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S15 EP147: Hour 3 - Big Pharma is Good

Episode length: 37m

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Moderna and Merck just posted the first successful late-stage trial of a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, intismeran paired with Keytruda, cutting the return and spread of high-risk melanoma, and Erick Erickson spends the hour singing the praises of Big Pharma and taking apart the conspiracy that drug companies are hiding the cure for cancer. He talks about his wife's stage 4 lung cancer, why a lung transplant was never an option for her, and why the people most certain a cure is being suppressed are the loneliest and most isolated people in America. Then a full turn to the loneliness data: Brad Wilcox on unmarried young men outnumbering married men two to one, Rosaria Butterfield on why your messy house is an excuse and not a reason, and why going to church is the cheapest mental health treatment in the country even if you do not believe.

  • Moderna, Merck, Intrisan, and Keytruda: the first late-stage win for a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, a $50 billion market cap swing, and Merck's Jane Healy on a whole new field of medicine
  • Why the "Big Pharma is hiding the cure" conspiracy is really about envy, covetousness and isolation, with Erick's account of his wife's incurable lung cancer and the genetic protein behind it
  • Caller Allen, an oncology pharmacist who worked with Emory, on why cures do not sit on a shelf, how small companies and private equity bring niche drugs to market, and the new mRNA flu vaccine approved under RFK's FDA
  • Modern monetary theory, grocery prices, Publix milk and beef, and why the answer to a bad economy is not the vice president's plan to dump the dollar as the world's reserve currency
  • Brad Wilcox, the Institute for Family Studies and "Get Married": unmarried men 20 to 39 up 47 percent, Gen Z and Gen Alpha social trust at record lows, and the COVID isolation hangover
  • Rosaria Butterfield on hospitality, what Christians could learn from their gay and lesbian neighbors, and the atheist who goes to church every Sunday for the friends
  • Personal color: Alan Ritchson and season four of Reacher, a kitchen renovation, Sunday nights on the porch, a camera crew coming to film the cinnamon roll recipe, and two hours in the orthodontist chair
Host:
Erick Erickson