john d. rockefeller

in 1900, john d. rockefeller controlled roughly 90% of all oil refineries in the united states. by some estimates, he was the richest private individual who ever lived.

he had a problem. scientists were discovering that compounds derived from coal tar, a byproduct of petroleum processing, could be used as synthetic medicines. aspirin derived from coal tar was commercialized by bayer in 1899. what rockefeller had previously treated as industrial waste could now be sold back to the public as medicine at profit margins approaching 10,000%.

he had another problem too. american medicine in 1900 was a competitive ecosystem of homeopaths, herbalists, naturopaths, osteopaths, midwives, and traditional doctors who used food, plants, water, and lifestyle as the primary tools of healing. nearly half of all american medical schools taught some form of natural or alternative medicine.

rockefeller invested heavily in the german pharmaceutical industry and eventually gained major interests connected to the ig farben consortium, which included bayer, basf, and hoechst. then a report was commissioned.

the report was written by abraham flexner, an educator with no medical degree. funded by the rockefeller and carnegie foundations, it was published in 1910. the report declared natural and alternative medicine schools to be unscientific quackery. it recommended shutting down more than half of all american medical schools and standardizing the remaining institutions around medicine based on synthetic patented drugs.

congress acted. within a decade, more than half of american medical schools were closed. the remaining schools accepted rockefeller and carnegie funding on the condition that they restructure their curricula around pharmaceutical treatment. nutrition was removed. herbal medicine was removed. lifestyle intervention was removed. the role of the doctor was redefined: diagnose the symptom, prescribe the drug.

the drugs were petroleum derived. the petroleum came from rockefeller controlled refineries. the medical schools were funded by rockefeller. the journals were funded by rockefeller. the american medical association was backed by rockefeller. hospitals were funded by rockefeller.

by 1925, the american medical system had effectively become a vertically integrated extension of the oil industry operating under the marketing slogan of “scientific medicine.”

this is the system that still exists today.

the pharmaceutical industry now generates around $1.5 trillion annually. although the united states makes up about 4% of the world’s population, it consumes roughly 50% of all pharmaceuticals produced globally.

the system was not designed to make people healthy. it was designed to manage symptoms in ways that create lifelong customers. a healthy patient is a lost customer. a managed patient taking pills every day for the rest of their life is recurring revenue.

the goal has always been to keep you profitable in that corridor between healthy and dead.

healthy enough to keep buying for as long as possible. not healthy enough to stop.

the doctor telling you to fix your metabolism by changing your diet is, from the system’s perspective, a defective product. the doctor prescribing statins, metformin, antidepressants, and lifelong blood pressure medication is functioning exactly as designed.

the system was designed by an oil baron who needed a market for the waste products of his refineries.

and more than a century after the flexner report, it still operates almost exactly the way it was intended to.

you are the customer.

the corridor is where you live.