×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: Okay, wait for it, wait for it. You’re gonna love this. Folks, you’re absolutely going to love this. Well, wait. Maybe some of you won’t love this. Let me speak for myself. I love this. You know that magical serum that was given to two white Americans suffering from Ebola? You know what the magic ingredient is? Nicotine. Tobacco is the magical ingredient in the serum. It’s a Kentucky tobacco plant from which they derive the magical serum that has caused massive reversals of the symptoms of Ebola in the two white Americans.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Okay. So yesterday on this program, when it was learned that two American missionaries are a man by the name of Brantly and a woman by the name of Writebol, Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol… She, by the way, is the last to arrive. She’s arriving today from Africa. They both have Ebola, and a super-secret serum unbeknownst to anybody but a precious few researchers had been tested on monkeys; it had shown some success.

So the rescue flights took doses of this magical serum on the jet from Georgia to Liberia, wherever they went to pick up these two people, and administered the doses, and the reports were that symptom reversals began rather quickly. Now, some people said they noticed changes in an hour. Others say, “No, no, no, no! Not possible.” But nevertheless, symptom reversal has been profound.

So yesterday on this program, I — your sensitive, ever-in-touch host — posited that it wouldn’t be long before we would hear people in the media saying, “Wait. Wait just a second. You have people dropping like flies with this disease in Africa, and you only took enough of this stuff for two white Americans, and you didn’t give any to the native Africans who are dying in record numbers with this disease? What’s with that? How in the world can you only give this to Americans? White Americans to boot! Why didn’t you take enough for everybody?”

Well, it didn’t take five hours. Let’s go to audio sound bite number one from CNN last night.

BURNETT: I know it’s miraculous. I know it was untested, that it was very risky, but what about everyone else? I mean (stammering), nearly a thousand have died, all of them Africans! Suddenly two white Americans, um, get the disease, and — and suddenly all the stops get pulled out?


GUPTA: Keep in mind, this had never been done before. I mean, he was the first human. So I think there is now some proof of principle, and the question becomes: “Is this something that could be, y’know, made more available to the masses?” This is a very unusual situation, Erin. Typically you test things. It goes through a clinical trial to test for safety —

BURNETT: (mumbling)

GUPTA: — to test for how effective it is, and then they figure out if it can be distributed to the masses.

RUSH: Right. That is Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who announced the details of the serum yesterday, and he said, “Weeeell, look, it had only been tested on monkeys. I mean, the fact of the matter is, these ‘white people,’ as you say, were guinea pigs. We didn’t know what was gonna happen. You can’t say that we denied giving it to Africans — who are black, by the way — in favor of two Americans — who are white, by the way — ’cause, hell, it could have killed ’em!

“We didn’t know. This stuff had never been tested. Now there’s some proof of principle. Now we know that maybe it could be used. So these two Americans…” (chuckles) That’s excuse that’s being offered. I don’t buy it. They wouldn’t have given this stuff to these two people if they thought it was gonna make ’em worse. In other words, they had enough evidence to know, based on the reaction that monkeys had with it.

But, I mean, how long did it take? It was hours! It was hours.

Do I know these people or do I know these people? Now the piece de resistance. The name of the serum is ZMapp. It’s named after a Kentucky bioprocessing company in Owensboro, and it is made from … tobacco! It is made from a unique Kentucky tobacco plant. “The drug is a cocktail of three ‘humanized’ monoclonal antibodies that are manufactured in a group of fragrant plants or bushes known by the genus name Nicotiana.”

What do you think the root word of “Nicotiana” is? Try Joe Camel. Try nicotine. Exactly right. Joe Camel is the root word. Nicotine! As Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies used to say, “Tabacki!” It is “tabacki” that is responsible for the magical potion and serum that was used to treat these two white Americans.

Again, the “drug cocktail” is known as ZMapp, developed by a San Diego company, Mapp Biopharmaceutical (two P’s in there: Mapp). “It is manufactured in Kentucky using fast-growing tobacco plants, which act as ‘photocopiers’ to produce proteins that are extracted from the plants and processed into the drug.” Not just any tobacco plant. I mean, this is a bat-out-of-hell, fast growing tobacco plant.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know what? You know how convoluted things are, folks. Here the media is all concerned that we have this magical serum from the tobacco plant in Kentucky that has produced a magical reversal in two white Americans suffering from Ebola, and why didn’t we give that to these poor, suffering Africans? Why did they only take enough for these two white Americans?


Yet nobody talks about the number of Africans who have been killed from malaria because we banned DDT! Do you know how many people have died unnecessarily because of this nutcase Rachel Carson? The ban on DDT has caused the spread of malaria, which has killed people by the tens and hundreds of thousands in Africa.

