America’s Lawyer E68: A new report from a Pentagon-funded think tank says that our aging politicians in Washington might actually pose a security threat because we can no longer trust them with classified information. Massive worker strikes are happening across America, from Hollywood to Detroit, in all sorts of industries – we’ll bring you the latest on the fight for better wages. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio, and this is America’s Lawyer. A new report from a Pentagon funded think tank says that our aging politicians in Washington might actually pose a real, real security threat because we can’t trust them with classified information. Massive worker strikes, well, they’re happening across America, from Hollywood to Detroit, in all sorts of industries. We’ll bring you the latest on the fight for better wages. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
A new study from a Pentagon think tank says that the aging politicians in Washington, DC might actually be a national security threat as their cognitive decline could make ’em accidentally reveal real important information. I’ve got Farron Cousins with me, and I always like to give Farron a shout out, again, I know you don’t like when I do this, but I follow progressive media all the time. I believe you’re the best in the business. I don’t say that because we’ve been friends for 21 years and we’ve been doing this for 21 years. I just think you’re the best in the business.
Farron Cousins: Well, I appreciate it.
Mike Papantonio: I like the way you handled this story time and time again. Anyway, let’s pick up with this story. It’s very bothersome to me, man.
Farron Cousins: It really is. And this is an interesting angle on the aging issue. We obviously, we’ve got McConnell, we’ve got Feinstein, we’ve got Pelosi. I mean, Biden and even Trump. They’re all facing a lot of questions right now about their age, their cognitive abilities. And here we have this think tank and of course it’s funded by the Pentagon, but they’re raising real concerns, saying, listen, we get that we’ve got these aging folks in DC but these people all have security clearances. On a regular basis they’re looking at classified material. And if they can’t trust their own minds, we should not trust them with this classified information. It is easier when you’re in cognitive decline to either accidentally spill something or maybe somebody infiltrates and gets you to spill something. It’s far too dangerous. And these people, they are a danger to the country now.
Mike Papantonio: Well, we know that Feinstein, I mean, Feinstein doesn’t even know where she is half the time. Literally doesn’t know that she voted on something half the time.
Farron Cousins: Didn’t know she missed months earlier this year.
Mike Papantonio: Didn’t know she had not even showed up in DC. The turtle here, I think it’s a little different. He’s got an illness. They need to get, it’s time for him to go home. The suspicion is that it’s early Parkinson’s disease. Go home. Live the life with your family, man. What is he, 80? I don’t even know how old he is. But look at both these people. It looks like Weekend with Bernie. Add Biden to that. Add Grassley to that. Add Pelosi to that. And all of a sudden what you have is you have the oldest leadership, the cumulative leadership, the oldest it’s ever been in American history. Did you see that statistic?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And not just, oh, this is the oldest we’ve been in a while. Ever. We’ve never had this many aging politicians. And we know there was that pharmacist who came out a couple years ago and admitted, hey, I can’t tell you who, but I have filled multiple Alzheimer’s prescriptions for multiple members of Congress. And again, this isn’t meant to say, oh, well you obviously shouldn’t be serving because you’ve got a disease. It’s the fact that these are people with security clearances that have access to material that if in the wrong hands could become a major national security threat.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. On the Pentagon issue, these are, this story you understand is about leadership in the Pentagon. Leadership that has all of our secrets. Leadership that’s making huge decisions about who we go to war with, when we go to war. Really important stuff. And the Pentagon is saying, what the hell? We have such a problem. We have to deal with it. And everybody’s ignoring it. I haven’t seen, this was The Intercept, again, Klippenstein, great, great writer.
Farron Cousins: Phenomenal, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: Phenomenal, phenomenal source, Intercept. Try to find this anywhere else, you won’t. We’re talking about people that hold, they got the finger on the pulse of nuclear war. And these are the people that they’re own Pentagon is saying, Jesus Christ, we need to do something because this is really bad. I don’t know. But corporate media, it’s not bad enough for corporate media to do anything about it. Even talk about it.
