When speaking about the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies in the 21st century most people think of huge hospitals, successful surgeries, and commercials for prescription medications. The majority of people rarely think about how modern medicine got to where it is today, or the implications of what transpired to bring us here. Most of what I am about to share is considered "debunked" or just fantasy. I am here to start talking about the story, with evidence to show that it isn't just fabrication. We need to talk about it.

All of it.

But there's no way to cover the history of it's entirety in one or even 5 posts. It is my intention to do my best to break this information up into bite sized pieces, as well as doing several video discussions on different platforms to further open dialogue about the implications of the information. I will do my best to keep the resources updated with information from these discussions as well. If you have questions feel free to email me directly and I will do my best to answer in a timely manner.

We should start with how the medical institutions came to be, and the story of modern medicine doesn't actually even start with "medicine" to be fair. It actually starts with several men who had nothing to do with medicine named Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., David Rockefeller and their company Standard Oil. This is the beginning of the story of how the Rockefeller's hijacked medicine and used it to further their dynasty (along with several other families who were also wanting to further their fortunes). Having likely heard these names before I am sure that you are thinking that this is just some "conspiracy theory" and that you don't want to waste your time, but I promise you that by the time you have finished reading this full account of the history of how Big Pharma has come to be, it is my sincere hope that you will thank me for sharing it.

Prior to the 1800's, medicine looked very different than today. The "doctors" of the time believed many different theories and many of them were very extreme. This was the time of miasma theory, leeches, and blood letting among many other brutal techniques. Medicine was practiced very differently, and although there were schools that were available there were no regulating bodies, and this was thought to have created many gaps in the education and subsequent practice of physicians. This was the time of snake oil sales men, peddling cures for every ailment. At this time, there were many types of doctors and healing methods. Medicine was the "wild west" at this stage, and it is how the term "quackery" became terms that are still used to this day. This was also a time period that the Rockefeller company "Standard Oil" was being investigated (and subsequently tried by the Supreme Court of the United States) because of it's shady practices (Standard Oil of New Jersey vs. The United States). The Rockefeller's had already started to move certain finances around with the General Education Board being developed in 1903, which became the International Education Board (Fleming, Saslaw, 1992). Prior to the Supreme Court finding Standard Oil guilty of corruption, illegal business practices, and racketeering, the Rockefeller brothers became involved in the Flexnar Report of 1910 also known as the Carnegie Foundation Bulletin number 4 (Flexnar Report). This report was organized by a group of men that called themselves "The Hopkins Circle" and was comprised of several men in leadership positions at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School (Duffy, 2011). It included two men of specific importance, a man named Abraham Flexnar, and another named Fredrick Taylor Gates (Duffy, 2011). Flexnar is self-explanatory, as he was the author who was commissioned to review the medical schools of the time and was hired by Henry Pritchett, the president of the Carnegie Foundation. Gates was the personal business and philanthropic advisor to John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It is important to note that Flexnar was not a physician, nor was he trained in any form of medicine. He was a teacher, and had traveled through Europe (particularly Germany) to evaluate universities abroad. He had focused primarily on medical schools while traveling, and had paralleled several aspects of medical education there with American physicians training, which lead to him authoring a book The American College. It was this book that Pritchett read, and hired Flexnar to evaluate the medical establishments in the United States (Duffy, 2011). The report was then published and given to Congress, with conclusions that included reduction in the number of medical schools and acceptance of applicants, and removal of all herbs/plants/nutritional information from the curricula as "quackery". Congress passed the conclusions into law.

It is also important to note during this time period that although the American Medical Association had been established in 1847, but was an extremely weak organization with little pull in regulation. It was not until 1873 that the judicial counsel of the organization was founded in order to deal with what were deemed "ethical and constitutional controversies" (AMA, 2024). It is also important to note that the AMA had formed the Counsel on Medical Education (CME) in 1904 which had the objective of re-establishing medical education in the United States (AMA, 2024). The association approached the Carnegie brothers, as they had also taken an interest in medicine although not for personal interests beyond investment purposes (Philanthropy Round Table). The report itself states that it was commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation but the Rockefeller's were also involved in the organization of the report as well through Frederick Gates, who as mentioned previously was a close personal advisor to John D. Rockefeller, Sr as well as an inaugural trustee receiving part of 73,000 shares of Standard Oil along with Rockefeller's son and Harold Fowler McCormick (Rockefeller Foundation). The Flexnar Report was completed in 1910, evaluating 161 individual schools, and the results were the closure of over 22% of the medical schools that were open at the time. By 1919 there was a total of 81 medical schools left open (Source Watch). This impacted most forms of natural and alternative medicine practices, as well as minority populations who had opened their own medical schools to serve non-white populations (Hiatt and Stockton, 2004).

