Healthy Wealthy & Wise Dr. William T. Choctaw, MD, JD
The Healthy Wealthy and Wise Podcast, with Dr. William T. Choctaw, MD, JD is a monthly podcast that focuses on personal growth and development by exploring a range of topics related to mental and physical health, personal wealth, leadership, and interpersonal relationships. Dr. Choctaw draws on his 75yrs experience and 50 plus years of surgical practice since graduating from Yale University School of Medicine.
Each month, we strive to provide our listeners with mental, physical, and spiritual strength by giving actionable advice, tips, guidance, and information to help them achieve their own personal, professional, and spiritual goals. We consider the health of the mind, body, and spirit paramount as a single unit that provides a cumulative strength greater than the individual parts, to strengthen the whole person.
We appreciate the natural differences in need between men, women, adults, and children. We recognize that the power to be happy is within each of us and under our control. We embrace technology and identify how it is applicable to our daily success. We address the entire human experiences from generation z to the baby boomers.
We’re passionate about the total person, and helping our listeners build and lead a full, well-rounded and happy life. So, tune in every month for an inspiring, encouraging, and informative podcast!
Healthy Wealthy & Wise Dr. William T. Choctaw, MD, JD
Celebrating Subcellular Triumphs: A Journey through mRNA Discovery and the Power of Holistic Healing with Nobel Laureates
Get ready to embark on a journey through the fascinating world of subcellular engineering with Nobel laureates, Dr. Katalin kariko and Dr. Drew Weisman. We'll take a closer look at their remarkable journey, from their first meeting 25 years ago, to their revolutionary discovery of the messenger RNA (mRNA) technique, a life-changing solution that paved the way for the creation of the COVID-19 vaccine. Overcoming numerous challenges, including Dr. kariko's dismissal from the University of Pennsylvania, these incredible scientists have shown us the power of resilience, dedication, and the transformative potential of knowledge and research in the realm of global health.
But that's not all. In this captivating conversation, we're also unveiling the broader concept of healing - one that holistically embraces physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Going beyond the cells and antibodies, we'll touch upon the strain a severe illness like COVID-19 puts on a person, and the integral role of comprehensive healing for a complete recovery. Wrapping up the discussion with some insightful reflections, we share some of the principles that have guided us through life with a positive lens. So, prepare yourselves for an enlightening episode that not only celebrates the extraordinary achievements of these Nobel laureates, but also illuminates the importance of holistic healing and the profound impact of positivity. You're in for a treat!
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The Host, Dr. William Choctaw; MD, JD, is a healthcare leadership expert, possessing a Medical Doctorate from the Yale University School of Medicine, and a Jurist Doctorate from Western University. Over a span of 50 years practicing medicine, he has served as Chief of Staff, Chief of Surgery, and as a member of the medical executive committee at Citrus Valley Medical Center over a 10 year period. Also, while practicing at Citrus Valley Medical Center, he served as Chief Transformation Officer, (developed a Robust Process Improvement/Lean Six Sigma program). Dr. Choctaw lectures nationally and internationally on medical leadership issues for hospital staffs, executives, and managers. He served as a Physician Surveyor on the Joint Commission. He's the author of 2 books, "Medical Malpractice: A Physician's Guide to the Law" and "Transforming the Patient Experience: A New Paradigm for Hospital and Physician Leadership, published by the Springer Publishing Co. He’s the President of Choctaw Medical Group, Inc., a clinical practice and medical legal consulting firm for medical staff executives, physician leaders, and hospitals.
Welcome to the Healthy, wealthy and Wise podcast with Dr William T Choctaw, mdjd, where the doctor helps you unlock your full potential by equipping you with tools and knowledge in the areas of health, wealth and wisdom anchored in his experience as a business executive, a physician surveyor for the Joint Commission, a former mayor and over 50 years of experience as a general surgeon. You've got questions, he's got answers, so let's get started. Here's Dr William T Choctaw, mdjd.