The Biden administration has agreed to release $6 billion to Iran as part of a prisoner swap, where five American prisoners in Iran were traded for five Iranian prisoners in the US. Swaps aren’t uncommon, but the release of $6 billion has created concern. Let me give you the headline on this. Okay. $6 billion is gonna be used by Hezbollah. It’s gonna be used by the worst terrorist organizations in the world. Now, how do we know that? Because we’re handling the cases against Iran. We know, we’re actually handling the terrorism cases. Thousands of ’em, thousands of contractors, Americans, soldiers who’ve been killed right back, take the money, it all flows to Iran. 90% of the time flows directly to Iran, to where the military, their standing military is actually considered a terrorist organization. But Biden says, hey, here’s another $6 billion of your money that we could have taken and given to these people who have lost, lost their lives. The families that have lost their lives. They’ve lost legs, arms and what’s been done by Iran in this terrorism cycle, Biden seems to ignore that. $6 billion rather than going to these claimants is now going back to Iran so they can make cruise missiles or they can make whatever the hell they want. They can finance terrorism, can’t they?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And just so everybody understands where the $6 billion came from, this was money that South Korea was going to pay to Iran. They bought a bunch of fuel from Iran, were about to pay their $6 billion. But then the sanctions came in place. So they said, okay, we’re not gonna pay you your money, obviously, because we get in a lot of international trouble for doing that. So as part of this deal, which definitely seems like an unnecessary concession, Antony Blinken at the State Department says, okay, we’ll sign a waiver saying South Korea can give you back your $6 billion. You give us five people. So we’re paying $1.2 billion per person. And they get the five people back for free. It’s crazy.
Mike Papantonio: I wanna ask your opinion about something. Okay. I hear these freaky talking heads saying, well, it’s not taxpayer money, it’s their own money, but we’re giving it back.
Farron Cousins: It doesn’t matter.
Mike Papantonio: Doesn’t make any difference, does it?
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: We’re giving them $6 billion that they didn’t have that I know the law firms that are handling cases for these victims where we’ve taken, it’s this intricate, we’ve taken the best experts in the country. They can take the money all the way back to Iran when Iran sent the money to this place to be washed or that place to be washed. We can take the money all the way to the roadside bomb that killed somebody. That’s how easy it is to follow this. We know 90% of it is Iran. When this was developing, the people that were victims were outraged because that’s another $6 billion that we’ve given back to the people that killed their family member or that caused them to lose both legs. Look, it’s Hezbollah, it’s al Haq. They’re all centered in Iran. As a matter of fact, Iran right now is the biggest supplier for terrorism money in the sub-Sahara. There’s no bigger supplier. The sub-Sahara, Africa. This is the country that gives them all, everything they need to blow the hell out of anybody they want. We’re gonna see it back in the US. This $6 billion, buddy, chicken’s gonna come home to roost on this. Biden was told, Blinken was told, don’t do this. Did it anyway.
Farron Cousins: And for the people who wanna say, well, we’re just giving them their money back. Why? I mean, you need to stop and think for a second why we withheld it from them in the first place. And this is exactly why. We could have made, prisoner swaps happen all the time. You don’t have to give up the farm in order to get people back. Usually in a situation like this, we had five of yours, you’ve got five of ours.
Mike Papantonio: Trade off.
Farron Cousins: Let’s just do a trade.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. We’re not gonna give you $6 billion that you can use against us in your terrorism network. And that’s exactly what happened here. And Blinken was told again and again by the best experts on the planet, who by the way, we know because some of them are working with us in the cases. Right. They said, don’t do this. This is a big mistake and you’re taking money away from the people who should be compensated for the terrorism that was directly related to Iran.
The Writer’s Guild of America is still on strike, as major studios and streaming platforms are refusing to agree to terms of the striking writers. These studios know that they have a secret weapon. These studios know that they have got these strikers in really a bad, bad corner. Every day I follow this, there’s this sense that, oh, there’s gonna be a resolution to this. There may be a resolution, but I’ll tell you, the writing is on the wall here. It’s on the wall. Hollywood is done. What we think of as traditional Hollywood is done. It’s been replaced by AI. They can do a script from AI. They can write the dialogue from AI. They can create the characters from AI. They can create the voice from AI. They can create all the technical hoops that have to be jumped through to produce. It is astounding. If you take just a minute and go online and just see what people in their home are doing. I mean, this doesn’t have a good ending. Even if this resolves, if you’re in this business, buddy, you need to go find another job. That’s what I’d recommend. And find out how to do AI and you got a better shot at making money the rest of your life.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it’s very unfortunate because I know, obviously we support these writers.
