>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made with a headline that read Bite of Dark Chocolate could sharpen your memory within an hour.

Study suggests.

End quote.

That's good news, right?

Got any dark chocolate on hand?

But as longtime healthcare journalist Gary Schweitzer writes, quote, great news if you're a mouse, because no humans were harmed in the conduct of this mouse research.

End quote.

The headline was from Fox News and a Schweitzer writes, the researchers in the study that was mentioned didn't feed the mice dark chocolate.

The paper did mention flavonols, which are natural compounds found in cocoa, red wine and berries.

But that's, of course, very different than talking about a piece of dark chocolate.

So how did dark chocolate become part of a national headline?

And it wasn't just that particular headline.

The misinformation was spread across various platforms and sources.

Schweitzer points out that chocolate and health stories are some of the most popular pieces you may see online or on TV.

But experts have debunked various claims about the health benefits of chocolate.

For example, the stories are meant to be clickbait.

They are designed to get your attention quickly.

We've all probably clicked on them at some point, and you've likely also seen health care related headlines that confused you, or raised questions, or even alarmed you, or maybe a relative of yours on Facebook shared something and you couldn't believe they were sharing it.

But what happens when this kind of clickbait informs actual medical decisions?

How does it affect patients who have to make hard decisions?

What about medical professionals who see people who are exposed to misinformation?

And during this current moment when misinformation is flowing from the federal government and people like Robert F Kennedy Jr., what is the role of journalists?

Our guests this hour are focused on media literacy and medicine.

They help us understand how to spot pseudoscience and healthcare misinformation, how to apply critical thinking to what we see on various platforms, how to identify credible sources and facts.

And I will welcome our guest.

Now, joining us remotely is Gary Schweitzer, a healthcare journalist for 50 years, adjunct associate professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health.

He's the founder of Health News Review, the content, which has now moved to Substack.

Gary, welcome.

Thank you for being with us.

>> It's great to join you.

Thanks for having me.

>> And with us in studio.

Welcome back to Christina Thompson, executive director of the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

And Dr.

Dr.

Rae-Ellen Kavey is with us, retired pediatric cardiologist and volunteer at the Rochester Academy of Medicine.

Dr., thank you for being back with us here.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> Nice to see you.

So first of all, the Breast Cancer Coalition has an event spotting pseudoscience and healthcare headlines with Gary Schweitzer.

It's happening on Wednesday.

What do people need to know?

>> All you need to do is go to our website.

If you'd like to register.

that's.

we also will be recording the webinar and it will be available on our website afterwards.

>> All right.

So Wednesday, 7 p.m.

we'll put a link in our show notes if people want to attend.

What do you hope people get out of the event on Wednesday?

>> Well, I'm just going to say that the coalition loves Gary.

He is a wealth of information and he breaks it down in a way that's very understandable.

there are headlines coming at us all the time from so many different sources, and they just want our attention.

It doesn't mean that anything is factual that we're reading.

And I encounter people every day who have just or have received a diagnosis of cancer.

And so it makes sense to research things.

It makes sense to try to learn things, but it doesn't mean that they're factual.

And it absolutely has the potential for being harming.

>> So that is on Wednesday.

Before then, on Tuesday, the Rochester Academy of Medicine has an event supporting strong teeth.

The science of fluoride and cavity prevention.

You thought fluoride was settled?

Well, here we are.

And doctor, you want to tell us a little bit about what's coming up tomorrow at 6 p.m.?

>> Right.

Well, the program is one of a series that we're doing on trying to increase the base of sound scientific knowledge about a number of critical topics.

And this this month is fluoride.

And the way the programs are set up, as we have a pure science portion talking about exactly how fluoride works, then we have a dentist from the University of Rochester Medical Center talking about the emergence of fluoride as a public health treatment.

And then finally, we have a practicing dentist from the community talking about how he deals with questions about fluoride in his practice.

>> So Tylenol, fluoride, there's a number of things in recent years that have been you know, brought forward as these kind of public health scares.

And Gary has written about them many times.

I want to start by asking you, Gary, just how you sort of define pseudoscience and health news.

And frankly, if this is the worst you have ever seen it in your career.

>> Clearly, yeah, nothing even comes close.

I jotted down a few notes about what I consider to be some of the tenets.

as it is for pseudoscience.

So pseudoscience claims are those that are really impossible to definitively prove wrong.

they avoid the scientific method.

They don't offer any hypothesis that can be tested.

It's usually just anecdotes of what we've seen this in a number of people.

So it's got to be real.

we they use scientific jargon sometimes, apparently very effectively.

But it is to create the illusion of expertise that really doesn't exist.

they often accuse mainstream science and mainstream physicians of hiding the truth.

