth in her lungs. And at that point, we actually ended up to completely leave the medical system to go all natural. She pretty much did a mixture of Gerson therapy with Budwig protocol, with, you know, a lot of sort of these, you know, herbs, and she was able to actually heal. And she's in her 70s today and healthy. But, but, but we saw after she went through chemo and tamoxifen and epa and all of these different things she took, we saw her health just really decline for the next, you know, quite a few years. She got put on antidepressants and anxiety drugs, thyroid medication. She had chronic fatigue, was just very, very ill until she was diagnosed with these lung tumors years later. And so that's, you know, praise God, she's doing well now. But it wasn't until she got completely out of the pharmaceutical and the conventional medical system that she was finally able to break free.
- [23:40]
Gardner Harris
Well, listen, Josh, I mean, my preacher just this past Sunday talked about the prodigal son anecdote. And as you know, the Pharisees were criticizing Jesus for. For dining with tax collectors, the Jewish tax collectors who. Collaborating with the Romans and what really comes out of this book is that we're all kind of tax collectors. We are all collaborating in a corrupt system. And what, what I show again and again and again is that doctors in this country are collaborating in these criminal conspiracies, many of them consciously, many of them semi consciously, because Johnson companies like Johnson and Johnson pay them. And when you get that kind of money, it's very difficult for you to see what's really going on. And so it's the. What I hope people see in this, in this book is that there are reasons why a huge share of this country don't really trust the medical system, don't really trust the experts that we're supposed to trust, because it's clear that they do sell you down the river in case after case after case. And it's very hard to break out of that. It's very hard not to be sort of collaborating with a system like that because it's so hard for you as a person to understand all the forces that are working against you. And again, that's what I'm hopeful in reading this book, you will see just the sort of touch points that you need to see to protect yourself, to protect your children and to protect your, your parents.
- [25:38]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah. Yeah. I want to encourage people to get the book. It's called no More Tears Here by Gardner Harris, and it's in bookstores nationwide. You can find on Amazon.com just look. No more Tears. Gardner Harris. You can find it on there. And really, I think there's so much value in reading this book because one thing that starts to happen is one, it's a very, I know, compelling and interesting read, but along with it, you start to understand and start to see more patterns. You become a more wise person when you read this book and books like this because you start to be able to see things you didn't see before in terms, in everything from the medical industry to the food industry to just life in general and understanding how to recognize deception, understand how to understand the intent of someone else. And so I think that this is an amazing book for, for everyone to read. You know, when I, you know, with, with what you're sharing here, I, you know, I think about COVID if somebody wants a real life example, because now there are a group of people that probably hear you say that most the doctors are in on it, either consciously, semi consciously, or subconsciously. And that might seem like a really extreme statement, but I don't think that's extreme at all. When I look at the way that Covid went down, people, doctors, in particular, went along with the narrative almost completely. And I don't know what the exact percentage was, but it was well over 50% that were at least conscious or semi conscious of what they were doing and what was going on, whether it be recommending ventilators that would kill people. You know, they were diagnosing people with COVID even if it wasn't Covid, or saying that was the cause of death going along with that. So there are so many examples. And let me say this. Here's the position that a lot of doctors are put in today, and most doctors. And I interviewed a few physicians about this, and they said, if I would have spoken out against the narrative, I would have lost my license and not being able to provide financially for my family. And so for them, I think that was the reason that I was hearing a lot of them say, well, this is why I went along with the narrative. Now, one, is it still a lie? Does it still totally ruin your character? Yeah, it does. Somebody who does that is. Is lacking character and principles. But that's, you know, that. Let me ask you, what is your perspective on that? Because the medical industry has become such of this powerful Goliath that, you know, they are able to take this, you know, the amount of money and the things they have. They're able to cause doctors to lose their license. They're able to completely silence media companies. They're able to have people do their bidding. It's almost like, you know, in a movie when, you know, some sort of villain has mind control over an entire population. That's part of what's happened here.
