Article:
How John D. Rockefeller Founded the
Business of Western Medicine
by Dr. Christopher S. Deatherage N.D
As a naturopathic doctor, with forty-one years of experience, I have had a lot of conversations with patients through the years who are disenchanted with western medicine—especially the quality of care they receive—and how the business of western medicine is conducted.
The business story of western medicine starts with John S Rockefeller who was considered the wealthiest American in the early twentieth century. Rockefeller owned 90% of all petroleum refineries through his ownership of Standard Oil Corporation.
When scientists discovered that medicines could be synthetically created from petroleum, Rockefeller saw the opportunity to control and monopolize the practice of medicine by creating synthetic medicines that could be patented.
There was a big problem with Rockefeller’s plan, however, as half of the medical schools at this time taught different forms of natural medicine. Rockefeller knew that to control and monopolize medicine he would have to expunge the competition.
Rockefeller hired a contractor, Abraham Flexner, to submit a report to congress in 1910. This report concluded that the natural healing modalities that a large percentage of doctors practiced at this time was unscientific quackery.
Based on Flexner’s report congress enacted laws that called for medical school curriculum standardization which only included the western medicine Big Pharm model.
Rockefeller teamed up with Andrew Carnegie and started funding allopathic medical schools all over America, forcing many medical schools that taught natural medicine to close. Thus, western medicine achieved a monopoly over all other schools of medicine in the U.S.