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In Response To Dr. Bastiat
Dr. Bastiat posted an interesting commentary last Tuesday under the title “Newsflash: People Are Weird” to which I would like to offer a few thoughts in response.
To recap for those who have not read the original post, Dr. Bastiat told the story of a patient called Susan who sought alternative medicine from nontraditional sources for an ongoing ailment but wasn’t getting any better from the alternative treatment. Dr. Bastiat listened to her symptoms and medical history, and asked a few probing questions. Based on the information she provided, Dr. Bastiat diagnosed Susan with a serious health issue and offered some obviously sound medical advice which she proceeded to shrug off, indicating that she had greater trust in alternative medicine than his professional diagnosis and subsequent advice.
Dr. Bastiat also mentioned a friend, Mark who lives in Chicago. Mark’s “neighborhood is a crime-ridden cesspool. Mark has voted Democrat his entire life. And he continues to do so.”
The good Doctor concludes:
I find both of these odd cases to be completely inexplicable. Neither “Susan” nor “Mark” are stupid. But neither case makes any sense at all. They ignore the obvious truth right in front of them, and do self-destructive things which make no sense whatsoever. And again, they are not stupid.
People are weird.
My aim is not to contradict Dr. Bastiat. I wholly agree, people are weird. I’d simply like to add a little context to Susan, who I think represents a lot of really smart people who may be weird but are also quite rational in their skeptical view of modern medicine. (Mark doesn’t need any contextualization, he’s just plain weird.)
Susan’s skepticism boils down to one simple thing: she has lost trust in Health, Inc. For the purposes of our discussion, I will define Health Inc. very broadly as the entire medical/health care establishment from policy makers, to regulators (FDA and CDC in particular), global nonprofits, researchers, manufacturers, insurers, hospital networks and administrators, and practitioners. A broad definition is necessary because virtually every member of each of these segments is a cog in the wheel that makes up Health Inc.
For generations, we have been lied to, misled, hoodwinked, bamboozled, coerced, and victimized by Health Inc., all while being grossly profited off of by the same.
Now, don’t misunderstand, I am not here to castigate the free market system or to suggest that the various private sector portions of Health Inc. should be barred from making a profit. However, health care and health insurance do not operate in an environment that resembles anything like the free market. That is a topic deserving of a separate and much longer commentary than I envision for this post. Suffice it to say, I reasonably assume that most members of this forum would generally agree that we’d be a lot better off if health care and health insurance operated in a much more free market environment with fewer mandates, greater competition, and a much less cozy relationship between the regulators and the regulated.
Where was I? Oh yes, I was about to list some of the many ways Health Inc. has caused itself to be viewed with deep skepticism by a large and growing number of very smart people.
For generations, the private sector and public sector portions of Health Inc. have operated in concert through cozy relationships and revolving doors to promulgate and perpetuate bad science, which leads to bad regulations, the enactment of bad laws, and bad public guidance by government agencies.
We’ve seen the now thoroughly debunked Food Pyramid foisted upon the American people, resulting in dietary changes that made us fatter and less healthy. It’s not just the food pyramid, dozens of dietary myths long perpetuated by Health Inc. experts have also been debunked.
We’ve seen the Sugar Lobby have a vastly outsized influence on federal agencies and legislators. One need not be a scientist to know that consumption of too much refined sugar (almost any at all being too much) is detrimental to our health. Big Sugar has for years paid for studies that, whaddya know, tell us that sugar isn’t so bad. They’ve successfully inserted sugar into just about all packaged foods. (Next time you’re picking up salsa at the grocery store take a look at product labels. You may be shocked by the sugar added to most salsas.) The unholy alliance between Big Sugar and Big Government has led to bad policies that have had deleterious health effects on the not sufficiently skeptical.
We’ve seen Big Pharma reap enormous profits while offering only marginal improvement in medicine, at best.
We’ve seen hospital administrators rush to cut off life support for patients against the wishes of family members.
We’ve seen hospitals, doctors, and insurers refuse to perform life-saving procedures on people who have not subjected themselves to an experimental “vaccine” of dubious benefit and with too many outstanding questions for many to feel comfortable with.
We’ve seen collusion between government and non-government entities at home and abroad to push junk science, squash dissent, drum anyone who questions the narrative out of polite society, stifle free speech, and otherwise abuse and erode many of the essential liberties that make (or at one time did make) the United States a beacon of freedom throughout the world.
We’ve seen nonsensical masking, social distancing, business breaking, society crippling policies continue to be mandated since long after they’ve been demonstrated to be not only ineffective but actually harmful. As Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit puts it succinctly, “I’ve seen the lockdowns and the damage done.”
We’ve seen hospitals and doctors ignore their duty to “do no harm” and gladly mutilate children to profit off of the current epidemic of gender confusion currently sweeping through our nation.
We’ve seen pediatricians willingly allow themselves to be coopted as agents of the government to find out from children whether or not their parents have firearms, a topic that has nothing to do with pediatric medicine.
