death
The Nazi relic of the German Heilpraktiker – alternative health practitioner, who practise so-called alternative medicine (SCAM)) – is a topic that I wrote about repeatedly, e.g.:
- Prison sentence for a German HEILPRAKTIKER who issued false vaccination certificates
- Another death caused by a ‘Heilpraktiker’, non-medically trained alternative practitioner?
- A German Heilpraktiker was sent to jail for fraud
The path to becoming a Heilpraktiker is as unique as it is scandelously unregulated. By law, the profession requires no mandatory curriculum, no accredited school attendance, and no state-regulated university degree. Technically, anyone over the age of 25 holding a basic middle-school education (Hauptschulabschluss) can sit for the exam (the Heilpraktikerüberprüfung), even without any education or training at all. While some candidates choose to prepare by voluntarily attending a private and expensive school (a Heilpraktikerschule) for one to three years, the lack of standardized educational oversight leaves massive gaps in crucial medical and professional subjects.
Chief among these neglected subjects is, in my view, medical ethics. For those who do attend a school, average ethics instruction ranges from minimal to non-existent. Because private institutes design their own proprietary curricula, ethics is rarely taught as a standalone subject. Instead, it is briefly touched within broader modules concerning Berufs- und Gesetzeskunde (Professional and Legal Studies).
This systemic omission is directly tied to the narrow scope of the state licensing exam. Conducted by local health departments (Gesundheitsamt), the examination is explicitly designed around Gefahrenabwehr, i.e. the prevention of immediate danger to public health. The state’s priority is ensuring that applicants know what they are legally forbidden to do, such as managing highly infectious diseases, prescribing prescription-only medications, or practicing dentistry.
Consequently, broader ethical education is completely sidelined. Vital topics like the biomedical principles of patient autonomy, managing clinical conflicts of interest, and the complexities of informed consent are virtually absent. While some voluntary professional associations have established a code of conduct (Berufsordnung für Heilpraktiker), learning and understanding these ethical guidelines is entirely voluntary and self-guided.
Beyond ethics, maany other critical subjects are severely neglected in the Heilpraktiker schools, e.g.:
- Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Scientific Literacy: students are rarely taught how to critically appraise clinical research, differentiate between correlation and causation, or recognize the cognitive biases inherent in anecdotal “success stories.”
- Pharmacology and Interaction Risks: While forbidden from prescribing prescription drugs, practitioners heavily utilize herbs and other dietary supplements. The study of how these substances interact with each other and a patient’s conventional pharmaceutical regimens is usually overlooked.
- Emergency Medicine and Differential Diagnosis: Because training lacks mandatory, standardized clinical rotations, practical competency in identifying red flags, such as atypical cardiac symptoms or early-stage oncological presentations, is dangerously variable.
The Heilpraktiker system offers unparalleled freedom of practice. At the same time, there is a near total lack of rigorous educational standards. This huge and dangerous imbalance leaves practitioners ill-equipped and put the public at unacceptable risks. Here are some examples of what can thus happen:
- The Klaus Ross / 3-Bromopyruvat (3-BP) Tragedy (2016): In one of Germany’s most notorious SCAM scandals, a Heilpraktiker operating a “Biological Cancer Center” in Brüggen treated terminally ill cancer patients with 3-Bromopyruvat, an unapproved, highly experimental chemical compound. Using an inaccurate kitchen scale to mix the powder himself, he administered massive overdoses via intravenous infusions. At least three patients died within days of the treatment, leading to his conviction for negligent homicide.
- The “BG-Mun” Fake Cancer Cure Scandal (Schrobenhausen): A Heilpraktiker, working alongside a businessman, defrauded desperately ill cancer patients by selling a fake “miracle serum” called BG-Mun for up to €5,900 per package. The practitioner explicitly pressured patients to abandon their conventional oncological treatments (like chemotherapy), promising that the serum would reverse tumor growth. Chemical testing later revealed the expensive liquid was nothing but worthless dilutions of glucose and basic amino acids. Multiple patients, including a 52-year-old esophagus cancer patient who went public with the story, died after their cancers metastasized following their cessation of proper medical care.
