Transcript Part 1 for those of you who don't want to/can't access the video.
Dr. Sabine Hazan: The Gut Bacteria That’s Missing in People Who Get Severe COVID
Dr. Sabine Hazan is a gastroenterologist and CEO of Progenabiome. She is an expert on gut bacteria. When she started studying the microbiomes of COVID-19 patients, she quickly noticed a pattern.
“The people that had severe COVID lacked a certain bacteria called bifidobacteria,” she says.
In this episode, she breaks down how a healthy gut impacts people’s outcomes from COVID-19, and what steps people can take to improve their gut health and overall immunity.
With the knowledge Hazan gained from studying the microbiomes of COVID-19 patients, she developed and patented treatment protocols combining vitamins and drugs that increase bifidobacteria including vitamin C, vitamin D, hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin.
We also discuss how the COVID-19 vaccines impact the microbiome, including the microbiomes of babies breastfeeding from recently vaccinated mothers.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Sabine Hazan, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Sabine Hazan:
Thank you for having me.
Mr. Jekielek:
I’m going to read you a recent headline in Newsweek, “It’s time for the scientific community to admit we were wrong about COVID and it cost lives.” I’m sure you’ve read this piece.
Ms. Hazan:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
What’s your reaction?
Ms. Hazan:
I’ve been saying that from the beginning. In fact, I’ve been saying that since I opened ProgenaBiome, my genetic research lab, because I felt that even in microbiology we’ve been wrong. We always thought that we would find the bug, kill the bug, and essentially that would be the end of the story. But it’s not.
It’s find the bug, kill the bug, but you kill the microbiome at the same time. It’s not the end of the story, it’s the beginning of a new story and a new disease and a new problem. With Covid I felt that, because I knew this foundation was already wrong, I knew that we were going to make the same mistake, which is, “Let’s find a vaccine.” A vaccine for a virus that is mutating was just not the answer for me.
The answer to me was, “Let’s focus on the microbiome. Let’s focus on how to build our immunity because our immunity is in the gut,” rather than focusing on, “Let’s kill the virus. Let’s give a vaccine for a mutating virus.”
Mr. Jekielek:
For starters, can you explain to everybody what exactly microbiomes are?
Ms. Hazan:
A microbiome is essentially all the bugs in the universe that are around you, that are on your skin, and that are in your gut. It’s bacteria, viruses, and fungi. My focus is really on the microbiome of the bowels, right in the colon. Why? Because essentially, everything you eat, you put on your skin, and that you breathe goes into your colon. You put something on your skin, it goes into the blood vessel, moves around, and ends up in your gut.
The microbiome is essentially the accumulation of all these microbes that interplay with each other. They all have a function. If you look at a macro vision of humanity, every human being has a function. The accountant is doing his thing, the plumber is doing his thing, the contractor is doing his thing, the doctor, the lawyer, and everyone cohabitates the planet doing their thing.
In the gut, it’s the same thing, except it’s microscopic. You can’t see them doing their thing, but they all have a function. Every microbe is doing something, whether it’s absorbing vitamin B, metabolism, or affecting moods. That’s what we’re going to find out. That’s a fascinating thing about the microbiome, it’s all these interconnections of these microbes doing something and essentially creating your immunity.
Mr. Jekielek:
Your approach to dealing with coronavirus, or the CCP virus, as we call it at The Epoch Times, and Covid, the disease, was through the lens of the microbiome.
Ms. Hazan:
Correct. My thought at the beginning is that everything ends up in the gut. If it’s something you’re breathing, or if you have influenza in your lungs, you’re going to find it in your gut, because we were finding that. If you inject Botox in your face, you find botulinum toxin in your gut.
Essentially, if you’re seeing all those microbes eventually ending up in your gut, the hypothesis at the beginning is that Covid has to be in the gut. We started back in January, analyzing the virus.
Mr. Jekielek:
January 2020?
