The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - Patrick Girondi ｜ 06-23-25

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00:00:30.000 It was just another holiday party until Michelle arrived with a chocolate Basque cheesecake. 0.87

00:00:35.320 Two rich cocos, caramelized top, which Michelle claimed to have just whipped together.

00:00:40.600 But the evidence told another story.

00:00:43.040 An empty PC box, a receipt in her purse.

00:00:46.040 All right, Susan, I bought the PC chocolate Basque cheesecake.

00:00:50.000 It was just $11.

00:00:51.420 Can you stop true cramming me?

00:00:52.880 Can I have another slice?

00:00:54.540 Try the season's biggest hits from the PC Holiday Insider's Report.

00:01:00.000 The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.

00:01:05.120 And we're back in the Stone Zone.

00:01:09.040 Joining me now is Patrick Garandi.

00:01:11.940 Now, if you met Patrick Garandi, you would not know that he is a biomedical company executive

00:01:17.860 who has spent a life trying to find the cures and treatments for rare diseases.

00:01:24.140 You might think that he was a very hip jazz musician or an A-list celebrity.

00:01:30.700 But Pat Garandi is a respected, well-known leader in the field of rare diseases.

00:01:34.840 He's traveled all over the world counseling medical centers on the strategies to be most effective when it comes to rare diseases.

00:01:42.180 He's devoted his life to curing sickle cell disease and thalassemia after his own son, Rocco, was diagnosed with thalassemia as a child.

00:01:54.340 An early pioneer in the field of gene therapy, Pat Garandi has fought big pharma corruption every step of the way in the court of public opinion,

00:02:04.000 as well as in the courts, to save his own son and others from these debilitating conditions.

00:02:10.840 It's an honor to have this courageous fighter with us today in the Stone Zone.

00:02:16.220 Patrick, welcome.

00:02:18.180 Well, thank you very much.

00:02:19.240 I appreciate it.

00:02:20.440 So let's kind of start from the beginning.

00:02:22.860 Explain to folks exactly what gene therapy is.

00:02:26.040 Sure.

00:02:27.600 So once you identify the therapy that creates a genetic disease, once you know what that gene is,

00:02:36.780 then there's a possibility of delivering that gene to enough stem cells in a patient's body to where the patient defeats the disease or is no longer symptomatic.

00:02:48.240 And you can do that either by changing the gene, which is called gene replacement, which is what we do,

00:02:56.320 or you can edit the gene, which is what CRISPR does.

00:03:03.320 So your company, San Rocco Therapeutics, developed a superior gene therapy for the treatment of sickle cell disease.

00:03:14.300 You would think that this would be greeted as great news, but instead it landed you in court and in the front pages of the New York Times.

00:03:25.560 So tell us what happened.

00:03:28.080 Sure.

00:03:28.940 So my son was diagnosed with thalassemia, which is a cousin disease, a sickle cell disease.

00:03:34.240 Both of them are created by a defective beta-globin gene.

00:03:38.000 And I was told that my son wouldn't make it to be a teenager.

00:03:41.100 I dedicated, I was a trader at that time, and Oprah Winfrey show, I was an American success story, very fortunate.

00:03:49.440 And I dropped everything and decided that I needed to cure the disease.

00:03:54.000 In 2010, my company delivered to the world the first commercial batch of gene therapy.

00:04:04.060 Up until then, it cost about a million dollars per patient to produce it, and it took about 18 months' time.

00:04:09.000 Instead, we made enough gene therapy to cure sickle cell disease or thalassemic patients.

00:04:16.620 We basically made the vector for $150,000 per patient.

00:04:22.540 At that time, we were sabotaged by Third Rock Ventures and a company called Bluebird Bio.

00:04:29.740 Bluebird Bio became a high flyer at about $12 billion market cap in 2018.

00:04:35.100 So, this is an extraordinary story.

00:04:40.860 Big Pharma, basically with a more expensive treatment, blocked this breakthrough technology that you put together, no?

00:04:53.060 Yes, it's exactly true.

00:04:54.520 So, Bluebird Bio said, you know, in 2013, after they had sabotaged our product, basically, we weren't aware of that yet.

00:05:05.780 But they said that they would treat patients for around $750,000 per patient.

00:05:11.120 In 2017, when we realized what had happened through discovery in the court system, we went after them.

