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Joe Rogan Experience #2079 - Brigham Buhler

Brigham Buhler is the founder of Ways2Well, a functional and regenerative care clinic, and a cofounder of its sister company, ReviveRx: a pharmacy focusing on health, wellness, and restorative medicine.https://www.ways2well.com

Brigham BuhlerguestJoe Roganhost
Jun 27, 20242h 14mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:11

    Peptides targeted by regulators: what’s actually happening and why it matters

    1. BB

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. JR

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

    3. BB

      Hello, Joe. What's up, man?

    4. JR

      (laughs)

    5. BB

      We're back.

    6. JR

      We're back. What's crackin'?

    7. BB

      Same stuff, new day.

    8. JR

      Yeah, sort of. Um, the war on peptides is going on right now.

    9. BB

      It is.

    10. JR

      It's interesting.

    11. BB

      It's, uh, to, to explain it is, is gonna take a little bit of time, but I'd love to dig into it because I-

    12. JR

      Yeah. Let's explain it, because there is no reason why they would be banning these things, other than for their own profit.

    13. BB

      You got it. You got the gist of it. That's-

    14. JR

      That's the only reason.

    15. BB

      So-

    16. JR

      There is no danger that these things are causing, there's no public health concern, there's no people dropping dead. But meanwhile, people are dropping dead from the ones that they have sanctioned.

    17. BB

      Yeah, and so I- I like to tell people, "What you're seeing is a symptom of a disease," and the same thing we do in healthcare. We don't talk about the symptoms. We don't treat the s- we- we- we unfortunately do treat the symptom and not the root cause or the disease. And so, to diagnose what the real issue is, we've gotta dig a little deeper into the history and what's going on there. And, uh, it's a pretty insidious disease, and it's spread throughout all of the government. Uh, and that disease is private industry and its influence, uh, on the federal government and the decisions they make. Um, and we're gonna talk a little bit about large language models later in- in the future of what I think healthcare is. But one of the critiques of large language models is, it's only as good as the data you put in. And I would argue that humanity is no different. It is only as good as the data that you put in. And so, if the federal government and the FDA is going to allow an open door policy with big pharma, w- they're going to come to the conclusions, and decisions, and policies that benefit big pharma. And so, if we take a little walk through history, you'll see (laughs) time and time again how this has happened. So, I'm gonna jump way back first.

    18. JR

      Okay.

    19. BB

      If you're good with this.

    20. JR

      Yes.

  2. 2:11 – 4:31

    A history lesson on pharma misconduct and the “medical‑industrial complex”

    1. BB

      So, you go way back. Um, there was a small little company that reached out to the Third Reich and said, "Hey, we need 150 participants for our clinical trial." The Nazi regime shipped 150 healthy Jewish women to this, uh, this pharmaceutical company to test its products. Literally within six months, there's letters back to the Third Reich from this pharmaceutical company saying, "Thank you so much for your (laughs) cooperation. The women arrived in great health and working order. Unfortunately, none of them- none of them made it through the initial phases of our trial." They killed 150 women. "We kindly request that you send us another 150 women." That little company became Bayer, which is now a mega pharmaceutical company.

    2. JR

      Holy shit.

    3. BB

      And I say that because, right, that was the '50s. It would've changed by now. That was forever ago, right? The world's a different place (laughs) . We would never allow that today. Jump forward post-World War II. I talked about this on RFK's podcast. Eisenhower had that-

    4. JR

      Can I pause- pause you there?

    5. BB

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      You said it was the '50s. It couldn't have been the 50s.

    7. BB

      Well, the '40s, sorry.

    8. JR

      Or the 40s, okay.

    9. BB

      And so, Eisen... Jump forward to... Is there a way to turn the volume down on this?

    10. JR

      Yeah, there's a button, or- or a knob right there.

    11. BB

      There we go.

    12. JR

      There you go.

    13. BB

      So, jump forward to, uh, Eisenhower's speech, his, uh, famous speech about the military-industrial complex. What a lot of people don't realize is there was a second half to that speech, where Eisenhower warned the American people about the medical-industrial complex. He warned that if we allow private industry to control, monopolize, and profiteer off of health and healthcare, that they will silo innovation, stifle innovation, and capitalize and monetize innovation. And I would argue that's 100% what we've seen, and it's continuing. So- and the reason I wanna walk the public through this is because to understand what's going on, you've gotta see the history of how it's happened. So, now (laughs) you jump forward to the '80s, okay? Time and time again, when big pharma has had an opportunity to choose left or right, over and over again, they have chose profits over

  3. 4:31 – 7:14

    From HIV contamination to opioids: recurring incentives and repeat failures

    1. BB

      patient outcomes. So 1980s, uh, Bayer launches a hemophilia drug. They i- inadvertently contaminate thousands of specimens with HIV. They know that they've contaminated specimens with HIV, this drug with HIV virus. What do they do? They have a decision, destroy all of it, or ship it to the public anyway. They shipped it into third world countries, Africa and Asian markets, and infected 20,000 people with the HIV virus.

    2. JR

      What?

    3. BB

      (laughs) This is the '80s when it was a death sentence. And so I say that to set the groundwork for, why would they ban peptides?

    4. JR

      Look at this from this article. "A division of the pharmaceutical company, Bayer, sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs, medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AT- AIDS, to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980s while selling a new, safer product in the West, according to documents obtained by The New York Times." Holy shit.

    5. BB

      And too, everything I reference, Jamie, 'cause this was something last time, I- I am gonna mention a lot of controversial stuff. So, I've listed reference after reference after reference on the-

    6. JR

      Okay.