Mike Papantonio: Of course we do.
Farron Cousins: They deserve everything that they’re asking for. And unfortunately, when you do look down the road and you see these studios already starting to turn to AI, you realize that this may be a fight that ultimately you can win. But that victory’s not gonna last very long. Because what we see now happening is that the creativity of these individuals, which is unique, not just with the editors, with the set designers, everything. So much talent and creativity. We’ve now programmed computers that can just do it.
Mike Papantonio: Scrape it.
Farron Cousins: Probably not as good, but good enough to where you pay $10 instead of paying a hundred people.
Mike Papantonio: And the studio doesn’t pay $20 million for an actor to act the part, or $10 million for a voice. That’s what’s happening. And it’s almost like they’re whistling through the graveyard and not understanding even if they succeed, there’s a reason that the studios are taking the avenue that, these are greedy punks. The studio management, they’re greedy, ugly punks. And what they’ve done as far as, they’ve actually pulled up the sidewalks in front of the areas where these folks were trying, they pulled up the sidewalks. They’re blaring noise. They’re doing everything they can to interfere. Why? That’s called reckless abandon, Farron. Reckless abandon takes place when you know you’ve won. And they may get ’em back for a little while. It’s just a matter of time. Look, go look at, there’s a movie called Safe Zone, written, directed, shot, everything by AI. Actors by AI, voice by AI. Journey to the Center of the Earth. These things are popping up everywhere. And if you go online, you’ll actually see where they’re now teaching everybody how to do this in their home. You can make a movie in your home. So I think the idea of celebrity, you know, celebrity’s not gonna mean anything anymore. And I guess the thing that strikes me is it’s almost like they are ignoring the obvious. Freight train is coming their way, no matter how this comes out. These people need to be paid for what they’re doing. The streaming is stealing money from ’em. Absolutely, stealing money from ’em. But I guess what I’m saying is I feel terrible for them, but the answer is it’s not gonna change. It’s not gonna change. It’s gonna get worse. It’s a new paradigm.
Farron Cousins: It really is. And as AI continues to evolve, and we’re seeing it evolve at a alarming rate at this point. I mean, six months, not even six months ago, three months ago, we’re sitting here talking about the idiot lawyer who used AI to write a legal brief. And it’s made up all the fake cases. But we’re already way past that. That’s ancient history in the world of AI at this point. And we’ve had our guys kind of play around with it a little bit, write scripts for little skits we do.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, let me announce you’re not real. You know, you’re computer generated.
Farron Cousins: I’ve been sitting at home for eight months now. But yeah, it’s terrifying what it can do. And it could, it could replace me someday. Sure. Absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: Go look at Pika Labs, P I K A labs, Farron, look at Runway labs. Here you’ve got generate, they generate scripts. They generate dialogue. They generate voices. They create voices. They create genders. Male, female, age, nationality. You know how they do it, focus groups. They say, okay, why did everybody like say Mel Gibson or whoever, why did everybody like Tom Cruise for this movie? They sit them in a room for days and they figure out what is that essential part of Tom Cruise that people liked? Why did the movie sell like it did? And then they just say, okay, we’re not gonna use Tom Cruise, but we’re gonna take all these essential elements and build that person with that voice, with that look, with that attitude. And we’re gonna create an actor and we’re gonna write a script based on. Here’s the other part I think is so interesting. There’s discussion that the reason we’re seeing so much DC and Marvel comic book kind of stuff is because there aren’t any new formulas out there. They don’t make comedies, they don’t make romance stories, they don’t make intrigue stories like as many as they used to because they’ve used all the formulas. So at this point, AI just scrapes all those formulas and creates a movie. These people are in deep, deep trouble right now. That’s the problem.
Farron Cousins: And speaking of the formulas, they actually did a study a couple years ago. You know, every Christmas season you got the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime, they put out all their Christmas movies, it’s always the same formula. The woman meets the man. She doesn’t like Christmas or he doesn’t like Christmas, whatever it is. But they found that people actually really like that predictable formula. It makes them feel good.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. Yes.