There’s always a sense of proportion that is missing on all of these things, and it’s largely because conventional wisdom simply picks up some piece of information that is wrong. But it’s established as so-called fact, and it just survives — and, again, it survives because it’s approved by left wingers! It’s all political, every bit of this. Ebola is political — given the way it’s dealt with, I mean.

You know, I think that’s the thing that really presents us with the biggest problem in trying to persuade low-information voters of what’s going on. Isn’t it true that most low-information voters — and maybe not confined to low-information voters. Isn’t it true that you hear a lot of people say, “I just hate politics! I hate it. I don’t trust politicians. I’m fed up with it. I don’t want to hear about it. Nothing ever gets done,” blah, blah.

You hear that all the time from people. Those are the same people that do not know that everything is political. They hate “politics,” but the only thing to them that’s “politics” is whatever the president and Congress might be arguing about or if it’s happening in Washington. But they would never see that there’s politics attached to virtually everything in pop culture that they are consuming.

They hate politics — and this my point. If they knew, if they were able to spot the politics in everything, given how much they hatred, it might be productive. But that, to me, is an indication of the great task it is. I mean, low-information people, let’s be frank: They’re gonna have to be turned into more-information-than-they’ve-got people if we’re gonna have a serious reversal here.

We can’t continue to have the lowest-common denominator among us dominate things. It’s not that we do. It’s that the Democrat Party panders to them. The Democrat Party cultivates them. The Democrat Party wants them to remain low-information for as long as possible, and they don’t even see that. There’s politics in so much, and these are the people that hate “politics.”

They think they’re escaping politics by watching TMZ, or E! Entertainment TV or reading whatever they read, or going to Twitter and Facebook. There’s nothing but politics on social media. But they don’t see it there. They only see it if acknowledged politicians are talking about things, and therefore they miss so much. That’s why, folks, for 27 years, 26 years I have been on this quest to get everybody to see the ideology that’s present in practically every news story.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This Jim in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You’re next, sir. Great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. Good to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that.

CALLER: Yes, sir. I have a different take on this Ebola virus serum that they’ve made. Now, it’s never before been tested on humans, correct?

RUSH: Supposedly it has only been tested on monkeys, correct, and that comes from Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health.

CALLER: All right. These two folks that we brought back, they would have been considered — for all intents and purposes — terminal, correct?

RUSH: Not necessarily. I mean, the death rate is between 50% and 90%. The fatality rate is between 50% and 90%. It’s not 100%.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: It does depend on medical care, the treatment that you get. There’s a number of factors. The three countries in Africa where the outbreak has taken place, they’re very backwards, particularly the health care systems, and it stands to reason that patients in America would not be as adversely affected, theoretically —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — as people in these three countries in Africa.

CALLER: Okay. Yeah, well, I was just going down the line of this being an experimental drug and having never been tested on humans, per se. Why is it that cancer patients that are terminal don’t get the same respect?

RUSH: You know, it’s strange that you ask that. While I was having this discussing on the air, I got an e-mail from a friend of mine who is currently starring in a major television show on TNT, Adam Baldwin. He plays the XO, the executive officer on this show, Last Ship. He said that a friend of his father… Let me double-check here. Where is it?

Oh, it’s either his friend or a friend of his father is suffering from cancer and was given… He doesn’t know if it was this concoction, but it was monoclonal antibodies, whatever is being given monoclonal antibodies, which is an ingredient in this conduction. Apparently Baldy’s friend’s dad has had profound success in reversing the cancer with whatever it is they’ve given him.

I don’t know what it is, and Adam doesn’t, either. He doesn’t know if it’s the same thing or not. But your question at large is, “Well, how in the world does an experimental drug that’s never been used on humans all of a sudden get used on two people who have Ebola?” ‘Cause I know that you are probably either somebody who has had this experience or knows somebody who has had cancer of some kind.

And there is an experimental drug not released to the market ’cause it hasn’t passed all the trials but you’ll try anything, and they won’t give it to you. That’s why people go to Mexico and other places to try things as a last-ditch effort. Now, here you have a serum that’s derived from a Kentucky tobacco plant, that, as far as we’ve been told, has only been used and tested on monkeys.

Yet somebody made the decision, “Oh, yeah. Let’s go ahead and use it on these two missionaries, these Americans. We’ll take some doses over to Africa. We’ll administer them there, we’ll bring ’em home, and we’ll continue the treatment.” The story we’re getting is of a massive, miraculous reversal. No cure yet. Neither of these two patients is out of the woods. They’re still suffering, but they’re better. They’re much better.

