I get a team. It's a new project. Doctor Bills back. I was going to say my absolute favorite, but that's probably not fair, but definitely in my top five favorites. And we have a lot of people here and appreciate you, sir. It's great to have you back. I love chatting with you. I was just pumping up your tires. Have you heard that expression pumping up your tires?
No, but I can gather what it means.
Yeah, that's an Australian expression for kind of you know, telling you you're amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, So if you're pumping up someone's tires, you're making them feel good. But it's you know, in this case, it's genuine how have you been?
I've been great?
And let me just say it's it's always a pleasure to come back to your podcast. It's you know, I really enjoy speaking with you.
Is it?
What are you not necessarily about this one? But in general, like doing this is probably the easiest, and by easiest, I just mean the less, the least pressure, the most comfortable. This is almost the easiest way to do right.
Probably most of the other interviews are more formal, and they play into my credentials in biomedicine, and the advice that I might be giving is, you know, more like standard of care type of thing.
So it is a pleasure to.
Come on here in a little more of an informal atmosphere and you know, just shoot the breeze about various topics.
I used to work in television for a little bit, and by a little bit I mean a few years, but like a weekly thing, and my weekly thing was anywhere between five and seven minutes. So I'd literally leave home,
drive into the city. You know, you've done it before, you've done television, and you go in and you get you sit in makeup, and they put stuff on you, and you get prepped and they wire you up and then and it's just this, it's a really impractical, impossible way to deliver quality information and build any kind of connection and rapport because you walk onto the TV set between ads, you sit down, they count you down, and then they kind of intro the show, and then they
intro you, and then they talk to you for three or four minutes, and half the talking is them, and then it's like that's quite carperence, you know, and it's like, oh, there are so many things that we can't say, you know, we really it's a really difficult way to share genuine insight and helpful information because the practical reality of the situation is you've got almost no time to talk.
That's true.
You got time enough for maybe three or four bullet points, and you don't have time to discuss caveats or pitfalls with any of those. So your message really has to be filtered to a degree where sometimes it's almost meaningless. So it can be frustrating at times.
Yeah, exactly, especially when especially the interviewer or interviewers have they've got a little b in their bonnet about a particular angle, or they want to know, they want to dive in on something, and they have an opinion and they almost want your endorsement when you're like, well.
It isn't exactly that. And then but don't you think though, you know, it's like you know, now, we're about opinion, we're not about science or information. But yeah, that's what I love about this. I mean for me being able to talk. You know, you and I can talk for twenty minutes, we can talk for an hour, We can go wherever we want to go. We don't need to throw to an ad we don't need to keep the sponsors happy. We have sponsors, but you know, there's no interruption,
you know. So for me, the free range kind of capacity to be able to just conversationally go wherever we want is quite liberating in especially in a time twenty twenty five where everything is five second posts in ten second reels and sound bites and grabs. You know.
Now, it's really refreshing to be able to go deeper on some of these issues and you get at the nuance of some of these topics. And the other bonus is that when you post these on your Facebook, Craig, your listeners are fantastic. They ask some intelligent questions or ask for resources, and it's great to be able to have that venue to follow up on.
Yeah, exactly. And if you are a listener and you don't, you're not part of the Facebook group. So it's just the You Project podcast Facebook group. And yeah, we post every episode that goes up, We talk about it and feel free to jump in there. And if you've got a question or you've got any thoughts on potential guests, hit us up and we'll see how we go. But we love having that community, and I love creating something that's you know, thankfully for the most part, very positive.
We have very very little negativity in that space, which is just a little bit of a light in the the social media darkness sometimes. So I'm very grateful to that for all of that from all of our listeners. Speaking of such things, I was looking at something on something came across my social media landscape, and that was some guy being hysterical about the fact that this new study is out and we're not going to dive into the study. I just want to talk about this thing.
This where you know, there's there's apparently that the COVID vaccine is causing all this cancer and blah blah blah, and it's it's a new research study. It's out from South Korea. And I thought, well, one, either that's crap, or two they're you know, they're misinterpreting something or or it doesn't exist right. And quite often these things when you go to try to find that research, the research
doesn't exist. Anyway, the paper does exist, and I had a look at it, and yes, the video clip was quite misrepresentative to say the least, But does that frustrate you being a researcher and being someone who's only interested in truth and facts and science where you see things or things get brought to your attention which are super duper misleading and very very incomplete.