    7. BB

      ... Ways to Well website. Anything that I reference will be on there as well. Um, but, so jump forward. They infect all these people with HIV. Okay. In the '80s, compounding pharmacies and specialty pharmacies and generic, uh, manufacturers attempted to create HIV treatment options that were affordable for third world countries. Because at the time, it was like $14,000 a month for an HIV treatment to keep you alive. Nobody could afford that in those countries. So what happens?... does Big Pharma, in a market they can't sell, in a market they can't touch, in a market where they inadvertently infected, or I would say almost knowingly infected, 20,000 people with HIV, they then lobby with the U.S. government, file and sue the shit out of all of these companies that were attempting to make cost-effective generics. It caught it up in litigation for three years before it finally, they bent to the will of the American people and the feedback o- of the public, w- there was outrage over this. And finally, after three years of litigation, Big Pharma said, basically, "Screw it. Go ahead and give them (laughs) the HIV, let them make these HIV meds in these countries that aren't buying our product anyway." And so, I just say all this so you know the people we're dealing with, right? And then you jump forward to the opioid crisis, which was predicated by the Valium crisis of the, I think that was the 40s or 50s, uh, and so time and time

  4. 7:14 – 8:44

    How peptides get ‘killed’ without a ban: dangerous lists, patents, and market signals

    1. BB

      again. And so how does the FDA come to these conclusions? It's because a majority of their funding comes from private industry, and a majority of their discussion, their talk track, their influence, their belief systems, and their thought processes are being influenced by these companies. So when we talk about peptides today in specific, there's over 7,000 peptides on the market, okay? What peptides didn't get banned? That answers the question in itself. The GLP-1 agonists, insulin, those aren't banned. Those are all patented peptides. These are peptides. These are short chain amino acids found naturally (laughs) in nature. They were patented for the dosage and delivery mechanism, 'cause you cannot patent a- a molecule. You can only patent the delivery mechanism and the dosage. And so the FDA allows all those peptides, but it's because Big Pharma is monetizing them and Big Pharma has their ear. Phew. And so we, we talked a little bit about this on the last podcast, and I didn't d- dig as deep 'cause we didn't have as much time. We, we just burned so much time covering all of this crap, but one of the things I saw is, it goes beyond the FDA. This insidious virus that, this disease state that we're seeing the symptoms of carries all the way into the DEA, the DOJ. When I was a, when I owned my own, uh, pharmacies and labs that billed insurance, that was one of the things I was talking about.

  5. 8:44 – 17:33

    PBMs, insurers, and DOJ pressure: how enforcement shapes medical behavior

    1. BB

      I hired a former Department of Justice prosecutor to come in and help me build out my compliance program, and he told me, "Brigham, when I was at the DOJ, we had an open meeting every month with the heads of the pharmacy benefit managers, where they would come with stacks of papers, books of papers, of people that they wanted us to federally indict," okay? And so as I begin to layer this, you'll understand where this is going. So indict, they can't indict someone if they did s- nothing wrong, right? That would be the, the lens that the average American has. So let me explain. You have a, let's say I build a blood lab, which I did, and I go out and I educate clinicians on the importance of running comprehensive blood work. I go to the insurance companies and I say, "I would like to be in network with you, United, Cigna, Aetna." Their response is, "Go pound sand. We're not taking any more in-network contracts." So my options at that point are to lay everyone off, shut down, and go home, uh, or bill them out of network. The issue with billing them out of network, and so, so that patients understand, or the, uh, y- the listeners, you're paying for out of network benefits and you're paying these big companies, these big insurance companies for the right to be able to choose where you get your blood work done, your blood work analysis, all of these things. What ends up happening is, if you're out of network as a lab, as, in any of these, uh, whether it's a, a blood lab, a genetic screening lab, like Gary talked about the MTFHR test, the motherfucker test. (laughs) We were doing that eight, nine years ago. That was one of the tests we offered, was this gene carrier test to identify the root cause of why people are having these issues. Any of it, insurance said, "No, we're not, you're, we're not gonna let you in network." So you're forced to bill out of network. What does that mean? They pay me 30% of billed charges. So if it costs me $300 and I need to make $350, I now have to basically bill the insurance $1,000 to get paid my $350. Are you following me? Yes. Okay. Now what the insurance companies do is they wait till I've billed them millions and millions of dollars. Then they go sit down at a desk with the Department of Justice, and they say, "Look at this. This motherfucker (laughs) billed us $1,000 a test on a test that should have been $350." Right? And I'm not blaming the Department of Justice. They are acting upon the information that they are given, right? They are being fed bad information by bad players, and that leads to bad decisions. And, and at that point, if they bring forth a case on somebody, you're done. And so it's, it's a terrifying space. Um, and it's, it's in every branch of the government. There's such a long reach of the ability to, uh, impress upon people how, so they're, they're almost influencing decision-making through enforcement, um, rather than through legislation, right? So the checks and balances are being cut out from under the American people, because there is no checks or balance. Jesus Christ. Does that make sense (laughs) at all? And so th- this is what I explained a- again on RFK was, but if you're, if you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. When I started this, the, the head of the DOJ who I hired to help me with compliance, he told me, "There's two things that will get you in trouble with the Department of Justice, a lot of money..."... and bad facts. So, if you're a successful entrepreneur, you're gonna generate a lot of money, and if you get on the wrong side of a pharmacy — I mean, of a — not a pharmacy benefit manager — of an insurance company, they're gonna generate the bad facts, and now you're a target, and now you're on the Department of Justice target list. So doctors, it's beyond them being scared of getting kicked off contract to run these tests. It's beyond them being scared of the insurance companies cutting their reimbursements or not allowing them to participate in their plans. They're scared for their liberties and their freedoms. If, if they get on the wrong side of an insurance carrier, they're gonna use the justice system as an attack dog to take you out, and this is th- the honest to God truth. I saw people who were innocent, who did nothing wrong get federally indicted. And if you un- understand anything about that process, the more you know, the more fucking terrifying it is. It's terrifying, Joe. Because as soon as they indict you (laughs) , you're, you're, you're done in the court of public opinion, right?

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. BB

      They, they release something in a way that makes it look like you're this terrible human. They skew the facts through the lens of the f- of the insurance companies. And so the insurance companies are essentially saying, "Hey, Department of Justice, we built the case for you. Here it is. Look. These guys billed us $3 million. Uh, they fraudulently billed us and ran up the cost of healthcare." And that's the path they take. And then once you're on their radar, you, y- you don't get to present your half of the case. So, to get an indictment, all it takes is a prosecutor presenting to a jury of your peers, which, in the state of Texas, has an eighth-grade literacy level, and they say, "Hey, these guys billed, you know, United $5 million last year on lab tests that United say should've been, you know, $800,000. Um, do you think there's enough info to dig deeper?" That's all an indictment is. Yeah, if there's enough info to dig deeper, that sounds like bad facts and a lot of money, right? But now (laughs) it goes beyond that. 90 s- 90-plus percent of the time, once they've indicted you, they file for an asset seizure. And so, if you're an orthopedic surgeon and you were invested in one of these models, uh, with labs, all the sudden, you get indicted. They seize your ability to defend yourself. All your bank accounts are cleared. They, they can seize your cars. They can take your assets, and it's, it's terrifying. And I'm not saying this to say the DOJ is bad. I'm not ... I don't think they're bad at all. I think they're given bad information, and heretofore, they act in accordance with the information they're given. And it's the same thing with the FDA. The FDA is acting in accordance with big ... Merck is looking at over 200 peptides for patent, okay? They're actively investigating over 200 pe- ibutamoren, which is on the banned list, just popped up, phase two FDA trials with another pharmaceutical company. It's on the banned list, but it's in FDA trials now, so they can patent it and monetize it and have a monopoly on it.

