Captured: How Our Institutions Were Taken Over

➡ The text discusses a weight loss peptide called retatrutide that reduces appetite and burns fat, which the author claims to have used successfully. It also introduces Elizabeth Burch, a law professor who has written a book about a complex legal case involving telemarketing scams, shady doctors, and profit-driven lawyers. The author emphasizes the need for systemic change in various sectors, including medical, legal, and educational, and encourages people to engage in conversations about these issues. The author also promotes her website and newsletter, where she shares exclusive content and webinars.
➡ The legal system is often too expensive for most people, leading to a rise in mass tort cases where many people are affected by the same issue. However, these cases often leave individuals feeling insignificant and their compensation minimal. Lawyers who work on contingency fees can help people access the court system, but the system needs reform, especially for mass tort cases. The discussion also highlights a case where a faulty medical product affected many people, showing the need for legal support and reform.
➡ Over 100,000 women have sued due to complications from mesh implants, with many more likely affected. The mesh, intended to form a protective hammock around organs, often splinters and causes damage. Women were scammed into expensive surgeries to remove the mesh, thinking the medical device maker was recalling the product. The surgeries, which should have cost $800-$1000, ended up costing up to $130,000, paid from their future settlement proceeds.
➡ The article discusses the issues with the healthcare and legal systems, focusing on the experiences of victims who underwent traumatic medical procedures. It highlights the lack of trust in these systems, leading to people being taken advantage of by scammers. The article also points out the difficulty in accessing accurate information and making informed decisions. It concludes by stating that while there are good professionals within these systems, the overall structure is failing and needs reform.
➡ The text discusses the challenges faced by individuals when they take on large corporations in court. It highlights how these corporations can manipulate the justice system, often intimidating witnesses and using their financial power to influence court decisions. The text also points out that important information often remains hidden due to confidentiality orders, preventing the public from making informed decisions. Lastly, it emphasizes the need for change in the system to ensure it works for the majority of people, not just the powerful corporations.
➡ The speaker discusses the issues with bureaucracy in the United States, particularly in the healthcare and legal systems, which have led to a halt in progress. They highlight the need for reform and transparency, using examples like the GM ignition switch failures lawsuit. The speaker also expresses concern about the rise of mass torts and the potential misuse of medical treatments. They mention their book, which aims to shed light on these issues and spark discussions about necessary reforms.

It’s hard to say exactly what they knew because of course they’re not going to admit at all. But according to them, they didn’t realize, you know, what was happening. They didn’t realize about the call centers. But I mean if if you’re driving to an outpatient clinic and your patients are being put up at a hotel nearby overnight after surgery and you’re doing five of these a day, if that doesn’t raise some kind of red flags for you, it should just a short break from the program to share with you an amazing peptide to help you lose weight.

It’s stronger than Ozempic and why it’s because it not only reduces your appetite but it also burns fat fat. These other GLP1s on the market, they do not burn fat, they just reduce your appetite. This one retatrutide is stronger. It’s considered a next generation peptide because of that. And man, does this work. I’ve been using it for two and a half weeks and I’ve already lost 11 pounds and I cut my dose in half because I was losing weight too quickly and that kind of freaked me out to be honest. And so I also am taking this 5amino 1 mq in capsule form.

This helps by making sure that you lose fat, not muscle. And so in conjunction I’m using both of these. This will work whether you have this or not. And I am telling you it’s amazing. If you are interested in getting this I have the link below or you can go to sarahwestel.com on the shop. You can use a coupon code Sarah to save 10%. If you have questions about your own use you should either consult your doctor or you can join Dr. Diane’s tribe and and I have a link below to that. It is only a dollar for the first week.

You can ask her any question you want and get all your answers to this. How to take an injectable and there shouldn’t be any fear in doing that. It is easy and straightforward. Go to sarah westall.com under shop or use the link below and remember to use coupon code Sarah welcome to business Game changers. I’m Sarah Westall. I have Elizabeth Burch coming to the program. She is a professor of law at the University of Georg and let me read her bio a little bit. She holds the chair of the Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law. Her teaching and research interests includes mass torts, class actions and civil procedure.

And she’s going to come and talk about a book that she wrote on a case that’s just absolutely incredible. And we’re going to talk about the system in general. But she also has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and won the American Law Institute’s Early Career scholars medal in 2015 for scholarship potential to improve the law governing class actions and multi district litigation, whatever all that means. I don’t know, I’m not in that industry but it sounds impressive. Okay, I’m sure it is impressive, otherwise it wouldn’t be on there. But she also has a book selling the Dream meets Empire of Pain in this shocking never before told story of three women caught in a web of telemarketing scammers, shady doctors and profit hungry lawyers.

Her turn fears surrounding a faulty medical device affecting millions of women into a frickin gold mine. I added the word fricking because didn’t say that but this is a really good. It’s kind of like all these people are just, I mean the fact that I’m talking now, they’re all people are all saying we just got to deal with these issues and they’re willing to talk about them. And we went there on a lot of aspects of what’s going on in the system and, and the fact that more scholars, more people who are trying to make a difference are coming out and talking about these issues and saying I don’t care.