We’ve seen growing acceptance of euthanasia at home and more aggressively in places like the Netherlands and Canada, where doctors seem eager to proactively goad patients into offing themselves to save the system a buck on their care.
We’ve seen a growing number of doctors, hospitals, and medical schools adopt the absurd notion that there are more than two genders, that men can get pregnant, and that women not be called women, girls, or female, but rather by some bodily function such as “person with a uterus, birthing person, or person who menstruates.”
We’ve seen little public resistance to these insane notions about gender and sexuality from medical professionals who damn well ought to know better and should be the tip of the spear in pushing back against the insanity. Instead, we’ve seen them tacitly go along with the craziness, or in many cases explicitly go along with it.
I could go on but it’s late, this post is getting long, and I’m pretty sure the point needs no further belaboring.
Skepticism of Health Inc. is merely symptomatic of growing distrust in the institutions which have heretofore been critical in upholding Western Civilization. Trust in government, the scientific community, organized religion, public education, higher education, the arts, news media, entertainment, etc., has plummeted. This diminishing trust has been almost exclusively brought on by the institutions themselves by abandoning political neutrality, adopting woke leftist narratives, and then deciding that those narratives needed to be forced upon the great masses of normal, smart, weird people who just want to be left the hell alone.
One result of the implosion of trust in institutions is a growing sense that since we’ve been lied to so much, in so many ways, and for so long by Health Inc., we can’t trust anything being pushed by anyone associated with Health Inc. This is the one weird reason why so many smart people are tuning out thoughtful, caring, and compassionate doctors who give good, sound, beneficial advice. It’s not that all doctors are cogs in the wheel of Health Inc., it’s just that so many of them are that it’s difficult to ascertain who can be trusted and believed.
I feel for the good doctors out there who are frustrated at being ignored by their patients. I feel more for the patients who don’t know who they can trust and thus feel compelled to seek alternative medicines and treatments from sources outside of the Health Inc. orbit.
None of this changes Dr. Bastiat’s conclusion that people are weird. It just gives some context as to why.
I echo his closing prayer: Lord, help us.
Published in General
People are also weird in that although the USA has won one and only one war over the last 78 years, and that was a war we fought against the tiny island nation of Grenada, yet most people do not realize and accept the fact that our wars are fought in order to be prolonged profit-making affairs for the Military-Industrial-Surveillance state.
Most citizens are also weird that although followers of both parties have insisted that there have been major shenanighans on a massive level in elections going back to the year 2000, people have not also insisted that we go back to much better way of handling elections: pen and paper at the polling places with no computerized determining of the vote count.
Most loyal Dems and Republicans also seem unaware that at the top it is all One Big Money Party.
Once people believe something, it is very difficult for the individuals involved in the belief to shake that belief off. Especially if it part and parcel of a major belief system.
I think this applies to many institutions if not all.
The technocrats have spent all their capital lying and forcing others to live by those lies.
Health Inc murderer people with the shut down. People did not get regular tests and check ups and needlessly died. For a hospital or doctor office to have shut down over nothing, using covid as an excuse, caused the death of who knows how many people.
Individuals can be trusted but who has that relationship with a single doctor anymore? The police assume everyone they encounter is a bad guy and act accordingly. Big corporations are run by multi millionaires who don’t have to experience the poor services or frustrations of normal people. That includes most healthcare and insurance systems.
The technocrats have been exposed as our enemies. Unfortunately, the destruction of trust pretty much dooms us. Low trust societies don’t become high trust ones. Ever.
To enhance your sentiment regarding trust, Bryan:
“Don’t put your trust in nobles, nor in mortal man who has not the ability to bring deliverance.” (Psalms 146:3)
Another version, albeit less faithful to the Hebrew, has it thus:
“Don’t put your trust in experts who know nothing of life.”
Yes, lots of unnecessary deaths due to lack of screening catching things before they got too far along. Those deaths are completely attributable to the lockdowns pushed by the medical establishment, in my opinion.
If Health Inc. wanted to make an attempt to restore trust (and success would be a longshot at best) there would need to be significant accountability and consequences from the highest levels to the lowest. Not just statements of regret with vague notions inferred apology. Full throated acceptance of responsibility followed by concrete changes in policy and law to prevent a repeat, followed by resignations, firing of culpable persons who refuse to resign, and in some cases prosecution and prison.
To be clear though, the skepticism of Health Inc. began prior to COVID. The way they handled COVID only accelerated what was already happening and crystalized in the minds of many smart people just how bad the situation really is. Any attempt to regain trust, long shot as it might be, must reach far beyond the events of the past three years.
Nathanael, I don’t doubt that a great many people have become skeptical (or more skeptical) of expertise in all its forms — and particularly the medical variety — since the grotesque mishandling of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.
“Susan” (not her real name) strikes me as more the opposite, a woman inclined to offer her trust too easily. I appreciate skepticism, though I like it tempered by a little sensibility. Susan, as described by the good doctor, seems to me more gullible than skeptical.