    4. JR

      And what does it do?

    5. BB

      Ibutamoren is the one that helps stimulate growth hormone. People use it for weight loss and, uh, growth hormone production. It's a precursor. Uh, and it's ... Again, it's a safe drug, and it ... But it's not even a drug (laughs) again, it's a peptide. And so peptides are short-chain amino acids, and, and the only reason I go down the path of the DOJ stuff is to just give the public the awareness of, it's beyond the FDA. It's in all branches of the government, and bad info in equals bad decisions out. Um, and so I think that this is ... You know, if, if you look at it from a different lens, I go, okay, when I try to sit in the seat of an FDA, uh, decision-maker, I look at it and say, "To play devil's advocate, you know, it's one of two things. Do you think the peptide's dangerous? Do you think these short-chain amino acids are dangerous? Um, because if so, you're allowing Big Pharma to use them, um, and th- there's no data that shows that any of these peptides that are on the banned list are dangerous." Like, BPC-157, and when I say banned list, let me step back on that. They didn't ban the peptides. They reclassified the peptides under a category of dangerous, and through that, they indirectly have killed the market on those peptides, because most doctors in America are not gonna write a drug that's on an FDA dangerous list, because it opens them up to litigation and risk.

    6. JR

      And what, what is the pr- like, how do they classify something as dangerous? Don't they have to have some kind of evidence?

    7. BB

      In this instance, there's no evidence. There's literally ... And, and even if you look at adverse events that have been reported across the United States, almost all those adverse events are black market. Any adverse event regarding BPC-157 is literally a black market, uh, product that somebody bought from China or Canada, that's filled with potential particulates or, uh, uh, i- issues of, of, of contamination or, uh, lack of efficacy or too much efficacy.

  6. 17:33 – 20:56

    Compounding pharmacy safety vs Big Pharma manufacturing: who gets scrutinized?

    1. BB

      And so, where I was going with this is, if, if you ... We know for sure that the peptide itself isn't dangerous, so then you go and say, "Okay, do you not think that FDA-regulated compounding pharmacies are capable of compounding these peptides?" The highest paid person in my building is my quality and compliance guy. Uh, i- i- he literally worked for Abbott Laboratories for 15 years, working hand-in-hand with the FDA to make sure they follow all of their protocols and procedures. So, just so the public knows-... any product that comes into our pharmacy at Revive, um, our compounding pharmacy, we make sure it's an FDA approved ingredient with an independent third-party verification of the ingredient itself. Right? Showing that it is 100% the ingredients they tell us it is. Then we compound it in an ISO 5 environment. The law says we need to do ISO 7. We go above and beyond and use an ISO 5 sterile facility. Uh, we have the two highest paid employees in our building are our regulatory compliance guys that are over quality controls. Okay. So then from there, whenever we compound a product, we send every single batch off to be independently third-party verified by a independent lab unaffiliated with us, and we file those records away. Everything is documented. Every aspect, from the chain of custody of the ingredient, to the chain of custody of the drug, to the delivery to the patient. All of that is documented. So, it's either, one, you're saying the peptide's dangerous, or two, you're saying compounding pharmacies are incapable of compounding drugs that aren't dangerous. And if that's the case, then why are you asking us to compound hundreds of drugs that are on FDA back order lists? Because your buddies at Big Pharma aren't gonna compound them, because they don't make enough money, they don't generate enough revenue. So, half the stuff that's on a crash cart used in the hospital system is made by mom and pop compounding pharmacies. I- it's like ... (laughs) . S- so the safety is there, the efficacy is there, the sterility is there, and the peptide itself is safe. So, yeah, I just go back to I have to believe that you're acting upon bad information. And I wanna give them the benefit of the doubt. And, you know, my message is we've got to go meet with the FDA, and we've got to start having conversations, and we've got to represent small compounding pharmacies and the average American. Because right now, they're only hearing half the story. And that half of the story is Big Pharma banging on the desk and saying, "Hey, we want to patent these peptides. We're gonna go through clinical trials. We're gonna do it the right way, you know, and we're gonna do all these checks and balances." But it's like, we don't need you involved in supplements. Like, if you really look at it, it's, it's essentially ... I mean, again, I've said it, it's a short chain amino acid. You know? It's not a drug.

    2. JR

      It's just bananas that it's that corrupt.

    3. BB

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      It really is.

    5. BB

      It is.

    6. JR

      And, uh, you going and having a conversation with the FDA, in my mind, that's not gonna fix jack shit.

    7. BB

      (laughs)

    8. JR

      They're gonna listen to you and they go, "Okay, yeah, yeah."

  7. 20:56 – 25:00

    GLP‑1s, shortages, and lawsuits: compounding as a workaround—and a target

    1. BB

      Well, the other end is what, what's gonna happen if they really truly continue to regulate these things out of the marketplace is you're not gonna regulate it, you're just gonna shut down the people that follow the rules. You're gonna shut down the compounding pharmacies that do things right. And then h- here's an example, like let's talk about the peptides that didn't get banned, the GLP-1s, which is, uh, what a lot of people know as Wegovy, Ozempic. Um, the generic names are tirzepatide, Ozem- uh, tirzepatide, and uh, semaglutide, um, weight loss drugs, GLP-1 agonists. Those are not on the ban list because FDA has, uh, or Big Pharma has patents on those. Um, but they can't patent the molecule, right? They can only patent the dosage and the brand name. So, compounding pharmacies throughout the country are compounding those products for pennies on the dollar at a different dosage. And then what happens is, and, and that's because these products are on an FDA back order list. Okay? This is the whole cycle of the lu- ludicrousness of this situation. They're, the FDA is saying, "Hey, there's not enough of this product to meet the demand of the, uh, of the American people." And if we really look at what those drugs are, they're not a weight loss drug, they're a diabetes medication. And we know that diabetes indirectly impact, or, or directly impacts poverty stricken and minority communities disproportionately. And so, when we compound these medications to meet the needs of the people who can't get those medications or maybe can't afford those medications because they're on a FDA back order list and they're asking us to compound them, Big Pharma then turns around and sues compounding pharmacies throughout the country, then uses their long reach of PR firms to put it in the news, make it sound like you don't know what you're doing, like these compounding pharmacies are dangerous, they're not regulated, it's the Wild West out there in compounding pharmacies, there's no oversight, these aren't FDA approved products. Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Do you know how many times the FDA has been in my pharmacy in 18 months? Twice. They've s- we've interacted with them four times in 18 months. Do you know that there are 2,500 manufacturing facilities owned by Big Pharma that have not been inspected in five or more years? Five or more years. Furthermore, they've outsourced their manufacturing to third world countries and rural areas. And those products, when they come into the United States, do not go under FDA inspection. There is no validity testing like we do. There's no sterility testing. There's none of that. And so why are GLP-1s on back order? You wanna know why?

