Ask Dr. Drew
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong: LA Times Owner on CA Wildfire Disaster, Ending Newsroom Bias Against Conservatives & Why He Supports RFK – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 454
Fri, 14 Feb 2025
As owner of the historic Los Angeles Times newspaper, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has said its endorsement of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was a mistake, suggested that his newsroom should add AI “bias meters” to ensure objectivity, and vocally supported RFK by saying Kennedy “knows more about the science than most doctors.” His push to diversify the LA Times’ political viewpoints led to multiple resignations by editors and columnists, who were uncomfortable with his intention to balance the paper’s opinion section with more centrist and conservative writers. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is a physician, surgeon, and biotech entrepreneur who has pioneered treatments for diabetes and cancer. In 2018, he became the owner of the Los Angeles Times. He serves as Executive Chairman of ImmunityBio and holds over 675 worldwide patents. In 1993, he performed UCLA’s first whole-organ pancreas transplant and developed Abraxane, an FDA-approved cancer drug. Soon-Shiong is Chairman of NantWorks, recipient of the 2016 Franklin Institute Bower Award, minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, and healthcare advisor to Botswana’s President. Read the LA Times at https://latimes.com and follow Dr. Soon-Shiong at https://x.com/DrPatSoonShiong 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong?
We are very privileged today to welcome Dr. Patrick Soon-Shong, a physician, transplant surgeon, biotech entrepreneur, pioneered treatments for diabetes, cancer. In 2018, he became the owner of the LA Times. And as he said, some of his posts on X create a lot of excitement. He doesn't understand why sometimes. He is the executive chairman of Immunity Bio and holds over 675 worldwide patents.
1993, he performed at UCLA, first whole organ pancreas transplant. And he developed Abraxane, which as a Lynch patient, I'm glad they have available. It's an FDA, obviously, cancer medication. He is chairman of Nantworks, recipient of the 2016 Franklin Institute Bauer Award.
and a minority owner in the los angeles lakers so we got a lot to talk about uh i'm very anxious to hear his story and we'll get right to it with dr patrick soon shong right after this our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian and bizarre the psychopath started this right he was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography btsd love addiction fentanyl and heroin ridiculous i'm a doctor for say where the hell you think i learned that
I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say.
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Go to fatty15.com slash drdrew to receive 15% off a 90-day starter kit subscription. or use code DRDREW at checkout for that 15% off, or just go to our website, drdrew.com slash fatty15. And as I said, we're excited to have Dr. Soon-Shong with us today. He is the LA Times owner. He's going to make the LA Times great again.
He has some interesting public statements he has made recently about the mayor of Los Angeles. As I've mentioned before the break, physician, surgeon, biotech entrepreneur, you can follow him on XDR, Dr. Pat Soon-Shong. And he would like you to read the LA Times if you go to latimes.com. Dr. Soon-Shong, thank you and welcome to the program.
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Chapter 2: What are the challenges facing California's wildfire management?
And these same people that are telling us that their grave concern is carbon, what our state contributes from the standpoint of carbon emission, we undo it all every time there's a fire. It's completely undone. And there's no reason for these fires to be out of control like this. They could easily manage it, but they're not governing. They're not doing it. Let me ask this. Is the paper...
Are you going at it in a kind of proactive way to try to raise the question of what are you people doing? Or are the people that write for the LA Times too much on team Aaron Bass that they wouldn't dream of it?
Well, the good news is they are now truly investigating. As early as this morning, I had a conversation with the executive editor and investigating all these issues, not only these issues, but the people involved with actually managing these issues. And that's coming out. And so that's the role of the paper. The papers will hold people accountable. And I think they're going to do that.
Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that because it feels like Journalism has become a cheerleading organization rather than an organization that asks good questions and tries to penetrate the veneer of whatever they're trying to keep you from understanding. And there's so many things in this town. I was talking to somebody the other day. Do you know the city council in L.A.
takes the position that the reason we're having an outbreak of catalytic converters being stolen... from cars, right, to take a catalytic converter. I don't know if you know this. There's an outbreak of this where everyone's getting their catalytic converter stolen.
