“The medical religion, like every religion, has its heretics and dissenters, and respected voices coming from many different directions have contested the actuality and gravity of the epidemic…. Limitations on freedom are thus being willingly accepted, in a perverse and vicious cycle, in the name of a desire for security.”
-Giorgio Agamben
Watching the Kennedy hearings in the wake of Biden’s pardon of Antony Fauci reveals a disturbing truth: that Democrats intend to cling to the wisdom of their position during COVID and of their embrace of a medical system that rewards big companies at the expense of patient care and choice. And although Kennedy can be accurately pigeonholed into a box that cries out “lunatic”—his conspiracy theories about disease weaponization and the desire of the Deep State to use disease as means of wiping out civilizations, his nonscientific declarations based on correlation to link vaccinations to various illnesses—he is no less scientific than the Democrats and liberals who demonize him, and at least he has identified the problems of our healthcare system and scripted a path forward. We have lived in a medical religious state for 100 years, one in which pharmaceutical companies and their leashed “expert” scientists spit out self-serving deceptions behind their crisp white coats and bogus credentials, coddled by a media and a Congress that accepts ample money from Big Pharma. As long as the Democrats stick to their medical gospel and label it as scientific, the American public that counts—those not wedded to either political party—will see through their hypocrisy and turn to those, like Kennedy, who at least are willing to take on a pernicious system.
“It has been evident for quite a while that science has become our time’s religion, the thing which people believe that they believe in,” biopolitical thinker Agamben states. “[S]cience organizes and arranges its own structure through different forms and ranks. To its elaboration of a subtle and rigorous dogmatics corresponds, in praxis, a vast and intricate cultic sphere that coincides with what we call ‘technology.’” Democrats, who often seek to extricate religion from politics—something necessary for us to function as a liberal and open society—have transformed medical science into a new religion, one that disseminates fear to justify dogmatic proclamations that echo the words of drug company derived truths. In the Kennedy hearings we are witnessing one group of religious pseudo-scientists fighting with another. Except at least Kennedy and his cohorts are wise enough to understand the danger of medical fearmongering in any democratic society, as well as the bankrupt declarations of our medical experts more religiously inspired than scientifically valid, and certainly not forwarded in the interest of the public.
Who can forget the dogmatic absolutism of CNN during COVID? Well, clearly most Democrats, who continue to rely on that corporate-tinged and skewed TV network for their biased news, and who contend that Fauci and Biden and the Democratic governors who led us into a pit of religious absolutism dressed in a cloak of faux-science were right. CNN did not allow anyone to question Fauci’s false gospel, labeling many critics as mass-murderers and anti-science goons. They scared and paralyzed the world with exaggerated statistics that flew across our TV screens 24 hours a day. They brought on drug-tinged “experts” to explain that unless Americans bowed to curtailment of liberty and forced medicalization with experimental drugs, wore masks, and turned off their lives, then we would all die. To distinguish CNN’s Jake Taper from Joseph Goebbels is nearly impossible; both preached a false dogma buttressed by scientific absolutism, both demonized the “others” who they refused to even acknowledge or discuss issues with, both profited greatly by spreading a cloud of fear. But make no mistake about it: fearmongering is the greatest enemy to democracy, and while the Democrats believe they can regain power from it, in fact, it has led to Trumpism and to a reaction against all the hypocritical self-righteousness Democrats have preached.
Democrats still turn to CNN as their news source, still mask and bemoan any who dare question any part of the Fauci dogma including forced vaccination, still believe that anyone who challenges the liturgy promulgated by self-selected medical “experts” deeply tied to the drug industry should be censored. I was censored, simply for stating a fact and helping my patients live. We did have treatments for COVID, just like we have treatments for diabetes and heart disease that rely on common-sense interventions and eschew flooding our bodies with drugs and tests and procedures. I almost lost my license and was told that if I dare say one thing that challenges the Fauci dogma, then my license will be threatened again. I was in the pits of COVID, seeing COVID patients every day while these experts sat in their drug company constructed homes spewing out declarations that only got in my way. I used the most robust science to help my patients survive the virus and was largely successful although I veered far from the Fauci/CDC/Democratic path. Because none of what I did correlated to what Fauci and CNN and the Democrats wanted, they tried to take away my license. Democrats did, in the name of science and safety.