Or the common phrase, what?

They don't want you to know and they offer easy solutions to complex problems.

There could be a much longer list, but these are things that come to mind as I think about pseudoscience.

And if I could just continue for a minute, I think that one of the biggest, issues is on social media platforms where influencers have millions of followers.

You know, I thought it was pretty cool when I got I think I have 14,000 followers on the X platform, so I found a guy who has 600,000 followers and he called ivermectin.

This veterinary medicine drug.

He called it a cutting edge human cancer treatment.

600,000 followers.

It was reposted 4000 times.

He got 11,000 likes and it was bookmarked by people 6000 times.

Another guy on X who has 2 million followers, described the industrial solvent DMSO as a cancer miracle hiding in plain sight.

And as often happens, he claimed that the FDA choose to to bury the evidence and then finally podcasts, which are a little bit different, but they're a form of social media.

And Joe Rogan is the roaster of of so many pseudoscience claims on his podcast, he had the actor Mel Gibson on a couple of times.

One time when Gibson talked about three friends with stage four very advanced cancer, whose cancer disappeared after taking two.

Anti-parasitic drugs, he gave no evidence, just offered anecdotes.

These stories about his friends, that podcast episode on YouTube so far has had more than 12.5 million viewers.

That's kind of hard to combat, and that's that's the onus of the problem.

>> So let me follow up in a couple of different ways here.

First of all, I really appreciate the point that you're making about anecdote and how powerful an emotional anecdote can be.

It's easy for it to go viral.

You've shared, for example, a lot about how quickly Tylenol became this object of obsession, and here are some headlines from Infowars, Infowars, pregnant liberal woman suffers fatal Tylenol overdose after trying to prove Trump wrong.

Now allegedly on a ventilator fighting for her life.

It's an interesting headline claiming she's on a ventilator, fighting for her life after suffering a fatal overdose.

So I don't know if she's dead or on the ventilator.

But regardless, that's the claim there.

Here's another Infowars.

Infowars shock video pregnant women gobble Tylenol after President Trump issued a public warning triggering mass hospitalizations and organ failures.

So that one should be easier to check.

Are we having mass hospitalizations because of Tylenol problems?

And the answer is no, we're not.

But when you see something like.

Well, look at this woman.

She's fighting for her life.

She's on a ventilator.

All she was trying to do was take a couple Tylenol and stick it to the white House.

And now she might die.

That's a very emotional, visceral thing to think about.

And apart from being able to call this person or call their doctor, I don't know how you'd verify that, but it's easy to share it.

So I really appreciate the point that you're making about one of the early indicators of pseudoscience or pseudo medicine is really dramatic claims that can't really be verified, that are purely anecdotal and often very emotional.

but it works, doesn't it, Gary?

I mean, it really works in the modern media age.

>> It does.

And so when I cite some of these numbers, like, the, the guy who had 600 thousand followers it doesn't stop there because those 600,000 followers in their own network probably spread it.

X number of times beyond 600,000.

You know, who's we want to give listeners and viewers some tips and one really good one on this very case example that you just raised.

Evan, is a website called Newsguard.

I think they're actually being sued by the Trump administration right now for something.

But Newsguard is run by a couple of veteran journalists almost as old as I am.

And they, they cover false claims across the board, not just on health care, but they do a really good job from time to time.

There's probably at least 1 or 2 a week that they publish and they debunk doing a great deal of really interesting research and research that gives users everyman tips on how to see through the hype and the false claims in a lot of these pseudoscientific claims.

>> Well, Joel writes in to say, ivermectin sure cleared up a terrible infestation of mites among our backyard squirrels.

Not sure I would take it as a treatment for anything else.

Fair enough.

Joel.

but, you know, I want to go back to something Gary said as well about not just ivermectin, but there's a a style of language you will often hear, which is this is what they don't want you to know, and they is always sort of the shadowy cabal.

Sometimes it's big pharma.

but typically Gary, when that is the claim, here's something that they don't want you to know.

What is the claim about?

Why?

Why are they trying if there is a miracle cure for cancer, if there is a miracle cure for Covid, why do they not want you to know it?

>> Well?

Well, I can throw some things out, but none of them make much sense to me and I doubt that they will.

To your listeners and viewers.

so that it is a it is a conspiracy on the part of the American Medical Association or their members and and hospitals and medical centers which just defies belief defies evidence.

but that's just it it sounds very easy to say that an industrial solvent has been around for 50 years, and it's a cancer miracle, hiding in plain sight.

and if you're dealing with an audience that is so overwhelmed with this tsunami of claims that drown the American public every day it's easy to I understand it.