I understand your question. How in the world does this happen without human trials? Nobody knows what the… Well, we do know what it is. It’s called MZapp. That’s the name of the serum. It comes from a Kentucky tobacco plant. Now, I don’t have the answer for you. I don’t know why it is that other drugs have to go through this extensive trial period.

They need documented results and so forth for years before they’re ever administered to humans, and this happened to be administered to humans without any of that taking place, as far as we know. Again, we only know what’s been reported, and the first place any of this was reported was CNN. It was Dr. Sanjay Gupta who reported yesterday that this has only been tried on monkeys, and his source was Dr. Fauci at the National Institutes of Health.

So it is curious what the protocols are and how this all works, from a regulatory standpoint.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A little clarification here on the serum that the National Institutes for Health administered to the two Ebola patients. It seems the term monoclonal antibodies has got people thinking that, “Well, I’ve had that, I’ve had that.” And you haven’t. This is something brand-new, and it really hasn’t been administered before. Monoclonal antibodies simply describe the way the drug is made, i.e., cloned from antibodies, but the antibodies will differ, depending on the disease.

In this case, a company in San Diego — don’t know how — experimented with a rapidly growing tobacco plant in Kentucky, and, for whatever reason that they learned, they essentially photocopied antibodies found in it that works in Ebola in monkeys. And the National Institutes of Health determined to give some dosages to the two missionaries from America who were discovered in Africa to have come down with the disease.

There all kinds of cancer treatments, in fact, that feature monoclonal antibodies, so it’s not the same thing that was used here. Monoclonal antibodies specifically bind to a substance like a cancer cell. A monoclonal antibody is basically a detective. It’s used to detect and find a specific substance, say, in the bloodstream, and glom onto it and try to kill it.

Now, in the case of the Ebola serum, the antibodies, the monoclonal antibodies that they have found in this Kentucky tobacco plant, apparently do something to the Ebola virus and retard it, harm it, when in monkeys. They tried it on these two human beings, these two white Americans, and the news reports are it was profoundly successful, overwhelming successful, which now is causing people to ask, as I predicted yesterday, “Well, why didn’t you take enough to give to all the poor people in Africa?” CNN asked that last night.

And other people are saying, “Wait a minute. This thing hasn’t been tried on humans, and yet they released it? Why don’t they do that for cancer drugs?” Well, sometimes they do. Sometimes the National Institutes of Health will administer experimental drugs. It does happen. But not all the time. There are times they withhold some of the drugs that they’re working on, largely because of the side effects or the real fear that the side effects will be worse than whatever benefits there are. So that’s as much as I have been able to learn here just in the short three and a half, four-minute time-out at the bottom of the hour.

The bottom line, just because you might have heard that a friend or a relative was given treatment that contained monoclonal antibodies, it’s not this. That’s just a technique that is used in order to bind these attack agents to the proper cells that are considered the problem in the body. Just imagine little detectives, little Inspector Clouseau’s and they’re released and they are to find, in this case, the Ebola virus. And then they’re to glom onto it and attack it. And if it works, then the virus suffers, it is harmed, and it is weakened, and there is a reversal of symptoms. That has apparently happened here. But you’re still gonna see people ticked off about this, about a lot of things on this.

You’re gonna see, “Why do it on Americans first?” The answer, why not? Why not use Americans as the guinea pigs? Why not, if it’s not gonna work, why not try it on Americans first and spare anybody else potential suffering. There’s any number of things. The point is, we shared with you the Facebook post yesterday. We read to you this really caustic and mean post aimed at people who are alarmed here that we’re bringing Ebola patients into this country for the first time ever. There are people that don’t understand why we’re doing this. Why would we bring a deadly virus into this country in the form of infected people? The reaction to that has been really caustic. And it’s been from people who are identified, people who I know are leftists.

They’re really mad about this. “If you don’t have it, you’re not gonna get it, stop worrying, screw off!” You know, this kind of stuff. Reactions that you’d never see when people talk about bird flu, swine flu. So the question is — and I of course have the answer, but I’m not gonna give you the answer. Problem is, when I say something about anything, there’s nothing left to be said. And I have to leave some things for you to say on this program.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Back to the phones, and we go to Bethel, Connecticut. This is Laurie. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. Longtime listener, and I have been a responsible citizen by raising both my now-adult children on your show, so they vote responsibly, and they are well informed.

RUSH: Rush Babies!

CALLER: Yes, they definitely are. (laughs)

RUSH: Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

CALLER: I just wanted to make a comment. As a retired math teacher, I always look at permutations and combinations. I was thinking about how this Ebola cure scenario could have been played out, and I was just wondering what your thoughts would be. Let’s say that they tested this supposed cure on African citizens after having just been tested on monkeys.

