Medical Groupthink Makes People Sicker, Analysts Argue

Medicine has a huge “blind spot” that has led to an explosion of childhood obesity, diabetes, autism, peanut allergies, and autoimmune diseases in the United States, says Martin Makary, M.D., author of the bestselling book Blind Spots.

“We have the sickest population in the history of the world … right here in the United States, despite spending double what other wealthy countries spend on health care,” said Makary during a September 20 presentation at the Cato Institute, titled “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.” Also on the panel were Cato scholars Jeffrey A. Singer, M.D., and David A. Hyman, M.D.

Makary became well-known during the COVID-19 lockdowns as one of a small group of prominent physicians who publicly questioned the government’s response to the virus. Makary is a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he researches the underlying causes of disease and has written numerous scientific articles and two other bestselling books.

Chronic-Disease Epidemics

Makary said the rates of some diseases have reached epidemic proportions. Half of all children in the United States are obese or overweight, with 20 percent now diabetic or prediabetic. The rate of children being diagnosed with autism is up 14 percent every year for the last 23 years, one in five U.S. women have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and gastrointestinal cancers have doubled in the last two decades.

“We have got to ask the big questions,” said Makary said in his remarks. “We have developed blind spots not because we’re bad people but because the system has a groupthink, a herd mentality.”

Health care has become assembly-line medicine, with health professionals pressured to focus more on productivity and billing output than on improving overall health, says Makary.

“We need to look at gut health, the microbiome, our poisoned food supply; maybe we need to look at environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it; maybe treat diabetes with cooking classes instead of throwing meds at people; maybe we need to treat high blood pressure by talking about sleep quality,” said Makary.

Sticky Theories

Hyman says cognitive dissonance can cause blind spots, highlighting an example of a surgeon initially resistant to trying less-invasive antibiotics before surgically removing an appendix, as recounted in Makary’s book.

“Easy problems are already fixed, so how do we fix this hard problem?” said Hyman at the presentation, pointing out unjustified medical opinions can persist for decades.

Such opinions include the ideas that “opioids are not addictive, or antibiotics won’t hurt you, or hormone therapy causes breast cancer even though the data never supported it, the dogma of the food pyramid,” said Makary.

“We love to hold on to old ideas not because they’re better or more logical or [more] scientifically supported than new information, but just because we heard it first,” said Makary. “And it gets comfortable. It will nest in the brain, and subconsciously we will defend it.”

Peanut Allergy Mixup

Singer asked Makary about the peanut allergy dogma the American Academy of Pediatrics pushed in 2000, recommending children not eat peanuts before the age of three. It turned out to be wrong, said Singer.

“We have peanut allergies in the U.S. at epidemic proportions, [yet] they don’t have them in Africa and parts of Europe and Asia,” said Makary. The United States “got it perfectly backward,” said Makary. “Peanut abstinence results in a sensitization at the immune-system level.”

An early introduction of peanuts reduces the incidence of people identified with peanut allergies at a rate of 86 percent, Makary told the audience.

Makary said he confronted those who argued for peanut abstinence, noting there were no studies to back up the recommendation. They replied that they felt compelled to weigh in because the public wanted something done, said Makary.

‘Demonized’ HRT

The recommendation against hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for older women because of breast cancer risk is another example of misguided groupthink, Makary told the audience.

“It is probably the biggest screw-up in modern medicine,” said Makary.

“HRT replaces estrogen when the body stops producing it,” said Makary. “Women who start it within 10 years after the onset of menopause live on average three and a half years longer, have healthier blood vessels, they will have 50 to 60 percent less cognitive decline, the risk of Alzheimer’s goes down by 35 percent. Women feel better and live longer. The rate of heart attacks goes down by half. And their bones are stronger. There is probably no medication that has a greater impact on health outcomes in populations than hormone therapy.”

A demonization campaign against HRT began 22 years ago when a single scientist at the National Institutes of Health held a press conference saying HRT was linked to breast cancer, Makary told the audience.

“The incredible back story is that no data were released at that announcement,” said Makary. “And today there is no statistically significant increase [of breast cancer].”

Political Challenges

Among the broad range of topics in the 75-minute discussion, the panelists considered how medical groupthink affects government policy.

“Agencies make decisions in the shadows of how [they think] Congress will react,” said Hyman. “Congress can make your life really miserable if you’re a federal regulator. They can cut your budget, call you in, and yell at you because you haven’t taken aggressive steps to protect the American public.”

Makary said doctors must avoid making recommendations based on “gut feelings.”

“We spend a staggering amount of money on delivering health care, and very little money on what actually works,” said Hyman.

AnneMarie Schieber ([email protected]) is the managing editor of Health Care News.

