#1747 - Dr. Peter A. McCullough

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Well, sir, thank you very much. I've seen a lot of your testimonies before they were actually taken down. I've seen some of the videos that were yours that were taken down off of YouTube. And then I found that very odd that a doctor talking about a medical disease would have videos taken down. An actual expert would be either testifying or discussing treatments and talking about a disease and have those videos taken down off of YouTube. First of all, if you would please just state your credentials and tell everybody what you do.

Peter A. McCullough (0:50)

I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. I'm an internist and cardiologist. I'm also trained in epidemiology. I'm an academic practice in Dallas, Texas, so I see patients about half the time. I saw patients yesterday. I drove down today to see you here in the studio.

And the rest of my time I spend as an author, an editor, I'm the editor of a major journal in cardiovascular medicine, the former editor of an international journal. I'm the president of a major medical society right now currently, about five years into that position.

And I frequently publish. In my field, I study the interface between heart and kidney disease. I'm the most published person in my field in history.

I have over 650 publications in the National Library of Medicine. I imagine that's probably ahead of anybody you've had on the show. They mentioned Paul Merrick. I'm just ahead of Paul Merrick. Peter Cori mentioned him in critical care. I'm just ahead of Paul, a lot younger than he is. And in COVID, when COVID hit, I really dropped everything to put all of my academic efforts on this because I saw it as an all hands on deck situation.

Joe Rogan (1:52)

Now, when did things start to seem strange to you in terms of the way the information was allowed to be distributed, in terms of the way people were treating patients, and not just that, but the information on how to treat patients was distributed?

Peter A. McCullough (2:09)

I didn't see this coming, to tell you the truth. I was pretty happy in life. Medicine was moving along for me and had a very highly ranked position at a major academic medical center. And, you know, traveled frequently and did all the things we normally do in academic medicine, you know, meeting, interchanging, challenging, being skeptical with one another. That is the lifeblood of academic medicine.

And things were going great in March. This hit, we immediately took efforts. We thought it was going to hit Dallas. We started looking at things, how to configure our workforces. I went and got a grant, got a large grant to study a prevention approach to protect our workers at our health care facility. And I worked with the FDA over a weekend to get an investigation on a drug application awarded in my name in order to test a prophylactic approach. And things were going great in March.

And I can tell you, it wasn't but a few weeks in April on these task force calls. I was on routine health system calls once a week, and I was on one with the National Institutes of Health. And I asked a question. I said, when are we going to start to treat the problem?

People are getting sick out there. They're starting to be hospitalized. Some are dying. When are we going to start to treat patients? It's too late. The hospital is too late to treat people. It's obvious they're dying in the hospital. We must start early.

And you could basically hear a pin drop on these calls. No one had an idea about treating COVID-19 at home.

Joe Rogan (3:36)

Was there no thought about it? Was there no discussion? Or was it just not a point of focus? Like, what was the problem there?

Peter A. McCullough (3:45)

I think it was a grip of fear. Doctors, for the first time in their lives, felt like they could get the disease themselves if they actually saw and examined these patients.

All the discussion was on personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, negative airflow rooms. It was all about protecting the healthcare workers. There wasn't any focus on sick patients. And after the weeks went by, I became incredibly frustrated. I started communicating with our Italian colleagues. I said, what's going on? You guys are getting blasted in Milan.

Is there anything we can do to treat patients at home and stop these hospitalizations?

Joe Rogan (4:20)

And were you alone with this concern? Were there other doctors that were joining you with this?

And were there treatment protocols that had been put into place that were being tested?