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Joe Rogan Experience #1979 - Dr. Aseem Malhotra

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, MD, is an NHS Trained Consultant Cardiologist, and visiting Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health, Salvador, Brazil. He is the author of several books, including "The Pioppi Diet", "The 21-day Immunity Plan", and "A Statin-free Life". www.doctoraseem.com

Dr. Aseem MalhotraguestJoe Roganhost
Jun 27, 20243h 2mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. NA

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. AM

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. NA

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music)

    4. AM

      How you doing? I'm good.

    5. JR

      All right, we're rolling.

    6. AM

      Awesome.

    7. JR

      How are you?

    8. AM

      I'm good, man.

    9. JR

      Welcome to America. (laughs)

    10. AM

      It's- it's great to be here, like, my 25th time. (laughs)

    11. JR

      Yeah. 25th time recently?

    12. AM

      Um, no. I mean, I was last here in, uh, November actually. Yeah. I was here in November and, um, but I have, you know, my closest family outside my immediate family, um, unfortunately have all passed away now, uh, are in California. So, you know, since I was a kid, I'd probably come over and meet them and, you know, come over to San Jose and, like, every other year.

    13. JR

      Hmm. (smacks lips) So for people who don't know what- who you are and what you do, w- could you please just tell us your credentials and w- what your occupation is?

    14. AM

      Yeah. So I'm a consultant cardiologist. Um, I qualified from Edinburgh Medical School in Scotland 2001, so I've been a practicing physician now for well over 20 years. My initial early career, Joe, is I specialized in interventional cardiology. So in layman's terms, that's keyhole heart surgery. Stents, if you like. Um, and then over the past few years, for different reasons, which we'll probably get into, um, I focused more of my, uh, work on prevention.

    15. JR

      And how did you become this, uh, controversial COVID character?

    16. AM

      Well, it's interesting. My- I think controversy with me probably started a- a much, uh, many years ago. Um, probably I became sort of- I- I broke into the mainstream, uh, around sort of 2011 initially, because I wrote a article which was a front page commentary in The Observer Newspaper, which is part of the Guardian Group in the UK, basically as the cardiologist who's saying, you know, "Why are we serving junk food to my patients in hospitals?" Uh, and that was after I'd met with Jamie Oliver, who I'd written to. So that's how I kind of started campaigning on the issues around obesity at that point. Um, and not shortly, uh, aft- not long after that, Joe, I then, um, had a sort of- went into a deep dive to try and understand why we had an obesity epidemic, so what was driving that, uh, what was the role of cholesterol and heart disease, uh, overprescription of statins, saturated fat, and- and essentially, that culminated in me publishing a piece in the British Medical Journal in 2013, October, basically which was titled Saturated Fat is Not the Major Issue, and suggesting we should be focusing on sugar. We got it wrong on saturated fat. We're overmedicating million people- millions of people on statins. Cholesterol is not that bad as a risk factor for heart disease. Um, and that's really where I sort of broke into the mainstream. That was, you know, it w- the BMJ press released it. It was front page of three British newspapers. It was- I was on Fox News Chicago, CNN International, and that's really when I- I started my kind of activism and, um, to try and fight back against medical misinformation and- and a kind of deep understanding that what was driving poor health for many, many people was biased and corrupted information that was coming from two big industries, um, big food and big pharma.

    17. JR

      And that's, uh, fairly controversial still today, but backed up by data now. Like, that- l- look, the- the- the talk about saturated fat and the fact that sugar is terrible for you, and now that we know because the- The New Yorks Times (clears throat) , excuse me, The New York p- The New York Times published, um, that, uh, expose of those initial scientists that were bribed. I believe it was in the '50s or the '60s. Do you ni- you know the whole story?

    18. AM

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      Of course you do. Um, where they- they were basically given about $50,000, which is not that much money, to ruin everyone's idea of what's good and bad for you, because they demonized saturated fat in order to preserve sugar. They- they- they were paid off by the sugar industry to do this.

    20. AM

      Yeah. Absolutely, Joe. That's- that's really the heart of the problem. It's- it's- I would describe it as the corporate capture of medicine and public health, and it's been going on for decades. Yet, I think only now, uh, and certainly we'll get into it around the COVID vaccine stuff, I think only now more people are really becoming aware of it, and, uh, I think one of the things I discovered when I looked into the whole issue about saturated fat and sugar, et cetera, is, um, you know, in the- uh, in the sort of '50s, '60s, and '70s, there were two scientists who were really at war around what was driving heart disease. Because heart disease really started to increase in the United States from 1920 and peaked around 1960 and '97 in terms of death rates from- from coronary artery disease. And Ancel Keys was the American physiologist who s- from Minnesota who said that saturated fat was a culprit, and then there was John Yudkin, who was a British, uh, endocrinologist, nutrition scientist who basically said that it's sugar. But because the sugar industry was so powerful, they were able to put all of their resources and energy into supporting Ancel Keys, who did take money from sugar industry, it later emerged, and silenced John Yudkin. And for decades, we were under this false belief that it was saturated fat that was the big culprit with heart disease, and the other thing to add in to this, which wasn't fully accepted or known at the time, was the, uh, now acknowledgement that, uh- of the impact of smoking. So, um, you know, it was- it took about 50 years between the first links between smoking and lung cancer that were published in the British Medical Journal before we had any effective regulation on tobacco control- you know, tobacco control, uh, interventions come interventions. And, um, uh, a- and- and now we know that when you look at the decline in death rates, specifically death rates from heart disease in the last four or five decades, almost half of that, Joe, can be- can, uh, attributed to reduction in smoking. So- so these-

    21. JR

      Wow.

    22. AM

      ... these are things that weren't really fully accepted and understood at the time, and the reason for that, and this is really interesting, is the tobacco industry adopted a corporate playbook, you know, I call it a dirty tricks corporate playbook, um, of planting doubt that cigarettes were harmful, confusing the public...... denial, and even buying the loyalty of bent scientists. So when there was, uh, people, doctors, and public health advocates saying smoking is a problem with the heart, scientists were paid to write articles in medical journals saying, "It's not smoking, it's stress. People who smoke are more stressed and it's nothing to do with the cigarettes."

    23. JR

      Hmm.

    24. AM

      So, you know, this is history repeating itself in a way. And denialism, and this is a- another thing I find quite fascinating, I- I- I mention this in some of my lectures as well, as late on as 1994, the CEOs of every major tobacco firm went in front of US Congress and swore under oath they did not believe nicotine was addictive or smoking caused lung cancer.

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. AM

      Right?

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. AM

      So, you know-

    29. JR

      That's pretty wild.

    30. AM

      ... all of that was thrown in. So I, once I kind of, as a, as a practicing cardiologist, as a, a regular frontline jobbing doctor who was seeing, since I qualified, more and more people getting sick, more chronic disease, I started to think, "Hold on, is there something we're doing wrong as a medical profession? A- are we giving the wrong advice? What's actually going on here?" And when I did that deep dive and went into the root cause of it, I then realized that, you know, the, the system, unfortunately, had become increasingly corrupted, um, over many, many years by, um, these powerful commercial entities that ha- whose only interest, for legal reasons, is to produce profit for shareholders, not look, not to look after your health.