Yeah, well it concerns me on a number of levels because when and just full disclaimer, I have not read that study. In fact, Craig was one of the first to bring it to my attention today. It's brand new, so I don't have you know, I can't speak one way or the other on it. All I can tell you is there's a lot of other studies that have been done that's say, the exact opposite, absolutely no link between COVID nineteen and increased cancer. So it's probably a
red herring. But the upshot of the question boils down to this sensationalism or you know, a study that comes out that may bolster someone's by or preconceived notions gets a lot more press than the many other studies that are that show the opposite result. And this is known as confirmation bias. And when you're cherry picking data and just representing one side of the story that happens to align with whatever your personal beliefs might be, that does
a disservice to the entire biomedical community. It does a disservice to your listeners. I think it's irresponsible to not, you know, weigh both sides of the equation with you know, an equal you know, an equal amount that correlates with the amount of evidence that's out there. You know, if you're going to say this one study shows this, I think it's responsible to say there are many other studies, however, that do.
Not show this effect.
I think that is just giving the audience fair and balanced information.
Yeah, totally great. And even the ULSA is in that pipe, which that the highlight real thing that I saw on social media didn't mention this. Authors basically say this doesn't in any way reflect causation and it may not. Like there's lots of more research that needs to be done, so they actually weren't claiming anything but that paper if people want to look at it, it is one year. Risks of Cancer associated with COVID nineteen vaccination was published
September twenty six. But if you want to save yourself some time, I had a scan this morning and it's relatively inert. It doesn't really say a whole lot more than what we've just spoken about. Speaking about things that might affect our body. There has been will definitely affect our body. There was a bit of controversy about what's called thailand ol in the States, and we call it paracetamol, and an alleged link between that and autism. And I
might get some of this wrong. I'm not all over it, but I'm pretty sure RFK, who for some reason is like the health minister or something. What is his job? How the fun did you get that job?
That's a really great question. Well, he got that job because he's a Trump loyalist. Basically, he is woefully unqualified to be the Secretary of HHS, which is the American Health and Human Services. This is a guy who literally said, no one should be taking medical advice from me. But that's his freaking job. It's to give medical advice. So your question is really on point. How in the world did we come to this point. It's an excellent question,
and it boils down to politics. Unfortunately, it does not boil down to what's in the public's best interest.
Hmmm. Yeah, it's like, yeah, like me being a direct point of the creative director of the bolsho or ballet or something. I don't know. It's like, no, Craig, you're not a good bit for that. You have no talent, you're not creative, you can't dance. So the allegation or the message was that it causes potentially there's a lot doesn't cause, but there's a potential link to increased rates of autism with women, pregnant women, was it? I think, yeah,
pregnant women using tailanol. Where did that claim come from? And what's the actual skinny on it? What's the truth?
Yeah?
So this this was a disastrous press conference on a number of different levels. First of all, they completely mischaracterized what autism really is as a you know, as a condition, and very insensitively painted everyone on the spectrum with a very wide, you know, a very broad brush, and it really misrepresented and offended a lot of people with who
are on the ASD spectrum. It's autism spectrum disorder. But getting to the point about the drug, a set of menafin or what we call tailanol in the States, paracetamol, I guess is what you guys referred to it as all the same drug, same molecule, And this press conference pointed to a series of very dubious studies that were summarized in a review article suggesting that there may be a link between people who are pregnant taking tylenol and
then having children who have an increase increased risk for developing autism. So there was no nuance provided here and no mention of studies that proved otherwise. So it was a really irrespondsible announcement. Just unbelievable that this came from an HHS secretary in the States, because that position commands a great deal of attention worldwide. You know, many people outside of the US pay attention to what our Human
and Health Services Office states. So this has the potential to be, you know, quite devastating for families because what it might end up doing is steering pregnant people away from taking a medication that could be very important with respect to curing pain and fever during a pregnancy. Pain and fever are known to produce miscarriage, stillbirths, birth defects, and wait for it, autism. So by discouraging people from taking this medication, you actually may be increasing the risk
of autism. So it boils down to your question, where did this come from? Well, it came from this one dubious review article that cherry picks studies that showed a very tiny risk which was not emphasized in this press conference. The risk is extremely small of autism being developed, and they failed to mention two studies that were much larger, much better controlled, and did what we call a sibling pair analysis, which controlled for a confounding variable of genetics,
because that is the main driver of autism. If you talk to anyone with a medical or scientific background, it boils down to genetics. But this paper, what this press conference was trying to say, Actually, I think I have a quote here from Trump, who had to chime in, of course. He said tail and all is quote not good, quite like hell, not to take it, and even admonished women to just tough it out. You know, just you have a fever of one hundred and five, just tough
it out. You're going to tell the fetus to tough it out too, you know. It was extraordinarily insensitive and irresponsible from from a biomedical scientist's position. And we can we can go over some of the data which I think might help your listeners understand a little bit better where I'm coming from.