- Severe Complications from Autologous Blood Therapy (Eigenbluttherapie): A widespread SCAM among Heilpraktiker involves drawing a patient’s blood, mixing it with ozone, oxygen, or homeopathic remedies, and reinjecting it back into the muscle or vein to “stimulate the immune system.” Due to insufficient training in strict clinical hygiene, numerous documented cases have occurred where patients suffered from sepsis, internal abscesses, and systemic bacterial infections requiring emergency ICU hospitalizations.
- Misdiagnosis of Life-Threatening Emergencies: Because the Heilpraktiker exam does not mandate clinical training, practitioners have no clinical experience and frequently miss time-critical medical diagnoses. Documented cases include patients presenting with atypical chest pain being treated with acupuncture for “energy blockages” rather than being immediately referred to a hospital for an evolving myocardial infarction. Similarly, early-stage, highly curable melanomas or other malignancies have been misidentified as benign skin lesions or metabolic imbalances, delaying life-saving surgeries until the diseases reached terminal stages.
- Ineffective SCAMs for Acute Psychiatric Crises: Some Heilpraktiker choose to specialize in psychotherapy (Heilpraktiker für Psychotherapie). Scandals have arisen where patients suffering from severe clinical depression or acute psychotic episodes were treated solely with Bach flower remedies, St. John’s wort, or talking therapy rooted in esoteric ideas. The rejection of conventional psychiatric intervention and pharmaceutical stabilization in these acute phases has directly led to preventable self-harm and suicides.
So, why does Germany put up with the Heilpraktiker?
Despite repeated and fierce criticism, the German Heilpraktiker is sustained by a combination of law, politics, and tradition. The primary legal shield is Article 12 of the German Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of occupation (Berufsfreiheit). Because the state’s entry exam pretends to screen for immediate public danger (Gefahrenabwehr), courts pretend the system is legally sufficient; completely banning the profession would trigger severe constitutional challenges.
Furthermore, as often discussed on this blog, SCAM enjoys immense public popularity in Germany. Millions of Germans value the Heilpraktiker for the long and empathetic consultations that the overburdened conventional insurance system rarely permits. This widespread voter support, coupled with a highly organised political lobby, makes outright abolition a political non-starter.
Thus Germany continues to have a two-tier health system. This paradox exposes a profound cultural contradiction in the German psyche, which is famously stereotyped as risk-averse, highly bureaucratized, and obsessed with systemic order. While Germany tends to regulate everything from highway speeds to the exact composition of its beer, its tolerance of the Heilpraktiker system represents a massive, hazardous blind spot.
By clinging to an outdated Nazi-law out of political convenience and romanticized cultural traditions, the state has allowed this two-tier medical landscape to persist – one built on rigorous science, and another shielded by a legal loophole. In trying to uphold the constitutional freedom of occupation, the German legislative framework inadvertently compromises a far more fundamental duty: the protection of the public from dangerous quacks. This leaves a nation known for “playing it safe” in the ironic position of legally sanctioning pseudo-scientific nonsense within its healthcare system.
A fuller analysis of the Heilpraktiker can be found in my book “Vorsicht Heilpraktiker” [in German].
Because homeopathic remedies are usually diluted to the point where none of the original substance remains (often beyond Avogadro’s number), the ethical concerns with this treatment must focus on veracity (truth-telling), patient autonomy, beneficence, and justice. Here are some of the problems that ensue**:
Violations of Veracity and Informed Consent
Informed consent is an essential element of medical ethics and dictates that a patient must be given full, accurate, and evidence-based information regarding a treatment’s nature, mechanisms, risks, and efficacy to make an autonomous decision.
Homeopathy operates on two main principles: “like cures like” (Law of Similars) and the “law of minimum dose” (the more diluted a substance, the more potent it becomes). Scientifically, these principles contradict established kowledge of chemistry, physics, and pharmacology. Presenting these concepts nevertheless as scientifically valid violates veracity.
When a practitioner administers or sells a homeopathic remedy without explicitly stating that it contains no active ingredients and performs no better than a placebo in clinical trials, the patient’s autonomy is compromised. In other words, patients are making a healthcare choice based on deception or omission.
Maleficence
While homeopathics are physically inert and thus unlikely to cause direct harm, homeopathy poses a severe threat via indirect harm.
