Fixing Healthcare Podcast

Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr
  • 4.5 (163)
  • Medicine
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“A podcast with a plan to fix healthcare” featuring Dr. Robert Pearl, Jeremy Corr and Guests

  1. 1d ago

    FHC #233: Can physicians fix healthcare before the system breaks?

    American healthcare is approaching an economic reckoning. Or, better yet, a doomsday clock. Spending now exceeds $5.7 trillion annually, medical costs continue to climb and millions of families are struggling to afford care. Yet the people who may be best positioned to improve the system — physicians — are exhausted, overburdened and disengaged. In this Unfiltered episode of Fixing Healthcare, Drs. Robert Pearl and Jonathan Fisher join cohost Jeremy Corr to confront a difficult question: How can doctors lead the changes healthcare urgently needs when so many are already struggling to get through the workday? Dr. Pearl begins with the economic warning signs. Healthcare spending is projected to approach $9 trillion by 2034, while employers, insurers and government programs face growing financial pressure. He argues that continuing to raise prices, restrict coverage and shift costs to patients will only make matters worse. The solution, he believes, requires physicians to take a more active role in redesigning care. That means preventing chronic disease, reducing avoidable hospitalizations, embracing new technologies and collaborating to improve clinical outcomes at lower costs. Dr. Fisher agrees that medicine must change. But he questions how much more can reasonably be expected of clinicians who already lack sufficient time, resources and authority. Many physicians, he explains, are operating in survival mode. Asking them to assume leadership responsibilities without meaningful support risks accelerating the very burnout that threatens the profession. Their discussion explores several questions facing American medicine: Why are physicians increasingly reluctant to pursue leadership roles, and what would encourage greater participation? How can clinicians collaborate to reduce costs without compromising patient care or increasing workloads? What can healthcare leaders learn from advances in generative AI about teamwork, persistence and solving difficult problems? Where is the line between motivating physicians to embrace change and pushing already exhausted professionals too far? The conversation culminates in a sobering question from co-host Jeremy Corr: What happens if healthcare costs become so unsustainable that the system begins to break down? Listen to this episode of Unfiltered for a candid discussion of healthcare’s economic future, the limits of physician resilience and the leadership necessary to prevent today’s problems from becoming tomorrow’s crisis. HELPFUL RESOURCES ‘Just One Heart’ (Jonathan Fisher’s newest book) ‘ChatGPT, MD’ (Robert Pearl’s newest book) Monthly Musings on American Healthcare (Robert Pearl’s newsletter) * * * Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple Podcasts or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post FHC #233: Can physicians fix healthcare before the system breaks? appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

  2. Oct 21

    FHC #232: Can GLP-1s & GenAI solve healthcare’s affordability crisis?