I’m putting, I’m just doing it because it’s the right thing to do. And I think you’ll listen to this and you’ll hear a lot of what I’ve been talking about for years is what is coming out in this conversation. But she has direct experience with it and it’s beyond time that we address where this country is. So many of our systems, our medical systems, our legal systems, our schools, so many things are collapsing because the system is broke. And we’re going to talk about that. And so people get triggered by the word broke. Maybe it’s corrupt, I don’t know.

It’s just not working for people. Right. And we talk about how these partisan issues we just got to stop. I mean we have so many extreme people who are just bent on fighting instead of solving issues. The mass majority of us just want these issues to start to resolve themselves and people to come together. Even if you totally disagree with me, come and her you disagree with us. We don’t, I’m sure we don’t agree on everything. Just come together and talk about things because one thing I do know is the system is all these systems are not working for people.

But before we get into that I want to remind you to go to. Please go to my substack, sign up for that and help support my work. I have so many different exclusives on there that you can see. I have, I’ve been doing webinars. So I have. I have a webinar with Andy SCHECTMAN and with Dr. Diane Kaser on peptides. I have one on quantum physics and how that’s changing. And so that was two amazing. Ayan and Philip, amazing scientists. I have a lot of material that’s up there. I’m going to have more webinars coming going into the future on, you know, I always do the Edge of Change.

Where are things going and willing to go there. It’s not. I haven’t been rewarded that much for doing the Edge of Change. People want to shut me down. But I. These are questions that I believe we need to be asking and do we want to make some of these changes or are they good for us? And what are the best. There’s a certain percentage, like 30 some percent of the people. Even if the change is better for them in every single way, they’ll still fight it as if it’s, you know, fight it to the death. They do not like change, even if it’s better for them.

Then there’s a certain percentage of people who love change, and then there’s a certain percentage that will eventually adapt and deal with change. But that’s why, you know, I never realized because I’m more in the. I’m always interested and excited about what’s going on in the world. And the edge of Change. I didn’t realize. I do now. I realized it like a decade ago. How much change affects people? Probably more than a decade, probably about 20 years ago, but didn’t realize it until I started doing this. How much people fight it. But it’s important that we talk about this.

Some of it’s really exciting, some of it’s scary. And so if we don’t talk about it, we’re going to be forced to deal with what is shoved down our throats. Whereas if we talk about it and get engaged and get the top scientists and engineers and. And people everywhere engaged in this, then maybe we can do what’s best for humanity. Instead of sitting on the sidelines complaining about everything, let’s get involved. And that’s my goal, is to do that. And so I think this is a part of those conversations to get involved. For my substack, please consider going to Sarah Westall that substack.com you can also go to sarawestall.com and see all my shows posted there.

Sarah sign up for my newsletter. In either place, the newsletter automatically signs you. That is Substack is my newsletter. So if you sign up for my new newsletter@SarahWestel.com that signs you up for the substack, but you can also go directly to Substack as well. Sarah wessel.substack.com See all the different exclusives, see all all what I write there. Things are free. Most of the stuff is free for the first 30 days. So thank you everybody who does. You know, it’s a new year and I just want to thank I don’t give enough gratitude to those who’ve been listening to me for years or just listening to me new.

I’m appreciative of that as well. So thank you to everybody and I’m really hoping I’m one that I’m glad 2025 is gone wasn’t easier for me. I, I have, I feel better about 2026. I think it’s going to be a great year and let’s make it a great year. Okay, let’s get into this conversation I have with Elizabeth Birch. Hi Beth. Welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited about it. You have a incredible story to share about your legal adventures, your journalism. You wrote a book called Pain Brokers. But I want to talk to you about just how crazy the legal system is right now and then dive into your, your example of how bad it is.

The legal system seems to be so messed up. I would say it’s just completely broken. I don’t know what word to use, but average people don’t even have access. I mean, it’s almost as if the legal system is not even there for the majority of people in this country because it’s just too expensive. That’s certainly the worry. And you know, I think the expense of the system has in large part led to the proliferation of these types of mass tort cases. So, you know, it used to be that if you had one of these kind of high value, high dollar injuries that you could go and get a lawyer and you’d be able to file a lawsuit.

And you know, these days, if it’s a type of harm that hurts a whole bunch of people, you end up almost feeling like a number on a spreadsheet because you don’t really have a huge voice when it comes to these types of cases. You don’t, you make $3.50 maybe if you win, if you’re lucky. Yeah, yeah, I know. I, you know, and it’s a, but it is a big win for the attorneys. I, I, if they win. But for the actual people, it’s almost nothing. And so it’s, I did get involved in a case once where I got like eleven hundred dollars that was amazing.

I was really surprised because it’s usually a $25 or something. But the legal system in general though is if the 90% of the people can’t even afford to partake, it’s like we have no justice system for the majority of the people. Well, that’s certainly the worry. And you know, the types of cases that I write about, these tort cases are by and large the lawyers who are willing to work on contingency fee, which is a good thing overall because it allows for people to have access to the court system. You know, particularly people who couldn’t afford to go out and hire a lawyer who’s billable hour rate is $800 an hour.

