Tenpenny Monday Minute

The downhill slide of our healthcare system started in 1909.

Have you heard of the Flexner report? It was written in 1909 by John D. Rockefeller’s personal lawyer. This report turned medical schools into the big pharma machines they are today. Basically, this is the have a symptom, take a pill approach to medicine. At the turn of the century, the Rockefellers dreamed of creating everything from oil, like making pharmaceutical drugs from petrochemicals. But they had one problem…natural medicine, which was very popular in the US. In fact, almost half of the doctors and medical schools in the US practiced holistic medicine.

How to get rid of the competition? Enter Flexner, who traveled across the country reporting on the status of hospitals and medical schools. They scared people, saying it all needed to be modernized and centralized. He demonized homeopathy and many doctors still working with it were jailed! To “help with the transition”, Rockefeller donated over $100 million to hospitals/medical schools and founded a group of philanthropic leaders called the “General Board of Education” (GEB) to make sure all students were learning the same thing, and that proprietary medicines were used.

That was 1909. Look where we are today. Time to make some serious changes. No more Flexner plan!