How Rockefeller eliminated natural cures from the popular imagination to create the modern pharmaceutical industry
People these days may see you as a weirdo if you talk about the healing properties of plants or any other holistic practices. Like everything else, there is a lot of politics and money behind our modern medical system.
It all starts with John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937), who was an oil tycoon, a robber baron, and the first billionaire and monopolist in the United States. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he controlled 90% of all oil refineries in the USA through his oil company, Standard Oil, which was later split into companies like Chevron, Exxon, and Mobil.
Around 1900, scientists discovered "petrochemicals" and the ability to create all kinds of chemicals from petroleum. The first plastic was made in 1907, and scientists also identified several vitamins, leading to the assumption that many pharmaceutical drugs could be derived from petroleum.
This presented a wonderful opportunity for Rockefeller, who recognized the potential to monopolize the petroleum, medical and chemical industries simultaneously.
The best thing about petrochemicals was that everything could be patented and sold at a high profit.
However, there was a problem with Rockefeller's plan for the medical industry: natural and herbal medicines were very popular in America at that time. Almost half of the doctors and medical universities in the United States practiced holistic medicine, utilizing the knowledge of the indigenous peoples of Europe and America.
Consequently, Rockefeller had to find a way to eliminate his biggest competition. So, he employed the classic “solution-problem-reaction” strategy. This involved creating a problem to scare people and then offering a pre-planned solution.
He went to his friend Andrew Carnegie, another plutocrat who made his fortune by monopolizing the steel industry, and together they devised a scheme. Through the prestigious Carnegie Foundation, they sent a man named Abraham Flexner to travel across the country and report to the heads of medical colleges and hospitals.
This resulted in the Flexner Report, which gave rise to modern medicine as we know it. The report emphasized the need to modernize and centralize medical institutions. Based on its findings, more than half of all medical universities were soon closed. Homeopathy and natural medicines were mocked and demonized, and many doctors were even imprisoned.
To facilitate this transition and influence the opinions of other doctors and scientists, Rockefeller awarded over $100 million to universities and hospitals and founded a philanthropic front group called the "General Education Board" (GEB). In a very short time, all medical schools were modernized and homogenized. Students were taught the same content, and medicine became focused on using patented drugs.
tial grants to study how plants cured diseases, but their goal was to first identify which chemicals in the plants were effective and then recreate a similar, though not identical, chemical in the laboratory that could be patented.
Now, 100 years later, we are producing doctors who know little about the benefits of nutrition, herbs, or any holistic practices. We have a society that is largely dependent on corporations for their well-being.
They do not focus on cures but rather on symptoms, thus creating recurring clients. In the pharmaceutical industry, there are no cures for cancer, diabetes, autism, asthma, or even the flu; it would be poor business practice, as they would run out of customers.
As for cancer, oh yes, the American Cancer Society was founded by Rockefeller in 1913.
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