And to steal a catalytic converter, you have to jack the car up on a jack and go under it with a sawzall, an active saw, and saw it out of the car. City Council's position is it's Toyota's fault because they made it too easy to steal a catalytic converter. That's the city we live in.
Well, that's exactly when you talk about operational skill sets or running a real-world operation. And unfortunately, I think that's the problem with the politicians that now run the country is when I talk about competence matters. I think that's what really got a lot of views. I mean, something's common sense, like how about hiring people that are competent?
Not left, not right, but just competent.
That's a hate crime, Patrick. That's a hateful statement. And it's racist. And I don't know what's wrong with you to dare to say that we have to have people who know how to govern and who are competent. And I would argue that California has lost track, not just Los Angeles, but California has lost track of that.
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Chapter 3: How is the LA Times adapting to modern journalism?
Well, look, you know, when I bought the paper, I literally had no idea how a paper runs. I didn't even know what these rules were. You know, there's op-ed, opinion column, news reporter. You don't cross over from one side to the other side. And I asked people, show me the rule book, I think. Who wrote these rules? But okay. And I had normal Stein for about two years. And then COVID hit.
We had hired Kevin Merida. And unfortunately, I had no time then for the paper and let Kevin manage the organization as we hired. And with post-COVID and with the approval of our drug, I finally had some time to pay some attention. We're deep into the election between President Biden and President Trump and then Kamala Harris and Trump. And the time of endorsements was coming.
And this was October and I began to ask about how we're going about this. And I realized, just as you said, Have we become an echo chamber? And I just had to take some actions. And we didn't endorse Kamala Harrison. For that, I suppose, I became another racist.
Right, right. Yet again, a racist. And so, which is so comical in a certain way. But the other thing I think I've noticed, it feels like the, is it right to say that your employees haven't been used to being run like a business? Like there's some sort of an endeavor that is, you know, sort of outside of normal business practices. You know what I mean?
Like they can just do what they want to do come what may.
Yeah, and it's even more difficult because of the unionization of it, you know. But I think now they're beginning to understand, you know, how papers have all now gone under. And we've supported this paper, and we'll continue, and I want to make it clear. I think this is too important, because I think there needs to be a voice for the public.
And so we'll continue to support it, but we have to change, and we have to increase engagement.
I was just thinking about engagement. I wonder if you could imagine a way to create a paper that has a X-like response system attached to the stories. I guess it would have to be online, right, to do that. Is that the kind of thing you guys are thinking about? In addition, of course, to the podcasting. What's that?
I'm going to break some news for you now then. So when I bought the paper, I saw we were approached by Washington Post that had this software that they do called Arc. And I looked at the paper software called WordPress. And I come from healthcare where the medical records is such a mess. And I said, this is as much a mess as the records.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Dr. Soon-Shiong's political views?
What makes me so hopeful, aside from your assessment, which I completely sign on to, is that you tell me if this is true. Do you anticipate that other outlets, other newspapers could use your platform? Because if newspapers should have shifted generally in this direction, it could be really exciting.
It really is, and that's what we've offered. I've met with some of the most major newspapers of one name, and we've actually made it free for the small local newspapers if they want to.
Oh my God, that's amazing.
But then we'll start this whole thing called... This could change everything. Yeah, this is the opportunity to do that.
I have to take a little break. When we come back, I want to talk about RFK Jr., if you don't mind. I want to talk about vaccines. I don't know if you saw that tape that rolled into this interview. It was with Joseph Freiman, who did an evaluation of the Pfizer research.
And one of the things he pulled out of that was that they excluded everyone that got lost to follow-up during the two-week window after vaccine, which is when all the vaccine reactions occur, which is astonishing, but that was part of the Pfizer study.
And they were talking to the heads of the FDA in that interview, and they had the study group that wrote the big study, and one of the physicians there had a kid die of the vaccine. I still don't think he's had a callback from the VAERS system. There's just a complete lack of willingness to look at the fact that there are some adverse events out there.