    2. JR

      Sure.

    3. BB

      Because the, E- Eli Lilly specifically, with its product, got one of their facilities shut down because they failed FDA inspection with egregious actions. We saw just a few weeks ago, uh, eye drops that are from FDA approved sources got recalled. And when a whistleblower blew the whistle, they go in and there's people in their ISO sterile rooms barefoot.Like, the- the level of egregiousness and manipulation is insane. But when you control the media, and you have the ear of the government, and you can move chess pieces, it makes it hard to, you know, be able to navigate that, compete with that, and educate people. And so, if you didn't give me a platform, nobody would know this stuff. If it wasn't for people like you and- and Robert Kennedy, and people who question things and challenge the system, um, I can't SEO optimize, I can't Google Search engine optimize. I can't get these messages out. I called a PR firm to say, "Hey, how do we combat this and what can we do?" And they were like, "The best bet you have is long-form media like podcasts. That's really the only way you're gonna get it out there."

    4. JR

      (laughs)

    5. BB

      "It's not gonna be something picked up by the media outlets."

  8. 25:00 – 39:10

    Media incentives and the revolving door: pandemic fallout and trust collapse

    1. JR

      'Cause they're dirty too.

    2. BB

      (laughs) Well, a lot of their- a lot of their advertising and funding comes from Big Pharma, and so-

    3. JR

      Yeah.

    4. BB

      ... it makes it tough.

    5. JR

      Well, we found that out during the pandemic. But what's fascinating is, it's had a terrible effect on their bottom line, because people watch them shill for these pharmaceutical drug companies and not report adverse events, and not report the dangers of shutting down schools and all the harm that it's doing to children, all the harm that it's doing to business. 'Cause they didn't report on that, people lost faith in them.

    6. BB

      Yep.

    7. JR

      Like radically. CNN showed, uh, recently its lowest ratings since 1991.

    8. BB

      Well, look at what they did with you with the vaccines. And I don't know if you saw now, two- two different articles in the last 60 se- 60 days probably. One is that people who have been vaccinated multiple times over, uh, I think the age of 60 are at an increased risk of being hospitalized with COVID, was one of the articles.

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. BB

      And then the other article was that two of the heads of the FDA that approved the vaccines now went to go work for Moderna.

    11. JR

      (sighs)

    12. BB

      In the last 40 years, okay, the last 40 years of the FDA, two heads of the FDA have not gone to work for industry. Two.

    13. JR

      Only two.

    14. BB

      That's nuts.

    15. JR

      (laughs)

    16. BB

      That's insanity. And so- a- and that's the same thing that was happening at the DOJ, and that's why I wanted to bring up the DOJ. And it- as well, even though th- they have nothing to do with the peptides, they are part of the- the healthcare industrial complex, inadvertently, because they're being used as an attack dog by the big insurance companies. And all it takes is one orthopedic surgeon getting indicted for something, or one general surgeon getting indicted for something, for everyone to go, "Fuck that. I'm done."

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. BB

      "I'm not doing that test. I'm not doing a genetic test."

    19. JR

      Right.

    20. BB

      Like, "No way." And- and now, insurance doesn't even cover any of those tests. And so, they're gonna force anything out of the marketplace with time, but in the short term, they're gonna run their offense. And that same level of spit that's being swapped at the FDA is being swapped at the DOJ. So, the big insurance companies attempt to recruit away DOJ prosecutors, and once they've built their reputation in working as a s- uh, as a steward for the people, uh, at the Department of Justice, and they put some big hides on the wall, and big- build- build a name for themselves, they'll get recruited to private industry. And one of the big options for them is to go work for the, uh, the insurance companies, including the FBI agents. So most of the... And I- and I say this 'cause I don't think the average clinician in America even understands. When you have a insurance special investigative unit show up at your practice, which happens, so if you run a lot of blood tests, or you do a lot of genetic tests, or you do anything that the insurance company thinks, "Man, this guy is doing these tests. I don't want him doing these tests anymore," there's a chance that they send an auditor. And that auditor is a special investigative unit, and that guy is typically a former FBI agent that worked for the federal government, who still has all those connections at the office. And so, there's just so much cross-pollination. And again, uh, it's not me saying the DOJ is bad or the FDA is bad. I'm saying, when they're given bad information, just like AI, information in, information out. Like...

    21. JR

      Why are they- why would they be upset at people running tests?

    22. BB

      Well, this gets super complicated. We talked about this on the last podcast. So, there's laws and rules and regs, and the- the s- the state and federal laws say that physicians are allowed to have an investment, uh, in an entity. So, a lot of people don't know that. Like, when you go to a surgery center, there's a good chance that y- that surgeon owns into that surgery center. Okay? If- if you go to a f- if you have a clinician, um, like somebody from the mothership, they couldn't get, uh, they could not get, uh, their GLP-1, semaglutide. So they reached out to me and said, "Hey, can you get my dad semaglutide?" And I'm like, "Yeah, we make it at the pharmacy." The doctor wouldn't send to our pharmacy. And it's most likely 'cause he had a relationship with another pharmacy, right? And so, that physician may have been invested in that pharmacy. And as crazy as that sounds, the law says they can, as long as you don't pay them on the value or volume of their referral, they're allowed to have a passive interest. So, think of it as you're investing in a stock, right? If I work at Abbott, I mean if I- if I'm a doctor and I prescribe a drug from Pfizer, I'm still allowed to invest in Pfizer stock, right? What I'm not allowed to do is receive direct remuneration in accordance with the value or volume of my referral. It cannot be an arrangement where you say, "I'm gonna give you $100 per patient." Right? That's- that's a kickback. That's illegal. That's a violation of federal and state law. Um, however, if there is an investment op- bonafide investment opportunity and 100 clinicians buy into a hospital, and then they operate at that hospital, the law says they're allowed to own into that hospital, and own up to 40% of that hospital. And so-Again, and two, I always like to give both sides of the story, and I said this on the last podcast. There are bad people doing bad things throughout every aspect of this. It's not insurance companies are all bad, and clinicians are all good, and lab owners are all good. There is egregious stuff happening at all levels, and there are indictments that the Department of Justice bring forth that are 100% justified. No arguments there. But oftentimes, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water, and oftentimes, the insurance companies are able to skew facts in a way that put innocent people in bad positions. And that's all I'm trying to say. And so, it- it- it's so deep and goes, runs so deep, it'd take us seven podcasts to cover all this stuff. But, I mean, it's- it's real. It's- it's not foofoo stuff. It's real. It's happening every day.

