>> mr. marty mckerry with his book blind spots when medicine gets it wrong and what it means for yourhealth on this episode ofbook notes plus with brian lamb. available on the cspan mobile app and where you get your podcasts. earlier today the ceo of f0 1979 in partnership with the cable industry, cspan has provided complete coverage of the halls of congress from the house and senate familiars to

congressional hearings, party briefings and committee meetings. cspan gives you a front row seat of how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions, and completely unfiltered. cspan, your unfiltered view. js s njoining us now is john hopkins school of medicine professor and author of the book blind spots, when medicine gets it wrong and what it means for our health. dr.marty mckerry. dr.mckerry, welcome to the program. >> good morning, tammy. good to be with you. >> let's start by talking about your new book, and tell us about what you focus on and why you decided to write it. >> well, smart people can develop blind spots, and group think is a powerful force.

we have missed out on a giant problem that we would be talking about, the rapid increase in chronic diseases, maybe pancreatic cancer, the rates doubled in the last 20 years. half of our nation's children are obese or overweight. a pediatrician would rarely see a case a generation ago of a child with type two diabetes. now it's extremely common. rates of auto immune diseases going up, and now affecting one out of five women. sperm counts have gone down 50% over the last five decades and the age of puberty going down every year. what is going on? who is asking the big questions? we have to talk about our poisoned food supply, engineered, highly addictive chemicals added to our food. the role of pesticides and toxins and seed oils, and these issues have lived in a giant blind spot. at the same time, group think

and medicine has really created some medical dogma that has resulted in recommendations now reversed, and people are not aware that have been reversed or science suggests they should be reversed. i go through the common health topics where we got it wrong in the modern era, not just saying opioids were not addictive, but also for 60 years we got it wrong and still get it wrong. we just had an nih study showing lucky charm cereal is healthier than a steak. people need to know the truth about preventing peanut allergies and cancer preventions and the side effects of antibiotics and the central role of gut health. it's integral to many parts of the body. going through manyof the topics in the book blind spots. >> i want to relate this from

your book. the medical establishment got the prary cause of heart disease wrong r 60 year it got antibiotic appropriationness wrong for years. it got the addictive properties of opioid wrong for 20 years. a partial list of major errors on leading issues in health, and the errors are not oversights of the patient era. they are avoidable mistakes in modern medicine. doctor mckerry, in your book, you cite all of your sources for those examples, everything you talk about, and including some of the original studies that were done, and the recommendations were based on. how do those incorrect recommendations gain so much traction to become what we all are told by medical professions and associations?

>> so it turns out there's a psychology to group think and why we believe what we heard first. not because it's more logical or more scientifically supported than the new information, but we like to hold on to what we believed first. dr.fessinger described the comfort or the calm in the brain that we subconsciously like from having one idea nested and settled in the brain. when new information comes in, we don't like the discomfort of two conflicting ideas as part of the community condition. we dismiss new information or subconsciously reframe it to make it fit what we already believe so we don't let go of what we already believe. let's say you smoked cigarettes and the study shows smoking is bad for you. describing the psychology of cognitive decisions. you say without realizing it,

subconsciously going through the acrobatics so say, well the new study must have been done in a different population or doesn't apply to me or they smoke more than i smoke, and i do other healthy habits, and it counterbalances it in my case. we will do whatever we can subconsciously to dismiss the new information. in the real world, there's practical applications. we all do it. part of the human condition. we need to recognize we do this, and then try to actively suspend our biases as we hear new information to consider it objectively. if you look at the food period, for example, once everyone signed on that this was the way to go, and if we could demonize it, we could address heart disease. that was the bandwagon thinking. there's people who have

challenged the fact, the dogma that opioids were not addictive, and challenged that hormone therapy increases a woman's risk in breast cancer, and have challenged the dogma of the food pyramid and the dogma you should avoid peanuts in the first few years. often times with group think, there's a sort of silencing or crushing of the dissent. there's often an allegiance to the institution or the consistent message, or it may be driven by the medical, industrial complex, and those are some of the reasons why i discovered in the book this medical dogma can take on a life of its own. >> the example you start with, in your book, young children should avoid peanuts to be safe. and that is something that was prevalent for a long time. explain who first proposed

