COVID was a wake-up call, because our system is broken.
Our voices were silenced, and the truth hidden.
shots were mandated. Healthy alternatives were banned and billions were pocketed by big pharma.
As frontline doctors and medical professionals we took a stand and said no more. And our members
went to work to reform our health care system and restore the doctor-patient relationship.
That's resulted in a historic shakeup and the elevation of RFK Jr. to lead the world's
most influential health care agency.
Now we have an unprecedented opportunity, a chance to redefine health care, not simply
to make America healthy again, but the world.
Together, with your partnership, the Independent Medical Alliance is shaping the future of health.
We're taking on the chronic disease epidemic.
We're restoring power to patients and independent medical providers.
We're fighting for transparency in medicine, for truth, for you.
This is more than a conference, it's a movement, it's honest medicine.
the future of health. Honest medicine, redefining health. Join us, be part of the change.
You guys just gave me chills, all the clapping. I love it. A very important time. Well, I'm going
to bring on Chris Martinson. For those that don't know you, not only is he CEO and founder
at Peak Prosperity, which is an amazing organization that does a lot of great educational work and
breaking news on economic issues, which are probably very timely right now, energy and the
environment. But he's also a board member. And our board members don't get paid. They do a lot of
amazing work just from their heart because they're so about the mission. And Chris is also a senior
fellow in toxicology. So he's bringing great expertise. He's going to emcee our conference.
We'll have different moderators, but we got the real pro with us today. So I'm going to turn over
to Chris. Oh thanks. Oh thank you. I see a lot of who's who's been here before and yeah
this is turning into like a friends and family gathering and and and that's fantastic. So
we've tried to leave lots of space in between panels except this morning. You'll just have
a few short ones. But the point of this whole thing is to get to know each other to reconnect
to recharge because you just saw in the video. We're not kidding. This is the greatest
opportunity we're gonna have to redefine health. So my goal here is to set this
from the top down and then so we can ground it to the bottom up because
that's where the magic is gonna be in this story. Policy and the actual
actions that make the policies actually live. Without further ado we are gonna
have this panel gentlemen as I call you out can you come up and take your seats
and the first up will be Dr. Joseph Varon,
and he is co-founder of the FLCCC.
We're gonna hear all about that.
President, Chief Medical Officer, obviously of now IMA.
It's hard, you know, that's easier than FLCCC.
And Chairman and President
of Doherington Medical Associates.
Next up, Jeff Hanson.
Jeff with the FLCCC, I mean, from the beginning.
He's been extremely generous with his time and his funds and if if it wasn't for Jeff
I don't think I don't think this room is here today. He was really instrumental at the beginning and throughout
Next up David Mansdorfer
Welcome David former HHS deputy assistant secretary of
health and I am a senior strategic advisor and
famous as of recently as being the person who fired more people at HHS
But I believe that does not hold the record anymore.
We'll hear more about that.
And then finally, Tim Clark, not last but certainly not least here, former White House
HHS liaison.
All right.
Well gentlemen, welcome.
The point of this is to understand what's really possible now at this particular moment
in time.
there I just want to ground because this is big you wear the IMA now and that
represents a lot of flux and change so I want to try and help everybody get
oriented on that but let's start is all good stories with how we got here so Joe
so how we got here and I mean how we got here is using resilience I mean what a
resilient look at you guys started at five doctors bouncing ideas among each
other because people were dying in front of us. People were so sick we didn't know what to do. I would call Paul Paul would
call Pierre. I mean we were all discussing what can we do. Zooms at three o'clock in the morning. Crazy things. And look at
where we are today. Look around you guys. This is incredible. A group of people that were bound together by one goal. And that
was at the time to save those patients with COVID.
And that's when most of us opened our eyes.
That's when we realized what was going on.
And many of us who had been following traditional,
conventional medical culture, like you call it,
we realized that there was something intrinsically wrong.
And we needed to do more than just take care of patients.
and that's when we created the FLCCC, which most of us had issues with the extra C's. I mean,
I'm so happy that we are now the IMAs, but I'm serious. I mean, come on, how many times you
didn't say the FLCCC and you were missing one C and then people would look at you straight.
So, but we created this organization that started out of, again, now we have thousands of
healthcare professionals following thousands, actually millions of health enthusiasts that
are following us. I mean, we are somebody that now we can truly make a difference,
not just on one illness, but on a series of illness. So we started as five guys just bouncing ideas
and look at where we are today. Indeed. So Jeff, you've been here since the beginning
And tell us what you signed up for
and how that maps into where we are today.
