The Great Conspiracy
I am not a believer in conspiracy theories. But the process commonly called the great Rockefeller–Carnegie conspiracy is worth a little thought. It fundamentally changed medical education, patient care and the possibilities for healing. Its main effect was that healthcare became a business — and a huge one.
Today, medical education worldwide follows very similar principles. An American, a Hungarian or a Nigerian doctor is expected to know the same things. The same scientific principles must be followed from one end of the world to the other. Uniform protocols define how a given disease should be investigated and which tests should be performed. Treatments have likewise been standardized worldwide. Diseases — whatever causes them — are in the vast majority of cases treated with chemical substances, i.e. medications.
However, a question may arise: billions of people take medications every day according to these standardized protocols, yet the number of registered patients does not decrease; it steadily increases. As if the medications did not cure but kept people sick.
When I finished medical school in 1991 and began working as a ward doctor, Hungary had about one and a half million recorded patients with high blood pressure. According to the latest Central Statistical Office data, that number has tripled to 4.3 million. Meanwhile, many supposedly effective antihypertensive drugs have been introduced. Thirty years ago, blood pressure could often be normalized with a single pill; today 3–4 drugs in combination are prescribed as a rule.
But why did it turn out this way?
The process started in America, is tied to the pharmaceutical business, and globally pushed out every other healing method.
The Great Conspiracy
John D. Rockefeller was the richest man of his time, and he wanted to extend his oil monopoly into healthcare and the distribution of medicines. He knew exactly how drugs could be patented and also that natural active substances cannot be patented. Therefore he needed to eliminate competition — in other words, to make all natural remedies impossible to use, such as homeopathy, herbal therapies, manual therapies, electrotherapy, magnetic field treatments and all similar methods.
He had already befriended Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate. To achieve the above, they devised a large-scale plan that would forever change the direction of medical education and care in the United States (and gradually around the world). At Rockefeller's suggestion Carnegie established the Carnegie Foundation.
Enter Abraham Flexner, an educator and school owner who drew attention with a critique of the American education system. The Carnegie Foundation commissioned him to conduct a survey. He visited all (155) American and Canadian medical schools of the time and reported his findings in the Flexner Report.
He found that individual medical schools applied different approaches, had different durations of training, and held differing views on the roles and duties of doctor and patient, the necessary examinations and, of course, treatments. He pointed out that the knowledge of physicians graduating from different schools varied significantly. In some places anatomy was not taught, so doctors lacked even basic knowledge. Elsewhere manual therapies were emphasized, etc. The doctors' knowledge and skills showed wide disparities, which naturally resulted in diverse therapeutic practices.
He recommended standardizing the requirements for medical education: identical training durations, subjects and curricula. He demanded that only standardized, industrially produced preparations be taught and excluded any preparation whose production or active ingredient content was uncertain (e.g., medicinal herbs, healing teas). He also grouped all natural remedies and folk therapies under the category of things not to be taught — essentially labeling them as “quack” methods. Thus teaching about nutrition disappeared entirely from the curriculum.
Protocols at every level
Rockefeller, seeking to monopolize drug supply and Carnegie latched onto Flexner's work. Rockefeller donated a colossal sum (hundreds of millions of dollars in today's terms) to the foundation to implement its recommendations.
Flexner proved to be an excellent battering ram. He himself was an ardent proponent of the theory that diseases have biochemical origins and rejected everything that deviated from it. His argument was strengthened by the fact that both he and his son received income from the Carnegie Foundation.
Through the Rockefeller–Carnegie plan, medical education was soon based on Flexner's principles. So successful was this that in 1910 Congress codified them into law. Schools that failed to adopt and implement the standards recommended by the Flexner Report were soon closed. Holistic healing, traditional manual therapies, herbal extracts, botanical active ingredients, and all forms of electrotherapy were “banned.” Several physicians who used these methods were jailed for quackery.
Throughout medical history many forms of natural healing schools existed. In the East, traditional Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese or Hindu (Ayurveda) medicine are still accepted today. Rockefeller and Carnegie replaced all of these with a single path — their own. Because they successfully captured the education system, there was no obstacle to promoting their approach as the only possible way of healing: the administration of patentable pharmaceutical preparations.
To ensure that medical schools fully moved in this direction, the Carnegie Foundation began to support institutions financially. As a condition, they required that the foundation be allowed to nominate one member to the school's board of trustees. If a school wanted money, it agreed. Through that board member it became assured that only drug-oriented curricula would be taught.
Later effects
The standardization of medical education was only the first phase. The second phase came decades later, in the second half of the twentieth century.
Standardization was extended to disease-management protocols. The holistic, patient-tailored approach to examination and treatment was “retired.” The new method was uniform protocols. When investigating the same cluster of symptoms, every patient must undergo the same set of tests and receive protocol-driven treatment.
What is the effect today?
Today the situation has deteriorated to the point that doctors are hardly allowed to think! They must carry out a diagnostic protocol and then a treatment protocol. A protocol determines which tests must be performed when a certain disease is suspected — even when the diagnosis is crystal clear. Protocols may also list additional optional or recommended tests for special cases.
Suppose you have a fever, you cough and your back stabs with every breath. At the first moment the doctor suspects pneumonia. In my early years we took a stethoscope and listened to the patient's breath sounds. Pneumonia can be diagnosed with that simple exam.
Nowadays the doctor sends you to the lab, for an ECG (to rule out a heart attack), for a chest X-ray (to confirm or exclude pneumonia), and maybe even for an abdominal ultrasound (to rule out intra-abdominal inflammation, bleeding, etc.). If you’re lucky, that’s all, and you receive treatment. If not, a few extra tests like a CT scan may also “drop in.”
The many tests are not (only) done in your interest!
Legally, the doctor wants to “cover his back,” saying he ordered everything the protocol prescribed. Just in case you sue for negligence. The more uncertain the case, the more tests he surrounds himself with.
The institution gets paid for the tests — even if the test was unnecessary, the result negative, and a simple auscultation would have sufficed instead of an X‑ray/ultrasound/CT.
After all the expensive (and partly unnecessary) tests confirm you have pneumonia, the treatment protocol kicks in.
You get antibiotics, an expectorant, a fever reducer, a cough suppressant — and multiple drugs for sure. Because it is in the protocol.
Health as big business
The standardized medical education initiated by Flexner, and financially midwifed by Rockefeller and Carnegie, and the protocol mindset turned healthcare into one of the world's largest businesses. The proliferation of mandatory tests, the treatments and drug combinations prescribed for diagnoses steadily increase expenditures. Neither governments nor individuals can keep up with the explosively rising costs.
They no longer focus on you and your healing but follow protocols. It is in the interest of the healthcare industry that more and more expensive tests and procedures are performed on you, that you take as many drugs as possible and ideally for the longest possible time.
Yet there are methods by which most diseases can be prevented or corrected. It would be in your interest to know about and use these methods.
For the players of the healthcare industry, however, you getting well is not good business! It is very bad business.
