Dr Aseem Malhotra: Why heart drugs hide a bigger story

1. 0:00 – 3:10

   Intro

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra0:00

      From everything I know now, I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that the COVID vaccine introduction has had a catastrophic net negative effect on society. And this is really most disturbing, and I've not been public about this before, so I'm gonna tell you this for the first time.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:15

      Dr. Aseem Malhotra is one of the UK's leading celebrity heart doctors.

   3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra0:20

      Whose influential research has sparked important conversations about nutrition and exercise and the healthcare system. A Times journalist called me and said, "We've got reports now of a 25% increase in heart attacks in hospitals in Scotland which are unexplained. What do you think about the vaccine?" I was a bit surprised, said, "What do you mean?" He said... And to have that deep knowledge and understanding gives me very deep pain. And medical knowledge is under commercial control. This is the root of the problem. The system is psychopathic when it comes to making money, and there is so much harm that comes from drug prescriptions. One credible estimate suggests the third most common cause of death globally, after heart disease and cancer, is prescribed medications. This is a dirty secret within medicine. We should shift our approach to health from a predominantly drug-based model within healthcare to one which is more based upon lifestyle. So what is that? The first thing that needs to be done, by 2030, it's estimated that about 23.3 million people will die yearly because of heart disease, globally, and there are 200 million people taking statins around the world, but the increase in life expectancy with statins over a five-year period, 4.2 days.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:25

      How do I prevent myself ending up on either statins or having a heart attack?

   5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:29

      This is really important information, so...

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:34

      Quick one before we get back to this episode. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people who watch this channel regularly and have hit that subscribe button. It means more than I can say. And if you hit that subscribe button, here's a promise I'm gonna make to you. I'm gonna do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're gonna deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're gonna continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Back to the episode. Dr. Aseem, you're working on a documentary called First Do No Harm, which will be out shortly. Why did you choose the name for your documentary, First Do No Harm?

   7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra2:36

      Well, first and foremost, the credit to that name actually goes to my co-producer, Donal O'Neill, who's made a number of health documentaries, um, and he's a former international athlete. Uh, you know, and he used to work in marketing and PR, so he's very good with, with slogans and sound bites. Um, but it- it- it totally resonated with my work and what I've been doing probably for well over a decade, which is to try and shift, um, our approach to health from a predominantly pharmacological-based, drug-based model within healthcare to one which is more based upon lifestyle.

2. 3:10 – 5:44

   The title for your book, why?

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra3:10

      And that's because that's where the best evidence is in terms of improving our health, but also, in terms of managing the healthcare system where there is so much waste, where drugs are over-prescribed. And, obviously, First Do No Harm means, in the consultation room, the ideal scenario should be with every patient that if there is a, uh, non-drug-based way, non-pharmacological way of managing their illness, chronic disease, which is the big problem in society right now on healthcare systems, uh, that should be the primar- primary approach. Um, as well as highlighting through the title that there is so much harm that comes from drug prescriptions, just... I mean, this is something that even brings gasps from audiences when I give talks and lectures all around the world, and whenever even I say, I even think, "Bloody hell, how have we got to this situation?" That, you know, one credible estimate suggests the third most common cause of death globally after heart disease and cancer is prescribed medications, what your doctor prescribes for you so-called appropriately, mainly because the information which doctors use to make decisions for patients when it's prescribing drugs invariably is based upon a gross exaggeration on the safety and the benefits of those drugs.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett4:33

      And the phrase, "First Do No Harm," which is the original phrase that you've spanned for the title, where does that phrase originate from?

   3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra4:39

      Well, actually, it's one of the basic principles of medical ethics. You know, as doctors, that's the- something that's almost we're indoctrinated or ingrained with whenever we, m- you know, practice medicine, treat patients. Um, that should be at the- that's at the forefront of our minds. It should be at the forefront of our minds.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett4:55

      What- what... Professionally, what is your professional title?

   5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra5:00

      Um, I'm a consultant cardiologist.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett5:02

      What does that mean if I, um...

   7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra5:03

      So I, uh, I spec- so I qualified as a doctor, um, medical doctor in 2001. Um, and then after, um, becoming a, um... I- I decided after two or three years of doing my sort of initial post-graduate basic training in medicine to sub-specialize in cardiology, which is basically everything to do with the heart. And then within that sub-specialization of cardiology or specialization of collog- cardiology, I trained in interventional cardiology. Um, in layman's terms, Steve, that means keyhole heart surgery. So that's what I trained to do, um, and I did that, um, uh, you know, up until probably 2014, 2015. And then I shifted

3. 5:44 – 7:46

   Your professional title

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra5:44

      more towards, uh, a more holistic approach to managing heart disease, especially looking at the science and practicing the evidence base behind how lifestyle changes can manage heart disease and even potentially reverse it.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett5:58

      You must have seen a lot of hearts in your time.

   3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra6:00

      Yes. I, I, I think in terms of... I was thinking about this 'cause, you know, up until 2019, I was, you know, an NHS doctor. We'll come back to later why- wh- what happened in 2019 but... And that's my passion. Um, but within the NHS, which I think trains doctors brilliantly, um, it's a very high intense workload. Um, and, uh, just to give you perspective on that, um, you know, we have the highest, uh, capita population per doctors in Europe. So least number of doctors per, uh, population, uh, in the country, um, and the most number of doctors on night shift. So it's quite intense. And because of that, I was thinking back in terms of the patients I would see on the wards and the throughput and the people that I would see, you know, in the- what we call cardiac catheter lab where we did the diagnostic angiograms to visualize the heart arteries and we put stents in et cetera. Over my career, I've probably managed tens of thousands of patients.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett6:58

      Why did you choose to specialize in the heart versus other parts of the sort of medical, um, ecosystem that you could have pursued? What- w- was, was there something...

   5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra7:09

      Yeah. Uh, I don't know if there's one answer to that. I think one trigger very early on in my life is, um... You know, I grew up in a medical family. Both my parents were GPS. And I had an older brother who had Down syndrome and, uh, which also meant he had a small hole in his heart as well. And when I was 11 and he was 13, shortly after his birthday, um, he got a tummy bug, uh, standard tummy bug. We didn't think anything of it. Within six days, Steve, um, he became breathless and rapidly deteriorated, got admitted to the hospital and had a cardiac arrest and died. And later

4. 7:46 – 9:57

   Why did you decide to specialise in the heart?

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra7:46

      on, it emerged his... You know, the postmortem showed his heart was massively enlarged and essentially it's something called viral myocarditis. It can happen actually to anybody. You get a, a cold and in 1 in 10,000 people up to 1 in 100,000 people, the body then has what we call an autoimmune reaction. Instead of dealing with a cold on its own, it then attacks the heart. And, and in a third of those patients, you can basically... Who get that, they will deteriorate and they will die. And so I think for me, that had such a profound impact on my life, um, and with both parents being doctors, of course there was a bit of... There was no pressure from my parents. They wanted me to, you know... My dad wanted me to be a cricketer. But, um, (laughs) I think that was implanted in my mind that if I was to go into medicine, I wanted to get involved in managing and helping people, you know, prevent heart disease. So I think that's where it started from.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett8:37

      It's interesting 'cause when we think about our health, a lot of people think about the amount of weight they have on them. They think of, you know, abdominal fat. They think about how strong they are, their muscles and things like that. Then a lot of the other things are very superficial, those sort of measures of our health because we've never really seen our heart and it's similar to our brain. Because we've never seen our heart or our brain, we- I think we typically devalue the role that they play in our over- overall health. But when I was reading some stats around heart disease and how, how many people die from heart disease, I was shocked. So if we start there then, can you give me a sort of macro picture on why it's important to keep our hearts healthy and how, um, how many people are, are dying because of unhealthy hearts?

   3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra9:22

      Yeah. So globally, um, it's estimated, and it's on the increase by, uh, the- certainly by 2030, it's estimated that about 23.3 million people will die, um, yearly because of heart disease. Globally, right? And that's a huge number. And, and just to put it in perspective, it's the, one of the leading causes of premature death. In European men, it is the leading cause of premature death. And, uh, and that's why I think it's so important not just about people's lives being cut short early, but also there is an associated morbidity, which means the

5. 9:57 – 11:47

   How many people are dying because of unhealthy hearts?

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra9:57

      quality of life deterioration that happens with people who are diagnosed with heart disease that may not be able to exercise very much because they get pain in their chest 'cause of a blockage or they may develop what we call heart failure where the pump function of the heart is affected because of blockages or because of a previous heart attack where they survived and therefore they can't actually do the activities they want to enjoy. And that's, you know, way bigger. In fact, that's... Well, sorry, just as important as, as of course the, the premature death rate. So, you know, it's a massive issue. And it's interesting, Steve, that you, you mentioned, um, the image side where people think about excess body fat and big muscles and that kind of thing, and that also plays into a certain culture and mindset that I think detracts from us actually addressing the root cause of many problems with society today and our health, um, which is not related to image actually. It's about the, the basics of, of, uh, reducing stress, about our social interactions, et cetera. Um, to some degree obviously what we eat is linked to, to how we look but, um, yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think it's not something people really think about enough, um, often until it's too late.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett10:58

      How does it impact women? Because we mentioned it being the single biggest killer of men, I think in Europe you said. What about women?