You know, it's been a labor of love
and it's been an unbelievable journey
working with such courageous physicians,
scientists, clinicians, other providers.
And, you know, I was asleep in 2019.
I thought, you know, generally government,
it's bureaucratic, a lot of red tape,
but do our health agencies genuinely care about
the health and welfare of society?
And I would have said, yeah, of course,
maybe a little bureaucratic, less efficient,
but ultimately, yes.
And then I entered into 2020 as many of us did.
Many of you have been awake for a long time.
That wasn't the case with me.
I had my head down 25 years,
raising a family, building a business.
And when I peeked my head out,
I realized that the world has gone mad.
I think you coined that phrase, Paul,
and I'm stealing it from you.
And I realized the regulatory capture, the conflicts,
very little of it is actually about public health.
And that really scared me.
At the time, five years ago,
all four of my kids were school-aged.
And I got in this fight because 30 years from now,
I can't look back and say I did nothing
because we have to seize the opportunity.
And I'll tell you, it has been a wild ride
and I would do it over again 10 times.
And I think the key is that we won this by the skin of our teeth and we're in a political organization. We've got progressives conservatives throughout the organization.
We'll always be a political and will support people that are supporting the right types of health care policy regulatory and policy reform.
But ultimately our friends are at the at the highest levels in HHS and the derivative agencies. This window is open for us now.
now barely open. And if we don't seize the opportunity and drive real reform and real change this window is going to close as
quickly as it opened. And I think it's essential and it's incumbent upon every single one of us whatever our gifts and our
talents and our abilities are to drive change now for the sake of our children and and our grandchildren. So this is an
important fight. And we're a piece of it. And the last thing I'll mention we're an important piece because and I don't need to
be hyperbolic here and frankly I'm not. Marxist tendencies always go after control of education health care food supply. We are an
essential component of decentralizing America and putting the power back in the hands of the people again. Yeah.
Jeff I want to get to that open window with both David and Tim next. But first can you introduce them a little bit more
completely than I did yeah so David what's it been four months now yeah so
David and I live about 15 minutes a lot of this is serendipity I think or divine
appointments but we both live in Keller Texas and so does Eric I don't know
where Eric another outside member of our is that okay so David under Trump 1.0
served as his technical title was deputy assistant secretary of health which is
one vertical inside of HHS,
but he was involved so early in the administration
and there was a lack
of organizational leadership expertise.
There were a lot of scientists,
a lot of clinician types,
but there was not organizational leadership.
So he took that mantle very early
and has the esteemed reality of firing,
as you heard from Chris,
more HHS employees than anyone
in the history of the organization.
He oversaw all 280 advisory boards to HHS,
which is what Tim, 40,000 people,
completely restructured these advisory boards
and it's union type labor, if not straight union labor.
I don't know what the nomenclature is in HHS,
but he was the point person for negotiating all labor
for all 80,000 full-time employees.
By the way, there are somewhat something like 140
to 150,000 outside contractors.
So this is a behemoth organization
that I didn't fully appreciate,
frankly, before meeting David and Tim and Eric.
Now, Tim was actually appointed
as the White House HHS liaison.
And I'm like, what does liaison mean?
It is not a superficial role.
That's technically the individual that's responsible
for installing all the political appointments
and responsible for overseeing all 280 advisory boards.
And he delegated that responsibility to David.
So the depth of understanding
in terms of how our health agencies work
and how to get things done is unparalleled
and you folks have been a real gift to the organization.
So it's great to have you.
Thank you.
Nice.
Thank you.
All right, I want to draw on that depth of experience.
David, we'll start with you.
So you were there for Trump One
and Jeff just said he thinks a window is open.
So A, what was your experience under Trump One
and how does that differ from what you see
in the landscape today?
Well, it's interesting because I used to hold a lot
of these records until about last Tuesday.
and then they really knocked him out of the park.
So I feel very insignificant these days
when you mention my numbers compared
to what the esteemed secretary Kennedy is doing.
But what's interesting about it is Trump 1.0
was a incredibly tumultuous time
when it comes to health policy.
If you all remember right,
we had the big conversation about repeal and replace.
We had the fortune of watching Senator McCain
give us the thumbs down on the House floor
and potentially looking at
repealing the Affordable Care Act.
