by A Midwestern Doctor
One of the classic ways an abuser controls their prey is to manipulate the environment so that the abused individual begins doubting their own observations regardless of what is occurring in front of them.
In the 1944 movie, Gaslight, this was accomplished by the villainous husband (played by Charles Boyer) adjusting the intake to gas-powered lights (causing them to flicker) and simultaneously denying that any change was occurring to his mentally abused wife (played by Ingrid Bergman). The term gaslighting originated from this classic movie.
In modern times, this is accomplished by having medical providers all echo the same message that a patient’s injury has nothing to do with the pharmaceutical (or other medical procedure in question). Most commonly, it instead is argued that the symptoms they are experiencing are due to pre-existing psychiatric issues the patient has (e.g., anxiety), which are treated with medications that often create additional issues.
Before we go any further, I want to emphasize just how miserable this is to go through as an injured patient. Imagine what it would be like if (due to the medical injury) the world you had previously known collapsed around you and every single person you trusted (including your friends and family who defer to the judgment of “experts”) told you that it was all in your head and you just needed psychiatric help. It’s a perfect recipe for going insane
For example, let’s consider the recent experiences of Maddie De Garay in the pivotal Pfizer trial that was used to argue for the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines in the adolescent population:
Pfizer's trial only vaccinated 1,131 children so a single serious injury would have made the vaccine too dangerous.
Maddie's story shows just how far medicine will go to betray and gaslight patients who threaten its narrative. We may never know who else was swept under the rug. pic.twitter.com/4ONwty5Hu6
— Pierre Kory, MD MPA (@PierreKory) January 11, 2023
Although Maddie’s experience was atrocious, it was sadly not unique and many others had similar experiences in the COVID-19 vaccine trials. Similarly, I have heard many similar stories from other people who were harmed by the medical system.
Pharmaceuticals are inherently toxic. For example, most medications work by inhibiting enzymes (which are essential for life) and because of how interconnected the body is, this inhibition will inevitably create a variety of unintended consequences.
Similarly, most vaccinations function by making the immune system (often with the aid of toxins that help provoke that response) have an unnatural and narrowly focused response to a target substance.
The creation of this immune response unfortunately also often creates dysregulation within the immune system as this provocation can cause the immune system to be diverted away from attacking things it is supposed to address (e.g., microbes or cancers), while simultaneously triggering it to attack the body’s own tissue.
Since toxicity has always been inherent to the practice of allopathic (Western) medicine, the profession has gradually come up with a playbook to prevent its inevitable medical injuries from sabotaging business. This has essentially been accomplished by doing the following:
•Telling patients the adverse events they experienced either are not occurring or are unrelated to the toxic pharmaceutical.
•Developing an elaborate scientific apparatus that provides evidence refuting the link between these injuries and pharmaceuticals on the market, while concurrently training the population to defer to the scientific consensus rather than trusting their own observations.
•Making competing forms of medicine that lack a similar degree of inherent toxicity illegal, therefore making the only choice within the existing medical monopoly be a toxic form of medicine (similarly consider how allopathic medicine is always considered to be the best form of medicine every other approach must find a way to measure up to).
This is also why we have the doctrine in allopathic medicine that every treatment has risks and the treatments are chosen because its benefits outweigh its risk (as opposed to just exploring systems of medicine without those risks).
All of this in turn results in the tragic phenomenon known as medical gaslighting, or as some like to put it “allopathic medicine gaslights you to death.”
I have found numerous documented examples of medical gaslighting stretching back to the late 1700s and in each case, typically only a minority of the medical profession was willing to acknowledge the injuries that are occurring could be linked to their pharmaceuticals.
At the same time, it’s rare for me to meet doctors I consider to be evil; on the contrary, most tend to be remarkably intelligent and well-intentioned individuals who genuinely want the best for their patients.
At this point, I believe medical gaslighting is a natural consequence of our training. Since the therapeutic toolbox of allopathic medicine is quite limited, most doctors cannot practice their craft without administering unsafe pharmaceuticals to their patients, and thus for the sake of their self-identity, they must fully believe in their pharmaceuticals (this subject was discussed further here).
It is an enormous personal investment to become a physician and it is extremely difficult for someone who goes through that to acknowledge that much of what they learned is highly questionable.
