Dr Phillip Altman: COVID Misconceptions Introduction

Now today, we are diving into the world of COVID-19. Vaccines, public health messages, science in medicine. It’s quite an in-depth discussion, and I’ve met my guest today a few weeks ago. My guest today is actually Dr Phillip Altman.

Phillip has a Bachelor of Pharmacy, a Bachelor and Masters of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy, a PhD. He has spent most of his career as a clinical trials and regulatory affairs pharmaceutical industry consultant with more than 40 years of experience in designing, managing and reporting on clinical trials. 

So if anybody knows about clinical trials, Phillip is that person. As I mentioned, I had the pleasure of catching up with Phillip and his lovely wife, Juanita, who, as soon as I heard him talk and heard his background, I wanted to share him with you.

Phillip’s dealt extensively with the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, throughout his entire career. He knows how it works. He’s worked for and consulted to most of the international pharmaceutical companies represented in Australia. 

He was fundamental in the establishment and foundational, I guess, in the establishment of the Australian Regulatory and Clinical Scientists Association, which is a peak educational forum for more than 2000 clinical and regulatory scientists working within the famous Australian pharmaceutical industry. He’s got a life membership of this association. Look, if anybody knows clinical trials and regulatory bodies and regulatory processes, today’s guest is that man.

Podcast Transcript

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:00] I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast, The Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their Elders – past, present and emerging.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Unstress. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Now today, we are diving into the world of COVID-19. Vaccines, public health messages, science in medicine. It’s quite an in-depth discussion, and I’ve met my guest today a few weeks ago. My guest today is actually Dr Phillip Altman.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:43] Phillip has a Bachelor of Pharmacy, a Bachelor and Masters of Science and, a Doctor of Philosophy, a Ph.D. He has spent most of his career as a clinical trials and regulatory affairs pharmaceutical industry consultant with more than 40 years of experience in designing, managing and reporting on clinical trials. 

So if anybody knows about clinical trials, Phillip is that person. As I mentioned, I had the pleasure of catching up with Phillip and his lovely wife, Juanita, who, as soon as I heard him talk and heard his background, I wanted to share him with you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:01:26] Phillip’s dealt extensively with the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, throughout his entire career. He knows how it works. He’s worked for and consulted to most of the international pharmaceutical companies represented in Australia. He was fundamental in the establishment and foundational, I guess, in the establishment of the Australian Regulatory and Clinical Scientists Association, which is a peak educational forum for more than 2000 clinical and regulatory scientists working within the famous Australian pharmaceutical industry. 

He’s got a life membership of this association. Look, if anybody knows clinical trials and regulatory bodies and regulatory processes, today’s guest is that man. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Phillip Altman. Welcome, Phillip.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:02:24] Thank you for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:02:26] Phillip, When we met about a week or two ago, I was so looking forward to meeting you because I know you have an incredible history in the world of pharmaceuticals, approval of pharmaceuticals. TGA, FDA. I wondered if you might just give us a little bit of a background.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:02:45] Right. Well, I’m a Big Pharma guy. Right? I was trained in Big Pharma. I worked in Big Pharma as a staff member, in some senior positions and all in Australia, but plugged in internationally. Spent quite a few years there. I thought I knew enough to become a consultant and started my own business and had doctors and nurses and pharmacists and health economists and statisticians work for me, but still working for Big Pharma. 

So I’ve been interacting with the Australian TGA for decades, literally decades and decades. Right, and I know them fairly well. I know what they do, I know their standards, I know quality of data. I’m well aware of what safety and efficacy means and what data you need to support those claims. So I can’t deny it. I’m a big pharma guy. Right. But that’s… That’s okay. We’re not drawing, you know. We don’t hold any grudges here.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:03:55] And I have to say, I was treated very well by Big Pharma really well. And during my career, I was never asked to do anything improper to cut corners. I was left to my own devices to do the right thing. My job was always to present Big Pharma and the data that I was responsible for in the dossiers in the best possible light.

The TGA, on the other side, their job was to be the worst critic of Big Pharma. To be their worst nightmare. Right. And that’s the way the battle was. For as long as I really knew them, I then retired. But what I’m seeing now is it isn’t the way it used to be.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:04:50] Well, that’s so much of what we’re going to want to talk about today because to say the last two years have been an exceptional time in human history is probably an understatement. And as somebody who has been aware of the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in all levels of health care, I must admit even I have been taken aback as I as I know… 

Let’s just take a broad view here first, and we’re going to dive into a few different misconceptions about this. But tell me, given your background in Big Pharma and dealing with the TGA, has this been business as usual? What have you seen?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:05:34] Not at all. Not at all. And I really didn’t realise it until this pandemic began, and it began, and I was as frightened as the next person. I mean, we had these incredible modelling claims of widespread death. Right. And you know, they came from the Imperial College in London and the Doherty Institute in Melbourne and so forth, and various places in the US. 

The estimates of death in Australia were 150,000. From our most senior health bureaucrats here. Right, those who relied on this dodgy data and people were rightly scared. Now, maybe that was done on purpose. That’s a possibility. The other possibility is that these modellers really thought that wasn’t a realistic estimate. But the models were wrong. They were way wrong. 

And they were driven by these PCR tests, which the average layperson doesn’t know what a PCR test. This would have been the first time that any of them would have known what would a PCR test was. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:07:00] Right. Well, let’s do some revision here quickly, though. For those that didn’t know, give us PCR 101. 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:07:08] All right. Just very, basically.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:07:10] Very basic.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:07:11] That the PCR test is designed to be a highly sensitive test. And you can adjust it, right? That’s the secret. You can adjust the cycle of thresholds in the way you use it so it can detect even a single virus. Doesn’t have to be a live virus. It could be a part of a virus. Right. And you can get a signal from a PCR test because it’s multiplied a trillion times. That small signal is multiplied a trillion times.