00:05:19.120 And in 2020, we finally settled out of court, and we were getting back into the business of curing patients.

00:05:28.160 We were the first, actually, in patients in 2012 in a clinical trial in the United States.

00:05:34.540 Bluebird Bio, however, got approved in December of 2023.

00:05:40.920 And instead of charging $750,000 because they didn't have any competition, which was us at one time, so they charged $3.1 million per patient.

00:05:52.600 We can treat the patients for $800,000.

00:05:56.320 These are both large sums of money.

00:05:59.220 To what extent are taxpayers picking up the tab for these treatments?

00:06:03.320 So, there's basically 90% of all thalassemic and sickle cell disease patients are on some form of Medicare or Medicaid.

00:06:14.760 To treat a patient with gene therapy costs the company, costs my company, excuse me, costs my company somewhere around $500,000.

00:06:27.980 Just for hospital costs and for the creation of the product.

00:06:33.920 So, after you add overhead for the company, et cetera, et cetera, like I said, I promised Bobby Kennedy that we'd keep the price under $1 million per patient for the next 10 years.

00:06:45.520 But, however, like I said, Bluebird Bio for gene replacement charges $3.1 million.

00:06:51.700 And CRISPR, which is gene editing, and it cures the exact same patients, is charging $2.2 million per patient.

00:07:00.120 So, if you multiply the difference between $3.1 million per patient and $800,000 per patient, which we believe is the fair price, is the right price, times 100,000 patients,

00:07:12.720 the taxpayer is basically theoretically defrauded out of about $230 billion.

00:07:19.120 Yeah, that's the back of the envelope number I came up with.

00:07:22.360 At some point, you notified New York Attorney General Letitia James about this precarious situation regarding children in New York State with sickle cell anemia.

00:07:32.380 I believe you met with her.

00:07:35.140 What were the results of that?

00:07:37.600 Yeah, so, in 2018, we basically, after we did discovery in our court case, we realized that there was this horrible criminal sabotage that happened, including insider trading.

00:07:51.940 So, Bluebird Bio traded up to a $12 billion market cap that has raised a total of $4.2 billion in the marketplace.

00:08:01.400 And they were getting ready to treat patients with what we believe was a less safe drug because they were using our first generation of our drug.

00:08:12.160 And since then, we have improved it.

00:08:13.920 And so, we went to Letitia James' office, one of our guys actually met with her, but I met with her office probably 10 times.

00:08:27.900 We brought her everything.

00:08:30.100 We brought her all of the emails.

00:08:31.860 We brought her all of the court evidence, which pointed to criminal activity to sabotage our product and to boost the cost of gene therapy for sickle cell disease.

00:08:43.920 We went to her first in May of 2019.

00:08:49.640 We recently were pushing back and forth all the way until 2024.

00:08:57.180 And the answer was always the same, that she didn't have the resources to go after the people who were costing the lives of sickle cell disease children.

00:09:10.900 This is an incredible story.

00:09:13.420 I have to ask you, as a high school dropout, how did you assemble a team to take on Big Pharma in the way you have?

00:09:21.980 Well, initially, I started investing all of my own family money.

00:09:25.580 Like I said, I was a rags to riches story on Oprah Winfrey.

00:09:28.380 I was in Playgirl magazine as one of America's most overall bachelors with Magic Johnson and Sylvester Stallone.

00:09:35.320 So once my son was diagnosed, I stuck all my own money.

00:09:39.380 I stopped trading and I stuck all my own money into curing the disease.

00:09:44.800 And by doing that, I won a lot of heroes and a lot of people who thought that I was a hero and a lot of people who want to collaborate, including some of the top researchers in the United States, including the head of gene and cell therapy at the NIH, Dr.

00:10:00.520 Dr. John Tisdale, an incredible person.

00:10:03.480 And I also attracted the Walton family.

00:10:06.240 The Walton family, meaning John Walton, they have son Lucas.

00:10:11.800 Lucas had a rare disease.

00:10:14.260 We got involved in 1995 and he was partners all the way to 2004.

00:10:19.800 And the Walton family, over the last 20-some years, have also put in about $23 million into the project.