The most critical ethical issue occurs when patients use homeopathy for severe, progressive, or life-threatening conditions (such as cancer, severe infections, or chronic diseases like diabetes). Delaying or entirely replacing evidence-based medicine with placebo treatments (i.e. homeopathy) violates the duty of non-maleficence (do no harm). It can lead to preventable suffering, worsening of the condition, or even death in extreme cases.
Homeopathic “Vaccines” (Homeoprophylaxis) is an apt example. Some homeopaths offer all sorts of homeopathic vaccinations as alternatives to standard immunizations. Marketing these as effective protection against potentially deadly diseases like measles, polio, or pertussis erodes public herd immunity, leaves individuals entirely unprotected, and can endanger us all. This is a massive failure of both individual and public health ethics.
Beneficence
Beneficence requires healthcare providers to act in the best interest of the patient by offering treatments that provide a tangible, therapeutic benefit.
While the empathetic, unhurried nature of a homeopathic consultation can provide psychological comfort, homeopaths cannot ethically justify charging high fees for what is essentially a placebo wrapped in pseudo-medicine. Relying on a mechanism that depends on the patient remaining ignorant of the treatment’s true nature is fundamentally paternalistic and violates modern standards of beneficence.
Justice and the Exploitation of Vulnerability
The ethical principle of justice involves fairness, equity, and the responsible distribution of healthcare resources. It is regularly violated in the realm of homeopathy.
Homeopathic remedies are cheap to manufacture, yet they are marketed at unjustifiably inflated prices. Targeting vulnerable populations, such as the chronically ill, parents anxious about medication side effects in their children, or low-income individuals seeking cheap alternatives, is an ethical violation of justice.
When public the health insurance programs of certain countries, or mainstream pharmacies fund or promote homeopathic products alongside effective medicines, they misallocate resources and mislead the public. In other words, they give a false stamp of authority to quackery, draining resources that could support evidence-based public health initiatives.
So, how unethical is homeopathy? My short answer is: VERY!
** for a more detailed discussion, please have a look at our book.
The long-standing consensus surrounding moderate alcohol consumption has recently been disrupted by a landmark review. Initiated under a US congressional mandate to evaluate the evidence base for the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the study—convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) alongside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—concluded that even a single alcoholic beverage per day significantly elevates the risks of serious chronic illness and premature death. After unexplained bureaucratic delays, the release of this taxpayer-funded research delivers a sobering truth: there is no net health benefit derived from alcohol consumption at any level.
For decades, public perception was shaped by data suggesting that a daily glass of wine or beer could act as a cardiovascular shield. This new review systematically dismantles that notion by identifying significant methodological biases in the previous evidence. Chief among these is the “sick quitter” effect, wherein baseline categories of non-drinkers inadvertently included individuals who had abstained precisely because of pre-existing, severe health conditions. By correcting for these distortions, the review demonstrated that health risks accumulate linearly. Alcohol acts as a dose-dependent toxin with no safe lower threshold, and even minimal daily intake accelerates linear risk trajectories for:
- liver cirrhosis,
- severe hypertension,
- various malignancies, including esophageal, colorectal, and breast cancers.
Beyond chronic pathology, low-level consumption also:
- impairs cognitive architecture,
- accelerating brain aging,
- elevates the immediate probability of physical injury.
The friction surrounding the report’s delayed release has exposed systemic vulnerabilities at the intersection of federal policy and corporate lobbying. Historically, US dietary guidelines defined moderate drinking as up to two drinks per day for men and one for women. The new scientific consensus exposes these thresholds as dangerously obsolete, highlighting a stark disconnect between federal health advice and contemporary medical data.
This friction might underscore the impact of the commercial determinants of health, exposing how multi-billion-dollar alcohol conglomerates employ aggressive public relations campaigns and sophisticated scientific interference to preserve market shares. By aggressively marketing alcohol as a benign staple of a healthy lifestyle, the industry had successfully obscured its intrinsic risks. The new evidence shifts the conversation from personal indulgence to an important public health issue.
Update (July 2026): a US government–commissioned analysis of alcohol-related risk was published. Here is its abstract:
The purpose of this study was to estimate the lifetime risk of alcohol-attributable mortality and morbidity in the United States based on a person’s average lifetime weekly alcohol consumption to assess the impact of per-occasion alcohol consumption on health.
