Dr. Alessi dives further into the discussion he recently discussed with Connecticut Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani. Topics include how Connecticut stacks up against other states in terms of citizens' health, confusion over health recommendations and waning confidence in the federal government, the continued importance of vaccines, and potential lost ground on research as a result of a culture trending toward an attack on science.
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DPH Commissioner Manisha Juthani:
https://portal.ct.gov/DPH/About-the-Commissioner
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Support from UConn Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine:
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Dr. Alessi: Welcome to the Healthy Rounds Podcast, where we provide you with up-to-date, timely medical information from national and international leaders in their fields. This podcast is brought to you by UConn Health, with support from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a grant from Coverys. The podcast is not designed to direct your personal health care, which should only be done by your physician.
I’m your host, Dr. Anthony Alessi, and it’s great to be with you for what we’ve come to be known as “the Deep Dive” in terms of looking back at a recent podcast we did. In this case, one we did last week with Dr. Manisha Juthani. Dr. Juthani is the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health. She’s a medical doctor and a specialist in infectious diseases, and my conversation with her was very educational and brought out so many things that I didn’t know about the Department of Public Health and the vast job that she faces.
We started off the interview by asking her how she ended up getting this job and it’s interesting because she related the situation where she was working at Yale and COVID was developing, and basically it was a situation where Governor Lamont felt that he had a confidence in her and really it was the fact that he saw something in her in terms of her ability to lead, that he brought her into his cabinet and into this executive role. And it relates back to my conversation with Dr. Agwunobi, who again talked about his father as an inspiration for him. And it brings to me in my own life that there are so many people who professionally inspired me to move ahead in the medical field. And, it’s something that I’ve always felt is as adults, we have somewhat of a responsibility to encourage young people to inspire them when they may not have that confidence in themselves to achieve great things, things that they want to do, whether it be medicine, whether it be business. If we recognize some attribute in that child or in that young person, it’s worth mentioning like, you know, “you really have a future”. And really those words from an adult can really change someone’s life, as it does for so many people. I think many professionals, many successful people, whether they be actors or sports stars again, have gone through that.
Probably the single most important question I asked Dr. Juthani was, “are we safer living here in Connecticut as opposed to other states in this country?”
And the reason I ask that is because we have seen such a dramatic change in leadership with respect to health here in the United States. People have lost confidence in the Centers for Disease Control. Just think about that. The Centers for Disease Control have been really the hallmark of research in many areas, and it’s been the hallmark for people throughout the world. And yet we here in the United States have lost confidence in them. That loss of confidence primarily comes from their positions now on childhood vaccination, and as she explained it, the difference is basically at this point surrounding three vaccinations.
Here in Connecticut, we require 14 vaccinations that are administered at different points in a child’s development. The CDC has made three of those now optional, specifically measles, meningitis, and hepatitis. So, here in Connecticut, those are still required if a child is going to attend public school and be around other children.
So, here in Connecticut, when it comes to these vaccinations, from that standpoint, we are somewhat safer because they’re still required. But the CDC has raised doubt. It’s raised doubt in parents’ minds that these vaccines may cause autism, for which there is no scientific proof, and we’ll get into some of that a little bit later.
But, the point here is that you need to really discuss this with your physician, and I think everyone believes that. It’s also a thing that she mentioned that, so childhood vaccinations are administered to prevent disease. That’s the idea. To prevent polio, to prevent smallpox, or measles, any of these contagious diseases that could lead to death in some cases, or be crippling in the case of polio.
Whereas as adults, when we get vaccines like the flu and shingles, as much as they may prevent disease, that’s not the overall objective. The objective is to prevent hospitalization. To prevent days lost from work, from enjoying your life, and put you at risk for other illnesses. So, you may still get a flu, you may still get shingles, but it would be such a mild form that you would not require a hospitalization, and that’s a very important distinction.
So, we have a situation where there’s distrust. The other problem we’re having and that she brought out is when I asked her what keeps her up at night, what worries her the most, and her answer was very interesting from the standpoint that it wasn’t so much the future, when I asked what the future may hold.