But does everything make sense so far? Great?
Plain? Yeah, Yeah, I just I know Trump has no filter, but it just to me, I'm like, even he must realize sometimes surely, surely you're not the guy to comment and even if you think something, you don't know it and I don't anyway. Yep, all right, give us give us some of the stuff. Anton.
I actually that that reminds me of something, Craig. I would love to hear your interpretation, you know, as being a representative of all of Australia, which I'm sure you are. Yeah, what you what your country thinks of what has happened with respect to you know, this press conference and so on, How how your government agencies responded. I'm sure they refuted the claims and encouraged your medical professions to continue giving paracetamol during pregnancy for pain and fever, as did like
every other worldwide uh medical organization. So we can circle back to that at the end, because I'd love to hear, you know, an outsider's perspective on how you're perceiving the US.
Now, yeah, let's let's get to that light. But definitely, I mean they're just my thoughts, but yeah, so give us, give us the deeper kind of understanding of what we're not understanding with this tile now autism kind of issue.
Yeah, absolutely, so, first, a little bit of common sense, you know, that can dispel it pretty quickly. Two thirds of pregnant women in the US take Thailand all for pain and fever, and the standard of care is to give as little as possible for as short as possible. Okay, that's that's just the standard of care. That's not a
great revelation that RFK made. So when you consider the sheer number of pregnant women in the US taking Thailand all already, and the fact that two thirds of our kids do not have ASD you know, it's actually less than one it's actually less than three percent, and only one fourth of that three percent have the severe and profound autism that RFK misled people to believe that's what
everybody with autism is like, gross misrepresentation. You can see right off the bat that these number don't make any sense. They don't align, you know, in any meaningful way. Many people use thailanol without incident. Autism cases have been documented prior to the introduction of tailanol. It wasn't mass marketed until the late fifties, but there's plenty of cases in the literature for autism, spectrum disorder, and even profound autism.
So that doesn't make any sense. The studies that they were citing were correlational, just like the South Korean study that you mentioned claiming a correlation between the COVID vaccine and certain cancers. It's not causation. There's a wonderful meme that circulates that illustrates the dangers of drawing conclusions from correlative studies.
You can make a.
Graph of rising autism diagnoses and the amount the popularity of organic foods in marketplace and low and hold they correlate. Okay, both of those graphs go up in the same direction. So what RFK might have you believe if he was reading this graph based on his interpretation of this data, is that, oh, organic foods cause autism. So correlation doesn't mean anything unless you have a biological mechanism, So we have to keep that limitation in mind. The association, as
I mentioned before, is also very small. It's one point one times more. That translates to less than ten percent greater risk. To put that in perspective, let's consider the increased risk that smoking does for lung cancer. That's a ten to twenty times greater risk, which translates to almost a thousand percent greater risk. So these studies that they
were citing were marginal at best. Okay, no dose dependent effect was ever recorded, which means, like you would expect that the more tail and all taken during pregnancy, the higher the risk or more severe autism should show up. That's not the case. There's that that doesn't hold up, and there's no mechanism that's been proposed. If you're going to tell me Thailand all causes autism, I want you to tell me at a molecular level how that's happening.
And nothing like that exists. Same with the COVID nineteen vaccine and this cancer link. Okay, fine, tell me how in the world that can possibly happen. I haven't heard any plausible model. So those are the things that I need in place before my government makes some kind of you know, sledge hammer demand that we should stop using a seat of menafin during during pregnancy.
