An iconoclast must not only have abundant common sense but the gift of the gab to state the obvious. Simply stating won’t do. You must rub it in.
My favorite iconoclasts are Peter Skrabanek and Thomas Szasz. Skrabanek was a general practitioner who authored Death of Humane Medicine and Rise of Coercive Healthism. Szasz, a psychiatrist, who volunteered that he entered psychiatry to unveil its pseudoscience, is the Voldermort of psychiatry – he who must not be named (may be Voldermort is the Szasz of muggles). He wrote several books including “Myth of Mental Illness.”
Neither believed in nominative subtlety. The title of their books gave it away. Both Szasz and Skrabanek had a point. The point was simple. Be careful. Don’t allow the medical profession to medicalize the broad coastline of normality – the dog ears of the bell-shaped curve.
Skrabanek was a socialist, Szasz a libertarian. Neither was against medical care for the sick and poor. Skrabanek was urbane, Szasz went for the jugular. Both were prescient. They predicted modernism’s medical epidemic: overdiagnosis.
I’m a pseudo iconoclast. I look for real ones. I recognize them a mile off. They are straight shooters. They are humane but do not wear sentimentality on their sleeves. So it was not hard to spot Vikram Khanna, the author of Your Personal Affordable Care Act. Khanna is an ‘in the trenches’ foot soldier who has worked on the wards, worked with insurers and worked as a regulator. He has a mission, like Skrabanek who he worships. To fight healthism.