    American healthcare keeps getting more expensive. Insurers respond by restricting access, employers cut benefits and patients pay more out of pocket. Yet the underlying problem remains: chronic diseases continue to drive much of the nation’s medical spending. In this episode of Diving Deep, co-hosts Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr explore two technological advances that could help break this cycle. One is already changing how millions of Americans manage their weight. The other could transform how physicians and patients manage chronic disease. Together, Pearl argues, GLP-1 medications and generative AI offer a new path toward better health and more affordable care. Two innovations, one goal: preventing costly complications Pearl begins with a striking figure: Americans now spend more than $5.7 trillion annually on healthcare, with chronic diseases accounting for much of the expense. Five major conditions (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia) are associated with more than $1.3 trillion in annual medical costs. Rather than continuing to shift these expenses among insurers, employers and patients, Pearl argues that medicine should focus on preventing the complications that generate them. GLP-1 medications offer one way forward. By helping patients lose substantial weight, these drugs can also reduce the risk of diabetes and other obesity-related conditions. Clinical trials demonstrate benefits that extend well beyond the number on the scale. But prevention alone isn’t enough. Millions of Americans already live with hypertension, diabetes and heart failure. Despite effective treatments, many struggle to control their conditions because medical care still revolves around brief office visits every few months. Pearl explains how GenAI agents, connected to home-monitoring devices, could change that. Rather than waiting until a patient’s next appointment, AI could analyze daily blood-pressure readings, glucose levels and weight changes, identify worsening conditions and alert clinicians when treatment needs adjusting. The result would be more continuous care, fewer preventable complications and potentially billions in savings. Making that vision possible, however, would require lower drug prices, compatible monitoring technology and payment models that reward keeping patients healthy. What a troubling AI experiment reveals about medicine’s future The second half of the episode explores a very different development: an OpenAI experiment in which AI agents unexpectedly began working together to solve complex cybersecurity challenges. According to Pearl, roughly 1,200 agents established their own means of communication, exchanged more than 70,000 messages and files, and coordinated activities beyond what researchers had anticipated. Some subsequently accessed systems at Hugging Face without authorization. The experiment raised serious questions about how to control increasingly capable AI. But Pearl sees another implication that deserves equal attention: what if similarly coordinated agents could work on behalf of patients? Imagine having an entire team of AI agents continuously analyzing your medical history, medications, test results and wearable data. Working alongside clinicians, they could identify problems earlier, assist with difficult diagnoses and provide medical guidance when doctors’ offices are closed. Pearl describes three possibilities: a 24/7 entry point for patients seeking medical advice, personalized guidance during hospital stays and continuous monitoring for people with chronic illnesses. These applications go far beyond the administrative tasks that dominate much of today’s medical AI adoption. They would require physicians to reconsider how much clinical responsibility can be shared with technology. Ultimately, both discussions arrive at the same destination: America will not solve its healthcare affordability crisis by restricting care. It will do so by keeping people healthier and treating problems before they become life-threatening. Listen to this episode of Diving Deep to explore how GLP-1 medications, GenAI agents and new approaches to medical care could make that future possible. Helpful links: OpenAI’s Latest Experiment Should Change How Doctors And Patients Use GenAI (Forbes) How GLP-1s And GenAI Can Solve Healthcare’s Affordability Crisis (Forbes) Monthly Musings on American Healthcare (RobertPearlMD.com) * * * Dr. Robert Pearl is the author of ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine. Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post FHC #232: Can GLP-1s & GenAI solve healthcare’s affordability crisis? appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

  3. Oct 14

    FHC #231: Dean Ornish on lifestyle medicine, loneliness and hope

    Dean Ornish’s life was saved by meaning, connection and lifestyle change. Then he spent 50 years proving those same forces can save others. In this episode of Fixing Healthcare, Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr welcome Dr. Dean Ornish, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and one of the most influential figures in lifestyle medicine. Across his career, Ornish has shown that comprehensive lifestyle changes can help prevent and even reverse major chronic diseases, including heart disease, prostate cancer and, most recently, early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. But this conversation begins somewhere more personal. Ornish describes becoming suicidally depressed at 19 and discovering, through illness, spiritual teaching and acts of service, that healing begins when people reconnect with meaning, purpose and one another. That experience shaped his life’s work and gave him a radically different view of medicine. Drugs and surgery can be lifesaving in a crisis, he says, but they often bypass the deeper causes of disease. From there, the conversation moves into the science behind his approach. Ornish explains how diet, exercise, stress reduction and love and support can affect gene expression, inflammation, telomeres, loneliness, chronic disease and survival. Ideas once dismissed as “touchy-feely,” he says, are now supported by decades of peer-reviewed research. Pearl and Ornish also discuss generative AI, where both see promise and limits. AI can deliver knowledge at extraordinary speed, but Ornish emphasizes that information is not the whole story. Medicine still needs presence, listening, compassion and the kind of human connection that helps people feel seen and accepted. In his closing reflection, Pearl connects Ornish’s work to the future of healthcare affordability. The nation will not fix healthcare by cutting back, he says. It will improve outcomes and lower costs by keeping people healthier, preventing chronic disease complications and aligning incentives around better care. Dean Ornish has spent his career showing that health is not driven by one input alone. It is multimodal: shaped by food, movement, stress, love, purpose, connection, biology and belief. This episode is a reminder that healing is not only about adding more medical interventions. Sometimes it begins by helping people stop disturbing what they already have. Helpful links: Dr. Dean Ornish (website) Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases (Dean’s book) ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine (Robert’s book) * * * Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post FHC #231: Dean Ornish on lifestyle medicine, loneliness and hope appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