You know, these are people who are willing to work on behalf of the public. And you know, I think by and large they do a good job. It’s just that this is a system that I think is in need of a whole lot of reform, particularly when it comes to these types of mass tort cases, because it’s just, it’s really difficult for the victims to feel like they have any sort of voice or say in the process. And mass tort cases meaning there’s a large group of people that have been hurt by something. Absolutely right. Right.

So I always, you know, tell my first year tort students that a tort is a harm. It’s like a punch or a kick. It’s not a layer cake. That’s a tort with an e. So a little bit different. But yes, you know, these are mass harms. They’re also different than say a class action, which is, you know, being overcharged for $3 at an ATM fee. For example, you might not care so much about a $3 overcharge, but you are going to care if, you know, in the instance of the people in my book, you’ve had a faulty medical product that’s been implanted in your body and in some cases it has to be removed.

Well, and the tor cases will be fine for if there’s masses of people hurt. But let’s say there’s only five people hurt or there’s only you hurt, then what kind of, you know, people you just a victim that can’t afford to defend themselves. It can Be really hard to find a lawyer. You know, a lot of these elite trial lawyers. You know, I heard a statistic a few weeks ago that it seems like only one out of every ten cases is actually accepted. And in some cases, it’s lower than that. So it can lead to what we think of as essentially our settlement mills, which are lawyers who are willing to take a case, but they’re not really willing to go to bat for you.

And, you know, I don’t. I don’t mean to lump all lawyers into the same group, because there are certainly some lawyers out there who are willing to take cases to trial, and those are the kinds of lawyers that you want. Yeah. Because if the settlement’s not even that great, if you’re not willing to go to trial. Right. I mean, you have to be serious about it. Otherwise, they don’t even take the settlement that seriously. And then you don’t get. I mean, you have to be willing to go the full yards. Yeah. I mean, that’s the trial lawyer’s best bargaining chip, is to say, I’ll see you in court.

Right. I don’t like that settlement offer, so I’ll see you in court. And if it’s not a credible threat, why would a defendant pay more? That’s right. It’s not even real. But, you know, when I taught entrepreneurship, then one of the things that we taught is you need to have FU money. Right. And you. You do. Everybody needs that kind of. You need a pot of money that you can tap into, because you’re gonna have to tap into it at some point to. To protect yourself. And every. But not every entrepreneur is taught that, but you need to.

And pretty much every person needs to if they possibly can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. Right. I mean, it was kind of interesting the way he. I had a speaker come in, and he. And ever since he’s talked about him like. That’s absolutely right. And FU money. Everybody needs a few money. But. But let’s talk about your situation where there were. Was this. Really, people were victimized en masse with this medical device. It’s kind of the intersection of where the legal system and big pharma all kind of goes awry. Can you talk about that? Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, for your viewers, I think the interview you did with Gardner Harris probably primed them a little bit. You know, his book, no More Tears, you know, the pelvic mesh was made. It was made by Johnson and Johnson. It was made by six other manufacturers in addition to Johnson and Johnson. It’s a Product that was originally designed for hernias. So, you know, putting mesh into, say, a man’s abdominal is very different than putting it into the pelvis for a woman. And, you know, particularly when it’s in an area that moves with every little kind of cough or walk, and it can often splinter inside of people.

And so in the case of the story that I wrote about, it was not only a product that was gone wrong, it was also additional people capitalizing on this product that has gone wrong. What did they say it was going to do? Well, so the callers, they would call the women. And to give you just kind of a little bit of background, there was a data breach in India. So as medical records companies began to outsource records keeping overseas, there was an Indian company, a call center in India, that realized they were essentially sitting on a gold mine for mass tort lawyers.

They had all of the medical data, they had all the codes, and so they could look and see. All right, well, here’s this person. She was implanted with this kind of mesh on such and such a date by such and such a doctor. And so they would call the women and, you know, they had all the information that would normally alert you to this being a scam. So they weren’t asking for people’s medical information. They were saying, you know, I see you have these things. This is a ticking time bomb inside of you. You need to have it removed immediately.

We’re setting up surgeries. In two weeks, we’re going to fly you down to South Florida, we’re going to have it removed, and you’ll be well on your way. Okay, hold on a second. What did they get them in their bodies for? Were they. Did the women think they were for hernias, too, or they. Were they. No. Yeah. So this was. This was a product for incontinence, largely. It was also for pelvic organ prolapse. So as women age, gravity takes hold and, you know, things start to sag, and sometimes there needs to be some mechanism to lift the organs back up.

What’d it do? It lift it up and. So that it wouldn’t rest on their. So that it wasn’t resting on the bladder. It wasn’t causing incontinence, and in some cases. So, you know, the organs themselves were literally not falling out. Oh, my God. Okay, so did it actually work then, or. No, because it created more issues than it solved. I think it created more issues than it solved. You know, it used to be. And you still can have that kind of a surgery Done, it’s a little bit more invasive, but with your own tissue that’s being repurposed for that surgery, as opposed to a medical product.