    23. JR

      And most people have zero idea this is happening, and most people just look at the recommendations, whatever it is, whether it's been discussed in the media or whether their doctor tells them, and they don't have any idea what the influence behind that is.

    24. BB

      Correct. Correct.

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. BB

      It's tough. I mean, uh, it's tough. It's nuts. But there, the side effect profiles safe, um, on the peptides. Like, there's the efficacy, like, time and time again, I cannot tell you how many people, how many patients and clinicians who buy BPC for their patients throughout the United States have had phenomenal results with the healing factors, and I attached some links, um, on the Ways to Well website about BPC and studies done with healing spine injuries, with healing joint injuries. Um, and- and- and there's even a study on safety, and it wasn't in humans but the safety study was in mammals, dogs and mice, and yeah. There's, it literally talks about how there was zero side effects seen, re- irregardless of dosage.

    27. JR

      So this, this study is, uh, gastric pept- uh-

    28. BB

      That's just BPC, that's the-

    29. JR

      Yes.

    30. BB

      Yeah, the full name of BPC.

  9. 39:10 – 47:44

    Devices, 510(k), and underreported adverse events: why ‘approved’ doesn’t mean safe

    1. BB

      Well, and then where I get frustrated is, I've been to Oz, Joe. I've been behind the fucking curtain. I know. I was a device rep. I was a drug rep. I stood in surgeries from dusk till dawn, watching products that have never had human safety trials go into the body, time and time again. When people think that going into an orthopedic surgery, or going into a general surgery, or going into an OB GYN surgery, you make the assumption that all these products have been through human safety studies and all this stuff. And I talked about this on our last podcast too, but over 90% of the products that are in the operating room never went through human safety studies. The FDA created what's called the 510K approval process in the '70s. They said, "It's growing too fast. We're bogged down. We can't get to all this shit. Now you're bolting on all these extra products in addition to drugs, and now we're talking biologics, and let's not even get into AI and large language models." You know, to their credit, they're doing their best to navigate a really tough space with a lot of different stuff coming at them, and so they created a loophole. And the premise was less than 10% of the products would come through this channel to get into the operating room. Jump forward to today, and 92% (laughs) of the products in the operating room came in through the 510K approval process. And what is that process? What it says-

    2. JR

      (sighs)

    3. BB

      ... is if you can show something in like kind is already in the operating room, then you can do what's called a daisy chain. So imagine iPhone 1 versus the new iPhone, right? That's what we're talking about here. Imagine Henry Ford's car versus Elon Musk's Cybertruck. That's the difference, and it's moving at a breakneck speed. And it's shocking that there's not more adverse events, but we also know that less than 2% of adverse events get reported, and so-

    4. JR

      (sighs)

    5. BB

      ... I can give you a real-world example on that too. When I was a rep, um, there were shavers that kept continually changing, right? And it's, it's a da- it's a- a blade that goes in this shoulder, and they'd clean up your shoulder and cut out tissue. That tissue has to get sucked through a cannulated component of the shaver handpiece and pumped into a vacuum, and disposed of, and discarded, of the bad tissue, that y- the tissue that you wanted to extrapolate. Um, as the technology changed and the shaver handpieces got smaller and smaller, a lot of these companies didn't update their packaging inserts, and so they didn't update their sterile processing procedures. And so what happened is tissue began to gunk up in handpieces. And this was not unique to one company. I'm not gonna say the companies' names, and I'm not gonna name the hospitals, but there's, there's a company that took the fall for it. But in reality, I was z- the rep, and I, I s- I went in and helped that hospital figure out what was going on. And I took a camera, and I scoped every cannulated piece of equipment that I could find. All of it had tissue in it, gunked up tissue from previous surgeries-

    6. JR

      (sighs)

    7. BB

      ... in that. And so-... when, when you take this product from one surgery to the next surgery, to the next surgery, we know that certain bacterias are extremophiles. They can handle, so they autoclave it. And all that is, is to purify it. It's called clean dirt, right? The debate at the time was, is there such thing as clean dirt? If we run it through a sterile processing machine and we cook it at thousands and thousands of degrees, nothing can survive that, right? No. Bacteria is an extremophile. It can fucking make it from outer space on a meteorite and crash onto Earth, you know? (laughs)

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. BB

      Like, these are some of the most resilient life forms in the history of existence.

    10. JR

      Well, prions, the things that cause mad cow disease, you could cook them at thousands of degrees and they stay alive.

    11. BB

      Well, this is where it gets even scarier. So, whether we're talking about, i- i- like with stem cells, one of the big things that's happened is when they, when they throw out adverse events, even with the, uh, stem cells or biologics products, almost all of those adverse events have nothing to do with the product and everything to do with the chain of command. So, look at how rigorous the chain of command is on me as a compounding pharmacy. I told you step, by step, by step, check balance, check balance, check balance. None of that exists in, in the big medical. None of it. I was a device rep with shavers, pumps, equipment, implants in my trunk of my car in 110-degree weather. I- It wasn't just me. Every rep carries product called trunk stock. Drug reps carry product called trunk stock. They put drugs in the trunk of their car and drive around and give them to clinicians to use for samples. But those products aren't being climate controlled in the way they're supposed to be. There's no chain of command, there's no chain of custody. They're, they're not following any of those protocols. And even the storage facilities that almost all of these implant companies are using, and device companies, they're not paying for climate-controlled storage typically. They're sticking them in a storage shed, and then a month later, that product's going into surgery. And so I'll give you another crazy... And I'm saying all this not to bash one company or bash anybody in particular. It's just the truth, Joe. It's the fucking truth. And when the FDA says, "We're worried about safety on a peptide that's a naturally occurring amino acid," I call bullshit, because I go, "Then where were you when all this other stuff was happening?" I was in a surgery at the Houston Zoo where I watched a shaver handpiece being used on a tiger, and it had green tape wrapped around it, okay? And I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. It had green tape." Jump forward two months later, I'm in a human surgery, and I see a shaver handpiece with green tape. And I thought, "Man, that's wild. It can't be." So I check the serial number, same damn serial number that was in that tiger surgery.

