Julian Ungar-Sargon

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  • Theological Essays
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  • Deep Dive Ditty
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  • Dominican University

Essays on Healing

The Dark Side of Medicine

jyungar May 28, 2025

The Dark Side of Medicine

Modern medicine, while representing humanity's greatest scientific triumph over disease and suffering, simultaneously harbors a profound and troubling history of ethical compromise, ideological weaponization, and systematic dehumanization. This comprehensive analysis explores the "dark side" of medicine through multiple historical and theoretical lenses—examining Nazi medical complicity, Soviet psychiatric repression, institutional critique through Goffman's sociological framework, and contemporary manifestations of medical authoritarianism. Drawing upon Jewish theological perspectives on healing, critical scholarship from bioethics and medical humanities, and philosophical critiques of bureaucratic rationalization, this article reveals an enduring tension between medicine's technological capacity and its ethical-spiritual mission. The paper argues that medicine's susceptibility to moral corruption stems not from individual failings but from structural conditions that transform healing encounters into exercises of biopower, ultimately calling for a fundamental restoration of medicine's moral imagination and commitment to human dignity.

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Julian Ungar-Sargon

This is Julian Ungar-Sargon's personal website. It contains poems, essays, and podcasts for the spiritual seeker and interdisciplinary aficionado.​