Money and Influence: Peter Attia’s Lawsuit against Oura Ring

my friends we have a lawsuit which means that things that big companies and famous people wanted to keep HED are dropping into the public record and this one is a doozy in July 2023 the longevity Doctor Peter AA sued the fitness Tracking Company Aura ring claiming that it owes him $1.3 million in unallocated stock options but this is not a run of the-mill lawsuit to collect on an overdue bill it is a blueprint for the relationships between medical companies and medical influencers and offers us a rare Peak into the money that moves around behind the scenes that subtly and sometimes overtly affects the way that all of these people communicate human health information it details how much money AA was supposed to be paid how and when he took direction from Aura to land stories and the mainstream media and most importantly at least to me his role in placing the fitness tracker into scientific studies in order to market the product in this video I'm going to explain how the hidden network of sponsors behind aa's very well-respected brand affects the science that he communicates to the public now none of this to my knowledge is illegal and well that might be the problem the things that pop out to me in this lawsuit might sound like I'm going after a te specifically but my larger point is that the sorts of business Arrangements that AA exposed by filing this lawsuit have become the norm for how most of the public consumes science communication now before I go into the sorted details I want to State outright that I think Peter Atia is a really inspiring guy and maybe the best science influencer out there I read his book out live last month and was impressed by his measured approach to Fitness and Longevity he doesn't jump onto every biohacking bandwagon that comes along and boils down his recommendations on longevity to paying attention to just a few major admittedly addressable factors it's not going to be malleable based on one pill one magic workout one fruit smoothie shake or any such Elixir it's going to come down to a lot of hard work a lot of understanding a lot of sacrifice and a lot of strategy he is sensible where other influential scientists Dazzle you with Cutting Edge and ultimately usually unproven scientific treatments most admirably he is one of the few Mega influencers who is capable of changing his mind on things when new evidence comes out for example he started out as a major proponent of intermittent fasting but eventually changed his position when the data mounted against it that sort of intellectual flexibility is rare on the internet and I commend him for it and this is why it is just so fascinating to read this legal complaint that he filed against Aura because despite his demeanor and logical mind I find it Well I guess I find it depressing what his arrangements with corporate sponsors actually look like if AA is the best of the scientific influencer lot then my guess is that the cont tracks that other influencers sign with their sponsors look sort of similar or maybe they're even worse what is true for Atia is going to be in the same ballpark as any deals involving Andrew huberman David Sinclair Andy Gulpin Lex fredman Dave asprey Mark Heyman rungan chattery Tim Ferris and the list just keeps going on you get the idea if you are making your reputation by being some kind of health authority some kind of reputable um credentialed authority figure but you are taking money from a company in the exact space that you are making your content then that is a absolute direct Financial conflict of interest that's Rohan Francis a cardiologist from the UK who is also YouTube famous but notably does not at least to my knowledge take any sponsorships so so if you want to know exactly what AA was doing for the money will his lawsuit points the way the gist of the complaint goes like this in April 2016 Carl cavella one of the founders of Aura ran into harprit sing Ry an investor and one of Peter Tia's friends at Whole Foods and Ry decided to invest in the company and join the board of directors a few months later in 2017 Ry became president of Aura and wanted to bring Atia in as a scientific adviser Ry was an enormous champion of Atia and wrote to the board saying quote Dr AA is very well connected not just in medicine but with all types of influencers as well which is a clear indication that from the very beginning aa's value was at least half because he was influential no real surprise there they sent Atia a free aing and AA said that he would love to contribute his expertise as quote a physician focused on the science of longevity more importantly because he understood the capabilities of competing devices on the market quote AA could bring members of the scientific community and relevant researchers in the academic space together to help design develop or analyze medical studies and this this was the first mention in the suit that aa's role would also include him influencing the output of medical studies on behalf of aora and it's followed directly by this statement Dr Atia could provide awareness in the US market through social media to hundreds of thousands of people specifically interested in products of this nature Dr AA could also introduce Mr R to potential high-profile us influencers partners or investors interested in wearable technology now AA was going to be involved in all sorts of things getting Aura off the ground uh including raising funds and directly selling products to his longevity focused audience now they all signed ndas and AA was brought on board during a beta test AA made some recommendations on how the device detects heart rate variability and they all agreed to work together offering Atia some sort of equity in the company which was the ultimately basis for the lawsuit but by 2018 AA hadn't gotten paid so he told IIA that a bunch of aura's competitors were