Lifetime risks were estimated using a cause-specific modeling approach that combined exposure data from national health surveys, relative risks, population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and morbidity data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. A narrative review assessed the health impact of per-occasion alcohol consumption on health.
At low levels of consumption, no protective net effect of alcohol consumption on health was observed. Elevated mortality and morbidity risks were associated with alcohol consumption starting at relatively low levels. Males consuming >6.5 (95% CI [<1, 13.5]) and females consuming >7.0 (95% CI [<1, 11.5]) drinks per week had life-time alcohol-attributable mortality risks >1:1,000. At >8.5 (95% CI [2.5, 13]) drinks per week for both males and females, these risks increased to >1:100. At 14 drinks per week for males (the upper limit of the former Dietary Guidelines for males), the risk of an alcohol-caused death was 1:25 (4%). Drinking patterns also impacted risk. Above 1 drink per occasion, higher consumption was associated with progressively increased risks of breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, and injury.
Alcohol consumption, including at what may be perceived as “moderate” levels, is associated with increased mortality and morbidity risks. These results support tightening alcohol use guidance in the United States, for both males and females, to no more than 1 drink per day.
Public health significance statement: The Alcohol Intake and Health Study shows that for Americans, even what is socially considered “moderate drinking” increases the risk of dying or developing health problems, helping people better understand the net health impact of alcohol. Furthermore, by identifying the levels of alcohol use that raise the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and injury, these findings can guide individuals, families, and communities in making safer choices about drinking patterns. The results also support changing the U.S. Dietary Guidelines on alcohol to recommend that current adult drinkers consume 1 drink or less in a day.
Authors and independent observers have described the report as having been sidelined during the Trump administration, citing conflicts with industry interests and existing “moderate drinking is safe” messaging.
I spent the last 2 months in France where it happened to be hot. Too hot for my taste! I could not do much during the day and, at night, I was unable to sleep well. As the heatwave carried on, it began to impact on my mood and health. I may be particularly sensitive to heat, but I am by no means the only one who suffered. Record-breaking temperatures and unprecedented ocean warming have triggered a global health emergency. Driven by climate change, modern heatwaves are predicted to strike with greater frequency, intensity, and duration, pushing human physiology to (and sometimes past) its limits.
Extreme heat operates as a silent killer by severely exacerbating pre-existing cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. It can also cause acute medical issues like severe dehydration, kidney damage, heatstroke, and even death. Extreme heat disproportionately impacts highly vulnerable groups, including older adults, children, outdoor laborers, and individuals who are unhealthy to start with. Urban populations face magnified dangers due to the urban heat island effect, which traps dense pockets of heat in city environments.
The consequences are already devastating. The recent heatwaves in Europe caused over 1,300 excess deaths within just a few weeks. Extreme heat contributes to a global toll of hundreds of thousands of heat-related fatalities each year. It also ripples through societal infrastructure. Extreme heat heavily strains our healthcare systems, disrupts local economies, worsens food and water insecurity worldwide, endangers local transport and other infrastructure. Here in France, for instance, we had prolonged cuts first of electricity and then on the Internet/telephone; many people and shops had to throw away the content of their fridges and freezers. Even more alarming: one of France’s largest rivers, the Loire, went completely dry.
An analysis of nearly 2,500 UK media articles covering the June heatwave found that most reports failed to connect the event to climate change, despite strong scientific evidence that global heating intensifies extreme weather. Approximately three-quarters of the articles made no reference to climate change or global warming, highlighting a significant gap between scientific consensus and public communication. Such omissions are problematic because they leave audiences without crucial context. Attribution science now allows researchers to quantify how much more likely or intense specific heatwaves have become due to greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from fossil fuel use. Without this information, heatwaves may be perceived as isolated or purely natural events rather than manifestations of a broader, human-driven trend. Failing to link extreme weather to climate change undermines public understanding and may weaken support for mitigation and adaptation policies.
The most worrying thing is that we are rapidly approaching irreversible thresholds. To mitigate this mounting catastrophe, immediate international cooperation is required. We must deploy both short-term adaptation strategies, such as robust local heat action plans and early warning weather networks, as well as aggressive, long-term global emissions reductions. And we also should vote out politicians who still:
- pretend that climate change is a hoax,
- blame their neighouring country, despite being huge polluters themselves,
- shout “drill baby, drill”,
- pretend that summers have always been hot,
- claim (against all medical knowledge) that humans will somehow manage to adapt to extreme heat.
