Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he plans to tell American medical schools they must offer nutrition courses to students or risk losing federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Speaking at an event in North Carolina in April, Kennedy lamented, "There's almost no medical schools that have nutrition courses, and so [aspiring physicians] are taught how to treat illnesses with drugs but not how to treat them with food or to keep people healthy so they don't need the drugs."

He added, "One of the things that we'll do over the next year is to announce that medical schools that don't have those programs are not going to be eligible for our funding, and that we will withhold funds from those who don't implement those kinds of courses."

The medical establishment in the West has become a dangerous caricature of its noble origins, churning out graduates who are little more than glorified drug pushers, trained not to heal but to manage symptoms in a perpetual cycle of disease care. These doctors, products of a system captured by pharmaceutical greed, are woefully unprepared to address the root causes of the chronic illnesses plaguing society. Their education, steeped in reductionist dogma, fixates on diagnosing and treating diseases with a prescription pad, ignoring the glaring reality that most ailments—diabetes, heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disorders—are lifestyle diseases, born of poor nutrition, stress, and environmental toxins. Yet, these graduates are clueless about prevention, nutrition, or the intricate interplay of the body’s systems. The result? A healthcare system that doesn’t heal but perpetuates suffering, bankrupting individuals and communities while enriching Big Pharma.

Let’s be clear: 95% of the drugs prescribed are not only unnecessary but actively harmful, disrupting the body’s natural balance and masking symptoms that could be resolved through lifestyle and nutritional changes. The medical profession’s obsession with polypharmacy—piling drug upon drug—creates a chaotic cascade of side effects. Statins, for instance, lower cholesterol but deplete CoQ10, tanking energy levels and heart function. Proton pump inhibitors for acid reflux wreck the gut microbiome, impair nutrient absorption, and increase risks of infections and fractures. Antidepressants, handed out like candy, alter brain chemistry with long-term consequences we barely understand, while doing nothing to address the social or dietary triggers of mental health issues. And don’t get me started on the overmedication of infants and children—pumping babies full of antibiotics for ear infections or reflux meds that disrupt their fledgling microbiomes, setting them up for a lifetime of allergies, asthma, and immune dysfunction. It’s malpractice dressed up as care.

The microbiome, that delicate ecosystem of trillions of microbes, is collateral damage in this pharmaceutical free-for-all. Antibiotics, prescribed with reckless abandon, annihilate beneficial bacteria, paving the way for dysbiosis, inflammation, and a host of downstream diseases. Food allergies, skyrocketing in prevalence, are a direct consequence of this disruption, compounded by doctors’ ignorance of how diet—think gluten, processed sugars, alcohol or artificial additives—fuels intolerance and autoimmunity. Medical graduates don’t even blink at prescribing steroids or antihistamines for allergic reactions, never pausing to investigate the patient’s diet or gut health. Why? Because their training doesn’t teach them to. They’re taught to suppress, not to cure.

The damage is staggering. Chronic diseases now consume 60% of healthcare budgets in the U.S. and much the same inAustralia, with over half the population on at least one prescription drug. Type 2 diabetes, once rare, afflicts 1 in 10 Americans and 1 in 15 Australians and climbing, driven by diets high in refined carbs including sugar, alcohol and sedentary habits—yet doctors prescribe metformin instead of preaching fasting or low-carb eating. Heart disease kills 1 in 4, despite decades of evidence that Mediterranean diets and exercise outperform statins. The opioid crisis, born of doctors’ eagerness to prescribe painkillers, has claimed over 500,000 lives in the U.S. since 1999. And let’s not forget the iatrogenic harm—medical errors and drug side effects are the third leading cause of death, killing an estimated 250,000 Americans and 18,000 Australians annually. Australia’s figures are thus relatively similar.

Big Pharma’s tentacles are everywhere, bankrolling medical schools, ghostwriting studies, and wining-and-dining doctors to push their latest blockbuster drugs. The revolving door between regulatory agencies and drug companies ensures that profit, not health, dictates policy. Take the statin racket: despite dubious evidence of benefit for most patients, global sales top $20 billion annually. Or consider the antidepressant cartel, worth $17 billion, peddling pills that perform barely better than placebos in trials and that increase the risk of suicide and possibly homicide. Medical graduates, indoctrinated to trust these pathetic “evidence-based” guidelines, become unwitting pawns in this machine, prescribing drugs they don’t fully understand to patients who don’t need them.

To their credit, the medical profession excels in trauma care, surgery, and anesthesiology. When you’re in a car wreck or need a tumour removed, these doctors are lifesavers. Their precision in acute settings is unmatched, and we owe them gratitude for that. But the moment you step into the realm of chronic disease—where most of the suffering lies—they’re out of their depth, floundering in a sea of pills and protocols that do more harm than good.

We demand change. The body is not a machine to be tinkered with but a self-regulating system that thrives on proper nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress management. Nature has the answers: whole foods, fasting, exercise, and herbs can prevent and reverse most of what ails us. Vitamin D deficiency, rampant in the West, fuels everything from depression to cancer—yet doctors rarely test for it, let alone prescribe sunlight or supplements. Magnesium, critical for 300+ bodily functions, is depleted by stress and drugs like diuretics, yet it’s ignored in favour of blood pressure meds. The ketogenic diet has reversed epilepsy and diabetes in countless cases, yet it’s dismissed as a fad by doctors who’d rather prescribe insulin.

This isn’t just incompetence; it’s a betrayal of trust. The medical profession must be dragged, kicking and screaming, into a new era—one that prioritises prevention, respects the body’s innate wisdom, and rejects the pharmaceutical stranglehold. Patients deserve doctors who listen, who understand that food is medicine, and who dare to question the dogma they’ve been fed.

Ian Brighthope

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