OPINION:
Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during this week’s Make America Healthy Again conference — which was heavily sponsored by corporations and hosted by the nonprofit The MAHA Center — that artificial intelligence has the ability to “free us from medical tyranny.”
Eh. Maybe. Maybe not. It’d be just as accurate to say that AI has the ability to become the new face of medical tyranny.
It’d be just as worrisome to see AI pick up where government has left off, and where Big Pharma-slash-Corporate-Medicine has paused.
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Consider the coronavirus years and the clampdowns on individual health choice that occurred, and the medical bureaucrats who served as the face of COVID tyranny. That was a time that revealed the deep partnership between government and Big Pharma; between America’s so-called trusted medical experts and the world of vaccine developers.
Dr. Anthony Fauci became the face of medical tyranny.
But he was only one of thousands of tyrants.
Fauci would say jump; his adoring fans in the media would ask how high; and the mostly leftist-leaning politicians in federal and state and local governments would rush to implement some worst-case-scenario control that did zero to mitigate COVID risks but everything to seize individual liberties from citizens.
The hospital world, quick to note the loss of revenues that would occur from the government-forced clearings of their beds in case of COVID catastrophes, happily traded medical ethics for diagnostic dollars: the more test-case positives, the more deaths due to COVID, the more ventilators for patients, the more money they received from the taxpayers’ pockets.
The teachers unions played along and diligently shut schools; private businesses played along and happily applied for and received emergency COVID funds; pastors and preachers and faith leaders of all walks played along and shut church doors — at a time when the world most needed faith and hope and truth. And those who didn’t play? Those who refused to play?
They were censored. They were assaulted. They were attacked. They were fired. They were treated as second-class citizens and worse, treated as if they were harming — killing! — humanity.
The COVID years equal the tyrant years.
So here comes Kennedy, at the AI conference, to say, as The New York Times noted: “One of the things that is going to change is that we’re never ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us, ‘Trust the experts.’ If somebody tells you, ‘Masks work, trust the experts,’ AI may tell you otherwise. If somebody tells you, ‘Social distancing works, trust the experts,’ AI may correct that. And if somebody tells you that a vaccine will prevent transmission and infection, or you need to take it to protect your grandmother, AI may say it actually doesn’t do that.”
Well and good.
But AI’s only gonna say what it’s programmed to say. And what if it’s the tyrants who are doing the programming?
The case for AI in the health care industry should not be that it’s going to free Americans from medical tyranny. AI, in the hands of medical bureaucrats, could just as easily become the new tool of tyranny.
The only way to put a stop to medical tyranny — the only way to stop government officials and corporations and Big Pharma types and insurers and bureaucrats of all walks of life dictating to individuals what health services they must take — is for the individual citizens to demand a stop to the tyranny.
Substituting one overseer for another is not a path to individual freedom. AI must never be given the power to decide a citizen’s medical choice. AI must never be solely used to determine the cost and risk of providing a citizen’s chosen medical treatment.
Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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