I don't relate to it, but I understand that it's easy to glom on to things that seem easy.

That's because you've had some issues with physicians or with the healthcare system that you you just whitewash everyone and blackball everyone with one sweep.

And, and so you fall prey to these claims of an easy way out.

And people get hurt.

>> Well, so let me ask our guest in studio Christina Thompson.

I'll start with you as the executive director of the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester, how does misinformation and disinformation end up sort of on your radar, and what worries you the most in the sort of the context of your work?

>> That's a great question.

And, you know, ivermectin is something that I hear people who are newly diagnosed or new to us.

>> Ivermectin with breast cancer.

>> Yes.

Breast or gynecologic cancer.

Those are the folks that we serve.

they can they may be asking us about it as an alternative to treatment.

And, you know, I I've got to imagine that they heard it through the social media platforms and saw the exact things Gary was talking about.

And I'm more than willing to have a one on one conversation and show some data and show really reliable sources that refute this.

But at the end of the day, they're going to make the decision that they want to.

we are very much at the coalition of the mindset that there are a lot of complementary therapies to our traditional medicine, and we want to be able to help you through any adverse side effects that you may experience during treatment.

but they are not a replacement for the tried and true evidence based treatments that are being proposed.

>> Are there people who ask if ivermectin can be used instead of chemo?

>> Well, I make it very clear that that's not something that I did, so I can't speak to it.

And if they want to be matched with someone else, which is something that we do regularly, who did that successfully?

I don't have that person to share with them.

>> But okay, but that's the kind of question you're getting.

>> Those are the kind of questions.

And then I think there's also a lot of just misinformation on treatments in general.

so, for instance, I spoke with someone who was going to forego radiation for breast cancer treatment because she's terrified of needles and anesthesia, which are not a part of radiation treatment.

So we needed to break it down and just get to the basis of that.

Something she had heard from someone else.

>> Okay.

I mean, don't you wish there was a study that's going to be published tomorrow that says ivermectin cures everything?

>> Absolutely.

>> Wouldn't that be amazing?

>> That would be amazing.

But I mean, I've heard it since I was born.

If it's too good to be true, most likely it is.

And I think that we have forgotten that statement.

>> Okay.

And I also appreciate your desire to work very patiently with people because, again, nobody who is worried, unsure about vaccines for their children is unsure because they actually don't love their children and they want their children to suffer.

Nobody who is thinking maybe ivermectin instead of chemo is doing that because they think, I'd like to ensure that I'll have a shorter life.

People are really looking for good information, right?

And I appreciate the patience that you show.

but these are major decisions about their health.

>> Yeah.

>> So do you find that most conversations at least do yield more trust in doctors and in established medicine and the treatments that work?

>> Yes.

I think that just that approach of one on one and supporting but never like belittling or anything like that.

Sure.

I mean, I usually what I say is we are extremely lucky if we are diagnosed with breast or gynecologic cancer in Rochester because we have a number of fantastic providers and systems that we can access.

That's not always the case.

So let's break it down and say that this is what one provider proposes a treatment plan.

If you wanted to have a second consultation in a different system or with a different provider, you could do that.

And the best case scenario is they're going to come back with the same treatment plan.

So it's just you know, reiterating that this is the right thing.

If you got a different treatment plan, you're, well, you can make a third consultation.

And so just follow the information.

>> Well, before I turn to doctor kV, let me just ask Gary Schwitzer why in particular did ivermectin get this?

It's not even a moment anymore.

It's years of almost religious devotion among some folks.

Why do you think Gary?

>> Well, big influencers like Joe Rogan, can take the credit or blame for a lot of that.

you know, it wasn't claims in established medical journals that got people turned on to this idea.

It was the wildfires being set largely on social media.

>> Yeah.

And I also wonder, Gary, if we all need a little bit better.

And maybe that's part of what these what our guests are doing this week with these events better both media training and sort of just basic medical literacy, you know, so I had norovirus recently.

I would not recommend it.

Not a lot of fun.

The nice thing is it's fast.

It was sort of in and out of my system pretty quickly.

I could have taken ivermectin four hours after I knew I was sick, and then a day later I would have started pretty comfortably convalescing and I could have said, well, you know, I took ivermectin and it got better.

Well, I got better anyway.

I could have taken anything.

I could have taken ginger ale for a day.

I actually think I did that.

But regardless you know, I think we have this cause and effect struggle.

And so if you have an illness that you're going to convalesce from, you have if you have a common cold, a regular old coronavirus, a common cold you know, it's easy for you to figure out in your own mind.

Well, I got better because I took xyz or I did XYZ, whereas if you have breast cancer.

You may not get that chance.

If you're going to make a decision based on bad information.

