What do you mean by that?

Well, I suppose a core argument I'm making throughout the essays in the book is that health ultimately is a social construct.

Health is not the absence of disease.

I mean, disease itself is a construct.

What we consider to be healthy and unhealthy is a construct.

These are lines that we draw, that we negotiate amongst ourselves as a society, and that we renegotiate.

Let's take one concrete example, because this sounds pretty abstract.

What did the rise of the Maha movement indicate to you? And how would you regard the movement going forward in terms of a potential partnership or a threat? First

Do you think academic public health has calibrated on liberty, on the ability of someone to earn a living when it comes to pushing through or advising on mitigation efforts for health crises? Do you think that lesson has soaked in, or do you think there has to be more discussion with the community and with people from all sides of the political spectrum, as we said, to kind of learn that lesson, to really learn that lesson?

Yeah, let me start with a defense of Francis Collins as director.

I think Director Collins has been quite public about the fact that he actually has had a reconsideration about the different weight of some of these inputs.

But he invited me to present at the NIH Director's Seminar in December 2020, where I actually presented a lot of these ideas.

You know, I think we forget that a lot of the COVID story was sort of two stories.

There was an acute phase of just a lot of fear, confusion, about a six-month period where it was very difficult for people in positions of authority to know what the right thing to do was.

And then a fairly rapid recalibration where people like Francis Conswin, who was director, was trying to understand these other forces.

I mean,

I guess I wonder, uh, can you explain that a little bit or do you think there is a tendency to overprescribe some medications?

Yeah, I think the issue of overprescribing in the MAHA agenda is, um, is an interesting one and, and it is a little bit of a piece of the larger MAHA agenda, meaning that it, it is correct.

There is overprescribing.

There is overprescribing of a number of medications.

There's overprescribing of antibiotics.

These are really complex systems that embed incentives for practitioners, incentives for prescribing, and what we need to be doing as a society is doing the science to document the overprescribing, to work in partnership between science and government agencies to cr- make sure that the incentives are not for overprescribing, for, but for prescribing accurately.

So, the MAHA agenda, which is founded on a number of important and correct observations ends up being taken too far to suggest that science has nothing to offer and that we should move to some other alternate way of embracing things like psychedelic and psychedelics and biohacking that is not grounded in rigorous evidence that can make sure that medications or approaches that you and I use are indeed safe, they're effective, and can do what they're supposed to be doing, which is helping us live longer, healthier lives.

What do you tell people about whether- where to go for good information? Is it still the CDC or- or- or what do you tell them?