A poll: how many of you are physicians or other medical professionals? (And WHY do you read Unreported Truths?)

Lately I have been getting a LOT of emails from doctors. Given how often I write negatively about healthcare and medicine, I want to know why you read me - and what I can do better.

Last week, an old friend - a journalist turned physician - emailed a surprising note:

Alex,

I am one of your biggest fans, and read your work religiously. I place it at the same level as Substack postings by Matt Taibbi and Seymour Hersh.

What you have been writing lately about medicine, particularly the circumstances around the Houston pediatrician and the flood (and COVID!), is spot on. It's long overdue that this focus be placed on medicine. As I see it, doctors who decide to become political activists and let this intermingle with their medical care are as onerous as journalists who became political activists and let this supersede their objectivity as observers and reporters. In both instances, it has detracted from the mission.

Anyway, it must be a burden to field the incoming barrage of hatred you must be receiving from those who don't agree with you.

I admire your work.

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(More respected than the New England Journal of Medicine! And way cheaper…)

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This was my answer [redacted only to hide some personal details], and I meant every word:

XXX:

You have no idea how happy I am to hear this! Sometimes I think, XXX became a real doctor while I turned into this weird pontificator, I'll bet he looks at me as an object lesson when journalists get old and try to tell actual grown-ups how to behave. I'm glad you think I'm on the right track.

I truly do not understand how medicine - which so many smart people enter for the best possible reasons - has gotten so politicized and lost, how pediatricians think their role is to dump parents who may have questions about the vaccine schedule but hand out amphetamines to perfectly healthy kids who simply don't like to sit still.

Perhaps I'm too discouraged because of what I've seen with [REDACTED DETAILS] - but the fact that we spend so much more money than anywhere else and wind up with these terrible outcomes is a massive indictment of the system and the people leading it, to the extent anyone is in fact leading it…

But I hope you and XXX are well and enjoying XXX. Fill me in on everything!

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Anyway, my friend’s note got me thinking: I receive lots of emails from physicians and nurses. Maybe more than any other profession.

What’s strange is that I know plenty of physicians don’t like me. I had a particularly unpleasant run-in during Covid with one I know. We have since patched things up, but his open contempt gave me a bracing glimpse of how the medical establishment saw me.

Part of me doesn’t blame them. Medical school is rigorous, challenging, all-encompassing, and expensive. Doctors spend the best part of their twenties learning how to diagnose and treat disease (and sometimes even take care of patients). Outside of the military, no training remakes a person as thoroughly.

Now here I come, telling these skilled professionals their system is broken, particularly in the United States. I complain the drugs they prescribe too often don’t work and they and everyone and everything else else in healthcare cost far too much, even given their incredible training.

Plus, oh yeah, too many of them now let their political views interfere with their treatments they provide.

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(It could always be worse. At least we’re keeping the organ harvesting to a minimum. Unlike China.)

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Who exactly am I to complain? I’m not a doctor, or a nurse, or a research scientist. If you’re crashing and need your fluids balanced, don’t come to me! If you want a colonoscopy, please look elsewhere. Et cetera.

Yes, I’ve written about the drug industry for a long time. But, as my critics on X love to point out, I don’t even have an undergraduate sciences degree.

Yet a surprising number of UT readers ARE doctors or nurses or otherwise in the health sciences. And you are not merely emailing me, you are discussing these financial and cultural issues openly with each other on the comment forums.

Given how insular medicine can be, this is the equivalent of a war reporter creating a newsletter about problems in the military — and finding officers and soldiers not just tipping him and encouraging his reporting but frequently discussing their concerns publicly on his Website. Many physicians now appear profoundly alienated from the institutions where they work, as well as the professional organizations that claim to represent them and the government and private bodies that set healthcare standards.

Obviously, the analogy isn’t exact. Medicine doesn’t have a unified chain of command, and physicians and nurses are unlikely to face any discipline (except in unusual circumstances) for going public.

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(Obligatory second subscribe button, and reminder that time is running out for the $300 Unreported Truths founding member T-shirt…)

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Still, the size of the UT medical audience is yet another sign that the healthcare system and its established institutions are failing. A one-person newsletter shouldn’t be taking share from the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. But a lot of you seem to feel they aren’t hearing your perspectives.

Okay, onto the poll. It’s open to everyone, not just subscribers. I can’t check your answers either, so I hope you will be honest (not usually a problem for UT readers).

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The total tally will be interesting. But I am even more interested in WHY you read me, what stories you might like to see me investigate in the future, and how I can do better.

So please don’t hold back.