00:10:28.860 But by being the father of a sick patient, being very serious about all of this and not chasing the money, just chasing the cure, it actually won me tons of wonderful allies, including Dan O'Connor of Trial Site News, Professor Frank Park, Dr. Lucha Lusato.

00:10:48.240 So it goes on and on and on, all of the wonderful people who are helping us.

00:10:53.640 Because this is obviously, for some people, not about a cure or treatment, but about making money.

00:11:00.920 Are you concerned that these powerful, big pharma corporations will move to try to stop you again?

00:11:09.380 That's always a possibility and always a concern.

00:11:13.160 We know how these huge, you know, multinational corporations work.

00:11:18.000 You know, for them to knock somebody off is not a big deal.

00:11:21.460 You know, somebody dies of a heart attack or gets hit by a car and something like that.

00:11:25.780 However, you know, I've met President Trump.

00:11:29.440 I've met Vice President Vance.

00:11:31.300 I'm very close to Robert Kennedy and him, Senator Tim Scott from North Carolina, have all pledged to make a gene therapy for sickle cell disease and thalassemia, my own son's disease, accessible.

00:11:48.860 So at this time, if they decide to do something against me, I think they'd have a lot of, they'd have to think about a real lot before they would do something.

00:12:00.440 But, of course, it's always a concern.

00:12:02.960 Well, we obviously not only pray for your safety, but we pray for anybody who's afflicted with these horrific diseases.

00:12:11.140 I really think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the standout appointees by President Trump.

00:12:18.480 I knew him casually before he himself ran for president, had a high regard for him then.

00:12:25.520 What impresses me most about him is when you watch him prior to his appointment, even prior to his candidacy, running first as a Democrat, then as an Independent,

00:12:37.020 and ultimately putting his own personal ambitions aside to endorse President Donald Trump, forming a powerful new political realignment.

00:12:47.260 Because I think millions of common sense minded Democrats and independents followed him in the last election.

00:12:56.820 But what impresses me the most about him is that in any format, whether in a panel or whether questioned about his beliefs,

00:13:08.500 he never makes any statement that he can't back up with solid research from a credible source, whether it's a trial or whether it is a study.

00:13:20.360 And that, to me, earned my respect.

00:13:25.060 I also think it was disgusting the way that big media tried to just erase him, just to try to censor him entirely.

00:13:34.740 So even when he did get on, say, CNN or one of the three networks, they would severely edit his interviews, never allowing him to fully and completely express himself.

00:13:49.440 It was a news blackout that this administration opposes.

00:13:55.520 I think one of the three pillars of this new coalition is free speech.

00:14:01.040 And the fact that he's changed the vaccination advisory board makeup, the fact that he is outlawing certain toxic additives, dyes and other chemicals in our food,

00:14:17.300 things that have already happened long ago in Europe that will now happen now,

00:14:21.340 shows me that his commitment to make America healthy again is very serious, very much on target.

00:14:28.540 I notice that he is relentless in his efforts.

00:14:33.600 I admire him tremendously.

00:14:35.280 I don't know him as well as you do, Pat, but I think he's among the president's very, very best appointees.

00:14:42.980 Folks, if you're just tuning in, this is The Stone Zone.

00:14:46.400 I'm Roger Stone, and we're talking to Patrick Garandi,

00:14:49.540 Garandi, one of the most respected leaders in the field of rare diseases,

00:14:54.440 a man who's fighting big pharma to bring a less expensive treatment for those with sickle cell disease.

00:15:03.100 Don't go away, because we'll be right back to talk about this David and Goliath struggle

00:15:09.240 and how Pat Garandi has given everything he has for his own son and for others afflicted with this horrific disease.

00:15:21.100 You're in The Stone Zone.

00:15:22.380 I'm Roger Stone.

00:15:23.860 Whatever you do, please don't touch that dial.

00:15:26.380 The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.

00:15:32.580 The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.

00:15:38.660 And we're back in The Stone Zone.

00:15:41.440 We're talking to Patrick Garandi.

00:15:43.840 He is one of the most respected and well-known leaders in the field of rare diseases.

00:15:48.780 He has put his entire fortune and future into the fight against big pharma corruption

00:15:56.500 and an effort to find a less expensive and more effective treatment for sickle cell disease.

00:16:03.680 He was motivated by the illness of his own son.

00:16:08.540 If your son Rocco could join us now, Patrick, what would he say?