But the medical manufacturers can’t make money when you’re using your own tissue. So instead, they created this product, and, you know, they created an inferior product when they knew that something was better, but they could make money on the inferior and not on the more superior product. So that’s what they pushed. And now, how many people were affected by this? Oh, gosh. I mean, just lawsuits alone in federal court, not even in the state courts, were over 100,000. So there were over 100,000 women that sued. And, you know, I suspect most people don’t sue when they have something like this happen.

So, you know, I think the number of people who are adversely affected is probably much, much greater. But there are millions of women worldwide with mesh inside of them still. Still. Okay, and what kind of problems do you have when you’re walking around with mesh inside you versus you could do a superior thing with your own tissue, but what kind of problems would you have? You know, sometimes the tissue with tissue is porous, Particularly vaginal tissue is very porous. And so as people move, the mesh can become unintwined. It can pierce through other organs. It can get entwined in bone.

And so when you’re trying to remove mesh, it’s almost like taking rebar out of concrete. You know, it was designed to go in, and then that scar tissue was supposed to form kind of a protective hammock around it, which keeps all of your organs inside. But instead of doing that, oftentimes it would splinter, particularly as it aged. And, you know, I think it was an email from Johnson and Johnson that called it, you know, can fold like a potato chip and crumble inside of the people. Oh, gosh. Okay. So then they got these scam calls to go and get surgery in Florida.

Did they actually pay these women to do what? I mean, where’d the money come from to pay them to go do the surgery and all these things? Well, so the. The short answer to that is that the money came from their future settlement proceeds. But a lot of the women didn’t realize this because for many of them, they didn’t realize that they couldn’t use their insurance until they got down to Florida. Some of them actually thought it was the medical device maker who was calling them and recalling the product. Just like you might get an email or something in the mail from a car company saying, hey, this part has gone wrong.

Come in we’re going to fix it. They thought it was very similar. Hey, we’ll fly down to South Florida. We’ll fix it up for you. You’ll be on your way. They signed a DocuSign packet, which is fairly standard, but you think, well, I’m going to sign consent for this kind of a surgery. And inside that DocuSign packet was a retainer agreement for an attorney and a lien against their future settlement proceeds. So a procedure that, had they gone through their insurance, would cost insurance 800 to $1,000 ended up costing them up to 120, $130,000. Oh, my gosh.

Their future settlements. And when their settlements were so small, the average mesh settlement was only about $40,000. Some of these lien companies actually went after the women to try to recover the remainder of the money. But where. Why would they. If it’s only an $800 surgery, why were they charging these women $130,000? These lien companies that were going after them, they should go after. There’s fraud, right? I mean, were they really charged this and was it really paid? And then who paid it? Well, ultimately, so, so this was how the. The scam ultimately kind of got unravel, taking these bills to the device makers and saying, in the settlement process, here are my bills.

And the device makers were saying, wait, why are these bills so high? And so they began to do an investigation and figure out, well, why are the bills so high? Why is this costing so much? And it turns out that it shouldn’t have cost that much. But the lien companies are using this as some sort of an insurance against settlements that may never happen. So instead of calling it what it is, which is essentially a loan of some sort, they avoid those types of usury laws by saying, this is. It’s not a loan. It’s against your future settlement proceeds.

So we can charge you X percentage. So was the doctor paid 800 bucks for the surgery? The doctors were paid more than you would get through insurance. So most of the doctors would pay between 4,000 and $5,000 per surgery. So they were in on it. It sounds like they were in on it. They were getting. They were getting paid more, and then they were paying kickbacks to sort of the middlemen who coordinated the. The travel for the surgery and the call centers, et cetera. Geez. But then the 130,000 was an additional scam on top of that.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, they were scam upon scam, wasn’t it? Upon scam. I mean, the, the Original device was a, was a horrible scam. The. The surgery was a scam. And then the lien, the overall lien against our proceeds was a scam. Oh, my gosh. There was a lot of people involved in this. They were all involved. And it was all, you know, it was just a money making venture for everyone. It essentially turned women’s bodies into cash machines. Wow. Okay. So did anybody. I mean, were they compartmentalized? So the doctors are like, yeah, I’m making more than I should.

But they did not. Did they all realize that the scam was that big? I. It’s hard to say exactly what they knew because of course they’re not going to admit at all. Sure. But according to them, they didn’t realize, you know, what was happening. They didn’t realize about the call centers. But I mean, if you’re driving to an outpatient clinic and your patients are being put up at a hotel nearby overnight after surgery, and you’re doing five of these a day, if that doesn’t raise some kind of red flags for you, it should. That’s right. It’s like, come on, that should be raising.

But they figured they were. They were compartmentalized. They’re making money, so they didn’t ask any questions. And a lot of them were bankrupt. A lot of them are bankrupt now? Well, no, they were then. So a lot of these surgeons were in bankruptcy proceedings and they were looking for ways out. Why. Why were they in bankruptcy proceedings? You know, one of them was a victim of a Ponzi scheme that he invested money in some sort of a fellow Jamaican’s company, and it was a Ponzi scheme. So he had lost his life savings. Another one was apparently just bad with money.

