After almost 35 years of medical practice, especially working in Urgent Care where I have to review other doctors’ charts, I am stunned at how moronic we are as a profession.
Truly moronic.
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The number of times I have seen people in their late 80s and 90s on statins, the elderly on three or more sedatives, or the implementation of expensive procedures offering no help is truly stunning.
I often question patients and ask:
“Why are you taking the pills you are taking?”
The inevitable answer…
“Because my doctor told me to.”
But what if your doctor is a moron?
What if the entire enterprise of Western medicine is based on moronic assumptions?
Assumption #1
No One Is Supposed to Die
The first — and craziest — assumption is that no one is supposed to die.
For instance, I recently saw a 91-year-old who had just received a cardiac stent.
Is this necessary? Is this safe? What is the cost/benefit — or is this mostly expensive and dangerous practice?
One of the only things we have certainty of is that we are going to die.
This fundamental fact of biology is mostly neglected in modern medicine.
The way we treat the elderly with endless pills and procedures is just nuts.
Yet again, I saw a 97-year-old patient who had just received a mammogram.
To prevent what???
To extend her life to 99½?
Assumption #2
There Is a Treatment for Everything
We literally live in a “treatment for everything” world.
Watch TV for five minutes and you will see ads for diseases you didn’t know existed — and didn’t know you had.
Pharma companies literally rebrand diseases with abbreviations and acronyms.
Think about that.
Pharma is branding diseases to make them easier to Google search and catchier to sell.
*“Are you a 50-year-old man with less pep than you had 10 years ago? It’s not aging — it’s DDOTD, or Dippy-Doddlitis of the Dick.
Try Mycoxafloppin and see your energy soar… and she’ll like it too.
Side effects include fungating ass cancer, anal leakage, and possession by the prince of darkness. If you feel the presence of Moloch for more than four hours, please consult an exorcist.”*
Just because there is a treatment for something does not mean it is safe, effective, or necessary.
We live in a country of wildly over-prescribed medications.
Statins. SSRIs. Antipsychotics.
The list of useless and dangerous prescribing is endless.
Every time I work, I see patients on dangerous combinations of medications.
Did they receive informed consent?
Did the doctor explain that it is unknowable to predict what a combination of 18 medications does?
Unknowable.
I saw a patient a while ago who wanted a refill of Ambien.
I declined and stated that according to the prescribing information the drug was not to be used for more than two weeks.
He had been on it for more than a decade.
His question was:
“Why did my doctor do this?”
My answer was:
I don’t know.
Morons gonna moron, I guess.
The Profession’s Magical Thinking
I’m not telling you that I have not actively participated in the moronic practice of medicine.
I too am guilty — and I think back with some embarrassment.
I believed what I was told.
One concept pushed on us was that patients couldn’t become addicted to opiates if they had legitimate pain.
This is patently idiotic, but it was the standard of care for decades.
We harmed so many people based on terrible science and misguided eagerness to help people.
Add to that the endless pressure from pharma, and you have a disaster on your hands.
The Opiate Example
In the opiate example, it is natural to first blame the pharmaceutical companies.
Do they deserve it?
Absolutely.
That said, not a single member of the Sackler family wrote a prescription for opiates.
They did studies and aggressively marketed — however not a single pill could be dispensed without a prescription.
Without physicians, Purdue Pharma had no business.
What if doctors would have fought back?
What if we would have questioned the opiate data?
History showed 3,000 years of opiate use, and no matter how the drugs were formulated or consumed, they were always addictive.
Always.
The British and Chinese fought two wars over opiate addiction.
Two wars.
Yet somehow we pretended like we knew better in 1980.
Why did we assume that a substance that had always been extremely dangerous was now magically safe?
What we did as a profession — myself included — with prescription opiates required magical thinking.
Doctors: Scientists or Priests?
There is a lot of magical thinking in medicine.
The profession has done an amazing job of cloaking itself in “Science” where there is no science to be seen.
Medical training is not fueled by curiosity or inquiry.
It is fueled by compliance.
Doctors are not trained to be free thinkers.
They are trained to be compliant doers.
More simply:
We are not trained as scientists.
We are trained as priests.
And not real priests learning to commune with God.