Now, the health authorities have never really come clean as to how they adjusted the PCR test. But most people, most experienced lab people, would say if you run a PCR test, more than 24, 28 cycles threshold, it becomes irrelevant. Right. And I think they were running them in New South Wales in most parts of the states and so forth at 40 or above. 

Really it was just ridiculous, which meant that these chief health officers, where we’re getting on TV every morning, they became celebrities, right? And they were talking about the number of cases as determined by PCR tests.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:08:33] PCR was never intended to be diagnostic for the disease. Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test, said that. He’s dead, unfortunately. Now, it was never intended to be diagnostic. Right. And they were using it diagnostically. They were using it to drive government policy. 

And to a large extent, they still are. The RAT tests (Rapid Antigen Tests) have largely replaced that. And even the CDC, the U.S. Centre for Disease Control, came out, I think in January. And made a statement. Very quietly, no fanfare that they were abandoning the PCR test. Right. Well, a bit late, yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:09:25] And the horse has well and truly bolted.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:09:28] The horse has well and truly bolted, but. But people are still scared out of their wits. As I said, I had an interview just this morning. And I said, I still see people driving around in their cars with their windows out wearing a paper masks. Right. I feel sorry for those people. People are frightened out of their wits. 

Now, our public health officials, our senior bureaucrats, our highly paid senior bureaucrats, most of them are on $10,000 a week. They haven’t been telling us much information. They haven’t moved on. All they tell us is, “Get vaccinated. Get your boosters.” But a lot of the promises, a lot of the things that they told us were true about these vaccines, have now collapsed. Right. 

We’ve now had a year and a half of experience with these vaccines, and our chief health bureaucrats and many politicians have not moved on. They haven’t learnt anything. Right. And this is because there is mass censorship.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:11:00] I should go back, and what’s becoming clear to me, Ron, is that there are three types of science. Right. Okay. I didn’t know this before. Well, I knew about two types of science. The first type of science is classical science. That’s a science that I was trained in. Right. 

I was trained to look at the quality of the research, look at the design of the research, look at how it was done, who did it, and is it reproducible when you analyse it statistically? Does it stand up? Is it subject to scrutiny? Can it be repeated? That sort of thing. Right. That’s a science to me. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:11:42] Yep.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:11:43] There was always junk science, right. And you could smell that a mile away. You know, someone would publish a paper in some obscure type of journal and they claim something weird or crazy or it didn’t quite sit well. You could just look at it. You could see by the design of the study or the number of subjects or the observations that were done or the statistics or something like that. Right. 

It didn’t take long if you’re trained in science. You look at something like that for about 60 seconds, and then you throw it in the bin, right? Yep. And you relied on the iconic legacy of medical literature. You know, you relied on the lancets. You relied on the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association. You know. You know, there’s a… 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:12:41] Were they publishing classical science?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:12:44] Of course, they were. Well, when I went in the work each day, I’d shut my door. I would have a stack of literature. We would subscribe to the best journals, and I put the best ones in the top of the stack. And I, I’d spend the first hour of my day, hour and a half of my day educating myself to the latest science. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:13:07] Hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:13:08] That was part of my job. It was keeping up with science. Science is never settled. It changes all the time. And, you know, I’ve heard this statement made elsewhere in other contexts, of course, that the science is settled, right? The science is never settled. All right. So this was a problem. And we’ve now been through a year and a half of experience with these gene-based vaccines. They’re not really vaccines. So I can come here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:13:46] We’re going to come back to that. We’re going to come back. I want to stick with the science because you’ve listed two: classical and junk. I want to challenge you about classical in a moment. But go on. Give me the third one.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:13:58] All right. So there’s classical, there’s junk science, and there’s a fraud, too, you know, you fraud is part of junk science. Okay, but now there’s a new term which Robert Malone introduced me to. And I just saw it just a few days ago, and it perfectly encapsulates what we are seeing now. Right. And it’s scientism. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:14:28] Scientism. Go on.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:14:32] Scientism is basically just reading between Robert Malone’s lines and, in my own words, is institutionalised junk science plus censorship. Right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:14:50] Yep.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:14:51] So if you have enough people in positions of authority.l It has the title doctor or professor, or they’re part of a scientific advisory group to the government. And they say something that in itself is sufficient proof. Okay. So you should not question any dictate that comes from them. Hmm. You don’t know what their qualifications are. You don’t know how experienced they are. Who’s making these claims. You don’t know how conflicted they are. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:15:40] Mm hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:15:41] And yet they pronounce these things, and the public basically says, “Right, if the TGA says it or ATAGI says it, Vaccine Advisory Group says it, that’s good enough for me.” I can write a rebuttal of 50 pages in length, fully referenced, to things that they say, and it doesn’t matter because they don’t have to reply. 

And I’ve actually done that. I’ve written to the National COVID Clinical Evidence Task Force questioning their position on Ivermectin, and I fully referenced yes, spent a lot of time on I get no response. Zero. Zero response. An open letter published I actually published the letter in Quadrant. Waited a couple of months, put in another submission, this time with Tess Lowery’s support. Now, most people know who Tess Lowery is.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:16:50] Will go on. I do. And I know some of my listeners as well. She’s impressive. But just give us, tell us who it is.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:16:57] There’s a whole section of medical literature which involves meta-analysis. And that is the principle that you don’t depend on a single study to prove safety or efficacy or whatever you’re after. This is long, long been known. The TGA never accept, or they never used to accept. I can come back to that. They never used to accept a single study to approve a claim. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:17:30] Mm-hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:17:32] In any single study, you randomly sample a population. And that population is going to be different from study to study. Right. So they want you to present a number of studies in different places done by different people for verification, right? Circumstances do vary. I could tell you all sorts of stories about circumstances I’ve been in with the TGA, but we don’t have the time to do that, right? But I can tell you that you don’t depend on one study.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:18:05] Now, in this particular case, let’s go back to Tess Lowrey. Here is a section of medical literature which is a very important meta-analysis. Where you look at it, there are rules to analyse a whole group of studies that have been published on a subject. And you ask a specific question, and there are rules for how you ask that question, how you screen the papers, and how you assess them. 

