There are some challenging theoretical critiques of Western medicine, such as Jon Jureidini and Leeman B. McHenry, The Illusion of Evidence-Base Medicine (2020) and Medical Nihilism (2018), by Jacob Stegenga. However, here is a great summary of all that is wrong with modern medicine by Roosh v, who has had a life a bit like St Augustine, moving from promiscuity, to finding Christ. And that is his main point, that medicine once was based around Christ, with many hospitals being set up by churches, but now have moved to secular humanism and Marxist materialism. No good has come from this, and indeed much evil.
“When I was an undergrad at university, I originally wanted to become a doctor. I was on a pre-med track along with many of the peers who majored in a hard science. Starting in my junior year, much of our talk was centered around taking the medical school entrance exam (MCAT) and achieving a score that assured acceptance into a medical school not based in the Caribbean. I quickly learned that, all else being equal, we would be evaluated on a curve according to our race. My black peers could get in with an MCAT score of 25, while my white peers needed to get close to 30. It was even worse for Asians, who had to punch above 30.
How could it be that applicants who objectively did worse on an exam could become a doctor over those who had done better? Doesn’t society want the absolute best doctors in the country to perform life-saving procedures and surgeries? Apparently not. The medical care that you receive is becoming increasingly dependent on correcting perceived historical wrongs than rewarding genuine ability and intellectual merit. I could not understand that as a lowly undergrad student. It should not surprise you that nearly all of my black peers became doctors, but based on what I knew of their abilities from studying with them, they were not the most qualified above other applicants who were discouraged due to the higher standard they were being judged on.
While a requirement for intelligence has not been completely thrown out the door, politics was already an entrenched factor for medical school admissions upon my graduating year of 2001. Consider the fact that women are so “encouraged” to become doctors that they now outnumber men, only later to leave the profession in droves because they changed their mind or desired lighter hours. What a societal waste to train women for medicine when so many of them rightfully decide it’s more joyful to raise children.
Once in medical school, at least, students can be taught pure medicine, untainted from the type of affirmative action policies that selected much of the admission class, but medical schools are connected to universities—the same universities that have become infected with a Marxist rot that insists on creating an inverted world where revolutionary and egalitarian ideas are elevated above the most basic truths. I have seen no indication that medical schools have walled themselves off from this revolutionary spirit. Not only have they adopted Marxist ideas, but at the same time they’ve become heavily influenced by money from the pharmaceutical industry.
Medical treatments lack reproducible proof of efficacy
Medical school curriculums have been created through “scientific studies,” and who can afford to conduct those increasingly expensive studies but globalized institutions, corporations, and “philanthropic” foundations. Take a look at the popular medical journals today and you will see a paucity of studies promoting natural remedies or lifestyle changes. Those compose a tiny minority of the research compendium because it entails no profit, and if you encounter such a study, it almost certainly was done outside of the United States.
Medical students gain a large amount of raw knowledge, but the entire orientation of which to apply that knowledge is to slice, dice, and pill-feed. In their exceedingly expensive training (medical school debt can surpass $1 million), students learn that all bodily problems can be solved with a scalpel or through prescribing chemicals produced in Chinese and Indian factories. I’ve been to honest car mechanics who have advised no intervention for an annoying car issue, but a doctor is trained to do something, anything, and the patient, lacking in faith and terrified of death, will beg for that anything—which they may have seen on a slick television commercial—no matter how extreme or toxic, even if the expensive solution to his ailment will merely rearrange the workings of his body to soon create yet another ailment that he must also seek treatment for. The efficacy of all those treatments is unknown because of the reproducibility crisis that has not only hit the soft sciences but also medicine.
The reproducibility crisis is the phenomenon whereby at least 50% of scientific studies cannot be reproduced, in spite of the fact that reproducibility is supposed to be the hallmark of science. I should be able to take your peer-reviewed and published scientific study, duplicate the setup, apply the same variables and conditions, and come up with identical results, but this is simply not happening, and perhaps never happened. You would think that reproducibility is essential to prove the efficacy of any medical treatment because human health and life are at stake, but just one successful study is enough to sweep all the failed ones under the rug. I know this because I worked for a pharmaceutical company that would hedge their bets by conducting multiple studies on the same drug candidate and then pick the ones that showed the most favorable results that could lead to FDA approval.
Many drugs that were heralded to alleviate a disease, despite the studies allegedly proving their claims, turned out to cause serious health damage while providing no curative effect, and so the entire foundation of modern medicine becomes shaky, held up only by vested financial interests that want to keep selling you expensive treatments. I can in fact prove to you that the best way to put out a forest fire is to drop a nuclear bomb on it. The fire will certainly go out since the entire forest and all combustible matter would be obliterated. I may even get published by a journal that peer reviews my nuclear bomb treatment, but if you want the forest to at least somewhat resemble its original state, it may be worth looking into another remedy, and the sad truth of my nuclear bomb example is that at least it does work, but most medical treatments do not work, and were approved by compliant government bureaucrats who wanted high-paying jobs in the same companies they are supposed to protect us from.
What is really true and what is not? What really works and what doesn’t? You’ll need a professional laboratory to help you seek the truth, but only 3% of laboratories are independent. Most are connected, by one or two degrees, to corrupt academia, the same interests that profit from the supposed cure, and Bill Gates and the Rockefellers, who have a strange fixation on the agenda of depopulation alongside “health.” …
I’ve been to several hospitals and noticed that many of them were established as explicit Christian charities. Relics of those foundings can be seen in the occasional Bible verse displayed on the walls, but when you walk into a hospital administrator’s office today, or you peek into the cubicles of the nurses and doctors who practice there, you will see not the God of the Cross but the gods of technology, silver, and gold. Medical care is a big business that is controlled by big interests, and the token displays of Christianity you witness are just to appease the few faithful remaining in this country who feel hesitant to be chopped up by human hands instead of trusting the hands of God.
Good can only come from God, and if an entire industry is advancing without God, as medicine has been during our lifetimes, I don’t see much good in it besides the boring but effective treatments of hip replacement, eye cataract surgery, and removal of warts. If you’re afflicted by something that merely annoys you, perhaps a visit to the doctor couldn’t hurt since you will make a decision for your care that is clear-headed and not based on your fear of death, but if your life is at stake, and you ask a doctor to lay hands upon you, you will get the worst of what medicine can provide simply to keep your body alive when God Himself had already decided that what you need to do is repent and get ready for your next life.
It is possible that I may die sooner than my parents because I refuse to get butchered by doctors only to die alone in the end, but I can’t help but consider the benefit to my soul. As I write this, I know that I can be struck down at any moment. No med-tech torture device or genetic therapy injection will save me. I may not have much time to even say goodbye to those I love when the angel of death comes to take me, so believe me when I say that I make my peace with God every single night. Not one goes by that I don’t ask him to forgive me for my sins, because when the end comes, I only want to be comforted and embraced by the love of God who created me, not the sterile gloved hands of a doctor who wants to dope me up to the point where I don’t even know what is happening to me, all under the guise of making me feel a false “comfort.” Only God can give me comfort. Only He can help me face my death. And only He can prepare my body to be resurrected in the age to come.”
All I can say to that is: Amen, brother!