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    (laughs) …

    1. AM

      to me is the very next day after I'm in the news, I get, um... Well, actually, and I'll tell you something more, more interesting. So I, I go on CNN International. So I'm a junior doctor at this point in the British National Health Service, and I'm in the green room about to go live on air for CNN to debate with a professor, who I won't name, at Imperial College, who is a very big proponent of statins. And, uh, I'm about to go on air and he basically, he meets me there and he's like soup- he's almost frothing at the mouth. He's really angry. "I'm really angry with what you did." And I was like, I've never met this guy before. And he started repeating this mantra basically. He basically said, "For every one millimole lowering of LDL cholesterol," which is what statins do, "you have a 20% reduction in heart attacks." And he come and said almost like a religious mantra. He kept saying the same thing again and again and again. And he, and I just, I stayed calm and I said, "Listen, you know, I think this, uh, merits debate. I think there's a big problem with overprescription of statins. I don't think that, um, everybody should be taking statins. I think it has a role in some people." And he kind of calmed down. We went on air, and the discussion really focused on the fact that, you know, this cardiologist here is saying it's okay to have steak. Do you agree with him? And, you know, and the d- the discussion ended up being quite reasonable. Um, but I got a little bit of a kind of like, you know, uh, I felt almost there was a veiled threat, you know. This guy's a very powerful guy, um, you know, in, in the cardiology community, in the scientific community in London. Everybody kind of knows each other. You know, this kind of person, he, things could happen where people like that could potentially, you know, have conversations and wreck your career. But I was, you know, for me, I'm just committed to the truth. So I kind of, you know, I didn't know what was coming. The very next day in my hospital, I get a phone call, and I just started working there a couple of weeks earlier, uh, as what we call an interventional fellow. So I was the main guy who was being trained up to be the next, um, uh, what do you call, interventional cardiologist. So they choose people. I was selected in this university hospital to be the guy that essentially does the procedures and operations with supervision to become completely independent. And I was doing, you know, I started doing stents and doing stuff independently, and I was, I was good at it. So I get a phone call from the secretary of the medical director and she says, um, you know, uh, "Dr. So-and-so," I won't name him, um, "you know, would like to meet you." And I just got a feeling that it wouldn't be good, and I spoke to, you know... When I, when I, when I published this piece, because this, uh, h- it's called Croydon University Hospital, went in the news, a lot of the staff were really proud. Like, I had, you know, the nurses and secretaries coming up to me and saying, "Thank you, well done. It's so, so great to see this in the news," and, "We're really proud of you," and, "You represent our hospital," and this kind of stuff. And I said, "Well, the medical director wants to see me." He said, "Oh, no, I'm sure he's- wants to congratulate you."

    2. NA

      (laughs)

    3. AM

      And I wasn't quite sure. So I go up to his office. Never met this guy before. He, um, opens the door. He doesn't shake my hand. He's literally red in the face and he doesn't... He says, "Come in. Sit down." I sit down and he looks at me and he says, "Do you know your duties as a doctor? I've been speaking to the General Medical Council about you." Now just for the audience here, General Medical Council are the regulatory body that control doctors' licenses to practice. They can remove your license to practice, right? And I'm sitting there going, okay. Um, he says-... what, tell me, w- what have you done? You know, uh, "I've read this article and this is a tweet here, uh, you know, saying that statins are over-prescribed," blah, blah. And I, I talked him through it and he goes, "Are you telling me that our nurses can tell our cardiac patients that they can eat butter?" Now, it sounds ridiculous, Joe, now.

    4. JR

      (laughs)

    5. AM

      Right? But he was really serious about this. So I, um, I calmly just spoke, said, "Listen. This isn't..." I just, this is the thing that got him. I said, "Listen. I've written this in the British Medical Journal, one of the highest impact medical journals in the world, this was peer-reviewed, and I think there is a scientific case here." And I just talked to him, you know, um, uh, without getting emotional and, uh, it was really interesting. By the end of the conversation, he said to me, he said, "I very much hope that in 10 years from now, I can tell my grandkids that I sat opposite the man, the cardiologist that busted the myth of saturated fat causing heart disease."

    6. JR

      Wow.

    7. AM

      Right?

    8. JR

      So you turned him?

    9. AM

      I did. But, but unfor- so, I did, I felt I did turn him and I thought, okay, you know, this is the power of the truth and you stand your ground and you, and you talk respectfully to people and you can potentially turn them. What happened over the next few months though was something I never could have predicted but really shaped me in many ways, uh, to be the, the person I am today. I, uh... This story had legs, so it kept dragging on in terms of, you know, there was a lot more stories now and interest about butter and saturated fat and in fact there was a front page, I don't know if you remember this, Time Magazine, um, there was a, 2014, there was a front page story "Is Butter Back?" And it was triggered by my article 'cause a journalist called me and spoke to me, I didn't, I wasn't quoting the article then but he said, "Listen, we're, we're gonna look into this." And they got with some different nutritional scientists and made the case that butter was fine, probably okay in terms of heart disease. But what happened after that was because I'd also attacked statins, you know, um, and, and of course a huge industry I think, well let's just try and give some context here, Joe. Uh, the statin industry, or the cholesterol-lowering industry, I mean, it's a, it's a trillion dollar industry. There's a lot of money, a lot of people make money from the fear of cholesterol and the prescription of statins. In fact, there's estimates now that globally, in terms of prescriptions, up to one billion people are prescribed statin drugs. In the United States it's at least 30 million people taking them, probably more. So I had really said essentially that most of those people don't need to take a statin. And, and, and more, more than that I said we should tell patients honestly and break down the information the way they can understand and say, "Listen. If you're low risk of heart disease, you haven't had a heart attack, your benefit of statin is 1%." Right? And, and when you tell people that most people, Joe, don't want to take the pill anyway. So I said this is about ethics and evidence-based medicine. So I kept that discussion going and then one of the cardiologists, the lead cardiologist in the department, he came up to me one day a couple of months later and said, "Listen." Uh, I think I was on Channel 4 News talking about it or something, and he said, "Listen, um, you know, uh, I respect your opinion," blah blah. "However, um, you can't keep saying this publicly, um, and if you do then there may be an issue about your job here." So I kind of thought, okay, well, and I'm not saying anything wrong, uh, something else came up, I was quoted in another article and then, you know, I had had a job in this place, Joe, for one year. This is my interventional fellowship, you know, being, s- doing the specialist training, final stages to being an interventional cardiologist and, uh, I then got a letter out of the blue, um, four months into the job saying that, "We have decided to discontinue, um, you know, your fellowship and, uh, you got two months notice."

    10. JR

      Was there any reason?

    11. AM

      No, but it was clearly because of, 'cause of this.

    12. JR

      They don't have to give you a specific thing that you violated or...

    13. AM

      No, there was no reason because the thing is, my, uh, uh, you know, my, uh... And I don't say this to blow my own trumpet. I've always prided myself on my clinical care in over 20 years which is unusual and I'm sure some of it's luck, I've never received a single complaint from a patient and I got on, get on with my colleagues and the staff and everything, so there was no reason but he basically said to me, off the record it was because of this and clearly someone higher up had, um-

    14. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    15. AM

      ... Had had a conversation I suspect, right? Um, a journalist who's a Guardian journalist who I knew also when I told him about this at the beginning he said, "Waseem, you know, just be careful because, you know, I've seen this happen before. You know, the pharma companies are very powerful and someone will just need one phone call to the CEO and they'll say 'Shut this guy up.'" Right? And we'll get onto other stuff later-

    16. JR

      Okay.

    17. AM

      ... that'll seem quite similar but yeah, sorry, go on.

    18. JR

      But, but can you please tell us, like, what is the mechanism? How do statins work and wh- what does it do to lower cholesterol?

    19. AM

      Yeah. So for many years there's been this misconception that high cholesterol is one of the most single, w- one of the most m- important risk factors for development of heart disease. So I broke down the data and have published a lot on this stuff to look at it properly and, Joe, this, uh, the association of, uh, cholesterol and heart disease came from something called the Framingham Study which was in Massachusetts, started in 1948, carried on for several decades where they followed up 5,000 people and many risk factors for heart disease came from that correlations which were then validated like things like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, even smoking and high cholesterol. Now what's interesting about Framingham is when you look at the associations of total cholesterol and heart disease it was only there when your, uh, total cholesterol, the significant association was only there if it was over 300 milligrams per deciliter. Very few people have total cholesterol that high and we have to also understand that most of your cholesterol is genetic, 80% of cholesterol is genetic.