Without urgent measures, the human and economic toll will escalate uncontrollably.
Medical ethics rests on 4 core principles: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, along with the crucial rule of veracity (truth-telling). In the realm of chiropractic, the most significant ethical issues/problems generally fall into the following ethical categories:
- Compromised Informed Consent & Veracity
Informed consent requires that a patient fully understands the nature, risks, benefits, and scientific backing of a treatment before proceeding.
1.1.The “Subluxation” Theory: A sizable segment of the chiropractic community still adheres to the erroneous belief that spinal “vertebral subluxations” cause a disruption in the body’s “innate intelligence,” leading to systemic disease. From an ethical standpoint, promoting an unproven, pseudo-scientific premise as medical fact violates veracity and compromises patient autonomy, as patients cannot give truly informed consent based on erroneous concepts.
1.2. Over-claiming Scope of Efficacy: While evidence might support spinal manipulation for acute lower back pain (if one were to interpret the dtat optimistically), most chiropractors claim they can treat many other illnesses, including non-musculoskeletal conditions such as asthma, allergies, infantile colic, ADHD, and high blood pressure. Marketing these services without robust clinical trial backing misleads vulnerable populations.
- Violations of Non-Maleficence
The principle of non-maleficence requires practitioners to avoid inflicting unnecessary harm or exposing patients to disproportionate risks.
2.1. Cervical Manipulation and Stroke Risk: One of the most severe ethical concerns involves high-velocity, low-amplitude (HVLA) thrusts to the upper neck, the hallmark modality of chiropractors. This procedure has been linked to vertebral artery dissection (VAD), which can cause strokes and deaths. The ethical failure is most obvious when chiropractors perform these adjustments without warning the patient of this and other adverse outcomes.
2.2. Paediatric Chiropractic: Performing spinal adjustments on infants and toddlers (whose spines are primarily cartilage and still developing) poses distinct physical risks. Because infants cannot consent and the evidence of benefit for childhood ailments is practically non-existent, this behaviour violates non-maleficence.
- Secondary Harm: Delay of Standard Medical Care
Harm does not only come from physical injury; it also comes from omitting or delaying necessary medical treatment.
3.1. Anti-Vaccine and Anti-Medicine Sentiments: A large proportion of the chiropractic profession advise patients against conventional medicine, pharmaceuticals, and vaccination. When a chiropractor discourages a patient from seeking standard medical care, they are actively contributing to potentially life-threatening delays in care.
- Violations of Beneficence and Justice
Beneficence means acting in the patient’s best interest, while justice involves the fair and equitable distribution of healthcare resources.
4.1. The “Maintenance Care” Business Model: A common predatory practice of chiropractors involves convincing patients that they require lifelong, regular spinal adjustments to “stay aligned” and prevent disease, often locked into expensive upfront contracts. Recommending continuous, costly treatments that lack clinical evidence of long-term benefit shifts the focus from patient welfare (beneficence) to practitioner financial gain.
4.2.Over-Utilization of X-rays: Some chiropractic clinics mandate full-spine X-rays for every new patient, regardless of symptoms, and repeat them frequently to “prove” alignment changes. Exposing patients to unnecessary ionizing radiation for marketing or diagnostic justification is a direct violation of both non-maleficence and the ethical use of healthcare resources.
For a more detailed account of the ethical problems in so-called alternative medicine, please see our book on this very subject.
I suppose nobody need eplanations what the Epstein files are, or what crimes they depict, or how often Trump is mentioned in them. What many might not know is that even the United Nations (UN) have commented on these documents
Independent human rights experts, operating under mandates from the UN Human Rights Council, have warned that the Epstein files reveal evidence of a possible global criminal enterprise involving systematic sexual abuse, trafficking, and exploitation of women and girls. Due to the scale, transnational reach, and systematic nature of these atrocities, the experts stated that the documented conduct may meet the legal threshold for crimes against humanity. Under international law, this threshold applies to acts like sexual slavery, torture, and trafficking when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.