Similarly, no well-intentioned doctor wants to harm a patient, and since they often do, the reflexive psychological coping mechanism is to deny the possibility of each injury that occurs (discussed further here).
This first dawned on me at the start of my medical education when one of our professors inserted a tirade against anti-vaxxers into his lecture and concluded his argument with “… and just think about it. Do you really think pediatricians would vaccinate their patients if they thought vaccines could harm them?”
Although widespread denial of the harms that Allopathy causes likely explains some of my profession’s predilection for gaslighting, I do not believe it is the primary issue. Instead, I believe it is a result of the training doctors receive making them unable to recognize medical injuries.
Because the human body is immensely complex, humans in every era face significant difficulties in being present to everything that is occurring within a human being. Most medical systems address this challenge by creating diagnostic models which simplify the immense complexity present in each patient down to the key things that must be focused upon to positively affect patient wellbeing.
The downside to this approach is that there will always be things in each patient that lie outside the diagnostic model being used to evaluate them. When this happens, those things understandably will not be recognized (unless the medical practitioner innately can perceive a complexity that transcends the limitations of their diagnostic model, something the majority of the population is not capable of).
In the case of allopathic medicine, we are taught a diagnostic model that is excellent for identifying many things (particularly indications for prescribing pharmaceutical drugs). However, our model also fails to notice many other things which are critical for health and wellness.
For example, much of medicine is taught by having a series of lists to memorize that are plugged into linear algorithms. Because this requires breaking many complex subjects into a binary “yes” or “no,” many important things that lie between these two polarities get lost in translation.
This is the easiest to illustrate with the nervous system (but the issue is by no means exclusive to it). When evaluating it, one of the things we are all taught to do is quickly check if the twelve cranial nerves are functioning normally (e.g., can you swallow, make a smile, or follow a finger with your eyes).
Frequently, although the cranial nerves are “generally normal” they will have some difficulty firing (e.g., at some point in the motion arc as the eyes travel side to side, they will jump instead of moving smoothly). These “minor” deficits often have a significant impact on a patient’s quality of life, but in most cases (except when evaluated by experienced neurologists or neurosurgeons), the function of those nerves will be noted as normal and ignored.
One of the most common signs of a vaccine injury is a subtle cranial nerve dysfunction (discussed further here). While these are very easy to recognize if you are trained to look for them, that training does not exist within allopathic medicine, and as a result, most physicians simply cannot see the large number of vaccine injuries occurring around them.
The cranial nerve example unfortunately is only one of many areas where a complex presentation of symptoms is simplied into a box that excludes an inconvenient diagnosis from ever being recognized. Another common way this boxing occurs is when an authoritative diagnosis is used to deny a complex phenomenon without actually stating what it is.
For example, many disorders in medicine are simply symptoms written in Latin. Dermatitis quite literally translates to “inflammation of the skin,” and in most cases is simply treated with a cream that suppresses that inflammation.
Conversely, in many other medical systems, inflammation of the skin is recognized as an important sign of something being awry in the body, and the exact character and location of the inflammation are focused upon to identify and address the root cause of that inflammation (to some extent this is recognized in dermatology, but even there it occurs nowhere to the degree that it should).
Similarly, “migraine” headaches, although not exactly Latin, falls into a similar boat. While many things can cause migraines (e.g., they are very frequent after COVID-19 vaccine injuries) their cause is rarely focused upon, and instead, the standard medical approach is to throw pharmaceuticals at them until something improves the headache (and sadly in many cases nothing does).
In my medical practice, I frequently treat migraines. In these patients, I find over and over that they have seen numerous doctors (including highly regarded specialists). Despite this, it is very rare anyone they saw was able to recognize the diagnostic signs or aspects of their history that point to the root actual cause of their headaches, and thus, not surprising that they will simply be prescribed more and more medications in the hope one will work.Iatrogenesis is the term for any type of illness or medical complication resulting from a bad reaction to medical care (e.g., a complication from a surgery or a pharmaceutical). A common pattern I’ve observed for decades is everyone denying a particular iatrogenic complication exists (e.g., “there is no evidence”), and then once overwhelming evidence exists that it does, it will be acknowledged.
I guess it gets even worse when ideology becomes an overriding consideration.