A middle-aged woman came to ER reporting high blood pressure for the past week. She mentioned dizziness. She was emotional in triage. Stressed at home. Well-appearing.

Her workup was normal. Labs, ECG, vitals stable. I sat down to talk.

She brought up life stressors, but then said, “Everyone’s stressed.”

I paused. I told her what I often have to remind patients, and myself: just because everyone’s stressed doesn’t mean your stress isn’t real. She nodded in agreement.

This reflexive dismissal — which we all do — shows how dangerously normalized our current misery is.

She told me she wanted to “get to the bottom” of her blood pressure problem. She worried it might be the COVID vaccine. She feared a stroke.

These conversations are increasingly common. And increasingly exhausting. They happen between cardiac arrests, broken bones, septic kids, and end-of-life discussions.

I explained that like 90–95 per cent of people with high blood pressure, her hypertension was essential, meaning no specific cause could be identified. Secondary causes exist, but they’re rare. This is basic medicine.

But facts don’t feel like enough anymore. Not in a timeline where science is suspect, evidence is recast as propaganda, and vice versa. Not when anxiety about the vaccine outweighs justifiable fears around heart disease, stroke, or death itself.

Reflecting on this, I keep coming back to the growing influence of the “wellness” economy, with its influencers, endless supplements, and its weaponized distrust of medicine. 

This is a movement that tells people science is corrupt, and health is a personal virtue. 

That second point also implies its inverse; that sickness is a result of personal weaknesses. None of it is true. But it doesn’t matter. Not when it feels true.

I went to medical school with a professor who spent decades studying autoimmune disease pathways. He wasn’t in it for the money or the status. He was trying to unlock something that could help millions of people he would never meet. “If I can find the key,” he told us, “then I’ve helped more people than I could see in a lifetime.”

That’s the spirit of medicine. Or at least it was.

Contrast that with today’s American medical leadership — credentialed grifters in white coats who sell lies, sow doubt, push ideology, and profit off the chaos. 

They claim to engage in scientific debate. But their arguments aren’t scientific. They’re preloaded talking points: that infection-induced immunity is superior and safer than vaccination, that vaccines cause infertility, that they’ve killed more people than COVID itself. None of these claims are supported by evidence. They contradict everything we know about immunology, virology, and decades of public health data.

And yet, instead of defending their positions in journals, conferences, or among peers, they position themselves as martyrs — attacking consensus while claiming they’re censored. It's not science. It’s strategy.

If a mechanic told you to pour sugar in your gas tank, you wouldn’t debate them. You’d report them, and that mechanic might be fined or lose their job. No one even has to die.

But these physicians? They abused their credentials — and the public’s trust — to spread disinformation on a scale no licensing board is prepared to confront. The consequences are far from hypothetical.

They’ve built a movement. One that weaponizes the First Amendment, reframing regulation as persecution, and truth itself as elite manipulation. They call it a civil rights issue. It’s not. It’s a coordinated attack on the foundation of scientific progress.

And they’ve convinced millions that those of us still showing up — still using the tools of modern medicine to reduce suffering and save lives — are part of some conspiracy. That we’re dangerous. That we’re the ones who are bought. 

It’s projection. It’s inversion. And it’s working.

The lives saved, the pain managed, the recoveries that looked like miracles — none of it came from celery juice or good vibes. It came from drugs. From ventilators. From the kind of brutal, unglamorous science these frauds now mock while calling doctors like me pharma shills. But the moment they can’t breathe, they show up expecting that same system to save them with the same tools they spent years turning into conspiracy bait. No hesitation. No apology. Just entitlement.

If the anti-science movement’s adherents had any ideological consistency or self-respect, they’d stop using hospitals altogether. But they won’t. Because deep down, they know this system, the one founded on honesty and scientific rigor, works. Even as they dismantle it.

This isn’t just burning out doctors. It’s driving them out. There’s a point at which too many nurses, physicians, and techs will simply say: “I’m done.” 

I’m still here. I worked in the ER yesterday. I work today. I’ll be back tomorrow. But I’m telling you: this relationship between medicine and society only works when both sides show up. Right now, one side is collapsing under the weight of lies, false equivalence, and cultural rot.

If you want modern medicine to be there when you need it, start calling lies what they are. Start calling grifters what they are. Stop pretending these are just differences of opinion.

Because there is a time limit. And we’re nearly out of time.

---

Code Black is a pseudonymous physician and health policy expert who now practices in Canada. Their previous Canada Healthwatch articles include I traded my U.S. medical career for life in Canada, and the physicians are coming. Is Canada ready?