The disclosure follows the “Epstein Files Transparency Act” of 2025, which led to the US Department of Justice releasing over three million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images in January 2026. The background involves wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while facing minor-recruitment and sexual exploitation charges, and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
The experts emphasized that states are legally obligated to investigate these crimes, which were fueled by corruption, supremacy, and extreme misogyny. They called for independent and impartial investigations into all individuals, financial structures, and official entities implicated, asserting that resignations are not a substitute for criminal accountability.
The experts praised the resilience of the survivors but criticized “grave errors” in the release process that exposed sensitive victim information, risking retaliation and stigma. They urged the adoption of victim-centered standard operating procedures for future disclosures and demanded that governments act decisively, declaring that no one is too wealthy or powerful to be above the law.
“Any suggestion that it is time to move on from the ‘Epstein files’ is unacceptable. It represents a failure of responsibility towards victims,” they said. “It is imperative that governments act decisively to hold perpetrators accountable,” the experts said. “No one is too wealthy or too powerful to be above the law.”
Trump and his team have repetedly responded to Epstein-file in general. Trump himself seems keen to disregard the experts, do precisely what they warned against, and move on. As far as I know, there is no statement of Trump or his team commenting directly on the UN experts’ “crimes against humanity” document itself.
In my view, it gets increasingly hard to ignore parallels between US anti-regulatory health movements and historical eugenics programs like the one enacted by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Evaluating the rhetoric of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regarding disease, public health infrastructure, and chronic illness, an underlying philosophy emerges of prioritizing a return to idealized “natural health”, while dismantling the medical systems designed to protect the vulnerable. This, I would argue, echoes the tenets of “eugenics” as practiced by the Nazi regime.
To understand this comparison, we must examine the foundational ideology of Nazi eugenics. It was a concept wrapped in the language of public health and hygiene, biological purification, and economic efficiency. The Nazis aimed to eliminate what they deemed to be lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of life). German physicians at the time feared that medical science was keeping the weak alive at the expense of the strong, thereby subverting the natural laws of selection. The Nazis viewed chronic illness and disability to be a drain on the collective national body (Volksgesundheit). Their conclusion was that the elimination of the genetically inferior was a biological necessity.
A modern variant of this ideology manifests in rhetoric that views chronic illness not as a collective societal responsibility requiring robust medical intervention, but as a biological failure stemming from a corrupted modern infrastructure. Kennedy’s actions focus on dismantling federal health agencies and drastically alter the regulatory framework governing medicine. In public addresses, he has consistently attacks established medical consensus, stating that public health policies are “ruining our children’s health” and leading to an “epidemic of chronic disease.”
Further alignment with eugenicist thinking lies in the proposed solutions to this perceived crisis. Rather than strengthening protective medical care, the rhetoric frequently leans towards a form of biological determinism that views modern medical interventions, such as vaccines and standard pharmaceuticals, as inherently corrupting influences that prevent the human body from achieving its “natural” state. This brand of anti-science rhetoric effectively abandons the vulnerable, stating that the aggressive opposition to standard medical treatments threatens to reverse decades of progress in child survival and disproportionately harms those with compromised immune systems.
When politicians advocate dismantling public health protections in order to let ‘natural immunity’ or ‘cleansing’ of dependencies determine who survives and who does not survive, they risk endorsing a “survival-of-the-fittest” ideology that overlaps with social Darwinist and eugenic ways of thinking. By declaring chronic illness as something to be purged via the withdrawal of institutional medical support, the rhetoric subtly shifts from a message of health advocacy to one of biological exclusion.
Please don’t get me wrong! I do not for a moment seek to diminish the crimes and atrocities of Nazi eugenics; they remain a singular and unprecedented horror. My purpose, rather, is to highlight that any ideology which calls for the erosion of medical safeguards for the sick rests on a perilous philosophical kinship with the Nazi project of privileging the “healthy” over the “infirm.” By recognising these parallels, we may hope to remain vigilant and help forestall the repetition of such history.