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Colorado gave over 500 people assisted suicide drugs solely for eating disorders in 2024

Published on October 14, 2025

Todayville

Fr0m LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The lawsuit says Colorado’s assisted suicide law violates federal protections by allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to some disabled patients under circumstances where others would be directed to mental health care

Doctors in Colorado are pushing assisted suicide on hundreds of patients solely because they suffer from eating disorders, according to a patients’ advocate sharing the harrowing story of one such case.

Writing in the Denver Post, Patient Rights Action Fund and Institute for Patient Rights executive director Matt Vallière tells the story of his friend Jane Allen, who battled anorexia “most of her life,” who in 2018 was diagnosed with “terminal anorexia,” a relatively recent diagnosis which has been criticized as overly broad and dangerous.

Her eating disorder doctor, Jane wrote, “would ‘make an exception’ for me and ‘allow’ me to die, if that was my choice. It didn’t feel like my choice – I felt coerced and spent an incredibly agonizing months in an assisted living facility.” She eventually received the suicide drugs, but was saved by her father winning a guardianship order and having the drugs destroyed.

“I ate just enough to not die right away. And then I ate more,” Jane wrote. “I weaned off the morphine and all the other hospice drugs that kept me in such a fog. I was getting better, and then I was told that I was too much of a liability and dropped from the clinic. I moved from Colorado to Oregon. I have a job that I love, a new puppy, and a great group of friends. I’m able to fuel my body to hike and do the things I love. I’m repairing my relationship with my family, and I have a great therapist who is helping me process all of this. Things obviously aren’t perfect, and I still have hard days. But I also have balance, and flexibility, and a life that is so much more than I was told would ever be possible for me.”

Jane ultimately passed away due to complications from her years of anorexia, which Vallière wonders could have been prevented by not detouring her down the terminal anorexia route. Regardless, her story details how easily similar cases can end in suicide for people without people willing to fight to give them hope. Live Action notes that last year, Colorado saw a record number of people, 510, prescribed suicide drugs solely for dietary disorders.

“What we do know is that these laws are not so rosy as the propaganda would have you believe,” Vallière writes, adding “there has been and will be more collateral damage in people like Jane or Coloradan Mary Gossman, who was told by a nationally renowned Denver eating disorder treatment facility, ‘there’s nothing we can do for you,’ which qualified her for lethal drugs under the law. She’s in a better place now and has joined as a plaintiff in a lawsuit to overturn the law. So, I ask: how many collateral deaths are acceptable to you?”

That lawsuit says that Colorado’s so-called “medical aid-in-dying” or assisted suicide law violates federal protections by allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to some disabled patients under circumstances where others would be directed to mental health care, by “assum[ing] that a request for assisted suicide is not an indication of a mental disorder, when other Colorado laws make precisely the opposite assumption for virtually everyone else.”

Twelve U.S. states plus the District of Columbia allow assisted suicide. In April, however, a bill to legalize euthanasia failed in Maryland.

As Vallière has previously argued elsewhere, current euthanasia programs in the United States constitute discrimination against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as when a state will “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care, “I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics.”

Support is available to talk to those struggling with thoughts of ending their lives. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.

Agriculture

“We Made it”: Healthy Ostriches Still Alive in Canada

Published on October 3, 2025

Todayville

“We need to rebuild this organization [CFIA] back from the ground up”

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Looks like we made it. For another weekend at least. Until sanity settles down into the head into the head of the federal government that remains fixated on the killing of 399 healthy ostriches. As the clock wound down today, an announcement from the farm proclaimed, “We made it today,” calling it another “miracle Friday.”

WATCH TODAY’S Miracle Friday Announcement

Earlier in the day, Rebel News’ Drea Humphrey reported, “There’s apparently a SWAT team up the road, I hope that doesn’t mean they’ve gotten bad news,” wondering “if the police were preparing to aid the CFIA in the cull.”

Dacey Media reported that the farm said that “Ostrich Hunters” were also spotted at Universal Ostrich Farms according to Katie Pasitney The “kill pen” is fully set up and CFIA have been luring ostriches into it.

But as of 5:30 ET, it seems the farm and the ostriches may have escaped to live another day as the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) did not hand down a decision to grant a further leave to the farm to prepare its case, or dismiss the case, allowing the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to proceed with their “cull” to kill 399 healthy ostriches.

The palpable, raw government over-reach that includes over 100 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) that have occupied the farm highlights the mismanagement of the CFIA and may be one of the reasons that the SCC has hesitated in making a decision before the weekend.