And so how do we get better educated about that?

I mean, how do we all get better educated?

Gary.

>> Yeah, there are some really good sources that I'm just going to run through.

A for you and for your listeners and viewers.

I think that stat news stat, which is a subsidiary of Boston Globe Media, is just hitting it out of the park every single day.

K health news used to be called Kaiser Family Foundation.

It's now K Health news on health policy issues has been terrific on investigative health care journalism.

Although that's not all they do.

ProPublica is terrific.

And thank God that one of our old tried and true wire services, the Associated Press, has really done a terrific job in the last couple of decades on health, medical and science stories.

But in social media, let's not overlook some of the people who have taken the opportunity to find a platform for their very important voices.

So there are top epidemiologists that I turn to every day like Caitlyn Tina, whose Substack is called, Your Local Epidemiologist.

another woman Dr.

Jess Stier, s t I e r who has her own private Substack and then is in with a group of other people called unbiased science.

And there's a guy who goes by the name Health nerd.

yeah.

Gideon.

>> Yeah.

>> Gideon.

Meyerowitz-katz who is very good and can help anyone I think could could help people in elementary or middle or high school start to hone their own critical thinking.

we tried to do this for 16 years, Evan, on this site that, as you said, no longer exists, called Health News Review.

And it's a shame that when we turned off the lights nothing filled that void because we did it for 16 years, and the whole mission there was, was not to degrade or be overly critical of the news media, but to help lay people, help news consumers, health care consumers to improve their own critical thinking by looking at how my team and we had about up to 50 people, a lot of physicians a lot of researchers incidentally, with four women who were diagnosed with breast cancer and were trained by the National Breast Cancer Coalition in how to evaluate evidence, were among our reviewers.

And we just thought, and I believe this and I think we had the evidence to show this, that if people would follow how our team reviewed claims that were made about health care interventions, they themselves could become smarter.

Healthcare consumers.

>> Hope so.

Dr.

Dr.

Rae-Ellen Kavey, let me turn to you.

As a retired pediatric cardiologist and volunteer at the Rochester Academy of Medicine, and as someone who I would say, knowing you over the years, you are concerned about sort of public education levels on health information.

Is this the worst you've ever seen it?

>> Oh, without a doubt.

Without a doubt.

I just wanted to bring up something that I think is a little bit of a common denominator, and that is when people are afraid.

And the pandemic is a good example when they're diagnosed with breast cancer as a good example, it's really hard for them to take in facts at that time.

They're desperate.

They're reaching for whatever.

And that's how that's one element, I think, in how things like ivermectin and inappropriate treatment for breast cancer could creep in.

So I think it's important.

Something you mentioned, let's get health literacy at a baseline established when people are not as much afraid, when they can take in information and have it in the back of their mind.

When an issue comes up.

So that's one of the things we're doing hoping to do with the Academy is provide the information upfront so that when a question comes, like with fluoride, as it's coming, you say, oh, you know, I heard about that.

Let me go back.

Let me think on this a little more.

Let me remember what I heard on that day when I wasn't really afraid.

>> I think that's a great point.

Fear is very powerful.

Yeah.

People want answers.

They want solutions.

They're desperate for a solution that will work.

They're very vulnerable.

so I really appreciate that.

Are you surprised to see fluoride, for example, which is your topic at the academy this week?

Is that something that you ever expected to sort of be back in the public debate?

>> You know, I never did.

I think fluoride has been an enormous benefit for, for all of North America, actually, Canada and the United States.

And I'm just astonished to see this.

but it has come from on high concerns from the EPA and from Kennedy.

And people listen, they are worried because somebody they think well of, or at least they recognize as an authority is telling them they should be worried.

>> The Kennedy thing is interesting because until this new administration doctor Cavey, they could be hearing whatever RFK Jr.

was saying.

And he spent years campaigning against vaccines and saying all kinds of very, very, not only wrong things, but dangerously wrong things.

I thought during his Senate confirmation, he kind of downplayed some of the worst of what he has said.

But he still now kind of bringing that same approach.

We see the results of that.

The difference is he's considered by many Americans to be a health authority now.

So before he was like this anti-vaccine crank.

>> He still is an anti-vaccine crank.

>> But he is now considered a health authority.

So he has this patina of authority and that that makes it much more difficult, I think, to convince some, probably some Americans, that he is wrong.

Right.

>> Well, for sure, there's no question.

And also, he has a pulpit that is bigger than any influencer because what he says is magnified and restated over and over again.

it's also misunderstood over and over again and incorrectly conveyed.

But yeah, he's in a much more powerful position now.

It's still astonishing to me, though, how readily people will accept information that is untrue.

