Signals for what’s next – and what matters
Health ⎪ Innovation ⎪ Society
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Hey Reader,
It didn’t start with RFK.
It didn’t start with Trump.
But something is breaking. You can feel it.
Public trust is crumbling.
Not just in politics.
In medicine.
What used to be sacred—hospitals, journals, experts—is now up for debate. And not just debate. Open rebellion.
An anti expert, anti institution and anti truth zeitgeist has up-ended not only our politics but the very myths that envelop our society and now our hospitals, clinics and labs.
If our answer is eye rolls, p-values, and PowerPoint decks, we won’t just lose the public—we’ll forfeit the marrow of our professional sovereignty.
Most establishment doctors are trained to think that if they show the data and explain the science, trust will return.
But this is a mythic war, not a methodological dispute.
So the Trump-RFK coalition is less about science, and more about a narrative war over legitimacy.
Medicine Has Lost Its Myth
For most of modern American history, medicine carried a quiet authority.
Doctors weren’t perfect. But they were respected. Trusted. Believed.
You walked into a hospital and entered a sanctified space. You obeyed the prescription. You didn’t ask what peer-reviewed journal the treatment was in—you just swallowed the pill.
That era is over.
And it didn’t die because of TikTok influencers or fringe podcasts. It died because the very system that claimed to heal us stopped being human. It became faster, colder, richer, more bureaucratic. It started looking more like a hedge fund than a place of healing.
Then came COVID.
Conflicting messages. Shifting guidelines. Censorship. Corporate profits. Mandates. Burnout. Doxxing. Canceled careers. Broken trust.
The stage was set for a new kind of prophet—and into the void walked Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., torch in hand.
What’s happening in Congress is happening in our clinics: thieves have entered the temple.
The New Rebellion: Burn It All Down
What unites Trump and RFK—two men who couldn’t be more different—is not policy. It’s narrative.
They offer something people are starving for: clarity in the chaos. A villain to blame. A system to reject. A truth to feel in your bones, even if it doesn’t hold up in PubMed.
They’ve tapped into a new kind of American energy: anti-institutional rage that is as emotional as it is ideological.
“They lied to us.” ” They sold us out.” “They don’t care if we live or die.”
It doesn’t matter if those feelings are accurate. They are true in the nervous systems of millions.
And medicine, like media, like government, like academia, has become a symbol of the elites.
Which means it’s now fair game for the populist bonfire.
For a profession that has a self-image of being apolitical (more perception than truth) and anti-sentimentality, this has been a shocking pivot.
The Myth That Died
The old myth went like this: “Doctors are the guardians of truth. The institutions are rigorous and benevolent. The journals are sacred. The FDA protects us. NIH exists to advance science.”
That story worked for decades—so long as:
- The care felt personal
- The bills didn’t bankrupt you
- The systems worked for most people
Now?
- A 10-minute visit costs $500.
- You see a new provider every time.
- Your insurance denies your meds.
- And your doctor spends more time charting than looking you in the eye.
- Medications are more expensive than gold
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to lose faith.
You just have to be paying attention.
The New Myth: Outsider as Oracle
The collapse of trust has created space for a new archetype to rise:
- Truth-telling outlaw
- Rogue healer
- Wellness rebel
- Substack doctor (I’m the exception…!)
- Barefoot prophet with an X account, a vendetta, and a supplement line
They don’t need credentials. They don’t need data. They have something better: coherence + charisma.
If everything is a conspiracy, then only citizen detectives can sleuth out the truth. And pass sentence on perceived liars thieves and criminals. It is seductive precisely because
It’s seductive because it offers:
- Agency over authority
- Intuition over expertise
- Narrative coherence over institutional chaos
Rage, blame and mistrust will always have an audience. Warm lies feel better than cold truths. That’s why RFK’s anti-vaccine message resonates. Not because it’s medically sound—but because it feels emotionally true to millions who feel betrayed.
The public isn’t rejecting science per se (though at times they do)—they’re rejecting power that feels opaque, dehumanizing, and unaccountable. People don’t want data (in isolation), they want meaning, coherence and authenticity. They’ll settle for the simulacra of these if they can’t get the real thing.