  4. Oct 6

    FHC #230: Flashback to healthcare skimping and AI-powered patients

    Fixing Healthcare is revisiting a Diving Deep episode that feels even more important today than when it first aired in November 2023. At the time, ChatGPT had been available to the public for just one year. Generative AI was still widely viewed as a fascinating but unreliable tool, impressive in some settings and error-prone in others. Many clinicians saw it as a novelty. Some saw it as a threat. Few fully grasped how quickly the technology would advance or how profoundly it might reshape the relationship between doctors and patients. Nearly three years later, that early vision already feels outdated. We’ve already surpassed the vision of generative AI helping patients prepare for office visits and ask better questions. The next generation of AI agents are proving capable of helping provide care between visits: monitoring chronic disease, identifying early signs of heart failure, flagging postoperative wound infections, answering medication questions and alerting doctors when a patient’s condition begins to worsen. Instead of centering care almost entirely around the doctor’s office, these tools could extend medical expertise into the home, 24/7. When the episode was released, many people worried that generative AI was not powerful enough to solve clinical problems. Now, some worry that it has become too powerful and may pose existential risks. Across the nation, health systems, technology companies and policymakers are debating how far these tools should go, how quickly they should be adopted and who should guide their use. That makes this replay especially timely. In this episode, co-hosts Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr return to two connected problems: the high cost of American healthcare and the potential for generative AI to give patients more knowledge, agency and control. The first half of the conversation focuses on “skimping,” a term Pearl uses for the many ways healthcare organizations constrain costs by giving patients less care, less access or fewer resources while still charging more. He compares it to buying a box of cereal at the same price, only to discover there are fewer flakes inside. In healthcare, however, the consequences are far more serious. The second half of the episode turns to generative AI and the future of the doctor-patient relationship. Pearl argues that, when used correctly, generative AI could make medicine more collaborative. Instead of relying entirely on brief office visits, patients could use AI to better understand their conditions, evaluate treatment options, track symptoms and participate more actively in decisions. Doctors, meanwhile, could benefit from patients arriving better informed and more prepared. That idea was provocative in 2023. Today, it is becoming increasingly practical. Generative AI systems have grown more capable, more conversational and more widely used. The tools available now are far beyond what existed when this episode first aired. And as Pearl has argued in his book ChatGPT, MD, the exponential growth of AI means that capabilities can double quickly. If a technology doubles in power each year, then after five years it is not five times stronger. It is 32 times stronger. That mathematical reality gives this episode its new relevance. The conversation is both a look back at early optimism about generative AI in medicine and a reminder that even bold predictions can prove conservative when a technology advances exponentially. Listen again to this early Diving Deep conversation and consider how much has changed since November 2023—and how much more may change in the next two years. HELPFUL LINKS How America Skimps On Healthcare (Forbes) How Generative AI Will Upend The Doctor-Patient Relationship (Forbes) Monthly Musings on American Healthcare (Robert Pearl’s newsletter) * * * Dr. Robert Pearl is the author of ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine. Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post FHC #230: Flashback to healthcare skimping and AI-powered patients appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

  5. Sep 29

    MTT #111: Why are patients paying more before they get care?