    20. JR

      80%?

    21. AM

      80%. Since it's, since I... Because cholesterol's a really important molecule in the body, it's not just-

    22. JR

      Right.

    23. AM

      ... it's, you know, important for maintaining cell, uh, uh, cell membranes, uh, it's important role in the immune system, um...

    24. JR

      Hormones.

    25. AM

      Hormones, vitamin D synthesis, all of that stuff, right? So it's genetic. You can alter it with your diet, the components of it-... something called triglycerides and HDL, so-called good cholesterol, right? But, so the total cholesterol was not a very good indicator. So if it was very, very high, there was association, but that's in, what's interesting about that is though most, almost all of those people had a genetic condition which gave them very, very high levels of cholesterol. It's called familial hyperlipidemia. Affects one in 250 people. Right? And then at the very other end, from Framingham, the very low levels of cholesterol, less than 150 milligrams per deciliter, or four millimoles in, in European, uh, terminology, there was almost no heart disease. So again, there's genetic factors there. And we, so basically, people with genetically low cholesterol tend to not develop premature heart disease. Another interesting caveat. Most of that data on the development of heart disease was only up to people in, who were 50 or 60. And what wasn't publicized is that once you hit 50, as your cholesterol dropped in Framingham, your mortality rate increased. Never really discussed. So I looked at all of this. "Oh, that's interesting." But I think the thing that really, um, sort of was a nail in the coffin for me in understanding the association of cholesterol and heart disease was very weak, was William Castelli, who is one of the co-directors of Framingham, a cardiologist, in 1996 did a full summary of Framingham. And he said this. He said, "Unless your..." 'Cause, you know, you're gonna talk about, you may be thinking, "Well, okay, hold on, there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol." So he specifically focused on what we call LDL bad cholesterol. And he said, "Unless your LDL cholesterol is above 7.8 millimoles per liter," which is something like, um, Joe, it's probably a, a, yeah, at least 300. Pretty much three, around 300 milligrams per deciliter. It has no value in isolation in predicting heart disease. So what they determined from Framingham was your risk of heart disease, as one of the risk factors, was something, was your total cholesterol divided by your HDL, the good cholesterol, the ratio. So that's the first thing. So the association of, of cholesterol and heart disease is quite weak, first and foremost. The second question is, when you try and prove that there is a biomarker that is causal in heart disease, you want to show that if you lower it, then there is a difference in heart attacks and strokes, for example. And only in 2019, more recently, um, uh, I co-authored a paper in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine with two other cardiologists, and what we did was we looked at all the drug trials at lowering cholesterol to find out is this true? When you look at it in totality, not cherry-picked evidence, is there a correlation with lowering LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol and preventing heart attacks and strokes? And this is based upon randomized control trial data, so this is the most robust evidence you can get. Joe, no clear correlation. It was BS. The whole thing was BS in that sense. Like, it's very weak, if anything. So that means ... So then the next question is, well hold on, how do statins work? And that's the question you asked me earlier, and it's a great question. It's a really important one. Statins do have a, a small benefit, but one of the properties of statins which isn't talked about is they have anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting benefits. So even though they lower LDL cholesterol, the real benefit in preventing heart attacks and strokes is through that mechanism.

    26. NA

      Mm.

    27. AM

      But when you break it down, as I said before, your risk is, you know, the benefits are about 1% if you're low risk of heart disease. But if you've had a heart attack, and many patients I see have had heart attacks and they go, automatically put on statins, and the cardiologists rarely even check their cholesterol because in the cardiology community, we kind of knew that. It was like, it doesn't matter what your cholesterol is. Let's put them on a statin, because the trials show there are benefits. But what are those benefits when you break them down in absolute terms? This is really crucial and important. Um, and this isn't cherry-picked stuff. This is what all the evidence shows and it's been peer-reviewed, et cetera. If you've had a heart attack, patient comes to me. "Doc, shall I carry on the statin or I've been put on the statin or I'm getting side effects?" I say to them, "Listen, let's just, let me just explain to you the benefits first so that you're not, you don't have an exaggerated fear of stopping your statin, and you also don't go around with the illusion of protection, thinking, 'That's the only thing I need to do now.'" Over a five-year period, if you take your statin religiously and don't get side effects, right? 'Cause remember, the trials took out people with side effects. So best case scenario, your benefit of a statin is one in 83 for saving your life. Right? And one in 39 in preventing a further heart attack. Now, a lot of people find that quite underwhelming. Another way of looking at the statistics, Joe, and this is important for populations, looking at those trials, and when I, when I, what I'm about to tell you, when I talk at conferences to doctors and general practitioners and, and there's like a gasp from the audience, right, when I tell them this. And this is published in the BMJ. So in the r- randomized trials, you look at an average. How much ... Well, if I ask you that question, right? You've had a heart attack, let's say for example, and statins are one of the most prescribed drugs or the, you know, miracle cure, whatever the, the, one of the most potent, um, beneficial drugs in the history of medicine. If you take those, uh, if you take a statin for five years, having had a heart attack, in that five-year period, how much would you think or hope it would add to your life expectancy? You've, you've literally survived a heart attack, right? And now you've been given this pill which your doctor's telling you this is, you must never stop, this is gonna save your life. How much would you hope it would add to your life expectancy over a five-year period, over that period? You know, we can incrementally-

    28. NA

      25%. 30%.

    29. AM

      Yeah. Okay, so a few years. I'll add a few years extra.

    30. NA

      Yeah.

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    Yeah? You want the…

    1. AM

      Yeah? You want the answer?

    2. NA

      Yes.

    3. AM

      Just over four days.

    4. NA

      Four days?

    5. AM

      Four days.

    6. NA

      Maybe those are great days though. (laughs)

    7. AM

      (laughs) Well, no, fair enough. Absolutely. And you know-

    8. NA

      Yeah.

    9. AM

      ... but, but, you know, this is ... So and the reason I'm mentioning that is when you look back over the last few decades and people talk about what has-... driven down death rates from heart disease, there's this assumption it's been the mass prescription of statins, millions of people taking statins. But the evidence suggests... There's a separate analysis done, they looked in European countries, high-risk and low-risk people with heart disease over 12 years, was there a difference in re- was there a reduction in heart disease death rates because of statins? And the answer was no. And that doesn't mean that the data is fraudulent, it's been misrepresented, but if you accept... Say it's a four, a four-day increase, right? But these are in people who didn't get side effects who were adherent to statins, and real-world data tells us, Joe, even people who've had heart attacks, maybe 50% of them will stop taking it just within a few years, mainly because of side effects. You can understand why that hasn't had an impact on the population, but think about that. This is one of the most powerful, lucrative drugs in the history of medicine, and this is how marginal, let's be polite here, how marginal the benefits are.

    10. JR

      Now, once this information has been out there, and it's been published and you've had these talks and people are aware of this, what has been the reaction? And has there been any change in how it's prescribed?

