Robert Mendelsohn - the medical heretic

This is part II of a profile of Dr Robert Mendelsohn, a staunch critic of medical science and the medical system who wrote Confessions of a Medical Heretic.

Click here to read Part I of the article on Dr Robert Mendelsohn.

The Confessions of Dr Robert S ‘Meddlesome’

Continued from part one...

The medical establishment is a church, Dr Mendelsohn claims. Hospitals are “temples of doom”; diagnosis, drugs and surgery are rituals and sacraments; doctors are priest...

There is a vital difference, however, between Modern Medicine and other religions. The major religions – Jewish, Christianity, Islam and oriental religions – have common ethics. All encourage large families and respect for the elderly. All judge a society by its treatment of marginal groups such as premature babies, retarded children and old people.

All discourage non-procreative forms of sexual activity, like homosexuality and masturbation. In short, all the major religions are pro life. Modern Medicine isn’t. Dr Robert Mendelsohn argues:

Modern Medicine is an idolatrous religion, for what it holds sacred are not living things but mechanical processes. It doesn’t boast of saving souls or lives but of how many times this or that new machine was used and how much money was taken in... The God of Modern Medicine is Death! A new world was recently coined by Dr Quentin Young to describe one activity of Modern Medicine: iatrogenocide – the systematic destruction of a large group of people by doctors. One example is the marketing of infant formula in developing countries, where poor people cannot afford it or cannot use it safely. The promotion of bottle feeding is also an attempt to break up the family – preventing the close bond between mother and child.

Dr Robert Mendelsohn also notes that Modern Medicine condones sexual activities that do not produce life, like homosexuality and masturbation. And, it promotes activities that obstruct life, like birth control.

Whether these are morally wrong is beside the point. For example, birth control per se is not morally wrong. But certain form of birth control, like the Pill and the IUD, cause harm to the women who use them. These are biologically wrong, Dr Robert S Mendelsohn asserts. He calls such acts “biological sins”.

Modern Medicine directly promotes death as well – by encouraging people to accept death with dignity; by building hospices to separate the sick from the rest of society; by performing abortions and euthanasia. Abortion is not just giving women “the right to choose”. It kills the child and also harms the mother. It’s a biological sin. All these death-oriented activities are frightening reminiscent of the Nazis. Prior to World War II, German doctors willingly got rid of ‘useless people’... Liberalized abortion and euthanasia were followed by the ‘death with dignity” of old people. Later came the murder of gypsies, then the rounding up of anti-Nazis and Jews.

The priests of Modern Medicine are, of course, doctors. Dr Mendelsohn calls doctors “The Devil’s Priests”. These priests have great power over people. He asks: How many people can tell you take your clothes off and you’ll do it?

Doctors are supposed to deliver health. But as a group, they appear to be sicker than the rest of society:

More doctors are mentally disturbed, divorced or unhappily married, and addicted to alcohol and drugs than any other group of people... (they are) narrow–minded, prejudiced and fairly incapable of reasoning and deliberation.

Fear of failure, fear of missing of a diagnosis, fear of malpractice, fear of remarks by their peers, fear that they’ll have to find honest work. To hide their fear, they are taught to adopt the authoritarian attitude and demeanor of their professors. Doctors, then, develop two major attributes: fear and arrogance.

When asked to evaluate retarded or handicapped persons; doctors always give the most dismal prediction. Nurses are next, followed by psychologists. Parents are the most optimistic. This pessimism puts doctor in a situation where they cannot lose. If a doctor fails to help you, it’s not his fault because your outlook was poor to begin with. If he succeeds, he has worked a “miracle”.

Dr Robert Mendelsohn puts it this way: If he wins, he’s a hero. If he loses, he’s a defeated hero – but still a hero.

What to do about doctors? Sue them, Dr Robert Mendelsohn urges. Challenge them, threaten them. Better still, avoid them. Leave the Church of Modern Medicine.

Leaving is not the final answer. The next step is to establish what Dr Robert Mendelsohn calls “New Medicine”. It won’t be easy, he warns. We will have to take the responsibility for our own health, consulting doctors only when things go seriously wrong. "New Medicine” is still a religion and we will still need faith.

But you won’t need faith in technology, or doctors, or drugs, or professionals, Dr Mendelsohn explains. You need faith in life.

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