Why Doctors Despise Health Reform

“In a joint Instagram, infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS, and nutrition and public health educator Jessica Knurick, PhD, RDN, pointed to two children dying of vaccine-preventable diseases and CDC experts being pushed aside on decision-making about vaccines as additional examples of Kennedy's inability to lead the agency.”

-Kristina Fiore, Medpage Today

Medpage Today, one of many sites designed to educate doctors, has come down hard on Kennedy.  “Calls for RFK Jr. to Resign Grow Louder—More doctors are taking to social media to call for Kennedy's ouster,” read a recent headline.  I read the article after skipping over endless drug company ads such as the one in the picture above.  This most recent barrage only cites internet doctors, and a very narrow slice of them.  The ones who hate Kennedy.  Quite a few internet docs and healthcare reformers don’t make it on the page of drug-company sponsored sites like Medpage Today.  And therein lies the conundrum of what doctors hear about medical reality, and what patients hear from doctors.  All of it is tainted in a way to preserve a dysfunctional and industry-centric medical system that costs a lot and provides horrific care but which is dangerously profitable for the few “Experts” cited who oppose Kennedy either speak about his antipathy to vaccinations—which has led to countless deaths, according to these pundits—or his reshuffling of esteemed organizations like the NIH and CDC.  Let’s tackle both of these positions.  Political posturing and a powerful drive toward self-preservation and religious zeal characterizes the meat of the assaults.

Jake Tapper is exemplary of a high-profile non-physician who seeks to desecrate anyone opposed to our current system. He is the CNN correspondent who, during COVID, refused to speak with anyone who did not fully agree with his pal Anthony Fauci, relying instead on an army of academic doctors who take copious funds from drug companies to maintain their pretense of being real researchers; most merely maintain their credentials by conducting studies designed and financed by their drug company sponsors.  Tapper’s repudiation of science and discourse in the name of a faux science that he defined as “Listen to Fauci or you are a dangerous misinformer” (I paraphrase!), his fearmongering and demonization of anyone who truly sought to understand the virus and the treatment of the virus so we did not have the highest death rate in the world (Which we did, thanks to people like Tapper and Fauci), is predicated on something that he, his academic pals, and Fauci all have in common: they take big bucks from big pharma.  Upon Kennedy’s nomination Tapper said: “I hope you like measles,” insinuating (and stating many times on his show, as do many journalists equally fearful of what Kennedy may do to their advertising stream) that we are now in a measles outbreak thanks to Kennedy’s anti-vax position.  Better mandate vaccines, mask up, close society, and use emergency powers to oust these villains who dare harm us all than listen to Kennedy!  Of course, given Tapper’s and CNN’s track record during COVID, when they stoked the flames of fear and the suppression of scientific discourse on a road toward high ratings and increased advertising, you’d think he wanted another nice outbreak!  But he knows measles won’t be anything serious enough to improve ratings, and it’s a perfect platform to attack those who threaten the drug-company fueled system that Tapper and those who support him seek to preserve.

Measles is a blip at best.  So far, about 2000 people have come down with it, all unvaccinated, few dying, none spreading it to the vaccinated.  That’s .000625% of the population!  And such infectious blips happen from time to time; never has measles spread to the general population.  More people die of lightning, crossing the street, swimming; perhaps we should ban those very dangerous activities too and blame Kennedy for them.  Instead of focusing on the true determinants of health, Tapper and many of his cronies—including those typically quoted in the very restrictive drug-company sponsored “educational” sites as well as most drug-company sponsored medical journals and conferences and talks—twist truth in the service of Big Pharma, scaring people into doing something and focusing on issues clearly more a distraction than of substance.  Why?