    12. JR

      What?

    13. BB

      Same serial number. At the time, what was happening is if a loaner went out, it would go out to an animal surgery, veterinary clinic. There's no way to differentiate, right? So a, a count number is an account number, right? And so they ship out a loaner and they would use that, and then they'd ship it back. But... Okay, but they're going to process it, clean it, sterilize it. Y- Y- You never should be doing that in the first place. But I've already told you now how the packaging inserts don't explain properly how to clean out these instruments. And it's not one company, it's not one product, it's thousands of products. And so...

    14. JR

      So, a human patient could be potentially contaminated with bacteria from a tiger.

    15. BB

      100%. 100%. Y- you never, you never... Like... And so I s- I say... (laughs) I just say this because when they're throwing stones or people are like, "Peptides are dangerous or stem cells are dan-" It's like, this is nature, and the rules, and the regs, and the restrictions, and the safety nets, and the protocols, and the chain of custody, and the hoops that we jump through. Like, let's go to the cellular options. Whether we get a biologic, whether cellular or acellular, okay? When it ships out, they say what time it's shipped. It ships on dry ice, stored at frigid temperatures. We... When it arrives, we have to sign for it, and then we immediately unbox it and load it into a cryofreezer and document each lot number, what time we put it in the freezer, and within 30 days, if we don't use that product, we discard it. Even though there's no- nothing that says it's not viable, uh, or it's not going to be as good, that's the protocol, because we're gonna go above and beyond and follow the most rigid safety protocols. And that does not happen in traditional medicine. The average American is assuming that if they go into surgery, that's safe. "But these stem cells, man. Ooh, who knows about that? That could be dangerous."

    16. JR

      (laughs)

    17. BB

      And the truth is, everything's risk-reward. It's all risk-reward.

    18. JR

      Jesus Christ.

    19. BB

      (laughs)

    20. JR

      It's just so gunked up. It's just so corrupt that it feels helpless when you're discussing this, because there's this feeling that the more you dive into this and the more you describe things and the deeper you expose the corruption, the more it's so confusing because it doesn't seem like there's a way out.

  10. 47:44 – 48:56

    Why he built Ways2Well & Revive: escaping insurance and building cash‑pay care

    1. BB

      Well, and you asked me last time, you were trying to ask me to articulate how I started Ways to Dwell, how I started Revive, and we spent three fucking hours (laughs) going through all this.

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. BB

      The truth of the matter is, I saw a problem, I tried to come up with a solution. And that's all I've been doing over and over again. Problem: There's an opioid epidemic. It killed my brother. Solution: Non-addictive, non-abusive treatment modalities to heal and help with pain. That... Uh, so I start a pharmacy. Insurance says, "Nah, we're not gonna cover it." Right? "We'll just put him on an opioid." Okay.... problem. Now I have to figure out how to make these products cost-effective enough to be able to sell them to the average American, the average Joe, you know, not the affluent. It's the everybody needs to be able to afford these treatments. So I built a 503A sterile pharmacy and we began to make products that were in the gaps. Anything I saw that insurance didn't cover, wouldn't cover, was egregiously price-gouging patients on, is what we would make at our compounding pharmacy. Um, and so, eh, then we start Ways to Well and-

    4. JR

      Can you give me examples of those products? Like what, what products are those?

  11. 48:56 – 1:04:03

    Testosterone, medical dogma, and the PBM-driven formulary machine

    1. BB

      Yeah. So I mean, uh, any ... Well, peptides fall into that chain. Um, you know, big pharmas wasn't making peptides. But now that the market took off on peptides, big pharma is trying to cannibalize peptides and get into that space more and more. Like I said, Merck's looking at over 200 peptides right now. Um, testosterone therapy, right? When a lot of times when people say, "Hey, you know, if it worked, everyone would use it in traditional medicine." No. It, it took 75 years of dogma and confusion for testosterone to pull itself out of the doldrums of the dungeons to be utilized daily as a go-to resource for aging men. And the only reason testosterone made it out was because one guy had the balls to test it. No pun intended. (laughs)

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. BB

      But it was, uh, Dr. Morgentaler, a urologist, famous urologist said he ... They were... This was prior to Viagra. He said, "I've gotta do something for these guys who have erectile dysfunction. I don't have an option." And he began using testosterone. And then his colleagues said, "Well, hold on a second, that's gonna cause prostate cancer." And then he began to analyze his patient population and see that it wasn't increasing prostate cancer in his pa- patient population. So then he went back and did a retrospective study all the way back to the 1930s, where we found out that the original study that created that dogma, that maintained its status for over 75 fucking years, was total bullshit. It was a patient population of three. Two guys dropped out of the study. One guy had, uh, levels that went up and down on his prostate levels, and it was ... It, it was all debunked. And now it's proven time and time again if testosterone was increasing prostate cancer, we would have seen a huge spike in prostate cancer. What we're seeing is about 14% of men develop prostate cancer. And so as we walked through-

    4. JR

      What, what do they think the reason for that is?

    5. BB

      For what?

    6. JR

      Why do 14% of men develop prostate cancer?

    7. BB

      Well, 14% of men in general patient population develop prostate cancer.

    8. JR

      General, general-

    9. BB

      Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah.

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. BB

      Not ... So w-

    12. JR

      Not population.