   3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra11:05

      It's, um, not as bad for women and part of the reason for that, Steve, is... And traditionally, women on average will live, live up to ten years longer than men.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett11:16

      Right.

   5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra11:16

      And the reason for that is that women don't tend to develop heart disease, um, at the same age as men. But after the menopause, the rates of heart disease actually start to catch up. So even though women will live longer, it's still a big issue with women as well. Um, absolutely.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett11:33

      Your mother passed in November 2018 after a bout of sepsis. The, uh... It was interesting, I read this quote you said, I think it was on, um, on iNews. You said, uh, "G- you're a GP that had dedicated 25 years

6. 11:47 – 12:22

   Why do women get fewer heart diseases?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett11:47

      of your life to the NHS and ultimately you failed by it." How were you failed by it?

   2. AMDr Aseem Malhotra11:57

      In my mom's circumstance, what happened was, you know, I-... the system was under so much strain. I mean, she had- has suffered with a- a- a debilitating rheumatoid and osteoarthritis for many years. Initially, I think a lot of her health issues were rooted in her weight. I mean, she was addicted to ultra-processed food. She consumed a lot of sugar. I grew up in a household where there were just cakes and biscuits everywhere. And, you know, she was a very

7. 12:22 – 16:07

   The NHS failed you, how?

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra12:22

      loving mum, um, but I was addicted to sugar probably because of that as well for some time. But it affected her health. And I- and- and- and I love my mum very, very dearly, and it was heartbreaking to watch her suffer slowly over a number of years. But the way she was failed by the NHS specifically is that, um, I had already been campaigning for many, many years in terms of seeing how the system of the NHS was being put under more pressure, a lot of it by diet-related disease, and there were so many opportunities for us t- that were being missed to actually improve the system so the doctors could provide quality care to every patient, to a good degree. When my mum was admitted to hospital and she was sick with infection in her spine, she'd become so frail from her arthritis that her immune system probably wasn't functioning properly as well. Because the hospital was under so much strain, because we had not sorted out the root causes of the s- pressure on the system, they missed a heart attack for nine days. And it's extraordinary, Steve. I remember, I was a car- they knew I was a cardiologist, and it was our local hospital. My dad was a local GP, and he was a- considered a medical leader. I mean, he was loved and liked and respected massively. So even with all of that, um, they- they did everything they could to help her but, um, she- she went- she became breathless one day. They treated her for, you know, um, uh, you know, for infection w- with lots of fluid, et cetera, and, um, they carried out a heart scan. It was decided, "Let's do a heart scan on her." But nobody actually looked at the result of the heart scan and shared it with the team because they were so busy. They just missed it. And I get sent the results nine days later, being asked, "What do you think?" And I immediately noticed that her- it was an echo. It was a heart scan looking at the pump muscle of the heart, that part of the heart muscle wasn't working well. I said, "She's had a- you've missed a- " It was a- a relatively minor heart attack, but enough to cause her to go into what we call heart failure. Within 24 hours, fluid in the lung, intensive care, went into a coma, and that was it. So that was a- was a failing of the NHS, but not because of the principles of the NHS, but because the NHS, um, over the years, Steve, has lost its, um, basic ability to care for patients because the principles of the NHS have not been upheld.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett14:37

      For anyone that isn't aware, the NHS means National Health Service, which is the health service and system, um, within the UK. The- th- the- I mean, just a few years later, your father passes in July '21 from a s- an unexplained heart attack at 73 years old. Um... I mean, so there's three members of your family that have ultimately, um, died as a result of or closely linked to heart attacks. Your immediate family.

   3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra15:09

      Yeah. Yeah. Um, it- d- yeah. To some degree, yes, all related to the heart. All related to the heart.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett15:18

      Was your father's heart attack avoidable in your view? If you think about the lifestyle choices and things like that, that you j- you talked about your mother there. Was that avoidable any- in any sense of the word?

   5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra15:28

      Yeah, interesting. Um, so there were two components to my dad's, um, death. Um, strictly, the- the post-mortem findings didn't reveal a heart attack per se, but for all intents and purposes, it can be seen that way. So, um, the first thing that happened was, um, my dad, by the way, was a very fit man for his age, 73 years old, um, played badminton every week, um, had a bit of high blood pressure, but had got that better control after quitting sugar, partly because of all my campaigning. Uh, and he listened to me, and he was very into eating healthy food. In fact, you know, I consider myself to be extremely fit. I'm- I'm obsessed with exercise. Um, you know, I played a lot of competitive

8. 16:07 – 20:34

   How could these deaths have been avoided

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra16:07

      sport when I was younger, partly because of him. And, uh, it was very unexpected when he called me up, it's coming up to his anniversary, July 26th, 2021, and he said, "Aseem, I've got some chest discomfort." And, uh, I asked him, you know, to describe it. In medicine, 80% of your diagnosis, if you're a good doctor, comes from the conversation. So the way he described his chest discomfort was a central heaviness going to his shoulder. So immediately you think, "This is heart." And I said, "Do you need to call an ambulance?" He was a bit reluctant to call an ambulance for whatever reason. And then I said, "Okay." I was in London, he was in Manchester. That's where I grew up. And I decided to go and have a shower, get ready and get on the train, and he was ringing up his, uh, neighbors who were both doctors. And by the time I came out of the shower, I called him back and there was no answer. And I remember my heart just thinking, "I really hope he's not had a cardiac arrest." It just- I thought, "No, this is- this can't be- can't be what's going on." Kept ringing, ringing, and eventually, um, the neighbor who's a doctor, who knew me, she answered the phone and said, "Aseem, your dad's had a cardiac arrest. We're doing CPR on him." I know from national data, and I've even written about this in The BMJ, the average response time, Steve, for- for- for many, many years, one- one of the things, uh, that we do- have done very well in the NHS, some of the best in the world, is our treatment of heart attacks and the speed of treatment, and even cardiac arrests. I knew the average response time was eight minutes. I said, "The ambulance will be here in eight minutes." Because of the timing, almost certainly, he will have what we call a shockable rhythm, as in, um, the heart is probably in- in a- having a electrical disturbance and we'll be able to shock him out of it. More than 50% chance he will survive. This is a- I'm thinking already like this. (inhales) 10 minutes pass by, ambulance hasn't shown. 20 minutes, nothing. 30 minutes, um, they get there, and I FaceTime them, they attach a cardiac monitor, it's a flat line. He's gone. Nothing to be done. And of course, that was, you know, at that stage, I was obviously devastated and I- you know, I wrote in the i newspaper about how I- I screamed louder than I ever have screamed in my life.... but to come back to that situation first and foremost. So the first thing is, if the ambulance had turned up on time, almost certainly he, it's likely he would have survived. That's the first thing. But the second thing in my mind is, why has he had a cardiac arrest in the first place? He was a really healthy guy. In, in my family, as in on his side, there was no family history of heart disease. He had high blood pressure. Okay. But that was about it, right? And he was otherwise pretty good. And when the post-mortem came back, there are three major arteries of the heart. Two of them had severe blockages and I thought, "This is odd." Because I knew his lifestyle, this is my area of interest and expertise, heart disease specifically, how it progresses, how you can reverse it, all that stuff, what medications can do, what they can't do as well. And I thought to myself, "Hold on." I knew his scan from a few years earlier. Something has happened in the last two or three years that has caused a rapid acceleration in the disease of the heart, right, in terms of the blockages getting very rapidly, you know, um, uh, progressing. And I thought, "This doesn't, this, noth- this doesn't make sense." And I thought to myself, "Was he just severely stressed?" Like, stress can do it. Very severe stress can do it. He'd lost, obviously, my mum a couple of years earlier. But he was a very resilient guy. He was the vice president of the British Medical Association. He was still involved in medical politics. During COVID, he was one of the faces on the BBC during the COVID pandemic, talking about, you know, how we should manage this, et cetera. So he was still very mentally active. He wasn't a recluse sitting in the corner, you know? He was still social. So it doesn't really fit. And then a publication appeared in the journal Circulation, which is considered a ver- uh, the premier cardiology journal. And a cardiologist called Steven Gundry, who you may have heard of, he's done a lot of work in lifestyle and lectins and stuff. So he, he had, uh, and he actually had a very senior role in the American Heart Association, a very eminent published cardiologist. He published, um, an abstract where he had looked at several hundred of, of his patients who had taken the COVID vaccines, specifically mRNA vaccines, so either Ph- uh, Pfizer or Moderna, two doses. And what had happened was within eight weeks of taking those jabs, their baseline risk went from 11% chance of a heart attack in five years to 25% chance just within eight weeks. That is