During COVID and beyond, President Biden and many Democratic governors acted in a religiously inspired dictatorial manner. Supporting Governors such as Walz (Harris’s running mate) and the still popular Galvin Newsome to censor and remove licenses from doctors who challenged the script laid out by Fauci and the CDC, Biden (and many of the Democrats now attacking Kennedy) personally endorsed massive campaigns of forced vaccination, punishment of adults and kids who dared question getting the COVID vaccine (loss of job, loss of schooling), one of the most onerous campaigns of censorship and smearing of character ever perpetrated in modern American politics, and a fallacious self-serving scientific script taken almost entirely from drug company literature. They refused to listen to anyone who sought a more liberal and scientific path, labeling them as enemies of democracy and science, even though of us who tried to save lives.
And so, as the Democrats lambaste Kennedy and continue to endorse their past polices that nearly destroyed the nation, they continue to fight for a medical system run by specialists and drug-companies. No wonder that no one with a brain in their skulls believes that they are anything but hypocritical bullies. That is why Kennedy is a better alternative than any of the Democrats who have proceeded him. Yes, he likely is a bit crazy, and his ideas verge from scientific reality, but he is willing to tackle the horror of COVID, the mess that is our healthcare system, and the need to preserve choice and liberty in a way that Democrats do not support beyond their words. The reason Kennedy looks good and dangerous to the Democrats is that the Democrats have no plan of their own, clinging to the drug-company Medical Industrial Complex that they have come to adore and respect and that pays them well. Most Republicans feel the same.
When Democrats assail Kennedy for his stance on vaccines, they resort to an equally nonscientific and dogmatic falsehood, that vaccines are a universal good that can never be studied or criticized. Even the “science” they toss at Kennedy is, by any critical examination, poor science, designed by drug companies, not randomized, not valid. Are we sure that vaccines given in mass to kids and elders don’t cause harm? No, because no one has studied it, even as the Democrats falsely claim that science has proven that they work and are harmless. Do we have to blindly accept CDC edits assuring us that masks work, that multiple vaccines in elders are safe and effective, that Paxlovid and the COVID vaccine have been well enough studied to declare them safe and effective? The CDC, as we have discussed, is largely financed by the pharmaceutical industry through the CDC Foundation, and its leadership largely derives from drug company leadership, and yet we simply should believe what they say without evidence? Many articles and studies have demonstrated the CDC’s perfidy and its allegiance to drug companies, and at least Kennedy is calling out the CDC and FDA for this and wants to reform them. But what about the Democrats? What about CNN? Why don’t they at least discuss why the CDC has been so wrong and how we can fix it rather than simply bullying Kennedy?
It's because in the medical religion that Democrats now endorse—pitting smart us against dumb them and assigning to “otherness” those who dare question any part of the CDC’s agenda—the CDC must be unassailable if it is to retain its power. It must spread fear and then demand absolute compliance. There must be an oppositional binary that pits them vs us, erasing any voices who use facts and reality to question their gospel or demonstrate medical uncertainty. Like all religions, the Democratic religion of medicine sees no nuance, accepts no heretics, and insists on absolute obeyance to the edifice that the Medical Industrial Complex it has created. When they attack Kennedy, it’s not because he’s a lunatic—and I’m not saying he’s not—but because he’s a threat. He is showing America just how sick our healthcare system is, just how beholden it is to tainted experts and bought-off politicians and TV networks, how much it is harming us by trapping us in its deceptive alure. Writes Agamben: “What is fear, into which people today seem to have fallen so deeply that they have forgotten their ethical, political, and religious beliefs?”