And there are people around the world. They’re not many. They’re pretty rare birds that really take years to understand how to analyse in terms of strict meta-analysis rules, how you conduct these analyses, and it’s really time-consuming, takes a lot of manpower.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:18:57] Now, Tess Lowrey is one of the best in the world. I actually asked her a couple of questions to respond directly to the National Evidence Task Force to supplement my report. And actually, she actually wrote a supplementary report. She and her people wrote a supplementary report. For me, I was quite honoured. Right. Put it into the National Clinical Evidence Task Force. No response. They don’t have to respond.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:19:32] Practising scientism.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:19:34] So this is scientism. So, you know, I’ve written affidavits for people who like in the Family Law Court, right, where a husband and wife are split up. One partner wants to take the child and have the child vaccinated COVID-19 vaccinated with these gene-based vaccines. If the other partner does not, they end up in family court, and I have to write the affidavit. 

Well, I can write an affidavit, and I’ve done it. I can write 30 pages with 50 references. Right. Which proves established pretty well that these kids don’t have to be vaccinated. And yet the other side just says, “ATAGI or the Vaccine Advisory Group say that they should.” That’s the beginning and end of the argument on the other side, where they have no real knowledge of anything, and they don’t even want to listen to science. So that’s scientism. And we are in that now. We are in scientism.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:20:46] But Phillip, I come back to your original classical science, and I’m visualising you coming in in the morning with your pile of journals feeling like this is classic science, this is the science I have to get through today. And you are so busy doing that that perhaps this is a story of scientism that has been going on for a little bit longer, but it’s a story that’s easy to miss. 

But once you hear it, difficult to ignore. The science in medicine. Can we just talk about that for a moment? What percentage of the science in medicine is paid for by the pharmaceutical industry, either directly or indirectly?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:21:28] Wow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:21:30] You know where I’m going on this.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:21:32] Yes. I don’t really know, but I suspect just about all of it now. Right. Because it is almost impossible to get a conic legacy medical journal to publish something negative on the COVID vaccines or to get something published positively on Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. They screen them, right. And if any papers do get through and big pharma object to it, you’ll find they’ll be withdrawn by the journal.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:22:20] This is we are talking, folks, about the science in medicine. Because I think, you know, one of the issues is that to me, what’s happened in these last two years is that what has been going on for about 30 or 40 years, really? And it’s not me on my own. I mean, we’re talking about a former journal.

You know, like what was her name, Marcia Angell from the New England Journal of Medicine. She was the editor there for 20 years. Professor Peter Gøtzsche was a leader of the Cochrane Collaboration, which was set up to police all of this. In his book, Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime. 

I think that speaks for itself. So this isn’t just some somebody like myself suggesting John Ioannidis, I’m sure you’ve heard of, you know, so this is a story that’s been going on which for a busy practitioner like yourself who’s trying to keep on top of all the science, the classical science, may miss this story that all of it is actually funded by the drug companies. Is that a sobering truth? Is that a sobering truth?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:23:30] I think you’re being very diplomatic. Right. And, you know. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:23:34] I wasn’t being actually…

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:23:35] I mean, you’re trying not to say, “Phil, you’ve been naive for a long time.” 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:23:40] Okay, that’s…

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:23:41] That’s enough.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:23:41] I think that’s what I was heading towards. But, Phillip, you know, like I did an interview with the Australian of the Year, James Muecke, who naively had thought for 10, 20 years that the food pyramid in the Australian H0000ealthy Eating Guidelines was a really good thing until he looked into it. And here you are is somebody in Big Pharma who’s spent a lot of time, and now you’re looking into it too.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:24:05] Look, look. I got a hint of this with the cholesterol theories die. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:24:11] Okay. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:24:15] And that is fairly late in the piece, right? Because I was getting older and interested in cholesterol. But when you go back, and you look at the published clinical trials and how this stat wears massage, the great similarities between how they massage the pivotal the single clinical trial that device has put up that Moderna put up, they’re published now right. 

They’re in the New England Journal of Medicine. Right. And but they don’t emphasise some pretty important points in those papers. For example, in the Pfizer trial, you know, the headline is 44,000 patients, 95% efficacy, right? And I’ve said this in other interviews, too. If you… 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:25:08] No, no. Say it.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:25:10] I’ll say it again for your viewers. What did you think that 95% efficacy meant? Maybe it meant 95% efficacy of preventing you from getting COVID or preventing serious COVID or preventing you from going to the hospital with COVID or even 95% protection from dying from COVID? No, none of those. None of those. 

The endpoints for clinical symptoms were those which included the common cold. So if you had a sniffle, a sore throat and a temperature, that counted in the 170 patients upon which they built that 95% claim. So I think there were 162. Right. Just. Just to go back. So…

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:26:06] Mm-hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:26:07] Out of the 44,000. Right. 170 got COVID and expressed symptoms. Could be very mild. Right. And of those 170, 162 were unvaccinated. And eight were vaccinated. So that’s where they get the 95% claim from. But does that endpoint make any sense to you? What? To me, once I knew about the gene-based therapies, which they call COVID-19 vaccines, the question is, would you take an experimental unproved gene-based therapy with no long-term effects to prevent mild, usually mild symptoms of COVID-19? 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:27:02] Hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:27:03] To me, that answer is pretty simple. Hmm. Right. Yep. So. But that’s not how it’s presented to the population at large. And our health bureaucracy has been silent. Now, I can forgive them, and you know, when you’re in a debate with people, the best thing to do is to put yourself in their shoes, right? To understand how they were thinking. And I know how they had these extraordinary modelling claims of massive death. 