It's still astonishes me.

>> Gary Schwitzer with RFK Jr.. I mean, like lately, part of the problem I have is a journalist is there are times where I kind of want to have a conversation about some of the things he's doing that I think are interesting, like, I want to talk about food dyes.

I want to talk about like ultra processed foods, which I think probably merit more conversation.

And but now you bring his name up and the whole room gets divided immediately.

Either either he has admirers or people who can't stand it.

And it's like, well, I guess we're not going to talk about food dyes or something.

That is, you know, maybe more legitimately interesting because of how polarizing he is.

Have you ever seen a public health figure like him in your career?

>> Well, it is easy to find polarization in health care.

Unfortunately there shouldn't be in science.

because evidence rules the day.

And but interestingly, now he has helped put in the minds of the people who follow him and listen to him.

we don't listen to the experts.

Experts, expertise is a bad word in this administration.

And there are signs, though.

There was a poll that may have been a KFF poll last week, and I forget the percentage.

It was 50% or more of those polled lack confidence in the ability of federal health agencies, the FDA, the NIH, the CDC to to live up to their responsibilities.

So I don't know who's wising up.

but I think that it is happening.

And, you know, I think that the more that Kennedy does videos where he admits that he snorted coke off a toilet seat, the more that he jumps into an ice bath wearing his jeans after doing no shirt on, crazy looking workouts with kid Rock.

The more that he even graphically puts a mike Tyson Maori Tribe tattoo look on his face and now holds up kid Rock and Mike Tyson as some of the most important figures in influencing dietary changes in this country.

The more he does that, he's digging a hole.

He's not going to be able to get out of.

because he's just losing more credibility with this every day.

There are a lot of big egos in these federal health agencies.

unlike anything I've seen before.

These guys, he Marty Makary at FDA and Dr.

Oz at Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, love hearing their own voice, love seeing themselves on camera and are doing it unlike anyone in federal health agencies in the past.

And I don't think it's sitting well with people.

>> Well, when we come back from our break, we'll take some phone calls and emails from listeners.

You can call the program toll free.

844295 talk.

It's 8442958255263 WXXI.

If you call from Rochester 2639994.

As always, the email address for the program Connections at wxxi.org.

You can join the chat if you're watching on the WXXI News YouTube channel.

We're talking to Gary Schweitzer, a health care journalist who's done a lot of work in this field over many years, and he's going to be part of the event on Wednesday night that the Breast Cancer Coalition is putting on.

Christina Thompson is the executive director of the Coalition of Rochester.

And Dr.

Dr.

Rae-Ellen Kavey is here, a retired pediatric cardiologist who volunteers at the Rochester Academy of Medicine, who's putting on their own program tomorrow.

On the subject of fluoride.

So we're going to come right back and we'll take some of your feedback next.

I'm Evan Dawson Tuesday on the next Connections.

We've had a lot of commentary from elected leaders about solar, about why some elected leaders at the state level don't want to see more solar arrays, particularly on possible farmland.

We're going to talk myth versus reality when it comes to solar development, and answer any questions you might have.

We'll do that Tuesday on Connections.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

We'll start with Robert in Fairport on the phone.

Hi, Robert.

Go ahead.

>> Yeah.

thanks for taking my call.

One of your guests kind of mentioned that the the perception that Kennedy was the person that sort of started this whole fluoride removal of water kind of thing, and I don't think that's accurate.

If you look at it Europe's been doing this for a long time.

Most countries in Europe and Western Europe don't fluoridate their water.

I'm not saying I'm a fan of that.

I think that it probably has some benefits, but I ran across it in a business trip probably 15 years ago in Maine, where a community there was having a vote on removing fluoride from water.

And in the United States, this has been going on for probably 20 years.

>> Robert.

Thank you.

Now, certainly RFK Jr.

wasn't the one who who is the only one who's pushing the idea.

Dr.

Cavey.

>> Oh, yeah.

I'm sorry if I gave that impression.

I just know that he happens to be someone who speaks about the neurotoxicities that can come from fluoride in the water.

>> okay.

And so, Robert, that's a fair point.

And it's not when you see criticism of fluoride, this is like a lot of things.

There is some discussion that's perfectly appropriate because my understanding as a non-doctor non researcher is that both too low and too high level of fluorides can be a problem.

It's also important to know thresholds.

Thresholds, you know, because someone will say like isn't arsenic bad?

But isn't there like arsenic in x, y, Z?

Well, it's always about thresholds and knowing what you're dealing with.

So it's dangerous for someone with a little bit of information, like me and the public, to assume I know too much.

But I think there's very legitimate questions.

And from what I've read about Europe, most of Europe does not fluoridate their water.

