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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News RFK Jr.’s vaccine committee to vote on ending Hepatitis B shot recommendation for newborns

Published on December 4, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

The goal is to examine whether vaccines on the recommended schedule are contributing to the rise in allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other conditions such as autism.

Vaccine advisors to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plan to vote on ending the recommendation of the Hepatitis B shot for infants and discuss other changes to the childhood vaccination schedule.

The federal advisers, selected by RFK Jr., will meet on Thursday and Friday to review the childhood vaccination schedule, according to a report from The Washington Post. The goal is to examine whether vaccines on the recommended schedule are contributing to the rise in allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other conditions such as autism.

The vaccine panel, headed by Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist and critic of the COVID shots, plans to vote on ending the Hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for infants within 24 hours of birth. The panel will decide whether to delay the first dose to a later time.

Critics of the very early administration of the first Hepatitis B vaccine dose argue that it represents an unnecessary risk, as the vast majority of children are not at risk of infection.

The vaccine committee makes recommendations to the CDC director on the vaccine schedule. Directors have typically adopted the panel’s recommendations, compelling insurers to cover certain vaccines. These recommendations also provide a guideline for most pediatricians and medical organizations.

READ: Florida moving to be first state to end all childhood vaccine mandates

“We’re looking at what may be causing some of the long-term changes we’re seeing in population data in children, specifically things such as asthma and eczema and other autoimmune diseases,” Milhoan told The Washington Post.

“What we’re trying to do is figure out if there are factors within vaccines,” he added.

He said that the committee is examining the potential dangers of using aluminum as an adjuvant, an ingredient meant to trigger an immune response strong enough for the body to develop antibodies and protect the person from the disease.

The CDC recently revised its website on the issue of autism and vaccines, now stating, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” The CDC had previously held that there was definitely no link between vaccines and autism. The change was made at the direct order of RFK Jr.

The McCullough Foundation, founded by famous cardiologist and COVID response critic Dr. Peter McCullough, goes even further in its critique of childhood vaccines. In a recent extensive report, the authors analyzed 12 studies comparing routinely vaccinated with unvaccinated children. According to the report, all of these studies showed “superior overall health outcomes among the unvaccinated, including significantly lower risks of chronic medical problems and neuropsychiatric disorders such as ASD [Autism spectrum disorder].”

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23,000+ Canadians died waiting for health care in one year as Liberals pushed euthanasia

Published on December 4, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Tens of thousands of Canadians have died while on waitlists in recent years, according to new data. Meanwhile, euthanasia now accounts for five percent of all deaths in Canada.

Over 23,000 Canadians have died while on waitlists for medical care as Liberals focused on euthanasia expansions.

According to government figures published on November 26 by Canadian think tank SecondStreet.org, 23,746 patients died on government waiting lists for health care between April 2024 and March 2025.

“What’s really sad is that behind many of these figures are stories of patients suffering during their final years – grandparents who dealt with chronic pain while waiting for hip operations, people leaving children behind as they die waiting for heart operations, so much suffering,” SecondStreet.org President Colin Craig explained.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. If we copied better-performing European public health systems, we could greatly reduce patient suffering,” he continued.

According to the data, collected through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, there has been a three percent increase of deaths while on waitlists compared to last year. The number is likely much higher, as the reports did not include figures from Alberta and some parts of Manitoba.

Data further revealed that 100,876 Canadians have died while waiting for care since 2018, thanks to increased wait times and insufficient staffing.

“It’s interesting that governments will regularly inspect restaurants and report publicly if there’s a minor problem such as a missing paper towel holder,” Craig noted. “Meanwhile, no government reports publicly on patients dying on waiting lists. It’s quite hypocritical.”

At the same time, the Liberal government has worked to expand euthanasia 13-fold since it was legalized, making it the fastest growing euthanasia program in the world. Meanwhile, Health Canada has released a series of studies on advance requests for assisted suicide.

As LifeSiteNews reported earlier this week, so-called “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAID) is responsible for five percent of all deaths in Canada in 2024.

Currently, wait times to receive genuine health care in Canada have increased to an average of 27.7 weeks, leading some Canadians to despair and opt for assisted suicide instead of waiting for medical aid. At the same time, sick and elderly Canadians who have refused to end their lives have reported being called “selfish” by their providers.

In one case, an Ontario doctor revealed that a middle-aged worker, whose ankle and back injuries had left him unable to work, felt that the government’s insufficient support was “leaving (him) with no choice but to pursue” euthanasia.

Other cases included an obese woman who described herself as a “useless body taking up space,” which one doctor argued met the requirements for assisted suicide because obesity is “a medical condition which is indeed grievous and irremediable.”

The most recent reports show that euthanasia is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.