Currently the media takes $22 Billion annually from Big Pharma, making it one of the leading sources of revenue for places like CNN, which takes a lion’s share.  (Only “Big Food” gives more advertising revenue in its effort to convince Americans to eat poorly, something equally beneficial to a medical system that prospers when people are scared and sick.)  Pfizer is one of the biggest sponsors of CNN.  Tapper himself takes money directly from Pfizer.  No wonder CNN was hell bent on demonizing anyone who sought to responsibly give the COVID vaccine rather than mandate it for everyone including kids.  The vaccine was (and is) largely untested and in any case would not help young people, whose death from COVID in 2020 was 300 total (compared to flu death of 3,000 a few years ago which Tapper failed to mention; no generous CNN sponsors make the very cheap flu vaccine) and who were shown in multiple studies not to increase COVID surges in adults (facts too that Tapper and his big-Pharma allies failed to mention).  Tapper’s and CNN’s “truth” corresponds to its own financial and political agenda, and they can twist that truth as best serves their interests.  This is not unique to CNN; Gardiner Harris in No More Tears talks about how Fox pulled a story warning about a dangerous Johnson and Johnson product when the company threatened to pull advertising revenue.  Drug companies consider paying compliant media drones one of their best investments.

We know, as noted in a recent blog, that studies actually show no benefit from the COVID vaccine, especially for the young; COVID deaths increased after the vaccine primarily in areas of the world with the highest vaccine penetration.  It also has massacred young people while providing no benefit; heart disease, cancer, auto-immune diseases all increased dramatically with this vaccine.  But that didn’t stop Tapper and so many other pundits and doctors for decrying any attempt to make the vaccine voluntary; they saluted Biden’s executive orders that deprived universities of federal funding if they did not mandate this vaccine, while kicking people out of Federal jobs and the military if they dared question this gift to Pharma.  Kennedy wants a conversation, he asks for more study, he seeks to move beyond the media fixation on measles and explore ideas that would actually help our young.  Doctors and others who benefit from Big-Pharma largesse (as well as those who get all their information from drug-company headlines misinterpreted as scientific fact) seek to frame the narrative as one between science and misinformation.  To them science and pro-choice mean: do what we say because we say it.  The misinformation label is placed on those who seek discourse and studies.  Tapper and CNN have mastered Orwellian dialect as they convince their audience that they are liberal and scientific.  Doctors readily comply.  One just yesterday, who works at Hopkins, told me that we will all likely die of measles and that Kennedy plans to ban all vaccines, denying the need to study them since by definition all vaccines are safe and effective.  He also denied that Hopkins takes copious funds from the Pharmaceutical Industry for “research” done by their doctors.  This robotic, accusatory, naïve thinking—the very antithesis of the critical thinking people like Osler felt was necessary for any effective doctor—is just what the drug companies and Tapper seek to exploit.  Doctors are indeed the greatest allies of Big Pharma, and under their delusionary haze of being scientific, they assail everyone who seeks true scientific scrutiny of the medical industrial complex.

Thus do they demonize Kennedy for creating the fictive measles epidemic because it plays into Kennedy’s anti-vax reputation and thus is an effective means of discrediting him and all those who seek healthcare reform.  The fact that Kennedy’s report barely mentions vaccines, and when it does it is not anti-vax but rather leans toward pro-choice and more research, escapes the lens of Tapper and most doctors and Medpage Today; they seek to frame the debate as one between a dangerous man who hates science and those who adhere to science.  Science to them is the status quo, the dogma proclaimed by Big Pharma and its academic doctor handlers, the fear-mongering and excessive medicalization of our nation in the name of profit and ratings.  Any who question this lucrative business will be crucified as an anti-science nutjob.

The other big jab thrust at Kennedy and others who seek to reform our healthcare system is his attempt to restructure the CDC.  A lot of very liberal students at University of Maryland attacked me for discrediting Fauci’s COVID policies and Biden’s vaccine mandates, telling me that Pfizer and the CDC should not be questioned.  They even sent me articles from CNN.com as their only source, dismissing the scientific articles I sent them, as well as my intensive experience as a geriatric doctor taking care of hundreds of COVID patients (as these students hid behind their masks and mocked anyone refusing to follow the CNN script).  I told them that in my day, liberals like me questioned authority and believed in a pro-choice motto of “our bodies, our choice,” while they relied on industry diatribes and tainted media coverage to deprive people of choice and discredit anyone who dared want to have a conversation.  They rolled their eyes. Kids today!

