About the Project
The Lucidicus Project encourages young people entering the medical profession to examine the moral and economic foundations of ideas such as individual rights and capitalism. The project is based in Boston, Massachusetts, and our mission is to provide the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit to medical students across the United States and around the world. Through the support of our donors, we provide the kit to students free of charge.
Why such a philosophical approach?
We take a philosophical approach because philosophy plays such a crucial role in human events. A man's philosophy—whether he holds it implicitly or explicitly—is his fundamental guide to life. It is ultimately what helps him choose his values and courses of action. For future doctors, one's personal philosophy influences choices, such as whether to stand up against new regulations or allow further government control to spread infiltrate the profession.
What is the fundamental problem in medicine today?
History shows us that central planning is disastrous to any country and any industry. Economics explains why certain systems inevitably lead to rationing, lower quality, longer waiting times, rising expenditures, and other undesirable consequences. Philosophy pinpoints the principles at work in this unfortunate chain of cause and effect. These are facts. Yet pundits and politicans continue to call for the expansion of the very regulations, restrictions, and social programs that are the cause of our healthcare malaise.
The Lucidicus Project helps students understand how improper government intervention, past and present, has created the vast majority of problems we face in medicine today. Rather than protecting individual rights, federal and state governments have instituted controls over trade, contracts, and voluntary associations, leading to numerous market distortions and misaligned incentives. At the economic level, these interventions ultimately cause prices to rise and quality to decline. At the clinical level, government-instituted reimbursement schedules and treatment guidelines supplant the judgment of doctors with that of central planners, causing important medical decisions to be made according to what is good for the state rather than what is good for the patient.
How is this perpetuated?
What makes the encroachment of state-run medicine possible is that doctors, by and large, are not philosophically equipped to defend themselves. They are told—and many believe—that the only proper motive for entering medicine is to help others. As a result, those who enter medicine for the self-motivated reasons of intellectual challenge, love of the field, and financial reward are made to feel a profound guilt over any material success they have achieved. This technique of inducing guilt gives the moral high ground to those in society who demand self-sacrifice and submission. Unable to advocate for their own rights, doctors come to accept and invite further intrusion into their field under the mistaken premise that such government control is needed in order to achieve prosperity or "social justice."
What is the alternative?
The alternative is to allow doctors (and other producers of goods and services) to practice their trade freely, without demanding that their interests—or anyone's—be sacrificed to the service of anyone else. Applying the ideas of rights and free trade to medicine, we get a scenario in which those who produce medical goods and services are free to compete with other producers to earn the business of patients. Under capitalism, doctors would be free to practice medicine as they see fit, not as government officials working from "national guidelines" say they ought to.
Patients, of course, benefit most of all. They benefit from the boom of human ingenuity and capital investment as new medicines, procedures, and facilities are developed and constructed. Patients also benefit tremendously from the increased competition in goods and services, as they would be free to purchase and patronize as they wish, without government officials restricting access or enforcing mandatory waiting periods.
How can I learn more?
The books and materials in the Medical Intellectual's Self-Defense Kit introduce rights, capitalism, and other important ideas in a way that most medical students can relate to. The Lucidicus Project provides these kits to medical students free of charge.