In his 1974 book and accompanying article with the shared title of “Medical Nemesis,” philosopher and theologian Ivan Illich boldly asserted that medical professional practice and related health policies, which he characterized as “both industry and religion,” had become “a major threat to health.”

Leading medical figures such as Richard Smith, a long-time medical journal editor and critic of fraudulent health research, later credited Illich with “remarkable” prescience about iatrogenesis — the cover term for ailments “where doctors, drugs, diagnostics, hospitals, and other medical institutions act as … ‘sickening agents.’”

Already by 1999, the Institute of Medicine had flagged medical error as being in “the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems.”

Then in 2000, Johns Hopkins public health expert Dr. Barbara Starfield got more specific, fingering iatrogenesis as America’s third leading cause of death.