The Dark Side of Medicine, Past and Present

[this is a draft article]

human biology is fascinating. But whatever people call “medicine” is a sort of rationalised religion people have been made to follow to believe they know how to “better people”. In some cases it’s great, we solve diseases, cure people who were on their deathbeds.

In some ways it’s an unethical hell. 70 years ago your doctor recommended cigarettes because research said they are good for you. (Yeah, that’s what happens when you are in a capitalist system and the largest funder of “cigarette research” is the cigarette companies themselves).

Medicine taught people to be racist based on percieved “superior races”.

It wasn’t nazi soldiers with gas chambers who genocided disabled people, it was nazi doctors who were told they were helping the patients by euthanising them through mercy killings (the patients had not consented and thought it was just a normal medical visit).

Freud, the founder of much of modern psychiatry, based his entire view of treating women on “hysteria”. The view is women can’t control their emotions and they manifest through physical symptoms.

This lives on to this day, with women who have physical symptoms a doctor can’t figure out being diagnosed with “psychosomatic disorder”, your brain invents your illness but it’s all psychological (they have no proof to back this up, except the insurance companies and governments push it because it means they don’t have to pay disability benefits).

Lupus, ME/CFS, Peptic Ulcer all diseases that were intially blamed on “mass hysteria”, why? because they mainly affect women.

Medicine is built on a large pile of misogynistic, racist, colonialist, ableist, homophobic bullshit.

Yeah homophobic. How did they treat gay people a couple years ago. A “medical disorder” a “psychological illness”. They still do that to trans people now.

The large large large majority of medicine is a massive conflict of interest. Who funds basically all studies, pharma companies who wanna get rich on drugs, and insurance companies who wanna find a reason they don’t need to cover everything. Their current technique is to label everything they can as “psychological” and then they claim through stigma and harmful stereotypes whetever is “psychological” is the patients fault. They then promote the cheap treatment of “therapy and exercise” which they say will cure everything. Don’t get me wrong both of those things are great and really help people with their lives but are no better than band aids or pain killers if the patients issues are caused by underlying biological mechanisms.

I don’t mean to say people in the medical system are bad people. The vast majority came there to help others and help improve society and I think that’s something that we should all be grateful for. But most also fail to question and be critical of the system they perpetuate. They operate within a system that has evolved with and continually perpetuates deep injustices.

they act like it is “do no harm to worldview of the medical establishment” and not, “do no harm to the patient in your care”