Farron Cousins: And AI is able to create that with any genre. The predictability, I know everybody says, oh, well, I like the twists and turns, and sure those are good. But deep down, studies have proven people like the predictability where they can feel smarter saying, I know what’s gonna happen next and AI gives it to them. And it’s scary. It truly is.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the reason there aren’t that many movies like Sixth Sense to where you’re going, what the hell? At the end of the movie, you’re going, what? I didn’t see that coming. So the idea is get rid of these folks. Get rid of the people that are out there holding up signs. Get rid of the creators. Get rid of the grip people. Get rid of everybody. Save hundreds of millions of dollars so those greedy freaks running management can put more money in their pocket. That’s what this is about.
Politicians love to tell us why they’re trying to protect our children and many are gonna make that theme the central focus of their campaigns. But a new report shows that children in the US are not being protected from all things like child marriage and grueling agriculture work and oversight. Let me, I rarely do this, but I want to do this. This article created by Slate sucks. It absolutely sucks. It misses the point. The headline is, The Big New Report American Children Out. And you know why it sucks? It’s because they try to take a political angle on it. The first paragraph is, this is all about Red states. Nonsense. When you dig down, it’s as much about blue as it is red. But what ends up happening is anybody looking at this story by paragraph number three says, this has lost total credibility with me. That’s what we try to avoid here on this show. We try to say, call balls and strikes. If it’s red, it’s red. If it’s blue, it’s blue. But this writer for Slate thought it was so important to take a political position that they almost discounted the importance of this article. You pick the article up. I think it sucks. Go ahead and tell us what it’s about.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And to your point there too, they also mention, like, a lot of this happens in the Bible Belt, but it’s also literally happening everywhere else too.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: So you didn’t even need to include it. But what we’ve got here is this new report from Human Rights Watch that usually is looking at other countries and telling us how horrible things are there. They’re looking at the United States and they’re saying, listen, all those problems that we’ve identified in mostly third world countries, child marriages, children as young as seven grueling for 12 hours a day in the fields, that’s happening literally in your backyard. We have had hundreds of thousands of children, some as young as 10 years old, married off within the last decade here in the United States, usually 10 year old girls marrying adult men or girls under the age of 15 and 14, marrying adult men because it’s legal. Most states it’s legal.
Mike Papantonio: It’s an important story. That’s not my point. You and I have done this story half a dozen times. Agriculture industry that’s, kids are working the agriculture industry. They’re losing their arms, they’re losing their legs. Now you’ve got immigrants coming in, they’re gonna put those children there. If they lose a leg, ship ’em back home, no big deal. Ship ’em back to Nicaragua. We’ve done plenty of these stories, but we’ve tried to do it to where we’re saying, this is the problem. Don’t close the door, don’t close the door to evaluation and analysis because of your childlike, your childlike way of thinking to say, I’m gonna do everything red and blue. This article could have been a good article. It just sucks. After the first paragraph you go, really?
Farron Cousins: Well. And I’ll tell you another thing they missed too. They mentioned for a couple words, child poverty, they say, but we didn’t get into that. We have child poverty exploding right now in the United States. Those reports have been everywhere over the last couple weeks. You know after getting rid of the expanded child tax credit that we had during Covid, which was one of those great covid policies, we lifted millions of kids out of poverty. And then just for no reason, we said, we’re just gonna stop. And all those children immediately, their families fall right back into poverty and these kids don’t know where their next meal’s coming from.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, let me turn it up even a little bit more. How many stories have you seen corporate media do on this, on the, even the agriculture issue where the numbers are staggering? You know, where we’re letting kids work equipment rhey should not be around. They’re getting, they’re dying. They’re losing limbs. How many times have you seen corporate America do a story on that? Because corporate America does not like, corporate media does not like to report on corporate America, period.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. They’ll go to a commercial, their advertisers, you’ve got Tropicana or you’ve got Idaho potatoes, or John Deere, Monsanto, everybody involved in agriculture. So we’re not gonna talk about the fact that we got kids dying in the fields.
Mike Papantonio: They won’t do these stories. You know when I, I did corporate media a long time as you know, and we’d be in the middle of the small count, Pap 10, 9, 8, 7, they’d say, Pap, we gotta change the story. I might be talking about Bayer, for example, or whatever. And then all of a sudden in my ear says, you can’t do the story. You have to do some nonsense snowflake story about the constitution. Because in between the time that the tickle or the coming up, Mike Papantonio’s talking with Ed Schultz or whoever about Bayer and products that are killing hundreds of people, Bayer calls up and says, really? You gonna do that story? Well, we’re gonna cut your advertising dollars down. And so I have to change the story. That story doesn’t get told. That’s corporate media interaction with corporate America.