I have followed Anthony Fauci’s career for 30 years, and have seen the damage he has wrought to the integrity of our healthcare system, his willingness to sell out to drug companies that reward him and his cronies, his central role in assuring that all academic clinical research studies will be paid for and scripted by drug companies, his one-right-answer dogmatism that decries any who dare question his God-like wisdom. “I am science” he declared during COVID, spitting out advice and “facts” that were clearly wrong, and demonizing any who dared question them. He worked with drug companies to sell products that had questionable efficacy, endorsing cheap snake-oil solutions like masks and distancing when good data from Italy and Harvard showed that we could save most COVID victims through simple medical interventions. That he acted in a self-serving and evil manner is incontrovertible. That his very demeanor of arrogance and ignorance that he hid behind a cult of personality made him the scientific version of Trump is also clear as day. That Democrats clung to him as a savior and still do, that is more difficult to digest. But make no mistake, as long as Democrats view medical science as a cult, as long as they use it to promote fear and to extinguish science and liberty, as long as they march behind people like Fauci and his drug company allies, not only will people like Kennedy offer the only alternative to their perfidy, but also the horror of Trump will not soon dissipate.
Looking back on history, we have seen this drama play out before. Woodrow Wilson posited himself as the great Progressive President. He kept us out of war, until his own hubris and likely many corporate interests pushed him and our nation into a self-destructive war that nearly tore our democracy to shreds. As he preached a sermon of liberty and peace and goodness, he suppressed free speech, jailed and destroyed the lives of any who dared disagree with him, degraded as stupid and evil his enemies, refused to ever discuss that which he had declared absolute, and ultimately wedged a deep chasm between his own self-righteous moral absolutism and his anti-democratic actions. Like Biden, he told America that he was moral and scientific as he desecrated morality, liberty, and science. The results? Twelve years of Republican rule followed his presidency. Americans—at least those not on either political team and who think about issues rather than viewing politics as a sport—saw though his hypocrisy, as they saw through Biden’s when they elected Trump.
I remember early in COVID telling my friends and kids that the Democrats were destroying themselves by preaching liberty and science as they desecrated both. That by following Fauci they were in essence becoming more reactionary and anti-scientific than Republicans. That people would react and vote them out. My kids scoffed at me. “No one cares about COVID,” one of my sons said. “That won’t make up anyone’s mind.” And yet, it did.
We all live in political silos designed by our own choices: the friends with whom we choose to associate, the TV networks and newspapers from which we get our news, and an AI directed social medica that places us in arenas with people who agree with us. We are unwilling and often unable to digest two sides of a debate. We have become religious and binary, erasing nuance as we cling to one side or another, take the word of those who we believe we can respect, view our side as good and the other as evil, and paint the world in a faith-based absolutism that prevents any of us from having a meaningful conversation. We had a choice: Trump or Fauci, Republican or Democrat, vaccine or no vaccine. There was no and is no middle ground. Kennedy sits on one side, his Democratic assailants on the other.
But I was lucky enough to be exposed to what most liberals and Democrats were not, and despite the assurances spoken by my kids and friends—based on the information they garnered within their silos—I was able to take a journey in the other silo. That’s because when I wrote about COVID, my observations and facts and ideas sat squarely in the anti-Fauci camp. When I attempted to peddle my books on social media and on radio media, only the “others” who opposed Fauci—the Kennedy crowd as well as many other liberals like me who too joined the large and censored band of doctors and scientists willing to take on Fauci and Biden for their lies and actions—would allow me to speak. And so, in a weird turn of events, I spoke on conservative media, even though my message was squarely liberal and scientific. It’s just that the liberal media now was reactionary and dogmatic, and they wouldn’t invite me to speak. In fact, the one liberal talk show that invited me on ended up not airing my interview because, as the producer said, my ideas were dangerous. What were my ideas? I just stated a fact, that despite masking all my older patients were still getting COVID, so we clearly needed another approach. Dangerous? Yes, dangerous, enough so the producer reported me to my State medical board, and they threatened to take away my license, even though I was working so hard to understand the science of COVID and to save my patients, even though my ideas were actually liberal and fully supported by science. When medical science becomes religious, when any challenges to the status quo threaten the biopolitical power amassed by those who speak in a singular dogmatic one, then yes, my factual observations, my scientific queries, my ability to save patients by NOT following the path of the CDC and Fauci, all of that became a threat. And for that, the Democrats tried to take me down.