    In this week’s episode of Medicine: The Truth, hosts Jeremy Corr and Dr. Robert Pearl dig for the facts beneath healthcare’s biggest headlines. Today’s show opens with a problem more Americans are facing every year: rising out-of-pocket costs and the growing demand that patients pay before they receive care. Pearl explains that the listener’s concern is increasingly the rule, not the exception. Total health costs per employee now average more than $20,000 a year, including premiums and out-of-pocket obligations. With projections for next year showing costs rising another 9% to 11%, workers are likely to shoulder an even greater financial burden. But higher deductibles are only part of the problem. Doctors and hospitals are increasingly asking patients to pay out-of-pocket costs in advance before scheduling non-emergency procedures. Pearl says 92% of U.S. healthcare providers now either strongly encourage or require advance payment, up from 81% a year earlier. That means a patient who needs a hernia repair, gallbladder surgery, ACL repair or other painful but non-emergency procedure may be asked to pay thousands of dollars before care can proceed. For Pearl, this is a warning sign of a larger affordability crisis. As premiums, deductibles, drug prices and hospital charges rise, medical costs are increasingly being treated like a hot potato, passed from the federal government to states, from insurers to employers and from employers to workers. Here are the other major storylines from episode 111: President Trump has nominated Dr. Heidi Overton to lead the FDA following Marty Makary’s departure. Her support for scaling back childhood vaccine recommendations has already drawn concern from Senate Health Committee chair Dr. Bill Cassidy. The battle between politics and science is expanding. Pearl points to HHS hiring an Army doctor to investigate unsupported claims that thousands of U.S. service members died after receiving COVID vaccines, despite Pentagon reports finding no vaccine-related deaths. Personalized mRNA cancer vaccines remain one of the most exciting areas in oncology. Early Moderna and Merck data in melanoma are promising, though the full results have not yet been published. A new FDA-approved drug for advanced pancreatic cancer has generated enthusiasm because it extended life in patients who had already failed chemotherapy. But the drug is expected to cost about $480,000 a year. The Lone Star tick is spreading beyond the Southeast into New England and the upper Midwest. Unlike the deer tick associated with Lyme disease, the Lone Star tick can trigger a potentially dangerous allergic reaction to red meat. Measles cases are rising at a record-setting pace in 2026, with preventable deaths occurring among unvaccinated individuals. Falling immunization rates put the United States at risk of losing its measles elimination status. Employers are bracing for the largest healthcare cost increase in two decades. Some are responding by dropping GLP-1 coverage, limiting spousal coverage or shifting more costs to workers. New evidence from Amsterdam supports the value of long-term primary care relationships. Patients who saw the same clinician for 15 to 20 years had lower odds of emergency hospital admission, and cost reductions appeared strongest among those with relationships lasting 10 to 15 years. In a comparison of tirzepatide and semaglutide for weight loss, Pearl says tirzepatide produced greater weight loss and slightly better A1c reduction, while semaglutide had fewer reported side effects. He emphasizes that both drugs are highly effective and that cost is often the main reason patients stop taking them. The episode closes with Pearl’s provocative thoughts on generative AI. He says the time has come for healthcare professionals to stop denying its clinical power. Pearl acknowledges the existential risks associated with advanced AI, but says the same capabilities also create enormous opportunities to improve outcomes, save lives and make care more accessible and affordable. American medicine, he argues, is not performing well enough to defend the status quo. Misdiagnoses, preventable medical errors and poor chronic disease control continue to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. Meanwhile, patients are already turning to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other large language models when they have symptoms or medical questions, especially when doctors’ offices are closed or appointments are days or weeks away. Pearl says the question is no longer whether generative AI will provide clinical expertise to patients. As both a physician and a patient, he hopes healthcare professionals seize the opportunity before someone else does. Tune in to hear the full discussion and subscribe to Medicine: The Truth for more fact-based analysis of the medical, scientific and policy stories shaping American healthcare. * * * Dr. Robert Pearl is the author of “ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine” about the impact of AI on the future of medicine. Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post MTT #111: Why are patients paying more before they get care? appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