- [28:40]
Gardner Harris
Well, Josh, the last story I tell in the book is the COVID story, the story of Johnson and Johnson's vaccine, which is a disaster that has really never been told. But, you know, here's the thing, Josh. Johnson and Johnson itself has spent $35 billion since 2011 on lawyers and litigation. When I was doing this book, all of these experts who, you know, I was one of the top medical reporters in the country. I knew many of the top experts in the country, and I called them about these stories, and they would immediately go off the record and say, gardner, are you out of your mind? Do you know the kind of people you're tangling with? You're making a huge mistake. What kind of lawyers do you have? And. And these are people who are tenured faculty members, have all the protections in the world. In some cases, you know, are fairly elderly. And I was always like. This particularly came true when I was talking about the number of Deaths from the. From Risperdal, the antipsychotic. And I was talking to the world's expert on this, and I said, you know, my back of the envelope calculation here is that there's about a million deaths. And he said, oh, no, no, Gardner, I. I think you're way off. And I said, oh, do you think it's 500,000, 250,000? And he said, no, I think it's about six times the number you. You said. And I was like, you think 6 million people have died? He said, give her plus or minus a million. Yeah, about that. And I was like, you don't know. You don't think that would be news? And he said, gardner, do you know what kind of lawyers these people have? And, Josh, remember how many of those COVID deaths took place in nursing homes? One of the ways that Risperdal kills people is by making them more susceptible to. To respiratory infections. What's Covid? It's a respiratory infection. Did you ever hear this? No.
- [30:45]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah. Yeah. The. It's. It's like so many people are in on it that it's hard to believe it's possible. I mean, that's. I think that's the thing that a lot of people struggle with today. And the other thing that's been so interesting about today is it's become such a political thing almost, you know, and it actually flipped. You know, it actually flipped because it used to be more Democrats would be on that plane and Republicans would. And now it's totally flipped, which is just interesting as well.
- [31:12]
Gardner Harris
Well, the head of the NIH now, Jay Bhattacharya, I just met him on Tuesday.
- [31:17]
Dr. Josh Axe
I mean, I am so impressed with him. Well, I think I'd love to hear your thoughts on him, but he seems like he's got a. You know, so I. I know Jay.
- [31:25]
Gardner Harris
And in fact, he had a conference at Stanford back in October to reassess Covid, which I think is an incredibly important thing to do. It's clear that the. The school lockdowns, the school shutdowns in blue states were a disaster. Right. It's clear that children in blue states suffered much worse academic loss, including my own kids, than children in red states, and that red state governors handled that situation better than blue state governors. It's clear that there were any number of actions taken that, in retrospect, were wrong. And Jay was right, in my opinion, to hold a conference to, like, let's start looking, you know, with science, at what worked and what didn't. And he. I was the only major journalist to show up at this thing because I think it's important that, that this conversation happen. And so I was a speaker at this conference and frankly, none of my former colleagues and colleagues were willing to show up. And that's the kind of thing that I think makes a lot of people worried. Like, well, why can't we talk about this?
- [32:51]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, you know, I see, you know, I see a lot of backlash. We're gonna see, we are gonna see so much of this come fall. I mean, you probably saw Robert F. Kennedy here about two weeks ago, said by September we'll know the cause of autism. And then they're also at the same time doing a lot of research around vaccinations and a number of things. You know, what are your thoughts on and what do you think will be coming out? Any indications or thoughts from you What'll be coming out here this fall?
- [33:19]
Gardner Harris
Well, look, I am a believer in childhood vaccinations. I had my children vaccinated. I think the science there is clear. But I think the problem that many people have is that the very institutions that say, on the one hand, childhood vaccinations are very good are the same institutions like the fda, the cdc, all these others that are engaged in the, these clear, problematic and in some cases, criminal cases that have cost millions of lives. So that's why the book is so important in terms of, look, Johnson and Johnson was enabled in all of these disasters by the FDA that oftentimes put out false statements on Johnson and Johnson's behalf to protect it from accountability for its own actions. So, you know, the sort of, the disbelief that is, that is clear throughout the system. Epo, for instance. To this day, many oncologists in small towns prescribe a lot of EPO to cancer patients even though it's clear that this drug kills them. And it's not a surprise that it's in the small towns of this country and that a lot of this disbelief has really taken hold.