that, what the study said, and what we know now. >> well, tragically the american peanut allergy epidemic was ignited by a medical dogma in the year 2000. medical experts at the american academy of pediatrics put out the recommendation that children should avoid all peanut products including peanut butter in the first three years of life. that became disseminated widely, and they thought that avoiding peanut-related products like peanut butter in the first three years of life could prevent peanut allergies later in a child's life, but they forgot about the basic principle called immune tolerance. they didn't consult with the immunology community or study the literature. they shot from the hip and put the recommendation out there because it made sense to them, a small group of people, and it turns out that avoidipeut related products in the first

three years of life doesn't prevent peanut allergies. it causes them because they are sensitive to the peanut-related products. for 15 years, this was the dogma. it went all the way up until 2015, and some people still believe in it. some pediatricians still recommend peanut butter avoidance in the first few years of life tragically. what happened, peanut allergy rates started to increase and surge, and they felt like we have to double down. we have to get more parents to comply with our recommendation. it was a false recommendation. tragically because of that false dogma, we have the worst peanut allergy problem in the world here in the united states. they could have done the study back when they made the recommendation or before they made the recommendation, and when i asked some of the people who made the recommendation, why did you make such a dogmatic recommendation with no scientific evidence? they said the public was asking

us what we should -- they should do to prevent their child from getting a peanut allergy. they thought they should have to tell them something. sometimes the right answer in medicine is we don't know. >> we are talking with dr. marty mckerry about his new book blind spot when medicine gets it wrong and what it means for our health. if you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now. here are the lines, broken down by regional. if you're in the eastern or central time zone. (202)748-8000. mountain (202)748-8001. and medical professionals (202)748-8002. another from book,

talking about peanut allergies, avoidance recommendations still linger. the u.s. food program known as wic in peanut butter for childr despite children who are eligible for the program have a higher risk of developing peut allergies and would benefit e st from the early intrucon. the wic program provides unique public health opportunity to prevent peanut alleie peanut butter was to be one of the foods included, and it could prevent more than 50% of the new cases of peanut allergy every year he said. this is a modern day scandal that is still ongoing. so what are the challenges to countering or correcting information once it's out there? >> one of the broader problems

we see with a small group of medical leaders issuing strong recommendations based on no good scientific evidence, but just their opinion, when they get it wrong, when they get it tragically wrong as they with the low fat and avoiding cholesterol, and ignoring pesticides, and telling parents incorrectly to avoid the peanut related products for the first three years of life. when they get it tragedy wrong, you don't see an apology. you don't see a correction with the same vigor and public profile as you do the original recommendation. they just fade away. what you are left with, this sort of confusion out there. people are left confused as to what to believe. they feel like they hear different things and don't know what the truth is, so we need

to show humility in medicine. our medical leaders need to come right out and say look, we got it wrong. we feel badly about this. here's the truth. putting it out there with the same rigor in which they put out their initial dogmatic recommendations that end up being proven wrong. >> we have a lot of callers waiting to talk with you. we will start with bill in georgia. good morning, bill. >> good morning. can you hear me? >> yes. >> i'm a pediatrician, now retired. the problem that dr. mckerry has spoken about, the dogmatic idea that the american academy of pediatrics and those in the academic parts of pediatrics are always right, that's what has caused the problem in pediatrics, the peanut allergy, the scare tactics of covid, frightening parents, keeping their children at home and

putting masks on babies and children under the age of five. this, purely in many ways, political did driven, and we have -- the american academy of pediatrics has unfortunately lost the confidence of american parents because of their scare tactics. unfortunately dr. mckerry, putting masks on 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds, just sheer madness. i don't know -- there's a doctor from san francisco who totally agrees with me that the american academy of pediatrics screwed up totally, and this organization should be disbanded. it no longer represents

pediatricians. it represents political forces, corporate forces, and all i can say as a pediatrician, i'm very sorry for what the american academy of pediatrics did to the children of the united states. >> dr. mckerry? >> so the american academy of pediatrics has been under intense criticism for its becoming very political. political with a narrative in one direction. they pushed for cloth masks on toddlers for nearly two, i'm sorry, three years. they argued there would be no developpal effects. it's clear they were wrong. they pushed hard for multivaccine booster shots with the covid vaccine in young, healthy children, and they ignored natural immunity, and many rank and file pediatricians, front line doctors out there did not agree