They use things like fluoridated salt.

They've got, you know, other ways of sort of dealing with fluoride as an issue.

and they definitely do have those conversations.

And then there are the conversations that people like Gary have chronicled, which is the claim that fluoride is a program of government mind control.

you know, there's any number of claims I could spend the next ten minutes on, if you want, that are not just about good faith questions about fluoride.

They are not designed to be, I think, good faith they are.

They're more in that category of here's what they don't want you to know.

Here's how they're trying to control you, and here's how they're trying to harm your children.

So there's a there's a spectrum.

And I'm sure Dr.

Carvey tomorrow night, probably a lot of that will get addressed, I assume.

>> Oh, yeah.

In fact, we have three different speakers dealing with the subject from different points of view.

But I think the really critical critical information there, Evan, is that a small amount, the correct amount of something at a level that is measured and appropriate is one thing.

High levels with people taking high levels, because there is a new study that shows that people who drank fluoridated water, their adolescents have higher scores on aptitude tests, knowledge tests.

So there's bad information, misinformation in both directions.

And it has to do with not getting the evidence right.

>> Yeah.

So Robert, I do appreciate the call.

This is not just Kennedy thing.

And I don't mind people asking appropriate questions.

We should all ask appropriate questions about how products like fluoride, of course.

and fluoride is probably like anything else, like too much.

You don't want too much of it.

A bell pepper is good for you.

Don't eat 500 today.

You know, that's probably good advice.

And I'm not a doctor.

Anything you want to add on fluoride?

Gary Schwitzer.

>> You know what's.

Well, not not to not to the point of Robert's call, but it strikes me that the common theme, somewhat of a common theme between fluoride and the Covid vaccine or any vaccinations is the feeling from the Maha group that this is being imposed on them.

without any input and against their will.

And I am sensitive to that.

but it's it's important, I think, for us to step back and see the commonalities in some of these claims and what's behind the thinking to make those claims.

And I think in this case, that's one of them.

Don't impose things on us without our input.

We've seen that across the board on a variety of issues.

>> Gary, let me also ask you just a question about some of the debate we're seeing.

And you brought up the Make America Healthy Again.

Maha movement that is sort of a a Kennedy idea.

And a lot of his acolytes will will use that phrase.

But there's something going on just today, and I'm going to read from the Hill's reporting today.

This one surprised me because Kennedy has had his hobby horses over the years, one of them being glyphosate, which again, I don't have a whole lot of expertise on glyphosate or what we spray on crops or products.

And again, I think there are fair questions about pesticides.

There's fair questions about how we raise our food.

But glyphosate has been in the crosshairs of people who are big Kennedy followers.

They want glyphosate gone.

Well, the Trump administration recently had an executive order boosting the use of glyphosate, protecting and expanding the use.

And here's how The Hill reports it today.

The Maha movement, spearheaded by Kennedy, is skeptical of Big Pharma, especially vaccines, big chemical and big agriculture, and Republicans long time pro-business positions have increasingly put them on a collision course with the Maha movement.

On this issue.

Kennedy, in a post on X Sunday night, implied that pesticides can cause health problems, but he said they are necessary to ensure an adequate food supply and to the disappointment of many in the Maha movement, he came out and said, quote, I support President Trump's executive order to bring agricultural chemical production back to the United States and end our near-total reliance on adversarial nations, Kennedy wrote.

So he's endorsing the president's decision to greenlight more glyphosate, even though a lot of people in the movement are against it.

Is this the kind of thing that can split a movement, or does a movement basically say, I'm with that guy no matter what?

So whatever he says, we'll go with?

I mean, how does this typically break down?

>> I think that there is some evidence with some of the recent polling that I alluded to earlier where it is splitting up.

his followers and, you know, I, I kind of think we could reuse that Maha acronym.

to make, make America honest again.

because there have been so many untruths, so many false claims, so much misinformation.

It's interesting.

It wasn't hard for me to find at all.

It's all over social media clips of Kennedy, I think from late 2024 saying no holds barred, that glyphosate has been proven to be cancer causing agent but when the president says, I'm going to boost production, we just flip flop.

as there have been so many flip flops in this administration.

Again you know, we're going to lay off several thousand people in the Doge effort or cut them loose.

And then we realize who we let go.

And so we tell them, well, come on back to work.

so this is just something that I think we're going to have to become accustomed to.

And and steel ourselves to it.

>> So let me ask all three of our guests, then a little bit more about what they think we can do to become better consumers of information.

There's a lot of emphasis on how kids are on social media, but I think that that is a good get out of accountability card for all of us adults who are on our phones too much, who are on social media too much, who are no longer reading books, who are seeing a TikTok or an Instagram reel that makes claims about maybe it's glyphosate, maybe it's fluoride.