9. 20:34 – 28:27

   The vaccine causing body and heart inflammation

   1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra20:34

      a huge jump. Like, just to give you perspective, Steve, if I today decided that I was gonna just consume junk food, all my meals, right? I was gonna smoke 20 cigarettes a day, I was gonna stop exercising, I wouldn't get anywhere close to increasing my risk within eight weeks. And the mechanism was through inflammation. And I thought, "Ah, I know heart disease is a chronic inflammatory condition. I think it's the lifestyle." So if this is even partially true, it means that the COVID vaccines may be causing inflammation around the heart, and that means that many people are gonna have an acceleration in heart disease, and that may explain what happened to my dad. But that was only one bit of data. Of course, a good scientist knows, okay, it gets you thinking, it's a hypothesis potentially, obviously with some data, but it's not enough to be, make it more than likely at this stage. And within two weeks, call it providence or whatever else, um, I got a phone call from, uh, somebody who I know, I consider him, um, you know, one of the smartest cardiologists, very high integrity, from a very prestigious institution. And he called me up and he said, "Waseem, I've got something to tell you. I'm very upset." He said a group of researchers that I'm linked to in this institution, um, had accidentally found, and this has nothing to do with blood tests or cardiac risk, through a, a very high-tech imaging of the heart modality they were using, that there was inflammation of the arteries, which would cause obviously heart, potentially heart attacks, that was there in the vaccinated, but not there in the unvaccinated. The lead researcher sat the team down and he said, "Guys, I just wanna make this clear. We are not gonna explore these findings any further, because it may affect our funding from the drug industry." Now, obviously people hearing this are gonna think, "Wow, that is, sounds corrupt." Um, this is something that has been a big problem within medicine for a very, very long time, which isn't getting, uh, an airing, but it didn't surprise me of that... but it was still quite shocking. But for me at that stage, Steve, it was, okay, at the very least, I should ask the question. And I was nervous about it. I had been someone who took the jab myself. I went on Good Morning Britain in, very early on when they were just offering it to high-risk people, to say that, um, I think that this is probably safe and people shouldn't be worried. And this was, again, specifically to address people from B- black and ethnic minority communities, 'cause there was a lower uptake amongst those communities. Partly also because they are often amongst some of the most marginalized, marginalized members of society, and they have less trust in authority and government. So you can see how the psychology plays in there. And I convinced a friend of mine who's a film director, Gurinder Chadha, who directed, um, Bend It Like Beckham. You might know some of her movies. And we went on together on Good Morning Britain to say, "Listen, I think, listen, you know, this is fine." So I had all of that. And so I was... in many ways I was indoctrinated. And, and there is, you know, and people don't like to admit they're wrong or think they've got it wrong. So for me to start turning or changing my mind or asking the question, um, is not necessarily an easy thing to do. But I've done that throughout my career. So, you know, if anyone has the, um, character, you know, I know myself to be able to say, "Listen, okay, there's new evidence here," or whatever else, I felt I could do that. But I was still nervous. And I thought, you know, "This is not something that I think the BBC are gonna pick up on." I had a good rapport, um, with GB News at that point, um, and I still do. And one of the presenters, Alexandra Phillips was a friend of mine, and I called her up and said, "Listen, um, you know, we were doing..." She wanted me on anyway. I was doing regular health slots every few weeks. I said, "What, Waseem, what do you wanna talk about next week?" And I said...... I think, let's talk about this. I said, "Okay." Go on GB News, I say, you know, the vaccine committee of the country should look into this. This is what I know. This is what I found, whistleblower, all this stuff. I said, "My dad died as well, and this may be the reason for his death." And I just asked that question, and of course I didn't expect it to go viral, you know? It got millions of views and it was getting reach all over America and that kind of thing. Strangely, by this point, Steve, I don't know if you remember, but Omicron wave had started, and, um, we were getting reports from South Africa, which was really reassuring that from the doctor that discovered it, that this doesn't seem to be more harmful than the flu now. Great, okay, it's mutated as a different strain. This is really great news. And then Sajid Javid around the same time, the Secretary for Health, had come out in Parliament and said, "We are now going to pass through legislation that the COVID vaccine needs to be mandated for healthcare workers." Despite the fact that the British Medical Association, medical colleges, we've never... In our country, one thing that's really good, especially within the medical establishment, we don't believe in mandating any drug. They do this in America. They've never done this here. And although they weren't very vocal about it, they kind of were a bit relatively quiet, they weren't supporting it openly saying that we should mandate. This is coming from... It was a political decision. I thought, "This is very odd." At a stage now where we're thinking there's serious harm, we know it's not... And by that stage, 2021, November, most people were of understanding now it wasn't stopping infection, right, for most people, right? So I said, "This doesn't make any sense." So I then started campaigning on this issue, and I started campaigning on this issue and was able to get into the mainstream news on this particular issue because around that time, um, the iNewspaper had published an investigation into the delay that led to my dad's death of the ambulance service, right? And I had also got privy to knowledge in that, you know, in that story that the deputy chief nurse of NHS England had called me up and said there'd been basically a cover-up by the government and the Department of Health to stop people knowing for months there were ambulance delays, doctors and members of public. I thought, "This is unacceptable." So I exposed this. It became a massive story. BBC News. And when the BBC presenter was saying, "Dr. Malhotra, what's going on, wrong with the NHS? Why is it failing? Why is this happening?" And I said, "It's multifactorial." But I said, "One of the most important reasons is you failed, we failed for years to address the root cause of what's driving stress on the system, taking on the excesses of big food and big pharma." But I said, "Right now, we've got, um, 80 to, uh, you know, uh, 100,000 NHS staff who are refusing to have the COVID vaccine. This would be a crisis. They're gonna lose their jobs. This is, this mandate needs to be overturned. It's not scientific, it's not ethical." So I go- I got that into the mainstream and ultimately we ended up overturning, right, the, the, the, um, the mandate. Um, but there was a backlash, Steve, behind the scenes. And I've not been public about this before, so I'm gonna tell you this for the first time, because I think it's time I tell, I tell this story. Shortly after me going on GB News, as a doctor who'd had the vaccine, I'd been on Good Morning Britain to say it was likely safe and effective, to then talking about we should maybe look into this and maybe pause the situation because of, um, these heart issues that need to be investigated. I received an email from the Royal College of Physicians, this is the oldest medical institution in the world, saying, "Dr. Malhotra, um, we have received a number of anonymous complaints from other fellows that you, uh," in reference to my GB News interview, "that you are spreading anti-vax misinformation and you've got four weeks to respond to this." And they were saying all the different sanctions that could happen because of me doing this, right? Steve, at that point I thought, "If we are gonna get a pause on this vaccine and really investigate it, it's because of such an indoctrination, because so many people, billions of people around the world have taken this, and therefore the, the, the battle to expose it is gonna be harder than anything I've ever done. The only way in, my only chance is to get it published in a peer-reviewed journal and then to get it into the news." I spent nine months at that stage literally eating, breathing, sleeping, speaking to two Pfizer whistleblowers,

10. 28:27 – 30:09

    Being accused of spreading misinformation

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra28:27

       speaking to eminent scientists in expertise I didn't have around immunology and vaccine development. Of course, I had the, uh, understanding of cardiology, you know, better than anybody in, in this particular field, in this particular area. And when I did that research and looked at it, I first of all concluded that there absolutely needs to be a suspension of the vaccine, because, um, what happened by the summer of 2022, and this is actually the, the most crucial and important piece of data on its own which should have been enough to suspend it and actually suggests that it probably shouldn't have been rolled out in the first place, is that those trials that were done by Pfizer and Moderna, which led to the, all the media reports, 95, 100% effective, um, you know, the approval by the regulator, the roll-out, the coercion, the mandates, they were reanalyzed by some very eminent scientists, including the associate editor of the BMJ, the, one of the world's top epidemiologists. And they published in the journal Vaccine, which is the premier journal for vaccines. And they were able to get new data that was made available on Health Canada's website and the FDA in America's website, and what they did in their reanalysis of the original high-quality clinical trials is they found, Steve, you were more likely to suffer serious harm from taking the vaccine at a rate of one in 800, that meant hospitalization, disability, or life-changing event, than you were to be hospitalized with COVID. And this is during the early phase, right? This is during the mo- the most, most lethal strain. For all age groups? Yes. Well, absolutely. Well, they put all age groups together, so on average in all age groups, that's a very good question, um,

11. 30:09 – 34:43

    The harm of the vaccine

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra30:09

       but what's missing is the actually, okay, is there a benefit, uh, that's... For some age groups, yeah. ... greater than the harm in certain age groups? But we can indirectly answer that in a second. So that was the original trial. So on average, it was more harmful than beneficial.... okay? But even before talking about all age groups, Steve, a one in 800 harm rate for a vaccine is completely unacceptable in the sense that we have pulled other vaccines in the past for much less harm. The swine flu vaccine was suspended globally because it was found to cause Guillain-Barré syndrome, a debilitating neurological condition in one in 100,000 people. Rotavirus vaccine was pulled in 1999 because it was found to cause a form of bowel obstruction in children, a one in 10,000. So you've already got a harm rate of one in 800 irrespective of... Right? So that, first and foremost, should be a red flag to say, "Hold on. This is, this is too much."