Ten years after Brexit, it seems reasonable to ask what effects Brexit has caused on health-related matters for the UK and beyond. Here is my attenpt to provide an answer; these are the 8 issues that come to my mind:
- Workforce Disruption and Recruitment Shift: The ending of free movement led to a sharp drop in EU-trained doctors, nurses, and social care staff. To plug these vacancy gaps, the UK was forced into recruiting heavily from non-EU nations. This created a fragile reliance on international recruitment from countries facing their own healthcare worker shortages. In turn, this further supported the xenophobic sentiments of some UK citizens.
- Medicine Supply Problems: Leaving the EU single market introduced significant customs and regulatory friction. This friction directly contributed to the frequency and severity of local pharmaceutical shortages in the UK.
- Loss of Regulatory Leverage: By exiting the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the UK became a standalone market. Pharmaceutical companies now regularly prioritize the much larger EU and US markets for rolling out cutting-edge new treatments, leaving the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to act as a “rule-taker” by fast-tracking approvals already granted elsewhere.
- Cross-Border Friction: Reciprocal healthcare arrangements became more complex under the new Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) system. While basic travel is covered, specialized cross-border medical networks face ongoing administrative and legal hurdles. Many British ex-pats’ found themselves without health cover.
- Regulatory Divergence in Training and Innovation: The UK has increasingly diverged from EU rules, such as lowering the mandatory clinical training hours required for a nursing degree to get staff into hospitals faster. Additionally, medical technology and AI developers now face double-compliance costs (clearing separate UK and EU hurdles). This makes the UK a more expensive market to launch new health technologies.
- The Macro-economic Squeeze: The overall economic downturn resulting from Brexit reduced UK GDP, shrinking the available tax revenues. This has directly limited the government’s financial capacity to fund the NHS, to clear post-pandemic backlogs, and to invest in long-term social care reform.
- Exacerbating Health Inequalities: As inflation, food costs, and supply chain disruptions damaged the UK, vulnerable socioeconomic groups have been hit the hardest. These economic pressures, combined with a chronically strained social care sector, significantly widen UK health inequalities.
- Compounding Pressure on Patient Outcomes: While ultimate health metrics, such as mortality rates and overall life expectancy, are influenced by dozens of complex variables, an underfunded NHS, chronic staffing vulnerabilities, and restricted access to new drugs create a persistent, negative headwind against public health which, in the long run, can only negatively affect patient outcomes.
All of these effects are clearly negative.
Can anyone think of a positive effect?
I can’t!
The claim that Elon Musk might be “killing millions” sounds like hyperbolic rhetoric, but it is an entirely predictable mathematical projection of his policy choices. Peer-reviewed global health modeling showed that the systematic dismantling of USAID—spearheaded by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—will result in over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, millions of whom are children. By freeze-framing and terminating programs that provide life-saving vaccines, malaria bed nets, and HIV therapeutics, these actions have directly triggered the resurgence of entirely controllable diseases.
Hard to believe?
See for yourself; here is the abstract of the paper published in the Lancet:
Background: Official development assistance (ODA) accounts for the majority of humanitarian and development assistance in the world’s most vulnerable countries and has played a pivotal role in advancing global health. We aimed to comprehensively evaluate the impact of ODA funding on mortality across the past two decades, and to project the potential consequences of current defunding trends.
Methods: We conducted an integrated retrospective evaluation and forecasting analysis using longitudinal panel data from 93 low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). First, we estimated the association between ODA per-capita funding and mortality outcomes from 2002 to 2021 using a two-ways fixed-effects multivariable Poisson regression model with robust standard errors, adjusted for all relevant demographic, socioeconomic, and health-system covariates. We then assessed age-specific and cause-specific effects, performing extensive sensitivity and triangulation analyses to test the robustness and causal interpretation of results. Finally, we integrated the retrospective impact estimates into validated country-level microsimulation models to forecast mortality under three defunding scenarios up to 2030: a business-as-usual trajectory, a severe defunding scenario, and a mild defunding scenario.
