Advisor, Fortune Brands Innovatns
Search every verified Brett Finley interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a 2017 talk at Google, Dr. Brett Finlay discussed the role of microbes in human health, arguing that modern society has become "too clean" and that reduced microbial diversity is linked to rising rates of diseases such as asthma, obesity, and depression. He cited research correlating antibiotic use in early life with higher rates of asthma and noted that the average child in the US receives 10 to 12 courses of antibiotics by school age. Finlay described studies showing that fecal transplants between mice can transfer obesity, and he stated that red meat consumption leads microbes to produce compounds linked to atherosclerosis. He also said that vaccines are effective and that the autism-vaccine link has been "completely disproven," while criticizing the use of antibacterial hand sanitizers as "poison" that kills beneficial microbes.
“We've gotten too clean, and actually you will start to see these microbes are influencing the diseases that affect us on a daily basis.”
“If you have antibiotics in the first year of life, you again have a much higher rate of asthma. And this has been now really well documented.”
“The microbes seem to be controlling obesity; fecal transfer from fat mice to thin mice makes the thin mice fat, and vice versa.”
“When you eat red meat, microbes convert a component called phosphatidylcholine into TMA, which the liver oxidizes to TMAO, causing atherosclerosis.”
In the two hundred years since we discovered that microbes cause infectious diseases, we've battled to keep them at bay.
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