People will always chose empathy without authority than authority without empathy —even if it’s medically dangerous. The felt sense of inner truth – weaponized by grifters and alternative health providers – seems the only reliable compass for patients who cannot trust experts. See this quote in a recent expose of why more women are foregoing traditional breast cancer therapies, including notable celebrities:
“People can come to these conversations with preconceived notions about the effectiveness of these treatments and whether they should do them,” said Dr.
Skyler Johnson, a radiation oncologist at the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute.
“I get the sense that they feel like they know more than me, that I’m more of an enemy than a counterpart trying to help.”
For more than ten years, Johnson has
studied people who forgo conventional cancer treatments in favor of unproven treatments. In one of his studies, the breast-cancer patients who made such a decision had a 470 percent increased risk of death in the following five years. He’s hesitant, at first, to say what’s changed in the decade since he began this line of research; social media was around a decade ago, after all.
“But I can tell you that the patient behavior has changed,” he said, referring to worsening distrust in doctors and in the health-care system at large. “And I think it’s changed in a way that is likely going to lead to the adoption of more unproven cancer treatments.”
What Establishment Doctors Still Don’t Get
Here’s the part that stings: most doctors think the answer is to be more scientific. More careful. More correct.
But this isn’t a fact war. It’s a myth war.
People aren’t rejecting science. They’re rejecting systems that made them feel small, scared, silenced, and disposable.
When a mother sees her child suffer after a vaccine—even if it’s correlation, not causation—and the system mocks her, censors her, or gaslights her… she doesn’t forget.
And when a doctor defends that system without compassion, he loses more than an argument. He loses the mythic trust people once had in medicine itself.
What This Means For The Future
Doctors may retain still high, if not declining, levels of trust. But Medicine and Healthcare are no longer the high priest and church of health for too many people. That throne is gone. People want it for themselves. They decide who they anoint. And perhaps that’s entirely a troubling development.
Now:
- Public health will be tribal.
- Science will be emotional.
- Truth will be voted on by the algorithm.
- And wellness will become increasingly spiritual, personal, and unregulated.
Some of that will be beautiful. Some of it will be deeply dangerous. And it will only grow more extreme as distrust of elites accelerate. AI and alternative medicine will increasingly fill the trust vacuum, not because they are better (although LLM’s like ChatGPT already outrival most medical providers fund of knowledge)—but because they are available, personalized, and not the government.
Patients are no longer just seeking care—they’re yearning for sovereignty, safety, and something sacred. But these are alien values to a system built on efficiency, compliance, and control. And so we will crown anyone—outlaw or oracle—who dares to offer them back to us.
What Now?
We need a new archetype of the healer:
- Less algorithm, more presence.
- Less arrogance, more humility.
- Less jargon, more narrative.
Not just doctors. Mythic doctors. Physicians who can weld the scalpel and forge the story. They must know the research and how to feel truth – and its vibes – in a room.
Because if we don’t adapt, we will lose not just the narrative—but the future of health itself.
This is not about simply getting media training (though that can help). That reeks of PR, spin, and scripted empathy. What’s needed now is authentic authority—the kind that isn’t memorized, but earned. It has to be one in which patients are co-creators with us and gain identity, agency, and belonging.
Postscript
How we take care of ourselves is perhaps the most important, most human and most spiritual thing we do. Every human enterprise, in some way, is a manifestation of this central and sacred calling.
So what’s happening in our healthcare system is of profound importance. RFK , Trump, Oz, Means are not the cause. They’re symptoms. Symptoms of a mass disillusionment with the idea that the system works.
Patients aren’t just fed up—they’re in open rebellion. A new class of prophets—some visionary, some dangerous—now wield the tools, the market, and the story to build a parallel health system. And what was once fringe is fast becoming the new mainstream.
Medicine has a choice. Rebuild trust—or keep feeding the fire.
The white coat is burning.
What comes next… is up to us.
Tomorrow Can’t Wait,
