Lucidicus Project: A Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit

About the Project

The Lucidicus Project encourages young people entering the medical
profession to examine the moral and economic foundations of ideas
such as individual rights and capitalism.

The project is based in Boston, Massachusetts, and our mission is to
provide the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit to medical
students across the United States and around the world.

Why such a philosophical approach?

We take a philosophical approach because philosophy plays such a
crucial role in human events. A man's philosophy—whether he holds it
implicitly or explicitly—is his fundamental guide to life. It is
ultimately what helps him choose his values and courses of action.

For future doctors, one's personal philosophy influences choices,
such as whether to stand up against new regulations or allow further
government control to spread infiltrate the profession.

What is the fundamental problem in medicine today?

History shows us that central planning is disastrous to any country
and any industry. Economics explains why certain systems inevitably
lead to rationing, lower quality, longer waiting times, rising
expenditures, and other undesirable consequences.

Philosophy pinpoints the principles at work in this unfortunate chain
of cause and effect. These are facts.

Yet pundits and politicans continue to call for the expansion of the
very regulations, restrictions, and social programs that are the
cause of our healthcare malaise.

The Lucidicus Project helps students understand how improper
government intervention, past and present, has created the vast
majority of problems we face in medicine today.

Rather than protecting individual rights, federal and state
governments have instituted controls over trade, contracts, and
voluntary associations, leading to numerous market distortions and
misaligned incentives.

At the economic level, these interventions ultimately cause prices to
rise and quality to decline. At the clinical level, government-
instituted reimbursement schedules and treatment guidelines supplant
the judgment of doctors with that of central planners, causing
important medical decisions to be made according to what is good for
the state rather than what is good for the patient.

How is this perpetuated?

What makes the encroachment of state-run medicine possible is that
doctors, by and large, are not philosophically equipped to defend
themselves. They are told—and many believe—that the only proper
motive for entering medicine is to help others.

As a result, those who enter medicine for the self-motivated reasons
of intellectual challenge, love of the field, and financial reward
are made to feel a profound guilt over any material success they have
achieved.

This technique of inducing guilt gives the moral high ground to those
in society who demand self-sacrifice and submission. Unable to
advocate for their own rights, doctors come to accept and invite
further intrusion into their field under the mistaken premise that
such government control is needed in order to achieve prosperity
or "social justice."

What is the alternative?

The alternative is to allow doctors (and other producers of goods and
services) to practice their trade freely, without demanding that
their interests—or anyone's—be sacrificed to the service of anyone
else.

Applying the ideas of rights and free trade to medicine, we get a
scenario in which those who produce medical goods and services are
free to compete with other producers to earn the business of
patients.

Under capitalism, doctors would be free to practice medicine as they
see fit, not as government officials working from "national
guidelines" say they ought to.

Patients, of course, benefit most of all. They benefit from the boom
of human ingenuity and capital investment as new medicines,
procedures, and facilities are developed and constructed.

Patients also benefit tremendously from the increased competition in
goods and services, as they would be free to purchase and patronize
as they wish, without government officials restricting access or
enforcing mandatory waiting periods.

How can I learn more?

The books and materials in the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense
Kit introduce rights, capitalism, and other important ideas in a way
that most medical students can relate to.

The Lucidicus Project provides these kits to medical students free of
charge.

http://lucidicus.org/about.php