I've got yeah, go ahead, ask a question.
I'm just sorry, I'm just I'm being completely silly here, but I'm thinking about correlation versus causation, right, I'm thinking, well, I'm going to do a graph. In fact, I probably might do this on social media because I'm a fucking idiot. But like in the last ten years, we've seen both electric cars, the use of electric cars go through the roof, and diabetes.
Now I'm not obviously Craig, you know those electric cars are causing diabetes.
Well, I mean that can't just be a coincidence, Professor Bill Happy, I mean.
Go publish it, Go publish it.
I think I think I've just solved the type two diabetes crisis. We just got to, I think, go back to internal combustion engines, get rid of electric cars. Problem solved. You welcome world. That sounds ridiculous, but it's not that far away, is it.
No principle, that's exactly what's happening here.
Because what you need to think about in these studies tailan al. They're claiming there's an association with autism. There's no plausible mechanism for how that can happen, at least nothing that I've read. So what that might be indicating to us is that it's an indirect effect. What are these pregnant people taking the tilenol for. Is it an infection? Is it some kind of pain disorder. Maybe that's what's causing the autism. You know, that's a study that's worth
following up on. But you don't come out and say, Thailand All's causing it, because that could be a total red herring, meaning it could be totally an indirect effect, and you're going to miss out on what the direct effect is. Okay, you can, you can take away tailand all from pregnant women, but still not fix this problem because that wasn't the issue to begin with. So that's that's why these these types of reckless announcements are just
so dangerous and not serving the public well. And the biggest sin that they committed at this press conference was that bigger and better studies have been done and there's no link whatsoever between the use of a set of menace and during pregnancy and the risk of autism. And what those studies have found point to the confounding variable of genetics, and the way they do that is they compare siblings, which is something these other studies never did.
And when you compare siblings, which rules out the genetic factor or you know, allows it to be considered, there's no link whatsoever that the set of metaphemetic medication was not a player here. So what are these two studies? Well, there was one in Sweden conduct in twenty twenty four. It's the largest study on this topic ever conducted to date. It involved two point five million children monitored over twenty
six years. You couldn't ask for a better and more comprehensive study, and they found no link when they did disibling pair analysis. And if one study is not good enough for you, well in Japan there was another study done just this year two hundred thousand children. It's not in the millions, but two hundred thousands in appreciable study. I would call that a good size. Again, found absolutely no link when the sibling pair when genetics was considered.
All the scientific and medical societies that I'm aware of, including the American Academy for Pediatrics, American College of Obgyn, and the World Health Organization, all of them denounced this press conference and reiterated that tailanol is absolutely safe to give for pain and fever during pregnancy, and in fact it should be given because that can cause complications if you don't treat it, and there's no other medicine that's safer, and there's no compelling evidence of the link, you know,
based on these two very large recent studies that have been conducted. The AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics characterized this press conference as quote filled with dangerous claims and misleading information. And that's just inexcusable in our government officials.
You know what's interesting is that like the actual lack of transparency and scientific kind of integrity, Like they're standing up there going, this is the real science. This is what they don't want you to know. And it's really just a it's just as you were talking about before.
It's really just confirmation bias playing out where we're looking at this thing which is not a very well run study with this dodgy what we call an Australia dodgy evidence or whatever interpretation of results versus these mega studies that we're not talking about that actually contradict what we're talking about. I mean, it's the funny thing about science and scientists is that every scientist has got an opinion
and emotions and an identity and a brand. And I'm not saying I'm doing a PhD. So I'm not throwing me and you under the bus. But the problem is that it's so hard to find people who are truly truly I mean especially in the public space. I mean perhaps where they don't care about the outcome. They just want the outcome, like whatever that is, Like they don't have an emotional or a financial or a career kind of interest.
You know.
It's like, how do we just get to truth without putting all the bullshit, without putting all the confirmation bias and the intolerance and the agendas. And yeah, that's and for the average punter who listens to this, who isn't a scientist or a researcher, or a medical professional or a health professional, no wonder, it's confusing and no wonder. Sometimes we don't know. It's like we've got more information
than ever and more confusion than ever. It's tricky, I think for the average person to know who to trust, who to pay attention to. You know, even with us and we're not pointing people in a direction, We're trying to have a rational conversation about something that's been big news.
