@agaperealm @h4890

That's really sad. And even more sadly, not uncommon. Personally I've never really trusted the medical establishment, especially pharmaceuticals companies. When I am faced with the question of whether or not something involves a conspiracy, and I have no other means to discern it, I use these four criteria.

Means, motive, opportunity, and historical track record.

In the case of pharmaceuticals companies, they check all four boxes required for me to lean towards them operating a conspiracy for their own financial gain. That is my default judgement. Any interest in human health is always subservient to their profit motive, without fail. As to other forms of modern medicine, it's a bit of a toss up. When the doctors themselves aren't utterly incompetent fools wallowing in their own conceit, some of the techniques they can bring to bear are genuinely life saving. But most of the time in my experience they are incompetent conceited idiots. It's no wonder that the third leading cause of death in Canada and USA is medical malpractice.

This being said, not all science ticks those four boxes. A lot of it does, but definitely not all. Moreover, unlike the medical establishment which has inviolate financial incentives to collude to distract, deflect and deny their own malfeasance, science (when properly conducted) in general is all about debunking the established dogma. That's practically it's central thesis (aka: falsifiability/falsification). Modern academia has it's own issues, with scientific publishing being a virtual circle jerk in competition over grant money and so forth, but at the end of the day it still produces real tangible technologies and advancements we benefit from daily. Moreover, there're financial incentives for that to be the case, and given the overwhelming greed inherent to our economic system, that is a fairly reliable motive.