Her biggest concern is making up for lost ground. Are we going to be able to make up for the research that’s been halted and stopped because of federal funding? And specifically centering around messenger RNA. So, I thought it would be worthwhile to talk a little bit about that. It’s not just messenger RNA, but HIV research has also been set back. But, I did want to talk a little bit about messenger RNA because I think there’s so much misinformation about it. Messenger RNA is just what it says, a messenger. It is a messenger that brings information to cells that produce a protein. It’s a RNA is basically the recipe. Messenger RNA is something that’s just that, it’s a messenger.
It’s only there for hours, maybe a day, and then it’s gone. When we design vaccines, the messenger RNA is basically the chassis. It is like when you go to buy a car, you buy a General Motors car, you’ll get a chassis. That chassis may be on a Suburban, it may be on a Cadillac Escalade, it may be on a GMC. It’s the same chassis, but they changed the body.
And that’s the story, the same story we have with messenger RNA. It is the chassis for which you change the body based on what you are fighting.
The big problem is, and messenger RNA provided it saved millions of lives just based on COVID. But now we are embarking on a situation where messenger RNA can treat a variety of cancers by creating personalized vaccines against someone’s own cancer, or generalized vaccines to target the cancer proteins and alter them, these destructive proteins.
A recent study looked at people with lung cancer. And they looked at people with lung cancer who got the COVID vaccine, and those who did not get the COVID vaccine using messenger RNA. And what they found was that those who got the COVID vaccine with messenger RNA lived longer, across the board, lived longer than the people who did not.
So again, we believed that the messenger RNA serves to prime our immune system, our own natural cells to fight this cancer. And it’s amazing that we are on the cusp of this, and yet all research has stopped pertaining to messenger RNA, based on the edict from the federal government. And as I mentioned, they stopped HIV.
Another one, I mean, let’s talk about it. Acetaminophen, right? We are hearing about acetaminophen and the fact that acetaminophen can cause autism. That’s the latest thing we’ve been trying, that has been told to us, and that we have been fed, directly from the mouth of the president of the United States.
But, again, a scientific study looking at 43 studies on acetaminophen during pregnancy concluded that there is no evidence that this painkiller increased the risk of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. And this was just published in The Lancet. But the point here was also that this looked at sibling studies.
So, where twins both got acetaminophen, mom got acetaminophen during pregnancy, twins were born, one became autistic, the other did not. Had nothing to do with acetaminophen. That’s just common sense. But again, we’re being fed information that is false, and it’s part of the attack on science that we’re living with, and she made that very clear.
But most importantly, I think again, it’s important to discuss these things with your physician. What that’s led to now are physicians being inundated with questions, and there are so few physicians. It was another part of our conversation was how do we encourage more people to go into primary care?
Because it’s the primary care physician who you’re going to approach with these questions, and it takes time to answer them. So again, it puts our health care system kind of in a hole and somewhat behind.
I came away from the interview with Dr. Juthani hopeful. Hopeful in the sense that we know that there are people in charge in our state who understand science and who understand how to keep us safe. But by the same token, it increased my frustration over the fact that we have ignored science, and we are moving in the wrong direction right now.
With that, I thank you for your time today and really I urge you to listen to Dr. Juthani’s interview, as well as this Deep Dive, and reach out to me. If you have questions, if you have ideas for future programs, or questions I can go back to Dr. Juthani with, just reach out to me at healthyrounds@uchc.edu.
As always, Jennifer Walker is the Executive Producer for the Healthy Rounds podcast. Chris DeFrancesco is our Studio Producer who’s taken time to put this all together as a Deep Dive. Be sure to listen next week as we kick off American Heart Healthy Month, and we talk about the importance of screening for heart disease and treating heart disease.
My guest is going to be Dr. Peter Schulman, who’s a Professor of Medicine and a cardiologist here at UConn Health. Thanks again for listening, and until next time, this is Dr. Anthony Alessi. Please stay healthy.