00:16:12.240 Well, you know, Rocco has thalassemia, but I mean, he's never been a thalassemic patient.

00:16:20.400 He's always been a boy and then a man with thalassemia.

00:16:25.860 I think he's kind of tired of waiting because since 2010, I've been saying, son, you're going to be cured next year.

00:16:33.520 You're going to be cured next year.

00:16:34.800 And these criminals, I don't know what else to call them, have actually cost years of my son's life

00:16:43.820 and the lives and years of many children with sickle cell disease and people with thalassemia and sickle cell disease.

00:16:54.500 But Rocco is a fighter and he just says, you know, Dad, just keep it up.

00:17:01.660 Just keep it up.

00:17:02.680 I'll hold on.

00:17:03.380 You just keep it up.

00:17:05.800 It is a riveting and I think highly motivational story.

00:17:10.820 You can read about the famous San Rocco Therapeutics Bluebird Bio Memorial Sloan Kettering court case.

00:17:18.060 It was very well covered in The New York Times.

00:17:21.840 I also want to thank you, Patrick, for that audio clip that you sent me.

00:17:26.400 Very, very cool.

00:17:29.280 What is next for your company?

00:17:32.060 What happens next?

00:17:33.460 Yeah, so we have now produced enough vector for 60 patients.

00:17:42.180 We are amending the clinical trial, IND.

00:17:47.720 Like I said, we were the first, ours was the first vector in patients in the world in 2012.

00:17:54.180 And then again, it was sabotaged by Bluebird Bio and Third Rock Ventures.

00:17:58.780 But we now are going to start recruiting patients.

00:18:04.620 The product is 30% more efficient than the approved Bluebird product, which is called Zinteglo.

00:18:12.160 It's much more patient-friendly than the CRISPR product, which is called Caskervi.

00:18:18.320 And we're working with Bobby Kennedy.

00:18:21.800 He's hired, like you said, some incredible people.

00:18:25.340 His chief of staff, Stephanie Spear, Prasad, Macquarie, Bhattarachira.

00:18:31.740 They're all incredible people.

00:18:33.480 And we're working basically with all of them.

00:18:37.240 We made the promise, and Bobby made the promise, and Senator Tim Scott made the promise.

00:18:43.080 President Trump knows about it and is committed, as well as Vice President Vance, that we're

00:18:49.880 going to, in President Trump's administration, bring forward an accessible gene therapy for

00:18:57.720 sickle cell disease and thalassemia.

00:19:00.420 And we're right on target to do that.

00:19:03.500 We should be treating patients again, the latest, by the beginning of 2026.

00:19:10.200 Well, it is an inspiring story of one man's struggle against Big Pharma.

00:19:16.040 Of course, our greatest interest is in the children, praying for the children afflicted with

00:19:21.920 this horrific disease.

00:19:23.040 Patrick, thank you for bringing your story here into the Stone Zone.

00:19:27.720 For this inspiring discussion.

00:19:30.940 God bless you, my friend, and good luck in your struggle to bring a more affordable treatment

00:19:36.800 to the American people.

00:19:38.880 And I share your high regard for Robert Kennedy and his mission to make all Americans healthy

00:19:46.600 again.

00:19:47.740 Pat, thanks for joining us.

00:19:49.840 Thank you.

00:19:50.220 And, you know, I know how influential you were getting Bobby to support President Trump.

00:19:58.560 And I really do believe that that's what put us over the top.

00:20:02.560 So I want to thank you because I was involved in some of those conversations and back then.

00:20:08.440 So thank you.

00:20:10.100 You're an incredible patriot, Mr. Stone.

00:20:12.440 And I'm a huge admirer of you and your books.

00:20:16.180 Thank you.

00:20:16.940 And God bless you.

00:20:18.060 It is really a realignment.

00:20:19.880 It's changed the face of American politics.

00:20:21.920 Thanks for joining us today on the Stone Zone.

00:20:24.280 Until tomorrow.

00:20:25.520 God bless you.

00:20:26.400 And God speak.

00:20:27.540 Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.

00:20:31.380 You can hear the Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.

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00:20:55.260 See you next time for a new episode so you never have to wonder.

00:20:59.260 What the heck is going on here?

The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - June 24, 2025

Patrick Girondi ｜ 06-23-25

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