And, you know, it’s so hard to say why people get into these circumstances. So they looked for surgeons that were already in dire problems, and that’s who they got to do this. Well, I don’t know if they targeted them that way. I know they contacted surgeons who are not in dire circumstances, who were less willing to do this kind of a surgery. So it turns out, you know, if you’re in these types of financial straits, you’re probably more willing to go along and not ask the types of questions that you should be asking. Yeah, there’s a lot of, like, in every profession, there’s.

If you have a degree or your whole focus is surgery and medicine, you’re probably not very good at business. I mean, there’s always exceptions. There’s people who are good, you know, at both, and they do well, but the majority probably aren’t. That’s true. Yeah. Right. So then what happened here? You did you. You wrote the book on this. Were you involved at all in the legal process? No. No. I mean, I’m very careful not to get into either side. You know, I think a lot of academics consult for plaintiff side or defendant side. I think it’s important as an academic to stay neutral.

So I wasn’t involved in either side of it. I actually, you know, I had read about. I had read some inklings about this story back in 2018 that were published first in Reuters and then in the New York Times. And then I got a call out of the blue, and it just happened to correspond with the same time that I started to get an MFA in narrative nonfiction. I got an email out of the blue from a whistleblower who was involved in the same sort of scam. And I had been wanting to write a story about the pelvic mesh litigation, but I wanted it to be a page turner.

I wanted it to be something that people really wanted to read. And so when that happened, it seemed like serendipity. A quick break in the program to share with you is that the gold market, the silver markets are seeing huge movements not seen in our lifetimes. There is massive movements of gold coming off the comex, coming back to the United States. We’re hearing chatter of gold being reevaluated from $42 an ounce upwards of what market is right now, which is almost 3,000 an ounce, or even a lot more than that. This is an amazing time to get metals, to get gold, to get silver.

Silver will move with the gold. If gold is reevaluated, it could be one of the best times in history. To get ahead of the curve on this, I recommend using Miles Franklin. They have the best prices, they have the best service in the industry. I’ve done a ton of research on this, and you don’t want to be paying higher premiums. Premiums than you should be. You want to keep as many of your assets as possible and even consider converting your IRA to precious metals. They’re good at that too, and they can help you do that. If you are interested in preserving your wealth and preserving your assets with precious metals, go to sarawestall.com Miles Franklin and you can fill out that form that’s there to go directly to an.

An expert associate that works at Miles Franklin. And you, by filling out that form will get access to the private price list. Just for Sarah Westall listeners. Okay, go to Sarah Westall Dot com. Miles Franklin and fill out that form and get access to the private price list. Okay, Back to the program. And you, you interviewed the victims or you had three victims that you specifically interviewed and kind of followed their story as to what happened. Can you share some of the details on why this was, what they went through and how damaging it was to them? Because that’s what the point was.

Right. It was just so traumatic. It was both traumatic when they were going through the process and a lot of them. For example, Sharon, who is a woman that I wrote about, she has a master’s degree. She is the coordinator for all of special education in a tremendous county in South Carolina. It’s not as if she is naive, but she was terrified. She was convinced that she was told it was basically like having been told that she had cancer. And so there was both the initial sort of revictimization. There was the flying down to the CD outpatient clinics, one of which was an old chiropractor’s office.

That felt like something out of the town. Twilight Zone. And then there was the aftermath. And the aftermath, many of them are still various degrees of incontinence. They’ve had to have multiple surgeries to try to fix. Fix the fix. Surgeries weren’t even good. I mean, a lot of them were just bad surgeries too. Right? You know, it certainly seems that way. The subsequent surgeries ended up pulling out more mesh that had been missed. And, you know, I think the women just didn’t really realize what they were agreeing to. When they flew down, you know, they were told this is life saving surgery.

You know, Jerry was on the bed with her granddaughter watching television, and she had the phone on speakerphone. And, you know, her granddaughter heard them say, you have a ticking time bomb in you. And, you know, that was it. She’s like, you’ve got to fly down to Florida. You’ve got to have this, you know, taken out. Yeah, the family members who get scared and then they convince the older people to do it. And they’re very ignorant to what’s going on, even more so than the older person is. I saw that in my family. So, okay, so we have a lot of issues upon issues.

I mean, we have a legal system that’s. That’s simply not working for people. We have a phar. Our pharmaceutical system that we, you know, they’re not doing superior work because it doesn’t make money. So we have that. Then you. And then we have, you know, piranha scams. We’re in a situation right now where so many of these systems are not working for people. And then you get people like me who see it and like, I don’t want to partake in any of this crap. I, I, I, you know, my family gets sick, I want to fly them out of the country.