    2. SBSteven Bartlett31:00

       When they say harm rate, how do they- what's the range of definitions of harm?

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra31:05

       Well, in this one, they categorize serious harm as it caused you to be hospitalized.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett31:09

       Yeah.

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra31:10

       It caused a disability-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett31:12

       Okay.

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra31:12

       ... or something that was life-changing. Now, of course, that can incorporate lots of different things, but of those, and I spoke to the lead researcher, I now work with him on other things, um, 40% of the serious harms were actually related to clotting disorders like lung clots, heart attacks, et cetera.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett31:27

       I want to make sure I'm super clear here because I don't understand, um, the- the data you're citing. So you're saying that they found that one in 800 people would have serious harm or harm?

    9. AMDr Aseem Malhotra31:37

       Uh, serious harm.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett31:38

        Serious harm.

    11. AMDr Aseem Malhotra31:39

        Serious harm.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett31:39

        One in 800 people had-

    13. AMDr Aseem Malhotra31:40

        In the trials.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett31:41

        ... 100.

    15. AMDr Aseem Malhotra31:41

        One in 800, yeah, one in 800, serious harm, right? Now, just to give you perspective so you can balance it out, just because this is important. It's a question you've asked that's really important. Um, we didn't have any good real-world data at that point on, can we separate vaccinated from unvaccinated to look at what the hospitalization rate would be for COVID, for example, in people who took the vaccine versus the people that didn't according to age group? That data in the whole world, the only country to get- make that data available was the UK. And they did that in the beginning of, uh, 2023. So January last year. And what did that show? After two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, Steve, if you were over 70, so this is the highest risk group, you had to vaccinate 2,500 people to prevent one person being hospitalized with COVID.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett32:37

        And this was with a different strain, the Omicron strain, because the original strain was-

    17. AMDr Aseem Malhotra32:41

        Yeah, it was... They didn't... Yeah, it was... You're right, it was with the Omicron strain, so that was still... But it gave us a ballpark figure that even that... So it's li- it's like, so say a patient comes to me and says, "Doc, what are the benefits of this drug as a prevention?" Whatever else. And I say to them, "Well, if you take this, there's a one in 2,500 chance it will help you, prevent you being hospitalized." I'll be honest with you, Steve, I mean, in medicine, in all the drugs I've used and all the data I know about different medications and heart disease, et cetera, that figure, I mean, i- it's a very serious issue, but that figure is a joke. I mean, there's nothing of that, of such poor... And then when you get under the age, when you get to people under the age of say, uh, 50, you're talking about having to vaccinate maybe several hundred thousand to prevent one hospitalization.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett33:23

        Is that relevant for that, the first strain of COVID as well? Because... Or do we not have the data on that because-

    19. AMDr Aseem Malhotra33:28

        W- no, we don't have that data on that. We do, uh, in my paper which I published actually, we did have some data on Delta and if I remember correctly the data on the over 70s, the, th- there's also problems with this a little bit because it's not corrected for other factors, such as socioeconomics, et cetera, risk factors of, you know, that might make people more vulnerable. So if I remember correctly from that paper, if you're over 70 that was about one in 250. Delta was the worst strain actually. So about one in 250, okay?

    20. SBSteven Bartlett33:54

        On the British Heart Foundation website, I'm sure you've read this, um-

    21. AMDr Aseem Malhotra33:56

        Yeah.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett33:57

        ... just to s- read out what they say on there, it says that up to one in 10,000 people with the Pfizer vaccine might experience a risk of mi- m- myocarditis or pericarditis. Have I pronounced that correctly?

    23. AMDr Aseem Malhotra34:12

        Yeah.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett34:12

        Up to one in 10,000 people for the Moderna vaccine, and, uh, it's not possible to estimate other vaccines because they're not frequently used in the UK. All three of these COVID-19 vaccines are mRNA vaccines designed to target the Omnicon- Omicron strain. And at the top of this it says, "The risk of myocarditis or pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccine is very low." How do you respond to that? Do you think... Uh, you agree with that?

    25. AMDr Aseem Malhotra34:36

        No, I don't agree with it at all. I think there are a number of layers to respond to this. I think the first thing to say, Steve, is the British Heart

12. 34:43 – 37:34

    Responding to the British Heart Foundation comments

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra34:43

       Foundation, with the greatest respect to them, and they do a lot of good work, overall they're still part of the so-called establishment which has been blinded for years to actually even address so many issues on health when it doesn't, uh, suit the interests of Big Pharma. And, and, and I can say that categorically because I know one of the, th- the chief advisor, uh, uh, to heart disease, um, uh, for the British Heart Foundation, with the greatest respect to him, is a guy called Professor Rory Collins, um, at University of Oxford, and they have said similar things when it comes to statin drugs, which we'll talk about later. Um, but that person, the people who advise them are people who are heavily funded and linked to Pharma, taking, their institution's taking hundreds of millions, for example. So there's a huge bias there to start with, that's the first thing, but it... For me, what the British Heart Foundation are not doing is actually countering... And I would love them to counter that because I'm, I'm very open for the debate here, is that you've got a re-analysis of... And they know this, the best way of determining serious harm from any drug is actually looking, one of the best ways is the highest quality level of evidence which is the randomized control trials which is what led to the approval. When you've got an independent re-analysis in a peer-reviewed journal saying, "More harm than good from the beginning," that in itself... And, and then we look at real-world data, Steve. There's so many other bits of data that they're ignoring. Basically, to answer your question, they're ignoring lots of other data which is very clear, whether it's autopsy data, whether it's other studies that came out of Israel that showed... For example, this was published in a journal called Nature Scientific Reports. And again they ignore this, they don't talk about it, so it's, it's like hold on guys this is... You're ignoring, you're not even mentioning this data they showed.And this is really most disturbing. In 2021, there was a 25% increase in heart attacks and/or cardiac arrests in people aged between 16 and 39, which was associated with the COVID vaccine, but not associated with COVID.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett36:45

       How do they, how do they tease out-- I was thinking about, um, you know, the increase in heart-related conditions around the pandemic and following the pandemic, and in, in much of your work, and I think in this book, I can't actually pronounce the word, the POP diet?

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra36:58

       The POP diet, yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett36:58

       The POP diet. You talk about how these other sort of lifestyle factors like community, friendships, relationships, stress, mental health, being sedentary, sedentary, all of these things can contribute to heart problems. So, when I think about the pandemic, I go, people weren't seeing their friends, we were stressed more than ever, people were losing their jobs, they were furloughed-

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra37:16

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett37:16

       ... um, they had mental health, you know, we saw the mental health, uh, stats explode.

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra37:21

       Yep.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett37:21

       Um, all the factors there that are linked to heart disease. So, how do we know that it, it wasn't th- those factors of the pandemic that caused an increase in heart-related issues? And how do- how can we tease that out

13. 37:34 – 40:46

    Our lifestyle choices contribute to our heart problems

    1. SBSteven Bartlett37:34

       from the, the vaccine?

    2. AMDr Aseem Malhotra37:35

       Really good question. Um, because remember, I also said that early on before I realized the vaccine might be playing a role. I actually thought that was, that was the most likely explanation of the increased heart attacks, lockdown stress, poor diet, et cetera.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett37:47

       You'd expect to see an increase (...)

    4. AMDr Aseem Malhotra37:48

       You would, you would.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett37:49

       Yeah.

    6. AMDr Aseem Malhotra37:49

       And I think it has played a role, Steve, for sure. It has played a role. But then, when you look at the quality of data to say how much of a role that's played, that it, it's on a different level when you look at the vaccine, when you look at the plausible mechanism, you look at the types of people that are dying, young people and stuff like that. It doesn't fit. Um, I'll be honest, my personal view, it is a primary driver, without any shadow of a doubt, in my mind, and a personal view of the excess deaths. As a scientist, I'll say it's a likely con- significant contributory factor, but probably the most likely because another aspect to all of this is what we call pharmacovigilance reports. So, these are reports that are done by members of the public when they, they have an adverse reaction to any drug. And it's not easy to fill in. You fill in these, what we call yellow card scheme, you can get it online, and you send it off to your doctor or to, you know, the regulator. Those reports, and I've, throughout my career, have never seen the extent, like for example, I'll give you an example. Um, after 9.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was ultimately pulled, right? AstraZeneca, of course, was also one of the COVID vaccines. There were 800,000, in this country, 800,000 yellow card reports. Now some of them are not gonna be serious, serious, but people don't fill in a yellow card report if you've had a bit of a fever after having a vaccine. They felt quite ill, ill enough, so that's already... And then within that, it's estimated maybe one in five of those from other data would suggest serious harm. So, other data from reporting, and with the- w- so with about, I think, 30 million doses, it was probably about 30 million doses of Pfizer, we had about 500,000 yellow card reports in this country, right? Which is still a lot. You know, that's one in 60 yellow card reports. Now, they're all not gonna be super serious hospitalization, death, whatever else. Um, but when you put all of the data together, Steve, the- it paints a picture that makes it look as clear as day that anybody doubting, you know, it should be, th- th- the evidence should be, this is the primary cause of the excess deaths until proven otherwise. That's the level of evidence, Steve. But it's just being ignored. It's being ignored. And I can talk about why it's being ignored.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett39:57

       Uh, u- um, one of the things I've been tr- sort of gaps in my head that I've been keen to fill is, do you believe that if we hadn't have introduced the vaccine, more or less people would have survived COVID? Because I've got close friends of mine that got COVID, and I watched them go from very healthy-looking people to basically skeletons. Good friend, actually, good friend, one of the CEOs of my company, his dad went from being a very healthy man to being basically looking like a skeleton, and almost died. And then I've got, I know of other people that did die. So, I think in the grand scheme of things, when we think about, um, vaccines, was it a net positive that we had a vaccine?

