Introduction: The Hidden Coup That Reshaped Medicine

On July 4, 2025, the peer-reviewed medical journal Cureus published a groundbreaking article by Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH: "Rockefeller, the Flexner Report, and the American Medical Association: The Contentious Relationship Between Conventional Medicine and Homeopathy in America."

Ullman uncovers how American medicine's shift to "scientific medicine" was not the natural outcome of superior therapies, but the result of strategic philanthropy, institutional collusion, and financial manipulation. At the heart of the story lies John D. Rockefeller--America's first billionaire--whose personal love for homeopathy was ultimately overridden by his advisors' hidden agendas.

Rockefeller's Special Affection for Homeopathy--and How It Was Betrayed

For the last 50 years of his life, Rockefeller entrusted his health to homeopathic doctors, calling homeopathy "a progressive and aggressive step in medicine." He instructed his staff that he wanted half of his foundation's medical philanthropy to support homeopathic institutions.

Yet despite these explicit wishes, not a single dollar from Rockefeller's massive philanthropic empire--amounting to over $500 million (billions in today's currency)--was ever given to homeopathic colleges or hospitals. Instead, his advisor Frederick T. Gates and later his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., ensured that all funding went to allopathic schools aligned with the emerging pharmaceutical model.

The Flexner Report: Reform or Rigged?

The 1910 Carnegie-funded Flexner Report is often hailed as the cornerstone of modern medical education. Ullman shows it was anything but impartial.

• The AMA secretly collaborated with Abraham Flexner, feeding him talking points and even accompanying him on school inspections.
• Homeopathic institutions were excluded from meaningful consultation.
• Flexner, who had no medical degree, denounced homeopathy as "dogma" while ignoring its documented clinical successes.

The result: within a generation, 22 homeopathic medical schools in the U.S. had stopped teaching homeopathy and were taken over by conventional medicine, including Boston University, New York Medical College, Hahnemann Medical College (Philadelphia) University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, and University of Iowa. [vanished].

The Unpublished Gates Reports: Policy Laundering Disguised as Science

Ullman's most shocking discovery comes from five previously unpublished internal reports written by Frederick Gates to Rockefeller in 1911.

• Gates mocked homeopathy as superstition and claimed it had never cured a single case.
• He misrepresented dilution principles with mathematically false metaphors.
• He praised William Osler--while ignoring Osler's own public statements affirming homeopathy's value.
• He insisted that "nine-tenths" of diseases were germ-based, a claim contradicted by mortality data of the time.

In Ullman's words, this was not science--it was policy laundering, turning bias into philanthropy.

The AMA's Drug Money Pipeline

While Rockefeller's foundations withdrew support from homeopathy, the American Medical Association (AMA) forged lucrative ties with the pharmaceutical industry.

• Under George H. Simmons, JAMA shifted from a modest publication into a drug advertising juggernaut. Transparency was touted, but companies often had to pay "shakedown" fees for the AMA's approval.
• Simmons himself had trained as a homeopath but later burned records and suppressed this history when he became the AMA's enforcer.
• This alignment of organized medicine with industry money ensured that patentable, petrochemical-derived drugs--aspirin, acetaminophen, coal-tar derivatives--were privileged over holistic systems.

The Forgotten Outcomes: Homeopathy vs. "Scientific Medicine"

One of Ullman's most powerful arguments is the sheer irony of early 20th-century medicine:

• In 1903, AMA president Frank Billings admitted that only quinine for malaria and mercury for syphilis were reliably effective.
• Meanwhile, comparative hospital records showed that homeopathic institutions had dramatically lower death rates during epidemics of cholera, yellow fever, pneumonia, and scarlet fever. Conventional medical hospitals and mental health institutions had between two to eight times more deaths by percentage.

And yet, it was homeopathy--not conventional medicine--that was erased from medical schools.

Final Thoughts: Why This History Matters Now

Ullman's work demonstrates that the downfall of homeopathy was not due to scientific inferiority but to economic exclusion, institutional collusion, and ideological warfare.

This history is not just about the past. It echoes today, as integrative, holistic, and natural approaches once again face regulatory assault, censorship, and defunding.

The lesson is clear:

Medicine is never just about science. It is about power--who controls it, who benefits from it, and who gets written out of history.

By reclaiming these suppressed truths, Ullman's scholarship invites us to reimagine a pluralistic medical future--one that honors both scientific rigor and therapeutic diversity.

Read Dana Ullman's full peer-reviewed article in Cureus
Support independent health journalism by rating the article (top left corner of the page)

Author Note: Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, is America's leading advocate for homeopathy and the author of The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy.  He created an e-course, entitled Learning to Use a Homeopathic Medicine Kit, which incorporates a 700+ page ebook called Evidence Based Homeopathic Family Medicine, plus up to 80 short videos (averaging 15 minutes). Dana Ullman's website is www.homeopathic.com, and his Substack blog is here!