Speaker 2:Good morning. I'm Dr William Choctaw and I am delighted to have you with us today. Welcome to our Healthy, wealthy and Wise podcast. These podcasts are part of our Leadership Masterclass series based on my 50 years of surgical experience 50 plus years of surgical experience and my 75 plus years of life experience, so please sit back and enjoy. Today, we're going to talk about the Nobel scientists who just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Please stay with us and enjoy.
Speaker 2:Each month, we strive to provide our listeners with mental, physical and spiritual strengths by giving you actionable advice, tips, guidance and information to help you achieve your own personal, professional and spiritual goals. We consider the health of your mind, body and spirit paramount as a single unit that provides a cumulative strength greater than the individual parts. In other words, we want to strengthen the whole person. So thank you for giving us some of your very valuable time and joining us on this very important topic. As always, we like to start with our beliefs. I believe life is about being of service to others. I believe knowledge is power. I believe leaders can change the world. We always like to give you an outline, and so we're going to talk about the two doctors who discovered the messenger RNA technique to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic, for the pandemic. We're going to specifically talk about them and how they got to where they were and how we have all benefited from their resiliency and dedication to this particular project. So go with me, if you will, to an area we used to talk about in college and medical school as subcellular engineering. Think about it this way how bodies are made up of cells, probably billions of cells. Inside those cells, inside each cell, there is a nucleus, and inside each cell there's what we call cytoplasm. I like to use the analogy of think about an egg, a fried egg. The yolk, if you will, would be the nucleus and the white part of the egg around the nucleus would be the cytoplasm, but they constitute the egg. That's the way a cell is, so if you can think about a cell in those terms. And so what we're going to do is we're going to go inside that white and yellow part of our cells, down to an area that's used to determine activity of those cells, to determine how those cells actually work and how those cells give direction to the body or to other cells to fulfill certain tasks. It is absolutely fascinating how our body is designed, and so I encourage you, just for a brief time, just go with us on this journey of subcellular engineering.
Speaker 2:Two of the individuals who this month as a matter of fact, this week, we're in the month of October just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine are doctors Catalan Carrico and Dr Drew Weisman. Catalan Carrico is 68 years old. She originally immigrated from Hungary to this country when she was quite young and subsequently grew up here and became a scientist, particularly a subcellular engineering type of scientist, and as a result of that, became very, very interested in the work of the different enzymes within ourselves, particularly the enzymes having to do with messenger RNA, dna, ribosomes, proteins, polymerases, etc. Etc. And so, basically, this is her life's work. Dr Weisman is originally from, was born here, and also and is an image of the immunology, and so his work for all of his life has dealt with the immune system in the body. He's been fascinated about the immune system, which is sort of the defense system in the body, if you will. If a foreign agent comes into our body, like a bacteria or a virus, the immune system is that system in the body that's responsible for protecting us and getting rid of that foreign agent, and so this is really a lot of what Dr Weisman has dedicated his life to doing and, as fate would have it, apparently they met about 25 years ago at the University of Pennsylvania, where they were both instructors and began to talk and, as they say, the rest is history. And so we have a scientist who is interested in the cell and mechanisms within the cell who then has a conversation with another scientist both of positions who's interested in the defense parts of the cell and that process and how that process protects the body, and, as a result of their extraordinary work, we have now been blessed with a vaccine using their technique messenger RNA, and we've talked about this in some of our previous podcasts, but we'll just briefly summarize some of the aspects today. But the main thing is that we are better in this country in the world actually not just this country because two individuals dedicated their lives to doing this and they've been doing this obviously over 20 years.
Speaker 2:Particularly Dr Carrico, who was at the University of Pennsylvania with Dr Weisman, actually was dismissed from the University of Pennsylvania about 10 years ago. And what she decided to do? She wanted to continue her work, and so she decided to go overseas to Germany and work for a little company called BioTech. Now, you may have heard of BioTech maybe two, three or four years ago, when they were talking about vaccines. Well, biotech is a company that was working on messenger RNA as a process to make vaccines better, just a little small company that was working on this particular technology. Pfizer, the bigger pharmaceutical worldwide, in essence partnered, I think, biotech, and that's how Pfizer ended up being the main pharmaceutical company to bring this mRNA technique for vaccine production to market and allowed and actually was the first to do that, and so all of us, myself included, were able to get that vaccine and consequently be protected.