    8. AMDr Aseem Malhotra40:34

       There is, from everything I know now, I've slowly and reluctantly come to the conclusion that the COVID vaccine introduction has had

14. 40:46 – 43:42

    Did the vaccine have a net negative result?

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra40:46

       a catastrophic overall net negative effect on the population and society. And one of the re- and, and let me just caveat this 'cause you've mentioned the fact that people suffered from COVID, and I'm not denying that. I've got patients, Steve, that I see that have had long COVID that weren't vaccinated, okay? And have suffered quite badly. Most of the most serious aspects of COVID happened early on in 2020, and predominantly affected the elderly. We've got all of that data now that's been reanalyzed by one of the world's top scientists. And even looking back now, essentially, if you were under 70, even from the beginning, your risk of serious harm from COVID is in the ballpark figure of the flu, right? And even I actually was wrong. I wrote an article in European Scientist in Mar- in April 2020, because I actually initially started making a lot of noise about why are we not talking about lifestyle with COVID to help people mitigate, you know, the immun- improve their immune system. And I said, you know, talking to, um, a friend of mine who works in the busiest ER in America, in, in New York, who I've done work with, and he said, "Wasim, this is d- I've never seen anything like it. This is devastating. Some of my colleagues are dying." So, I have no doubt that at the very beginning in the early strain of the virus, it was really bad, especially for vulnerable people, people with obesity, et cetera. We-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett42:09

       'Cause even I, I, I, I remember getting COVID. I was actually, used to live on the top floor of this building, and-

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra42:13

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett42:13

       ... I remember, I've never experienced anything quite as bizarre as the symptom set that I had when I got COVID. The fact that at 3:00 AM in the morning, I don't take medicine, so th- fact, at 3:00 AM in the morning, I'm lying flat on my floor ordering ibuprofen on Uber Eats because my back...... I just had the most bizarre, like, back pain. And so I was having to, like, lie flat on the floor because I couldn't even lie in bed it was so bad. And just this weird set of symptoms that I'd never had before.

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra42:38

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett42:38

       My, my partner, she lost her smell and taste, and it was so unusual. It was so unusual. Um, I, there's not been a time in my lifetime that people have lost their smell and taste en masse. So when I- when it- when you hear it compared to the flu, you go, "This was not the flu. This is something different."

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra42:53

       Yes. No, the symptoms are very different, and I think now it's accepted, um, that, um... And we won't go into a lot of detail, but by I think one of the reasons as well, it was human engineered, you know? It, it, almost certainly the evidence points to it being a lab leak, right? So, it had a very... You're right. It, it was very different to any other virus.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett43:09

       That used to be a conspiracy theory.

    9. AMDr Aseem Malhotra43:10

       (laughs) I know, right?

    10. SBSteven Bartlett43:12

        Now it's not a conspiracy theory. (laughs)

    11. AMDr Aseem Malhotra43:13

        I know, I know, exactly.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett43:14

        It's funny, yeah, when you h- hear about that-

    13. AMDr Aseem Malhotra43:15

        (laughs) .

    14. SBSteven Bartlett43:15

        ... that, that lab in Wuhan that were messing around with viruses, and then we, we decided to put the blame on, like, a market stall. But I think now the general consensus is that it probably came from that lab in Wuhan.

    15. AMDr Aseem Malhotra43:25

        Yeah, absolutely.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett43:26

        Yeah.

    17. AMDr Aseem Malhotra43:26

        Absolutely. And I've spoken to... In fact, I, I spent time with actually the scientist that first went public with it, who identified it. Um, a guy in America, oh sorry, in Australia. Um, so yeah, it, that came from a lab. But, so I think it had these different strange things, loss of smell, et cetera. But in terms of serious illness,

15. 43:42 – 45:57

    COVID was a lab leak

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra43:42

       um, it was there at the beginning. Now, when you, when you look back, I think essentially there were vulnerable elderly, but, uh, you know, who, who suffered, um, especially people in nursing homes. There were a lot of deaths there. But there's so many other components to this. So, one is, did we institute the correct treatments? A lot of people were killed because they weren't managed properly in ITU, you know, in terms of putting people, intubating them, putting on respirators when they didn't need it, and that in itself has a risk. Um, some of the wrong treatments were given. There were other treatments now that we look back that probably would've been helpful. Things like ivermectin, which I know has been a bit controversial, but, um, was very, it's a very safer than paracetamol, right? So first, do no harm, okay? Um, but it may have done some good, and a lot of people and doctors around the world that used it in several thousand. There's a doctor in South Africa that used it in 14,000 patients, including many elderly. Not a single one died from COVID, and this is early on. So, there are all these things that we missed. We missed the lifestyle intervention. So, all those things are there. But by the time you get to the end of 2020, the beginning of 2021, there are so many things that happen, Steve, that you have to think about before you introduce a vaccine. One is, what is the state of the virus right now? Um, and it, it already mutated to some degree, and become less lethal. There is natural immunity, which we know is very powerful, right? Um, and but the issue with the vaccine is, and certainly it was probably there from the beginning, we know that when one looks at the original trials, there was a, and this is what the drug companies have been doing for a long, long period of time, they will mislead people using statistics about the benefits. So, you use something called relative risk reduction. Let me just explain this, 'cause we can apply this to statins as well, is they presented the benefit as a 95% protection against infection. Remember that figure, 95%, right? And it was what we call relative risk reduction. So, if you've got, for example, two groups in a trial, say 100 in one trial, uh, in, in, in one group and 100 another, and let's just say, let's give you an example of statins, and you're, you're following them up over five years to look at a drug to see if it benefits them in preventing having a heart attack. In one group, they get the dummy pill, um, and you follow them up over five years, and in the people that got the dummy pill, in fact you didn't do anything different, two of them suffered a heart attack.

16. 45:57 – 49:18

    The drug companies misleading us

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra45:58

       In the other group, the other 100 people that were followed up over five years who got the pill, the, the drug, right, only one suffered a heart attack. So, you've reduced the heart attack risk by 50%, right?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett46:11

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra46:11

       Two to one, right? 50%. But you've only prevented one heart attack. You've treated 100 people, but you've prevented one heart attack out of treating 100. Yeah? Does that make sense? So, that's a 1% absolute benefit. In other words, when you explain that to a patient when I ask, when I have engaged in sort of what we call informed consent, shared decision-making, when they ask me about a drug, I'll say, "This gives you a 1% chance if you take this drug religiously of preventing a heart attack." Now, you, you apply that to the original COVID vaccine trials, which by the way have so many other problems with them, because even those trials were conducted and analyzed and designed by the drug industry. I mean, this is one of the biggest myths that needs to be busted, Steve, out there for most doctors, um, as well as members of the public. Medical knowledge is under commercial control, but most people don't know that. So, what happens is they did the trial, but let's just talk about what the results, this, their, their, their results showed us. A 95% relative risk reduction against infection. They didn't show any reduction in, uh, COVID death, by the way, in that trial, right? They just said it would prevent from infection, but we then presume it may then prevent, right, uh, reduce death rates. The absolute risk reduction from infection at the beginning was one l- was 0.84%, one in 119. So, that's how many people you need to vaccinate to prevent one infection, which actually people were not told. That, so imagine you're thinking should I take this vaccine? You say, "Well, Steve, there's a one, less than 1% chance that it's gonna prevent you getting infected." People weren't told that. That would-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett47:39

       But then, but that it then reduced my chance of getting seriously ill, right?