You know, maybe maybe it's treatment for breast cancer.

And and we share it.

You know, it looks sort of juicy and interesting and you share it and it's hard to vet it.

and I don't know how you kind of come back from this.

So I'll start with Gary, but I want to ask all of our guests about this.

I mean, you act ask a lot of Americans where they're getting news these days, and news comes from social media.

Now, that means it's probably coming from different sources, or it's chopped up and packaged in different ways.

But it is really hard to vet.

I mean, I got an email from a listener named Jim who says, like, where's the data on all of these health stories or claims?

Like, we never see the data.

I don't even know if we're asking for the data.

I think we just see something that sounds really it fires us up and we share it.

Maybe it confirms a belief we already have and we share it.

Or maybe it scares us to Dr.

Kv's point and we share it.

How do we get better at this, Gary?

I mean, like, I'm tempted to just say like get off social and start over, but I don't know if that fixes everything.

What do you do?

>> Well, I'm going to tell you just three.

We used to apply ten criteria to the review of any story that made a claim about an intervention.

I'm only going to emphasize three of them.

And it's to the to the point of what this listener raised with you about.

Where's the data?

We gotta learn to help people assess whether a story or a claim has told you how big or how small are the proven potential benefits and how small, or how big are the potential harms?

We have to quantify those things for people.

And if we just say it's very helpful or it's very harmful, that shouldn't cut it.

Where are the numbers?

and if you don't see any assessment of the quality of the evidence, we need to drive into people's heads that a so first of all, many of these claims are made without any studies behind them.

But even when there are studies, a study is not a study is not a study.

There is a hierarchy of evidence with the very best studies at the top and a lot of garbage down lower in that pyramid.

And these are easy things to to teach people to look for.

Did you quantify the harms and the benefits?

What are the numbers and did you evaluate the quality of the evidence?

>> Okay.

well, let's ask our guests in studio.

What do you think of that?

Christina Thompson.

>> Well, I think the approach I try to take is to meet these people where they're at.

And so, first of all, we will certainly have this wonderful webinar experience with Gary on Wednesday.

It's going to be recorded.

I'm going to refer people who didn't meet me before that to this in the future.

and, you know, my daughters are ten and 13, so they're very much into social media and the screens and things, they're very much into makeup and cosmetics and personal care products.

And there's a great app out there that I turn them on to that scans the barcodes and helps them figure out if something is full of garbage or is better.

And it can offer alternatives.

And so I've tried to kind of meet them where they're at, you know, they're going to continue with these TikTok trends.

And I'm like, hey, look it up on the app and let's see what's really in that.

>> Yeah, I'm not saying that nothing shared on TikTok has ever been true.

Of course that's not correct.

I mean, there's a huge range.

so okay, I appreciate that.

That's a mechanism of maybe dealing with it.

Do you want to endorse getting off social entirely?

Oh.

>> God, that sounds so lovely, but I can't.

I mean, there's I know there's great things about social media too, and I think it's just that continual education on what is the source.

Is this a.com.

Is this an org.

What what do they want you to buy.

You know we've got to just be smarter.

And we say the same thing about fundraising for breast cancer.

You got to follow the money.

Who's benefiting.

>> Yeah.

Just as a brief aside the comedian and songwriter Bo Burnham had a song called welcome to the internet, in which he catalogs all the ways the internet.

Internet has sort of come to corrode our brains.

And as we're kind of the New York Times recently had a conversation about if we were redesigning the internet, what would we want to get from it?

Because clearly we didn't sign up for this.

So Christina's point's a good one.

I mean, there's certainly good things that can come from it, but, boy, we're often just navigating the swamp of all the other stuff just to try to get to the good stuff.

Dr., what can we do better here?

What do you recommend?

>> Well, I think I'm just following both of our of your previous guests.

I think when people hear something about something, that's the time to look into it.

That's the time to try to get educated.

Not when you're afraid or not.

When you have a family member affected or or your child is sick.

And what is going on here?

The the question, I'll give an example.

Yesterday I heard on NPR about a huge number of studies showing that when children adolescents smoke marijuana, they have a greatly increased incidence of psychotic disease in mental illness of all kinds.

In the future.

I knew nothing about that.

I had not heard anything about that before.

I went directly to try to find out more, to try to learn more.

I'm not affected by that.

My kids are not adolescents anymore.

but I there there was a fact I knew nothing about but an extravagant claim that mental illness follows excessive use of cannabis in adolescents that I've not heard before.

And that's the time.

That's the time to follow up on it.

>> let me get back to a couple of questions and comments from the audience before we lose the hour.