with the recommendations, and so you saw a very big disconnect with a highly politically charged academy of american pediatrics and everyday pediatricians out there. i think it's important for our leaders to show humility. when they get it so tragically wrong, rallying schools to shut out children for one year and 9 months during the covid pandemic, ultimately what they failed to do was look at data from europe that was very apparent, very early in the first year of the pandemic, there was a 10,000 fold difference in covid risk between an older individual with a comorbidity, and a young, healthy child. so the conception of the focused protection was not one they described to. they were open free and clear after two to four weeks of closure in europe for the

entire pandemic. the data was no different. i don't talk about covid much in the book, but it's a peek into how the broader medical establishment has functioned on so many other recommendations. >> james in rome, georgia. good morning, james. >> good morning. i have two issues very quickly i would like to bring to you. first of all, the trump vaccine was not a vaccine. it did not prevent covid. this man was incompetent. the warp speed of whatever happened. it's a failure, making people sick. you do not have regular guinea pigs for the vaccine to be tested. we would find out years and years after it happened. number two, would you delineate to the public all of the experiments that people have used on black people here in

the united states from sticking needles in the babies head to letting people walk around with diseases. black people have been the guinea pigs, all of the experiments you used on black people, but not able to use the vaccine. we have been used as barbarians, but what about the -- would you delineate. >> we will get a response from dr. mckerry. >> the caller is appropriately outraged at the tuskegee experiment. the medical establishment experience with the black community, letting it run in the trial that was grossly unethical. it was barbaric.

people should be upset questioning the vaccine direction, people made it sound like it was the rural republicans that were the number one group questioning the vaccine. that's not true. the african american community had the highest unvaccinated rate, and it may have been because of the trials in e 1960s. >> question from social media a text in. melvin in illinois. can you speak on the issue with more and more people becoming resistant to antibiotics and what it could lead to? >> antibiotics save lives, but they also carpet bomb the microbiom, the bacteria lining the gut. millions of bacteria line the

tract, and these are normally there and are critical for absorption and training the immune system, and some of the bacteria makes seratonin and some glp-1. it lives in the blind spots of modern medicine. more and more research is showing when you alter the microbiome through any one of the modern day factors, it affects people's health. it ignites chronic diseases. a study from the mayo clinic looked at 14,000 kids, and among the children who took the antibiotic in the first couple of years of life, remember, the

antibiotics alter the microbiome forming the foundational time in the first few years of life. kids who took an antibiotic in the first few years of life compared to the kids who didn't had a 20% higher rate of obesity. 32% higher rate of ada. 90% higher rate of asthma, and nearly 300% higher rate of celiac. what is happening here? the more antibiotics they took, the greater the risk of each of these. if you look at the expansion of the chronic diseases, historically, it's parallelled the modern era of antibiotic and antibiotic use. the c-sections alter the microbiome. instead of having it formed initially from the bacteria that seeds their gut from contact through the birth canal, instead born by c

section, and the sterile baby operated from a sterile field, and it's bacteria normally living in the hospital. a study just came out in the journal jama surgery showing an association between the rise in colon cancer we are seeing with people under 50 and having been born by c-section suggesting a role of the gut health. antibiotics should be used appropriately, but not overused. most are overused. >> lynn in virginia. good morning, lynn. >> the trump vaccine. that's funny. the way that was pushed, i was so hesitant about it until i was pressured by my family. i have several diseases, and i read questions about people like me, and how would we react

to the vaccine. of course i developed a heart arrhythmia from it, and spent time in the hospital after one vaccine. i have always questioned the vaccine, especially the number of them. i'm not going to get a shingles vaccine. i don't get the flu vaccine. the only two times i got it, the two times i got the flu. the microbiome. on point with that. it's so important. i was just reading recently about how all of the emulsifiers in our foods are destroying our microbiome and leading to these problems. i would like to know if he's had negative consequences to his career because of his, you know, speaking out about the dogma of the medical community. i will take my answer off the air. thank you. >> dr. mckerry.