Ms. Hazan:
2020, yes. We started in January 2020, because I had a big microbiome conference in Malibu, and doctors were coming from China, Australia, and all over to speak at this conference. We had to put the conference on hold, but we were studying the virus at the same time, because we’re all in the microbiome space. We’ve all played with poop essentially to try to manipulate or change diseases. That’s because we’re on the research part of it.
When Covid hit, and it went from China to Italy, and the strain of the virus changed, I said, “Wait a minute. This is not the same virus that was in China and went to Italy.” Dr. Borody and I, who was the father of fecal transplant, basically started saying, “Let’s look at this carefully.” We were all watching what was happening in China, and what was happening in Italy until it reached America.
As soon as it reached America, my first focus was to collect the stools. In March 2020, the first patients arrived, when that boat came off the shore, and basically patients were in there. Then, we had a couple patients in New York and a couple patients in LA. I collected stools. I had my doctors all over the country. We gathered ourselves, and there were about 400 doctors that do clinical research. Not just doctors that are practitioners, but doctors that were doing clinical research.
One of my doctors is Alan Miller in Atlanta. I remember calling him and saying, “You’ve got to collect stools.” He didn’t even have a mask. I didn’t have a mask. We’re basically going to these people’s houses, giving them kits and collecting stools. In March 2020, we had the first stools, and then we developed the assay.
When you’re looking for Covid, you have to have a certain pipeline that you develop. It’s not like I’m looking for a bunch of DNA of bacteria. I’m specifically looking for an RNA, a virus, and I’m specifically looking for Covid. We didn’t really know what to look for at the beginning and these reagents were not really developed. We had to create our own pipeline and that’s expensive.
It’s like you recreate a whole new formula in your lab. My scientist said, “You’re spending money for nothing.” This was over a $100,000 pipeline, not knowing what we were looking for. He said, “You’re not going to find anything.” I said, “I disagree. I’m sure I’m going to find something.” Then, he ran the pipeline and we ran those samples, and he called me and he goes, “You won’t believe this, but 100 percent of the samples have Covid.”
Even one patient that was asymptomatic, but come to find out he had symptoms a week prior. That was the beginning. We started looking at Covid in the stools and then when we found Covid in the stools, the people that didn’t have Covid were the people that were treated and no longer had symptoms. We said, “What treatment did they use?” The hydroxychloroquine/Z-Pak [azithromycin] was the treatment that was used.
That gave us an idea that maybe hydroxy and Z-Pak are killing off the virus. Because, like other bugs, you have to kill them and then boost the immunity. That was the first thing. The first thing was finding Covid. Then, once we found Covid, we decided to look at the people that had severe Covid, versus the people in the same family that never had Covid, but that were exposed to Covid.
We looked at the microbiomes. We did another pipeline, which is basically a DNA of microbes and we discovered that the people that had severe Covid lacked a certain bacteria called bifidobacteria. But there were people that were exposed to Covid, but never got Covid, in the same family. I’m talking about a farmer that slept with his wife. The wife had Covid. He never got it.
This farmer, in particular, did this experiment. He kissed her, he took his saliva, smeared on his face. He wanted to catch Covid to get the immunity. He never got it, never got the antibodies. I said to him, “I want to see your stools, and I want to see your wife.”
Sure enough, she had zero bifido. He had a lot. Why? He’s exposed outside, he’s in the sun, he’s playing with the cow manure. He’s drinking the raw milk from the cows. That started my train of looking at the microbiome.
Mr. Jekielek:
This is absolutely fascinating. Basically, you’re seeing that there is bifidobacteria in people who are somehow resistant or have overcome it. Before we go there, I want to backtrack a bit and catch up. You said you have 400 doctors. You’ve been involved in clinical trials for decades, correct?
Ms. Hazan:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
These 400 doctors that you’re talking about are people who you’ve been working with on this. On one side, you’re a gastroenterologist looking at microbiomes. On the other hand, you have been working in the sphere of clinical trials with big pharma for decades. Please explain that whole piece.