Findings: Higher ODA funding levels were associated with a 23% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality (rate ratio [RR] 0·77; 95% CI 0·70-0·85) and a 39% reduction in under-5 mortality (0·61; 0·49-0·75). ODA funding was associated with large mortality declines in major communicable diseases: 70% for HIV/AIDS (RR 0·30; 95% CI 0·24-0·39), 56% for malaria (0·44; 0·35-0·56), 56% for nutritional deficiencies (0·44; 0·30-0·65), and 54% for neglected tropical diseases (0·46; 0·36-0·59). Significant reductions were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal causes. Forecasting analyses projected that ongoing reductions in ODA funding could, under a severe defunding scenario, result in 22·6 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 16·3-29·3) additional deaths across all ages by 2030, including 5·4 million (4·1-6·8) among children younger than 5 years. Under a mild defunding scenario-defined as a continuation of current downward trends-the projected excess deaths would be 9·4 million (95% UI 6·2-12·6) overall and 2·5 million (1·8-3·2) among children younger than 5 years.
Interpretation: ODA funding has played a decisive role in reducing preventable mortality across LMICs over the past two decades, and the abrupt withdrawal of this support threatens to cause millions of avoidable deaths, reversing decades of progress in global health.
Funding: RF Catalytic Capital and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Attempting to shield Musk from the moral indictment of these deaths by hiding behind bureaucratic complexity is a cop-out. Musk is not a passive advisor suggesting minor budgetary trims; he has aggressively engineered and celebrated the destruction of these aid mechanisms on his public platform, explicitly branding the defunding of life-saving infrastructure as “clipping waste.” When an individual wields unchecked power to eliminate interventions with legally and medically proven survival rates, the line between “efficiency” and institutional negligence disappears. He is fully aware of the survival benefits of these programs, making the choice to dismantle them a calculated acceptance of mass mortality.
While defenders argue that epidemiological models deal in macro-statistics rather than localized causality, this defense elides the nature of modern accountability. Musk cannot hand-select which specific child dies of malaria, but he did hand-select the budget line that funded their treatment. Pretending this is just a structural or collective government failure sanitizes the reality: a single billionaire used his leverage to treat global survival infrastructure like an unprofitable corporate acquisition, making him materially and morally responsible for the human body count that follows.
In March 2025, a federal judge ruled that DOGE’s effort to dismantle USAID likely violated the Constitution and ordered restoration of access to key systems, saying USAID had been effectively eliminated. That matters because it weakens any claim that the dismantling was merely speculative or rhetorical: courts have already treated the shutdown effort as legally serious.
For a deeper look into the systemic impact of these specific health program suspensions and the firsthand accounts of how these funding disruptions unfolded on the ground, you can watch this France 24 Interview with a USAID Whistleblower.
Internal HHS and CDC communications leaked by the US Senate HELP Committee expose a truly scary crisis of institutional integrity. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. systematically dismantled evidence-based public health infrastructure to implement his personal, ideological and dangerous agenda. This was not merely a shift in administrative policy; it was an aggressive, top-down politicisation of science that directly compromised public safety.
It is now clear that less than 24 hours after his confirmation on 29/30 January 2025 – in the midst of a severe flu season that had already claimed 16,000 lives, including 68 children – Kennedy issued a direct mandate to halt active flu vaccine public service advertisements. Internal communications from HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon explicitly confirm this “was a direct ask from Secretary Kennedy.”
The institutional damage caused by Kennedy’s actions extends far beyond suppressed messaging into structural purges. In fact, it seems likely that Kennedy committed perjury. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy misled lawmakers regarding his intentions to restrict vaccine access and his past anti-vaccine interventions. Once in power, his chief of staff enforced an “absolute need for political review” over career scientists. Kennedy subsequently fired the entire 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), replacing them with people with strong anti-vaccine views. When career CDC Director Susan Monarez resisted rubber-stamping these politically motivated recommendations, Kennedy fired her, triggering a wave of high-level resignations among the agency’s top medical officers.
The leaked emails also confirm that Kennedy bypassed standard scientific clearance protocols to dispatch handpicked researchers into confidential CDC databases. This was a deliberate attempt to weaponize raw public health data to manufacture evidence for a spurious vaccine-autism link that has been thoroughly debunked by global longitudinal studies involving millions of children.
By substituting ideological loyalty for empirical evidence, the US administration has compromised the foundational mechanics of medicine. When a federal health agency is forced to prioritize dogma over data, the ultimate cost is inevitably paid in preventable human disease and death.
The conclusion: Kennedy has likely committed the serious crime of perjury, has shown to be a danger to our (the damage can quickly spread beyond the US) health, and in my view has to be removed from office asap.