chomping at the bit to work with him on their devices and my guess this was probably hoop and maybe Fitbit anyway other companies were similarly promising at the time now I think it's important to remember that in 2018 there was no clear market leader in the fitness tracking space and it could have turned into a win or take all situation where the recommendations of influencers in the medical field really really mattered I don't think journals really you know have encountered this this before where you have celebrity individuals people like Peter AER or hubman who have huge uh audiences to get them to talk about your product but also then give it the additional credentials where they you know are not going to just run a trial or or contribute to a trial they're going to talk about that trial on their podcast that's the you know that's the purpose and then it gives the company huge scientific credibility in my mind this is a huge corrup uption of the scientific process one that scientific journals are just not ready for well peerreview is almost always unpaid work May no maybe it is always unpaid work scientists also don't get paid for publishing in journals but product sponsorships like AAS were specifically designed to inject Capital into that process creating a conflict of interest Journal articles on any number of subjects became advertisements for or Aura ring now this same sort of perversion of the scientific process also seems to have happened in the case of Andrew huberman with his articles in cell reports medicine on behalf of whoop which was his sponsor AA had Aura uh huberman had whooop and it also may have influenced Susanna silberg's piece and it is a whole can of worms so check out the video right here uh if you just need more context anyway the complaint states that Atia and Aura were were successful in their efforts to raise the profile of Aura and by the end of 2021 the company was worth $40 million and that is a lot of money for his Services Ry ultimately agreed to give AA 20,000 uh stock options which were worth about €1 1.76 EUR a share at the time and have since Rosen to that $1.3 million figure now the complaint says that the agreement between them was explicit to quote the stock option agreement stated that Dr would be concurrently awarded stock options for committing to provide certain marketing services including participating in medical strategy and providing a scientific and medical perspective and and this part's important here helping make introductions to help Aura ring be used in medical studies committing at least 10 hours a year in advisory work to the CEO of the board and other medical board members promoting Aura in Dr Ortiz owned and operated social media channels including his newsletter and podcast and including defendants and the aura ring to other influencers partners and potential investors now that is not a bad gig for 10 hours of advisory work a year plus like you know glad handing with friends but it was worth a lot of money after they all agreed Atia shows how effective he really was one mentioned in his newsletter sold 1,000 Rings right off the bat that's about $300,000 of aura rings for just a mention and then he documents how he followed up on a request from Ry the CEO to leave some kind words about Aura for a CNBC reporter named Chrissy far now then he actually points out the tweets and the responses are really funny Dan frer an editor at a consumer advocacy publication um tweeted please be sure to sort your replies by who is an angel investor in the company AA he was directly promoting Aura ring and oh man the good old days of Twitter when people actually called out conflicts of interest still aa's tweet was eventually picked up by Mega podcaster and influencer Tom Bilu who commended Aura for gamifying Sleep everything was going according to plan now AA along the way also made introductions to The Sleep scientist Matt Walker who is now also listed as a medical adviser to the company possibly with a sort of similar looking contract now at this point it's worth noting that aura's website lists 10 total scientific advisors and AA is obviously no longer on it all of them have significant numbers of social media followers and it seems that a follower count is a necessary credential for Aura to take your science seriously which is maybe a little problematic like who's on their research and development team anyway that's the gist of what's happening in the lawsuit overall I don't think that the outcome will all be the that interesting a will either get paid out or will use some loophole and finish law because it's a Finnish company to avoid paying in full or there will be some sort of settlement uh in between anyway the rich people will continue being rich but what really came out in the lawsuit was that Atia who again is probably the most credible of uh this lot of health influencers is that the number of companies that he had similar arrangements with suffice it to say if AA Was a Race car you'd barely be able to see his paint here's my incomplete list uh that I got through the various biographies that he put out uh that list him as a sponsor or an an advisory position there's a health tracking company called biograph a keto cereal called Magic spoon a fancy chocolate bar compan called Fu Kitchen which is actually in my grocery store a diabetes management software company called verta Health a sleep supplement company called doc parsley a continuous glucose monitoring company called Dexcom a Kia carard dealership in Hawaii the podcast distributor supercast an intermittent fasting program at in Boseman a company called moonwalk bio which I can't I can't really figure out what it does but it appears to be in the quote cell reprogramming space and of course then there's athletic greens a daily supplement company that sells vegal powdered Health shakes uh where he is a scientific adviser it's not called ag1 