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra47:43

       No, but we then talked about that, haven't we? Like, as in when you look at the data certainly beginning of 2023, it was looking over the previous year, 2022, you have to vaccinate 2,500 people to prevent one person getting seriously ill with COVID, right, if you're over 70.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett47:57

       With the second str- with the other strain, with those lessons-

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra47:59

       With the other strain, and it may have been better, Steve. You're right. It may, it probably was better, but it's still, numbers are still much smaller than what people were led to believe. And, and by the way, Steve, the narrative at the beginning, they kept changing the goalpost. Remember, it wasn't about preventing serious illness and death. It was all about preventing infection. You are not gonna... In America, you've seen it all over CNN, Rachel Maddow, and she's saying it so passionately, "If you take this vaccine, you are not gonna get COVID," and calling anyone who s- who questions it being a science denier. I mean, Jesus Christ.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett48:29

       So, m- my last question on that before I, I said I was gonna say is, um, do you think there would've been less deaths overall...... if we hadn't have had a vaccine?

    9. AMDr Aseem Malhotra48:40

       Yes.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett48:41

        You think there would've been less deaths?

    11. AMDr Aseem Malhotra48:42

        By now. When you look at it, so I think over time, so, so where we are now-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett48:46

        What about the start?

    13. AMDr Aseem Malhotra48:48

        Um...

    14. SBSteven Bartlett48:49

        S- so if we hadn't have introduced the vaccine for that first wave of COVID, do you think there'd be less deaths?

    15. AMDr Aseem Malhotra48:54

        Okay. If I was to, uh... I still think that if... Okay, this is very nuanced but important. If the vaccine had only been offered to the high-risk people at the beginning, say the over 70s or people with multiple risk factors, I think there is a case to be made,

17. 49:18 – 51:09

    Do you think there would have been less death without the vaccine?

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra49:18

       right? I'm gonna counter that in a minute though. But there is a case to be made that there was overall benefit versus harm. But there's a problem. One, there wasn't true informed consent, right? Because those figures, those numbers weren't given to p- people about the prevention of infection, et cetera, right? Um, and two, if you have an average serious harm rate of one in 800, any scientist, even regulators would've said, "Hold on a minute. This is way too high. This is too risky." And this is, by the way, Steve, only the short term because remember, this vaccine didn't go through what other vaccines have gone through, which is five to 10 years of safety testing. So if you throw all those caveats in and use informed consent, I can guarantee you with all of my knowledge, expertise, experience with patients when you engage in these conversations, most of those elderly people will probably have r- still refused it. But, but, but yes, I think there is a case to be made that the, the benefits may have we- outweighed the harms in those high-risk people at the very beginning in the short term. Absolutely.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett50:20

       You know, when I think about Rachel Maddow and what she said on TV about, you know, that it's gonna stop the spread of infection, et cetera, I can have a degree of empathy because if that's the information you're being fed and you are a public-facing broadcaster and it's being fed to you by scientists and it's been fed to you by the NHS and whoever else and, you know, b- very credible people that you've been raised to believe and to trust, if you're a public-facing broadcaster, what else are you gonna say? You're not gonna say the opposite. You're not g- you can't sit on the fence.

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra50:53

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett50:53

       Your job is to broadcast.

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra50:54

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett50:54

       It's the news, right? So I have... And I mean, I think you did the same. You said earlier you went on Good Morning Britain or something and said the same.

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra50:59

       Yeah. And, and I'm not, and I'm not blaming Rachel Maddow here. I'm just saying that the indoctrination that came through the mainstream media was so strong through people like Rachel Maddow. And why is that important, Steve? I had a conversation

18. 51:09 – 54:14

    The government said the vaccine will protect us from COVID...

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra51:09

       with the chairman of the British Medical Association in December 2021 when I was campaigning to overturn vaccine mandates for healthcare workers. He had access to Sajid Javid. I had a previous, uh, rapport with Matt Hancock, but he had obviously (laughs) left by then. Um, and I spoke to, his name's Sian Nagpaul, and I explained to him everything I knew about the vaccine after looking at data at that point, I hadn't published at this point, but I went through it in, in, in, in a logical way. Chairman of the BMA, by the way, not just some random person. And he said, "Aseem, no one appears to have critically appraised the evidence on the vaccine as well as you have from our... to our chair. Most of my colleagues who are in senior policy, you know, medical positions, establishment positions are getting their information on the benefits and harms o- of the vaccine from the BBC."

    2. SBSteven Bartlett51:56

       It's, it's super difficult, isn't it?

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra51:57

       Isn't that extraordinary though?

    4. SBSteven Bartlett51:58

       Uh, I think i- it's really difficult because if I... if you're dealing with lots of people dying en masse and it's happened very, very quickly and people are just dropping dead and you're seeing, you know, hospitals being overrun, you've got to... (sighs) You've got to tread carefully with the information you're putting out there. So if the scientific information comes in early and maybe a little bit too s- too soon before it's really been vetted and triple-checked saying one thing and you're desperate for answers, I can, I can see why a group of people would say, "Okay, this is the best information." And then to go against that information could potentially cause tons of harm, so I can also imagine why a group of people would be really slow to then change their mind away from it, because you're dealing with like h- lots of people dying-

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra52:42

       And, uh... And Steve, I was that person too-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett52:43

       Yeah.

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra52:43

       ... so I'm with you on that 100%.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett52:44

       Yeah.

    9. AMDr Aseem Malhotra52:44

       I think where I'm taking this is the system, if it had been more transparent early on, and this is where I've been, you know, banging my, you know, head against a brick wall to some degree for about a decade. If there was more transparency in the system, we would've had better information even from the beginning. But that information was c- kept commercially confidential because of the system that really is geared towards, uh, supporting the interests of Big Pharma, not in the interest of people's health. And that, and, and if th- and that's the key point here, right? This is, we're looking back over time thinking how did this happen? How do we allow this to happen? We need to go deeper. Say h- how do we stop this happening again in the future so we have better information? That's all I'm saying.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett53:25

        Do you think it is malicious at like a government level? Do you think-

    11. AMDr Aseem Malhotra53:28

        No.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett53:28

        You don't think it is?

    13. AMDr Aseem Malhotra53:29

        Not at all. I, um, know many politicians, uh, very senior people, um, across party, uh, some of them I call my friends, uh, many of them come to me for medical advice (laughs) right? Um, in fact one of them, uh, you know, he lost a hundred pounds on my ƒPE diet with Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labor Party, right?

    14. SBSteven Bartlett53:47

        Mm-hmm.

    15. AMDr Aseem Malhotra53:47

        So, um, and, and, and these genuinely by and large are decent people that want to do the right thing, but they are also fed, you know, misinformation by lobbyists. They take as expert opinion or information stuff that has been curated for the purposes of the interests of Big Food or Big Pharma. You know, when I, um, campaigned on, you know, getting the sugar tax introduced, you know, I wrote articles in The BMJ and I started writing every newspaper and I remember, I thought, "We're gonna win this," because the

19. 54:14 – 56:30

    Is it a malicious action from the government?

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra54:14

       front page of The Daily Mail was, "Sugar is the new tobacco." And that put pressure on the then Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt because The Mail then decided they were gonna go, right? And of course, you know, that government, Conservative government are particularly, you know, influenced by what The Daily Mail writes 'cause they're traditionally one of their supporters. But there was a story around that time where they exposed, and it was on the front page, that government ministers, in terms of obesity strategy...... how do we solve the obesity epidemic, had had 99 meetings with representatives of the food industry and not a single meeting with a public health doctor, for example. So I know how that happ- that obviously that, the system should be more transparent to make sure that they understand that those, those politicians, but many of them, um, were shocked. And you know, when I, when I told them this information, they trust me, um, one of them wa- you know, was a, a very se- a, a former government minister who, uh, who said, "Aseem, you know, this is..." She's shocked by it, but like now understands it, that they, they were captured as well. But we all, we were in a state of fear, f- Steve, as well. We, let's not underestimate that. At the very beginning, we were all scared. We didn't know what we were dealing with. And of course, we have to have empathy for ourselves when you're in a state of fear, right, for albeit, uh, you know, I think it was, uh, a big error to some degree and everybody was scared, and I don't think it was malicious to create that fear initially. Um, it stops us, you know, being a, to be, being able, psychologically it inhibits your ability to engage in critical thinking, and all of us were in that position.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett55:41

       Is there a risk now that if there was a deadly vac- uh, deadly virus that broke out across the world, people are so scared of vaccines now, that they would not go and get it? Uh, because I, uh, there's something I was saying to my friend the other day, I was like, "We've gotten to a point now where I think so many people are skeptical about vaccines, that if r- if something does come from another lab somewhere, and it is really fatal, and the government d- stand on that podium again and say, 'Hands, face, space,' or whatever it was, that slogan, and they say, um, 'We need you to all go get this vaccine,' who's gonna go get it?"

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra56:15

       Yeah. No, I, I, uh, I agree. Uh, I don't like that situation. I don't want us to be in this situation, but you're right. There is a-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett56:21

       And there will be another pandemic.

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra56:22

       There, there is a big risk and, um, the way around that is, and this is what we're taught as doctors, right? It's

20. 56:30 – 1:02:49

    How are we meant to trust the government if this happens again?