Speaker 2:And so what this shows, I think, among other things, and one of the things that we try to do with these podcasts is we deal with the body, mind and spirit, because what we have learned, whether we're talking about wellness or just health, mental and physical health is that there is a collaboration within each of us, and so that the one plus one equals three, not two. So, indeed, it is the strength of that collaboration that allows us to produce the highest of quality, and I think doctors Carrico and Weisman are exemplary of that. And then, clearly, they needed to have a certain degree of perseverance, particularly Dr Carrico, as I mentioned, who was dismissed from the University of Pennsylvania. She had to really be strong and really be committed to doing this work, and certainly until the point that she would go to a different country to do her work, even though she had family and husband. So I think it just shows the level of commitment that is necessary sometimes to do this type of work that both of them had to be relentless in their pursuit Because initially, just because you come up with an idea, that idea is not automatically adopted by the, the medical community, if you will, and in a way that's a good thing. It has to be proven. It has to be proven over and over and over again. It has to meet what we call the co-postilist K-O-C-H. But that's how we know that it's genuine and that it's real. And indeed they were able to do that. Just very briefly, what they were able to do.
Speaker 2:Let's go back to the cell. Let's go inside the cell. We have a nucleus and we have a surrounding cytoplasm, and all of this is within a membrane called the cell membrane. Within the nucleus is where DNA is and this is the genetic code for us individually. Desoxyribonucleic acetic is the medical term for it, and it basically is what determines why I am and look and act differently from the way you may look and act. This is our specific genetic code and some years ago the entire genetic code was defined and what we found was the differences between all of us is really just one or two areas, that most of the area is exactly the same, but in terms of the vaccine it was utilized and the beauty of what doctors Kariko and Weissman did, it was to take a normal process within the body and use that process to fight disease.
Speaker 2:So think about this to take a normal process that was in the body and use that process. Use the body's own process, just by tweaking it a bit, but use the body's own process to fight disease, and that certainly is the best of all worlds. No process is perfect, and neither is this process perfect, but it works and has saved millions and millions of lives over the last two to three years. So, in essence, what it does is it causes the RNA, the messenger RNA, to produce a prototype of the virus, particularly the spike protein of the virus, and then have the body then be able to recognize the virus whenever it invades the body. Now that's a huge oversimplification, but that's in essence what it does, and the idea and the thought is absolutely genius.
Speaker 2:The whole idea of subcellular engineering that I can remember occurred back when I was in medical school that I first remembered this, and this was when Richard Nixon was president of the country, and at the time he had an idea, or certainly made a proposal in the federal government, that money's be used to cure cancer. The whole idea was that there were so many people dying of cancer and that we should increase research and development to cure cancer, and part of that was to use monies to be applied to what I call what's called subcellular engineering. We can see the cells under the microscope, but indeed it's what happens within the cells that dictates the essence of how our body functions and does not function. And this is what these two physicians were able to do, dr Kariku and Dr Weissman. They were able to take a part of that subcellular engineering, ie the messenger RNA function, and its primary function is to make copies of other types of RNA, and by having these copies in the cell, the cell is now better prepared to deal with an invasion from a foreign body, if you will, one of the ways for the mRNA vaccine to work is that it has to be couched in a a a a form so that the body does not attack it. Because, remember, a vaccine is something that's foreign to the body, so you've got to protect it with the protective coating or covering so that the body itself does not attack it. So they were able to do that. They were able to come up with a way to do that, using nanoparticles or nanoparticle production technique, and successfully be able to deliver the vaccine into the body, then allow the stimulate the cell, particularly within the cytoplasm, the mRNA within the cytoplasm to make a new type of mRNA and a new type of protein and allow the cell to protect itself against this foreign protein. I know it sounds a little complicated, but the bottom line is using the body to protect itself. That, in effect, is the essence of what Dr Scorico and Weissman were able to do. It took them close to about 30 years to do it. Obviously, like with a lot of great inventions and discoveries, it's discarded when it's first proposed. But over time and with a lot of time and effort, or a lot of people work entirelessly, we've all been able to benefit now from this new messenger RNA process.