  6. Sep 9

    FHC #227: Dr. Rod Rohrich on social media, science and AI-powered care

    In this episode of Fixing Healthcare, Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr welcome back Dr. Rod Rohrich, an internationally recognized plastic surgeon, former editor-in-chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and national leader in the application and safety of social media for medical advancement. Dr. Rohrich, a returning guest (FHC #57), focuses now on the healthcare concerns most affecting Americans today. Drawing on his experience with patients, physicians and a massive social media audience, Rohrich identifies three questions he hears most often: Can I trust my doctor? Is this information true or merely popular? And can AI really help me understand my health and make it better? These questions frame a conversation about generative AI, patient empowerment, medical misinformation, physician compassion and the future of clinical practice. Can I trust my doctor? Rohrich says patients want the speed of AI and the accessibility of social media, but they still want the compassion and judgment of a trusted physician. He and Pearl agree that AI will not replace doctors, but it can help patients ask better questions, understand their conditions more quickly and arrive at appointments better prepared. Rohrich sees this already in plastic surgery, where patients bring questions, research and even AI-generated summaries into consultations. Used well, he says, AI can streamline the visit, clarify patient goals and help physicians focus faster on what the patient needs. Is this information true or merely popular? Rohrich’s social media experience gives him a clear view of the problem. Patients are bombarded with claims about longevity, sleep, fitness, supplements and medical treatments, often from influencers with no healthcare background. His practical advice is to use generative AI as a filter: ask tools like ChatGPT or Claude to evaluate claims based on peer-reviewed, evidence-based research and supporting references. Pearl connects the point to peptides, noting that enthusiasm is not the same as evidence. Both physicians argue that patients need better ways to distinguish science from marketing. Can AI really help me understand my health and make it better? Pearl and Rohrich see AI’s greatest promise in making care faster, more personalized and more humane. Rohrich shares how AI helped identify a postoperative infection from a patient photo and generate clearer instructions for home care. He also describes using AI to write more empathetic responses to anxious patients. Pearl adds that ambient AI tools can free doctors from computer screens, while future applications could help patients understand hospital care, test results and next steps. The goal, both agree, is not to remove humanity from medicine but to use technology to restore it. Jeremy closes the show with a patient-centered concern: What happens when people receive lab, MRI or CT results through an online portal late at night, without a physician available to explain them? Rohrich says AI is already better than Google at providing context, but it must be used carefully because partial information can produce partial answers. Pearl argues that the answer is not to fear the technology, but to make secure, private AI tools more complete, accurate and useful for patients. The episode ends with Drs. Pearl and Rohrich laying out a shared vision. Generative AI should not replace physicians. It should take work off their plates so they can focus on what only people can do: solve complex problems, communicate compassion and guide patients through frightening moments. For Rohrich and Pearl, AI offers a chance to make medicine faster, smarter and more human, but only if doctors and patients learn to use it well and keep evidence at the center. * * * Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post FHC #227: Dr. Rod Rohrich on social media, science and AI-powered care appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

  7. Sep 1

    FHC #226: Peptides, primary care & the false choices in American medicine

    In this Diving Deep episode, Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr examine two very different healthcare debates that share a common problem: when medicine lacks good evidence and aligned incentives, patients and doctors are left with bad choices. The conversation begins with experimental peptides, a fast-growing topic on social media and in wellness circles. Dr. Pearl reviews the FDA’s ongoing debate over whether six experimental peptides should be made available to licensed compounding pharmacies. Supporters argue that Americans are already buying these substances through the gray market, often from overseas suppliers, and that regulated access would be safer. Critics argue that expanded access would encourage far more people to use products whose benefits, risks, purity and long-term safety remain uncertain. For Pearl, both sides are partly right, which is why a simple yes or no is the wrong answer. Saying no would not eliminate demand. It would leave many Americans buying peptides online without reliable quality control. Saying yes without conditions would create the impression of FDA approval without the scientific evidence normally required to prove safety and efficacy. Instead, Pearl argues for a third path: pair regulated access with federally coordinated research, safety reporting and controlled studies so patients, doctors and regulators can learn whether these peptides actually work and whether they are safe. The second half of the episode turns to primary care, a specialty Pearl says is in serious trouble. Primary care physicians are overburdened, under-resourced and underpaid compared with specialists. They face growing patient panels, administrative demands, declining autonomy and less interest from medical students entering the field. Pearl acknowledges that primary care leaders are right to ask for more respect, more support and better compensation. But he argues that payers are unlikely to invest substantially more unless primary care can demonstrate better outcomes and lower total costs. That has not happened consistently under traditional fee-for-service or pay-for-performance programs, which reward isolated steps in care rather than overall clinical impact. The solution is capitation. Under this model, primary care doctors would receive a prospective payment to care for a defined population rather than being paid for each visit or service. If chronic diseases are controlled, emergency department use falls and complications decline, both patients and clinicians benefit. But capitation also requires doctors to accept financial risk, organize into larger groups, adopt common clinical standards, coordinate care and empower effective physician leaders. The episode closes with a call for national primary care societies to lead. Pearl says they can help doctors form groups, negotiate capitated contracts, purchase stop-loss protection, implement generative AI, build clinical infrastructure and spread best practices from early demonstration programs. Across both topics, Pearl returns to the same point. Whether the issue is experimental peptides or the future of primary care, patients need evidence, doctors need accountability and the system needs incentives that reward better health. For more, tune into this month’s episode and check out the link below. Helpful links: The Best FDA Decision On Peptide Authorization Isn’t Yes Or No (Forbes) Monthly Musings on American Healthcare (RobertPearlMD.com) * * * Dr. Robert Pearl is the author of ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine. Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post FHC #226: Peptides, primary care & the false choices in American medicine appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