Politics where the pressure must have been incredible. The health regulators. The drug regulators. The health bureaucracy took an enormous gamble. This class of drug has never been approved before. Previously, it was used for very rare. 

It’s been researched in very small groups of people who are seriously ill, very rare conditions sometimes, these people had a life expectancy of short life expectancy of just, just a few years. Where are you prepared to take a bit of a risk? Right. 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:28:32] These gene-based therapies were being advocated across the board for everyone, and doctors were told to do not distinguish between the individual circumstances of anyone who would get this vaccine, right? Yeah. Don’t ask. The individual judgement of the doctors was taken out of the equation. They weren’t allowed to. 

They weren’t allowed to consider the clinical state of the person. They weren’t allowed to consider if they had natural immunity. They were allowed to consider their age group for risk. Right. I mean, still, now, there are clinical immunologists that I respect. Yet still, I have a feeling that these gene-based COVID-19 vaccines can prevent death in the elderly with co-morbidities. Right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:29:40] Mm-hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:29:41] And we can come back to those numbers, but basically when you are considering the administration of any drug, every time a doctor administers a drug and no drug is safe. Every drug. That’s how I was trained. Every drug has certain levels of safety. Every time a doctor prescribes a drug, he’s automatically, consciously or subconsciously, calculating a risk-benefit that was not allowed here. Right. So now we’re in a position where they’re advocating kids get vaccinated. Over five years old.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:30:26] Oh, even babies. They’re even moving towards babies now. 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:30:28] There are submissions now before the FDA. For infants down to six months.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:30:34] Yeah, it’s so…

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:30:38] It is illogical to me. Hmm. I don’t understand it. The number of children that have either been seriously affected by COVID-19 or died of COVID-19. And it’s a bit tricky because a lot of kids go to the hospital and die. They have leukaemia and stuff, and they die with COVID, right? But they don’t die of COVID. They die of leukaemia. Yeah, but they don’t separate out those numbers.

So an actual fact is the number of five or 11-year-olds that are seriously affected by COVID-19. Would range, and I’ve done affidavits on this for the Australian Federal Court and the New Zealand High Court, which are being heard now write these cases. 

And I did extensive research. And my conclusion in my affidavit. And I stand by it that the threat of serious COVID-19 and or death in the kids’ age group would range from incredibly rare to virtually or statistically nil. 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:31:59] So I ask once again, “Why would you administer an unproven, experimental, gene-based therapy with no long-term safety attached to it?” And there are some serious safety concerns now. Right. There are serious ones. Why would you administer that to a healthy five-year-old?

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:32:26] Yeah.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:32:26] Now, if that choice were presented by doctors to parents, they might have a different view, but I don’t think they’re allowed to do that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:32:44] Tell me. Just. I know there are a couple of misconceptions. I just want to touch on. And one of them is the misconception, and this is the narrative that we’ve been hearing. You’ve already touched on this, but let’s spell it out what the actual risk is: There is an alarming and disproportionately high risk of infection or death due to COVID across the general community. 

Now, you know, people are making informed decisions or think they are about to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. And I think this would be a pretty important fact to understand carefully before you make the decision. What is the risk?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:33:27] Yeah, it’s really important. And it’s as if the bureaucracy has gone out of its way to misinform the public about this. Because COVID-19, the SARS virus, is highly infectious. Right. People who are double jabbed are boosted now that they’re getting infected. Right. All over the place.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:34:03] Mm-hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:34:05] And. So a lot of people were infected. A lot of people were in the hospital with COVID. But don’t die from COVID. If they die, they die from other things. But the hospitals put it down as dying as a COVID-19 death, right? 

And it’s been estimated recently, and in actual fact, I saw it just yesterday, and I look at it every day. I learn about this virus and the vaccine. I spend the first 2-3 hours of my day trolling to the…

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:34:48] I was so looking forward to totally giving you background as well. 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:34:52] You know, this retirement hasn’t been what it’s cracked up to be, right? So I ran across information about this Swedish health authority now. And the Swedish have been really interesting. You know, they were sort of anti-lockdown stuff, and they came out of it pretty well. 

They actually showed that lockdowns don’t really work. But they did an autopsy audit of people who I. in-hospital and were listed as a COVID-19 death. And although the autopsy or it was small, I don’t know. It might have been 30. People or something like that. It wasn’t thousands of people. So it’s a small pilot. So you have to interpret the results in that line.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:35:54] Huh.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:35:55] But what they found was that six out of every seven deaths were not due to COVID. Right. So if only one in seven deaths is attributable to COVID, what is the real risk to the population? Right. And when you actually apply that adjustment factor to Australia, let’s say. 

The number of COVID-19 deaths is probably less than a general year of influenza. And probably only one-third of the number of deaths of suicide. So you have to sit back and you have to shake your head, he said. Say, have we lost our sense of perspective? Completely. Completely. And people are living in fear. 

The health bureaucrats haven’t corrected the situation. They’ve been very quiet. Have you heard of the health bureaucrats coming out recently and saying anything? They certainly aren’t saying these things are safe and effective now. They maybe they still believe it. And maybe they’re waiting for more information. I don’t know, but the information’s there. Hmm. But that. That has been a huge misconception.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:37:31] But listen, back to the risk. I mean, have I got this right? I heard that the risk of you not dying from COVID was about 99.96 to 9 8%. It was a really of not. Which means your chance of dying is something like .0422 or something like that. 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:37:57] Look, it’s something of that order. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:38:00] And the average and the average age of people dying is 86? 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:38:05] Yeah, yeah. Well, if you divided between males and females, I think it’s… I think it’s 86 for the males and 82 for the females. Or maybe I’ve got it… 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:38:18] Doesn’t that exceed our life expectancy?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:38:21] But it’s something like more than the average life expectancy. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:38:25] And is it also true that the average person dies with at least one co-morbidity and many with three or four co-morbidities?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:38:32] Sure. That’s that’s exactly it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:38:34] So that’s the risk. Which…

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:38:36] So, you know. And you have to divide it by age groups, too. What’s the chance of a fit person who’s not grossly overweight, doesn’t have diabetes or something, and dying of COVID-19? It’s just incredibly small. Why would you risk taking a serious genetic therapy which is failed in its promises so far? 

