Three panelists took part in a lively discussion about longevity and disease prevention at the TIME100 Talks event moderated by TIME senior health correspondent Alice Park on Wednesday in New York City.
Dr. Raj Panjabi, senior partner at Flagship Pioneering, an innovative bioplatform company leading a preventive health and medicine initiative; Jillian Michaels, creator of The Fitness app and podcast host Keeping it Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels; and Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and president of the Academy of Health and Lifespan Research, joined Park on stage to discuss topics ranging from vaccines to weight-loss drugs.
During the call, Park asked Panjabi, who previously served as the White House senior director for global health security and biodefense during the Joe Biden administration, about growing vaccine hesitancy in the US. Panjabi stressed that it is important to approach any vaccine announcement “with curiosity” and “help people understand the science.”
He said, for example, scientists have learned that the COVID vaccine more effective in preventing hospitalizations than it was in preventing infection. In the first two years of COVID vaccine distribution, more than 18 million hospitalizations and more than 3 million deaths were averted in the United States, according to the 2022 outlook. report from the Commonwealth Fund.
“The takeaway I have from the vaccine work is that it's still a proven and effective intervention. They're worth studying, continuing to study, but then it's worth really looking at the data,” Panjabi said.
Park then asked Michaels what questions she had about vaccine safety in light of mail on X in September, in which she said: “If we can acknowledge the undeniable historical success of vaccines, why is it considered dangerous or taboo to raise legitimate questions about how we use them today?”
Michaels has courted controversy in the past for expressing support for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement led by renowned vaccine skeptic and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. New York Time story An article published over the summer described Michaels as “concerns about vaccines have not been thoroughly studied (though she does not consider herself generally anti-vaxxer).”
Michaels responded that her questions were not necessarily about safety, but about some aspects of the vaccination schedule. She criticized the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine, which protects against the highly infectious disease that can damage the liver, is given at birth.
Critics like Michaels question why a newborn should be vaccinated against a virus that can be spread through unprotected sex or shared needles. “Parents want to know these things,” she said. (Public Health Experts emphasized that the earlier the vaccine is administered, the greater the chance of preventing early childhood infections, including mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B.)
Panjabi said the key point in recommending any medical intervention – whether vaccines or drugs – is whether the benefits outweigh the risks. He urged people to be respectful of each other when participating in these discussions.
Puck turned the conversation to Weight loss drugs GLP-1asking Barzilai if they were any good, to which he replied “definitely yes”. He said that “obesity accelerates aging,” so his treatment could solve the problem. And he cited new research that suggests weight loss drugs GLP-1 may have other positive health effectsfor example, reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
This topic prompted a question from one of the viewers. Andrea Deierlein, director of public health nutrition and an assistant professor at New York University's School of Global Public Health, expressed concern that these medications could be used to replace other aspects of a healthy lifestyle. Barzilai responded that exercise, diet, sleep and social connections are “good for everyone,” but as people age, it becomes more difficult to “optimize” these aspects of a healthy lifestyle.
“We have determined that there are medications that, as you get older, can change the rate at which you age,” Barzilai said. But as he said in a conclusion that speaks to the state of the art on the topic: “How we're going to do it and who we're going to do it with is still up for debate.”
TIME100 Speeches: “Living Better, Longer—Reimagining Healthcare from Nursing to Health Care” was presented by Shaklee.