And so I remember the first administration at HHS
that first 120 days to 180 days being a time of kind of
anxiety and nerves with what we could accomplish,
how we could do it, even what we were doing.
This time around, they have, I mean, as you've seen,
we're now barely 60 to 90 days into Secretary Kennedy,
and they've already enacted sweeping reforms
at the agency, starting at personnel,
all the way moving up to actually restructuring
large subdivisions within the agency,
like SAMHSA, HRSA, and even my old office,
the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health.
And so what do I see right now?
I see hope and opportunity
because we just had the great reset at HHS.
And if we don't step in right now,
we are going to lose this chance
because in politics, like you all know,
we're a pendulum society, right?
And so we had the pendulum swing our way
and we really have 18 months to deliver
until the pendulum potentially swings back.
And we have additional wrenches
that are gonna get thrown in like house oversight and others.
So I see a secretary Kennedy as being a complete disrupter
along with the president Trump, but the window short
and we need organizations
like the Independent Medical Alliance,
which is perfectly positioned to provide the evidence
and science and medical expertise
to reshaping policies ranging from mental health,
dietary guidelines, mRNA and many other policies
that we'll talk about during this conference.
Excellent, thank you for that.
Tim, same question.
From your perspective, what's possible now
that maybe was less possible last time?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I feel like 1.0, Trump 1.0 was on the job training.
And now we have 2.0 and we've learned a lot of lessons.
I think one of the lessons that we have to remember though
is that Tom Price was the original HHS secretary.
He was let go because of travel gate.
He was traveling on military jets
for places as close as like Baltimore.
And so he could, well, and that didn't set well,
but he was really let go
because he didn't deliver on repealing
the Affordable Care Act.
And that's why he was hired in the first place.
And so what we have to remember in Trump 2.0
is that Trump 1.0 and the Trump brand itself is winning.
And so David's right.
I mean, we have this unique opportunity.
And you also recognize in DC, it is a pendulum society.
When you're out, you're not out for long.
If you've been removed from the position of authority
or if your voice has been sidelined
by the Trump administration, you generally come back.
Everybody comes back.
You're not in the desert for long in DC.
So we have to recognize that.
And that means we have to push as hard as we can
when we have the opportunity and we have to win.
We have to have winning
because winning will support more winning.
And the Trump brand is winning.
And in 1.0 and 2.0,
that's the important thing to remember.
We have to win.
Tim, can you mention after you transitioned
from the liaison role to the White House,
what you did there briefly?
Sure, yeah.
So I was White House liaison at Health and Human Services.
And then I went to the White House Executive Office
of the President
and served on what's called the Domestic Policy Council.
And that is, in theory, it sets all domestic policy
except for national security and economic.
So I was a senior executive in the Trump White House
for a time, and I got to see it from that angle
as well as from the implementation angle
in the agency itself.
Well, good.
So to help complete the story
of like what's really possible here,
David, you had a lot of options,
a lot of things you could have done,
and you took a scan across the landscape
and decided IMA looked like a great place.
that's a good I that story is really powerful for me and maybe you could share that. Yeah. When you look at the landscape right
now there's in in politics and I come from a very political background. You have offense and defense and in Trump 1.0 we had
very little ability to play offense because our friends on the outside either didn't have the evidence or capabilities to talk
about the policy issues on our behalf and the other side is they were just generally scared to do it.
And so we were really left isolated in the health department and I used to talk actually Tim and I
office very close to each other and we used to talk all the time about how we didn't have
an advocacy and or evidence based organization that would be coming alongside us and supporting
us during that time. We had great institutions and I talk about this all the time. Republicans love to talk about health
economics. Like that's really easy for us. It's in our wheelhouse but we cannot talk about public health. We don't know how
to talk about it. And so now we have an organization that can do both. We have an organization that can talk about why the
you know, direct primary care is a great way to go,
as well as, you know, why vaccinating chickens
and bird flu is also probably not the best approach.
So, when looking at all of this,
and, you know, I will say that I got many calls
to go back into that, and I have three young kids,
so I was like, I don't particularly wanna work 18 hour days
and not know what state I am in, you know,
by the end of the day.
but being able to be helpful from the outside
and having an organization like the FLCCC or IMA,
which again, we'll talk about some of our early wins,
but we have had an opportunity to impact policy already.
And that comes from drawing on the fellows,
drawing on leadership here.
And that was stuff we did not have the first administration.
