It’s People
Yeah, the picture above is real, in fact taken by yours truly in my very own neighborhood grocery store. For those of you who make your own TikTok videos or think Demi Lovato is a thought leader, this reference may need some explanation. Back in the early 1970’s, a thoroughly depressing sci-fi film called “Soylent Green,” starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, depicted a society so overcrowded it was consuming itself – literally. Protestors, vagrants, and those welcomed into special suicide wards were all collected and sent to processing plants to be recycled into the eponymous food bars. So I took the above to be an example of impressively horrible marketing. A chef relative of mine did some digging, and discovered this: “Our founders named the product Soylent, in homage to the novel ‘Make Room!’ by Harry Harrison…that explores population growth and the world resources (Yes, we know that there is a Hollywood adaptation of the book that involves people).” “Involves.”
Okay, so that’s a funny aside that is just poetic license, or dark irony. It’s not like we would ever tolerate processing humans as a commodity.
Even if a bioethicist named Matthew Liao has been out there rattling around since at least 2012, arguing in favor of reengineering humans as a way to fight climate change. In ‘Human Engineering and Climate Change’, Liao argues “for the use of radical biomedical interventions on humans so as to create people who are literally physiologically-environmentally-friendly.
These biomedical interventions involve three approaches: a voluntary eugenics program against tall people, inducing intolerance towards dietary-meat, and radically lowering birth rates by altering women’s cognitive abilities.”
While I could certainly do with a lot fewer people on a voluntary basis, we are on real war crime-footing with this one: “As for inducing dietary-meat intolerance, Liao argues that the reason this is necessary is because livestock farming accounts for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions. To offset this, Liao proposes measures to make humans allergic to meat, like stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins, which would prime the immune system to act against these proteins, so that consuming meat would induce unpleasant experiences.” Anyone trying to come between me and the 16-oz medium rare ribeye I gleefully gorged on last night is evil incarnate.
Of course, this stuff is ridiculous, and has no place on blog about “Authentic Medicine.” It’s not like physicians would accept and promote medically unnecessary, quite possibly morally objectionable technologies just to adapt to social pressures, right?
It’s not like we would treat eating disorders by radical, permanent disordering of the digestive tract, leaving the altered with a plethora of chronic health problems from anemia to recurrent pancreatitis, and a permanently deprived sense of self-achievement.
It’s not like we would ever create a fertility industry, feeding people’s genetic narcissism by hyperstimulation resulting in needlessly high-risk multiple-gestation pregnancies (And what to do with the leftover embryos? There’s one for bioethicists with if they can take a break from solving less defined calamities).
It’s not like we would treat mind-body gender dysmorphia with hormonal and surgical mutilation, just to assuage the feelings of a society too cowardly to offer real compassion for tortured psychiatric conditions.
The scary part about this Mengele 2.0 and his kind is that their truly awful ideas are seen as just that…until they aren’t. The medical community rejects screwing around where it ought not, until someone invents a way to, funding and media follow, then aggrieved support groups make noise, and finally there is irresistible momentum toward a bad outcome. Maybe fertility treatments made sense for young couples having trouble conceiving (who could afford it!). But before you knew it, the technology created the Octomom, flooding the local pediatrician with an entire brood, at least half of which will undoubtedly end up on ADHD meds if they’re lucky. Along with fantastic, even miraculous new interventional and pharmacological technologies, medical schools and residency programs for all their blather about medical ethics and cursory classes, have internalized some pretty iffy stuff as well. This is later promoted by specialty boards and the politically corrupted organized medicine, until the individual physician who questions the newest conventional wisdom is damned as an apostate. The AMA, AAFP, et al that repackages trendy political/cultural topics as “medical” can be pressured into seriously considering absurd ideas from fruitcake academics. My point is that for all of its ongoing advances, the next truly bad idea in medicine is always right around the corner, and we should all be prepared to resist it. We are already allowing dishonest, harmful things in medicine, and should be terrified of engineering humans to serve the collective, especially if it interferes with enjoying a nice steak.
As Heston chillingly screamed while they carted his broken body off-camera,” You gotta tell ‘em…!”
I have never forgotten the movie title “Soylent Green,” nor did I ever see it. Thank you, Pat Conrad, for immunizing my curiosity from ever wishing to see this thing.
I’m a public service.