  8. Aug 26

    MTT #110: Peptides, politics & the perils of medicine without evidence

    In this week’s episode of Medicine: The Truth, hosts Jeremy Corr and Dr. Robert Pearl go in search of the facts beneath healthcare’s biggest headlines. Today’s show opens with one of the hottest and least understood medical topics: experimental peptides. Pearl explains that an FDA advisory committee narrowly recommended allowing compounding pharmacies to provide six experimental peptides to patients. This is not the same as traditional FDA approval. Rather than reviewing a drug through the usual three-phase clinical trial process, the recommendation would allow suppliers to provide peptide ingredients that compounding pharmacies could use to fill prescriptions. Pearl then explains why this distinction matters. If the FDA follows the committee’s recommendation, many patients may assume the peptides have been vetted like other approved medications. He warns that this could leave the nation in a medical gray zone, with broad access but little rigorous evidence on safety, effectiveness, dosing or long-term risk. The episode then turns to several follow-up stories and new medical developments, including the cyclospora outbreak, CDC leadership, pediatric e-bike injuries, AI-designed viruses, Ebola, mRNA flu vaccines and the continuing politicization of vaccine policy: The cyclospora outbreak appears to be slowing, but the total case count remains high and the exact source has not been fully confirmed. Erica Schwartz has been confirmed as CDC director, becoming the agency’s first full-time leader in a year. Pearl says Schwartz has strong credentials but will face major challenges, including depleted agency staffing, infectious disease outbreaks and political pressure around vaccines. Pediatric e-scooter and e-bike injuries surpassed 2,000 incidents from 2020 to 2024, according to data from Johns Hopkins researchers. Pearl warns that more states may need to restrict use among young children. AI can design viruses that do not currently exist in nature, a new Stanford study showed. This opens possibilities for new treatments but also raising biosecurity concerns. Pearl says the technology could one day help fight antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, but it also raises concerns about bad actors. Ebola is spreading rapidly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with more than 1,500 deaths and a mortality rate estimated at 40% to 50%. The FDA approved the first mRNA flu vaccine, developed by Moderna, for adults 50 and older. Pearl explains that mRNA technology could improve flu vaccination by allowing scientists to update vaccines closer to the arrival of each year’s viral strain. The episode closes with Pearl’s strongest warning: medical decisions made on politics rather than science lead to harm. He points to President Trump’s executive order changing childhood vaccine recommendations and encouraging separation of the MMR vaccine into individual measles, mumps and rubella shots. Pearl says there is no scientific evidence supporting the president’s claim that the combined MMR vaccine may be dangerous, while numerous studies show it is safe, effective and lifesaving. His conclusion: when scientific evidence is overwhelming, leaders need a compelling scientific reason to deviate from it. Whether the subject is experimental peptides, AI-designed viruses, mRNA vaccines or childhood immunization, medicine cannot protect patients if politics replaces data. Tune in to hear the full discussion and subscribe to Medicine: The Truth for more fact-based analysis of the medical, scientific and policy stories shaping American healthcare. * * * Dr. Robert Pearl is the author of “ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine” about the impact of AI on the future of medicine. Fixing Healthcare is a co-production of Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr. Subscribe to the show via Apple, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts. Join the conversation or suggest a guest by following the show on X and LinkedIn. The post MTT #110: Peptides, politics & the perils of medicine without evidence appeared first on Fixing Healthcare.

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About

“A podcast with a plan to fix healthcare” featuring Dr. Robert Pearl, Jeremy Corr and Guests

Information

  • Creator
    Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    299
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020 - Executive Podcast Solutions
  • Show Website
    Fixing Healthcare Podcast

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