Speaker 2:So to look a little more closely, just for a brief, with this process the messenger RNA does not enter the nucleus, remember I mentioned the nucleus is like the yolk of the egg. The messenger RNA primarily operates within the white part of the egg, if you will, or the cytoplasm of the cell. This is where it goes to an area called the ribosome and where it produces or transcribes new protein, if you will. What the doctors have taught the body to do is to copy the virus protein and then use that copy to protect the cell from the virus invading the cell. It's just an extraordinary process. It's. The process is called part of the process called protein synthesis. This occurs in the ribosome, which is in the white part of the egg, if you will, the ribosome, the cytoplasm, not in the yellow part. The messenger RNA directs the cells to produce copies of the protein that comes from the spike protein of the virus. By recognizing the spike protein as an invader into the body, the body then stimulates antibodies, which is part of that immune system, stimulates antibodies which come in and kill the virus. It's just an extraordinary process. As we know, the newest variant of COVID-19 is ARIS E-R-I-S. That is the one that's most prominent today and is creating most difficulty today.
Speaker 2:Let me share a personal note with you. One of the reasons why I am so fascinated and interested in this cell cell your engineer is my major in college was biochemistry. I'm originally from Nashville, tennessee. I went to an HBCU, a historically black college university called Tennessee State University in Nashville, tennessee. I knew I wanted to go to medical school, but I did not major in pre-med. I majored in biochemistry. As long as you take the breakfast of courses to apply to medical school, then you can certainly apply. Biochemistry always fascinated me. Chemistry was a requirement for medical school, but I didn't quite like chemistry, quite honestly. But I loved biology. Biochemistry was the perfect fit for me. It was just the perfect fit for me.
Speaker 2:Indeed, biochemistry is what's involved with the work of doctors like Carico and Weisman. If you remember, back in the early sixties again, depending on how old you are there was a doctor. There was a doctor James Watson and Francis Crick who received the Nobel Peace Prize I mean the Nobel Prize for in medicine for discovering something called the double helix. The double helix is the form of DNA. Dna is inside the nucleus of the cell Again, the yellow part of the cell if it were an egg yolk, whereas the messenger RNA is in the white part of the cell, ie the cytoplasm of the cell. But doctors Crick and Watson invented or discovered the double helix, got a Nobel Prize for it. The reason why I bring that up is Dr Watson was at Harvard, dr Crick was in England at one of the universities there and when I was in college my second year in college I was very fortunate to receive a summer internship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and it had been invited from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Speaker 2:It's listening. I love you guys. You literally changed my life. Literally changed my life Because what they did? It was a program that was designed to go to HBCUs in the sound and allow certain students who were academically qualified to study for the summer at three Ivy League schools. Think about that. This is something that happened in 1967. I was a sophomore in college at Tennessee State and I was one of two students from my school selected to be a part of this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program that allowed summer studies of students from HBCUs at Ivy League schools. And I was fortunate.
Speaker 2:In 1967, I went to Harvard and you gotta understand, I had never been out of the deep South in my life. I had never been on an airplane in my life. So here I am, first time, on a plane arriving in Boston, massachusetts, on my way to Cambridge to study for the summer at Harvard University. More significantly, I was assigned to study with a graduate student who was working for Dr James Watson. Now, dr Watson was not there that summer, he was away for the summer but I was able to work with his graduate student and the student was just extraordinary. His job was to teach me various subjects. These were regular Harvard college subjects, but he was my tutor and just my supporter overall. He was a young man from Caltech who was studying at Harvard for the summer, working on an advanced degree. So my point is that my interest in a lot of the vaccines and the way they're formed using a subcellular technique is really part of how I got into medicine in the first place. It fascinates me and I just sort of feel extraordinarily blessed to see the results of what has happened. But so just wanted to mention that very briefly.