Ms. Hazan:
I went from GI, being a gastroenterologist, to doing clinical trials. In fact, in my first year of fellowship, in order to get into GI as the first woman, I had to do research. The first year of research was really eye-opening about the world of clinical trials. I kept on doing clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies, like 10 percent clinical trial, 90 percent GI. And then, with kids and a husband who’s a cardiologist, it became 90 percent clinical research, and 10 percent GI. Why?
Because clinical trials gave me a view of what was the future. So often, you treat these patients with Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, and you give them the treatment that everybody gives them. You don’t really have a novel approach. A clinical trial was really a new idea from a scientist, and then you give it to a patient. To get these patients, you have to have a network of physicians that refer to you.
I was always known in the world of clinical trials for a bacteria called Clostridium difficile [C.diff], which is essentially a bacteria that causes people to have diarrhea, and is caused by taking antibiotics. It’s a case of a patient taking antibiotics, getting diarrhea, and then getting C.diff. I was always doing these clinical trials because medications weren’t working.
Then these clinical trials brought a new understanding of the microbiome. From clinical trials and working with pharmaceutical companies, I had an insight into the world of how to bring these trials to market and work with pharmaceutical companies.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let me just see if I’ve got this straight. On the one hand, you’ve got this window into these new methods that pharmaceutical companies are trying to use, and you’re actually getting patients and doing these double-blind tests.
Ms. Hazan:
Yes, placebo-controlled trials.
Mr. Jekielek:
Placebo-controlled trial, okay, excellent. Also, you’re specifically interested in this one particular bacteria that comes into the gut after antibiotics. Is this what you’re known for?
Ms. Hazan:
Yes, this bacteria is essentially the bacteria that probably resided in the gut but became toxic, and started secreting its toxins because we killed the microbiome around it. It’s essentially a microbe that sustains itself with other microbes, but once you kill the rest of the microbes, it starts flaring up.
Transcript Part 1 for those of you who don't want to/can't access the video. Dr. Sabine Hazan: The Gut Bacteria That’s Missing in People Who Get Severe COVID
Dr. Sabine Hazan is a gastroenterologist and CEO of Progenabiome. She is an expert on gut bacteria. When she started studying the microbiomes of COVID-19 patients, she quickly noticed a pattern.
“The people that had severe COVID lacked a certain bacteria called bifidobacteria,” she says.
In this episode, she breaks down how a healthy gut impacts people’s outcomes from COVID-19, and what steps people can take to improve their gut health and overall immunity.
With the knowledge Hazan gained from studying the microbiomes of COVID-19 patients, she developed and patented treatment protocols combining vitamins and drugs that increase bifidobacteria including vitamin C, vitamin D, hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin.
We also discuss how the COVID-19 vaccines impact the microbiome, including the microbiomes of babies breastfeeding from recently vaccinated mothers.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Sabine Hazan, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Sabine Hazan: Thank you for having me.
Mr. Jekielek: I’m going to read you a recent headline in Newsweek, “It’s time for the scientific community to admit we were wrong about COVID and it cost lives.” I’m sure you’ve read this piece.
Ms. Hazan: Yes.
Mr. Jekielek: What’s your reaction?
Ms. Hazan: I’ve been saying that from the beginning. In fact, I’ve been saying that since I opened ProgenaBiome, my genetic research lab, because I felt that even in microbiology we’ve been wrong. We always thought that we would find the bug, kill the bug, and essentially that would be the end of the story. But it’s not.
It’s find the bug, kill the bug, but you kill the microbiome at the same time. It’s not the end of the story, it’s the beginning of a new story and a new disease and a new problem. With Covid I felt that, because I knew this foundation was already wrong, I knew that we were going to make the same mistake, which is, “Let’s find a vaccine.” A vaccine for a virus that is mutating was just not the answer for me.