Roughly 13,000 auto workers in the United States went on strike last week as part of the United Auto Workers Union attempt to get better working conditions and benefits for workers across the industry. Now, the big three automakers are gonna face to face, they’re gonna face weeks, months possibly with factory slowdowns and maybe even stops. You know what’s the most bothersome about this? Is the industry, the auto industry, the three big made almost $170 billion, with a B, $170 billion in revenue is what they had last year. And they say, well, we can’t pay you this little extra money. We can’t change anything we’re doing.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. As the CEO is getting grilled. Why did you make an extra $30 million last year? But you can’t raise these workers wages over a period of four years. And that’s the thing people need to understand. These workers are not going out there saying, give me all my demands today. I need these by the end of the day. They’re saying, look, over the next four years, let’s create a structure where we get an increase this year. We get an increase next year.
Mike Papantonio: It’s totally reasonable.
Farron Cousins: It really is.
Mike Papantonio: Everything about this, even though some people have said, I mean, I think even some of the folks running the strike says, I know we’re asking for a lot. But really? Are they really asking for a lot? I don’t think so. Not when a company is making $170 billion. The three major companies, they have money to spread around and when they have money, they should do that. These workers took a big cut, didn’t they? When there was a decline, workers said, okay, you’re right. We wanna keep our jobs, we gotta do our jobs. And they did it. They delivered what was asked of them. Here’s the real problem I see. You’ve got the Chamber of Commerce, you’ve got associated industries, you’ve got the White House that say, come on across our border. Now why do you think that’s happening? What do you think’s going on there? Because they know that’s a whole generation that’s going to replace these folks that feel, that have the right to strike. That’s the plan. US Chamber of Commerce has spent a gazillion dollars trying to open the borders, so has associated industries. White House, Biden has fallen right into it. Yeah, we’re gonna open our borders. It has nothing to do, it’s all about a financial thing. These people are gonna come over, they’re gonna take these jobs eventually, just like they did where they came from. Mexico, what does an auto worker make $5 an hour? So they’re gonna come here and make $6 or $7 an hour and that’s gonna be like, that’s gonna be big, big deal to ’em. This is another paradigm shift, just like we talked about in the Hollywood story. This is a paradigm shift. It’s happening right before eyes. Lower wages, declining share increase, bottom economy up, forget it. If a guy can’t make enough money to buy a new house, buy a new car, have just the basics of life, the economy suffers. But when you put $35 in some of these folks’ hands, they can live a better quality of life. They can vacation. They can do all of these things that really matter, and the economy grows from the bottom. And that’s what we’re gonna lose here with what’s getting ready to happen.
Farron Cousins: And look, on the immigration issue, we have more demand here in the United States than we have workers. So the studies are very clear on this. If we do not get people coming across the borders, not necessarily in the auto industry, but there’s tons of industries that cannot exist if we don’t have these people coming across.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: But again, with what these auto workers are demanding here, and like you said, the union leaders say, we know we’re asking a lot. And that’s partially because too, you ask for more than you need. So that way when you negotiate, you do come down hopefully to the level where you wanted it in the first place. But we got, what is it, 70 days.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: 70 days worth of surplus before we start to see some real impacts here.
Mike Papantonio: Globalization, we talk about all the time. This is the effect. Okay. Globalization used to mean we’re gonna go to India, we’re gonna pay dirt wages in India. But what if you don’t have to go to India? What if you don’t have to go to Mexico? What if you bring ’em here? The overhead is even less. You don’t have to build a plant in Mexico. You don’t have to build a plant in India. They’re right here. You got the plant. You can even lower, your profit margins even increase. Again, it’s just corporate America. There’s no bounds to what these folks are willing to do. No bounds.
Farron Cousins: Wasn’t it Tom DeLay years ago when he went to Saipan and he said, oh my God, this is what, we should do this here. I mean, he was at a sweat shop.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I remember your story. You caught so much flack from the right wing and it was just. Tom, where is that guy? Did he die, Tom DeLay?
Farron Cousins: God, I don’t, we’ve got so many wackos in Congress today that I had forgotten about him till just now.