    11. AM

      So I then s- so after this publication in the BMJ initially, um, and then I, I, uh, you know, I had to, um, get another job, right? So I lost that job in that, in that hospital. I then ended up working for free briefly in another NHS hospital, cardiology department, that I worked for free doing one day a week, um, because I had another role with health policy, which I'll come on to, uh, you know, that they were paying me some money and I, I didn't wanna stop seeing patients, so I was working for free in one hospital for a year in the cardiology department. Um, I, uh, i- in sort of March 2014, the, uh, I got a, a phone call, in fact an email initially, from the editor of the British Medical Journal. And she said, "Aseem, um, you know, let's come, let's have a meeting." I think I went to meet her, and she said, uh, "There is a, a man called Professor Sir Rory Collins." Professor, uh, Rory Collins is probably considered, in the world, the lead statin researcher. He's at Oxford University. He got his knighthood from the Queen because of his work on statins. "He has said that you need to retract Abramson and Malhotra's papers because there is a significant error on the side effect issue, and this is gonna cause harm, people are gonna stop their statins." And she said straightaway, "No, I'm not gonna retract it, but we're very happy if you would like to publish a, uh, you know, send a critique and then we'll publish it." But for some reason he decided he didn't wanna do that. So this back and forth was going on, and then out of the blue, he decides, whether it was him or somebody else, to go to the Guardian newspaper. And I get a phone call from the Guardian and the BBC, which again was headline news, that what Abramson and Malot- Malhotra had, had done, this became a news story, front page of the Guardian, was so damaging in terms of their error on the statin side effects issue that people will die, essentially. This is, uh, almost as bad as, um, they were trying to make parallels with Andrew Wakefield and the whole measles, mumps, rubella issue that happened many, many years ago. That was the scientist that lost his license because he linked the MMR vaccine to autism, right? So they were trying to create that kind of frenzy, and I'm like, "Whoa, this is... Okay, let..." So I, I went on BBC and I, I stood my ground, and, and, and that I think put the BMJ under pressure. And then the next thing that happens is, I remember I was with my cousin in New York, I'll never forget this, and I get an email, a press release from the BMJ, which I knew was gonna, you know... And this is, to be honest, it's a, it's an attack on one's credibility. But the BMJ then decided they were gonna send our articles for an independent review, uh, whether or not they should be retracted. And I know, Joe, just to put things in context here, that's potentially career-destroying in the sense that if my article got retracted, it got so much publicity, and, and I genuinely believe what I said was correct, but it gets retracted, then your credibility is undermined pretty much forever, and your career's... You know, it, it would be career-destroying for me. I'm new at the beginning of my career. So I was on trial, essentially, for two months, if you like. And, uh, you know, that was, it was tough. It was very, very tough. Um, there was a panel, they convened, they asked me to, you know, send in responses and then whatever else. I didn't know what was gonna happen. And then I think it was August 2014, I remember, uh, it broke, the news, and it was, um, you know, I got an email and basically, uh, the panel had come back six-zero, unanimous in our favor.

    12. JR

      Wow.

    13. AM

      There was no call for retraction. 'Cause John Abramson went through a lot during that period as well. I know you interviewed him.

    14. JR

      Yes.

    15. AM

      And, uh, and we talked and whatever else. When that happened, Joe, there were two things that I could've done. One was, "Wow, this is, like, too much. I don't think I can handle this. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm gonna hide away and just keep a low profile." But I thought, "No. You know what? This is about ethical, evidence-based medical practice." Um, there were some corrections that needed to be done, some caveats that they added in to, to, into the papers around the side effects issue. So I carried on this campaign. I carried on publishing in other journals, kept talking about transparent communication, ethical, evidence-based medicine, statin overprescription. There are other things we can be doing in terms of lifestyle, right? Which are gonna be more powerful, you know, whether it's low-carb Mediterranean diet, exercise. Why are we not focusing our attention there rather than just giving people all these pills that they think is gonna protect them from heart attacks, and in most cases it doesn't? And in that journey, and this went on for a few years, um, this is where things got, uh, really interesting. So, so there was... To answer your question, yes. It, there was a lot of backlash, it was tough, there was a bit of smearing going on, um, but I realized then, you know, as a public health advocate that, uh, you've gotta have a thick skin and grow a rhinoceros hide. And tha- thou- those are the words from, uh, a man called Simon Chapman. Simon Chapman is a professor of psychology in Australia. He was considered the lead campaigner in making sure there was tobacco control in Australia, and he wrote a paper talking about his 38-year career in public health advocacy and gave 10 lessons. And one of those lessons is this, "As soon as your work-"... "threatens an industry or an ideological cabal, you will be attacked, sometimes unrelentingly and viciously. So grow a rhinoceros hide." And I thought, "You know what? I'm up for it. I'm up for it." And so many more people came out the woodwork to support me. Other doctors said, "You're right," you know. And I- I thought this is about truth and transparency and about, um, ethical medicine and highlighting all the corruption and the conflicts of interest. One of the things that Professor Collins had- it hadn't been made apparent, is his department had taken over 200 million pounds at Oxford for doing research into statins from the drug industry. And they also kept the data commercially confidential. So most of the publications and guidelines that were coming on statins were coming from- emanating from that department, where no one had been able to independently verify the data.

    16. NA

      Mm.

    17. AM

      And he is quoted in The Guardian saying only problematic side effects from statins affect 1 in 10,000 people. So I thought this- there's something- this doesn't- this doesn't add up. I think there's a bias. There's conflicts of interest. And I'm not saying that he was deliberately malicious, but I think there's a huge, you know, conflict of interest there that is clouding his judgment. Plus, he's not a clinician. He doesn't see patients. So there's all of those things that I think limit his ability to really look at the evidence properly. And 2016, um, you really couldn't make this up. 2016. So he's campaigning, saying side effect's almost nonexistent. I get a phone call from the Sunday Times journalist, guy called John Ungar-Thomas, great guy. And, uh, he said, "Aseem, you never for- you never believe- you know, won't believe what I found out." 'Cause by 2- the reason this came out in 2016, the- they decided to republish... So what Colin said, he says, "There's a lot of discussion about statin and side effects, so we're gonna reanalyze our own data again and look into this." So they published this piece in The Lancet in 2016, and it basically said the same thing again. Side effects of statins are rare. Less than 1% maybe get, you know, some mild muscle aches, that kind of thing. A week later, this journalist calls me, and he says, "We found some- I found something really interesting." I said, "What is it?" He said, "In the United States, there is a genetic test called StatinSmart, which is, uh, the company, uh, Boston Heart Diagnostics is a company that is, uh, marketing this, has a license to market this product. And on their website, uh, they..." Oh, the genetic test, the co-inventor of this genetic test is Professor Sir Rory Collins. And on their website, they're selling this test to basically try and figure out who's likely to get side effects. So you do this test, and it tells you whether or not you li- likely to get side effects from specific statins or not. And it says 29% of all statin users are likely to get s- significant muscle symptoms or side effects from statins.

    18. NA

      Whoa.

    19. AM

      And he did a Freedom of Information request to Oxford University. I- I've published on this with Jon Abrahamson, actually. We did this in one of the paper we wrote later on. (laughs) And he- and- and Oxford University came back and basically said that... He asked them, "How much money have you taken from selling this device?" And it was something in the order of, uh, the university had re- received 300,000 pounds. And Professor Collins' department had received about 100,000 pounds. This- you- it doesn't make any sense. So in one sense, he's saying side effects are nonexistent. Yet he's co-invented a test to try and detect who's likely to get side effects. And on the website... It got taken down after that, interestingly. You know, we- we published it, and we- we highlighted this. But it's like, hold on, they're kind of making money from both sides here. And for me, it- it just highlighted, you know, um, it was- this was all really, for me, like a symptom of- of a system failure, where, you know, there are all these concealed conflicts of interest. People are being selective with the information they put out. And ultimately, uh, at the root of the problem, Joe, is the- these big, powerful pharmaceutical companies, these corporations, have more and more control and unchecked power over these institutions. There are conflicts of interest, but people don't know about it, right? And when you tell people that story, when I give talks and lectures and I bring that up, it's just pin drop silence. People are just shocked.

    20. NA

      Mm.

    21. AM

      And some of them are angry. They feel they've been deceived. Like, how is- how is this acceptable?

    22. NA

      Yeah, how is it acceptable?

    23. AM

      Well-

    24. NA

      And what has been the response after that?