I do absolutely agree that there are major problems in medicine. I blame a lot of it on consolidation, the big “health networks,” Obamacare’s distortion of the entire industry, and government meddling in general. I have friends in the medical community and I’ve watched as their small practices increasingly struggle to comply with a growing bureaucracy that seems to serve no one well. I’ve never been one to condemn big business, but my sympathy with those who do increases every day.
I think this premise boils down to the current health care system isn’t great and provokes skepticism. But none of the alternatives have proven to be any better.
What’s the old adage? If you don’t believe in something, you will believe in anything?
Interesting perspective. I would agree that people can/should rationally get questions answered when seeking care. Further, I agree that we have justification to be suspicious of all kinds of institutions, including “Health, Inc.”. But…
You make a number of unsubstantiated sweeping assertions. Could you cite to any studies to back anything up?
For example, you state, “We’ve seen Big Pharma reap enormous profits while offering only marginal improvement in medicine, at best.” This seems incorrect to me.
Here’s a brief anecdote—about 20 years ago, my healthy wife was in her early 30s. She contracted a common strep infection in her lungs that inexplicably, within a few days, turned into advanced pneumonia, then moved into her bloodstream. The illness hit on a Friday and by the time we went to the doctor on Monday, she had plummeting blood pressure (80 something over 50 something if memory serves) and was in full blown septic shock in the early stages of organ failure.
The team went right to work to treat her and saved her life. One of the most critical meds was a new to market anti inflammatory drug to arrest the effects of the sepsis. $14,000 per dose. She needed two doses. However, before that medicine, she would have likely been on life support and a ventilator for days, if not weeks. With the meds, no ventilator and “only” a week in intensive care and a week in whatever they call care a step below intensive care.
That medicine was worth every penny, and probably today is a fraction of the cost it was 20 years ago. I suspect other docs on this site can name literally dozens of similar advancements in medicine and medical technology in the past 2 years, much less 20. Sure Pfizer has huge profits many years. And in my mind, good on ‘em.
I feel sorry for you. I must be a very fortunate person. I have had excellent medical care, and more importantly, so has my family.
The best thing about our country is the constant argument we engage in. It creates excellence–up to the point that it is demoralizing to people in the field. That we need to guard against.
If I were in the medical field and had read the OP, I’d be very discouraged. It’s an unnecessarily strident piece, I think.
That may be true in her case, however I know a lot of people (very smart and successful people) who take a nearly identical approach as Susan. Many people I know and respect go to the chiropractor first, use herbal remedies first, and only go to a medical doctor as a measure of last resort. The mistrust is both deep and well deserved. It’s also killing a lot of people who refuse to see a doctor until it’s too late.
No need to feel sorry for me. My family and I are healthy and well with little need for regular medical care. Unless of course you take into account seasonal allergies in Central Texas where the trees are on an active mission to choke us out with pollen. ;-) When we have on occasion needed to see a doctor we’ve been mostly happy with the care we’ve received.
I think being skeptical of authority is great. But some people take their skepticism so far as to say that the US government faked the moon landing. I actually met someone who tried to convince me of this. I told him that I can not prove that the moon landing wasn’t faked, that it really happened. But still, it seems more likely to have happened than to have not happened.
I think we have to make guesses all the time as to who is telling us the truth, who is misleading us and who has been mislead and will unwittingly mislead others. We hope to have our guesses turn out right often enough to keep ourselves out of trouble.
I agree with this. However, I would not put moon landing conspiracy theorists in the same category as people skeptical of establishment institutions that have done almost everything in their power to alienate normal people over the past 40 years or so. Certainly there is bound to be some overlap, but the two are generally not the same. Evidence for the lunar landings is overwhelming and evidence to the contrary is usually proven worthless quite easily.
What we are experiencing today is the wholesale collapse of public trust in public and private institutions, many of which were revered for generations. This self-inflicted wound is not only detrimental to the institutions, it is detrimental to all of us.
For our society to function well we need strong institutions that are both credible and apolitical. We need to be able to trust, for example, that scientists are both competent and trustworthy; that they are not merely parroting the company line to keep the funding coming, or to keep from being drummed out of the community. We need institutions that welcome rigorous public debate, transparency, and free speech. This is the opposite of how our institutions behave today, particularly in the health care and health insurance arena but also in education, climate science, and…well you name it.
Is there any significant public or private institution in this nation that enjoys a healthy degree of public trust at the moment? I can’t think of any off hand.
Even the military has lost it.
You know I’ve got to say I woke up this morning and said, “Horse dewormer.” And the whole covid crisis came into real clarity. Just the fact that media could feel so free to decry ivermectin as horse dewomer instead of a safe drug for people for half a century or so, and nobody with official scientific status or governmental authority ever debunked the slander against a Nobel Award-winning invention, shows that they were all liars following a non-medical objective. Some mixed with truth perhaps, but the narrative was king, and the crisis was just as phony as the whole horse dewormer narrative.
I mean, where did that come from? Who stood by and allowed that falsity to become pervasive. I won’t get into government-paid censorship, or phony studies published in preeminent medical journals, or propaganda for the public’s good, or changing definitions and instructions for death certifications, or rigged statistical collection and analysis.
Just the abiding lie tells it all.