Mike Papantonio: I know. Farron Cousins, thank you for joining me.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: Surgical mesh products have been causing problems in patients for years, depending on the brand and the type of mesh that’s used. But now new complaints are emerging about a surgical mesh product that was initially used as a safe alternative because of the material that was used. It was biologic material. I’ve got Tim O’Brien with me, the premier lawyer, trial lawyer in these cases. Tim you and I did a segment on the artificial implant that was used, the mesh implant. This is a lot more bothersome because this is a biologic that’s contaminated and it’s not artificial. It’s actually bovine material. Right? Tell us about this case and what you intend to do with it.
Tim O’Brien: Right. So this is, I’ve got this case involving the Integra SurgiMend biologic mesh. And a client came to me through Mississippi, had lost her husband, and he went through a horrific death. And the doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on because he had an infection and the infection couldn’t be beat. Antibiotics, intravenous antibiotics.
Mike Papantonio: Was it sepsis? I mean, full-blown sepsis.
Tim O’Brien: He had full-blown sepsis, which of course led to organ failure and respiratory death. And he died. Then a year and a half after he dies, a recall comes out, says, guess what, Integra? Integra says, for the past five years, we are recalling all of those products because of endotoxin contamination.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Now explain endotoxin because it’s not just a regular toxin. This is where bacteria dies and out of that bacteria comes some awful things. Right?
Tim O’Brien: Right. It is seriously the Trojan horse. So the body attacks the bacteria, it attacks it, the bacteria dies, the cell wall breaks down, and then out of the Trojan horse comes this thing called an endotoxin. And if it’s one of the types of endotoxin like we have here with the Integra products, the problem is by and large, you cannot treat it with antibiotics. And it is designed to kill, it is designed to kill. And the body, if the numbers are high enough in terms of the endotoxin release, can’t fight it. Now, so that’s what I would call the bad roulette wheel because maybe you’ll get lucky and only a small number is released and the body can fight it. Or you can be one of those patients who has a big load of it, and guess what happens? You start with hypotension, your blood pressure goes down, the doctors say, well, he’s got a fever. Maybe he just got the flu. And then they realize this is much more dangerous because the patient’s organs are starting to fail. He’s going into septic shock and he’s diseased. And so then finally the patient because he or she can’t fight it, succumbs. And so short of that, you can also get bacterial meningitis from this.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Let me ask you a couple questions. First of all, what you’re describing could be a latent effect. In other words, you have the surgery, it may not be next week after the surgery. It may not be next month after the surgery. It’s possible that that bacteria, that endotoxin rises from the bacteria down the road, isn’t it?
Tim O’Brien: Yeah. So think of it this way. So you got the bacteria living in a condo. That condo is put into your body and the bacteria are fine, as long as they aren’t released from that condo, they’re just sitting there in the old bacteria home. And then when the body starts getting into that condo and start attacking that bacteria and it breaking down, the endotoxins get released and they aren’t content to hang out in the condo. They want to take a road trip and that road trip is through the blood. And then when those endotoxins get into the blood, that’s when the bad things happen.
Mike Papantonio: Tell us how horrible death by sepsis is. People don’t, they hear well, they had sepsis. They don’t understand. This is a horrible, horrible death, isn’t it?
Tim O’Brien: It is because it is not like a heart attack or a stroke where it happens immediately. You know something’s wrong. You’re conscious and you know something’s wrong and the doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong. And the pain associated with an infection like this, an endotoxin infection because it’s not just in your finger where you cut yourself and you have a little puss, it’s in your entire body. So everything is starting to hurt. Your body, I’ve heard it described as sounds like a tuning fork, that when you hit that tuning fork and it’s buzzing, but the sound is pain, it’s everywhere. So the body is like a tuning fork. Everything is painful because of the contamination, because of the infestation of the endotoxins. And then you’re slowly watching your organs shut down and you meet your end.
Mike Papantonio: The truth is, there are companies that make this biologic mesh and they do a good job. They not infected with bacteria. They do what they’re supposed to do. This company didn’t do that. What’s the company? Give us a quick history on it.