And it still feels very reticent to pull this together. And I'm hoping RFK Jr. has something to, you know, bringing the level of science up to something a little more, what's the word I'm looking for, to the standard of what science should be held.
As you know, I've been very supportive of RFK, and we can talk about that, and I'm really worried about long COVID. So we'll talk about that. Look forward to it.
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Chapter 5: How does Dr. Soon-Shiong's background influence his approach to medicine and media?
And Susan grabbed me. She says, show them the field kit. Show them the field kit. All the different materials that we have, thank God, have on hand when we have needed it. So we recommend it most highly. Susan, there's something else you want to say?
Great to have on hand in case of emergency, in case your CVS burns down. You never know.
Well, that was the thing.
You don't realize how lucky you are to have a CVS around the corner.
It's what motivated us to be involved with TWC. We first had the excesses of the government interfering with our ability to interact with patients and patients to get to doctors. And then we have failure of government around COVID.
natural disasters where people are stuck at home we could we were stuck here the fire was right next door and we had thankfully had our kids so they lost a lot more in the palisades i mean no adam can't even go home so i think today he might be going home somebody told me oh so it'd be interesting All right, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, physician, surgeon, biotech entrepreneur.
He's very kind, owner of the LA Times, very kind to join and spend time with us here today in spite of being ill. I am so, so grateful for you to be here. Tell them again about what's coming in two weeks and where they should go to get it.
Well, I think what we're going to do is literally put it live. And we've been beta testing it. So it'll be on your app. It'll be on your .com where the paper will be the paper except the homepage and everything else. You'll have live camera streaming. You'll have news. You'll have perspectives. You'll have a button that allows you to see different views. You'll have comments.
And it'll basically be a platform media, really a platform for you to interact with.
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Chapter 6: What is the future of the LA Times under Dr. Soon-Shiong?
Let's take a trip to Washington and go talk to Mehmet and see once he gets installed there. Really, I have so many people now in the government I want to go visit because I want to understand what they're seeing. I want to hear their perspective on what's in there. And you know how brilliant Mehmet is. I'm sure he'd be all ears in terms of doing things.
Now, another great mind in Washington is RFK Jr. We both kind of supported him. To me, what he brings is an ability to dissect complicated systems and look at adulterating influences. What are you seeing with RFK Jr.?
Well, you know, I only met him for the first time this year. And when I met him, You have all these preconceived notions that people put out in the media that... I know, it's so crazy. Yeah, yeah. And within maybe half an hour, I was so impressed by his scientific knowledge. And he really completely said the right way. He tries to dissect a problem and to ask the question.
So I said to him, I said, Bobby, really what you should go out and emphasize to the people, all you're asking for is just ask the question. We don't know the answer. Let's ask the question. There's nothing wrong with asking the question. And they get all caught up about him being an anti-vaxxer. He's not an anti-vaxxer. So we spent hours and hours and hours talking.
And I was therefore very convinced that here somebody would not only be able to ask a critical question that is life-saving for all Americans, And you know, it's the slogan of Make America Health Again. It really means it can. And I was concerned in my own life about some of these carcinogens because I'm a cancer doctor. So I said, let me give you a prime example.
There's papers and papers and papers that red dye 12 years ago is carcinogenic. The Europeans are smart enough, they're banded. Banded. If you go to Europe today and you find a candy, in fact, I've got candies on my table here, they're the European candies that are red in them, and American candies are red in them. European candies have no dye in it. They use beetroot, et cetera, plants.
And we have red dye in it. And only last month did they ban red dye. So, obviously, the question that he's been asking has validity. And we are silly enough to not adopt a standard of scientific rigor of really saying, look, if this is bad for us, why do we have it? Is it because it induces us to eat more? It induces the eye to go buy that more? Maybe it does.
