Story at a Glance:
No industry, organization, or cause tasked with solving a problem will actually solve it, because the problem disappearing threatens their economic livelihood or political power—a dynamic visible everywhere from non-profits which constantly seek donations but never produce results to dating apps that deliberately prevent users from finding partners and leaving the platform.
The pharmaceutical industry has perfected this model: drugs are designed to be taken perpetually rather than cure, side effects create demand for additional drugs, and the entire regulatory apparatus is structured to protect this status quo by suppressing affordable natural therapies like DMSO that challenge it.
SSRIs epitomize this dynamic—massively overprescribed, frequently life-ruining, and nearly impossible to withdraw from—yet for decades, the industry successfully kept all criticism of them out of mainstream discourse.
Recently, efforts to connect SSRIs to mass shootings shifted the Overton window, making SSRI injuries gradually become acceptable to discuss, culminating in Secretary Kennedy recently holding a panel where victims shared devastating testimonies of what SSRIs had done to their lives.
Kennedy then announced a multiagency federal effort to combat inappropriate SSRI prescribing, train providers in how to correctly taper patients off antidepressants, and provide non-pharmaceutical alternatives—marking the first time in memory a federal health initiative has aimed to help get patients off a major drug class rather than on one.
Conversely, those who embrace the constant challenge of actually solving problems rather than managing them—in medicine and elsewhere—consistently find it is the most fulfilling way to practice, which is why Kennedy's approach of giving physicians a supportive framework to break from the status quo holds so much promise.