One on the phone, Herman in Brighton next.

Hi, Herman.

Go ahead.

>> Hi.

I wanted to give a couple of examples where misinformation was a problem.

And then I also have, have a question.

some people, including a friend of mine, consulted the vaccine adverse Event Reporting System, theirs.

And because she read in the paper some, some claims, claims that we are not being told the whole whole story.

And on that basis, she decided not to get vaccinated for Covid.

And I think it's important for us to spread the message publicly that that is not that is raw data.

That is not anything that you can go on on its own in terms of determining the degree of risk she also was had applauded the recent decision of Health and Human Services to, to cut off funding for mRNA research.

for new flu vaccine and other kinds of vaccines, because she claimed that that would change that mRNA vaccinations would change your RNA and that would be passed down to your children.

And through the generations that I'm not a doctor, but or a researcher, but it's my understanding that that is not true, that.

>> No.

That's right, that's right.

And, and I, I just got to jump in, Herman, because that last point and I, I don't want to lose all the hour here, but boy, that is a really important point that Herman's making.

Gary Schwitzer we've seen in recent weeks, companies come out and basically say that certain development of mRNA that looked promising is going to be shelved because of the disposition and worse, of the federal government on this.

So we could see tangible changes to health care options and outcomes based on what we're seeing at the federal level right now.

Right?

>> Well, we could, but with, if you're talking about the Moderna flu vaccine as you may have seen, that has now been reversed again, probably because of the great outcry from the public.

And so I don't know if it came down from the president or what, but now that drug is going to be reviewed.

another really important example of of a flip flop.

Evan, I just wanted to I wanted to add to what I said before about big picture things that people ought to look for.

on many treatment decisions and certainly on many screening test decisions.

This is something we're going to be talking about quite a bit on the breast cancer webinar on Wednesday.

There are trade offs involved.

There's something you stand to gain, but there's something you stand to lose.

And if you only hear about what you stand to gain, I would run for the hills because there are so many trade offs or potential harms that need to be investigated.

And the other thing is, one of the things that is so good about publication in scientific journals is that there is almost always there should always be a section in the scientific paper which anyone could read.

That is the limitations that the researchers themselves admit exists with their work.

And I'll see so many news stories purportedly based on studies that don't ever mention the limitations.

So we need to train people to look for that as well.

If somebody does not mention what keeps you up at night, what do you not know about your research?

What are you worried about?

About what you don't yet know?

Then I don't think you're getting a very good, complete picture of the state of research and the way research is done.

>> Well said, well said.

I'll close with Naomi's email.

Naomi from Henrietta, I'm going to send this over to Dr.

Cave.

She says, I wonder what your panelists think about the role of shorter, more difficult to access appointments with doctors.

I wonder if 15 minute appointments make it difficult for trust between a patient and a physician to develop doctor Dr.

Kavey, what do you think?

>> Yes, I agree with that.

I think there is such a focus on, time and money.

Money and time in the medical profession that it's changed dramatically during the time that I practiced.

So I actually saw it and felt it happen.

And I agree that is a real problem.

You can ask for extra time.

One thing that's useful are the zoom calls that you can make, where you can follow up on something that happened in an appointment, but we just need to have a little bit of time to talk patient to doctor, doctor to patient.

Thanks for bringing that up.

>> Well, Naomi, thank you.

It's a really smart email and it's a good way to close the program and let you know that there's a couple of events this week.

Tomorrow night, 6 p.m., at the Rochester Academy of Medicine on East Avenue.

It is a live, in-person event, and it's part of the series that the Academy is doing on pseudoscience, debunking bad information and helping people get good information.

The specific event tomorrow is called Supporting Strong Teeth The Science of Fluoride in Cavity Prevention.

That's at 6:00 tomorrow.

Free.

But registration is required.

We're going to have a link in our show notes if you want to attend.

Wednesday, the Breast Cancer Coalition has the event spotting pseudoscience and Healthcare headlines with Gary Schweitzer that starts at 7 p.m.

again free.

It's a virtual event.

Registration is required.

We're going to have a link on our website and in our show notes.

If you want to check it all out there.

Christina Thompson, executive director of the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester.

Thank you for being here.

>> Thanks for having.

>> Me, doctor Dr.

Rae-Ellen Kavey.

Thank you for being back with us.

Thank you.

Gary Schwitzer.

Great to meet you this hour.

I know they're looking forward to having you on Wednesday.

Thanks for sharing your expertise with the program today.

>> Thanks for having me, Evan.

>> He's a healthcare journalist, 50 years of work here and great conversation.

Today.

We're going to be right back with you all tomorrow right here on member supported public media.

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