>> it thank you for the question. no, i have not had consequences. i have had good support and relationship at john hopkins where i have been on the faculty as a surgeon for 22 years. active as a public health researchers, publishing about 300 scientific peer-reviewed articles. i have had good relationships throughout the scientific community. some people disagree, and some people feel you should not have people with different opinions expressing those opinions when it comes to the vaccine. my team did a large study at john hopkins on natural immunity, published in the vaccine. did a large study at john hopkins on natural immunity in the top medical journal where we tested the blood and measured antibody levels. we had a covid a year and a half almost two years prior to look at the antibody levels. the study was well received in but it was censored from social

media. there is a sense of movement in the united states to say we should have political or part- time. if you do not agree with us on a certain narrative that will be a politically driven narrative on covid, you should not be part of the same conferences. there are a lot of doctors now who recognize that there was a bandwagon thinking when it comes to things like the color vaccine booster in young, healthy children who already had covid and natural immunity. we now know from a recent congressional hearing that at the fda were basically pushed out when the expressed opposition to the covid vaccine booster for young, healthy children. this vaccine went on to be mandated and doctors who expressed different opinions

were called anti-baxter's for expressing this nuance. >> dr. mcgarry, marty makary , a discussion on the recommendations about. nt to read this from your book. one the most common avoid cholesterol. or people to it has been foundational to blic health and help to shape the modern food industry. the concept sounds logical and has a broad course of expert support, including from large position as dishes associations. they believe they had the antidote to fight heart disease , america's number one cause of death, and were busy saving lives with their message that cholesterol avoidance saves lives. there is just one problem. it was never true. explain what happened in this instance and where the current

nutrition guidelines and recommendations say about cholesterol. >> we've got bad guidance on food in diet from the government and have no for 70 years. it's not fixed. it still is problematic. over 90% of those who write the government guidelines are conflicted with big food or big. we need fresh, new people to tell us the truth about the scientific research because nutrition is one of the most corrupted sciences in all of science. about 70 years ago, a doctor named ansell keys told the world that he had a heart attack because he had eaten too much fat, too much natural fat. he put them on a strict low- fat, low-cholesterol diet. his doctor who was really politically connected.

so many groups had demonized that. they were successful. it moved the food supply in the united states. right in front of their noses, they watched obesity rates soar as they moved the food supply to get rid of the fat and added sugar and refined carbohydrates processed foods. we started to watch diabetes and obesity epidemic soar and they did three major studies to try to prove fat in the diet caused heart disease. all three studies failed to show it. these were giant studies, including one of the largest studies ever done in history. unfortunately, we still have low-fat milk in schools and people talk about it as if it's healthier. people have ignored the role of

refined carbohydrates in sugar. >> people are going to their doctor and their doctors are still following the old guidance saying avoid cholesterol, how do you suggest they approach the conversation that maybe they should be trying something different? >> look. the reason why some of us as doctors are writing books like this are two educate people about the scientific truth on health. the science on cholesterol is pretty clear. the dietary cholesterol that we eat does not affect the blood terrestrial levels. that is because dietary cholesterol is esterified. it is bound to and it's not absorbed by your g.i. tract. our made by your body. 90+ percent of the dietary cholesterol soon goes right through you and is not even

absorbed. the irony is that people tiptoe around cholesterol in their food choices when they should be tiptoeing around ultra processed foods, seed oils, highly addicted engineered chemicals that are added to the food supply. about 1000 of which are banned in europe and other countries but are allowed in the united states and pesticides. if they kill pests, what do you think they are doing the bacteria th ght in the gut called the microbe i am? it is affecting gut health. >> along that line, this question to. she says what you think of some of the additive that are allowed to be in our food like i here as a gmo additive. >> high fructose corn syrup has gotten demonized a lot but really, it's just sugar. perhaps it can be delivered in a more concentrated form but we have to look at all of the

entire cumulative burden of what goes down our g.i. tract. in my opinion, as a surgical oncologist, there is a reason why the cancers that are going up are along the g.i. tract. that is because we have poisoned our food supply. we have to look at all of it. >> vincent in oklahoma, good morning, vincent. >> dr. marty makary . i have a question for you. >> go ahead. first is different you, do they work? >> schizophrenia is a real mental health condition with a chemical imbalance and can be treated and treated successfully with medications. this is a good example of medical condition that is real and needs the guidance of a good psychiatrist. on the other end of the