Rather unholy priests, doing what we are told by:
Pharma
Insurance companies
Governments
Idiot administrators
Fear: The System’s Control Mechanism
Most doctors sense this and hate the bureaucratic disaster that medicine has become, but somehow lack the ability to escape it.
I see this in my own life and it drives me crazy at times.
(It may not be a long drive.)
I have a medical degree and a medical license which are extremely valuable, yet the idea of running my own medical business always seemed too big and scary.
I understand how many young physicians would never consider doing something outside the system.
Saddled with hundreds of thousands of debt, nervous to be the attending physician, plus not being trained in business, the safety of the medical system seems like a no-brainer.
Fear is how the system traps its young priests.
Medical training is a fear-instillment experience.
Fear that you are not smart enough. Fear that you might hurt a patient. Fear that you will not pay your debts back.
Fear… and more fear.
Fear fuels compliance.
Fear extinguishes thinking.
The Outcome
A pipeline of smart, ambitious people chained to a system they hate, doing what they are told, and living a life they can’t afford.
This is institutionalized idiocy.
As Malcolm Muggeridge stated:
“We have been educated into imbecility.”
A Modern Example
“The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) and other major medical organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the World Health Organization — support giving transgender adolescents access to the health care they need.”
This is a quote from the American Academy of Pediatrics website.
It is a trade organization tasked with setting policy for doctors who take care of boys and girls — yet ironically they don’t know the difference between boys and girls.
Educated into imbecility.
They want to support “access to the healthcare they need”?
Like:
Cross-sex hormones
Mastectomies at 16
This is not a trade organization.
It is a coven of witches and a church of the unholy priesthood.
Is There a Way Out?
It’s one thing to curse the darkness.
But is there a way out of this mess?
What is the candle we can light to find the way out of this darkness toward better health and a better healthcare system?
Wow, you put into words the many thoughts I have had about the profession of medicine. I have checked in patients that brought a grocery bag of pill bottles. Repeats of medicine from different providers and the patient didn’t know they were ingesting the same chemical from different sources. The doctor prescribed so it must be a good thing. I am approaching being “old” and try to put on my armor before going to a provider. Most often they see age and white hair and more wrinkles: the mindset is “let’s look for fixing something that is not broken and I can make the system happy if I can prescribe a chemical. “ Never mind said chemical will cause new previously non existent problems. I have been on the receiving end of negative comments and looks from providers because I won’t be a victim of the system.
You are so right about the absolutely moronic level of care that passes for healthcare. I am now a retired nurse and there were a few insane things that did go away over the years but overall everything is just overkill and now it is because treatment is what the computer tells them what to do.
about the horrors of Johnson and Johnson. Much of it I had a general knowledge that there was a "problem" but really it is just jaw dropping horrible what this company has done.The author also is convinced the Sacklers get blamed but J and J is at least as much to blame for the opioid "crisis". Highly recommend the book.(No kickbacks for the recommendation )
Wow, you put into words the many thoughts I have had about the profession of medicine. I have checked in patients that brought a grocery bag of pill bottles. Repeats of medicine from different providers and the patient didn’t know they were ingesting the same chemical from different sources. The doctor prescribed so it must be a good thing. I am approaching being “old” and try to put on my armor before going to a provider. Most often they see age and white hair and more wrinkles: the mindset is “let’s look for fixing something that is not broken and I can make the system happy if I can prescribe a chemical. “ Never mind said chemical will cause new previously non existent problems. I have been on the receiving end of negative comments and looks from providers because I won’t be a victim of the system.
You are so right about the absolutely moronic level of care that passes for healthcare. I am now a retired nurse and there were a few insane things that did go away over the years but overall everything is just overkill and now it is because treatment is what the computer tells them what to do.
Just finished this 2025 book
https://www.amazon.com/No-More-Tears-Secrets-Johnson/dp/059322986X?tag=ustxtaddt-20
about the horrors of Johnson and Johnson. Much of it I had a general knowledge that there was a "problem" but really it is just jaw dropping horrible what this company has done.The author also is convinced the Sacklers get blamed but J and J is at least as much to blame for the opioid "crisis". Highly recommend the book.(No kickbacks for the recommendation )