And when you talk about it,
I know, I was joking with Dr. Varun earlier,
like he handed me the journal,
and I said, do you expect me to understand this?
And he said, yeah, I wrote it at an eighth grade level
for you specifically.
That's the type of policymaker
that you're typically dealing with at HHS,
not the specialist ones,
but folks like me who come from a political
or a generalist world where I can tell you
how to get a contract done,
but I can't tell you what mRNA stands for half the time.
And so that's the type of translation
this group is well positioned to do.
And in medicine, you talk around from bench to bedside.
Well, we have to talk about from bench to policy now,
and this group is perfectly positioned to handle that
and make a significant impact in the next two years
to four years to potentially longer.
Yeah, I want to talk about some of this real quick.
Sorry, can you mention the importance
of the Office of Intergovernmental
and External Affairs and our friend, Darcy Johnson,
who's a good friend of Kat's as well,
and why that's important?
Yeah, absolutely.
So at HHS, if you all wonder how folks write press releases
so quickly, is they're typically tipped off a little bit
before the announcement comes.
And so there's an office at HHS,
it's called the Office of Intergovernmental External Affairs,
and they work with outside organizations
that are principally aligned on policy areas
to allow for surrogates to go out
and talk on behalf of the administration
when it comes specific topics.
And so Tim and I, Tim particularly hired many of the folks
at HHS the first time,
and I helped on the advisory board side,
but we've had an opportunity to really engage
with the transition team and the folks at HHS
this time to place friends from Trump 1.0 and then others,
the new MAHA folks that are going in to allow them to drive policy forward.
But that's given us opportunities to work with folks in
the Intergovernmental External Affairs Office to where we have
sometimes foreknowledge of some of
the policy issues that they're going to be focused on.
Again, in the ability to play offense and defense,
we're already establishing ourselves as a trusted resource to be able to support good policy,
but also engage on difficult policy when it comes to conversations that I think we all care about
in this room. Excellent. Thanks. Jeff, I'm going to rewind the timeline just a little bit. Can you
Can you talk about how the FLCCC at the time,
but we were undergoing a lot of change.
We took some risks and we saw this all sort of coming
as it were, how did we get here?
Well, probably 18 months ago, but was it fall of 2023?
Can't believe it's already been 18 months.
It's amazing how fast time goes by.
We got together as a board and as a management team.
We recognized that Omicron was God's gift to humanity
in COVID, and we asked ourselves,
what is the FLCCC at the time gonna be about?
Do we have a role to play domestically and globally
like we did during the pandemic?
And if so, what is life after COVID look like
for this organization?
And all of you who have been avid followers,
you know Paul's great work in depression,
insulin resistance, cancer,
Dr. Carmen and Salibi's work in whole body health
and a whole host of other things.
Mumford's work in pediatrics.
So we were already moving well beyond COVID
when we got together as a board and management team.
And we spent probably three hardcore focus months
working on a new strategic plan to expand the organization.
And we began doing it executing in earnest
April or May of last year.
So it hasn't even been a year.
So I think that the, and we took risks, right?
We had to build out the organization more deeply
and then that costs money.
and we were already deficit spending,
we're still deficit spending.
Kelly aptly likes to say, it's not deficit spending,
it's investment spending, Jeff, and I kind of like that,
but it's still deficit spending.
And so ultimately the new foundation,
the building blocks that represent the strategic position
of the organization today,
and that will represent the future of the organization
are really fivefold.
Number one, first and foremost, it's our senior fellows.
six continents, 50 senior fellows, 16 countries.
God only knows how many languages
and three dozen scientific medical and clinical specialty.
So really broadened the bench.
Number two is the journal, which Joel will talk about.
Three, and many of you may not know this,
we launched IMA action
just before Kennedy's confirmation hearings
and played very heavily.
We spent over $200,000 very, very strategically
to support his confirmation.
Tim can talk more about that and how important it is
to have a sister 501C4 political action group
that can do things that a C3 can't
because it'll jeopardize the C3's tax status.
So it's the International Fellowship Program,
it's the journal, it's the 501C4 IMA action,
it's the four pillars, which are the building blocks
for everything that we're doing here on out
in terms of influencing policy.
And I think somebody just brought that on the screen.
Can you go back to that?
So it's combating chronic disease, patient empowerment,
transparency in medicine and health culture.
Health culture, can you bring that up on the big screen?
Yeah.
Oh, no, it's up, thank you.
Think about capturing hearts and minds.
30%, I think of the population plus or minus
is awake, somewhat awake.
30% in my estimation have been completely menticided
and are probably irrecoverable.
And then there's some form of a movable middle
if there is a movable middle.
and we've got to capture them.
So the four pillars is our policy document.
And Tim, you can talk about your daughter's work
as a senior policy writer in Trump 1.0
that's working with us to translate the doctor speak
into actionable policies under each of these pillars.
And the last is a trusted physician network
and the building blocks for the trusted physician network
across specialties nationally
are gonna be our senior fellows
and they're gonna identify the ones
that we're gonna bring in,
because the biggest question we get from any donor,
any follower, even Chris and peak prosperity,
where can I find a doctor that is awake
and that knows how to treat and knows alternative medicine?
Last but not least, and this is the BHAC,
Big Hairy Audacious Goal,
this is like the seven to 10 year plan,
hopefully closer to seven years.
We wanna launch what would represent
the only free thinking medical school in the nation.
And I think we can do it.
I think we can do it.
We've got to expand our donor base significantly.
But there are big foundations and people out there that know that this is right.
It's right.
The opportunity is now.
We've got to recapture medicine and training.
Indeed.
And so as we go through these very important days together, these are the four pillars
that every single thing is going to map under except for maybe one or two of the panels.
But what we're really doing here is grounding. What is the big opportunity? What can we do
at the policy level? What do we do as an organization? It's these things here. This is where we've
decided to focus. So very important initiatives under each one of these, because policy without
action is nothing at all, I guess. So before we get there, Tim, C3, C4, what's the difference
Oh, yeah. How does this work?
Well, so a C3 is an educational construct.
A C4, you can actually advocate for legislation, for votes, things like that in Congress.
And it's super important because you need to have both.
We advocated for RFK to be confirmed, so we were actively pushing to...
Senator Cassidy got 20 plus thousand calls from his closest constituents over a weekend
because IMA action, through the excellent work of Eric Lease, was carpet bombing his
voter file in Louisiana and saying, hey, we need Senator Cassidy's vote for RSK.
And can we patch you through?
Oh, we can?
Oh, good.
And then we'd patch it right through to the office.
And those things are real.
There's notes.
Senator Cassidy came in and saw stacks of notes from his constituents.
he knows there's back pressure, which is super important.
And I just, I can't emphasize this enough.
When, so I ran Trump's campaign in the Southwest US
in 2016, talking about a roller coaster.
And David probably thought I was nuts at the time.
And my wife who's here, my beautiful wife,
she's kept us all healthy in our house.
She thought I was nuts too.
And so then I get assigned to do this
White House Liaison on Health and Human Services.
okay, I'll go do that. What's the job entailed? And I was specifically told it's the Trump
administration. We're figuring it out. Okay. So I show up for transition in, in, in December,
and it's just a madhouse. And, and I walk into HHS at noon, the minute Donald Trump
raised his hand and began the oath, my authority began. And so we walked in with 35 Beachhead
team members. I was handed binders that HHS had prepared for transition. They still had Hillary's name in it. The President
Clinton's policies will match up with the and I'm like guys guys what are you doing.
Oh I'm sorry. Yeah we just did. We didn't have time to change all that. And and so that's where we started.
And then we did some things. The president wanted to end advertising for the ACA. And so I walked in I said OK you've
you've got $50 million left on this ad buy,
you're gonna cancel it all.
And within minutes, within minutes,
we were getting calls from Politico.
Hey, who's the guy that just canceled the ads on ACA, right?
And I couldn't walk through,
for a time I was the assistant secretary
for public affairs, I couldn't walk through that office.
You got 80 press people at HHS,
and then you got another 40 at CMS.
And you couldn't walk through without having
Dan Diamond from Politico call and say,
hey, I understand you were just in the office.
is yeah, Dan, I work there to what I do.
So this is what RFK is with,
and I'm glad he's now with 20,000 less
than he was this last week,
but that's what he's getting into.
And so having an outside organization like ours
to come in and be able to communicate with the press,
educate the press corps and do it from a C3 standpoint,
here's what we believe.
And then also from a C4 standpoint,
here's what we're urging your constituents to do.
That's essential, that's absolutely essential.
I think it was absolutely essential
in getting Cassidy's vote for RFK, and it set a tone.
We're putting out press releases every week now
on this, that, or the other stuff that HHS is doing,
and we're providing back pressure, back support
that their own comm shop isn't able to do right now.
I don't know if you've seen some of the blogs,
but there's some consternation
coming out of the White House right now
over HHS's communications.
Well, we're coming in to backfill and help support
and lift that up while they get their footing inside.
And that's just essential.
We didn't have it at 1.0.
I mean, David looked a lot younger than he does now
because that place aged us tremendously for four years.
It was just every day, it was like survival.
And so having an organized outside group like ours
is really essential to success.
I think we've already contributed to it,
but there's so much more to do.
But that's, you know, C3, C4 play together.
I would add one thing to that, if I could, Chris, briefly.
As you all know, we've always been the bedrock,
the foundation of the organization
has been evidence-based medicine, honest science.
And as an outgrowth of that, great education, I think,
and great advocacy.
We realized and learned the hard way
over the last five years, and we were opposition, of course,
and now we're not, that you've got to take it
beyond science and education and advocacy.
Good science, if leveraged well,
can result in good advocacy.
Good advocacy can result if leveraged properly
in great reform and policy and regulatory reform.
We've gotta go the extra mile
and you can't do that without the C4.
We're gonna be playing very heavily in strategic states
like Montana, there are sister bills.
I don't think they put the one for humans out yet,
but animals, is that right, Lynn?
So banning mRNA in the state,
and I think it just may have gotten
shot down by the governor.
But we're going to play very heavily
in terms of important legislation,
because you've got to reform the legislative level.
Yeah, so the policy is one thing.
But what the IMA is bringing is credibility, Joe.
And so the journal fits into that.
But how do we, and I want to talk about the journal
as an important beach where science can maybe start again,
because that got ruined.
But how do we build our credibility here?
First of all, it's important for us
to be able to help you guys in policy,
we need to bring insights.
We have some of the brightest minds on earth working with us.
So one of the many ways that we can have, I mean,
and you guys will see some of the research that we're doing
and stuff like that when you go down to the abstract alley
like Kelly likes to call it downstairs.
But one of the things to do this was to create a journal.
Any healthcare provider knows that journals today,
medical journals, are kept hostage.
They're kept hostage by a variety of pharmaceutical industries
and other kinds of industries.
Multiple times, Paul and I and our other colleagues,
you know, when we were doing all this ivermectin stuff
and showing that we had the lowest mortality rates
in the country, anything that we would send
that would even remotely mention ivermectin was being canceled
shut down. So as part of these organizational changes, we decided to come up with our own
journal. A journal that is not kept hostage by any pharmaceutical industry.
It has a journal that is funded by all of us, by donations. We have absolutely
no advertisement from any industry to say it for the time being.
It's a journal that's funded by us, by those donations that we do.
I mean, so think about it.
So now I don't have to think, well, you know, if I don't publish this paper
about MRNA, then I'm not going to get 25% of my income from Pfizer
or stuff like that, which is what happens.
we have our conflicts of interest are very well denied.
Not only that, we have a double-blinded peer review.
So let's say that Paul writes a paper.
And normally, I know Paul is Paul, he's very bright.
So I would approve his paper.
No, I don't know that Paul wrote the paper.
It's completely blinded.
Our editorial board is unreal.
We have pretty much people all over the world.
We have over 50 people.
For example, we have Professor Robert Malone
as part of the editorial board.
I mean, that's the caliber of people that we have.
I mean, people that truly know what they're doing.
And the papers are accepted on the basis
of true scientific merit,
not on the basis of, hey, we're buddy-buddy,
or ooh, I'm being sponsored by this company
that's giving us money.
So having a journal like that,
not just for us, but for other people
that don't have an avenue where they can put in good data,
good scientific data that is being censored
by the establishment because it doesn't follow the narrative.
I mean, that's an important part for IMA to come out
and be able to help you guys.
I mean, that's, in order for us to be able to change policy,
we need to have science, simple as that.
You were talking about credibility.
We are, as far as I know, the only alliance
or the only professional organization
that has this science and advocacy.
You either have them on one side,
or you have them on the other side.
But you have this union that we work
so good at putting together.
And like I said, you know,
we have some of the brightest people that I know.
And if we have an opportunity to make change, it's now.
And it's now through journal, fellows,
And obviously, the translation, like you call,
from the bench to policy.
Yeah, and then if you bike away in on that.
So I feel like IMA and IMA actually, when they speak,
they speak with tremendous credibility.
And IMA speaks with tremendous credibility because of that.
Because you have this well-rounded group.
You have a journal, you have science behind it.
It's not just some fly-by night.
Like David, we were talking about the Tea Party movement
and how that came and went, right?
It came and went because there was no there there.
It was a political construct.
This is not a political construct.
It's a science-based construct that has a political arm now.
And so, IMA has credibility and then IMA action,
the C4 has credibility because you already have scalps
or I shouldn't say scalps, you have, it wins.
You have wins.
And the biggest win was the confirmation of RFK
and the tremendous action that took place.
I don't know if you saw it, but there's trucks
driving around DC with the messaging on it.
And they were just driving around DC.
They were sitting out in front of the Senate office building
where the hearings are being held.
Every staffer, every Senator, everybody had to sit,
every press member.
It was fantastic.
And so I just feel like there's a lot of credibility
that backs this organization.
This isn't different.
This isn't different than some of the other fly-by-night
groups that come in and leave.
And there's a lot of groups that do that.
And it's because of the substance.
Indeed, David?
Yeah. You think about it too. The advocacy organizations on the other side are littered with academic credentials. Right. No. Every higher
education institution that has a policy shop all of the think tanks. And one of the things that again that I've talked about a lot is is we
don't have the ability or we have historically never had the ability to ask these questions. And so when we were kind of
ideating around our four pillar conversation I'd be able to ask a question like what does the evidence actually say about
this because and you know honestly folks would say OK we need to get the evidence a little stronger. We could rewrite it we
could say this in a certain way.
And that's part of the conversation.
Because again, for a health care complex
that's been driven by advocacy organizations focused
that are able to do that, to take
their interpretation of evidence and science
and write it into policy, we've never
been able to do that because we've either
locked the capabilities from a evidence-based standard,
or we just haven't had folks willing and able
to put their names on the line to have those conversations.
And so to me, we have this unique period of time
where IMA is perfectly positioned to inform policy.
And some of that policy is not even written yet today
because we can help bring the evidence
that allows it to be written.
And that to me is incredibly powerful.
Well, let me connect that to what Joe was saying
because it's fantastic that we're gonna have this journal
double-blinded, no influences.
But health and wellness don't pay.
That was one of the signs that was up running around DC.
So how do we get the studies funded
so that they can go into the journal in the first place?
Because we know that's been a big deficit.
They don't want the answer.
They don't fund the study.
Can we weigh in on that, David and or Tim?
Like, how do we get this done?
Yeah.
I mean, winning, right?
Trump's mantra is winning.
And so the ability to get evidence-based practices
into policy comes with a cost.
And, you know, as you've seen over the last, like,
I wanna say three weeks, NIH has been calling bad science.
You know, science that has no hope for outcomes,
science that should never have really been allowed
to start in many, you know, instances.
And right now, there's an opportunity for organizations
to step into that space, potentially
to look at changing the narrative
around the types of approaches that NIH and Dr. Bhattacharya
are going to look at, FDA.
And so you think about HHS, right,
which used to be 80,000, now it's
around 62,000, roughly, folks.
But it has the entire health care economy inside of it.
And so you have the NIH, which funds research
that they would argue is not of interest really
to the commercial sector.
We all know that's really not true,
but like that's really where they start.
The second part is FDA, which is like bring your drug
or your product to market.
And then you have the payment system, right?
At CMS, because CMS is obviously the largest payer
from a healthcare perspective, well, actually in the world.
But so you have the three parts of the triangle
that you have the ability to influence.
And so having policy conversations about how,
you know, we could look at SSRIs,
we could look at, you know,
lots of different parts of the things
that the administration are interested in,
but think about like the new emerging technologies
as well too, where we could say,
hey, you could do this over here
and it actually would save on the million dollar treatment
that Pharma is trying to push out over here,
here's the evidence and having a journal,
having the experts of the fellows to be able to have
that policy conversation has never happened
on the other side before.
Yeah.
Well, on that front then, so how does...
And it was an 80,000 person organization,
you say 62 now, it's a good start, I guess.
Can Kennedy really change the culture?
because you're describing decades
of sort of how things stood up.
There's a culture inside HHS, Tim,
you could weigh in on this too,
but can you really change a behemoth
that's been this invested in what we'll say is
bad science and pharma profits?
In Trump 1.0, my job, my initial job as White House,
they used almost to staff the agency
with the 200 politicals.
And I was handing certain people,
I was told this guy is gonna be your guy, no matter what.
Okay, fine.
So who was I handed?
Well, first I was handed Francis Collins
because he went to the president
and convinced the president he deserved
in the four years outside of us.
And we were just gnashing our teeth
when we found this out.
I was handed Scott Gottlieb.
Had no, right?
I was handed that.
And I was handed Seamon Firm for CMS.
And that ecosystem demon described it perfectly
and I haven't really thought of it until now
because I hear this is that the controls,
levers of controls were all predetermined somewhere else for Trump 1.0 and that's
why I say 1.0 was probably on the job training for us because 2.0 that's not
the case and yes can you change the culture I believe so and I think a lot
of the brakes that were put on in 1.0 are gone if now now we can now we can
move ahead the the thing is is will the outside forces be able to take out some
of our people. I read Dr. Weldon's letter about his process and how he was removed from
consideration for his post. And he's right. We're up against the most powerful money to
interest in the world. And, you know, at HHS, we spend, what, 35 cents of every federal
dollar that's sent to D.C. goes through HHS. It's just this massive thing. And so getting
hold of that wrestling that is going to take a lot. But I think it's going to be a lot
easier now because you actually have lieutenants to the secretary who believe in what the secretary
believed in.
I mean, we talked about Tom Price.
Tom Price was a doctor out of Atlanta, got taken out and we got put in.
A former drug executive, right?
And so then, and, and, and believe me, everything that we had put in place under Tom Price became
a lot harder and no new things were put in place under Alex Azar that would have been
put in place under Tom Price.
So that you see how this works.
So yeah, I think the brakes are off.
Our job is to, in DC, opportunities come and go.
If we don't leverage what we have now, right now,
six months from now, it could look entirely different.
I mean, look at today, the stock market's going nuts.
Everybody's focused on that.
Next week, it'll be something else.
Maybe it'll be that someone used Signal in the wrong way.
Somebody asked me, they said,
hey, I gotta get a flyover for this big event
we're doing, the 500th anniversary of something.
Why don't I just send a signal message to Pete Hagseth?
He'll get it.
Just kidding.
I can say that from the outside now.
We're not recording this, right?
So, but there's no guarantee that this opportunity
will last six months or three months.
And so what we have to do is we have to leverage this right now
and push as hard as we can, because this is historic.
I've never seen a time like this.
And how hard we push will determine how far it goes.
Hey, Chris, we've got just over 10 minutes left
and we want to do open Q&A with the audience.
I think it'd be helpful for the audience to hear from David
how the four pillars, how we've leveraged
the intellectual capital of the senior fellows
and subcommittees and how we're using
Tim's daughter as a policy writer.
If I could very quickly, those quick wins
to give us that dopamine rush that we all need.
So when admins change policies, it doesn't.
So is there any way to mitigate that pendulum swing here?
Yeah, there is.
And it's creating sustainable infrastructures
that fight for the good things.
I mean, that's really what it comes down to.
Again, you think about the largest advocate organizations
in the health space, Pharma, which has unlimited money,
AMA, which has unlimited money,
and all of the other associations that come with them
that basically have unlimited money
to do what we are trying to do as an outsider organization.
And so in order to create long-lasting changes,
you need both an offensive arm and a defensive arm.
You need a rock solid set of principles that you agree,
which are gonna be our four pillars so that we explain.
And you need the ability to defend
when good policy happens, the folks on the inside,
and then go on offense when bad policy happens.
And as a nonprofit organization,
Um, good policy and bad policy can come from any administration, it just can.
And so even within a Secretary Kennedy administration, not going to be a hundred percent on things.
But where are ways that we can engage around those conversations that are respectful and
have conversations about things we may not like.
But when the pendulum swings back, you have to have a rock solid offense put together
to be able to hold the other side
and bad policies accountable,
much like you all basically originated with
under the FLCC and your fight during COVID.
Yep, see, he missed a C on that one.
So, and we see it in play, right?
People, you know, 17 years between Semmelweis
saying we should wash our hands
and people saying maybe that's a good idea.
This is a thing.
So how we win hearts and minds,
it's data, it's being right,
it's having the credibility
and it's understanding the process
of how you change the culture.
And the most important thing is for people like you,
brave people, to stand up and say what needs to be said.
And by definition, it is the hardest to say the right things
when it is most needed.
And that's what everybody in this room represents.
So.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