You know, we already have agreements in place because we don’t trust a lot of our systems is. And I’m sure people are talking about this in academia that nothing is working for people right now. Yeah. And, you know, I think the systems are also what give rise to people. And I don’t want to use the word gullible. I mean, these are not gullible people. But one of the tools that the callers used was to be able to say, well, you know, do you trust your local do? And for many of the women who were reporting pelvic pain, they felt like it had been dismissed time and time again.

And so, you know, a lot of them said, well, you know, no, I don’t know. And so that was their opening to say, well, you know, there’s only a few doctors who can do this and you have to fly down to South Florida because, you know, people don’t understand what this cutting edge medicine is and you’ve got to come here in order to have it removed. So you’re right. I mean, that’s the problem. Right. Is that you can’t. It’s so hard to trust the system that is in place, that’s supposed to be good and it’s not.

And then that opens it up for all these scammers to take advantage of people, which I’m seeing too, that happened during COVID and that you’ve all these people that are spreading just craziness that’s out there and, and so you could get, you get scammed on both sides. There is a, you know, you can, you know, thread, a thin thread. You know, there’s a thin line of really good stuff out there, but you have to work hard to find it, don’t you? You do. And I mean, there are wonderful doctors and there are wonderful medical professionals out there and there are wonderful lawyers out there.

But I think the system as a whole is that you have to be your own best advocate and you have to try to decipher what’s good and what’s bad. And it’s really hard. It’s hard for people to get accurate information. It’s hard for them to make these types of, of decisions, even when they want very much to be informed about the decisions that they’re making on their behalf. Well, I know that a lot of people in the system are so disgusted with the system themselves that they’re trying to get out and come up with solutions. Right.

There are good people everywhere who are caught in a really, really bad system. And there are also a lot of information because of things like what we talked about, the mesh not being the superior product. They don’t. People can’t. It’s really hard to get access to the information to tell you what is the better route. So we have a lot of people everywhere frustrated, inside and outside the system, and good people everywhere frustrated. What, what are you seeing as some of the solutions to solve something? I mean, we, we can’t go on forever like this, right? Yeah, yeah.

You know, I wish I had a silver bullet and I could say, you know, if you only do this one thing, then the whole. That will fix the whole system. But unfortunately, as you identify it is a failing of multiple systems. You know, it starts as a failing at the fda. And you know, the FDA is stretched very thin. They regulate everything from tainted spinach to medical devices. You know, so it starts with this sort of, you know, regulatory failure that you have these products that slip through. And then it starts with the device makers who can make money off of them particular product.

Hold on a second. I want to say something about the fda. The FDA is funded by the big pharma. And so they, you know, the ones that slip through are highly funded, but then there’s all these other good things and the people can’t afford to get it through. And so they’re like a. They’re almost like a communist setup because they’re like this centralized source where only they decide on what’s happening, but they’re funded by these, this big company. So it’s also fascism. I mean, it’s a combination of everything bad together, a combination of both sides that are bad together making decisions for everyone with.

No, with not enough resources being funded by the very people who they’re supposed to be regulating. And then the people who have really good solutions never can. Can’t afford to even go there. So they’re going to all these other. That’s why I’m saying going out of the country, they’re going to all these other countries to get it done because they can afford it there. So the best solutions are not in the United States anymore because nobody can afford this. If you look at the graphs that are out, you saw the grass, probably by, you know, Kennedy, where it shows the whole rest of the world is like this.

And The US is an outlier like this of just totally collapsing essentially because of that very system where this, the more like Johnson Johnson, they weren’t going to use your own tissue because it, they can’t make money on it. The FDA is the same thing. People have a really good solution, but they can’t afford billions to get it through the fda. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is hard. It’s a system that’s collapsing. Absolutely. It’s, you know, it’s everything from our health care system in the United States to the way that our court systems work and the way they handle these types of big cases.

You know, I think many of us operate on, you know, this what I call the Perry Mason model or the Matlock model. You know, I was growing up and my grandmother would always have Perry Mason or Matlock on in the background. And you know, the idea was that if you file a lawsuit that you have your day in court and that you’re able to give a voice to what it is that is troubling you so that, you know, even if you’re just, oh, I’m just little old Beth Birch. Well, I can take on a Johnson and Johnson in the courthouse and you know, that’s, that’s what the courts are meant to be able to do.

And I think those voices are by and large getting drowned out. Well, you know, and I had a Gardner on talking about the Johnson and Johnson and what happens to people that actually do go after Johnson and Johnson and how much power they actually have. Witnesses are intimidated. They control the justice system in a lot of ways that people don’t realize through. They figured out how to do that through weaponizing different processes. Absolutely. I mean, they realized how cheap it is, for example, to fund appellate court state judge races. Nobody was funding. Who cares about Mississippi’s Supreme Court.

So there was a ton of money that was being poured into the Mississippi state justice system in order to try to achieve court reform through the appellate litigation system, for example. Well, what happens if they go against, you know, because we’ve seen so many cases where it should be a no brainer that discovery is allowed. Right. I mean it should be automatic with some of these cases and the judge doesn’t allow it. It’s like, what is going on here? So what is the, why are judges doing that and what is what happens to them when they buck system and they say, okay, I’m going to do what’s right here.