Speaker 2:Going back to Aris, one of the good things about this new variant for COVID-19 is that it does not appear to be very, very different from the previous variants and that's a good thing because it makes the work of the vaccine easier or more productive, if you will, or more effective, if you will. And as you know, the virus COVID-19, and its variants causes initially cold-type symptoms, but they tend to be on the most severe side. It's not like a regular cold or a regular flu. They tend to be on the most severe side, with fever, fatigue, dry cough, aches and pains, running nose, sore throat, there may be some shortness of breath and there also may be some gastrointestinal symptoms, abdominal pain, diarrhea, et cetera. These are some of the symptoms that we see, as we all know, doing the, usually doing the what we call the cold flu season. The fourth quarter and the first quarter of the year, a particular first quarter of the year.
Speaker 2:We basically have three main viruses that we're concerned about. One is the influenza virus, which has been around for years, and usually we get vaccines against that. There's the RBS virus, and it's been around not quite as long and you can also be vaccinated for that, and the more important or the more serious, the COVID-19 bars, which we've all been vaccinating. I remember vaccination. The purpose of vaccination is to prevent and infection. It does not treat the infection. So when you are vaccinated, that prevents you from getting the disease or the illness in the future. There are other types of medication that have been used to treat COVID and, as we mentioned before, these medications like paclibid, which is a tablet that can be used as an outpatient, redemzavir, which is given IV, that can be used early on when the symptoms have started. So we're talking about vaccinations now, which is prevention, not treatment.
Speaker 2:Undoubtedly, any type of severe infection and certainly COVID is no exception to that creates damage on multiple levels. We always talk about the body, mind and spirit, and rightfully so. There's a lot of focus on the body, but clearly the mind and spirit are also traumatized and it's very important to think about those areas as we experience, the members of our family experience illnesses, to help the whole person to heal. So, in summary, basically we have two physicians, dr Caitlin Carrico and Dr Drew Weissman, who just received this month the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their landmark work in developing the messenger RNA vaccine to save the lives of millions of people worldwide. And, as we mentioned, vaccines are not treatment, they are prevention, and the beauty of the work of these two physicians is that they were able to use the body's own mechanism to better protect itself against foreign invaders, ie viruses.
Speaker 2:My basic principles I believe God is in charge. I have said this before. My first principle I'm a physician of faith and indeed it has been my faith in God that has sustained me all of my life. Second principle is no bad days. I do not have any more bad days. I used to, but about 20, 30 years ago I got rid of all my bad days because I figured out that my day was good or bad if I said it was.
Speaker 2:Number three I don't sweat the small stuff. Most stuff is small. When things happen or are said to me that I perceive as being negative, I have learned not to worry about that. Most times it's not important, I just let it go. Number four forgiveness is therapy. Indeed, whenever something happens to me that I perceive as negative, I immediately forgive. It does not matter who's right or who's wrong. I have learned that forgiveness is therapy. And my final basic principle is that everything is a relationship. Everything is a relationship and relationships are based on three things respect, mutual trust, good communication. If you have those three things, you have a very good relationship. If you do not have those three things. You have work to do. If you like these podcasts, we would encourage you to become one of our loyal subscribers and go to wwwbuzzsproutcom forward slash 210103. That's wwwbuzzsproutcom forward slash 210103.
Speaker 2:And finally be the change you want to see in the world. Have a wonderful day.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Healthy, wealthy and Wise podcast with Dr William T Chokta, mdjd. Be sure to check out other great episodes covering areas of health, wealth and wisdom at THWPcom and, while you're there, be sure to check out the books, blogs and other literature in your preferred format. And don't forget to leave a review, subscribe, share and support the podcast that's at THWPcom. You've been listening to the Healthy, wealthy and Wise podcast with Dr William T Chokta, mdjd.
