The Email Was Not About Supplements
It was about teaching patients to distrust physicians
Trust in medicine is not lost in courtrooms or legislatures. It is lost quietly, one message at a time.
Recently I received an email claiming that a secret medical discovery from a wartime experiment had been hidden by governments and doctors for decades and was now finally being revealed.
The message urged me to watch a video quickly before it was removed.
There was no specific study, no identifiable investigator, and no citation.
It was not history.
It was not science.
It was marketing.
But the true product was not a supplement. The product was distrust.
The Architecture of Suspicion
The structure of the message matters more than the product it sells. It began with a shocking historical reference. It then asserted that authorities suppressed the truth. It implied that physicians knew but would not tell patients. Finally it offered the reader a chance to access forbidden knowledge. This sequence is psychologically powerful because it does not try to prove medicine is wrong. It tries to prove doctors are hiding something.
Once a patient believes that, clinical counseling changes completely. Evidence no longer competes with evidence. Evidence competes with suspicion. People are not persuaded by these messages because they misunderstand physiology. They are persuaded because the message answers a human fear: that institutions may not be fully honest. The email offers emotional certainty in place of clinical complexity.
When Delay Becomes Danger
In obstetrics this has real consequences. Our field depends on rapid decisions under uncertainty. When I explain why a patient with severe preeclampsia needs immediate delivery even when the baby may not survive, or why a septic infection after ruptured membranes requires urgent intervention, the discussion depends on a shared assumption. The patient must believe that my recommendations are based on safety rather than concealment. If the patient instead believes physicians routinely suppress cures or manipulate information, then medical advice becomes just another opinion. Delay follows. Delay in obstetrics is not abstract. Delay becomes hemorrhage, organ failure, or stillbirth.
Ethics Turned Inside Out
The email also did something ethically troubling. It invoked the crimes of wartime medical experiments not to remember victims or to warn about abuse of science, but to create authority.
The message suggested that dangerous experiments produced powerful cures that modern medicine refuses to use. This reframes medical ethics as obstruction rather than protection. The physician becomes not a professional bound by evidence and responsibility but a gatekeeper blocking access to truth. That idea damages more than reputation. It damages the clinical relationship on which safe care depends.
Trust Does Not Bend. It Breaks.
This is why misinformation is not simply incorrect information. It changes the rules of trust. Once patients adopt the belief that doctors conceal effective treatments, every recommendation becomes suspect. Reassurance sounds defensive. Nuance sounds evasive. Honest uncertainty sounds like deception. At that point the physician is no longer explaining medicine. The physician is trying to reestablish credibility.
What Actually Helps
Laughing at these emails does not help. Neither does trying to suppress them. What helps is explaining medicine clearly enough that the emails lose their power. Physicians must describe not only what we know but how we know it. We must explain uncertainty openly and explain why treatments are recommended. Silence leaves a vacuum, and the vacuum is filled by messages that sound confident and personal.
The Real Product
The greatest danger of these emails is not that a patient buys a supplement.
The danger is that a patient begins to see medicine as an adversary.
In obstetrics especially, safety depends on timely action guided by shared trust. When a patient hesitates because she suspects hidden motives, the harm is immediate and sometimes irreversible.
The email was not really about a hidden cure. It was about redefining the physician from a trusted professional into a suspected actor. Reassurance sounds defensive. Nuance sounds evasive. Honest uncertainty sounds like deception. And once that shift takes hold, patient safety becomes harder to protect.