Why Medicine Won’t Cure You (and What’s Finally Changing)

Written by A Midwestern Doctor on May 22, 2026. Posted in Current News

When I was in high school, I observed a few discouraging events which led me to postulate: “no industry, organization or cause tasked with solving a problem will actually solve it because the problem disappearing threatens their economic livelihood or political power.”

Since that time, I have observed more examples than I can count in so many different spheres that I’ve accepted this dynamic is a common feature of society, and likewise, have come across many similar observations by others, my favorite of which was:

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program—Milton Friedman

Recently two noteworthy examples of this principle came to my attention.

First, a frustrated patient shared with me they’d recently learned all of the online dating apps had switched from formats which allowed people to find suitable long term partners (e.g., with lengthy compatibility surveys) to ones which prevented people from matching because if someone found a good match on a platform, they would then stop paying more money for the service, whereas if they were hooked on it and spending hours each day trying to find someone, they would be a sustainable source of revenue.

More remarkably, once one company figured out this approach made more money, they bought out all of their competitors (sometimes with threats of spurious lawsuits) and shifted them all over to this predatory model as well (all of which is detailed in these six articles^1,2,3,4,5,6). I found this example noteworthy as:

• One of the greatest sources of distress I find in patients (particularly now) are relationship challenges, particularly a lack of one, and I believe much of this traces back to apps taking over courtship.
• Beyond the personal cost this dynamic creates, one of the largest challenges most developed countries are facing is a low birthrate which is primarily due to low marriage rates. My belief, in turn, is that many of the heavily contested policies we are seeing (e.g., reducing social support for the elderly, mass migration, or replacing workers with robots or AI) ultimately are due to the fact policy makers believe the declining birthrate means it will not be viable for the younger generation to support the society (particularly the elderly) so alternatives need to be found regardless of how objectionable they are.
• A common cycle predatory industries in America follow is presenting a “superior” way to meet an essential need of humanity that replaces the traditional one that’s worked, then once the old one is completely displaced, tightening the screws with the new one (to milk as much out of the population as possible) until things are far worse than what preceded it and massive social cost is accrued (e.g., the Rockefellers did this in various ways with food, energy, and medicine).

Note: because online dating has now become so bad, the companies that monopolized the market are starting to lose a lot of users and money, signaling there may be a chance for this cycle to reset itself.

Second, a federal DOJ indictment recently charged the SPLC (one of the country’s leading civil rights groups that built its reputation fighting hate) with wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering.

Prosecutors alleged it paid over $3 million in donor funds to informants embedded in white supremacist groups (including the KKK and National Alliance) while soliciting donations to “end hate,” and that one paid informant participated in planning chats, attended, and helped with logistics for the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.

Many, in turn, were outraged about this, in part because of how much political capital was extracted from the event (e.g., Biden made opposing it a central justification for his 2020 presidential campaign and Harris to a lesser extent did so as well in 2024) but also because of just how much money it made:

Unfortunately, these are far from isolated examples, and it would be impossible for me to cover even a sliver of them here. As such, this article will focus on how this principle applies to medicine and why I believe beyond greed, complacency also plays a central role in the continual recurrence of this dynamic across societies.

Is Money The Root Of All Evil?

The origins of our faith and devotion to money have raised many questions throughout the ages. The love of money, in turn, has long been recognized as one of the most powerful forces for twisting human hearts towards evil (which often results in immense destruction to the people or the environment), while simultaneously, its value is often completely arbitrary—money gets printed and then assumes value because everyone holds a collective faith in it the ruling class controls us through.

At the same time, money is a remarkable force for both developing and organizing society, and many of the things we depend upon are only available to us because of the economic system we live within.

When the question of money is looked at, it is often seen through a lens of greed being a deadly sin. However, I would argue the core issue is that for many people, effectively accumulating money becomes the foundational axiom (guiding principle) used to navigate life, causing them to rationalize a variety of unethical positions (they often lie about) to make money, because their internal algorithm will frequently default to the choice that acquires more money.

Recognizing this, in turn, provides an invaluable tool for understanding the world around you, as the motivations of others often become far clearer once you cut through all their rhetoric and view things strictly through what they stand to profit from.

Algorithms of Business

In the same way that a default behavior to seek the most profitable choice helps to explain many of the individual actions we observe around us, businesses also follow a relatively predictable set of behaviors aimed at optimizing profit, which you can see in a wide range of industries.

In general, most large businesses aim for the following, prioritizing whichever are most feasible:

• Continual growth
• High markups on their product
• The widest possible market
• Market exclusivity (to protect and maximize sales)
• Repeating sales far into the future

The main problem with this framework, which society largely applauds and equates with success, is that businesses routinely prioritize profit, even when it conflicts with the interests of customers or society.