    25. AM

      Um, so I think there's been a big shift. Uh, I think more doctors are aware now. Um, something unprecedented happened around that time. Our health watchdog, National Institute of Clinical Excellence, had recommended that with all- after all this publicity, that we should, general practitioners should be financially incentivized to prescribe statins for people at low risk of heart disease, even though we- this data was very clear. And I'd been on the TV and I'd carried on that campaign and talking about this stuff. And the union of general practitioners, the British Medical Association's General Practitioners Committee, actually revolted. This had never happened before. And they said, "No, we're not going to accept this." And they had to make a U-turn. So that, for me was a victory, based upon this sort of campaigning that I'd been part of. But now, more recently, with all these excess deaths that are happening, our chief medical officer, um, like a few months ago, came out and suggested that one of the reasons there's been these excess cardiac deaths is because people aren't taking their statins, which was then refuted because Carl Henighan, who's the director of Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford, um, he's non-conflicted, they don't take any more from- money from ministry, very rigorous, uh, uh, guy in terms of the way he does his analysis and his department, showed that that wasn't the case. And, uh, you know, I think that maybe was part of the distraction. But there is still now a push again to get more people on statins, and I suspect a lot of it is because, you know, if you think of the business model of the drug industry, it is to get as many people taking as many drugs as possible for as long as possible. Uh, 2018, I am asked to go to the Cambridge University Union by the BMJ to be part of a team to debate with AstraZeneca-... and I end up debating with the CEO of AstraZeneca. And the motion put forward, which was debated in Cambridge U- University was from them, we need more people taking more drugs. That was their motion. And, um, it, it was just, yeah. Uh, so, so that's their business model, Joe. People need to understand what we're up against here. But that isn't the solution to good health. In fact, over-medicated population now is a big p- it's a public health crisis, even pre-pandemic. Uh, one estimate, uh, from Peter Gaucher, who is a co-founder of the very prestigious independent Cochrane Collaboration, in the BMJ suggests that the third most common cause of death now globally, after heart disease and c- and cancer, is prescribed medications, what your doctor prescribes for you, mainly because of avoidable side effects. And these are avoidable because the decision-making and the prescription often doesn't involve an informed consent, and when you tell people the full benefits and harms in absolute terms of drugs, mostly they, they're more conservative, they're less likely to take the pills. But also, the information that doctors are using to make clinical decisions are based upon these industry-sponsored trials where they keep their data commercially confidential, which ultimately means that the safety and the benefits are grossly exaggerated.

    26. JR

      Yeah. John Abramson explained to me how peer review is done on trials that are coming straight from pharmaceutical drug companies, that you don't really get access to the data itself. You get access to the pharmaceutical company's analysis of that data.

    27. AM

      Yes. That's absolutely true. So, so-

    28. JR

      That sounds insane.

    29. AM

      It is completely insane. Completely insane.

    30. JR

      That sounds so obviously compromised.

  4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

    Wow. …

    1. AM

      look to people like John Ioannidis, um, who you may be familiar with. So he's a professor of medicine at Stanford. He's the most cited medical researcher in the world. You know, he's considered a medical genius, very s- high in scientific integrity. And he wrote a paper, uh, 2006, I think it was, in PLOS One, which was entitled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. And one of the things he writes in there with his own mathematical modeling of the reliability of research, and this is fascinating, he says, "The greater the financial interests in a given field, the less likely the research findings are to be true."

    2. JR

      Wow.

    3. AM

      (laughs)

    4. JR

      So in, in your estimation, is this just a fundamental aspect of unchecked power and influence where the industry exists primarily to make money? They provide these drugs, many of them are beneficial, but their overall goal is not public health. Their overall goal is making exorbitant amounts of money. They have a responsibility to their shareholders. They have a responsibility to the corporation, and that responsibility is to make more money, and they will do what it takes to do that, including compromising physicians, compromising researchers, compromising journals, and that this is just, you, there's not a lot of recourse for the person like yourself that steps out. You stick your neck out there, and you get attacked. And fortunately for you, you had all your bases covered, and the data was so obvious that you were able to survive this. But for the most part, most physicians, most doctors, most clinicians, they don't wanna get involved in that, and so they toe the line.

    5. AM

      Yeah. I think you've knit the hai- hit the nail on the head. So d- uh, let's give it some context here as well. Um, so yes, legal responsibility to provide profit for shareholders, not to give you the best treatment. But the real scandals are the, those with a responsibility, Joe, to scientific integrity, academic institutions, doctors, medical journals, collude with industry for financial gain. And the, the, uh, quite often, the w- and, and I know you discussed, you know, in detail around the whole Vioxx scandal with John, but quite often the way that these big corporations operate, as legal entities, I'm not pointing fingers at people within them, you know. Uh, I met Pascal Sotiris, had dinner with him. He was the CEO of AstraZeneca, you know. Um, uh, he even sent me a book, uh, afterwards, you know, to my home address. He knows where I live, so I better be careful.

    6. JR

      (laughs)

    7. AM

      Uh, but he seemed like a nice guy, right? But in their roles, they have, they, they are only responsible to their shareholders. But the problem is, and we see this historically, is quite often ... And Dr. Robert Hare is a forensic psychologist who was behind the original international, what we call DSM criteria for psychopathy, and he says that as these legal entities quite often in the way they conducted their business actually fulfill the criteria for psychopath. So callous unconcern for the feelings of others, incapacity to experience guilt, deceitfulness, conning others for profit. And we have precedent, we have history of that, you know. Between 2003 and 2016, most of the top 10, um, most of the top 10 drug companies paid fines totaling about $33 billion.... for illegal marketing of drugs, hiding data on harms, and manipulation of results. And, you know, uh, and when those crimes were committed, m- in most cases they end up making more profit from sales of the drugs than they do from-

    8. JR

      The fines.

    9. AM

      ... the fines.

    10. JR

      Like biogs.

    11. AM

      So there's no incentive to stop doing what they're doing.

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. AM

      And ultimately, you know, the patients suffer. But I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water here, because someone might say, "Well hold on, Dr. Malhotra, but aren't the drug industry responsible for all these life-saving treatments?" And blah, blah. And yes, they are. But the question is, what is the net effect of them? So if you look at, um, in the last 20 years, so I'll just take, uh, give you some examples here. Between 2000 and 2008, of the 667 drugs approved by the FDA, only 70, uh, 75% of them were found to be copies of old ones. So the drug companies will change a few molecules here and there on an old drug, rebrand it, rename it, patent it, make lots of money, and then they move on the- and they move onto the next one. Right? So there's huge waste. Only 11% of them were found to be truly innovative, as in a, uh, a therapeutic clinical benefit over the previous drug. So there's all this waste. In France, something similar. Between 2000 and 2011, of almost 1,000 drugs were approved by their regulator, um, again most of them are copies of old ones, but m- m- about double the amount of drugs, Joe, 15% of those drugs that were approved were found to be more harmful than beneficial, compared to about 8% that were therapeutic benefits. So what does that mean when you look at it in its totality with the waste and the harm? The overall net effect of the drug industry, in my view, on society in the last two decades has been a negative one.

    14. JR

      Wow. That's hard to swallow.

    15. AM

      And- and do you know one of the reasons it's hard to swallow? There's something sociocultural which we don't talk enough about. So a lot of people believe in medicine and think it's an exact science, but it's not an exact science. It's an applied science. It's a science of human beings. It's a social science. It's a constantly evolving science. We're taught in medical school 50% of what you learn is gonna turn out to be either outdated or dead wrong within five years of your graduation.

    16. JR

      Wow.

    17. AM

      The trouble is, nobody can tell you which half, so you have to learn to learn on your own.

    18. JR

      And you have to stick your neck out because you're going against whatever the narrative is.

    19. AM

      You do, but that's, you know, um, ultimately for me, everything I do is motivated by that patient in front of me in the consultation room. You know, that person's, uh, suffered unnecessarily who didn't need to be there.