In 1911, the Rockefeller's and Standard Oil were found guilty by the Supreme Court of creating a monopoly on the oil industry, among multiple other charges. The result of this decision was that Standard Oil Trust had to be dismantled as it was the largest corporation of its time. This decision also lead to the establishment of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and subsequent acts to protect citizens against monopolies in corporations (this is important to note for today's current situations with things like grocery prices, internet access and use, and media monopolies).

In 1910 the Rockefeller Foundation was formed, and in May of 1913 the Foundation was issued its charter by the governor of New York state. This became the front organization for the petrochemical giants to organize the coup on medical research facilities that now focused on drug based practices, like research facilities, hospitals, and universities. The Carnegie Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation were now in the clear to use their tax-exempt foundations to offer grants to the medical schools who agreed to only follow what would become the biomedical model of medicine. The sums of money that were given to the medical schools that had been deemed fit to remain open by both the Carnegie's and the Rockefeller's is documented to be well into the hundreds of millions of dollars between 1903 and 1934 (Fox, 1980).

There are several more details that are of importance in laying the foundation for this topic. The first has to do with the father of John Rockefeller. William Avery Rockefeller was not a rich man, in fact was a con man, and snake oil salesman himself (Carlson, 2019). One of his main "remedies" was an anti-cancer medication that was rumored to be petroleum and opium mixed together. Although this in itself doesn't show malfeasance from Rockefeller towards the natural forms of medicine, Rockefeller did have ill intent towards his father because of his abandonment of his family (Carlson, 2019). It is also my opinion that Rockefeller wanted to eliminate the competitors of pharmaceuticals ensuring that the allopathic model would be followed utilizing petrochemicals that had already made him a rich man. I also think that it is important to note that the Rockefeller's were highly involved in the political climate of the time, and were intricately involved in the establishment of several federal organizations that oversee the pharmaceutical industry. This will come into play in further discussions, but I would like to point that out now so that it is not a surprise in future posts. It is also important to mention that almost all pharmaceuticals contain petrochemicals, from aspirin to suppositories and I believe the fact that the Rockefeller's were petroleum tycoons influenced that greatly (CAPP, 2024).

I think I might cut this off here for the time being, as there is more for this time period but in Europe rather than the United States. I would like to note that it is not my opinion that medicine at the time did not need a "face lift" or that something similar to the Flexnar Report was not something that should have been pursued at the time. However, the funding and subsequent actions that came about from it were not ethically sound. The organizations that were pursuing funding the projects were doing it for their own best interests and not for the interest of furthering the medical profession. The organizations needed ways to invest funds and the medical establishment was one that was readily available. Philanthropic strategies were (and still are) a tax haven for the ultra rich to invest money tax free, and this practice was strategically used to take over the medical sector of the country. None of this was for the benefit of medicine, or for those that would come to depend on it for their health and well-being.

Citations

About the Council on Medical Education. (2024, July 8). American Medical Association. https://www.ama-assn.org/councils/council-medical-education/about-council-medical-education

Carlson, P. (2019, May 16). John D. Rockefeller Sr.'s Pap Was a Con Man. HistoryNet. https://www.historynet.com/john-d-rockefeller-sr-s-pap-was-a-con-man/

Duffy, T. P. (2011). The Flexner Report--100 years later. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 84(3), 269–276. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3178858/#R3

Fox, D. M. (2024). ABRAHAM FLEXNER’S UNPUBLISHED REPORT: FOUNDATIONS AND MEDICAL EDUCATION, 1909-1928 on JSTOR. Jstor.org. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44441287

Hiatt, M., & Stockton, C. G. (2004, December 2). The Impact of the Flexner Report on the Fate of Medical Schools in North America After 1909. ResearchGate; unknown. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242724640_The_Impact_of_the_Flexner_Report_on_the_Fate_of_Medical_Schools_in_North_America_After_1909

Modern American Medical Education - Philanthropy Roundtable. (2022). Philanthropy Roundtable. https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/modern-american-medical-education/

Petroleum and Real Life | CAPP. (n.d.). CAPP | a Unified Voice for Canada’s Upstream Oil and Gas Industry. https://www.capp.ca/en/oil-natural-gas-you/petroleum-and-real-life/

Stahnisch, F. W., & Verhoef, M. (2012). The Flexner Report of 1910 and Its Impact on Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Psychiatry in North America in the 20th Century. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2012, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/647896

Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, November 6). Flexner Report. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

Wikipedia Contributors. (2020, January 14). Rockefeller Foundation. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation