Charles Piller
speaker
984 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 17 Apr
Charles Piller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
you know, I'm going to pass on this one. I just feel like it's a little outside my area of expertise. Because I'm just trying to think from a rational standpoint of how to get around this issue that the FDA- Yeah, there's already, I do know there are already exemptions that the agency has the ability to grant exemptions.
Companies have, I can't remember what the name of this expression is used for it, but they can give people drugs for, you know, cases where they can't afford the drug and there's a certain number of exemptions that they'll give for that, especially for rare diseases, but I don't know all the ins and outs of it.
When it comes to the FDA, we're talking about the medications of it all right now, but there's also the world of medical devices. And now that world is moving so rapidly, probably faster than ever before with exponential rise in AI. You have all the interesting stuff Elon Musk is up to. What do you think the future of the FDA is when it comes to devices and approvals of experimental devices?
I think it's a tremendously exciting time. I think there's a lot of potential there. And there's really, with AI, there's a lot of potential for new drug development as well. I think some of the claims being made are exaggerated because you still have to test drugs in people before they can be approved.
What's an exaggerated claim that you've heard?
Well, the idea that drug development is going to be sped up by many years for particular illnesses because of AI. I think there will be some advantages and new ideas will come out of it that are tremendously important. So I do subscribe to that. But look, the most difficult hurdle for drug is always human testing. And that still has to happen.
It has to happen in a safe and correct way to safeguard the public. So I would say that something that should be considered and this might not be very popular with the current change of administration in Washington, is that right now, company fees pay for FDA examination of their drugs or devices for approval.
And the logic of this is that the companies need the approval, and consequently, they should subsidize the agency to do this examination. But in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of a lot of people who have studied this, this creates an inherent conflict of interest for the agency.
The people who are essentially paying for their salaries are the ones who they are really wanting them to sign off on a particular drug.
There's also the phenomenon that they call the revolving door, where people who are involved in the drug approval process in the federal government leave the agency, go to work for the drug companies that they were earlier passing judgment over, and now they're on the other side of it, earning four times their earlier salary. So that can be a powerful incentive as well.
What I think that the federal government should do is fund those drug evaluations from tax dollars because it's a much cleaner way that removes some of the conflicts of interest. And I know that they can't pay every FDA official the amount they could make at a drug company, but, um, at least starting with, uh,
being able to control that process fully and not depend on corporate fees, I think would be a good step.
For sure. Why, United States, we have the highest cost, the most money spent on healthcare, yet we don't have the greatest outcomes. Why do you think that's the case? Well, I mean, I think- Loaded question, right? That is a big question.
Only on a podcast we can ask that because normally on a TV segment, you'll have three minutes. It's like, go.
Well, I mean, again, this is not my direct area of expertise, but I think it's pretty abundantly clear that it's multifactorial. There's an entire gigantic mess with health insurance in our country. And there's a gigantic mess with drug pricing that the outgoing Biden administration has been attempting to make some progress on. And
I don't know what the Trump administration is going to do when they come into power, but I sincerely hope that they continue to try to get situations, get deals together so that the American drug consumer is not subsidizing all this research in a way that really is done in no other country in the world. So those are two big things that I think need to be looked at carefully.
In the health system that we have now, those are out of control costs. And this horribly tragic recent events associated with the murder of a drug insurance company executive in New York, I mean, this is terrible, and I think it's horrible that the social media associated with that, subsequent to the murder, some people were kind of saying that the murderer was a hero as a result of it.
I don't subscribe to that at all. I think it's a horrific thing to have done. That said, it shows the outpouring of frustration with the way in which medical insurance and drug company costs are really having a terrible, terrible effect on all of us. And so I think those are two areas that really need to be cleaned up.
Yeah. Even UnitedHealth was looking at... I believe it was the Department of Justice investigation for some kind of financial scheme going on. Similar vein as some of the people you were researching for the Alzheimer's work. What do you think...
should be the punishment or the outcome for someone who does participate in fraud, for someone who does make up scientific findings and is caught doing these things. Do you think this is simple as losing their job, discreditation? Should it be a criminal penalty?
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