spectrum, you have psychiatric conditions that in my opinion, represent the medicalization of ordinary life. if a child disagrees with an adult, why do they get a diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder? if a kid cannot sit at a desk for seven hours a day with a screwed up circadian rhythm because they have woken up early to go to school at a certain time that is really more convenient for adults and children and then they sit under a fluorescent light for seven hours a day and they don't like it? that is not mean they have attention deficit disorder and need to be medicated. we have the most medicated compilation and history of the world. 20% of our nation's children are on prescription medication. we've got to take a look at the bigger picture. what are we doing to children? paternalism in society that says children are being lazy and disobedient or they are on their screens too much. maybe we have given them

screens have addiction. maybe we have poisoned the food supply. it's not that they are making better choices, is that we have engineered highly addictive food additives in the food system and we have given them these food addictions. we have got to start looking at things differently. we need a fresh approach. we are going backwards and chronic diseases in the united states. we have got to start talking about our school lunch programs, not just putting every young child on ozempic. we've got to talk about treating diabetes with cooking classes sometimes. not just putting everyone on insulin and we've got to start talking about environmental exposures in our poisoned food supply. not just chemotherapy to treat cancer. >> cindy from austin, texas. good morning, cindy. >> good morning. i just want to say to the doctor it is so interesting. i just got to listening to you on the people's pharmacy. i walked in the door and here you are on c-span. i'm glad i am doubles dosing,

so to speak . i have a question. i heard you on both programs mention hrt hormonal placements are therapy. i know you can speak to my specific medical condition because you have never met me but in general, i am 55, i had an mri this week because i was concerned about my mild cognitive impairment, meaning memory loss. gynecologist keep telling me that they cannot put me on hrt because levaquin i had. i would just like to hear your thoughts on if you had a patient who is having menopausal memory issues, does the or any other brain incident mean it's counter indicated? thank you. >> no, it doesn't. i'm glad that you brought up the topic of hormone replacement therapy for women who go through menopause. this represents the dogma that

causes breast cancer and therefore should be avoided is probably one of the biggest screw ups in modern medicine. it's a mistake that continues to state. the dogma still permeates society and our medical field. 80% of doctors still believe it causes breast cancer even though the claim that it causes breast cancer announced 22 years ago was not supported by the study that was released. basically, 22 years ago the doctors had announced that he had just completed a study with researchers from stanford and harvard and that study was the largest study ever done in the history of medicine. a $1 billion taxpayer-funded study to evaluate the role of hormone placement every and he said we ended the study because we found that it causes breast

cancer. he did not release the data and i have gone through all of these details in my book blind spots. about a week later, the data went public and some doctors noticed hey, wait a minute. there is no statistically increase in breast cancer in the actual, raw data. some doctors tried to get but they could not fight the strong current of bandwagon effect. the group that was ignited from both the announcement of institutions and a media that ran with the headlines. the doctor was put on the cover of time magazine. media headlines declared that hormone therapy was no longer a miracle drug, it was now a carcinogen. women flush their pills down the toilet. it is one of the greatest tragedies of modern medicine because as i show in the book, there is never scientific

support increases mortality. i went and interviewed the doctor who made that announcement 22 years ago. he is in retirement. i had a long conversation that i described in the book blind spots. he acknowledged me that it did not breast cancer mortality. to this day, 50 million women have been denied the amazing health outcomes of hormone replace in therapy replacement therapy because of this dogma. to give you a sense of how significant the benefits are of replacing your body's estrogen with estrogen around the time of menopause. women live on average 3 1/2 years longer. their blood vessels are healthy. the blood vessel wall is softer and more dilated. the rate of cognitive decline goes down by 50-60%. the risk of alzheimer is