The efficacy is waning. It doesn’t last long. It’s not protecting you from getting infection or transmission from infection. Why? Why would you take that? I know a lot of people I talk to and they have been quite ill afterwards. But these are just symptoms, right? I mean, it’s not serious. I’m much more interested in the myocarditis, the pericarditis that’s happening, the stroke and so forth. And these numbers are through the roof.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:39:44] Well, let’s share those with us because another misconception is that the new generation of COVID vaccines have, in inverted commas, vaccines, and new vaccines have been proven to be both safe and effective. Go on. Just let’s just talk a little about that, and particularly about the myocarditis.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:40:05] That statement is false on its face it prima facie these things happen. Been approved. The drug companies have not provided the full complement of clinical safety efficacy data. It’s obvious they’ve been provisionally approved in Australia or allowed to be marketed under emergency use authorisation in the U.S. and variations on that theme elsewhere. Right. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:40:39] Mm hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:40:40] Which is an admission that the dossiers are insufficient. In Australia, for example, the multinationals are given six years to make up that deficiency in what would take them at least that long. 

Actually so because most vaccines take 7 to 10 years to be developed and there are a lot of vaccines that don’t make it. A lot of vaccines have been withdrawn from the market. And people usually say, “Oh, it’s a vaccine. It must be safe.” Really? Really not. Not so fast.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:41:20] Which brings me to the question of emergency use authorisations, which I think when we look at the whole ivermectin story, it dovetails into this, doesn’t it? Tell us about why the emergency use authorisation is so important. What does it actually mean and how does it differ from the usual process that drugs or pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals need to go through, which I know you’ve been involved with throughout your career? You, of all people, will be able to explain that one to us.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:41:53] All right. So the system is slightly different in the US to Australia, right? In Australia, the traditional approval is not really an emergency use regulatory pathway for drugs. Right. Provisional approval simply means they see a need. The drug regulators see a need. 

The company is prepared to submit partial data, and if the TGA believes that data is sufficient to allow its release to the public, the company has six years to make up the outstanding data. There’s no emergency bit about it and they don’t have to review that data as a matter of urgency. Right. It’s a slightly different situation. In the U.S., the emergency use authorisation, specifically in law, was only allowed if there was no alternative that was available. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:42:58] Uh huh. Now, that’s a big if. That’s a big if.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:43:03] It’s a big if. It’s a big if. Right? Hmm. There are many people around the world. It is these dozens of clinical trials that show both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin with zinc are highly effective in the treatment, especially of early COVID-19. Hmm. Right. I mean, this is done by meta-analysis. You don’t have to depend on one paper. You can look at the meta-analysis.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:43:32] Which is exactly what Tess Lowrey did.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:43:35] Which is what she did. And then Big Pharma organised another meta-analysis to be done. They analysed it in a slightly different way and knocked out a number of papers that were crucial. 

And you can imagine what the result would have been. Right. Which brings to disrespect, I think. The name of Cochrane. I have lost I have personally lost faith in the Cochrane reviews because now I know that’s part of medical literature, too. And it can be manipulated. And I would never have said that two years ago. I would never.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:44:25] You would have put them in classical science.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:44:28] Absolutely.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:44:29] But the emergency use authorisation and it’s actually quite relevant for America being such a litigious society. Am I right in saying that the emergency use authorisation absolves the company of, you know, responsibility for the adverse reaction? 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:44:49] Look, I, I think there are certainly very special arrangements and legislation in place since about 1986, I think. So that companies have immunity from litigation for damage caused by their vaccines. And if you get across the line, you call your product the vaccine, then you can take advantage of this. 

It’s a great business model because it means you don’t have to do the full complement of safety testing. The government will approve you. And as we’ve seen very quickly with little obstacles, the government will then promote your product for you, even pre-purchase it for you, and advertise it for you. It’s in terms of the business model, it’s pretty good.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:45:46] Well, I mean, on top of that, you get a whole population of, not a whole, a significant amount number of the population who are unwittingly also marketing in compliance officers for big pharma.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:45:59] They are. And I mean, look to be fair, they’re not all bad people, right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:46:09] No, I’m sure they’re not.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:46:11] I know they’re not all bad people. And most of them just want to keep their jobs and do what they’re told. And they just assume that so there are people who may know better than they know. And they have trust in the system. And I used to have trust in the system. 

That is the casualty of this pandemic, with a lot of people like myself no longer have faith and trust in our health bureaucracy and what the drug regulators around the world are saying. People have lost faith in their doctors. And it’s been really serious. Right. And that’s how this system has worked up to now. Yeah. 

And now that the wheels have fallen off these vaccines. And really the good news. I mean, I, I spend, as I said, the first part of my day now doing the same thing that I did in Big Pharma, just trolling through the information, trying to sift the information. And there’s no good news coming out of these vaccines, right? It’s just bad news and worse news.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:47:42] Well, well, give us some give us a little bit of an insight. I mean. I’m sure you could do a very big presentation on it, but what would be some of the highlights of that bad news?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:47:54] Well. The vaccines do not provide long-term protection now. We were told these were vaccines that, you know, with one or two shots could protect you. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:48:10] Well, we now know that’s not true, right?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:48:13] Everyone knows that’s not true. Yeah. And the interval between the boosters is getting shorter. The people are getting sick. Right. You know, boost it still. People, there’s no discussion about early treatment of COVID and people still view these vaccines as being treatment. It’s not said as such. 