    13. BB

      Correct. And so the thought was if we increase, um, certain levels, that we would increase the risk of prostate cancer. And so the challenge becomes, if you really go back and you look at the study, the guy who stayed in the study was chemically castrated. He had a testosterone level of 50 nanograms per deciliter, which is considered chemically castrated, so nonexistent. What Morgentaler discovered was when we take you from 50, chemically castrated, to low, 250, we increase your risk of prostate cancer. Because your prostate cancer risk at zero testosterone is basically zero, right? But once we push past 250, the low number, we now reduce your risk of prostate cancer. In fact, we insulate you from various forms of cancer beyond prostate cancer. So there's a therapeutic benefit if we get you into optimal ranges, and it's called the saturation model. So think of it like this. You can only water a plant so much, right? Once that plant has water, it's not gonna absorb any more water. The prostate can only ... The testosterone can only bind to a certain amount of receptors. Once those receptors are binded, then there's n- no continual upside risk, and then you get to get the benefits of testosterone that begin to reduce those risks of cancer. But today, in primary care, you will still have doctors who quote a study that's been debunked 100 times.

    14. JR

      Oh.

    15. BB

      And there, there's this dogma that exists over and over again in healthcare where it's like the data's there, the research is there, the info's there, but the system itself isn't allowing for it. Um, and so when we look at that ... I talked about this on the last. When we talk about insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers, every drug on the market that is covered by insurance is controlled by a pharmacy benefit manager. And those pharmacy benefit managers prioritize drugs in their classifications not based off efficacy, based off profits. Right? And so they are monetizing those drugs, um, through rebates with the big insurance companies. So i- insulin's a prime example. It, their in- current, uh ... The Senate House Committee did a study on insulin where they found, like, the price of insulin was $284 a vial. Do you know how much made it back to the company that ... to the pharmaceutical company that was making that insulin? Less than $40. Where the hell did all that extra money go? It went to the pharmacy benefit managers and the insurance companies through rebates. And so this is the whole other area of healthcare that people aren't understanding, and I tried to explain it, uh, on, on the last podcast. I know we dove deep into it, but it is a crucial component for people to get their head around what's happening. So insurance companies, so many people say, "Well, I have health insurance." Right? "That drug isn't covered by my health insurance, so it must be bullshit." Or, "That test isn't covered by my health insurance, so it must be bullshit." No. You don't have health insurance. What you have is managed care plan. They've renamed these plans. It isn't health insurance, it's a managed care plan. And what do I mean by that? They're managing your medications, your treatment options, and they're monetizing your disease state.They make money on every step of the way. And in- since the last time we spoke, a new, a new one came out, uh, Ohio, the state of Ohio, uh, they realized that over 200 pharmacies had gone out of business. The pharmacies were saying, "We're getting paid less and less," but yet the government was paying more and more. Why? How? Where was that money coming from? Where was it going? When they w- they used, I think- I can't remember, 30-something auditors at the state level, and what they found was $240 million in pharmacy benefit manager fraud, $240 million in money that they extrapolated from the American people, from the people of the state of Ohio, 'cause taxpayer dollars are who's paying for this stuff. And these pharmacy benefit managers are making their money on the spread. So, there's layer upon layer upon layer of how insurance companies can move dollars to maximize profits.

    16. JR

      Jesus Christ.

    17. BB

      Does that- does that make sense at all? (laughs)

    18. JR

      It makes sense, but it's just like, the more you talk, the more disheartening it is.

    19. BB

      Well- well, I mean, there's two different views on it, right? There's, uh ... Uh, optimists are usually successful and pessimists are usually right. I am very optimistic about the future of medicine. I'm very optimistic through large language models, cash pay model. I didn't want to get into that without first setting the tone for the listeners on how we're here. Why did we go to cash pay? Why is Ways to Well not in the insurance model? Why is Revive not in the insurance model? Because the insurance model no longer exists. That model is meant to monetize your disease, right? So, G- Gary talked about this. You come in. Let's say I come in, and I'm gonna give you a perfect example. I'm a mom. I'm stressed. I have anxiety. I'm not sleeping at night. I go to my primary care. That primary care has six minutes with me. It's not their fault. They're doing their best to navigate a shit system. They write me an Ambien and an antidepressant or an antianxiety, and they push me out the door. And that's their go-to treatment, because that's the tool in their tool belt. The difference is if somebody were to come in the door of Ways to Well or any of these cash pay clinics, I don't even wanna make it about Ways to Well, there are hundreds of phenomenal clinics across the country. Peter Attia is a prime example. He's gonna take the time to ask the question, to do the deep dive, to peel back the layers to the onion. Rather than treating the symptom, you're gonna uncover the root cause. And so, what did you do to assess that individual, right? If it was us, we would do a comprehensive blood panel. We would identify, is there a hormonal imbalance or any sort of imbalance in their biomarkers? Not gonna happen in the insurance model, because of what I was telling you. The doctors are scared. They're scared of getting kicked off the insurance. They're scared of ending up on a DOJ desk, because they're being- the data's being skewed, the info's being skewed, all of it, it's one half of the narrative. Um, so that's one reason they won't do it. So, that's the biomarker test, okay? Let's look at the other thing we would do. We would run an EEG to assess your- for- if you're- if you have insomnia, anxiety, depression, all of these things, another way to dig into the root cause separate from biomarkers is an EEG, to run a brain wave test that tells us, is your brain neurons firing at the posterior of your brain to the prefrontal cortex of your brain? And if you're losing data from the posterior to the prefrontal cortex, what you find is people with depression, with anxiety, with all these things, they're losing 40 to 50% of that neuros- neuropathic, uh, firing from the rear of their brain to the front of their brain. And this is a simple $200 test, okay? Then you go to what Gary brought up. You can do a methylfolate detoxification test, uh, MTFHR, the motherfucker test is what they call it, and it's a gene carrier test. 40% of people in America suffer from that gene, right? There's four other genes that are part of that test that we do. Any one of those genes can change the way your body processes and detoxifies. They're never gonna do that. That isn't covered by insurance. You could do a pharmacogenetic test to see if that- if that individual is even capable of metabolizing the treatment that you're writing them. Do they have a cytochrome P450 variance? Will this even work? How are they processing their food? We can do a gut biome test. We can identify (laughs) do you have a food allergy? Is your gut biome in good working order? Not covered by insurance. Do you get where I'm going?

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. BB

      There's seven or eight things we should be doing before we ever write you a fucking drug. For sure, seven or eight easy things, and you're not talking about a million dollars. Like, I bet all of those tests combined come out to less than a thousand bucks. And- and I know that's a lot, but y- you know, how much do you spend on your car payment? How much do you spend on your house? You're spending a portion of your life in that. You're spending 100% of this existence in this flesh vessel, and you only get one of them. What are you gonna do with it? Are you gonna put your hands- your- your life in the hands of these fucking assholes that are here (laughs) to extrapolate money from you and manage you into chronic disease? And I'm not saying the doctors are. The doctors are just using the tools that are in their tool belt. They're using the data and the tools that are in their tool belt, and that's all they know how to do, and they don't have the time, and they're stressed and they're overworked and they're tired and they're just trying to make it, and they're beat down. These people are beat down.

