Glyphosate Queen Will Head the FDA

+ the new cancer “vaccine”

Good afternoon everyone. A lot to cover today.

Glyphosate Queen Will Head the FDA

Heidi Overton will be the new commissioner of the FDA, much to my and Alexandra’s dismay.

Overton was the brains behind the executive order declaring glyphosate essential for national security. Overton is the antithesis of MAHA. She’s an institutionalist who has practiced conventional medicine and, in my view, lacks independent, critical thinking. During the Covid era, for example, she championed Operation Warp Speed and was very late to the game in advocating against school closures (March 2022).

What’s sad is that her predecessor, Marty Makary, was precisely the opposite: (1) he was a smart practitioner who acutely understood what we needed to do to get Americans healthy again; (2) he was level-headed during the Covid era; and (3) he was deeply principled—which ultimately got him fired, given his refusal to green-light fruit-flavored vapes.

Overton is the Glyphosate Queen with malleable principles, which, unfortunately, is exactly why she’ll head the FDA. She’ll do as Trump and foreign chemical companies request of her.

Cancer “Vaccine”

Ella Langley and Morgan Wallen just got dethroned for collab of the year, as Moderna and Merck teamed up to create a new cancer “vaccine” for melanoma. Love it when two greats get together to do their thing.

However, calling this a vaccine is a giant scientific leap. It’s not like it’s a shot that contains cancer antibodies so you’ll never develop melanoma. It’s an individualized therapy used in conjunction with another immunotherapy for patients who already have high-risk melanoma!

If this is a “vaccine,” then so, too, is my daily multivitamin.

What Moderna and Merck are doing here is excellent PR and savvy business. The companies haven’t even released the full, meaningful data yet—a detail Wall Street doesn’t seem to care about, as Moderna’s stock doubled the day of the announcement. They read “successful” and “cancer vaccine” and think 🤑.

This will generate billions in revenue. The individualized nature of the treatment means they’ll charge tens of thousands of dollars per patient, I bet.

ROB is not anti-cool scientific and medical advancements. But the cancer research and treatment development industry—despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investment—has yielded little meaningful progress. Cancer proliferates.

We don’t need to spend more money to “cure” it. “Cure” and “cancer” is another grossly misleading, oversimplified talking point that has been used to convince Americans that all we need is more money and resources for research and treatment.

I don’t think we will “cure” cancer. But we can prevent it.

If just 1% of what’s been poured into cancer research were allocated to cancer prevention campaigns—through the government, medical schools, pop culture, etc.—so that our country actually understood the role lifestyle can play in cancer risk, I believe we’d see a dramatic decline in diagnoses.

But there’s no money to be made in telling the masses that they have agency over their health by eating nutrient-dense foods, reducing their toxic loads, moving their bodies, living in real, authentic community, and, yes—eating butter.

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• Meta will pay up to $18 billion over allegations it addicted kids to social media. Meta has reached a landmark settlement with nearly every U.S. state over allegations that Facebook and Instagram were intentionally designed to addict children and harm their mental health. Meta will pay up to $18 billion over the next decade and, more importantly, will be forced to change how kids use its platforms—including a two-hour daily limit and blocking access from midnight to 6 a.m. without parental consent.

• A new Gen Z insult is calling somebody “polyester,” meaning they’re fake and inauthentic. Running On Butter mogs. Moderna is polyester.

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating food companies caught up in the avocado oil sham for allegedly misleading consumers. This investigation comes after ROB reported on it. Is ROB the new NYT?

• Speaking of the NYT, they have a great report finding that roughly 1 in 4 NFL players could develop a brain disease associated with repeated head injuries.

• The FDA cleared a new pancreatic cancer drug therapy that nearly doubled median survival in a clinical trial, from 6.7 months with chemotherapy to 13.2 months.

• The founder of David Protein is launching a new candy company using the same gross, weird, proprietary EPG fat they use in their weird, gross protein bars.

• Jenny Simpson, an American distance-running great, won’t ever run again after suffering cardiac arrest two months ago at a track meet. I’ve watched Jenny race multiple times and have long been a fan. Few American distance runners have accomplished what she has. She’s a legend and obviously goes hard. But yeah, when we get a Code Blue on the track, I think it’s fair to maybe move into a coaching role?

• Big Food is alarmed by GLP-1s.

• There’s a marathon in France where you drink a ton of wine throughout the 26.2-mile race. Running On Butter Cabernet.