Daniel Schmachtenberger
Daniel Schmachtenberger is a social philosopher and strategist. His work examines systemic issues, including the societal and structural root causes contributing to the chronic disease epidemic.
15 claims checked on air: 4 context 2 contradicted 1 overstated 5 supported 3 unverified
What they said on air - supported
Early toxicity studies on tetraethyllead showed that workers and researchers became ill, but the results were concealed.
"The early studies that were done on tetraethyllead on toxicity, the people did get sick, including the researcher, and the results were hidden." (said at 0:21:55)
Historical analyses and occupational health literature confirm that the early development and production of tetraethyl lead (TEL) in the 1920s caused severe illness in workers and researchers, including primary inventor Thomas Midgley Jr., while industry proponents actively marginalized, suppressed, and downplayed public health warnings and toxicity data to advance commercialization.
Historical exposure to leaded gasoline resulted in an estimated loss of one billion IQ points in the United States population.
"The effects when you look back in just America are estimated at a billion points of IQ loss for Americans." (said at 0:22:21)
A 2022 epidemiological modeling study by McFarland et al. published in PNAS estimated that childhood lead exposure from leaded gasoline resulted in a cumulative loss of 824,097,690 IQ points among the US population alive in 2015 (an average loss of 2.6 IQ points per person). Rounding 824 million to approximately one billion points accurately reflects the magnitude reported in the primary published estimate.
Leaded gasoline remains in use for propeller-driven aircraft.
"Even though we supposedly banned lead in gasoline, it's still used in prop planes." (said at 0:25:29)
While tetraethyllead was phased out and banned in motor vehicle gasoline under the Clean Air Act, leaded aviation gasoline (avgas, most commonly 100LL) remains in widespread use for piston-engine, propeller-driven aircraft. Avgas is currently the leading source of airborne lead emissions in the United States.
A 2019 study showed that lead exposure caused children under five globally to lose 780 million IQ points in that single year.
"there's a study I saw in 2019 that showed children under five lost 780 million IQ points just in 2019 just from lead." (said at 0:25:51)
A global modelling study published in The Lancet Planetary Health (using Global Burden of Disease 2019 data) estimated that lead exposure caused children younger than 5 years to lose 765 million IQ points (95% CI 443–1,098 million) globally in the year 2019. The speaker's figure of 780 million IQ points lost in 2019 closely aligns with this published estimate.
A study assessing biopsied prostate cancer tissue found that the combination of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and human papillomavirus (HPV) was present in the vast majority of cases.
"There was a study I found interesting that was looking at prostate cancers that were removed for cancer and that were biopsied and doing viral assessment on it, and found that the combination of EBV and HPV was present in the vast majority of them." (said at 0:46:42)
The speaker accurately describes the findings of a published study by Whitaker et al. (2013), which assessed human papillomavirus (HPV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in prostate cancer tissue and reported that gene sequences for both viruses were present in most of the malignant specimens. However, the study also found that EBV and HPV were equally ubiquitous in normal and benign prostate tissue, suggesting the dual viral presence may be incidental rather than a specific driver of prostate cancer. Subsequent studies in other cohorts have reported substantially lower coinfection rates (e.g., 14.9%).
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