    20. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    21. AM

      All of these external factors influence their health, whether it's an ultra-processed food environment, whether it's a pill, taking a pill they don't need. And, um, and- and we see that, you know, we now see that in the world. Um, you know, United States have, you've lost two years off your life expectancy in the last few years. In the U- in the UK, since 2010, Joe, we've had a- a leveling off, a stalling of life expectancy, and an increase in people living with chronic disease. So for me as a doctor, I think to myself, "Hold on a minute. You know, fine, this is multifactorial, but if we as a profession collectively were doing everything right according to the best available evidence, why are our patients getting sicker? Don't we have a responsibility to understand why and then do something about it?"

    22. JR

      Yeah, I would imagine you do.

    23. AM

      So that's, for me-

    24. JR

      (laughs)

    25. AM

      ... that's- that's- that's what, that's what drives me. Um, and you know, one of the things I was thinking about as well, if you... I've come up with this new term, and it's a derivation of something called commercial determinants of health. Right? So I like this definition. Commercial determinants of health are this, strategies and approaches adopted by the private sector to promote products- products and choices that are detrimental to health. Right? And that can apply to- to medications, it can apply to ultra-processed food which is addictive for a lot of people. Right? Um, but what I've come up with when you think about the drug industry and what Dr. Robert Hare talks about in Psychopathic is something called the psychopathic determinants of health. And, you know, uh, Richard Horton, who's the editor of The Lancet actually came to one of my lectures in London recently and then he referenced me talking about this in one of his pieces. It wasn't a completely positive piece on me, I'll be honest with you. It was a little bit of a subtle hatchet job. Um, but he talked about, you know, Malhotra talks about the psychopathic determinants of health. If you think conceptually, Joe, we talk about these very powerful entities that have a big influence on our lives, and if they are psychopathic, you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that's gonna have a downstream effect on society that's gonna be negative. Culturally, you know. People staying silent when they should be speaking up. Um, you know, I- I've been contacted by doctors who agree with me privately but say I wouldn't say that. Or, uh, and, uh, and this is, this is what- what we're having to deal with now. And this is, they've had, they've got more power than they've ever had, I think, Joe, over our lives, and influence. And, uh, if a psychopathic entity has so much power and control over our lives, of course it's gonna be negative, and we need to basically fight back.

    26. JR

      So this sort of established your hesitancy to just believe whatever the narrative that's being described by the- the industry, by the medical industry. So you had questions. Now, coming into COVID, did you have those initial fears or questions about the vaccine?

    27. AM

      At the very beginning, I had a little bit of skepticism about the efficacy of the vaccine, because we know traditionally f- vaccines for respiratory viruses like influenza are not that great. But I didn't... So with all of this knowledge and background knowledge, I honestly treated vaccines, so the word vaccine, like Holy Grail. Despite all of this stuff around over-medicated population, all these pills people are taking, whether it's blood pressure pills they don't need or statins or even diabetes drugs that don't have much benefit for them, um, and come with side effects, for me still within all of that...... vaccines are amongst the safest. So I never conceived of the possibility, at all actually, of a vaccine doing any harm.

    28. JR

      Even knowing that this is a completely different vaccine, that, that has, nothing's ever been distributed like this-

    29. AM

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      ... with these numbers.

  5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

    So when you say…

    1. AM

      and again, I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, but now I know the mechanism of harm. Uh, it makes sense. So I actually within ... So I'm very much into my fitness, Joe. I've been like, you know, I captained sports teams at school and university. I'm an obsessive exerciser, like every day. You know, I don't feel good if I haven't gone to the gym and done something, you know, almost every day. I started noticing within a few weeks that my energy levels started to get depleted quite significantly. My sleep was disturbed. And, and then I went into clinical depression. I was diagnosed with clinical depression. Um, didn't take any pills. It was probably mild to moderate over a few months. Um-

    2. JR

      So when you say diagnosed with clinical depression, what's the parameters? Like how is that defined?

    3. AM

      Yeah, so uh, in, so clinical depression, you usually have to have a number of symptoms that are persistent for at least two weeks. So these are things like something called early morning awakening, low mood.... you know, lack of energy, um, uh, negative thoughts for the future. There's lots of different criteria. And one of my, one of my family friends actually is a psychiatrist, um, and I spoke to him about it and, you know, he said, "Yeah, yeah, this is, this is depression." So, yeah, so I... But the one thing I noticed more than anything else is my energy levels were... I, I couldn't... Like, I'm a very active, energetic guy and I just couldn't leave the house. I didn't, I couldn't leave the couch. I was completely depleted.

    4. JR

      And what do you think cau- like, you, you believe it was a side effect of the vaccine, but what i- what's the mechanism?

    5. AM

      Well, we know now one of the problems with the vaccine is that the spike protein, and there's different theories around this, from the vaccine that's injected into the arm, gets distributed throughout the body and can be there for up to four months, um, uh, and what happens is, it causes either direct, and there's published data on this, a direct toxic effect to the tissues or an autoimmune reaction. So we're talking about the brain, the heart, the kidneys, the liver, the ovaries, and the testes. And that's probably the mechanism of action. And in fact, this is not, you know, um, interestingly (laughs) , you know, one of the side effects from a World Health Organization endorsed list, which I reference in my peer-reviewed paper, which we'll talk about later, actually puts in there psychosis (laughs) as one of the side effects of the vaccine, and there are case reports and people who went psychotic actually because of it. So, it's-

    6. JR

      A significant number?

    7. AM

      Um, well, uh, we don't know. We don't know the e- exact numbers. But one of the... The reanalysis of Pfizer's own trial by independent researchers published in Journal of Vaccine, one of this, in the clinical trial itself, one of the severe adverse effects wa- in the clinical trial was psychosis, at least in one patient.

    8. JR

      So for you, with your case, how long did you suffer from these symptoms?

    9. AM

      About three months. I mean, I, I, I went to, um, I went to a psychologist. I had cogni- I didn't wanna take pills, so I went to a psychologist. I, I, I had cognitive behavioral therapy. I started to just focus on going back to the basics, getting good sleep, resting, et cetera. And I came out of it, you know, I came out of it slowly. I started getting my energy levels back. Took about three months, three to four months.

    10. JR

      Did you experience any cardiology issues? Was there, there anything with your heart rate? Was there anything with your immune system?

    11. AM

      No, n- no, I didn't, Joe. I had two doses. I didn't get any of that stuff. No, I didn't. Um, uh, but then what happened was, just when I'm coming out of the clinical depression, starting to feel better. And I told my dad about it, you know, my dad was, you know, uh, we, we were very, very close so he knew everything that was happening. Um, you know, one of the things, by the way, uh, one of the, you know, when people go into clinical depression, one of the symptoms is suicidal ideation, as in thoughts about committing suicide. That's actually one of the symptoms. And I remember going for a walk with him. I was feeling so low and, uh, you know, I went up to visit him in Manchester and I just said to him, I said, "Yeah, I, you know, I, I'm having a thought of just, you know, going and, um, jumping in front of a car."

    12. JR

      Okay.