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra56:30

       one of the things that is ingrained into us as, at, uh, medical school, um, is that when you make a mistake, you tell the patient. Patients are very forgiving if they think and know that you acted from a place of good intent. 'Cause mistakes happen, things go wrong. This is what we need as a mea culpa, right? I was willing to do that. I mean, in, in some way I was partly responsible, certainly at the very early stage, to support a vaccine rollout, but I know that the most important thing for me to do when new information becomes available, and medicine again is not an exact science, it evolves, um-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett57:09

       But let's play that out. Let's play that out. So if we do it, if we had a situation where the, I don't know, the scientist that said really positive things about the vaccine, that it was, uh, side effect free or whatever, they come out now and they say, "We were totally wrong." And they say, "We got it so, so wrong." Let's, let's play out that scenario. What would happen the next day on social media is everybody who was criticized or critiqued or lost their job or was, I don't know, in some way penalized for their views that there might be side effects that we're not talking about, would immediately go to their, their base of, their audience and say, "I told you so." The conspiracy theorists on the internet who are all really extreme that believe that there's a group of people wearing like tin hats that have come up with this idea, they would be empowered, and what you'd then have is a situation where another vac- another pandemic rolls in from a faraway land. Those people said, "Listen," you know, those people that... So, so you see what I'm trying to say? It, it would, f- in my mind, it would fuel the, um, the narrative that vaccines are bad and less like, people would be less likely to take them because we're not driven by facts, stats, graphs, and figures. We're driven by emotion.

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra58:18

       Yep.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett58:19

       It's much more powerful-

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra58:20

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett58:20

       ... than just, if st- a scientist is standing there and showing me a graph. It's how I feel which matters the most.

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra58:25

       Absolutely.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett58:25

       And if I felt like I was betrayed and lied to, there's no chance that I'd run down and get another jab of something in my arm.

    9. AMDr Aseem Malhotra58:34

       It's an uncomfortable truth that needs facing though, Steve, because if we don't face it, these problems are gonna carry on. We're not gonna improve the situation by ignoring it and sweeping it under the carpet. So there will be that. You're right, there will be that backlash. I myself have had that, right? I've had people, you know, I, I got heckled at, you know, uh, um, at a talk I gave on this at the, for the first time when I spoke at it in London, um, saying I was part of it all, you're a liar, all this stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I, I got, you know, expletives were thrown at me and I, I understand where that emotion comes from, but at the end of the day, the only way we can progress and evolve is just accepting. But that, you know, uh, because we wanna then, it's not just about saying, "We got this wrong." It's actually explaining to people and saying, "Okay, we thought we were doing the right thing. These are th- problems in the system we weren't aware of. Most people are not aware of this. We need to resolve this and move forward with greater transparency," and over time, now, okay, within the immediate aftermath, of course there's gonna be that emotional reaction. There's gonna be a backlash. If there happened to be a pandemic within a short space of time after that admission, yes, it may well be that people aren't gonna go and take vaccines. But why should they, Steve?

    10. SBSteven Bartlett59:38

        Vaccines are, can save your life.

    11. AMDr Aseem Malhotra59:39

        No, no, no. I'm talking about a new, anything new. I'm not talking about-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett59:42

        Mm-hmm.

    13. AMDr Aseem Malhotra59:42

        So yes, absolutely. Traditional vaccines, I mean, I'm still a big subscriber and supporter, let me just make this clear (laughs) , of traditional vaccines. In my paper that I wrote, I said, you know, estimates suggest vaccines have saved four to five million lives a year and the serious harm rate of vaccines, I think there's, of course there's gonna be, nothing's completely safe. No drug is pharmacologically completely safe but just in terms of published data, right, probably still an exaggeration, but still it gives you a, it gives you a comparison. Serious harm rate for traditional vaccines, one to two per million. All right? So, so-

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:12

        People aren't very s- people aren't very smart though, uh, including me-

    15. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:00:14

        (laughs)

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:14

        ... when it comes to, when I hear the word vaccine, I think all vaccines. You think, we don't know what a vaccine is-

    17. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:00:19

        No, I know.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:20

        ... so it's just a word. It's like if you said to me dogs are savaging one in 800 people, uh, you know, the average person isn't, might not (laughs) , the average person might not think if that's a Chihuahua or like a German shepherd. We just heard dogs and then there's gonna be a fear of dogs, and I think of the same with the vaccines. We don't know the difference between different vaccines. We just think they're all the same.

    19. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:00:38

        Yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:39

        So if you just tell me that vaccines are t-...causing X, Y, and Zed, I'm gonna go, "I don't care if someone offers me a flu shot or a whatever thing, or whatever." It's the trust that's been eroded in the system-

    21. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:00:48

        It has.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:48

        ...and it's my trust in the word vaccine that's been eroded.

    23. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:00:50

        Yeah, no, and it's, it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate that, that, that has definitely showed. There has been a dent and a change, I think, in uptake of things like MMR-

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:58

        Malaria vaccine-

    25. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:00:59

        ... becau- becau- because of this.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:00

        ... sa- saved my life when I was a kid. I got... My... All my family got malaria. We were in Africa, so-

    27. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:01:04

        Yeah.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:04

        ...they all got pretty bad malaria. And, uh, so we, yeah... My... Pretty, pretty serious as well. I think I almost died of, uh, malaria, I, I hear from my mother.

    29. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:01:13

        Well, but, Steve, the thing is with those sorts of vaccines, they went through many, many years of safety checks, right? And this is an important thing, is that people... I think we shouldn't underestimate people's intelligence and their ability to understand and forgive as long as we communicate it in the right way. I have these conversations all the time with my patients, you know? I give them numbers. I talk through it. When I talk about statin drugs, for example, I say, "I'm gonna give you these numbers, but there are lots of caveats here. One, the data's never been independently verified," right? And I give them all this, and I give them alternatives, et cetera. I do this all the time, and patients want that. They want more information in a way that they can understand. And of course, yes, they wanna trust their doctor, but again, i- it's all... It comes down to ethics, values, intent, and doctors not admitting their mistakes is a very, very bad place to be.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:00

        The chair of the clinical cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Mark Dweck, commented that, um, on your opinion saying the COVID vaccines... "The COVID vaccine opinions you have are misguided and, and in fact dangerous. The vast majority of cardiologists do not agree with your views, and they are not based on robust science." Now, if you're someone listening to this now, I've got your opinion, and I've got this guy's opinion, the chair of the clinical cardiology at the University of Edinburgh. I've got the NHS saying that vaccines are safe and extensively reviewed in both adults and children and that the Independent Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Ed- Agency is continually monitoring the safety of COVID vaccines, and reports of side effects are very rare. And then I've got your view. How do I, as someone that's hearing this and this here, and this and this here, figure out what to believe? Because

21. 1:02:49 – 1:07:39

    How do we know who's telling the truth?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:49

       everyone's so compelling.

    2. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:02:50

       Well-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:50

       Everyone's got data.

    4. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:02:51

       Well, you just ultimately got to go with your own intuition, Steve. Who knew-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:54

       My intuition's always got aside with fear.

    6. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:02:56

       Yeah, may- may-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:56

       'Cause, 'cause I'm a human being.

    8. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:02:57

       May- maybe, and it... and this stuff works. Um, I'll come onto this, and this was a bit of a hatchet job by The Guardian. Interestingly, I've written 19 op-eds for The Guardian and Observer newspaper over the years, but you know how these... or how this journalism works. They'll, they'll, they'll move on. Um, a couple of things, just couple of facts to throw back at you first, and then what you've raised is really interesting historically and something that I've learned from this sort of backlash. Um, Mark Dweck, with the greatest respect to him, uh, what wasn't disclosed in that article is that he has taken money from Pfizer. He's, he's, he's, you know, been funded by Pfizer, and that's actual... You can look that up, right? So that's one thing. So that's a bias. Um, the... M- more important than that, the MHRA, which is described as independent, right, yes, is not. The British Medical Journal, BMJ, did an investigation, published, um, in the summer of 2022, and I presented this data, uh, on the... on the... on the MHRA at the British Medical Association Annual Conference, where the president of the BMA was there, the chair of the BMA was there, right, and they were gobsmacked, and they didn't... they couldn't believe. And this is why this information is so important, these facts are so important. The MA... Even I was shocked when I read this. Our medical regulator in this country, MHRA, gets 86% of its funding from Big Pharma, which is a huge bias. So they're not independent. So they're the... They're the two facts that should at least... If I threw that back, you'd say, "Well, hold on a minute then. Should I believe all this now?" What was the purpose of that article? Of course, it was to undermine my credibility. I'm exposing essentially something, you know. It, for all intents and purposes, is pretty horrific, you know, reluctantly on the BBC with 25 million views or whatever else, right? Um, but people that inspire me have been through far worse, right? And, and I'm an activist that want to expose injustices, right? Um, the likes of Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. One of the lessons from them and even public health advocacy, as soon as your work threatens an industry or an ideological cabal, you will be attacked, sometimes unrelentingly and viciously. And that was really a hatchet job. But-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:54

       Can I... What about the... the second part of the quote that-

    10. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:04:57

        Yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:57

        ...when he says that the vast majority of cardiologists do not agree with your views.

