Utilitarian Bioethics, Medical Socialism and the State
Greatest happiness for the greatest number is a path to medical totalitarianism
“Leaders create culture. Culture drives behavior. Behavior produces results.”
Urban Meyer
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reorganization efforts are being politicized by the very people and politicians who are accusing their opponents of politicizing the CDC.
These accusations of politicizing “The Science” are being levied against those attempting to reform a dysfunctional bureaucracy that came off the rails during the Biden administration, driving a wide range of clearly unscientific policies that damaged people’s health, deeply damaged trust in the public health enterprise, damaged the economy, and, in particular, damaged children. An agency that has presided over an extended period of declining health, longevity, and, recently, an increase in childhood mortality.
Those crying J’Accuse! at the reformers cloak themselves in the vestments of scientism. But underpinning the current CDC reorganization effort are multiple unacknowledged cultural shifts. These shifts have nothing to do with either science or “The Science”. They have everything to do with culture and ethics.
“Beyond shame there is politics.”
Gerard de Marigny, Joshua's Country
At the surface, there is the major cultural and organizational realignment toward merit-based hiring and promotion being forced on uncooperative, unrepentant academia as well as the federal bureaucracy, which are still invested in the primacy of diversity, equity and inclusion hiring and promotion policies (DEI) as a way to correct historic ethnic differences in economic outcomes.
Merit-based hiring is predicated in equality of opportunity, DEI hiring is based on equality of outcomes. Under the Obama/Biden administration, the public health service, and the CDC in particular, became intensely invested in DEI rather than in merit-based hiring and promotion. The results have been disastrous. The most egregious recent example being the hiring and promotion of a proudly public sado-masochist practitioner of satanism to serve as the principle advisor to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on policy matters relating to COVID, and White House Czar on policy matters relating to monkeypox, and played a key role in overseeing vaccine safety monitoring policy and operations, each of which public health challenges were highly politicized and grossly mismanaged.
Sadomasochism is the giving or receiving of pleasure (including but not exclusively sexual pleasure) from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Satanism is the worship or veneration of Satan, a figure from Christian belief who is also commonly known as the Devil or Lucifer and considered the embodiment of evil by those of Christian faith. Suffice to say, the vast majority of American citizens regard both of these as inappropriate fundamental value and belief systems for someone entrusted with protecting the health of the citizenry on behalf of the State. Those with these fundamental philosophical belief structures may be underrepresented in the US public health service (PHS), but being underrepresented is not the same as being qualified. If this is not self-evident, then I do not know what is. The decision to hire and promote a person deeply invested in these moral, philosophical and religious beliefs to serve in a public health leadership role fails on the grounds of merit and propriety. This lack of merit has nothing to do with personal private sexual preferences, but the appearance is that the preferential DEI-based employment policies that became normative during the Obama/Biden administration may have taken such matters into account.
But deeper than DEI is the insidious creep of woke socialist (truth be told, communist) bioethics into CDC, PHS and HHS culture.
This perverse new strain of academic bioethics is being advanced to justify a wide range of “public health” positions involving official State promulgation of policies ostensibly promoting “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” This virulent new medical bioethics logic is being used to justify inserting the State, corporations, and non-governmental organizations (such as teachers unions) into what has previously been a private 1:1, individual-focused relationship between medical care providers and their patients. All justified by radicalized socialist utilitarianism.
As commonly observed in all bureaucracies, mission creep and incremental expansion of what may seem to be a practical initial policy position eventually leads to bureaucratic totalitarian overreach by the State, such as was clearly observed during the COVID crisis. But in the case of the CDC and the “Public Health Service” (PHS) officer core, this overreach extends to asserting that the State has jurisdiction over the physical bodies of individual citizens. Furthermore, following the leadership and examples promoted by the CDC and PHS, this logic has pervaded the entire United States medical system down to the level of medical student teaching.
What is the nature and logic of this new medical bioethics that has taken root in the halls of woke academe? If you seek a practical introduction, I have covered a few examples in this previous essay published August 04, 2025:
The term commonly applied to this new woke socialist philosophy is “Utilitarian Bioethics.” At its core is the belief that the State has both the right and the obligation to promote the “Greatest Happiness for the Greatest Number.”
What is “Utilitarian Bioethics?” Turning to SuperGrok for a synopsis-
The primary objective of utilitarian bioethics is to optimize overall well-being in healthcare decisions, but the logic of this philosophy faces challenges in balancing individual rights and quantifying benefits and harms.
Utilitarian bioethics is an approach to ethical decision-making in healthcare and biomedical research that applies utilitarianism, a moral philosophy that evaluates actions based on their consequences, specifically aiming to maximize overall happiness or well-being. In this framework, decisions are judged by their ability to produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Key Features of Utilitarian Bioethics:
Consequentialism: The morality of an action is determined by its outcomes, not by intentions or inherent rules. For example, a medical intervention is justified if it results in more overall benefit than harm.
Maximizing Well-Being: Decisions prioritize the greatest happiness or least suffering for all affected parties, including patients, families, and society.
Quantifiable Assessment: Utilitarianism often involves weighing benefits (e.g., improved health, prolonged life) against harms (e.g., pain, cost, side effects) to determine the best course of action.
Impartiality: All individuals’ well-being is considered equally, without favoritism toward specific groups or individuals.