The answer to me was, “Let’s focus on the microbiome. Let’s focus on how to build our immunity because our immunity is in the gut,” rather than focusing on, “Let’s kill the virus. Let’s give a vaccine for a mutating virus.”
Mr. Jekielek: For starters, can you explain to everybody what exactly microbiomes are?
Ms. Hazan: A microbiome is essentially all the bugs in the universe that are around you, that are on your skin, and that are in your gut. It’s bacteria, viruses, and fungi. My focus is really on the microbiome of the bowels, right in the colon. Why? Because essentially, everything you eat, you put on your skin, and that you breathe goes into your colon. You put something on your skin, it goes into the blood vessel, moves around, and ends up in your gut.
The microbiome is essentially the accumulation of all these microbes that interplay with each other. They all have a function. If you look at a macro vision of humanity, every human being has a function. The accountant is doing his thing, the plumber is doing his thing, the contractor is doing his thing, the doctor, the lawyer, and everyone cohabitates the planet doing their thing.
In the gut, it’s the same thing, except it’s microscopic. You can’t see them doing their thing, but they all have a function. Every microbe is doing something, whether it’s absorbing vitamin B, metabolism, or affecting moods. That’s what we’re going to find out. That’s a fascinating thing about the microbiome, it’s all these interconnections of these microbes doing something and essentially creating your immunity.
Mr. Jekielek: Your approach to dealing with coronavirus, or the CCP virus, as we call it at The Epoch Times, and Covid, the disease, was through the lens of the microbiome.
Ms. Hazan: Correct. My thought at the beginning is that everything ends up in the gut. If it’s something you’re breathing, or if you have influenza in your lungs, you’re going to find it in your gut, because we were finding that. If you inject Botox in your face, you find botulinum toxin in your gut.
Essentially, if you’re seeing all those microbes eventually ending up in your gut, the hypothesis at the beginning is that Covid has to be in the gut. We started back in January, analyzing the virus.
Mr. Jekielek: January 2020?
Ms. Hazan: 2020, yes. We started in January 2020, because I had a big microbiome conference in Malibu, and doctors were coming from China, Australia, and all over to speak at this conference. We had to put the conference on hold, but we were studying the virus at the same time, because we’re all in the microbiome space. We’ve all played with poop essentially to try to manipulate or change diseases. That’s because we’re on the research part of it.
When Covid hit, and it went from China to Italy, and the strain of the virus changed, I said, “Wait a minute. This is not the same virus that was in China and went to Italy.” Dr. Borody and I, who was the father of fecal transplant, basically started saying, “Let’s look at this carefully.” We were all watching what was happening in China, and what was happening in Italy until it reached America.
As soon as it reached America, my first focus was to collect the stools. In March 2020, the first patients arrived, when that boat came off the shore, and basically patients were in there. Then, we had a couple patients in New York and a couple patients in LA. I collected stools. I had my doctors all over the country. We gathered ourselves, and there were about 400 doctors that do clinical research. Not just doctors that are practitioners, but doctors that were doing clinical research.
One of my doctors is Alan Miller in Atlanta. I remember calling him and saying, “You’ve got to collect stools.” He didn’t even have a mask. I didn’t have a mask. We’re basically going to these people’s houses, giving them kits and collecting stools. In March 2020, we had the first stools, and then we developed the assay.
When you’re looking for Covid, you have to have a certain pipeline that you develop. It’s not like I’m looking for a bunch of DNA of bacteria. I’m specifically looking for an RNA, a virus, and I’m specifically looking for Covid. We didn’t really know what to look for at the beginning and these reagents were not really developed. We had to create our own pipeline and that’s expensive.
It’s like you recreate a whole new formula in your lab. My scientist said, “You’re spending money for nothing.” This was over a $100,000 pipeline, not knowing what we were looking for. He said, “You’re not going to find anything.” I said, “I disagree. I’m sure I’m going to find something.” Then, he ran the pipeline and we ran those samples, and he called me and he goes, “You won’t believe this, but 100 percent of the samples have Covid.”