reduced by 35% in one study. the rate of fatal heart attacks goes down in half and if a woman falls, she will have stronger bones if she is on hormone replacement therapy reducing the risk of fractures. the health benefits are overwhelming. there is probably no medication in the modern era with the exception of anabiotic's that is had a bigger impact on the health outcomes of the population or has the potential to have bigger benefion the outcomes of thpopulation than hormone y started in 10 years of menopause. >> dr. marty makary, this question coming from a text in maryland. good morning. with the guest speak to all advice women receive while pregnant? while i was pregnant, there was a long list of things i was told not to eat. >> i have a chapter in the book on childbirth and how we

welcome babies into this world. you will hear a lot of different things. of course, it is important to get your advice from a good health professional but in general, eating good, whole foods. foods that are organic and don't contain pesticides and avoiding altar processed foods. eating good food that you get from good soil that are cooked as opposed to processed foods that are packaged with a long list of ingredients. it is important to state well- nourished. when it comes time for a -- for the delivery of the baby, mothers can design eight list of goals that they would like to achieve with their health professional. a delivery plan. best practices for eight delivery plan now include a delayed cord clamping. when i was a med student, you

cut the umbilical cord the minute it was clint. now we are recognizing in the benefits that blood flowing for minutes after the baby is delivered is pumping stem cells and fetal hemoglobin which has high oxygen binding properties and nutrients and antibodies and its warm up bledsoe keeps the baby warm. warm infused directly into the circulatory system. mothers should hold the baby for hours. what we call skin to skin ty moore kangaroo time. some birthing centers are now saying we are going to recommend best practices with delayed cord clamping, maximizing skin to skin time as long as the mom can safely hold the baby. that is an incredible incubator. research shows that babies have a more normal blood pressure and heart rate and also interestingly, a more normal glucose level when the mom wants the baby for a long period of time after birth. why is the babies glucose more normal? their stress hormones are not

spiking as often and that changes the glucose of the baby. there is something magical about bonding. part of these include not washing the baby in the first day. the baby has bacteria from the birth canal, a small protein film that covers the baby that is a bit of a thermal coat and it is important for a babies microbe i am developing to be breast-fed and start within an hour of what we call the golden hour of breast-feeding. some women cannot breast-feed physiologically and we should not shame them. however, breast-feeding is better for a babies health and microbiota. >> we have just about 20 minutes left dr. marty makary. cindy is on the medical profession line. good morning, cynthia. >> good morning. my name is cynthia. i am a pharmacist. i would like you to address the

increase use of two prevent cardiovascular events by driving cholesterol levels below 70 milligrams and also, the use of drugs to build in women with osteoporosis. thank you. i will take this off-line. >> thank you, cynthia. a woman can take all the calcium and vitamin d in the world but if she does not have estrogen in the postmenopausal period of life, it will not matter. it will not improve bone strength. that is why it is important for people, women do know the truth about hormone replace in therapy and the vast majority of women are great candidates after menopause provided they started within several years of menopause. regardless of if they had high

or low. i suggested maybe statins have their benefit not from the cholesterol lowering the effect but instead from the anti- inflammatory effect another known effect of statins. on the broader picture, we can keep throwing medications in the united states but at some point, we have to deal with the root causes of diseases and when we have a poisoned food supply and all of these altar processed foods and chemicals that go down in our g.i. tract, our g.i. tract is responding with an inflammatory response to these foods. it is not an acute and inflammatory storm, it's a low- grade chronic inflammation that disseminates throughout the body. inflammatory response and in inflammatory state. that affects the blood vessel of the heart known as the

coronary artery and is inflammation of the coronary artery wall that enables the dense protein some particles to deposit we keep throwing or we can address the root problem, the root cause of behind so many of these conditions. just as a side note. we have the most overmedicated and sickest population in the world. in my opinion, we have done a terrible thing to doctors in the united states. we have told doctors to put your head down, focus on billing and coding and seeing patients in short visits and were going to measure you bite your. that is a terrible way to treat talk to doctors in the united states. we have not given them the time or resources to address the root causes of so many of the chronic diseases we have. as a result, we have developed these massive blind spots of chronic disease expansion in the united states.