- [34:46]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, well, Gardiner, I know we've agreed on everything. The one thing I'll tell you that I disagree with you on, and I think we're going to see it this fall is I think we're going to see a correlation between vaccines and a number of conditions that are, you know, autism and others. And so it'll be interesting to see, I think there's been so much cover up with that in the past. I think there's been so much fall, false research are taking, taking credit for, for instance, the rates going down when they were already mostly gone down. On their own before they were even introduced, but taking credit for that. So I do think we're going to see more evidence of that. And I do think, hey, maybe there's a time and a place for some in a certain schedule. I think generally speaking they've harmed our immune systems and vaccines are a big part of the reason why autoimmune disease is up. Why, you know, some of these chronic infections are up. Because we've sort of strengthened one area of the immune system. And you could look this up. It's interesting your TH1 versus your TH2 immune system. But all that being said, I think that, I think we are, I think that people are gonna be surprised sometime in the next four years when some of the research comes out because I think that, you know, you know, pediatricians that that role in the medical field was created just for vaccines. I mean it's a, it's a major as, you know, money making industry as Covid. I mean the amount of money these companies made. So I do, I do, I do think that'll be interesting. I do agree with you. There's probably not that there's really not in terms of medical literature and evidence, there's really not a lot of evidence for those negative effects. And so I understand like your position. A lot of people, you know, even Mark Hyman, Peter Attia are on that same and they're more in the integrative health. It's not still functional or cellular like I am, but it's still more in that middle. But I do think as more research comes out, we'll be surprised there. So in spending some time with Marty Makery here I have the FDA this last week 1 I am such a big fan of him because he's the 1% of the 1% who spoke out the most during COVID I mean, you know, he's a person who, I mean, put his license completely on the line. Now let me say, I think the only reason he didn't lose his license is that he was the, you know, medical, one of the chief analysts and medical experts for Fox News and I think that he had enough protection there and that that's the only reason he didn't lose his license. Because if you go back and look at Marty Makery on Twitter or which is now X and all the social media platforms, every time Fauci referenced something or said something, he came against it with some really good, you know, either hypothesis or medical science and actual data saying this just isn't true. Whether it be herd immunity or what the Vaccine actually did in terms of protecting you against actually getting Covid in the first place or masking. He was coming out against so many of these things. And so. And I heard him say, well, and, you know, he said, just. I want to say this last week, as you referenced on Megyn Kelly, that they're getting all pharmaceutical industry leaders off of the board and the fda. I mean, talk about what a conflict of interest that is, that you have people that are leading pharmaceutical companies that are actually sitting on the board and that involved in, in the fda.
- [38:09]
Gardner Harris
So I hope he succeeds in that. I not sure he's going to be able to because industry representation on those advisory panels is in the law. It's actually at the discretion of the commissioner to make that call. Now, I don't. So if anybody sues him or the FDA over this, he's going to lose unless Congress passes a law kicking them off those advisory committees. You know, the industry's role in the FDA is so complete. The FDA is so shot through with industry money and influence that I mean, I'm, I look forward to Dr. Macari's, you know, oversight, but I think he's got a huge job. And at the end of the book, I have a lot of recommendations about how to change this. One of them is that the fda, which right now is largely paid for by industry, you know, FDA officials say in speeches that the industry is their customer. It's not you, it's not the public. The industry is their most important customer. And that's because they understand that their salaries are now paid for by industry. So I personally think that public servants need to be paid out of general revenue. And if you want to tax the industry for that money to go to the general revenue and then that money come from there to fda, that's fine. But having the money directly go from industry to FDA has completely distorted that agency. I also think that we need a separate agency that looks at products after they've been approved. And this is what we have in aircraft. For instance, as you know, the FAA approves new aircraft, but when they crash, it is the NTSB that investigates those crash, because everyone understands that the FDA is now completely committed to this aircraft and won't want to admit their own mistakes. That's what we have with fda. And what happens again and again and again, and you see this in the book, is that the FDA will approve a product and then doesn't want to admit that it made a mistake. And as evidence of deaths and injuries start coming in. So just years of delay happen, hundreds of thousands continue to be injured and the FDA ends up doing nothing. So that's why I think we need sort of an ntsb. And then finally, I don't think doctors should be able to serve as part time drug sales reps while treating you.
- [41:01]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [41:02]
Gardner Harris
You know, you need your doctor to be a learned intermediary. And if they're working for drug makers on the side, they're not an intermediary. And if they're taking all the talking points from drug makers, they're not learned either. So if, if they're, you know, they can go work for industry if they want to, but they can't treat you while they're doing it. And to this day, drug makers pay doctors in this country $2.3 billion annually. And that money is corrupting. It just is. And so there are a variety of other ideas in the book about solving these basic, huge problems in our health care system that have led, as I say, to millions of deaths.
- [41:49]
Dr. Josh Axe
Wow. You know, I want to go back to the, you know, my little rant on, on vaccines and then tie it into something you talk about in your book. And that is, you know, when I look at autism, for instance, I don't think that vaccines are the only cause. I think it's one of many contributors. I think we're going to see that the antibiotic overuse is a contributor. I know via the medical or the research that I've read over the years that if a parent has an autoimmune disease, genetically that's a contributor. There's an epigenetic component. I also have read studies on acetaminophen and Ed said.
