The Leading Life Science Podcast
Welcome to the Leading Life Science Podcast. I am your host Leigh Fell, CEO and founder of clinical development company Caritas Science Solutions and reader of all things wellbeing and performance based science.
In this podcast I speak to change makers and thought leaders from all different disciplines, in life sciences, in wellbeing, from Scotland and from further afield, all of whom are making a difference in developing our collective and whole person health.
We talk leadership, the science of leadership, leading science, life science and the science of life.
Whether your interests are pharmaceuticals, complimentary therapies, sports, nutrition or simply taking charge of your own health, we talk about it all and introduce you to some of the most innovative and ground breaking minds in our community.
The Leading Life Science Podcast
S3. Ep004 Some thoughts on RFK Jr confirmation hearing
Transcript:
So, at the risk of sparking some heated debate, I wanted to try to gauge where we are at as a sector on the whole RFK thing!
For context, I’m recording this on Thursday morning UK time, Thursday 30th January. So Robert Kennedy Junior had his first confirmation hearing yesterday in front of the senate. That is, to decide whether he will become the new US health secretary serving under Donald Trump.
He will have another hearing today so I guess we’ll find out more but I was interested to hear people’s initial reactions.
Now, I only managed to tune in to a snippet and the rest I’ve read the highlights this morning.
I think we can all agree that there’s a major crisis going on with our health and specifically with the culture around maintaining our own personal health. Huge issues with processed food! I don’t think any of us are debating that are we?
How you take on the food industry I have no idea.
But if you know me, I think you’ll already know I fully believe we should be promoting whole person health and we need to promote health from the foundations up so prevention of disease through good nutrition, exercise and psychological practices and training.
Incidentally I believe that as an industry that specialises in health innovation, we should be at the forefront of promoting that culture, We have a responsibility to promote cultures of health within our own teams, but that’s a chat for another day.
And you’ll also know that I’m still a big believer in the place for pharmaceuticals and that if we can maybe remove some of the noise, we can really focus our efforts on areas that really really need our expertise.
Anyway I digress!
Obviously the big controversial topic is vaccines. I’m going to avoid the topic of covid vaccines as I think that is quite complex.
But on vaccines in general, my feeling was that he seemed a little unclear about his answers.
I do worry about hearing scepticism around the likes of polio and measles as I believe the evidence overwhelming supports those campaigns and it would be great to see a world where we could eradicate preventable diseases like those. The ideal scenario being that those drugs make themselves redundant!
The counter argument being put forward is that he is not anti vaxx but that he wants to promote more scrutiny in the drugs we develop. So he is supposedly advocating for much stricter trials for safety and efficacy.
I mean, I think we all work pretty hard to ensure trials are run properly so is this more about how the regulators review the data?
Do you think we’re going to see changes in the trials sector? I don’t know, what’s your reaction?