I’m going to do, I am going to allow discovery. Because it is so obvious that there is all this smoke here. We need to allow discovery. What happens to them when they do something right? You know, they do with their. Their job. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the case of discovery, it’s probably difficult to get reversed, but oftentimes, you know, there will be interlocutory appeals to try to slow things down. And, you know, one of the most troubling developments, even with discovery, is that when the other side can discover the information, that information doesn’t necessarily become public.

So it used to be back in the 1980s that all the information that you pulled from the other side was actually housed in the courthouse. But the documents got so voluminous that they enacted a rule, at least in the federal. Federal court system and in most of the state courts, which has now become the norm, that discovery is just traded between the parties. And so typically, what happens at the outset of litigation is that you get a big company and they have multiple cases out there, and they’re worried that if we give you this information, that information is going to wind up in the hands of all of these different plaintiffs is that they put confidentiality orders in place.

And so much of the opioid crisis, I think, could have been stopped had the information come out. Very early on there was a lawsuit, I think it was back in 2007, that had that information come out, we could have stopped so much of the opioid crisis, but it was kept confidential. Are the courts relooking at some of this? Because discovery is for that purpose? Right. The whole point of discovery was for people to learn what the truth is. And if the truth is buried, it just gets back to my. My point earlier, where the information. People don’t have access to the information to make decisions about their own bodies and their lives and their families, whether it comes to finance health.

I mean, so many different areas. And then now we have censorship on top of it, where. Where these big companies are just beating the crap out of. And government, too, because of the. Which we just saw so much of with the government coercion. They have so much money to coerce these big companies to keep things from seeing the light of day. And so people aren’t able to make decisions on so many areas of their lives because of that. Are the courts and are the academics and are the people realizing that we got to open this stuff up now? I mean, that’s why the First Amendment was created in the first place, right? Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I wish I could tell you yes, but it is certainly not what I am seeing happening. You know, I Think the pressure on the courts is to resolve cases. And so in any kind of settlement, any kind of end to the dispute is a good in the eyes of many judges. Now, that’s certainly not always the case. You know, I think there are judges who still very much see the process as we are going to march towards trial. And the end should be some sort of a trial process rather than just some sort of mechanism to end this case quietly.

But as long as our courts and our judges are overworked, then settlement kind of becomes the gold standard. Settlement can be a good thing. It can, you know, particularly be a good thing for plaintiffs who need money now instead of three years from now. But the flip side of it is that settlements also involve competition, confidentiality. So whatever documents you exchanged in the heat of battle tend to get buried through any sort of settlement that will also include confidentiality provisions. I mean, so many cases are such that you want to go to court so that the whole group, you change the country moving forward if it’s something that’s affecting masses of people.

And so the, they want to settle as much as possible. But even discovery can really help masses of people. But that now you’re telling me, is become an issue. So, I mean, where do we go from here as a country? I mean, how, how bad does it have to get before we say, okay, enough. Do we have to completely collapse? I certainly hope not. I mean, you know, my question is real. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I have been writing about mass torts since before I graduated from law school in 2004. So for over 20 years, I have been writing about this kind of a system.

And so little of it changes because all of the key stakeholders, the plaintiffs attorneys, the defense lawyers, in some respects, the defendants themselves, have a vested interest in the status quo. And so the whole reason that I went and wrote this book is to try to open it up to the public to say, look, this is, is the system, this is what is happening. Let’s try to talk about how we can change it to make it work for the people in the United States. That’s right. And are you seeing more of a come together on the political side? I know there’s this factions that are fighting like to death about every issue.

And it’s like, it seems so polarized. But is the majority of the middle of the country saying enough is enough? Are we saying getting to that point yet where they don’t want to fight the other faction, they just want to solve issues? I really hope so. I mean, you know, this, this is not a partisan issue. You know, this affects people on every side that you can choose. And, you know, it doesn’t discriminate between Democrats or Republicans or, you know, whatever it might be. It affects all of us. And until we need of a lot lawyer.

You know, it’s fun to make lawyer jokes. And then you realize you go to court and it doesn’t seem like the system works very well for you. So, you know, fixing the system and making it work for the majority of the people who are in it I think should be a real key, a real touchstone. Well, it has to be, right? I mean, we just touched on so many of these issues that are out there, and I still wonder. I. I feel solace knowing I can at least go to another country where they’re not as screwed up and we have access to things.

That’s sad. It feels like the Soviet Union kind of where they. They were so broken that, you know, it collapsed and now they’re. I honestly, I think there’s. I know for stroke victims, it’s a hell of a lot better than it is here. My dad just had a stroke and I look at what they’re doing in Russia is, Is decades ahead of what we’re doing here. So. And they just don’t allow it. Here. It’s this peptides and regenerative stuff for the brain. And we treat stroke victims as if you can’t regenerate the brain. But in other Europe, you know, some of the top clinics and even in the Russian hospitals, they do it immediately put peptides and regenerative peptides that give you that in the hospital, and your brain starts to regenerate connections and things.

