Jensen Huang, Moderna Cancer Vax, Healthcare Lobbying

Zubin Damania (0:00)

All right, Vinay, I think we're live, episode 48, The VPZD Show.

Two middle-aged men in leather jackets. What could possibly go wrong?

Vinay Prasad (0:10)

It's what people wanted to see.

Zubin Damania (0:11)

It's what they wanted to see, you know?

Vinay Prasad (0:13)

It's my popular request.

Zubin Damania (0:14)

Two Huangs do not make a right.

So yeah, a lot in the news. We're gonna talk about the Moderna Cancer Vaccine. It's your kind of specialty. We're gonna talk about Calley Means on Rogan, talking about Healthcare Lobbying, Corruption in Congress, and my favorite thing, Maha. Sorry, dude.

Vinay Prasad (0:36)

Hey, I'm a proud supporter.

Zubin Damania (0:39)

Proud supporter of the Maha Movement. I'm one of the lobbyists, actually.

Vinay Prasad (0:43)

But I'm not a proud sponsor. I couldn't afford to have a booth at the convention.

Zubin Damania (0:47)

You couldn't afford a cold plunge or infrared sauna. And then-

Vinay Prasad (0:51)

I tend to be anti-supplements, you know that.

Zubin Damania (0:53)

Yeah, that's true, as am I. Although I did, like I said, I had been taking creatine. Creatine. And I will say-

Vinay Prasad (1:01)

For brain health.

Zubin Damania (1:01)

I've noticed that it actually, yeah, I feel like a little more muscle-y with the gym. I can do a few more reps. Placebo thing.

Vinay Prasad (1:09)

No, sorry, what were you saying? Keep going.

SPEAKER_3 (1:12)

He said, placebo, did you? Oh, I thought you used the other P word.

Zubin Damania (1:16)

I was like-

Vinay Prasad (1:17)

No, I don't want to make that, but no, I think two things can be true. There are some controlled studies that show benefits, but also the fact you feel different, maybe just-

Zubin Damania (1:24)

Oh, that's 100% placebo, and I'm okay with that because the downside of the creatine is almost non-existent, yeah, for someone like me. Satya Nagara says, happy Friday the 13th.

SPEAKER_3 (1:34)

Yeah, renal failure.

Zubin Damania (1:35)

That's a myth. Friday the 13th.

Vinay Prasad (1:38)

Oh boy.

Zubin Damania (1:38)

Friday the 13th. So it's a lucky day.

Vinay Prasad (1:40)

Had I known that, I wouldn't have come.

Zubin Damania (1:42)

I know you're driving and it's a storm today. It is a storm. It's like the first Bay Area storm of the season, really. Yeah, we don't get a lot.

Vinay Prasad (1:47)

It's actually nice and sunny, especially down here.

Zubin Damania (1:49)

Absolutely. Oh, so this thing about creatine and renal failure, it's an interesting thing. Creatine does raise your creatinine, but not due to renal failure. It's actually because it's metabolized. Yeah. So you have to kind of compensate for it. So you will see creatinine go up, but it's actually your GFR is unaffected.

Vinay Prasad (2:07)

So you need a different isotope you infuse to calculate the accurate creatinine, the accurate GFR.

Zubin Damania (2:14)

You need to do an inulin clearance. I made that up. I just remember that from medical school. I don't know if that's true. Hey, nephrologists in the chat hit us up. Of course, this is my audience, so there are no nephrologists left in the chat. They've all gone to your channel, where all the medical stuff is.

Vinay Prasad (2:27)

I don't have any nephrology knowledge.

Zubin Damania (2:30)

Ah, that's true. So Sue points out, hey, you guys park your motorcycles out back. No, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with motorcycles and everything to do with Jensen Huang, which we can launch into here. Nvidia's CEO, co-founder, been at that company for 30 years, got very lucky, turns out his graphics cards are also the perfect structure for AI processing.

Vinay Prasad (2:56)

Parallel processing.

Zubin Damania (2:57)

Parallel processing.

Managed to build this company, using that and be the face of AI. Not only that, but he is integral to the world economy at this point because many smaller AI, Neo cloud companies and things like that have received loan and financial sort of backstops from Nvidia, using the power of their $7 trillion or whatever $5 trillion market cap.

Vinay Prasad (3:23)

Down to $4 trillion now.

Zubin Damania (3:24)

Yeah, from a simple couple of three or so affairs.

Vinay Prasad (3:29)

Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Zubin Damania (3:30)

Tip of the iceberg, probably. Otherwise, Nvidia's board probably wouldn't have done what they did, which was pressure him to resign. So that said, it's quite interesting. So here's a guy who is the face of this company and his whole premise was based on this kind of, he's this upstanding guy who believes in integrity, a flat hierarchy at the company where 60 people report to him and known for his signature leather jacket, which his wife, Lori Huang, who they've been together since, I think, Oregon State where he went to school, turned him on to. And now they're like $9,000 like signature jackets.