Call to Dismantle the CFIA

On today’s Stand on Guard interview Katie Pastiney, spokeswoman for the Universal Ostrich Farms in British Columbia called for the dismantlement of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. She says that the CFIA:

“Needs to be dismantled and we need to rebuild this organization back up from the ground up and we need to have a new vision.

“We need to have a new mission and a brand-new face for Canadians that will give us hope that we will be protected not attacked.”

“The Canadian Food Inspection Agency continues to overuse their authority, overuse their excessive freedom that they’ve been given, and they have zero accountability for their actions.”

The farm has been embroiled in a dispute with the federal government and its CFIA agency for close to a year. The agency claims the flock of ostriches has the avian flu, but it refuses to test the farmers’ birds, even though they have been healthy for 258 days. At the same time the CFIA will not let the farmers pay for the tests themselves, saying they will charge them $250,000 per ostrich and put them in jail for 6 months.

The federal agency and the RCMP have seized and occupied the farm since September 22, 2025. they have conducted a campaign of harassment of the farm family and their flock of ostriches that included: arresting the farmers when they were told to go feed their birds; using lights and heavy equipment at night’; sending drones to chase the birds that resulted in pushing one bird over the fence so it hurt its leg, not treating the animals properly; and not feeding the ostriches full rations of food and water and not treating the birds the CFIA injured. These activities have continued as the CFIA continues to construct a “kill box” of hay bales that have been on fire four times while under the CFIA’s supervision and occupation.

Ostrich “kill box” continued to be built on the farm AFTER the Supreme Court of Canada ordered a legal “stay”

Running Out of Time

In a stunning report on X October 2nd, however, before the Supreme Court of Canada had made decision, the CFIA has daily continued to move forward to kill the ostriches ignoring the SCC legal “stay.”

Karen Esperson, Pasitney’s mother yesterday reported on X:

“We need to put CFIA in check.

“This organization feels they are greater than the Supreme Court of Canada. they are still positioning the birds and putting them in the position to be killed immediately. They are assuming they know the outcome of the Supreme Court oof Canada. Do they think they are better than the Supreme court? That they are going to for sure win?

“The Supreme Court has not decided.

“What is happening?

“We are on a stay order and yet I just got a call that they have a whole bunch of birds herded in a little circle in the kill pen.

“Waiting. This is animal cruelty.”

Efforts to Save the Ostriches

More and more Members of Parliament have been speaking up on behalf of the farmers including the local provincial representative, the local Member of Parliament Scott Anderson, who visited the farm trying to talk to the CFIA and also the Official Leader of the Opposition Pierre Poilievre spek out yesterday.

A second press conference hosted by John Catsimatidis, a New York radio host, billionaire and friend of Donald Trump and Dr. Oz, was also held yesterday. The USA Trump administration representatives including Robert F. Kennedy say they want to either pay for the ostrich testing or help re-locate them to the United States for further research opportunities. This outreach has been ignored.

CFIA Has Staff Enough to Kill but NOT Enough Staff to Test?

In my interview today with Pastiney she explained how the CFIA did originally give their ostrich farm an exemption that was later rescinded because the CFIA told them they were “understaffed and we’re not able to perform these tests.”

“There was an exemption package that was given to us on January 2nd. We have an email from Canadian Food Inspection Agency stating that we qualify for special rare genetics within our herd and that we could be exempt.

“Now when we followed through with that because we needed to test them just to show their DNA and their genetics and show their lineage that between January 2nd and January 10th something happened.

“Now we didn’t qualify we lost that right.

“And on January 10th they said sorry you don’t qualify for special rare genetics because we are understaffed and we’re not able to perform these tests.”

Why does the CFIA have staff to occupy the farm for weeks and to kill 399 ostriches as well as requisition the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) over 40 cars and reportedly more than 100 police on the farm since September 22nd, and not have the money to test the birds for the exemption?

How much has this debacle and exercise into Carney Government overreach been charged to Canadian taxpayers?

More than the tests to see if the ostriches are healthy or if they qualify for the exemption?

Other Farmers May Join in Efforts to Disband the CFIA

Pastiney says:

“I just did an interview with a farmer that this very same thing happened to them and it was based off a suspicion of tuberculosis outbreak on their farm.

“They [the farmers] had over 600 head of cattle, they had sheep, they had goats, they had pig or pigs, they had chickens.

“They [the CFIA] came in based off suspicion and off their own negligence they killed everything this beautiful older farm had to find out in the end that they tested after everything was dead and there was no tuberculosis.”

“I asked her a very important question, and I said could you trust this organization again? And she said, absolutely not.

“So, it became very clear to me after this about talking to two or three farmers that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency needs to be dismantled.”

“It is an organization that has lost the trust of Canadians.

CONCLUSION