Part 34, Exposing the Secret Ways Big Pharma Controls Medical Knowledge
Dr. Stoller: "Epistemic capture: when powerful industries control what gets studied, how it’s researched, and what counts as evidence"
Dr. Ken Stoller explains the pervasive power and control of the pharmaceutical industry over every aspect of modern medicine.
Learning that what passes for medical science in the 21st century are only those claims that profit the drug industry.
So can we trust that our doctors know the best ways to treat disease and chronic health conditions? Or have they merely been indoctrinated into a perpetual “sick care system” that aims to make us patients for life?
Modern medicine is not about curing patients. It’s about keeping them dependent on the pharmaceutical-medical complex.
Have you ever heard of epistemic capture?
Probably not, and yet it may one of the greatest threats to human knowledge and health today.
Political economist Dr. Toby Rogers recently told US Senators what philosophers have warned for decades. When an industry captures, not just regulators, but the very production of knowledge itself, it doesn’t just shape decisions, it shapes reality.
This is epistemic capture: when powerful industries control what gets studied, how it’s researched, and what counts as evidence.
Take medicine. Big Pharma spends $27 billion a year on drug promotion, more than the NIH’s entire budget.
Two thirds of medical school chairs have financial ties to Pharma.
Many clinical trials are outsourced overseas and ghostwritten.
Journals depend on reprint revenue, sometimes millions per article.
And the same investors often own both the drug companies and the journals that are supposed to keep them in check.
From day one of medical school future doctors are trained inside this epistemic bubble. They memorize treatment algorithms, but rarely learn nutrition. They follow standards of care written by conflicted experts.
And by the time they’re in practice, many don’t even realize the walls of the bubble exist.
The cost? Exploding rates of chronic illness.
Autism now affects millions.
Over half of American children have a chronic condition, and yet within the bubble, these epidemics are explained away as genetics or better diagnosing.
The obvious questions, the ones that might point to iatrogenic harm, are never asked.
But cracks are forming. Independent researchers are building new journals, new funding models, and new studies that ask the forbidden questions.
Litigation has forced industry documents into the light and the COVID era woke millions of people up to how science can be captured, censored, and sold.
Ending epistemic capture isn’t just about reforming medicine. It’s about restoring our ability to think clearly, to see reality, and to reach truth.
As Toby Rogers says, “Breaking free from this prison of manufactured knowledge may be the most important challenge of our time.