- [42:26]
Gardner Harris
Exactly. I was, I was wondering if you were going to go there because it has always been surprising to me that, that people in, in your world, Josh, don't talk more about acetaminophen. I mean, the data are pretty interesting and frightening. And you know, I certainly told my wife that she should not be taking Tylenol or, or acetaminophen during pregnancy and that we shouldn't be giving the kids that in their early years. I, I have seen those data and, and I find them troubling.
- [43:07]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah.
- [43:08]
Gardner Harris
And, and the fact, and again, the FDA's, as I have a whole section in the book on Tylenol and acetaminophen, the FDA's oversight about the safety problems with Tylenol, which, let's be clear, is by far the most dangerous over the counter drug sold in this country. It causes more death and injury than all other over the counter Medicines combined.
- [43:34]
Dr. Josh Axe
At one point, it was like. At one point, I want to say it was like the 15th leading killer in the whole country.
- [43:40]
Gardner Harris
It's crazy. And. And the FDA has held expert advisory committee after expert advisory committee over decades. Those expert advisory committees have told FDA in no uncertain terms that they need to increase the warnings on Tylenol. And almost every time, the FDA did nothing, and it wasn't. And in fact, one of the stories I tell in the book is that Johnson and Johnson sold two strengths of Tylenol for babies, right? There was one for infinite infants that was a very concentrated form of Tylenol, and there was one for. For children, and doctors and parents mix them up all the time, and the result was dozens of deaths of babies. And in this one case that I mentioned, an executive from Johnson and Johnson admitted that the company simply saw those deaths, deaths of infants as a cost of doing business. Because, of course, it's more profitable to have two different strengths of this than just one. And again, FDA knew this was going on, did nothing, until finally the legislature in Louisiana, because of a local incidence of babies dying, nearly passed legislation essentially banning this second strength of Tylenol. And finally, Johnson and Johnson pulled one of the strengths of Tylenol off the market. And now there's just one. But it took so many babies dying to get there.
- [45:24]
Dr. Josh Axe
It's wild. You know, when I. When I take care of patients today, or parents in particular, the two medications I have to educate them on the most are antibiotics and acetaminophen, because, you know, those are the drugs that are most given to children. I mean, there are others, of course, there's ADHD medications, asthma. I mean, there's a number of other other things. But those two in particular are very dangerous. Of course. Acetaminophen in the short term, antibiotics even more so in the long term. And what it does, the gut microbiome. But it's, you know, it's. It's. It's. This is why I want to encourage everybody. You have to read the book here again, this is no More Tears here by Gardner Harris, because this book really dives into. There are so many surprising things in the book that you'll look back and you'll be able to see the patterns of, or see what the pharmaceutical companies, what the media companies have been doing to cover things up and things that could be negatively impacting your health that you don't know about. I mean, there are so many other things in this book I know that you get into. Gardner, one of the last couple Things I want to mention here is that Johnson and Johnson paid academics. So again, this goes even beyond just the doctor, like just the actual doctors or the pharmaceutical sales reps or the CEOs. They paid academics, PhDs, researchers, to also essentially falsify papers. And by the way, I see this done all the time where doctors will sign off on something, getting paid, and they don't even know what they're signing, you know, or researchers and pizza. I mean, this is constantly going on today.
- [47:04]
Gardner Harris
So I tell a story about this group of very prominent academics at Harvard University. Johnson and Johnson paid them millions of dollars. They made up this phony diagnosis in pediatric kids so that Johnson and Johnson's drug could be used far more in these kids, caused one of the worst pediatric drug disasters in history as a result. And, and it's clear in retrospect that this diagnosis that they created is totally made up. And, and yet it happened. Harvard. In fact, at the time, I did stories in the New York Times about how they were lying about the money that Johnson and Johnson was giving. This led to an investigation in the Senate. It eventually led to the Physician Payment Sunshine act that requires the disclosure of payments from drug makers to doctors. Those that continues on to this day, although nobody can really even find those data. So I tell in this story the corruption at the most august academic institutions and in the country. And it happens again and again. And, you know, these institutions now obviously are under some attack and are stunned that a lot of people don't really believe them or trust them. But they have never acknowledged their role in many of these Clear, as we talked about, these are the largest, costliest and deadliest criminal conspiracies in American history. There is no doubt about that. And the Harvards of the world and the Stanfords of the world were all part of it. That's what the book shows. And again, if you want to do your own research, you can read the documents proving this.
- [49:12]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah. Wow. You know, last couple of things here. One is the pharmaceutical industry has a behemoth amount of money. I mean, it is absolutely massive. How do we face this Goliath and topple them to the ground?