But if you ask the public about these vaccines, they probably view them as a treatment. So that’s the bad news. The other bad news is that there is significant in vitro genotoxicity mutagenecity the data that mainly genotoxicity that it shows in isolated human liver cells that the RNA in these vaccines. Can be reverse transcribed into your DNA within hours.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:49:17] Tell us what that means to remind us. Well, remind us. Tell us what that means.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:49:21] Oh, it was assumed by these companies that would never occur. And our drug regulatory agency said that would never occur, despite the fact that no data was submitted to support that statement. Zero. And now. That’s been published in late February, I think. A couple papers. And I think Big Pharma is trying to get those papers withdrawn because they’re highly explosive. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:49:59] Because the implications of that are…

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:50:01] The implications are, well, the implications are that you could permanently alter your DNA right from bits in the mRNA. Not only that, it can be passed on. It gets into the germ cells. It’s the sperm and the ovary cells that get to those parts of the body and gets into those cells. 

It could be passed on to future generations, and it would be permanently in your genome. That is really serious. And that’s why gene-based therapies are subjected to really intense scrutiny. Safe. Well, well, well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:50:47] They used to be. They should be.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:50:50] Well, they’re not calling these gene-based therapies some kind of thing so they can get around that. Okay. So that’s important now. Now at the moment, there is only in vitro laboratory evidence of that. But it was predicted by molecular biologists that might happen. Then it was shown to happen in isolated liver cells. And these are red flags, right? 

These are things that when a drug regulatory agency provisionally approves or disapproves, conditionally under emergency use. It’s understood that both the company. And the drug regulator keeps their eyes wide open for signals of trouble. And when you run across a paper like this, it should trigger instantly. Questions being asked of the company, actions being taken by the drug regulator.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:52:05] For example, just the other day I saw there were 56 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. CJD. Right. Prion disease, which was predicted by molecular biologists many months ago. Right. Prion diseases are very serious. They’re usually very take a long time to affect the brain and induce dementia and so forth. 

But it’s now known, contrary to initial belief, when these things, these gene-based therapies, were initially released, they thought that they’d stay at the injection site. They don’t. They distribute right throughout the body, including the ovary, right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:52:49] Mm hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:52:50] And, in fact, they accumulate preferentially in the ovary. And this data was not widely known in the very beginning. That’s part of the essential drug research, biodistribution of something that’s just basic stuff. Right. But it takes years to do it. It takes years to do these studies. It takes a lot of money. 

But by calling these things vaccines and getting them approved conditionally, they avoided all these things. But having said all that, we’re now a year and a half down the track. We now know these things are happening.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:53:28] You know, there’s been 28,000 deaths reported in association with these vaccines in the U.S. alone under their system. They’re not all these deaths will be ultimately ascribed as due to the vaccines. Right. But there are ways of evaluating these cases, and we have no idea how that’s being done. That’s really secret. 

In Australia, there are about 879 deaths the last time I look associated with these vaccines, but only 11 have been declared as being due to the vaccines. Now, frankly, I just don’t believe it. Hmm.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:54:09] Hmm. And it’s one of the reasons why it takes 7 to 10 years to approve a drug because so many of these things are hopefully worked out before they get into the population. I mean, that’s just why.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:54:25] Sure. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:54:28] But taking a step back and, you know, I can see how you reflect on how this was managed. But how do you think we as individuals can ensure our leaders and so-called experts do better in the future?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:54:42] Royal Commission. Because they don’t answer to anybody. You can. I can put submission after submission in. Doesn’t matter if it’s 100 pages long.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:54:58] Mm hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:54:58] They just don’t respond. Yeah. They don’t have to. But if you had a royal commission, both sides of parliament won’t allow that. There are too many bodies. Yeah. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:55:17] You know, it’s interesting, too, Phillip, because I think we all love certainty in our lives. I mean, I think it’s, you know, it’s a human thing to want to be certain about what you’re doing, and particularly when you’re faced with something as unknown as we were at the beginning of this. And I said right from the beginning. 

I think it’s a really tough time to be a leader. It always is. But this was an exceptionally there was no rulebook for this beforehand. So, you know, very tough time to be a leader. But when it comes to ignorance, I think there are different ways of responding to ignorance. 

One is to be consultative and to explore. But when ignorance is combined with ego, arrogance and hubris, I think we end up with what we’ve ended up with.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:56:02] Yeah. And job security.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:56:04] Job security is a big thing because that’s a reality. That’s a reality. I mean, you know, you at this stage in your career, feel empowered, you know, empowered to speak.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:56:15] Well, it’s much easier for me to do it, you know, people say, oh, you’re; still, you’re really brave. Not really. I don’t I don’t have a consultancy at stake. You know, if I was a consultant and I was saying this, my business would be gone.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:56:31] Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:56:33] Gone over.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:56:34] Well, careers. I mean, careers. You know how long it takes to go through to build careers in health care?

