In this episode of Functional Medicine Research, I interview a very distinguished guest, Ethan Taylor, PhD about his published research on selenium, glutathione, and COVID-19.  Dr. Taylor has a wealth of knowledge and research experience on pandemics, selenium, glutathione, vitamin D, viruses, antimicrobial drug resistance, and how human relationships with animals causes so many of our health problems and climate change.  I was extremely grateful to have someone like Dr. Taylor on the show to share his expertise.

DisclaimerNone of the information contained in this podcast and transcript should be construed as medical advice. This information is for educational purposes only. Please consult your licensed medical professional about everything related to this topic.

Dr. Hedberg: Well, greetings everyone and welcome to Functional Medicine Research. I'm Dr. Hedberg and I'm really looking forward to my conversation today with Dr. Ethan Will Taylor. And Dr. Taylor is a pharmacologist, computational chemist, and virologist. He has a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Winnipeg and a PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Arizona. He began his career as Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, and later, Professor of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy. He's currently Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of North Carolina, at Greensboro, where he has also served as a founding member of the Department of Neuroscience and as Director of the Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory. Dr. Taylor has been engaged in research on HIV, Ebola, and other emerging infectious diseases for over 25 years and is best known for his work on the role and mechanisms of the dietary trace element selenium in reducing the pathophysiological effects of various RNA viruses. He's also an amateur musician. And with his wife Maria he operates the Dharma Farm Animal Refuge and Vegan Event Center in Archdale, North Carolina. Dr, Taylor, welcome to the show.

Dr. Taylor: I'm happy to be here.

Dr. Hedberg: Excellent. Great, so I wanna have someone on the show who has some excellent expertise in some of our biggest issues today in the world. Some of this will revolve around the current pandemic as well as we'll talk about how the consumption of animals is leading to pandemics and how it's affecting our environment. Before we jump into those details, can you give us just a general overview of your research interests and the work that you've done?

Dr. Taylor: Sure. As you stated in the bio, my background was in pharmaceutical sciences. Which means you're looking at drugs and how drugs work and designing better drugs. And so, I had that kind of background and I was a pharmacy professor for 18 years. But the more I studied drugs and how they work, you come to realize that most of the drugs we have, a lot of them treat symptoms. We have some phenomenal drugs, they're really great to have when you're doing surgery on people and things like that. And many of the drugs work well but a lot of them really just treat symptoms. And I became kind of more interested in, what's really the underlying cause of this pathogenic effect. And that led me inevitably to nutrition and being interested in nutrition. And part of it was a serendipitous, almost accidental discovery that I made when I was studying HIV, that led me to this trace element of selenium that you mentioned.

And so, that has kind of been my background but I essentially evolved into this area of looking at...became very interested in antioxidants, selenium in particular and its role in viral diseases, particularly RNA-virus diseases. And along the way, just my family were vegetarians and my kids became vegans before my wife and I did, and then we became vegans. For a lot of reasons, and people do that for different reasons, kind of health reasons,