    13. AM

      So it was, it was fleeting. I wasn't gonna do it, but that, I knew that I was that depressed that I is even, to have even that thought entering your mind. But anyway, I, you know, I'm a resilient, tough guy (laughs) . I just, I just dr- I knew I was gonna get better, I just had hope, and I got better slowly with time. And when I came out of it, that's when, you know, a, a real sort of tragedy hit me again, um, uh, 'cause me and my dad were still also mourning the loss of my mum. It had only been about two and a half years since my mum died. Um, and, uh, I, I get a f- it was, uh, I'll never forget this, July the 26th, 5:00 PM 2021, my dad calls me and he says, "Asem, I've got chest discomfort." And in medicine, 80% of your, if you're a good doctor, 80% of your diagnosis comes from the history. If you listen to your patient, then you will get the diagnosis just from that discussion. Uh, if you know, you know, from symptoms, you know, you can usually... And he said, and he, what he described sounded cardiac, which is typically, he said, "Asem," he's a doctor, but he was obviously a little bit concerned. I said, "Tell me about it." He said, uh, said, "How bad is it out of 10?" He said, "Like, 6 out of 10. Feeling a bit sweaty. I've got an ache in the center of my chest." I said, "Is it going anywhere?" He said, "Yeah, into both shoulders." And for me, I was like, "Okay." Didn't sound like an overt massive heart attack, but it was concerning. I said, "How long have you had it for?" He said, "I've had it for probably at least 20 to 30 minutes." I said, "Okay." I said, "Dad, you need to call an ambulance now." I didn't wanna scare him. I said, "You need an ECG straightaway, right? You need an EKG to see whether this is an acute heart attack, but you need to call an ambulance." And he was reluctant. Um, you know, I don't know why. The NHS was under pressure. He didn't wanna just... He thought, you know, he thought that maybe it was, you know, it was nothing major. And I said, "No, listen, I don't... Hopefully it's nothing major, but you need an ECG, you need to call an ambulance, 999." And he didn't wanna do it. So it was a back and forth conversation. I called one of his best friends who lives near him, uh, he was a doctor as well. I said, "Listen, you need to go and see Dad." And he was busy with something, but he said, "Listen, I'll call him." And in the end, what he did was he called, um, two of his neighbors, who are both doctors, who happened to be home. I think they'd finished work. And, uh, so I get in the shower. I said, "Listen, I'm gonna get on the train and come up." I get in the shower, come out of the shower, um, I call him back, you know, 'cause I was about to just, I was just changing, getting ready to get on the train, and there's no answer. I keep calling. No answer. Then one of, uh, his neighbors, a doctor, she answered the phone, and she's hysterical, and she says, "Asem, your father's had a cardiac arrest and we're doing CPR." Now, I went into kind of cardiology, try to take control of the situation, be as calm as possible mode, and I said, "Tell me what happened." She said, "Well, we walked in, we saw him..."... he was a little bit sweaty. My husband who- husbands anesthetist, he was there. He'd already called an ambulance, you know, uh, uh, called 999 and was on the phone. And while he's on the phone to the ambulance, my dad just keels over. Now, Joe, I've done a lot of work and even published on out of hospital cardiac arrests and what determines survival, and if you are gonna have a cardiac arrest, (laughs) if you are unlucky enough to have it, you are super lucky if you- it's witnessed by two doctors who are gonna do CPR and an ambulance has already been called. And we know the ambulance response times in the UK have, and I've published on this stuff, is almost within eight to 10 minutes in these sorts of calls they will be there. And your chances of survival are high in that situation, right? You've got CPR as witnessed and they usually get a defibrillator on you within 10 minutes. You've got probably more than a 50% chance of surviving. Ambulance didn't show for 30 minutes. And I remember just FaceTiming them and they put the cardiac monitor on and it was a flat line and I said, "There's nothing to do here. Don't show-" you know, they carried on. I said, "No, just stop." You know, I've led cardiac arrest teams, so I know there's no point just jumping on his chest now. There's nothing that we can do here. Uh, and- and it was- it was shocking beyond belief. I couldn't- I couldn't understand it. My dad was a very fit 73-year-old, you know? He would out- I mean, I consider myself quite athletic, you know, and he would out walk me when we were going for walks during lockdown. He was very active mentally. He was on TV talking about lockdowns and whatever else and, um, it didn't make any sense. So, I... Two things happened. First and foremost, I organized a postmortem, but I then also investigated like, "How's this happened? Why has the ambulance taken 30 minutes to- to- to get there?" And this links back to some of my earlier work in terms of speaking out and if you like, being a whistleblower. So I get contacted about two weeks later because I tweeted it out, you know, my dad was a well-known doctor, it was big news story in The Guardian, you know, the Mayor of Manchester who was friends with him, I mean, my dad was a wonderful human, said, you know, "We've lost one of the kindest souls to ever walked the earth." I mean, he was that kind of human, he was that well loved and liked by people. And, um, I- I got a phone call from somebody senior in the health department linked to the government called NHS England, and she was crying. She was a nurse, senior nurse, and she knew my dad, and said, "Aseem, there's something I gotta tell you." I said, "What is it?" She says, "The Department of Health, the government, had known for at least, for several weeks throughout the whole country, that, um, ambulances were not getting anywhere close to their targets for treating people for heart attacks or cardiac arrest, but had made a decision to deliberately withhold that information." And for me, that, you know, that- that was, um, that was quite upsetting because if I had known that, if we had known that, I wouldn't have asked him to call an ambulance. You know, the neighbors could have... The- the nearest hospital was like a five minute drive, Joe. They would've, you know, he would've, somebody would've taken him there, even if you'd had a cardiac arrest en route, they would've been able to get to defibrillator and he probably would've survived. So I thought, "This is, you know, I need to do something about this. People need to know." 'Cause it was still kept hidden. So I- I... With a- a journalist in the- in the UK called Paul Gallegar with a I, I've done a lot of work with him, great journalist, he then started doing freedom of information requests, getting information from the ambulance service trying to find out what happened, et cetera, et cetera, and we determined that this was the case, that there was all these delays and it'd been going for a long time. And then I wrote an article in the i newspaper. It became a BBC News story. But just before I published it, I contacted a cardiologist who I consider to be one of the good guys, Joe. And, again, I won't name him, it's- I think it's unfair to name him. And I said, "Prof," I call him Prof, I said, "I just want you to know this is what's happened, happening, you should be aware of this. Um, and I'm gonna, you know, get it out to the public. People need to know. You know, this is a big problem." Because it- it might change things a little bit, it's not, but at least we highlight the problem and try and find solutions and people then in these sim- similar situations. One of the interesting things is this nurse that called me said to me that two weeks earlier her own husband was playing soccer and came back from soccer with chest pain. She didn't even bother calling the ambulance. This is before my dad had his cardiac arrest because she knew it wasn't gonna get there. She got him in the car, drove down the- the highway, the freeway, to the nearest hospital into the Accident and Emergency Department and they diagnosed an acute heart attack and took him for emergency keyhole heart surgery. You know, so- so she knew this stuff and did- didn't, you know, obviously call an ambulance. So I- I told this to this professor of cardiology in a text message and you know what he replied to me? "Aseem, I wouldn't publicize this if I were you. You're only gonna s- make yourself enemies and I wanna do whatever I can to help you get a job back in the NHS," right? Because by this stage I wasn't work- working in the NHS, I was only doing private care. And I said, "Prof, what about our duty to the public and to patients?" No answer. Why am I telling you this, Joe? Remember earlier on I talked about the so-called psychopathic determinants of health.

    14. NA

      Yes.