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:56:40] Well, you know, this is why I won’t name any particular names here, but I’ve been talking to people in medicine who instead of giants in Australian medicine. Right. Those who spent their whole lives in medicine in building up a career in stuff and. It is very difficult for them to expose themselves in this way if they speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

It’s easier to speak sort of part of the truth and entered the whole truth. But I would not actually say it. It’s hard for them, and I can understand it. I don’t ask them to do it. I don’t ask them to do it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:57:31] Yeah. And I mean, if you were a doctor who’s built up a practise, you know, and are all building a practise, and you’ve got a family, you’ve got a mortgage, you’ve got a career, you’ve spent 20 years studying, and you’re faced with the choice of either do as you’re told or you’ll be deregistered, which is literally the choice that’s been offered. Exactly. I think I think you would choose to be quiet.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:57:56] Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s obvious. And I think a lot of people are just living in fear. And it’s tragic. It’s tragic. And the main reason why I’m here is to prevent this from happening again because it’s going to happen again. If we don’t do something, we don’t fix this. It’s going to happen again.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:58:16] Well, I would actually argue that this particular episode has emboldened so many aspects of the science in medicine, big pharma, that this is just a business model beyond their wildest dream. Absolutely on their wildest dreams. This is turbocharged.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:58:35] Absolutely. Mhm. But you know you mentioned also that when a drug is approved by TGA, it’s usually meta-analysis. They will not accept studies of one or two. And I recently did a programme, Phillip, on the Australian Government Forum on Early Treatment, which came 26 months after the beginning of the pandemic and was actually a great showcase for Molnupiravir Pax, the weed Sotrovimab and Rose Demi Beer. 

I mean, if you needed a commercial, all you needed to do was line up with Brendan Murphy, Paul Kelly, Michael Kidd, and John Skerritt, and they did a two-hour commercial for the drug companies. Now, I think Molnupiravir was accepted not on a meta-analysis, was it? 

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:59:25] No, you don’t need a meta-analysis for drug approval. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:59:30] No, no.

Dr Phillip Altman: [00:59:31] Let me make this clear. Yeah. Meta-analyses are usually used when a drug has been on the market for a long time and a drug company wants to extend the indications beyond those which were subject to clinical trials. Because a lot of drugs are used off-label, probably 25% of drugs used by doctors are prescribed by doctors off-label. Meaning for uses, they’re not officially approved. Right. 

But often, these indications are small indications, and the drug companies don’t want to spend the money and mounting more clinical trials and take years and tens of millions of dollars. So they get people to analyse the literature in a meta-analysis. But that’s usually done sort of more down the track. That’s why Ivermectin was subject to meta-analysis. It’s an old drug. It’s been prescribing billions of prescriptions. Right. 

It was known as a relatively safe and effective drug used all over the world. There was no doubt about that. The TGA know that. Okay, they’ve done their analysis of the safety of ivermectin. A lot of that has been published in 2013 in an Oscar report. That’s another story. I lost my train. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:00:53] But they know. They know, know… 

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:00:56] I wanted to say. Yeah. You mentioned Molnupiravir. That’s a classic example of hypocrisy. Right. So Molnupiravir has been advocated was advocated as as as as one of these great drugs. Right. To treat COVID-19. Right. Molnupiravir is a very old drug. It’s an old failed drug. Right. It’s a mutagenic drug. It means it affects your genes. It’s not on this scale of safe drugs. It would be pretty much near the bottom. Right. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:01:35] Wow.

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:01:36] And the evidence in COVID-19 consisted of well, while the TGA criticised the dozens of trials and maybe 60 or 70 trials with ivermectin, which we’re all sure they could individually, they might have had their little flaws, but collectively 60 or 70 trials all going the one direction, saying the same thing despite differences in dose and whether they use zinc in combination or not in the stage of treatment. 

They’re all going the same way and supported the safe and effective use of ivermectin, COVID-19. They said, “No, no, no, not enough data.” And they still to this day said, “No, no, no, not enough data.” But one trial for Molnupiravir for a 20-year-old mutagenic drug with pretty low efficacy was said to be approved provisionally for the use of COVID-19. Well, well, it just did happen. Well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:02:42] Yeah, me too. But more than that, and I think it needs to be said that not only did the TGA do that on what I didn’t even realise was a 20-year-old mutagenic drug that costs $700 for a five-day course or maybe $600. 

But they also banned, banned, and prevented doctors from prescribing a drug called ivermectin, which won a Nobel Prise in Medicine for the treatment of humans, not horse medicine for the treatment of humans in 2015 and cost 2.50 per course. 

So it gets worse than that. It’s actually you’ve given me another reason to be even more upset about it because I didn’t realise it was an old drug with mutagenic properties. So now listen, let’s just take a look…

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:03:31] I think you know, we can take the position that there was evil intent.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:03:39] Mm hmm. And they knew it, right? I don’t. I don’t prefer to take it. No, this is what I… My next question to you was going to be this very thing about how, you know, you’re like you. 

I mean, even probably you, even more than me, because you’ve been so involved in the industry that this is head-spinning stuff that you’re trying to make sense of morally, ethically, globally, you know, on so many different levels. And I’m just intrigued to know where you’re at now. You know, where how do you make sense of this? The whole thing.

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:04:24] I swing. Between the belief that you know, people knew was wrong in the beginning, but they just didn’t want to get fired to people just with noble intent. Right. They thought they were doing the right thing. 

And I think after a year and a half, knowing what we know now, I just have a sense they’ve gone a bit quiet. Right. The health bureaucracy is going to be quiet. There are still some danger signs, right?

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:04:56] The danger signs to me, the number one is going after the kids where the argument for going after kids the raise on death for going after kids. Risk-benefit. It doesn’t stack up. It’s bloody dangerous. I can’t believe they’re doing it. 

And if they proceed along that path. I’m not sure if they’re double thinking that now. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. But there’s also talk of our government spending a couple of billion dollars going in bed with Moderna to build a plant to make mRNA vaccines in future. Right.

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:05:38] Knowing what we know now, and I think if these things aren’t at least put on the back burner, at least put on the back burner, and if senior bureaucrats don’t stand up, it’s just one of them. It only takes one of them to stand up and say mandatory vaccinations don’t really make a lot of scientific sense knowing what we know now. 