- [49:34]
Gardner Harris
Look, I mean, it's why I go to church, because I think there is a. You can get a sense of hopelessness about this. It's really hard to fight these forces. And, you know, it's why, you know, I turn to, to, to religion and prayer sometimes because it's, it's, it's a, it's a much more hopeful space. And I, and I think Those of us who have faith, have faith that justice will prevail and that, you know, these. These things will come out. And look, Josh, I think the rise of. Of. Of podcasts like yours, of this alternative media space, of look, I think this book is something of a miracle that it got through the lawyers at Random House. And I have to give that company a huge amount of credit. It took a long time. My original manuscript was twice as long as the book eventually came out. You know, we lost a bunch of things, but. But I trusted them and because they were so committed to getting this message out. And so I think the answer is for people like you to keep talking about it. And I think that message is getting through.
- [50:55]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, there's a Bible verse it reminds me of, and essentially it says something to the likes of this is that what they intended for evil, God will use for good. And I see Covid being an example of that. When I'm early on in Covid, I was very disappointed and discouraged that so many people were going along with the narrative. In fact, I couldn't believe it. I was sort of shocked at how many people said, I'm going to wear the mask. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. Or just basically just cave and not even want to know the truth, in a way. But then coming out of it, it's like it woke so many people up. I mean, the way that, you know, Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan or Russell Brand or a lot of people started, I mean, literally had a massive shift in their perception. And also when I think about my early part of my medical career, when I opened my practice in 2007, you know, and even before that, you know, I think about how where the state of natural health was and how much pharmaceuticals dominated the sales industry. And there's absolutely been a big shift, but really since COVID a bigger shift than ever. You know, if we would have been having this conversation two years ago and you would have told me that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Marty Makery, Mehmet Oz, and some of these people were running, you know, HHS and the FDA and J. The nih, I would have thought, yeah, like, that is absolutely crazy. So I am very encouraged. I am very hopeful. And just seeing what God has done and putting the people in these positions and all of the changes and even your book coming out as an example, and then people like myself and others who are able to speak so freely, it's really. It's really an encouragement. Last thing I have for you and something I know you hit on in the book, but you'll go much deeper. You know, Just recently, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare's Pharmacy Services was murdered. And what actually a lot surprising amount of people are calling a targeted act. What are your beliefs on that?
- [53:00]
Gardner Harris
Look, I, you know, killing people is. You and I are clearly religious. You cannot go there. Right. I mean, let's be absolutely clear that what happened was appalling and terrible. But I think it certainly has come out of a growing wellspring of anger at this system that we have where we spend twice as much on a per capita basis of any other country and we get worse healthcare outcomes. And much of that is because corruption is now defining the system. I think corruption in health care is getting worse, not better. UnitedHealthcare, obviously there has been any number of investigations that it is diagnosing people with illnesses that they do not have so they can get extra payments from the Medicare program and doing all kinds of things that don't add to the health and welfare of the American public, but drain their savings. So I think there, the system we have been talking about, Josh, and I think you have been talking about for a long time that it can't go on like this forever. And we've all been wondering when we're going to have sort of a breaking point where people just sort of say enough. And, and I think people are looking at that terrible incident and murder as. As certainly a sign of that. I want to be clear, like, that is never acceptable. But I do understand the anger and wonder as you have been wondering where it will lead us and what is the system that we need to get to.
- [55:01]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah. Well, Garner, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us today. You know, and just uncovering the truth. I mean, one of the greatest virtues that I admire in people are people that want to know the truth. And, you know, the Bible talks about that being a source of wisdom, is that people that are wise, despite you know, what backlash it might come against them, despite how it might make them look, that they are committed to finding the truth. And so I'm so appreciative of your character and just wanting to go out and find the truth in order to help people. And I encourage everybody to check out Gardner's new book. It's called no More the Dark Secrets of Johnson and Johnson. It's in bookstores nationwide. You can also find it on Amazon.com Again, no more tears. And I just want to say thanks, everybody, for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe show where each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles and how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually and take your health and your life to the next level. I want to thank all of the subscribers out there. By the way, every time you subscribe, you allow me to bring on more high profile guests and incredible people here like Gardner. So thank you for your for all the subscribers out there. And if you're not subscribed, subscribe now and share this episode. There are millions of people that don't know the truth about the dark sides of the pharmaceutical industry, what they're doing to people. So thank you for all of you sharing it on Instagram and Facebook and social media and helping get the word out there. So, so grateful for you. And if you're watching on YouTube, let us know what is your biggest takeaway? What was that thing that maybe struck you that Gardner shared today? Let us know there as well. Again, Gardner, thanks so much for coming on today. So grateful for you being a warrior for Trut and thank you everybody. I'll see you on the next episode.