    12. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:05:01

        Um-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:01

        Is that true-

    14. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:05:02

        Well, he-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:02

        ...in your opinion?

    16. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:05:03

        He's giving his opinion, but actually, um, from every ca... Okay. Every cardiologist that I spoke to has basically said, "Asim, you're going to do... doing great work," but they won't speak out. And this is part of the problem, right, is that people are turning a blind eye. I had a... one cardiologist, um, who met me in the street, right? These are the... I have... This happens all the time. And he said, "I read your paper." He said, "I can tell you now, although they won't admit it publicly, all the cardiologists in our department, and they know you, and they, and they, they trust where you come from and your integrity, none of them are having any more COVID vaccines because of you. They're onto it." But Steve, this is a problem. Only a small minority of people are willing to speak out. I have a platform where I'm able to articulate it and, and do so, but that is my duty and responsibility. This is just a reflection of, uh, what is ultimately a Big Pharma tyranny, you know? Uh, I know you've interviewed, uh, Jordan Peterson, who I, um, admire greatly. Uh, and, and Jordan Peterson says, "When you have something to say, silence is a lie." And, you know, tyramy... Tyranny emerges when people are afraid to say what they think, and when everybody essentially lies all the time by being silent. That's when the tyranny is complete. This is exactly where we are. But I do want to mention something if you don't... if y- i- if you don't mind. Like, I have to go through this, right, myself, and it's not easy, right? You get all this stuff, and people are attacking your credibility. And I remember when that, that, that Guardian hit piece, which was like the f- you know, the top story that day, I actually felt in many ways... I had mixed feelings, but I felt, uh, over the target here, right? Because Gandhi said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you."... then they fight you, then you win. So, the point is, these things work, Steve. But, you know, the truth is the truth. So-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:50

        What is the reality, then, of your- of your life going through that? Because, you know, if you get attacked from all angles, you've not got immediate family there, you're- you're reading stuff about yourself online all the time, your colleagues, et cetera, turning on you. What- what's life like in- if I'm a fly on the wall in those hard moments?

    18. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:07:06

        Um, very deep pain. On to- to- to have the knowledge and deep- and understanding that, in my view, we are dealing with one of the greatest likely corporate crimes, medical mistakes, damage to people's health. People are suffering, people are dying, people have got all sorts of problems because of this vaccine. To have that deep knowledge and understanding, and to not... be able

22. 1:07:39 – 1:12:27

    What is it like to be attacked constantly?

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:07:39

       to see any great progress, or enough progress for this to be resolved or to be improved. That suffering around me gives me very deep pain, more than anything else.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:52

       Why?

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:07:54

       I think inherently I'm just very sensitive to that around me. That's just the way I am. I think it's part of my innate nature. I've always been like that, you know? I had, uh- I went from, you know... On the positive side, there are a lot of good friends around, you know? I haven't got immediate emotional support, if that makes sense, right where I am. But there are hundreds of thousands of people that support me, certainly who follow me on Twitter, and I- people come and meet me in the street. I randomly bumped into this doctor in the street who I didn't know, an older doctor, quite well-known, I won't name him. Um, and he said... H- he got really emotional in the street, and he met me and he said, "Dr. Malhotra, thank you for everything you are doing with all of this." And I said, well, you know, I- I tried to be as humble with it. I said, "I'm just a medium for a message. I'm doing the right thing." He said, "No, what you're doing is extremely brave and I'm with you 100% and I know the vaccine killed one of my colleagues," et cetera, et cetera. And he was very honest, said, "I'm just too frightened to speak up." But that gives me fuel, right? And this- this happens constantly. So, the- I think there is definitely something that I get from that.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:52

       So, let me summarize your position, then. 'Cause I wanna move on to... I wanna talk about statins and heart disease.

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:08:56

       (laughs)

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:56

       Particularly high cholesterol, 'cause I got told by my doctor I have high chole- high- high cholesterol. To summarize your position is, you believe that vaccines themselves are... n- net good for the world. It's vac- vac-

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:09:09

       Some of the greatest achievements in medicine are traditional vaccines, no doubt.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:13

       You believe that the COVID vaccine at the start, when administered to certain age groups that were most vulnerable... There's an argument to say that it was- it was a net positive?

    9. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:09:22

       Yeah. I think there's an argument.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:24

        And that you believe after sort of 2022 or 2021, when the variant changed to another... I think it was called Omicron, wasn't it? Um, that at that point, it certainly became a net negative. Is that your view?

    11. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:09:38

        I would think probably earlier, Steven. The only reason I say, and this is anecdotal evidence of course, is my dad had a cardiac arrest in the summer of 2021. He was 73, right? And he could be considered in a high-risk group. So, I think that if one is to make that case, I would say, well- well, it depends what we're talking about as well. In terms of COVID, yes. Right? The net benefit in terms of COVID and COVID deaths. But the problem is, what's the point in preventing someone getting COVID if six months later they're gonna die of a cardiac arrest?

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:07

        Mm-hmm.

    13. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:10:07

        You see what I mean? So, we've got to look at it in that nuanced way. But yeah, I think there is a case to be made that if it was just given to certain high-risk groups, overall there may have been a net benefit at the beginning. But where we are now and where it's continued and the mandates and all the stuff that extended it to many more people taking it... And that almost certainly was being fueled by Pfizer. Uh, and that's been shown that they were, you know, giving money to grass- credible grassroots organizations in the US to promote the mandates, right? This is after the data they received showing that it wasn't preventing infection and causing serious harm, right? So, this is- this is a problem with the system. I'm not blaming individuals here. This is something we'll talk about with statins as well. Is the, um, the, uh, the system, the corporate capitalist system or the way capitalism is- is actually being implemented, is in its... In many ways, and this has been diagnosed by forensic psychologists, uh, the- the corporation as an institution is psychopathic when it comes to making money. That means they have callous unconcern for the safety of others, repeated lying, conning others for profit. And this is, unfortunately, this is the root of the problem.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:15

        And you also believe that there is a chance as well, and it's likely, that the impacts of the lifestyle changes, the lockdowns, et cetera, the stress, the mental health issues, the removing people from being able to see their loved ones, the sedentary lifestyles, also contributed to the rise in heart-related conditions and heart disease?

    15. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:11:34

        100%. It's played a role. A smaller role, but it's played a role, 100%.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:39

        So, I want to talk about heart disease, because I don't even know what heart disease is.

    17. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:11:42

        (laughs)

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:42

        And also, I don't know what a heart attack is. I think we kind of all just-

    19. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:11:44

        Yes.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:44

        ... assume we know.

    21. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:11:45

        Yeah.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:45

        But what is a... What is a heart d- what's heart disease and what's h- a heart attack?

    23. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:11:49

        So, heart disease, uh, the conventional description or explanation of heart disease is disease that affects the blood vessels of the heart, essentially.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:02

        Okay.

    25. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:12:02

        That- that's the coronary artery disease, we call it. That's what most people, when they talk about heart disease, that's what they- that's what they mean. Um, so that disease that affects the blood vessels leads to build-up of... something called plaque, uh, which is furring, if you like, okay? Like a, um-

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:21

        Plaque.

    27. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:12:21

        Plaque, yeah. So, plaque is furring of the arteries-

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:23

        Okay.

    29. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:12:23

        ... like a blockage.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:23

        Okay.
23. 1:12:27 – 1:17:59

    What causes heart disease?

    1. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:12:27

       made up of, uh, cells of the immune system. It's made up of cholesterol, right? And over time, that- those blockages can either suddenly, uh, like a pimple building up and the pimple getting bigger and bigger and bigger, or even a small pimple suddenly bursting, and the contents of that plaque...... right? The response to, um, uh, uh, the blood having contact with the contents of that plaque that has built up over time suddenly cause a clot to form. And if the clot blocks the whole artery, then during th- the blood supply is completely cut off to the heart muscle. So, the, the purpose of those blood vessels is to supply the heart muscle with blood so it can contract. So, if you have a blockage that is there for several minutes, completely cutting off the blood supply, depending on where it is, it will cause that area of the heart muscle to lose its oxygen supply and nutrients and die and scar, and that leads to cell death. But of course, the heart muscle is quite big, so it could be a very small heart attack, could be a big heart attack. And then, so, so heart attack specifically is death of any region of the heart muscle because of a blockage-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:41

       Okay, I'm gonna try-

    3. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:13:42

       ... death, the death of the cells.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:44

       I'm gonna try and play this back to you.

    5. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:13:45

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:45

       Correct me where I'm wrong. So, you get this buildup in your artery-

    7. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:13:48

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:49

       ... but- due to a bunch of factors that we'll talk about.

    9. AMDr Aseem Malhotra1:13:51

       Which we'll go into, yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:52

        The buildup explodes.

Episode duration: 2:04:55