    15. AM

      There is a cultural problem in our profession where people are afraid to speak out for their patients, um, even if it's something that's important and true. So what does medicine become when doctors can't even speak the truth? But I didn't care. For me, this was more important than anything, so I got this out and it became a news story and I was interviewed by the BBC and it was a big, you know, and then- and after that, all these stories start coming out, you know? I made the so-called injustice visible through the mainstream. Um, but it still bugged me, you know, how did my dad have a cardiac arrest? So his postmortem finding cames- findings came back and he, two of his three major arteries were severely narrowed, right? Critically narrowed. 90% in what we call the left anterior descending artery, the most important artery to the heart, and the right coronary artery, and I thought, "This is weird." I knew my dad's lifestyle inside out, I knew his cardiac history inside out. There was no cardiac history. He had something called a calcium score done a few years earlier, he had blood flow to his arteries were all normal. This is a guy that only two years earlier on a badmin- I was Manchester champion, schools champion in badminton, right?Singles badminton, I don't know if you've ever played it, but it's a very... It's like playing basketball. For your cardiovascular system, it's really heavy. And for the first time in, God knows, um, probably about 30 years, he had, he beat me in the first game 15-1. And I was like, "My God. How is my dad beating me here?" You know, we were very competitive with each other. I mean, it was... We played for an hour and at the en- almost at the end of the hour, Joe, I got back in, it was like tied. I ruptured my Achilles, all right? It was that bad. And I was about to tweet and just say, I was like, "I'm really proud of my 73-year-old dad. He literally almost beat me in badminton." Right? He was that fit. So it didn't make any sense. So severe narrowings, and I'm just, "Okay, what was it? Was he really stressed?" You know, stress, by the way, severe psychological stress can, can, can cause these sorts of issues with the heart, but again, didn't, didn't, didn't buy it. And then October, November 2021, I get alerted from a cardiologist friend of mine who, who's one of the smartest cardiologists in the country, I think. I mean, he's a brilliant mind. And he sends me an abstract from a Circulation cardiology journal done by Steven Gundry, who's a cardiothoracic surgeon, I think based in New York. And I read this abstract and I'm like, "Wow." And what he found was in... He'd been following up several hundred people in their 50s with, um, a test that he does called the PULTS score, which correlates... It's a blood test, and it measures markers of inflammation in the blood gel which have been validated and correlated with heart disease risk and heart attack risk. And what he found was that within eight to ten weeks of these patients taking the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, mRNA vaccines, those markers of inflammation in the blood had increased to a level where their risk of a heart attack went from 11% at five years, just within two months, to 25%,

  6. 1:15:00 – 1:21:18

    Section 6

    1. AM

      which is a huge j- Like, to give it context, if I today decided I was gonna smoke 40 cigarettes a day, eat junk food, you know, hammer it all night, not sleep, um, stop exercising, I couldn't even get it close to increasing my risk that much in two months. Now, it's one bit of data, and of course, in medicine, which I, which we've talked about (laughs) is not an exact science. You never rely just on one bit of data. You look at other bits of data as well, and, and what kind of picture does all the information start painting? So at that point, I was like, "Okay, now I can understand. There's something now that fits with what happened to my dad. But if this is real, this is gonna be a problem, because I know you're essentially, for populations of people who may not know they've got a little bit, a mild furrowing that isn't gonna cause a problem for 20 years, suddenly you're gonna get an increase in heart attacks much more quickly." Then what happened was I got contacted... It all happened within a few weeks. Uh, a journalist, I think it was from The Telegraph or The Times, I can't remember, asked me to... Times, asked me to comment on the fact there'd been an unexplained increase, about 25% increase in heart attacks in Scotland in hospitals that people can't explain. So they said, "Dr. Malhotra, what do you think is going on?" Um, and then the third thing that happened was I was, um... A whistleblower from a prestigious university in the UK contacted me, a cardiologist, and he said to me... Uh, he was very upset, and he said, "There seems to be something I've got to tell you. I don't know what to do, but I, I need to tell you this." I said, "What is it?" He says, "Our... This research group had accidentally found with the use of coronary imaging techniques," so this is specialized high-tech scans of the arteries of the heart, "that in the vaccinated there was m- increased inflammation of the arteries of the heart and it wasn't there in the unvaccinated, which again would increase heart attack risk." But they had a clo- closed meeting and they said, "We're not gonna publish these findings or talk about it further because it may affect our funding from the drug industry." (exhales deeply) And I, at this stage, Joe, I was like, "Okay, now I've got three bits of data. There's enough here for me to at least ask the question." So I go on G- one of the m- more semi-mainstream news channels in the UK, it's called GB News, and, uh, I went to them, I said, "Listen, something I wanna talk about." I said, you know, I'd done stuff with them before, uh, and basically... And they said, "Come on, let's talk about it," so I talked about this on GB News and it went viral, you know? And I didn't say, "Stop the vaccine," or whatever. I said, "Listen, there's a signal here that needs to be looked into. We've got these unexplained heart attacks happening. We've got this evidence from Circulation, I've been told by this whistleblower (laughs) . Let's look at this a bit further." And, um, what happened then was just so bizarre. Uh, it was almost around the same time... I don't know if it was a- maybe, uh, it may have been just after that, Joe. Our Secretary of State for Health, Sajid Javid, gets up in Parliament and says, "I've decided to pass, we need to pass legislation to ensure that all healthcare workers get vaccinated and if they don't, they lose their job." Now, we've never done that in this country. I know you've had maybe mandates for other things. We never mandate any medical intervention in the UK. We've never done that before. I thought, "This is odd." I said, "Right now..." First and foremost, by this stage, Joe, we knew it wasn't stopping transmission, right? It probably wasn't gonna stop infection either, you know, the narrative kept changing. We were told it was gonna stop infection, now it's gonna prevent you having severe disease. You know, it kept changing. I said, "This is- should be an individual choice now." There's no... You know, uh, healthcare workers are not protecting their patients by being vaccinated. They may be protecting themselves. We'll get into, we'll get on to that data shortly. But they're not protecting their patients, therefore there's no reason, you know, we shouldn't mandate this. So then I, I literally launched into this... I, I was still interestingly at that point getting mainstream media interviews because people wanted to talk about what happened to my dad and the ambulance delays. So I went on BBC News and I got it in there. I said, "By the way, guys, you know, you know..." 'Cause they said, "Dr. Malhotra, what's behind our healthcare crisis?" I said, "Well, you know, we've been talking about this for years. We've not tackled prevention. We've got an obesity epidemic, right? A- And that's putting more and more stress on the system and it has been for a long time without any more resources. We've got an over-medicated population, we've not dealt with that, you know? W- up to one in five people over the age of 65 are hospitalized, Joe, because of side effects, right?" And they said, "But..."... "There's something else we should talk about as well. We could lose 80,000 jobs in the NHS if we mandate this vaccine and people decide not to take it. And that will be a disaster, but it's not scientific and it's not ethical." And then they would kind of cut me off at the end, and then I was on Sky News, so I kept doing this. And then I thought, "You know what? I, I, um, don't just believe in public health advocacy, I'm somebody also that does things behind the scenes." I meet politicians, I've worked with people in very senior positions in the Health Service, in Health Policy, I've had roles with those people. I believe in dialogue and conversations and giving people the benefit of the doubt and understanding they may be ignorant or have the illusion of knowledge. Let's have a conversation with them. So I call up the chair of the British Medical Association. And, uh, I was in America at the time. I'd, I'd come ... Because I live alone now, right? So I lost all my family. And I, and I ... My closest family are in California and they said, "Waseem, just come and spend a couple of months with us." So I get to the States around Nove- end of, uh, November 2021, and the first thing that happens is I get an email from a very prestigious medical body I'm associated with, I won't name them. And they say, "Dr. Malhotra, we've received a number of a comp- anonymous complaints from doctors that you are spreading anti-vax disinformation." Purely upon that interview on GB News where I said there's a signal and we need to look into it. That's all I did. So I was like, "Jesus." You know? "R- really?" And it was obviously stressful. I had to respond, and it took a month, and they left me with a warning at that point. But I realized something else was going on here, so I called up the chair of the BMA, his name's Chaand Nagaul, and I said, "Chaand, I need to talk to you." And he listened for two hours. I talked him through every bit of data that I'd come across and things about the vaccine. He said, "Waseem," he said, "I'll be honest with you." He said, "Nobody I've spoken to in Health Policy, my colleagues, appears to have critically appraised the evidence as well as you have. Most of them are getting their information on the benefits and harms of the vaccine from the BBC."

Episode duration: 3:02:25

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