#256 - A Contagion of Bad Ideas

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Eric Topol about vaccine hesitancy and related misinformation. They discuss the problem of political and social siloing, concerns about mRNA vaccines, the Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA, the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines, vaccine efficacy vs effectiveness, the Delta variant, the misuse of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), concerns about long-term side effects from vaccines, bad incentives in medicine, ivermectin, government and corporate censorship, vaccine mandates, and other topics.</span></p> <p><strong>Eric Topol</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is the Founder and Director of the </span><a href="https://www.scripps.edu/science-and-medicine/translational-institute/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Scripps Research Translational Institute</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Professor of Molecular Medicine, and Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As a researcher, he has published over 1200 peer-reviewed articles, with more than 290,000 citations, elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and is one of the top 10 most cited researchers in medicine. His principal scientific focus has been on the genomic and digital tools to individualize medicine&mdash;and the power that brings to individuals to drive the future of medicine.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 2016, Topol was awarded a $207M grant from the NIH to lead a significant part of the Precision Medicine (All of Us) Initiative, a prospective research program enrolling 1 million participants in the US.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Prior to coming to lead the Scripps Research Translational Institute in 2007, for which he is the principal investigator of a flagship $35M NIH grant, he led the Cleveland Clinic to become the #1 center for heart care and was the founder of a new medical school there.</span></p