Book Review: Confessions of a Medical Heretic

Robert S. Mendelsohn: The Prominent Physician and Professor Who Turned Against the Establishment

Long before physician researcher Peter Gøtzsche criticized unnecessary medical exams (such as mammograms, breast exams and X-rays), or Nobel laureate virologist Luc Montagnier criticized vaccines, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn criticized the whole medical establishment’s for-profit approach to over-diagnosing and overmedicating imbalances in the human body and psyche. Besides his well-known book “Confessions of a Medical Heretic,” he wrote as “People’s Doctor” eye-opening and controversial articles such as “An Outspoken Physician Says the Biggest Threat to a Woman’s Health is Her Own Doctor!”

You can read the book for yourself or the following details (mostly from Wikipedia) to judge for yourself about the validity of his views. My research into his claims and data shared in the book shows they are mostly accurate. He also seems, as a seasoned professor and practitioner, well qualified and knowledgeable about the topic although his critics consider some of his views and generalizations extreme and unfair.

Science today is complex, sponsored for profit and politicized. Guided by his God-given conscience and not politics/profits, Ray Armat, Ph.D. is an unsponsored polymath, former NASA grantee and an independent farmer, dedicated to share useful uncensored simplified science. You can encourage him by sharing these articles and by subscribing (free or by donation).

Robert S. Mendelsohn (July 13, 1926 – April 5, 1988) was an American pediatrician, anti-vaccinationist and critic of medical paternalism. He denounced unnecessary hysterectomies, radical mastectomies, and dangerous medications, reminding his readers of public health failures such as the 1976 swine flu outbreak and the high rates of cancer suffered by daughters of women who took the drug diethylstilbestrol (DES) during pregnancy. He portrayed many doctors as powerful arrogant priests of a primitive dogma/religion that could not be questioned by the public, with dishonesty as its central ethic. His mild manner appealed to the public, while his message infuriated his medical colleagues.

Mendelsohn wrote a syndicated newspaper column called The People’s Doctor, and also produced a newsletter with the same name (the newsletter continued after his death until 1992, under the name The Doctor’s People. he offered simple yet scientifically-backed advice to people who trusted doctors with everything. For example, he believed that parents were better qualified than doctors to assess their children’s health: “If your baby is crying, pick her up. If your baby can’t sleep, take him into bed with you!” Mendelsohn believed “Doctor-prescribed drugs of modern medicine kill more people than illegal street drugs.” He shares historic data that during periods of doctors going on a strike, mortality rates actually have declined! He seem to share Leonardo Da Vinci’s advice (in Codex Atlanticus, 16th century): “Keep clear of physicians: Whoever takes medicine hurts himself”

Mendelsohn was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago in 1951. He was certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.[6] Mendelsohn had a full-time private pediatric practice from 1956 to 1967, and continued to see patients of all ages on a consultancy basis until his death in 1988.

For 12 years, Mendelsohn was an instructor at Northwestern University Medical College, and was associate professor of pediatrics and community health and preventive medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine for another 12 years.

Mendelsohn served as National Director of Project Head Start’s Medical Consultation Service, a position he was later forced to resign after criticizing the “deadening atmosphere” of regular public schools. He served as Chairman of the Medical Licensing Committee of Illinois. He was president of the alternative medicine National Health Federation (NHF) between 1981 and 1982.

Mendelsohn said that the greatest danger to American women’s health was often their own doctors, and contended that chauvinistic physicians subjected female patients to degrading, unnecessary and often dangerous medical procedures. Cancer treatments like hysterectomy and radical mastectomy, according to Mendelsohn, were among the most indiscriminately recommended surgical procedures. He shares research that shows when experts reviewed hysterectomies performed in New York hospitals, 43% of these operations were judged as unnecessary.

In an era in which the side effects of medications and the risks of medical treatments were hardly known except to doctors, Mendelsohn insisted that patients, too, had the right to such information. In the first of his books to attract widespread publicity, Confessions of a Medical Heretic (Contemporary Books 1979), he describes his efforts to make the Physician’s Desk Reference, the authoritative guide to medications and medical treatments, available to the public.

In Confessions, Mendelsohn argued that the methods of modern medicine were often more dangerous than the diseases they were designed to diagnose and treat. He advised consumers to be suspicious of their doctors. “One of the unwritten rules in Modern Medicine is always to write a prescription for a new drug quickly, before all its side effects have come to the surface.” As an example, Mendelsohn cites Valium (diazepam), a widely-prescribed benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety disorders, muscle spasms, and seizure, with side effects of anxiety, muscle fatigue and seizure/dizziness! In other words, the drug’s harmful effects are the same as those that it tries to treat (you can read more about what the anxiolytic benzodiazepine group of drugs did to a world renowned psychologist in my books and earlier articles).

Mendelsohn opposed vaccinations for children, claiming the shots are dangerous and worthless. This is long before other doctors like Andrew Wakefield, Suzanne Humphries, Peter Gøtzsche and Viera Scheibner started questioning the wisdom of childhood vaccines.

Mendelsohn’s other publications:

1982, Male Practice: How Doctors Manipulate Women, ISBN 0-8092-5721-1

1987, How To Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor, NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company, ISBN 0-8092-4995-2

1985, Dissent in Medicine…Nine Doctors Speak Out, Contemporary Books, Inc.

1988, But Doctor, About That Shot: The Risks of Immunizations and How to Avoid Them, by Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D., edited by Vera Chatz and published by The People’s Doctor, Inc.

The People’s Doctor Newsletter – published monthly from 1980 to 1988: https://thepeoplesdoctor.net/