I might call this a love letter to what's good about medicine but like every institution, it needs to wake up to its own arrogance instead of assuming its ways are the best there is.
Medical training in its entrenched hierarchy is built like a cult. Cult members are not trained to think. They're spoonfed with they need to know, trained to regurgitate what they know, and make decisions based on the sources of knowledge the cult deems legitimate while believing they are elite, critical thinkers with sound judgement. Many can develop practice wisdom as they opt to learn from their patients and examine their relationships with patients in addition to examining patients to discover that there's too much interference in the doctor-patient relationship.
Many talented Drs have fled mainstream medicine to pursue a humanising medicine beyond the cult because they held unorthodox perspectives and were shunned for them. Medicine needs an overhaul of its priorities, including its hubris, paternalism, damaging hidden curriculum and its God complex because it will continue to haemorrhage excellent physicians and train a demanding, entitled, holier than thou, communal narcissist/activist workforce to replace them.
“Cult members are not trained to think”. In a world of too much information (and misinformation) this is strategy in many fields, not just medicine, to maximize productivity. I suspect it’s worse in medicine with the added weight of the “insurance protocol” which removes the need to think and assure payment. But you’d might be surprised to know it even applies to industries you’d think would value creativity.
How could they "learn to listen" if they have no intention of telling the truth in the fist place? (the quote, "I hope medicine learns to listen.", comes towrds the end)
Yeah, I really don't get the bemoaning of the loss of trust in medicine, or in pretty much all our powerful institutions. It's been obvious for decades that everything we call "science" isn't about science at all. It's ruled by greed and agendas. Trust? That's always a mistake outside one's closest circles of family and the rarest of friends, and often misplaced there. Heck, the founding documents of the USA are based on the very obvious principle that you better never, ever trust the authorities, and went to great lengths to dilute each power center, with the checks and balances we were once taught about in school.
The great silver lining of the scamdemic is many more have awakened to how rotten and untrustworthy our institutions are. Many more, but not nearly enough. It's always been so. Given human nature and the way institutions develop over time, they turn rotten and ugly, every time. It's an inexorable and well-known process that can't be stopped. No secret, look it up and learn something on the journey. Or simply remove any blinders you may have on, look around, call on your experience (if you have enough), and think. It's clear it can be no other way.
Wow, an excellent, well-thought out comment. I certainly count as a person who changed my opinions on the world post-2020. I was just looking at a website called "Stacker" that seems exclusively dedicated to helping journalists create the official lie. Get your info from stacker.com and guarantee that you will NEVER understand what is really going on! Then to whom may I ask do we turn? Substack is fine but it is only individuals.
Substack is fine because it IS only individuals. Remember what I wrote about institutions? That said, there are some web sites that for now seem pretty good, IMO. Sott.net, dailysceptic.org, brownstone.org, I like as much as any, I guess. There are a bunch of others worth a look, I'm sure you can find them as well as I can. You'll get links as you go, of course. I think I'll be skipping Stacker. I like print mostly, but appreciate a really good interview. I'd call this one, Tucker Carlson/Mike Benz, must-see, if you haven't already:
IMO, we are in a situation where it's time for somebody my age (old) to count his blessings for living in the USA in such good times. We're experiencing a reversion to the mean (I'm a math guy). My time and place has not been the normal human experience. I hate to admit I was naive enough to buy into the prevailing idea, that humanity was on a steady path toward better things. No, it looks like we've just been enjoying a high point. The old saying "hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times" is very true IMO, it's a cycle and we're going down John Glubb has a really good short essay on that -
My personality: I want to bring everybody together into a big organization
Which (of course) I guess that never works? Because...? I would need to be the leader of course. But (of course) that never works. So that is my basic problem. I' going to "move on" right now and maybe get coffee and contemplate my old age. Here's a link to a Springfield City Council meeting, where "Kristy" the town official, says into an open mic, "I don't give a shit..." (about.... I cannot really hear that part but I am thinking "these people") It comes in before the halfway mark, b.t.w. I did not read all of it. He always has a lot to say!
My personality is different. We need a mix, so we can complement each other. Trouble is, we're social creatures, but our social structure only works in small tribes. There, everybody is involved, and accountability is enforced. Once the agricultural revolution allowed us to build large civilizations, our basic human nature no longer worked for maintaining successful functioning over the long term. There's a memorable passage in a book about psychopathy where the researcher asked an Inuit tribesman how they handled psychopathic types. He said "somebody would just push a person like that off the ice when no one was looking". That worked. Once we developed more "advanced" and larger communities, such people are protected and rise to the top. There are good reasons why dark triad personalities rule, too many to go into here.