In this country, we don’t even have access to it. Nobody does it. So. So they’re decades ahead of us. So it’s. I’m just using that as an example. But that’s kind of where it’s. It’s like in so many areas, because our systems have grinded things to a halt, really, is what it’s, you know, and bureaucracy takes over. Everybody’s been in bureaucratic systems where it just grinds it to a halt. I mean, essentially, that’s what’s happening, and that’s what happened in the Soviet Union before it collapsed. And they’ve, you know, dug themselves out. They still have a lot of issues.

I mean, I. I’m not saying they’re the, the gold standard by any means on how everything should be set up, but. And at least in a lot of the medical. At least with strokes, they’re way ahead of us. So that’s how it feels in this country. Like we have such a bureaucratic situation where everything is grinded to a halt. I feel better that I can go to another country at least, but a lot of people don’t have those resources. That’s right. Yeah. I mean, I would love to fix the system that we have. And there’s so many different aspects to fixing the system.

Whether it’s looking at the healthcare side, whether it’s looking at the legal side, whether it’s, you know, focusing on transparency even within the legal system. You know, if you have a lawsuit. And there are some people who are real crusaders. I mean, I think back to. You might remember the GM ignition switch failures that were going on a few years back. That lawsuit actually started here in the state of Georgia because there was a woman who was killed. Brooke Melton and her family rejected a multimillion dollar settlement by GM because they realized that the recall that had been done was only a fraction of the cars that were affected.

And so they went public and they formed, you know, a huge nationwide recall just because they had the resources to be able to do that. You know, they didn’t need to be able. They had the fu money that you were talking about earlier. But, you know, so many people in the United States don’t have that kind of money and they’re, you know, they’re subject to the whims of the system and we’ve got to make it better for them. We do. Are we seeing panels being set up? Are we seeing think tanks? Are we seeing things being.

Break out of this craziness to. I’m really hoping so, yeah. I mean, not yet. You’re saying. It’s just at the beginning is what I’m hearing. Yeah, we’re talking about it. This is it. Is that it? Yeah, this I think is. I’m hoping that this is that moment, that this is the beginning of that moment. You know, I’m, I’m hoping that if the book does really well that, that I can start thinking about doing something like that. That has been my whole goal the whole time and writing this book book and telling these stories is that the system is broken.

Let me show you how. I can’t single handedly fix all the things, but we can talk about it and we can try to figure out which reforms are the most urgent and you know, how we can make it work for people. Well, and, and as a starter, immediately get some panels together and immediately have, I mean, you’d be such a great leader in that, you know, getting people together across the country and stop the partisan politics and let’s start fixing some of these issues. I mean, if we want to have something for our kids, I mean, my gosh, yeah, absolutely.

And it’s, you know, I worry about it, particularly in the mass tort space. You know, there are all these other mass torts out there that are starting to ramp up. There are now 3,000 lawsuits over we go, Vi Ozempic, all the giants, GLP1 weight loss drugs with the side effects that they’re creating. And so I’m worried that you’re going to see the same sort of ramp up that we saw in the pelvic mesh cases where, you know, they’re trying to put into place these types of mechanisms to jack up the value of lawsuits, not for the people who are experiencing the harms, but, you know, for the benefit of some sort of third party.

Well, it’s sad because, you know, I sell a retatrutide. We have a lab that does it, and we’re not seeing issues with it, but you have to be responsible, so you have to be. And the doctors are just like putting it out like candy. And the people need to reach. It’s like anything else that you take. You. You just be responsible for yourself and know what’s going on. And. But yet I get worried about that because I don’t want them to take away these things from me and, and I don’t want the system to regulate what I want to go right to my lab and get it.

And because so many people are being doing this irresponsibly and I don’t know what else is in these shots. It’s not just a pure peptide. I don’t want them to take it away from me and say, only the medical system can prescribe this when the doctors aren’t even doing. Being responsible with it. I want, I want to have the power over myself. You know what I mean? So the whole thing is like, gosh, it seems like that’s weaponized too. I mean, you want to be able to have access. You want to be able to have access to information, to the health care that you need and that you want.

And you want to be able to feel good about the information that you’re receiving instead of having to do, you know, a deep dive into any sort of little decision. You should be able to trust your doctors and the people that are supposed to be your advocates. That’s right. That’s what we need. Well, thank you. This is absolutely excellent. You have a book out. What is the name of your book? Where can people buy this? The name of the book is the Pain How Con Men Call Centers and Rogue Doctors Fuel America’s Lawsuit Factory. And you can buy it pretty much anywhere.

It goes on sale on January 13th. So it’s through Simon and Schuster, through one signal and it’s available at all of the bookstores and you know, wherever you get your books. Thank you so much, Beth for joining the program. I hope you end up people take you up on this. I hope you guys have panels. I would participate. I hope we really get this going because we got to do something and this is start and they don’t have people don’t have to agree with me. You know they have to agree with you. Let’s get together let’s get and start solving some of this stuff.

So thank you so much for joining the program. Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate it. SA. Sam.
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