pharma has a big, strong hold on the research enterprise in american medicine and the nih has not been interested in these topics. they have been not funding research on food as medicine and toxins that could potentially cause cancer in altar processed foods. instead, they had been funding projects like bad coronavirus research in china which they were funding prior to the covid pandemic. we need good research and the model orning, kathy. caller: dr., kathy. >> dr. mckerry, i love you. you are fantastic. my question is, it seems that almost every premenopausal woman that i talked to, including myself, cannot sleep tonight. they have severe sleep problems. is at a blind spot that nobody

is addressing? >> yes it is. when the medical establishment had demonized hormone therapy for menopause, 22 years ago, it was generally considered, why do you teach menopause in school, there's nothing you can do about it. that is so tragic. the old dogma from the old man that taught medical school curriculums, some women go through menopause, some women of menopausal symptoms, but it's usually short and mild. that is not true. the average duration of menopausal symptoms is nearly 8 years. for many women, they can be severe. menopause can have over 50 different symptomatic manifestations, including difficulty sleeping, night sweats, hot flashes, weight gain , mood changes, dryness, painful sexual activity. there

are so many symptoms that we have loan off in modern medicine . tragically, to this day, a woman is more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant for menopausal symptoms than they are hormone replacement. people need to know the truth about hormone replacement therapy. the dogma that increases breast cancer mortality was never supported by scientific studies. the back story of how that dogma got obligated was a fascinating story to report on in the book, blind spot. a group of doctors told this individual that made the announcement from the nih, you cannot put this out there without scientific support. you can say hormone therapy causes breast cancer. you will create so much fear. was something as sensitive as breast cancer, you will never be able to undo it. it is not supported by the scientific literature. tragically, the nih doctor ignored those scientists and colleagues of his and went colleagues of his and went

>> want to ask you about something else. you talked about in your boot in your book, that is reporting on studies and being objective. the quote, justuse there is a study to support anidea does not mean the study was designed properly, conducted ethically, or reported accurately. whenar people making medical claims, have to taa closer look at the underlying study use to support them. sometimes it rong, or intriguing. other times the study provides zero support for their claims. one my greatest erns is that today's public health and medical experts, and certainly have lost the ability to critically appraise research quality. the shoddy study supports people believe, it is hailed as definitive signs. of the strong study conflicts with a foregone conclusion, it is ignored or knit picked. we hear this all the time, there is always the new studies

coming out. there is not a lot of information that is reported on when it comes to the news. how should individuals and media ldapproach these new studies wh research is reported on? >> thank you for that question. it is important for people to understand that the general concepts of what makes a good study and what makes a flawed study. if you simply survey people, or you ignore other factors that may also play into the results, the study should be suspect. that is my people need to ask good questions when it comes to a study suggesting that alcohol is good for you. for example, if there ever was any benefit to alcohol to the heart, which i don't believe the data supports, it would be far outweighed by the damage to the liver. we talked about opioids and fentanyl, but alcohol kills more americans then opioids or fentanyl.

160,000 americans die each year . it has been in the blind spots of modern medicine. the old argument that we cannot go back to prohibition has silenced any public health conversations about alcohol abuse. should we be actively promoting alcohol abuse? overuse of alcohol, as we do to college students? this is one of the big issues in healthcare that we don't talk about that we need to talk about. in the book, the end, i go through a long list of things where we have done so many things wrong, what are we doing now that is in one of our blind spots? >> new hampshire, we have a medical professional. are you there? >> hello there, this is darling. >> good morning. >> go ahead, you are on with

dr. mckerry. >> hello. i am wondering if the hormone replacement, does it cause blood clots? >> yes. good question. if a woman starts hormone replacement therapy, more than 10 years after the onset of menopause, which they should not do, there is an increased risk of cardiovascular events. that is because, going 10 yearsa without estrogen will result in a narrowing and hardening of the blood vessels, increasing one's risk of blood clots as a consequence. it is not recommended for those that have a history of blood clots, or are prone to blood clots. it's not recommended for those with endometriosis. some doctors , for those that don't do well with hormone therapy, they may

recommend a different form, say a gel form or a transdermal form instead of an oral form. >> let's hear from sky in plainview, new york. >> good morning. i had a question about the origins of s the covid-19 virus. the world health organization and other groups maintain that it did not come from a lab. china destroyed the original samples, is my understanding. they also jailed physicians that blew the whistle on covid. they destroy the samples, they don't let the world see, the dna sequence. my understanding is, that this sequence could not have come