So, yea, for over a year I lived on conservative media. And you know what I saw? That people, including many moderates, were not following the script that my family and friends believed to be true. They actually saw the hypocrisy of the Democrats, who at once declared themselves to be liberty loving scientists and simultaneously took away our liberties and violated every precept of science including that of free and open discourse. They were not blind to this. Democrats may think that much of the public thinks they did a great job during COVID by shutting down society, mandating masks and medicines, and engaging in a massive censorship and smear campaign. But the only people who are crucial to American politics—the unaffiliated center—saw things like I did. They saw in the Democrats hypocrisy and self-righteous arrogance. They saw how the Democrats were allied with the pharmaceutical companies and would do nothing that dared threaten the ability of such companies to force their drugs into our bodies. They saw how Democrats spoke in the language of absolutism and refused to even engage with anyone who sought to express alternative opinions or use facts that discredited the Fauci scripture. Moderates weren’t blind to Democratic hypocrisy. They were disgusted by it. By turning their backs on science and liberty, by hiding behind a cape of overt hypocrisy, Democrats made Trump possible, just like the Wilsonian Democrats of 1918 and their own arrogance enabled 12 years of reactionary Republican rule. Do you know what surveys of Trump voters stated as their main reason for their choice? It was to preserve democracy. Yes, the independent voters are not as blind as the silo-living arrogant Democrats believe. They saw the danger of Democratic rule, and they voted accordingly.
But the Democrats don’t see it that way. They continue to attack Trump supporters as ignorant of science and enemies of democracy. Well guess what, many are just the opposite. They view the liberals as intellectual bullies who have no real science to back their claims. That’s what I saw from a long visit to the other silo. And they are right; just listen to the Democrats’ moral absolutism about vaccines, which when given in large numbers have no good evidence behind them. You wouldn’t know that listening to Democrats declaring, without a shred of evidence, that they are all good, no questions asked, anyone who disagrees is a dolt and a danger to this country. How is that not religion and arrogant stupidity? Which is exactly what moderates are saying about Democrats.
Until the Democrats are willing to acknowledge their own complicity in turning the country toward Trump, unless they can look themselves in the eyes and assail our past President for turning against science and liberty and pardoning the man who likely caused COVID and certainly destroyed our nation during COVID, until they step off their self-righteous perch of moral and intellectual bullying as they spit out “facts” handed to them by Big Pharma, then the same thing will happen. Trump and Kennedy look damned good compared to those who still wear masks and insist on restrictions to liberty, who view every new cold as a viral catastrophe that demands our obedience to the medical priests at the CDC, who have used disease to not only create a medical religion but also to buttress political control and moneyed interests. Writes Agamben: “We live in a society that has sacrificed freedom ‘for security reasons,’ and has hence condemned itself to living in a perpetual state of fear and insecurity.” Just to listen to Warren and Sanders shred Kennedy for trying to take on Big Pharma. All those two have ever done is to advocate expanding our bloated, drug-company controlled, specialty dominated health care system to even more people before we even try to fix it. They are good at attacking and pretending they’re smart and scientific, but they offer no viable solutions themselves. Likely because they are all so embedded in pharmaceutical largesse. And many Americans who are thinking people and who voted for Trump because they despise Democratic arrogance, they see through Sanders and Warren and the others. They know.
How can we Democrats reclaim the perch of scientific integrity, promote true liberty, and gravitate out of our silos and into the bins of nuance and discourse? How can we save our healthcare system without turning it into a religious binary pitting us against them? How can we stop clinging to our own mistakes and misperceptions, stop merely attacking the likes of Kennedy as a nut-job, and instead craft a path forward bereft of fearmongering and not motivated by an allegiance with the medical industrial complex? Actually, it’s quite easy to do that. But we must look ourselves in the mirror, accept our sins during COVID, acknowledge that in fact the healthcare system needs to be fixed and that we are the ones most qualified to fix it, and offer Americans something more palatable than what Kennedy is peddling. Here are some ideas that it’s time for Democrats to endorse:
• Extract all pharmaceutical financing and leadership from federal health agencies. The CDC, FDA, and NIH must be fully independent. Not only should their leadership be purged of former drug-company executives, but even those who have large financial interests in drug companies—including stocks—must be prevented from working there. This conflict of interest currently does not allow these agencies to work for the public good; they are the instruments of Big Pharma.