But that's not a reason for you to be eating a carcinogen, I don't think. What I'm really worried about now is PFAS. So he and I had this long conversation of PFAS. I don't know if the public understands PFAS. I just tweeted about that this morning because we need to get that out. This is as chemical as made by companies, DuPont, 3M, etc. And it's in everything.
It's in your milk, it's in your water, it's in your vegetables, it's in your organic vegetables, it's in your land. It is not surprising that Europe does not want to buy our food, and we have an increasing rise of cancer in young people." I said, all we have to do is ask the question, why? And I think one of the things that Senator Cassidy has said
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Chapter 7: What are the controversies surrounding vaccine discussions?
They worried about the oncogenic effects of Neupogen. That was always a concern back in the day. So I don't hear anybody ever talk about that anymore.
And Epigen would cause blood clotting. But you know, the irony is that they need Epigen and Neupogen because of what we've done to the patient. We've given them chemotherapy. And the same thing we've done to that patient is actually wiped out the cells that matter, the NK and T cells.
So my fight for the last 20 years is here's a surgeon from South Africa, this doctor working on pancreas transplant and talking to oncologists and says, everything we've been doing so far has been wrong. We've actually treated cancer wrongly.
We should use, when I tried to develop a Braxane, I wanted to use the lowest dose possible because a Braxane was to actually convert these macrophages called M2 to M1s, which are killer macrophages. So when you ask, am I an immunologist? Am I a surgeon? Am I an oncologist? Am I a virologist? By the way, if you're a virologist, you'll only think about these antibodies. You never think of T-cells.
So this problem with medicine, we've siloed ourselves into these little blocks. Oh, my God. Yes. And therefore, our thinking is so myopic. And if you have a broad scale scope of comprehensive thinking of the biology of the human being, you thought it was a quack. And here we have people like RFK who are really asking the right questions. And I agree with those questions.
And I sure hope it's confirmed. I'm not sure when the vote is, but I sure hope it'll be confirmed. Yeah.
I live in the world of primary care and I have my time in psychiatry and have my time in primary care. And that view of the human from the general and the whole system Nobody gets that anymore. You're not allowed to do medicine and do psychiatry and do this and do intensive care and all this stuff. I did all that stuff. And it really, I value it so much.
And it affects your thinking and your judgment when you have those experiences. And you're right. It's so siloed. It's wild. I, by the way, you mentioned the M1 macrophages. I'm kind of convinced they're involved in the endotheliitis associated with spike. Is that something you're looking at?
Well, it's the overkill, right? So when you actually have this ongoing chronic, basically, persistence of inflammation, then it's like a cytokine storm, right? And now when you have this ongoing inflammation, that's why with hepatitis you get liver cancer, and that's why with HPV it's persistent cervical cancer. God forbid, this virus is everywhere.
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Chapter 8: How can AI and technology improve healthcare?
The lowest longevity rate per capita is spent. And these are the kinds of questions that we need to ask. And now is the time. I really honestly believe I'm very excited about this time because people can ask hard questions and not be canceled. And that's what we need to do. Right. And just ask.
Listen, I... You mentioned trying to set up some hospitals. I managed a treatment center for 30 years, 25 years. It's not hard. You staff it up. You get the right people in positions. We get a couple hundred beds, and we move people through, and we send them out to residential facilities of vocational rehab, and you get them back engaged in life. You bring them back to life.
We could do it on a scale. We got to go get RFK because RFK wants to have these farms and things. But that's, as you and I know, that's something that happens after you stabilize people and deal with their medical issues.
But it'd be so easy to run a two, three hundred bed psychiatric facility in this town and move people through the treatment of addiction and chronic mental illness and send them to residential care.
Should I drive you nuts now by telling you something? Go ahead.
Is there another bomb you're going to drop?
So when we took over the St. Vincent's Medical Center downtown, you may know the daughter of the charity.
I remember.
And we tried to, and the county, we tried to get it because there was no reimbursement for Medicaid patients. And Dr. Becerra tried to block us trying to get other people to help, believe it or not, when he was here. And we had to go to court and fight him and we won. But eventually we couldn't win enough to the point that the place closed down.
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