Yeah, and that doesn't bid well for the future, not just the US, but globally. And you know, I think this is a global trend as we become more and more saturated with information, and we have a bunch of non experts or adjacent experts getting out there and just saying a bunch of stuff that is not true, or is downright misleading, or is a flat out lie. And they're doing this for attention or for money, and it's or maybe they think they are doing it for a
good cause. But what it boils down to at the end of the day, like you said, the public is not getting the information they need. You know, we can't be experts in everything. We rely on experts to tell us what's up and to give us evidence based policy and guidelines so that we can protect ourselves and our families.
And if we.
Destroy that system of trust, you know, I don't know where we go as a species moving forward. We're going to implode because people will be making decisions that just aren't based in reality and that can be absolutely devastating for them and their family. And that's what really breaks
my heart. You know, I've been studying, like, you know, biomedicine for thirty some years now, and then people come and show some YouTube video to me of someone who has absolutely no experience or hasn't been in the trenches on this and they ask me what I think, and like, why would you even consider taking this person's advice?
What credentials do they have?
You know, what have they done in their lives to contribute to biomedicine.
And it's just such a.
Misorientation of you know, of what we should be paying attention to.
And it's quite scary.
You know, I was not caught car mechanic to do heart surgery on me, and vice versa. We have to be able to trust and rely on experts. And when you have a government telling you not to trust the experts, you've got a real serious problem in your hands.
That's true. I feel like for you, I feel your pain, Like I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, you know and you're not You're not perfect, but you know a lot and this is your field and you are an expert, and I think it must be must be frustrating for you. I'm not at your level, will probably never be at your level in anything. But you know, I've owned multiple gyms, I've worked in the fitness industry in my whole life.
I've trained thousands of humans, work with tens of thousands of bodies, and sometimes you know when people are talking about training or something that I absolutely know, not I think or I guess. It's like no, I know this for certain because I've been in the middle of this thousands of times and somebody says something and it's completely untrue.
It's not like, oh, it's a little bit wrong, it's completely wrong, but they say it with such conviction, right or Probably the most misused phrase on the Internet in regards to science or alleged science or health or wellness information is research tells us. All somebody's got to do is preface any fucking statement with research tells us, and then people think that's science. I'm like, research doesn't tell us that. Or when people go, oh, I've done my
own research, I go, what does that mean? Tell me what your research entailed, because no, disrespect, I'm pretty sure you've done no research. Maybe you jumped on the internet and looked at things that isn't research.
Yeah, yeah, you don't need a lab code to do that.
No no?
Yeah?
Oh well, so is there any light at the end of the tunnel, Like what is the what is the panacea? Like how do we is it just people like you and me talking about this publicly and like pushing back a little bit and trying to shine a lot on that.
Well, I'll answer that question, but I do want to touch on a point you made, and it's just my personal opinion.
I don't know.
I haven't done my googling on this, Craig. So I would imagine research shows that it's our negativity bias that has a lot to do with this, because experts and doctors are wrong from time to time, or you know, they say one thing, new studies come out and they change their mind you know.
That's how that's how we progress.
Right, If we never changed our minds, that means we're not learning from new data that came out, So that should be part and parcel part of the process. And I think that's misunderstood. And when we hear about a doctor who did something bad, or you know, a scientific study that was later proven wrong, that sticks to us like glue, and we forget about all the thousands of
studies that have held up. We forget about the tens of millions of doctors who are giving good advice every day, saving lives every minute.
Those don't make the news.
All that really gets sensationalized are the negative stories. And I'm not saying they shouldn't be reported. But I am saying that we as media digestors, need to keep in mind that we are being only shown a sliver of reality, and that sliver is usually something that is going to
drive a headline or drive clicks. It's probably a little sensationalized, and we need to be cognizant of that, and keep in mind that there's lots of stories not being reported because they're not exciting that show that experts are getting it right all the time, So we have to you know me, I think that's a big part of the problem. It's a built in bias in our brain. I'm not blaming anybody. It's not our fault, but we should recogni that and try to be more savvy and intelligent when
we're listening to these influencers or watching these tiktoks. Got to check out their credentials and we have to fact check them in robust ways that rely on evidence and scientific or medical consensus.
