The purges, censorship, and politicization in the worlds of medicine and science are not distinct from the corruption and vandalism of the country writ large. It’s all part of the same horrifying, destructive process. One of the countless dangerous absurdities is Donald Trump’s insistence that Portland is a war zone and that 4,000 people have been murdered in Chicago. In reality, Portland is not on fire, and Chicago has recorded 339 murders this year, a decrease from previous years. Nonetheless, Trump is using these fictions as a pretext to send violent federal agents, and possibly the military, to terrorize the populace.
Obviously, writing about Trump’s authoritarianism and detachment from reality could fill a library. However, during one recent foray into his imaginary world, several doctors, namely Drs. Mehmet Oz and Marty Makary, were in the background, smirking and nodding along. Although they have no power in this domain, their silence and acquiesce lent the legitimacy of the medical profession to Trump’s threatening falsehoods. They had the chance to tell the truth but instead chose their power and positions.
Drs. Oz and Makary may think that they operate in a distinct sphere from the rest of the Trump administration and that what happens in these cities is none of their concern. While this is the case for the countless anonymous public workers who are quietly doing the same vital jobs they would have done had the election gone the other way, this is not true for the celebrity doctors who openly campaigned for Trump and whose propaganda elevates him to this day. Listen below as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who did nothing but numb people to COVID, now says Trump is “very pro-science” and that it is “ridiculous slander” to suggest otherwise. Where would anyone get that idea?
This is all especially loathsome coming from doctors who manufactured rage regarding COVID to usher in Trump 2.0 and their own political appointments. Watch these fearmongering propaganda videos by Dr. Bhattacharya, who warned that measures to limit COVID deaths would lead to a “biomedical security state”and Dr. Vinay Prasad, who said they could lead to the next Hitler. Their paranoid fantasies of violent cops attacking peaceful citizens are a fair description our current reality. Doctors who previously warned about a police state turned out to be pretty chill after all.
None of this is new. As Dr. Eric Reihart wrote in his article The Rise of Medical Fascism:
Authoritarian regimes always enlist medical systems to ensure their control over the means of life and death, but they do not do so overnight. Instead, medical fascism, by which I mean the integration of healthcare institutions and professionals into autocratic systems of control, coercion, and repression, rises gradually. It incrementally erodes professional ethics, co-opts health institutions, discourages dissent, and provides incentives and ideological support for participation in state violence. Rather than externally imposed, these steps are typically carried out by actors already internal to the field—usually by those doctors most eager for career advancement.
By prioritizing their career advancement, We Want Them Infected doctors have permanently linked their fate to Trump and everything he does moving forward. They chose to do this, and they can always choose to resign. Until then, they should be known for their COVID disinformation, glorifying Trump, and nothing else.
They might object to this, but who cares? Government doctors don’t get decide to how the public judges and remembers them. We do, and we don’t need their permission.