If none of them stands up, if none of them say anything. I get more worried. I think we’re at a bit of a tipping point here. I think they have a choice to make. The bureaucrats have a choice to make here. I’m not one to think that they had evil intent in the very beginning because I didn’t know these things.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:06:35] Mm hmm.

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:06:37] Should I expect that they know these things, too? Look, I really think that it was an unusual situation. They were forced into it. But now, knowing what we know, let’s all sit back and reflect. Let’s just cool it a little bit, okay? Because lives are at risk, especially the kids’ lives. And now it’s a turning point. They all have to make a decision. Now, are they going to be on the right side of history? 

And I can tell you what history is going to show because everything is coming through now is not good news for these vaccines. Right. And more and more people are becoming aware of the damage that’s been cost and to allow people to continue to live in fear is just reprehensible. I cannot believe the people in who we put our faith and trust in are doing this. I just… It does my head in.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:07:58] Phillip, it does my head in, too. And it’s a very sobering note to finish on. But thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insight and your experience in this industry and your doubts that I think, you know, the whole precautionary principle is something we can all aspire to. But thank you so much for joining us.

Dr Phillip Altman: [01:08:19] Okay. My pleasure.

Conclusion

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:08:24] Well, I think when we talking about COVID, it helps to make an informed decision, and that is extremely challenging in this day and age because with information comes power and really the amount of disinformation, and I’m not talking about anti-vaxxers or fake news, I’m talking about information coming from the highest levels. When that is our source of information, we have a really serious problem. 

And I do believe we have a really serious problem. And I’ve dealt with this in various podcasts, and I’ll continue to deal with it. I’m really grappling with this myself because, you know, I guess the question is just put my own house in order and make people as aware as I can to make decisions.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:09:16] I think there’s this thing called the precautionary principle where if there is a doubt about the safety of something, it’s best left alone and allow the authorities, the companies that are proposing this to prove its safety. 

And as the grandfather of five kids now between the age of three weeks old and six years old and many of my six-year-old granddaughters’ peers at school in year one have already been vaccinated. And they’ve been vaccinated by well-meaning parents who are wanting to do absolutely the right thing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:09:52] And I actually believe the vast majority of people out there advocating for mandating of vaccines and you may know some members of your family may be some you may be some yourself. And as I said, I believe so many people have unwittingly become marketing and compliance officers for an industry which has been repeatedly found guilty of fraud and illegal marketing and has been the subject of the largest criminal fines in American legal history. These are the companies we are talking about. 

And these companies have a fiduciary duty not to you as a patient, not to us as a public, but to their shareholders. And I’ve often described this. I’ve approached this COVID period, and I felt it was a great missed opportunity to really get people to focus on those co-morbidities and improve public health like never before. Because we’ve put fear into people, we’ve made them realise co-morbidities, making them more susceptible.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:10:57] Well, what a great time to focus on some simple interventions that would improve people’s health. That’s not what happened. And we’ve dealt with that over time. So a missed opportunity, I think a difficult time for leaders. 

I’m not diminishing that to regular listeners of my podcast, you will know that I have identified an increasing number of Ps of the pandemic, and I still maintain that the final P is definitely at the bottom of the list. You could argue about all these in the order of the other Ps. It’s essentially about Politics.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:11:33] When politicians are confronted by predictions of deaths that the authorities, like the Doherty Institute, predicted 150,000 deaths in Australia. In America, five or 6 million deaths were predicted. In the UK, there were also millions that were being suggested.

So when a politician who doesn’t have knowledge of medicine is confronted with these kinds of things, it’s time to turn to those in the know, in science in medicine. And as we’ve observed, the science in medicine is largely funded by Big Pharma, either directly or indirectly. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:12:14] This was what was so interesting about talking to Phil because he was talking about classic science and I put him on the spot there a little bit. I didn’t mean to I didn’t mean to suggest anything other than what he described as classic science. 

And he would arrive at work every day like many medical practitioners, like many people in the research and university communities, would be arriving with a pile of journals from The Lancet, the AMA, the British Medical Journal, from the New England Journal of Medicine. I mean, it’s by some estimation, it’s been estimated that you need to spend around 600 hours a week, you know, 600 hours a week, just to keep up with all the latest research.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:12:57] So when you’ve picked out ten or so journals, you don’t have time to explore conflicts of interest or business models. You just want to get to the science in medicine. And with your hand on your heart, you believe that is what is the right thing to do. The problem is, as I’ve alluded to in many other podcasts, and if you want to go back and look at The Elephant in the Room or Trust the Science??? (question mark), I’m not going to go through it all here, but there are so many questions. 

Not to mention the fines, $70 billion worth of fines over the last 20 years, the highest criminal fines in history issued to Pfizer, a company that all of you will be very familiar with. I believe we need to approach the science in medicine with scepticism. 

In fact, I would like to see an organisation formed which calls themselves the scrutineers of the science in medicine. I believe that’s what we need – independent scrutiny of the science in medicine because so much of it is corrupted.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:14:01] Phil introduced me to “Scientism” as institutionalised junk medicine, but I would argue, as have many far more qualified people than me, argue, that the classical science in medicine is a little bit like scientism, and that is a story that is easy to miss but difficult to ignore. But if you’re a regular listener to this podcast, at least you’re hearing the story about let’s be scrutineers of the science in medicine. 

And at the end of the day, if we’re looking to see what causes disease, let’s go back to the basics of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. Let’s look at nutritional and environmental medicine. Let’s study pathology. Let’s take the best of what pharmacology has to offer. 

But let’s take the best of what orthomolecular and nutritional science and environmental science have to offer us. And let’s just take a holistic approach to the health of the individual and of the planet. It’s not some new age philosophy, just happens to be the way the body works and the way the planet works. And so, I am very grateful to you for listening to this podcast. I hope this finds you well. Until next time. This is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

 

 

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.