• Medical research must be pushed back into the public realm. Anthony Fauci was very instrumental in tying academic research to the drug industry; from his perch at NIH he orchestrated an alliance between Big Pharma and academia that he ran like a dictator. If COVID was his primary sin, his entire career has been one of destruction to medical and scientific integrity. Its time academics receive their money from public funds to conduct research on drugs and interventions, and any studies conducted with Big Pharma money must have a disclaimer at the start explicating the funding source. Similarly, all media outlets that discuss medical studies must too have a disclaimer before such discussions acknowledging how much they receive from drug companies. If we can’t legally exorcise Big Pharma from medical investigation, we can at least warn the public and put both academia and the media on notice that we see what they’re doing.
• Currently 4% of Medicare funding to doctors flows to primary care. That must change if our system can function in the interest of patients, and primary care can no longer be hampered by obedience to quality measurements scripted by drug company studies. Medicare reimbursement reform can pull money away from specialists and procedures and place it in the hands of vibrant primary care, allowing every primary care doctor to be as effective as concierge doctors. The goal should be 50% of funding to primary care. Similarly, Medicare controls which residencies get funded, and until the primary care glut is reversed virtually all such funding should buttress primary care residencies.
• A national medical information center—created in the image of Cochrane, which takes no Big Pharma money or Big Pharma evidence to arrive at conclusions about risks and benefits of medical interventions based on robust and unbiased science—must be created that is nuanced, accurate, and presents its data using absolute numbers (how many people out of 1000 are helped or harmed) that are understandable by doctors and patients. This is the data that should comprise conversations between doctors and patients, rather than the now skewed and dogmatic “take the drug or die” rhetoric that is driving patients into depression and an early grave even as it feeds doctors and companies huge profits.
• Medical choice is key. The Democrats claim to be pro-choice but were anything but during COVID and still speak in terms of absolutes and mandates. We used to be the party of science and choice. Let’s return to that position. We can try to sway the argument using good data, but unless there is a proven public health necessity of an intervention (and none existed during COVID), patients deserve to make their own health decisions.
• Insurance, including Medicare, should pay more for programs that keep people healthy—diet, exercise, mental health—than for expensive interventions that make people feel sicker. Currently patients have a much easier time getting weight-loss drugs and expensive diabetes treatments than in getting good nutrition and exercise counseling.
Attacking Kennedy while clinging to its own disastrous path of medical religiously—to its own horrific policies during COVID, its own unwillingness to question medical dogma, its own worship of the current system that to them is like the holy scripture—will not win over any converts. Despite his flaws, Kennedy wants to take on the medical industrial complex. He pushes for medical choice, for scientific integrity, for exorcising the pharmaceutical industry from federal agencies and from scientific discovery. While I am no fan of Trump and view him as a dangerous demigod, I at least know that under his leadership I won’t be forced to be medicated against my will, I won’t be censored, I have a shot to recreate our healthcare system in a rational and scientific way. And I know too that the Democrats will push us back into the den of medical-religious absolutism if they return to power. I want to be proud of the Democrats and work with them. To do that, it's time they become the party they're supposed to be.
So, for Democrats like me who relish my party’s former values, there is only one path forward. Be more scientific than Kennedy. Script a plan that acknowledges our past sins and sees through the drug-company ownership of American healthcare. Only then will Democrats regain the moral and scientific foothold. Only then will moderate Americans who Democrats have long dismissed be convinced to return to the party. Let’s look forward and be better than Kennedy. Because our feckless attacks on his character don’t do anything to show that we’re actually the adults in the room. We’re just whining children who call people names and don’t have anything useful to say. We’re the bullies. And that only makes Trump look presidential. Until we understand that dynamic, we’re doomed to a long stretch of Trumpism.
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