Applications in Bioethics:
Resource Allocation: In healthcare systems with limited resources (e.g., organ transplants or ICU beds), utilitarian bioethics might prioritize patients who are likely to benefit the most or have the greatest societal impact.
Clinical Decisions: A utilitarian approach might justify withholding a costly treatment with minimal benefit to allocate resources to more effective interventions for others.
Research Ethics: In clinical trials, utilitarian reasoning could support testing a drug if the potential benefits to many outweigh risks to a few participants.
Public Health: Policies like mandatory vaccinations or quarantine measures during pandemics are often justified on utilitarian grounds, prioritizing population-level health benefits over individual autonomy.
Example: In a hospital with one ventilator and two critical patients, a utilitarian approach might prioritize the patient with a higher chance of recovery or greater potential for long-term quality of life, as this would maximize overall well-being.
Criticisms:
Neglect of Individual Rights: Utilitarianism may override personal autonomy or justice, such as sacrificing one person’s rights for the collective good.
Quantifying Happiness: Measuring "well-being" or "happiness" is subjective and challenging, especially in complex medical scenarios.
Potential for Inequity: Minority groups or vulnerable populations may be disadvantaged if their needs are outweighed by the majority’s.
Moral Coldness: Critics argue it can lead to dehumanizing decisions, like justifying harm to a few for perceived greater benefits.
The camel’s nose under the tent for this logic is the asserted right of the State to promote public safety. As the parable goes, if you allow the camel’s nose under the tent, soon the entire camel will be in the tent. So it is with bureaucracies and the State. And so it is with the US CDC and the PHS.
Operationally, this has been historically embodied and justified in the case of vaccine mandate and quarantine policies. For centuries, the State has asserted the right to intervene in bodily autonomy and personal freedoms in the event of an infectious disease public health crisis. But with the rise and frequent use of “Nudge” technologies by the State combined with a power of modern digital propaganda (PsyWar or Fifth Generation Warfare) to algorithmically influence and control information, thoughts and emotions at mass scale, utilitarian bioethics logic is now being used to justify a wide range of State public health interventions.
This expanded “public health” logic is designed to advance more nebulous objectives that fall into the realms of social engineering, surreptitious promotion of socialism, and outright social Marxism. All supported by the new religion of Scientism and unchallengable scientific dogma, e.g, “The Science,” which is proudly self-considered to be “owned” by both the State and supra-State socialist organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
To illustrate the point and the consequences of this form of insidious mission creep, consider the case of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). Typically, MAID is initially justified as a humanitarian intervention to relieve the suffering of those afflicted with an extremely painful and clearly terminal disease. Metastatic cancer invading bone or brain being common examples. Providing “humane” medical assistance in dying to those seeking to take their own life in these situations is readily justified in an agnostic society devoid of clear faith-based ethical boundaries to suicide. And of course, who is better qualified to provide this assistance than professional trained medical care providers, particularly physicians and nurse-practitioners. Enter the camel’s nose.
Canada has implemented the next level of MAID. If you seek to commit suicide for almost any reason, the Canadian government will financially, legally, and functionally support you in this choice. In Canada, MAID is now being offered as a medical treatment option. Chronic pain from a vaccine injury consequent to a State-mandated vaccination? MAID is a treatment solution. Depressed over job loss attributable to State economic policy mismanagement? MAID is a solution. Elderly, poor, alone and lonely? MAID will cure your problems.
On and on, the program scope is being expanded. On the foreseeable horizon is justification for depopulation. “Feel” guilty because you are consuming resources but not contributing to society (because the State and its propaganda/media tell you to feel guilty)? Contribute to the greater good by MAID. Meanwhile in back rooms, actuarial tables document that the burden of the elderly and infirm on public coffers can be greatly reduced via MAID. It is a good investment of State resources for an exceptional return on investment. Not to mention an opportunity to harvest organs and put them to better use in more productive members of society. A very nice supplemental revenue stream that can be used by hospitals (and the State) to support a wide variety of noble causes.
And then the camel is all the way in.
Why shouldn’t the State use its propaganda and media tool kit to promote MAID? In a foreseeable dystopian future, it becomes a civic duty to accept MAID when you are no longer “productive” to society as defined by State bureaucrats (or “public health officers”). And of course, doing your civic duty should be actively promoted using nudge technology, social engineering, neurolinguistic programming, surveillance capitalism and the whole shebang of modern digital propaganda and Psychological Warfare capabilities.
This is what happens again and again throughout history when individual rights are allowed to become secondary to the interests and “happiness” of the collective. And this is why the US CDC and PHS must be both completely reformed and culturally transformed to align with the primacy of the individual rather than the primacy of the collective.
Because utilitarian bioethics is incompatible with the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. Because the State does not have the right to control your body and what medical procedures you accept.
Because freedom, dammit.
That is why we need to completely reform CDC and PHS all the way down to the level of fundamental culture and ethics. This has nothing to do with either science or “The Science”. It has everything to do with how we wish to live our lives, and how we wish our children to be able to live and thrive.
Please lean in on this one, and help the “Make America Healthy Again” movement implement meaningful, sustainable reform- organizational, cultural, and ethical - of both the US CDC and the PHS. For ourselves, and for the generations of Americans that will follow us.
Quoting Ronald Reagan! I’m from the government and I’m here to help! The scariest words that have been well expressed with the Covid con!
The most chilling phrase in the English language is, “for the greater good.“