Gary Brecka

And so you have to have a sense of, look, we have to challenge deeply held assumptions.

Why does it take 10 to 12 years for a new cure to come to market?

Why do we accept these animal testing requirements that are now no longer necessary because we have better technology that predicts toxicity?

Why do we...

allow this grass standard for food to continue to allow pollutants and chemicals to affect our US food supply in ways we don't even fully appreciate.

And so you have to have a deep intellectual curiosity.

And one thing I love about you, Gary, is you've got the intellectual curiosity

to want to roam and not stay in a lane, but to ask any question that is necessary to try to get at a broader question, and that is, how do we improve health at scale?

Thank you, first of all.

So when you came in to the Food and Drug Administration and you sort of went from having this myopic view as an outsider to a very introspective view as an insider,

and you probably realized at that point the enormity of what you had just been appointed to do.

How did you set the agenda and the vision for the FDA?

Because, you know, in a lot of ways, I mean, it's a government organization.

There's got tons of bureaucracy.

It's very bloated.

This is like an aircraft carrier that is going full speed in one direction.

and you want to turn it around and start heading in the opposite direction.

And I've heard you many, many a time talk about the statistics that our nation is facing and the very grim statistics and how this didn't happen overnight, it happened over decades.

And so there's like these,

deeply ingrained processes and there's there there are bureaucrats that are lifetime unappointed bureaucrats that are in these agencies how do you come in at the top and and effectuate real change