u/Economy_West6016

The Flexner Report is taught as a triumph of scientific progress. But the funding behind it tells a different story.

By 1920, women had dropped from 50% to 4% of American doctors. Six Black medical schools closed. Homeopathic and eclectic traditions were eliminated — not because they were disproven, but because they couldn't be patented.

The mechanism was the same one Rockefeller used with Standard Oil: control the infrastructure, control the definition of legitimate.

What do you think — was this reform or regulatory capture?

Some context that might interest historians here:

Flexner had no medical degree. He ran a prep school in Louisville before writing the most influential medical document in American history. His report was funded by the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations — both of whom had significant financial interests in petrochemical-based pharmaceuticals.

The schools that survived were the ones that received Rockefeller and Carnegie donations — with conditions attached about curriculum.

This isn't fringe history. It's documented in E. Richard Brown's "Rockefeller Medicine Men" (1979) and Paul Starr's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Social Transformation of American Medicine" (1982).

Has anyone read Brown's Rockefeller Medicine Men or Starr's Social Transformation? Curious what historians here think of the regulatory capture argument.

I also made a documentary-style breakdown of this if anyone's interested: https://youtu.be/nI6GHBXssNU

In 1910, the man who rewrote American medicine had no medical degree. He ran a prep school.

In 1910, a man with no medical training wrote a report that destroyed half of American medicine. He was funded by Rockefeller.