I wonder whether there would be a racial slur associated with that, saying, “Well, Africans, are they just the next step up from monkeys, as opposed to the white Americans?” That’s one scenario. Another one: Let’s say, instead of the two Americans being white Americans, what if they had been Afro-American or black Americans, and let’s say they were not Christians. Let’s say they were Muslim instead. So you wonder how those different scenarios would have played out. What are your thoughts on that?

RUSH: Well, now, you see here’s a great example, ladies and gentlemen. This is a woman — our caller here, Laurie — who is looking at the politics of this, exactly as I teach, exactly as I hope people would. Those excellent thoughts, and she is only able to conceive of those thoughts because she knows how the left operates.

For example, I hadn’t even stopped to think about what the case would be if the news got out that we tested a serum only on monkeys and then we gave it to Africans suffering the disease. Even if it had been successful, you’re exactly right: There would have been people on the left who, when they heard that, would have charged racism at the NIH or something and, “How dare they!”

So your basic point is that they needed some public trials of this, but they had to be white Americans —

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: — because political correctness would not permit any other such trial. Is that basically your point?

CALLER: That’s one of the points. The other thing, aside from the insult that they were “white Americans,” let’s say they had been “black Americans,” and let’s say they hadn’t been Christians. Let’s say they were part of a Muslim-outreach organization. Would there still have been the same hue and cry?

RUSH: Well, wait a minute. There isn’t any hue and cry over this. The hue that I’ve heard… Well, I’ve got two seconds. Let me take a break and have more time on the other side.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: As far as I know, there is no hue and cry over who got the vaccine. And it’s not a vaccine. I’m just using that to simplify our discussion here. I don’t think there’s any anger over who got it. Not yet, anyway. But I tell you the thinking that went in. There’s no way the NIH was going to use Africans as guinea pigs. Remember, this has not been tried on human beings. There’s no way. They had no idea what the result was gonna be. Well, maybe they did. I don’t know. If you’ve been studying on monkeys and it’s okay on monkeys do you make the assumption that it’s gonna work on humans the first time?

I don’t have any experience with this. I have to assume that as much as they exercise caution with this stuff, I would think that they would probably think of the worst-case scenario in determining who gets it, and the last thing that was gonna happen, knowing this bunch, the last thing was gonna happen was they’re gonna give something to a couple of Africans and have it not work. So you give it to a couple of Americans and roll the dice and see what happens. Which has happened. And, for now, we’re being told that the serum is working and is reversing systems.

But nobody’s talking cure yet. We don’t know if the Ebola virus is gonna rebound and figure out this serum and overwhelm it later this week. Nobody knows this. So everybody’s still cautiously analyzing this. The reason that we even think this way, though, folks, the real point to Laurie’s question is, is exactly the politics of the left is what forces us to think this way. If there were no politics to this, you know all this would be? “Oh, my God, there’s a serum and they gave it to a couple of people and it worked, hallelujah!” End of story.

“My gosh, maybe we’ve made some inroads. Whoa, wow,” is all it would be. Nobody would care about who got it. Nobody would care about the race of who got it. Nobody would be raising questions about where it was administered or any of that. But because of political correctness and identity politics and the way the left determines things and because the left has already politicized this, the only hue and cry I have seen is directed at people who think it’s a little weird to bring the disease within the borders. We’ve never done that before. We’ve never had Ebola in our country. And we’ve brought two patients with it in and they’re in Atlanta at Emory Hospital.

You ought to see, there were motorcades. The news media had helicopters flying over the ambulances and the accompanying SUV army guarding these ambulances as they were on the way from the airport into the hospital. And then when they had the patient, Nancy Writebol, when she got out of the ambulance she was on a stretcher, people in full hazmat gear carrying the stretcher, or rolling the stretcher, wheeling it, she’s laying down on the stretcher also totally covered. The camera from the chopper is covering this like a visiting dignitary had arrived or something.

We’re forced to look at it like this because we’re just waiting, we’re just waiting for some angry leftist to start bitching and moaning about this. And look, like yesterday, it didn’t take hours for it to happen. “Why did only Americans get it? Why did we only take enough for Americans?” That was asked on CNN last night. That was an easy prediction. It’s easy for somebody who knows the left, and I know the left.

We’ll just have to wait and see what else causes them anger over this. Give it time. Something about it will besides, “Well, why give it to a couple of white Americans? Why not take enough to give to the Africans?” There was no way we’re gonna give a serum that has not been tried on human beings to Africans first, no way, in case it didn’t work, no way. That was not gonna happen.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This