My training partner, God bless him, he's the current reigning Australian conspiracy theory champion. He sends me about ten conspiracy theory videos a day. Shout out to the crab. His name is Mark I lovingly call him the crab because he looks like a crab and he moves like a crab. But yeah, he's way down the rabbit hole, Like he only comes out of the rabbit hole for lunch, you know, and then then back.
Wow.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, I think we all trust like that. He trusts nobody. He sent me. I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to throw him under the bus. He sent me one yesterday on this guy like who I don't know, worked for the Air Force or NASAU or someone, and talking about yeah, flat Earth, And I'm like, come on, bro, surely we draw a lot. Surely, surely we draw a line at flat Earth, even you. And
I'm like, yeah, so it's it is. I mean, we've never had the level of access to information, good and bad information, misinformation, actual information, pseudoscience, real science, hysteria, data like, but it's all coming at us unless you're very discerning or educated. It's often, you know, I'm mildly educated, and it's still hard for me to figure out what's what.
Yeah, you know, I actually feel a little sympathy for conspiracy theorists. I mean, the glom into something that seems exciting. That seems different. I think their intentions are often genuine. You know, they're trying to help, you know, they think they got something, you know, fascinating or important to share, even though it's demonstrably false.
For some reason, they are immune to hearing.
About the truth, or they think it's a hoax, which is another thing I get all the time, you know, you know, the conspiracy Whenever you show data or debunk something, the easy out is while it's just a hoax or you're lying. I mean, okay, well then it just boils down to a matter of trust, and you know, you can trust the conspiracy theorists or you can trust experts who live in the real world.
And yeah, I don't know, but I do.
I have sympathy because I sense that a lot of those conspiracy theorists have genuine feeling that they're trying to help. They got some kind of top secret information that the world needs to hear. But it's just so so terribly misguided, you know that. Yeah, yeah, it's a little heartbreaking. But to get back to your point, is there some light at the end of this tunnel?
Well?
I was really encouraged to see so many scientific and medical organizations coming forward immediately, you know, against what these recommendations were that came from our own government. And that was great to see because a lot of people are no longer standing up to some of the lies that we are being fed, some of the falsehoods that are being propagated. So it was encouraging to see them take a stand and say absolutely not, this is this is
this is totally nuts. Here's why listen to your doctors, not the guy who said, don't take medical advice from me.
Yeah, there seems to be I mean, from the outside looking in and the very far away lens through which we observe the US, which of course has just filtered through our media, is there a bit of pushback, more pushback coming, Like we have this thing, all these rallies, no kings, this has been on our this has been occupying out TV screens for the last day or so. Just give me an insight into that.
Yeah, that happened today and it looked to be an extraordinarily huge event. Or no, I'm sorry, it happened yesterday, but it looked to be an extraordinarily huge event. The turnouts were far greater than I think anyone really expected.
So I think, you know, there's an extraordinary amount of people in the US who see through all these lies, who see through the propaganda and have a greater understanding of what fascism and authoritarianism really is, and you know, conceive that this is a dangerous road that we are going down. We have, you know, a president that is you know, just so unpresidential, so unprofessional, and so puerile in his remarks and actions that is just not befitting
the integrity of that office. To many people, this is a global embarrassment and they just can't believe, you know, that it happened once, much less that it happened twice. So I don't quite know what the future holds, because now that the Republicans have power of so many things, they have both houses of Congress, they have the president,
They've stacked the courts. It it almost seems like a helpless situation that there's no way the Democrats are going to ever reclaim power because of all the gerrymandering and things that are going on that don't really allow them to have a fair fight. But seeing something like the No King's rallies does give you a glimmer of hope, you know, that when you can visibly see a bunch of people out there saying we're not going to take this, that's inspiring.
There's something like, I don't know, two and a half thousand different like groups rallies around the country, so definitely there's some momentum. So always good chatting to you, sir. We appreciate your wisdom and your insight and your time anytime and you're shakiness. Thank you so much. We'll say goodbye fair but thanks mate. I appreciate you for being on the project and being such a fun part of our team. Thank you.
You got it, Craig, thanks again.