Here's the facts about the CDC which we break down (with many references) in our book A Return to Healing.  The CDC, like the FDA, is a bastion of drug company influence.  Gardiner Harris and others have shown how the FDA is almost entirely financed and run by Big Pharma and typically bows to Big Pharma needs, willing to hurt millions of Americans rather than assail the perfidy of our pharmaceutical industry. A new study by Brownlee and Lenzer does the same.  Well, the CDC is right with them on that score, as so many journalists have shown.  They are funded by Big Pharma through their CDC-foundation, and most of their leadership are either former Pharma executives or become executives soon after leaving the agency.  Studies show that their policies toward vaccines and anti-viral treatment are geared toward increasing drug sales, and when data is given to them that contradicts their pro-Pharma position, they bury that data.  This is true of their embrace of Hepatitis C screening, of Prevnar (the second pneumonia shot), of Tamiflu, of Paxlovid, among others.  And their nonscientific and entirely fabricated views about distancing, school closing, masks, COVID vaccine mandates became the law of the land; those of us who dared push back came close to losing our medical licenses, even though none of their unnuanced declarations is based on evidence, and all of it is paid for by Big Pharma money and scripted by Big Pharma leadership.

So, yes, Kennedy and others seek to dismantle the CDC, to remove drug company money and leaders from it, and this has sparked the ire of MedPage Today, CNN, and so many others who seek to push back against any hint of reform.  We don’t have a CDC; we have an agency that has been coopted by Big Pharma.  They and Fauci—with the help of academia and the media—led us to the worst outcome in the world during COVID, and care less about the health of kids or elders then about selling drugs.  That may sound harsh and cynical, but facts are facts.  Those who attack Kennedy for wanting to dismantle the CDC are those most invested in our current profit-generating healthcare system.  God Forbid we had a CDC that told us the truth!  That would be a financial disaster.

Recent critiques of Kennedy’s report allege that some references in it seem to be fabricated or at the very least improperly cited.  Yes, that is a problem, but not one lost to academic medicine, whose own drug-company financed and designed studies are the very epitome of manicured deception.  They pick and choose every ingredient of their design to assure an acceptable outcome, and when that doesn’t happen, they don’t print the study.  MedPage Today and CNN similarly mangle truth in their effort to steer the country toward a medicalized nirvana; their fact checkers rely on drug company data to tear down any who dare oppose the prevailing medical dogma, and they conveniently erase any doctors or scientists who accept other narratives.  So yes, we must hold Kennedy accountable, but we must hold Big Pharma, the media, CDC, FDA, academic medicine, medical journals, doctors, and every other player in the healthcare infrastructure responsible for lying to and deceiving the public into consuming an orgy of medical care that has cost this country tens and millions of lives and a lot of unnecessary suffering.  Gardiner Harris, a New York Times journalist, holds himself responsible for blindly believing everything that academic doctors tied to Big Pharma told him, and he is not alone.  Perhaps he did so innocently, but many like Tapper and the writers for MedPage Today do so with clear intent: they must keep their sponsors happy!

This is why doctors and those who speak for doctors so vehemently oppose anyone, like Kennedy, who challenges a status quo that may be lethal and damaging to humans, but is very profitable to them.  Like I said, sickness generates money in the medical realm, and we have been inventing sickness in droves thanks to the compliance of those who most profit from it.  Most doctors in my opinion are more misinformed than malicious; studies show that 90% of doctors don’t truly understand the risks and benefits of interventions they insist are necessary, and most merely cite drug company dogma when they discuss it, like the doc from Hopkins.  That’s how they’re trained: best to be compliant; compliant doctors earn more, are less likely to be sued, won’t lose their licenses, and usually are labeled as thorough doctors by their patients who believe that more is better: more tests, more drugs, more procedures, more of everything!  Since insurance is paying, why not do it all!  But we all pay the price for our medical system’s compliance.  Unnecessary medical care constitutes the largest financial challenge to our nation’s budget and has led us to have the lowest life span of most industrial nations and the most chronic disease and illness of virtually any nation in the world.  We spend more, we generate profit for the players who bow to Big Pharma, and we’re sicker and poorer as a result.  But that’s the formula for success scripted by those who profit from our own suffering.  Best to talk about measles, poor references in a study, and the great CDC rather than acknowledge that we have a healthcare system that is on life support.  We may be getting sicker, but the players in our medical game are smiling all the way to the bank!