and the company is reportedly worth $1.2 billion and spends a minimum of $2 million a month on podcast advertising that's for a company that whose supplements really don't do anything uh there's no really great science behind it in addition to all of that I also found out that according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission AA is also on the board of directors of Frontier Acquisitions corporation which is registered in the Cayman Islands as something called a blank check company which has roughly $200 million in capital to dispose of I don't really know what a blank check company in the Cayman Islands does uh but he's on the board with another longevity influencer named David Sinclair to invest in quote transformative and disruptive Health Care opportunities whatever those are anyway let's step back and take a look at the huge and very big picture people listen to the Peter AAS of the world because they appear to offer credible perspectives on human health that go against the grain of whatever it is you get from your doctor's office they appear to offer you fresh Health perspectives and even hacks that allow you to outthink and even optimize yourself above and beyond ordinary care we want there to be Alternatives that are truly independent to the pharmaceutical industries that have failed a lot of Americans who mostly have terrible Health Care and have witnessed a long history of medical research malpractice but just because big Pharma has issues does not mean that aa's revolutionary sounding recommendations aren't influenced by the same sorts of conflicts of interest that made big Pharma so terrible in the first place now there was just article that just came out in the New Yorker like yesterday like right before I recorded this video uh about AA and it stated that a his recommendations often look great on paper the promises are awesome but that he doesn't always have evidence to go behind it uh to quote the article Peter's theory of medicine 3.0 is that you get all of this long life where you're healthy and then you fall off a cliff at the very end and it would be great if that were true but there isn't any evidence for it says cardiologist Eric toppel to the New Yorkers I mean a Tia's whole thing is that you want to extend the quality of your life as long as possible so that when you get to the end of it you just sort of drop off a cliff and just like die immediately this is what it means to square the longevity curve in an ideal world that red curve would be a straight line here that would drop vertically and instantaneously at the end of a person's life and you don't have to suffer that sort of wasting away and that is a you know honestly it's so appealing to me and to many other people the problem is is that we don't have the longevity science to back it all up so he makes these recommendations uh on what he says the evidence which is appropriate for for medicine 3.0 which isn't evidence it's mostly anecdotes because you can't do a longevity study on a population that's not dead yet you just don't know how the outcomes all pan out anyway if Atia can sell his scientific credibility to a company like Aura ring for 1.3 million and has 10 other companies lining up to pay him for similar services and maybe for similar amounts of money then how independent is he really for that matter how independent is any health influencer at all who is on someone else's payroll let me just end with one classic piece of journalistic advice if you are suspicious of someone's claims follow the money because the money always leads the way to what people's motivations really are and I really want Atia to be that Beacon of Health um Diagnostics he said so many interesting things but once you take money from one person and you influence science sort of willy-nilly and and and and on the payroll then how do we we trust anything that you do how do we trust any influencer in the scientific space this is why I think it's so important to be very very wary as someone in the the public sphere like myself of ever taking any sponsorships whatsoever Peter Tia is a doctor he gets paid I you know somewhere around 100,000 to $140,000 a year to be his personal um you know for you to be his personal patient that is a lot of concierge medicine and I think that's probably really good for the people who can afford it but on a larger scale when the money is dictating your medical prac practices there are some serious serious problems and I think that influencers like AA like hubman like that whole list that I said in the first place they're selling you hope with a veneer of medicine over it and then they have all of these relationships underneath that are funneling money into their pockets in ways that may not be totally straightforward unless you get a lawsuit put out where they are directly squabbling over money in legal print anyway if you found this podcast interesting remember that unlike AA and hubman and these others I don't take money from sponsors I do not work with Affiliates I do not sell ecourses my work is completely independent and I support myself mostly from YouTube advertising but also from patreon supporters who pay to get early access to my content I also have occasional gigs with mainstream media and of course my book sales I appreciate everyone who helps to keep me independent so that I don't have to work with companies that want to influence what I say from poke bear LLC in Denver Colorado this was Scott Carney investigates [Music]

Channel: Scott Carney

Views: 6,370

Keywords: Peter Attia, Oura Ring, Oura, Influence, Medical Ethics, medicine, science, Huberman, Andrew Huberman, Neuroscience, Huberman Lab Podcast, HubermanLab, Metoo, consciosuness, breathwork, Joe Rogan, manipulation, Kerry Howley, protocols, longevity, Drive, drive podcast, lawsuit, flatten the curve

Id: rWY4vvvVNUo

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024