Because of this, we frequently see:

• Artificial “needs” being created through marketing, making unnecessary products seem essential.
• Harmful products (environmentally damaging or toxic to humans) being aggressively marketed and kept on the market despite the damage.
• Extreme markups on essential products, pushing dependent customers closer to poverty.
• Monopolies and exclusivity tactics used to block competing (and often better) solutions from entering the market.
• Products deliberately designed for repeat purchases rather than full solutions, such as planned obsolescence or proprietary consumables (e.g., Gillette’s classic “razor-and-blades” sales model, and its modern equivalents like Amazon’s sinus irrigator that only works with its expensive proprietary pods that you quickly run out of).

The pharmaceutical industry, not surprisingly, excels in all of these, which helps to explain why they have managed to sustain steady growth for decades, and why one-fifth of all money spent in the United States goes to healthcare despite our country receiving very poor returns on that investment.

Note: annual adult vaccines (which frequently do nothing. particularly because they are often for the wrong strain) are an excellent example of an unsafe, unproven and ineffective product that is pushed on everyone because it fulfills the need for perpetually recurring sales.

Lifelong Patients

A frequently shared meme highlights that members of the medical community frequently face the same dilemma dating companies do.

The more time I’ve spent in medicine, the more I’ve come to appreciate that many principles you see in business are not only replicated in medicine but inevitably will guide medical practice.

For example, much of modern medicine is only possible because it has successfully made the case it represents the “pinnacle of science” and that medical services are both essential and deserve a premium price far exceeding what anyone else has paid historically (which allows immense amounts of American money to be invested into creating medical infrastructure and developing new therapies).

At the same time, this creates an inherent conflict of interest for the entire profession, as if major disease categories are “solved,” the lobbying power (which the industry depends upon) is reduced, and funds allotted to treating or researching that condition dry up.

Most importantly, the entire industry (and regulatory apparatus) is structured around this status quo, so anytime someone tries to deviate from it, countless stakeholders will emerge to oppose it.

This was best demonstrated by a 2018 report which provoked considerable public outrage when it was publicized by the mainstream media:

Note: while I can’t prove this, given how rarely the media will expose pharmaceutical misconduct, I believe the reason it did in this specific case was not to help the public but rather to send a message to the industry (and investors) to avoid curative genomic therapies.

All of this, I believe, helps explain why, while many competing therapies will always exist, the medical industry (and regulators) will only target the ones with the potential to scale up enough to meaningfully compete with their bottom line (e.g., we all saw what happened to the off-patent COVID-19 treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin).

In contrast, there are many effective alternative therapies I know of which receive very little pushback from the industry because it will never be possible to deploy them at a scale which meaningfully threatens the industry’s bottom line.

That likewise touches upon a core dilemma I face writing this newsletter: many of the approaches we use (like neural therapy) which (often rapidly) get excellent results for patients are offered by very few physicians and require extensive training to administer optimally.

As such, if I focus on them, it’s essentially useless information, as most readers will just feel frustrated they can’t access the therapy (or might end up with someone who does not correctly administer it to them).

Likewise, there are many excellent therapies we sometimes use, but in very similar cases don’t, because their interactions with the body make them inherently unsuited for universal protocols (which is a big part of why I have not focused on cancer treatments here).

Because of this, I chose to discuss the therapies we use just enough so that when someone who is likely to benefit from them gets the opportunity to use them, they will be able to recognize the value of that opportunity, but I try to refrain from reaching the point where I feel I’m just wasting your time by telling you about something you won’t be able to use.

Conversely, I have put an immense degree of effort into presenting and accurately laying out how DMSO works, what it can treat and how to use it here because it’s very safe (and costs close to nothing), it has a very wide range of conditions it treats (including many “incurable” ones), and it’s effective enough that the majority of people who use it will experience significant benefit (which is why I’ve now received over 6,000 DMSO reports from readers and this newsletter has reached so many people).

However, despite the focus I’ve given to DMSO here, it’s not actually the primary thing we use in practice. Rather, prior to starting this project, my position was:

• DMSO (especially IV DMSO) is life-changing for challenging neurological conditions, especially strokes (discussed here and here).
• DMSO is an excellent first aid tool (e.g., for injuries or burns) that if possible should always be in your first aid kit.
• DMSO is a significantly more effective and vastly safer NSAID (or Tylenol) alternative for treating tissue injuries and pain (discussed here) and one of the most potent anti-inflammatory options out there—which some patients really need (discussed here).
• You can do a lot of really useful things by combining DMSO with another (typically natural) agent and applying it to the skin (discussed here and here).
• DMSO is very helpful for herpes and one of the few ways you can reverse antibiotic resistance (discussed here).
• DMSO has a lot of different therapeutic effects, most of which are similar to what many of our preferred therapies do. However, the key difference is that DMSO is more broad but less potent than them.

As such, DMSO was more of a “tool in the toolbox” I used when it made sense rather than my primary modality, and I was mostly just outraged it had not seen wider adoption for some of these uses (e.g., strokes or an ibuprofen alternative) since there is such a massive need to have better therapeutic options in those cases (making it be one of the clearest examples of FDA malfeasance, particularly since the FDA stonewalled it for decades despite extensive proof it worked, widespread public and scientific protest, and multiple Congressional hearings).

This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here midwesterndoctor.com

Header image: The Canadian Press / Ryan Remiorz

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