Tim O’Brien: Alright, so it’s a company called Integra, and they bought another company called TEI Biosciences, which is located up in Boston, which was a biologic mesh manufacturer, now wholly owned. And what you do when you make a biologic mesh is you don’t cut it out of a cow or a pig or a sheep or anything like that. Instead you get essentially progenitor cells, which are kinda like stem cells from either fetal tissue from a cow or neonatal newborn tissues. And you propagate that, you let that grow. But because it is from an animal source, animals like everything carry bacteria, the testing for the bacterial contamination is of critical importance. The most important thing you can do. And so what happened with Integra starting no later than 2018, and in my estimation probably likely before then, they were not assaying the material well enough. In other words, they weren’t testing it to ensure, give a hundred percent confidence that there is no bacterial contamination.
Mike Papantonio: Didn’t they get a warning from the FDA saying, you’re not doing this right. We’ve inspected, you’re blowing this. You got a responsibility, people could die. Didn’t they give them warning letters about it?
Tim O’Brien: They did. And let me tell you, to get the FDA to come to your door and go through an inspection, it really takes, it’s not par for the course. You really have to have done something or the FDA has seen something that they don’t wanna see. So it started back in 2018 and 2019, and the FDA basically gave them a warning to the warning letter called a 483. You do not want to get a Form 483 because it’s very detailed. It says, we found this, we found this, and you company have committed to fix it. And so what happened was they committed to fix it. FDA didn’t follow up. And then lo and behold, five years later, there’s a recall involving much of the same problems that we’re seeing with that 483. That then triggers another FDA inspection. They come issue a 483 and soon after that, a warning letter and a warning letter is problematic because 483 is, you can keep quiet. A warning letter is public for all the world to see.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Most folks that have been following this litigation for decades understand who you are. They understand that you’ve led the litigation in all types of mesh cases. How did you get involved to where you uncovered step by step, the case that you’re getting ready to go to trial with?
Tim O’Brien: So on the Perfects plug case, I got involved about five years ago. There were attorneys, young attorneys, great firebrands, people who had done transvaginal mesh litigation. And they came to me and to you and said, we think we’ve got the same problem that was in transvaginal mesh, but in hernia mesh. There’s a lot of cross pollination here. So I got involved and started looking into it, and I immediately realized this is number one, an under-regulated industry. And number two, it was using products and systems that were just utterly deficient. And the problem is, it’s so widespread. Hundreds of thousands of people have used the synthetic meshes, and now in the background, the biologic meshes are coming on as an alternative.
Mike Papantonio: You like the alternative, if it’s right, I take it. You like the biologic mesh if it’s done properly, this was not done properly. Is that kind of what your case is about?
Tim O’Brien: That’s right. This is not about the material itself. It’s about what you do with the material. Recognizing it’s coming from a non-human source.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna put these companies up, SurgiMend, ReVize, TissueMend, and PriMatrix.
Tim O’Brien: Right. So TissueMend is actually a Stryker product, but it’s made by Integra, by TEI. So that’s what we call private label. They just simply punch it out, put the Stryker label on it. So all the problems go back to Integra’s Boston facility. And those are the biologic products that they make.
Mike Papantonio: Hundreds of cases, thousands of cases. How many are out there?
Tim O’Brien: It remains to be seen. We know that tens of thousands of patients have received these and we, I know from the standpoint of, I just had a client call who lost her husband. My estimation, it’ll be in the low thousands, in the several thousands of cases.
Mike Papantonio: Tim O’Brien, good luck with this. It’s an important case. Again, I’m always amazed corporate America, if money’s involved and they can say, I’m gonna put this product out there and I’m gonna leave it out there as long as I can, this product was not recalled when it should have been recalled. Was it? There was a time gap where they knew way before the recall. They knew way before that they had a problem and they kept it out there anyway, didn’t they?
Tim O’Brien: Yes. They could have recalled it. Stopped manufacturing, got the problem fixed when they first discovered it back in 2018. And instead, tens of thousands of these were implanted into patients.
Mike Papantonio: I can tell you, this company does not want you across the council table. They’re in for a bad day. Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Tim O’Brien: Thank you, Mike.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments are gonna be available throughout next week, so make sure you’re subscribed to Ring of Fire’s YouTube channel. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you the stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you, because their advertisers do not allow them to tell the story. They’ll lose advertising dollars if they do. Or their political connections, either Republican or Democrat, they are not allowed to tell the story because they have such a kinship with that political party, rather than simply calling balls and strikes. We call balls and strikes here. It might not be something you agree with all the time, but we ain’t gonna change. We’ll see you next time.
