The Chiro-Factor Episode 27: Pharma Unmasked: A 100-Year History
In this special edition of The Chiro-Factor, hosts Dr. Brad Glowaki and Dr. James Chestnut welcome investigative journalist and attorney Gerald Posner, author of Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America, for a no-holds-barred deep dive on the pharmaceutical industry.
Gerald brings the receipts — five-plus years of FOIA requests, court documents, and whistleblower interviews tracing pharma's 100-year history from selling morphine in the Civil War to becoming the second-largest industry on earth. Brad and James push the conversation further into where health actually comes from — and why no drug, even a "clean" one, can ever produce it. Together, they connect the dots between guideline manipulation, captured medical schools, direct-to-consumer advertising, vaccine immunity, off-label prescribing, NIH-funded patents, and the ongoing cancer and obesity-drug machine.
If you're a chiropractor, this episode is your ammunition. Decisions have consequences — and your patients deserve to know what's on the other side of the recommendation they didn't follow.
🎯 𝐓𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐬 - Glow's six-month masterclass on the exact table-talk sound bites and conversations that convert existing patients into a steady stream of referrals. One new patient pays for the entire program: https://www.levelupmentoring.rocks/pricing-plans/tabletalk
🎤 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐡 - 𝐋𝐚𝐬 𝐕𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐬, 𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟖-𝟏𝟗 - Chiropractic's birthday celebration and the live seminar of the year. Earn your CE while getting the unfiltered truth on everything Gerald covered in this episode: https://www.levelupmentoring.rocks/luevents
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introductions: meeting Gerald Posner, the Pharma book, and how COVID supercharged this conversation
04:54 - Why medical doctors aren't scientists — they're clinicians running on guidelines they didn't create
09:27 - Who really writes the guidelines: how cholesterol numbers got lowered overnight and 12M statin users became 36M
18:26 - A walk through pharma history: the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), morphine, Pfizer, Squibb, Wyeth, Lilly, and Bayer's "favorite five years" (heroin, aspirin, Tylenol, phenobarbital)
27:43 - 1938 and the Humphreys Act: how off-label prescribing became the industry's biggest loophole
32:02 - Properly prescribed drugs as the 4th leading cause of death — and how Viagra, Rogaine, and Botox were all "happy accidents"
34:40 - The core argument: even if pharma were clean, the paradigm is still wrong — drugs don't address the cause
42:11 - Puberty blockers, the Dutch studies, and "the greatest medical scandal since lobotomies"
47:42 - Penicillin's untold story: how pharma abandoned cheap cures and chased "me-too" patented variations
52:41 - Gerald's Oxford debate vs. the former Pfizer medical director and former FDA director (won 12-to-1)
57:04 - COVID, the NIH's $930 billion, and how taxpayers fund drugs pharma then patents and sells back
1:00:17 - 1986 vaccine immunity, 1997 direct-to-consumer advertising, and the Claritin loophole that built a $10B ad industry
1:05:43 - Media capture: why ER shows multiply, why CNN can't quit pharma ads, and how journals bury negative studies
1:09:03 - Inside the opioid crisis: Purdue, the Sacklers, Dopesick, and the Congressional bill that handcuffed the DEA
1:17:45 - Gerald's upcoming Jordan Peterson Academy course: The Politics of Cancer
1:20:32 - Why people accept the system: convenience, fear, and the cult-like structure of medical training
1:24:51 - Should chiropractors fight for prescribing rights? All three agree — it's a trap
1:34:09 - How "prestige" panels really work, the FDA's expedited-fee scandal, and statins gaining you 3-5 days over 5 years
1:38:46 - What's coming next: Bobby Kennedy, MAHA, and steering the ocean liner
1:44:00 - Closing thoughts for chiropractors: confidence, urgency, and why your recommendation is the alternative to all of this