    22. JR

      And how many of these doctors even know about these tests?

    23. BB

      A lot of them don't, because again, a lot of it's not covered by insurance. And so, if it's not in their wheelhouse, and so when you went back to, "Wait, doctors have investments," when I owned a blood lab, one of the things I learned is that clinician's so busy, if there's not a carrot at the end of the stick to have the conversation, to do the deep dive, to explain to them the methodology and the clinical protocols and the why-... they're not gonna mess with it, because they're just, again, trying to make it through the day. And so, those were pathways to be able to educate a clinician and give them some insight into why they should be doing these tests, clinically. Um, but yeah. Even- even today, like with, if you talk about cellular therapies, if you talk about peptides, most primary care clinicians in this country have no idea about peptides. Uh, or they'll say it's bullshit, or they say they don't work. And they'll say the same thing with cellular therapy. Um, "You can't get stem cells in the United States. You can't get that..." Y- you know, it- it's just this dogma that has created a misconception. Infrared. That's another example. You and I were talking about infrared beds and red light therapy. It is viewed by a lot of the doctors in this healthcare system, and I say healthcare loosely, it's sick care, as pseudoscience, um, bullshit, uh, chiropractic stuff. But if you look, infrared and these technologies, photolight therapy has been used since 1903, 1905. The guy won a Nobel Prize. Uh, Huberman does a two-hour breakdown on this stuff. It ... Infrared is not bullshit. There are over 60 studies that show infrared works. There was a study done in Europe that showed infrared improved vision in people over the age of 40, like using three minutes of infrared three days a week returned vision and eyesight. There's nothing that has done that. And so infrared has done that, and has helped people with, uh, degenerative eye disease, like as your eyes begin to degenerate. And how does it do it? We even know the science behind it. Y- y- like, it literally ... When you're taking NAD drips and you're doing all this stuff, you're doing it to try and get your cells to produce more ATP. 'Cause as we age, our production of ATP decline. And ATP is the energy source of a cell, and our eyes have a limited amount of ATP, but they require a massive amount of energy. And so as we age and our ATP dedu- r- declines, our cells are i- incapable of having the amount of energy required to maintain great eyesight. And so through infrared, through, uh, NAD treatments, through N- NMN, through all of these various modalities that are not being utilized in traditional medicine, you can make a difference.

    24. JR

      Aren't they trying to ban NMN as well?

    25. BB

      Yeah. Yeah. (laughs) Which is crazy.

    26. JR

      Again, same thing.

    27. BB

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      Where's the, where's the negative side effects? Where (overlapping) ... What's the reason?

    29. BB

      And all NMN is, is a precursor to NAD.

    30. JR

      Right.

  12. 1:04:03 – 1:42:12

    The future: AI/LLMs for personalized medicine—and the privacy/insurance risk

    1. BB

      So it's ... I- i- i- for them to understand it, we've got, we would ha- a- and that's why it's like ... So to move ... To be able to use these treatment modalities, you almost have to go cash pay. And then what- what I'm trying to figure out is how do we bring this to the masses? How do we bring longevity-based, predictive, proactive, personalized medicine to the masses? How do we bring this precision approach to everybody? And that's where I think large language models are gonna change the game. They're gonna change the world. I sent you, uh, Alan the other day.

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. BB

      The little alien. That's just-

    4. JR

      I don't like his voice.

    5. BB

      Yeah. (laughs) Well, he's a, he's a beta, so we're working on getting him all worked out.

    6. JR

      He looks like a beta.

    7. BB

      Yeah. (laughs) So but that's-

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. BB

      That's ... See, that feedback's amazing, because when I talk about personalized-

    10. JR

      I'm just kidding. It's not real feedback.

    11. BB

      But- but-

    12. JR

      I don't really have a problem with his voice.

    13. BB

      ... for me, this is my thought on it.

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. BB

      Part of being personalized goes above and beyond personalizing treatments with peptides and all these different things, to personalizing the patient experience. Some people wanna call their clinician at 2:00 AM. I can't tell you how many days I wake up, and somebody who went through the program messages me asking a clinical question, and I've gotta bug the clinician, and I've got 30 of those, right? Or the clinician gets an inbox filled with questions. The future of medicine is large language models will manage all of that.

    16. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    17. BB

      That large lang- that ... Alan will be able to assess your medical record. He'll be able to read your MRI. He'll be able to read your DEXA. He'll be able to read your VO2 max. He'll be able to assess your all-cause mortality risk. He'll be able to tie into your wearables, tie into your REM sleep, monitor your heart rate variability. That's proactive, predictive medicine. We're gonna know what date you started testosterone, what date you started a peptide, what date we began to see improvement on all of your biomarkers. Or if we don't see improvement, we're gonna know in advance that this isn't a good medicine for you, this isn't a good treatment for you. And so traditional medicine is not going to do these things. It's never gonna happen.

    18. JR

      Can you explain, when you're saying large language models, you're talking about artificial intelligence?

    19. BB

      Yeah. Well, so the- I- th- the really smart guys like Lex would say, "Well, large language models are just assessing massive amounts of data and guessing the next word," right? And so ChatGPT's a large language model. They don't consider it AI. Um, but it's because-

    20. JR

      But isn't the speculation the, one of the reasons why they think Sam Altman was pushed out, is that ChatGPT has acquired artificial general intelligence in the newest models?

    21. BB

      Um, that is, that is what I've heard from my AI guys as well. So I don't ... I was told-

    22. JR

      Yeah, I've heard it from people-

    23. BB

      I was told that he has a fiduciary duty to the board to disclose if the, uh, ChatGPT makes a leap, is what they call it.

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. BB

      And, uh, it made a leap.And then (laughs) he- I guess, they continued forward without reporting it to the board. But again, this is all hearsay. I don't know. I don't have any-

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. BB

      ... line of sight into that. But my, my buddies-

    28. JR

      I don't either, but I-

    29. BB

      ... in AI have told me that.

    30. JR

      ... I'm repeatedly hearing this.

Episode duration: 2:14:34

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