Only one little caveat here, in my engagement with Substack person "SteelJ" has said. Is this act of throwing somebody off the ice compatible with basic human nature? And -- do not trust everything an anthropological subject says to an anthropologist. Anyways, I guess your point holds up, that the smaller group has to handle stuff and probably does so. Although I wonder if even the primordial h-g group, said to be optimally between 20 and 50 persons, have their problems. There is also the spiritual retreatant who goes off to a hut or cave to meditate alone. But I won't talk about that because people start thinking I know something about spirituality.
So true words. I retired from nursing after 45 years. I watched as BigPharma and "me too" drugs exploded. I questioned all the vaccines we give our children now compared to the past, yet they are unhealthier. Than Covid happened. I read JFK's book on Fauci, and that answered a lot. I've decided medicine is mostly good for emergencies, like gun-shot wounds. Thank you for your hard work and ethics. Your articles are excellent.
I was put on Antibiotics often from age 5 to 15 for ear infections until I finally got tubes in my ear drums. The next year was miserable. No swimming allowed. Ever since I have had scarred tissue in one eardrum and still have a hole in one eardrum nearly 50 years later...
You write fundamental truths. The question is how do we correct the medical community? That would be a major undertaking. Trying to redirect the Leviathan it is. In many ways, it is akin to redirecting the entire nation away from Marxist ideology. JMHO.
Ah, you are asking the right question. The answer is, we don't. It's not fixable. I'm no socialist, but single-payer, so-called "socialized medicine" would be superior to what the US has, if it had been implemented many years ago. The countries where that's been reasonably successful implemented it way before their medical establishment co-opted 18% of their GNP. Our medical establishment has so much power we can't achieve what they did. And, like all institutions, their government-run systems inevitably degrade, badly, over time. IMHO, what might work would be zero third-party payers, everyone pays as they go. Private charity would have to step in for unfortunate, unlucky ones. There is discipline built into that system that would make it effective and sustainable. That was our system before WWII, in case you didn't know. Given the health of today's populace, and political realities, obviously that will never happen. So - unfixable.
Modern medicine can effectively treat only about 10% of human diseases, yet doctors are respected as highly scientific minds, endure rigorous training, and earn significantly higher incomes than average. However, they are often among the least creative groups. Yes, medicine needs to change.
I agree Kevin. Your interview by Tucker Carlson will bring this to the attention of many physicians and patients. We can make the change one person at a time. Our defects are entrenched in the system by leaders.
Most of US don't have enough time left in this life to witness corrections. For many, the only practical correction would be EXTINCTION FOR TREASON AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
I will never call on a Doctor for anything but a broken bone. Most forgot or simply discarded their Hypocratic Oath. The past 4 plus years confirmed my lifelong distrust for Doctors. #WhenThereAreMoreQuacksThanDucks
Very true. But unfortunately, it won't listen and it won't change. Medicine is firmly entrenched in the Military and Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex. It will simply crush both internal and external critics. Cancelling a few dozen gadflies now and then is just par for the course. It happened to me and it happened to you. But you don't seem to get it. You are a little fish to them. Completely irrelevant.
I suspect the vast majority of Physicians and Physician-scientists are in agreements with both your sentiments, and empathize with your trials.
But "Medicine" is hierarchical. What goes out for public communication and public consumption is tightly manicured and regulated.
It is not clear to me whether overturning this hierarchy will require an external force (economics, different regulatory mandates, public outcry etc...), or a mass internal insurgency.
"The medical establishment is right to be concerned about human rights and public health--these must be pivotal concerns of the medical and public health communities..."
"Health" or timely, affordable, and effective medical services? I'm responsible for my health and gathering the resources to protect and ensure it; the medical establishment is responsible for making available to me the diagnostic and treatment services I may require from time to time to do so.
I might call this a love letter to what's good about medicine but like every institution, it needs to wake up to its own arrogance instead of assuming its ways are the best there is.
Medical training in its entrenched hierarchy is built like a cult. Cult members are not trained to think. They're spoonfed with they need to know, trained to regurgitate what they know, and make decisions based on the sources of knowledge the cult deems legitimate while believing they are elite, critical thinkers with sound judgement. Many can develop practice wisdom as they opt to learn from their patients and examine their relationships with patients in addition to examining patients to discover that there's too much interference in the doctor-patient relationship.
