The Medical-pharmaceutical Killing Machine

In the Greek Trojan War saga, the god Apollo ensured that Cassandra’s prophecies would never be believed, with disastrous consequences. As recounted in the book, modern medicine, too, has produced its fair share of “medical Cassandras”—doctors and writers who have tried to warn the public about medicine’s life-threatening underbelly, generally to little avail. A chapter dedicated to nine of these medical skeptics, beginning with Ivan Illich and his coining of the term “iatrogenesis” to describe adverse outcomes caused by doctors, weaves a powerful portrait of harms regularly denied and ignored, with those making the claims typically marginalized and “canceled.” The book shows that there is no shortage of tools in the killing machine arsenal. One chapter highlights the mRNA vaccine technology inaugurated with COVID, illustrating how this new mechanism for iatrogenesis is inflicting novel forms of toxicity, not all of which are yet understood. Another chapter about assisted suicide and euthanasia describes the chilling global proliferation of policies and propaganda promoting those practices for vulnerable populations that include babies, children, people diagnosed with autism, and the mentally ill. The book also describes factors that make it possible for the killing machine to continue operating with impunity, including the ascendance of an “evidence-based medicine” juggernaut, medical gaslighting, and a ballooning global enforcement infrastructure. Nor does it shy away from confronting what some now characterize as “iatrogenocide”; a chapter asking “Why Do They Do It?” considers money, prestige, and control as three possible answers. Ultimately, it is only by acknowledging the long-standing reality of an all-too-effective medical-pharmaceutical killing machine that people can learn to dodge the threats and work toward building a different model that prioritizes life and genuine health.