Thank you .
I am appalled at the lies about Covid-19, the lack of actual treament,(yes there is a place for Ivermectin,steroids,Hydoxychloroquin and treatment protocols. Not acknowledged by CDC, NIH.
Could have saves hundreds of thousands of lives.. Has in India Brazil,prevented deaths of hundreds of Doctors and Nurses.. Yet not acknwledged.
Mutilation malpractice of Children instead of talk therapy and treatment of Gender Dysphoria Disorder.
No discussion of suicide rates 40 to 44 percent before and after treatment/surgery..
No discussion of 98%of children becoming accepting of their gender,male or female by age 18 to 24..
Denial by Physicians of basic Biology MALE /FEMALE.. . Fads and Fashion in Medicine that harms so many.
So Sad..
5 stars. BTW Soylent Green is one of my favorite movies along with the Charleston Heston classic planet of the apes. Soylent Green is people!
This guy gets it.
Do a search for the “transabled” movement and add it to the list of horrors.
Do I dare? Oh God, I know I’ll regret this…. *Martha proceeds to Google ‘transabled’”. Oh no! I didn’t know this condition had a name.
My situation is different, but the intense desire to remove my limb was indeed very real.
I suffer from CRPS after a couple of foot surgeries. Despite my medical knowledge of CRPS, a particularly terrible surge in pain made me seriously contemplate amputation. “Maybe I could drop a large rock on my foot so they’ll have to remove it!”. I begged my doctor to “just take the foot off – give me a prosthetic!”
I thank God every day that he denied my request.
Instead, he listened to my concerns and I was sent to a wonderful pain medicine doctor. My pain improved considerably with a course of injections, gabapentin, topical medications, and physical therapy.
I’m able to continue working as a nurse and all thanks to physicians that really care about patients.
I feel for patients that have poor relationship with their docs, have an unethical doc – or no doc at all! To go around “lopping things off” is bad medicine!
Amen.
Back in the early 80’s when I was a med student following anesthesiologists who treated this condition, (Back then it was Reflex Dystrophy Syndrome Type 1 or Type 2 if I recall correctly.) I was told even if the affected limb was amputated, the pain/discomfort would still remain. Hence the advice you received not to amputate but to continue pain therapy treatment (most likely sans opioids) was totally correct. Then as now.
When I started out in a rural area in family practice, a young lady of 22 years old, who taught deaf children sign language came in after a broadside car accident. She went to the E.R., they took multiple x-rays of her left arm of which I saw the reports. No fractures of any kind. She had most of the symptoms of RSD type 1 seven days after the accident. I silently freaked out, I kept composure, was aghast and called my anesthesiologist teacher and described the symptoms. He saw her the next day and started stellate ganglion blocks and after 2 or 3, she was completely back to normal.
The anesthesiologist, Mo called me a while later and because I got her in so fast, he said it saved her a lifetime of disability. Was an extremely satisfying thing to happen to me early in my career.
It’s was known at that time, the earlier the treatment for now known as CRPS 1 or II, the better the outcome. Probably holds true today. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Several weeks later, she saw me and thanked me profusely for getting her into care so fast.
She got back into teaching deaf kids sign language quickly. Was one of my best saves of my career.
Oooooops.
Should read “Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy” Me bad. RSD is still listed as that on the net. AKS
I LOVE hearing this story. I can see why it stuck in your mind years later. What a wonderful outcome!
I wish my CRPS had been treated right away. And yep, I was told amputation wouldn’t be of benefit because the pain would just move higher up as the limb was removed.
When I had the first surgery, through top of foot, I had a large neuroma removed. Unexpectedly, I had terrible generalised forefoot pain for weeks afterwards.
Instead of treating for possible CRPS though, I had another foot surgery, this time through bottom of foot. Ortho thought maybe the neuroma was growing back. He then removed more tissue including tissue closer to arch of foot.
Since that surgery made no difference in my pain, it was decided that I had CRPS.
I try to avoid any surgeries now and am very compliant with my treatment. Yes, opiates have very little effect – except tramadol, which does seem to help.
One of the best posts I’ve read here – thanks Dr Conrad! I’m a terrible writer, so will just say I agree with every point.
Btw: the Soylent Green drink isn’t too bad. Haha! I knew what it referenced, but couldn’t resist it.