Many talented Drs have fled mainstream medicine to pursue a humanising medicine beyond the cult because they held unorthodox perspectives and were shunned for them. Medicine needs an overhaul of its priorities, including its hubris, paternalism, damaging hidden curriculum and its God complex because it will continue to haemorrhage excellent physicians and train a demanding, entitled, holier than thou, communal narcissist/activist workforce to replace them.
“Cult members are not trained to think”. In a world of too much information (and misinformation) this is strategy in many fields, not just medicine, to maximize productivity. I suspect it’s worse in medicine with the added weight of the “insurance protocol” which removes the need to think and assure payment. But you’d might be surprised to know it even applies to industries you’d think would value creativity.
Like many trades, Most elders are too worried about losing their position to someone much younger when they learn too much too fast...
How could they "learn to listen" if they have no intention of telling the truth in the fist place? (the quote, "I hope medicine learns to listen.", comes towrds the end)
Yeah, I really don't get the bemoaning of the loss of trust in medicine, or in pretty much all our powerful institutions. It's been obvious for decades that everything we call "science" isn't about science at all. It's ruled by greed and agendas. Trust? That's always a mistake outside one's closest circles of family and the rarest of friends, and often misplaced there. Heck, the founding documents of the USA are based on the very obvious principle that you better never, ever trust the authorities, and went to great lengths to dilute each power center, with the checks and balances we were once taught about in school.
The great silver lining of the scamdemic is many more have awakened to how rotten and untrustworthy our institutions are. Many more, but not nearly enough. It's always been so. Given human nature and the way institutions develop over time, they turn rotten and ugly, every time. It's an inexorable and well-known process that can't be stopped. No secret, look it up and learn something on the journey. Or simply remove any blinders you may have on, look around, call on your experience (if you have enough), and think. It's clear it can be no other way.
Wow, an excellent, well-thought out comment. I certainly count as a person who changed my opinions on the world post-2020. I was just looking at a website called "Stacker" that seems exclusively dedicated to helping journalists create the official lie. Get your info from stacker.com and guarantee that you will NEVER understand what is really going on! Then to whom may I ask do we turn? Substack is fine but it is only individuals.
Thanks for the kind words.
"Substack is fine but it is only individuals."
Substack is fine because it IS only individuals. Remember what I wrote about institutions? That said, there are some web sites that for now seem pretty good, IMO. Sott.net, dailysceptic.org, brownstone.org, I like as much as any, I guess. There are a bunch of others worth a look, I'm sure you can find them as well as I can. You'll get links as you go, of course. I think I'll be skipping Stacker. I like print mostly, but appreciate a really good interview. I'd call this one, Tucker Carlson/Mike Benz, must-see, if you haven't already:
https://tuckercarlson.com/uncensored-the-national-security-state-the-inversion-of-democracy
IMO, we are in a situation where it's time for somebody my age (old) to count his blessings for living in the USA in such good times. We're experiencing a reversion to the mean (I'm a math guy). My time and place has not been the normal human experience. I hate to admit I was naive enough to buy into the prevailing idea, that humanity was on a steady path toward better things. No, it looks like we've just been enjoying a high point. The old saying "hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times" is very true IMO, it's a cycle and we're going down John Glubb has a really good short essay on that -
https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
Congrats on waking up! Most can't, or won't. Truth hurts though.
My personality: I want to bring everybody together into a big organization
Which (of course) I guess that never works? Because...? I would need to be the leader of course. But (of course) that never works. So that is my basic problem. I' going to "move on" right now and maybe get coffee and contemplate my old age. Here's a link to a Springfield City Council meeting, where "Kristy" the town official, says into an open mic, "I don't give a shit..." (about.... I cannot really hear that part but I am thinking "these people") It comes in before the halfway mark, b.t.w. I did not read all of it. He always has a lot to say!
https://jasonpowers.substack.com/p/unrestricted-war-tactics-bond-pagers
My personality is different. We need a mix, so we can complement each other. Trouble is, we're social creatures, but our social structure only works in small tribes. There, everybody is involved, and accountability is enforced. Once the agricultural revolution allowed us to build large civilizations, our basic human nature no longer worked for maintaining successful functioning over the long term. There's a memorable passage in a book about psychopathy where the researcher asked an Inuit tribesman how they handled psychopathic types. He said "somebody would just push a person like that off the ice when no one was looking". That worked. Once we developed more "advanced" and larger communities, such people are protected and rise to the top. There are good reasons why dark triad personalities rule, too many to go into here.