Even one patient that was asymptomatic, but come to find out he had symptoms a week prior. That was the beginning. We started looking at Covid in the stools and then when we found Covid in the stools, the people that didn’t have Covid were the people that were treated and no longer had symptoms. We said, “What treatment did they use?” The hydroxychloroquine/Z-Pak [azithromycin] was the treatment that was used.
That gave us an idea that maybe hydroxy and Z-Pak are killing off the virus. Because, like other bugs, you have to kill them and then boost the immunity. That was the first thing. The first thing was finding Covid. Then, once we found Covid, we decided to look at the people that had severe Covid, versus the people in the same family that never had Covid, but that were exposed to Covid.
We looked at the microbiomes. We did another pipeline, which is basically a DNA of microbes and we discovered that the people that had severe Covid lacked a certain bacteria called bifidobacteria. But there were people that were exposed to Covid, but never got Covid, in the same family. I’m talking about a farmer that slept with his wife. The wife had Covid. He never got it.
This farmer, in particular, did this experiment. He kissed her, he took his saliva, smeared on his face. He wanted to catch Covid to get the immunity. He never got it, never got the antibodies. I said to him, “I want to see your stools, and I want to see your wife.”
Sure enough, she had zero bifido. He had a lot. Why? He’s exposed outside, he’s in the sun, he’s playing with the cow manure. He’s drinking the raw milk from the cows. That started my train of looking at the microbiome.
Mr. Jekielek: This is absolutely fascinating. Basically, you’re seeing that there is bifidobacteria in people who are somehow resistant or have overcome it. Before we go there, I want to backtrack a bit and catch up. You said you have 400 doctors. You’ve been involved in clinical trials for decades, correct?
Ms. Hazan: Yes.
Mr. Jekielek: These 400 doctors that you’re talking about are people who you’ve been working with on this. On one side, you’re a gastroenterologist looking at microbiomes. On the other hand, you have been working in the sphere of clinical trials with big pharma for decades. Please explain that whole piece.
Ms. Hazan: I went from GI, being a gastroenterologist, to doing clinical trials. In fact, in my first year of fellowship, in order to get into GI as the first woman, I had to do research. The first year of research was really eye-opening about the world of clinical trials. I kept on doing clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies, like 10 percent clinical trial, 90 percent GI. And then, with kids and a husband who’s a cardiologist, it became 90 percent clinical research, and 10 percent GI. Why?
Because clinical trials gave me a view of what was the future. So often, you treat these patients with Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, and you give them the treatment that everybody gives them. You don’t really have a novel approach. A clinical trial was really a new idea from a scientist, and then you give it to a patient. To get these patients, you have to have a network of physicians that refer to you.
I was always known in the world of clinical trials for a bacteria called Clostridium difficile [C.diff], which is essentially a bacteria that causes people to have diarrhea, and is caused by taking antibiotics. It’s a case of a patient taking antibiotics, getting diarrhea, and then getting C.diff. I was always doing these clinical trials because medications weren’t working.
Then these clinical trials brought a new understanding of the microbiome. From clinical trials and working with pharmaceutical companies, I had an insight into the world of how to bring these trials to market and work with pharmaceutical companies.
Mr. Jekielek: Let me just see if I’ve got this straight. On the one hand, you’ve got this window into these new methods that pharmaceutical companies are trying to use, and you’re actually getting patients and doing these double-blind tests.
Ms. Hazan: Yes, placebo-controlled trials.
Mr. Jekielek: Placebo-controlled trial, okay, excellent. Also, you’re specifically interested in this one particular bacteria that comes into the gut after antibiotics. Is this what you’re known for?
Ms. Hazan: Yes, this bacteria is essentially the bacteria that probably resided in the gut but became toxic, and started secreting its toxins because we killed the microbiome around it. It’s essentially a microbe that sustains itself with other microbes, but once you kill the rest of the microbes, it starts flaring up.
Mr. Jekielek: I see.