Only one little caveat here, in my engagement with Substack person "SteelJ" has said. Is this act of throwing somebody off the ice compatible with basic human nature? And -- do not trust everything an anthropological subject says to an anthropologist. Anyways, I guess your point holds up, that the smaller group has to handle stuff and probably does so. Although I wonder if even the primordial h-g group, said to be optimally between 20 and 50 persons, have their problems. There is also the spiritual retreatant who goes off to a hut or cave to meditate alone. But I won't talk about that because people start thinking I know something about spirituality.
So true words. I retired from nursing after 45 years. I watched as BigPharma and "me too" drugs exploded. I questioned all the vaccines we give our children now compared to the past, yet they are unhealthier. Than Covid happened. I read JFK's book on Fauci, and that answered a lot. I've decided medicine is mostly good for emergencies, like gun-shot wounds. Thank you for your hard work and ethics. Your articles are excellent.
Yes, trauma care and, while over-used, antibiotics are truly wonder drugs . Otherwise, stay away.
I was put on Antibiotics often from age 5 to 15 for ear infections until I finally got tubes in my ear drums. The next year was miserable. No swimming allowed. Ever since I have had scarred tissue in one eardrum and still have a hole in one eardrum nearly 50 years later...
You write fundamental truths. The question is how do we correct the medical community? That would be a major undertaking. Trying to redirect the Leviathan it is. In many ways, it is akin to redirecting the entire nation away from Marxist ideology. JMHO.
Ah, you are asking the right question. The answer is, we don't. It's not fixable. I'm no socialist, but single-payer, so-called "socialized medicine" would be superior to what the US has, if it had been implemented many years ago. The countries where that's been reasonably successful implemented it way before their medical establishment co-opted 18% of their GNP. Our medical establishment has so much power we can't achieve what they did. And, like all institutions, their government-run systems inevitably degrade, badly, over time. IMHO, what might work would be zero third-party payers, everyone pays as they go. Private charity would have to step in for unfortunate, unlucky ones. There is discipline built into that system that would make it effective and sustainable. That was our system before WWII, in case you didn't know. Given the health of today's populace, and political realities, obviously that will never happen. So - unfixable.
It's like trying to fix US Givernment. 72% Are in bed with Communist China and Mexican Cartels. Unfixable.
Modern medicine can effectively treat only about 10% of human diseases, yet doctors are respected as highly scientific minds, endure rigorous training, and earn significantly higher incomes than average. However, they are often among the least creative groups. Yes, medicine needs to change.
I agree Kevin. Your interview by Tucker Carlson will bring this to the attention of many physicians and patients. We can make the change one person at a time. Our defects are entrenched in the system by leaders.
Most of US don't have enough time left in this life to witness corrections. For many, the only practical correction would be EXTINCTION FOR TREASON AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
I will never call on a Doctor for anything but a broken bone. Most forgot or simply discarded their Hypocratic Oath. The past 4 plus years confirmed my lifelong distrust for Doctors. #WhenThereAreMoreQuacksThanDucks
Very true. But unfortunately, it won't listen and it won't change. Medicine is firmly entrenched in the Military and Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex. It will simply crush both internal and external critics. Cancelling a few dozen gadflies now and then is just par for the course. It happened to me and it happened to you. But you don't seem to get it. You are a little fish to them. Completely irrelevant.
Kevin;
I suspect the vast majority of Physicians and Physician-scientists are in agreements with both your sentiments, and empathize with your trials.
But "Medicine" is hierarchical. What goes out for public communication and public consumption is tightly manicured and regulated.
It is not clear to me whether overturning this hierarchy will require an external force (economics, different regulatory mandates, public outcry etc...), or a mass internal insurgency.
Lead the way...I will support.
"The medical establishment is right to be concerned about human rights and public health--these must be pivotal concerns of the medical and public health communities..."
Your fundamental error in thinking comes early.
You cannot have health without human rights.
"Health" or timely, affordable, and effective medical services? I'm responsible for my health and gathering the resources to protect and ensure it; the medical establishment is responsible for making available to me the diagnostic and treatment services I may require from time to time to do so.
Agreed, but how?
It needs to change, but it won't.