The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour

Episode: How to Heal Modern Medicine
Host: Scott Bertram
Guests: Dr. Aaron Kheriaty (psychiatrist, bioethics director, and author), Dr. Wilfred McClay (historian, author, and professor)
Date: October 10, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode delves into the challenges facing modern medicine with Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, author of Making the Cut: How to Heal Modern Medicine. The conversation explores issues of bureaucratic overreach, the erosion of the doctor-patient relationship, “medicalization” of social phenomena, end-of-life care, organ donation ethics, the impact of COVID-era policies, and broader systemic failures driving physician burnout. Later, Dr. Wilfred McClay joins to discuss his new book Jewish Roots of American Liberty and the foundational influence of Hebraic thought on American history and culture.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty: “How to Heal Modern Medicine”

1. Personal Journey and Perspective Shift

• Insider-Outsider View:
  • Dr. Kheriaty reflects on his unconventional path into medicine, balancing interests in both philosophy and the sciences.
  • “I always felt like something of a field anthropologist taking notes on the natives.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 02:38)
  • His dual background fosters a critical, reflective approach to the medical profession.

Timestamp: 01:30–03:26

2. Medicine’s Core Problem: Efficiency Over Humanity

• Shift Toward Managerial Control:
  • Rising trend of top-down control—from government and corporate health conglomerates—results in homogenization and loss of individualized care.
  • Bureaucratic “throughput” metrics now define success, not patient well-being.
  • “You feel like you’re getting processed by an industrial system where whatever chief complaint you went in to talk to your doctor about takes a back seat and the doctor is staring at a computer screen.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 05:17)
• Turnstile Medicine:
  • Patient care is likened to theme park efficiency: move as many people as possible through as quickly as possible, punishing “outliers.”

Timestamp: 03:26–08:04

3. The Medicalization of Life

• Definition and Examples:
  • Treating non-medical or normative human differences as medical conditions (e.g., short stature, attention issues, gender identity struggles).
  • “Perhaps the most egregious contemporary example of medicalization is the so-called gender affirmative care… what I think is more accurately termed sex-rejecting procedures.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 09:25)
• Risks and Harms:
  • Particularly highlights irreversible interventions on children under “gender medicine,” citing recent critical reports from the UK and US.
  • Underscores a pattern of pathologizing “ordinary difficulties of living or just normal human variation.”

Timestamp: 08:04–10:34

4. Rethinking End-of-Life Care

• Limitations of Medicine:
  • Critiques both the transhumanist denial of mortality and the medical impulse to extend life at all costs (“therapeutic obstinacy”).
• Euthanasia vs. Therapeutic Obstinacy:
  • “While they may appear to be opposites, they’re really flip sides of the same coin because both are attempts to control something that ultimately is not under our control.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 14:26)
• Good Death:
  • Advocates for accepting mortality, emphasizing palliative care rather than futile intervention or death-on-demand.

Timestamp: 12:04–15:05

5. Organ Donation Ethics

• Opt-In vs. Opt-Out:
  • Warns that opt-out (presumed consent) systems risk undermining the principle of “the logic of the gift”—organ donation should always be given, not taken.
• Dead Donor Rule:
  • “We have to make sure that people are all dead, that that diagnosis of death is done accurately before we harvest their organs if people are going to maintain trust in the whole organ transplantation enterprise.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 17:37)
• Maintaining Trust:
  • Recent controversies highlight the importance of robust ethical practices and public vigilance.

Timestamp: 15:05–18:27

6. Physician Burnout and Systemic Failures

• Key Drivers:
  • Loss of clinical discretion, increased bureaucratic control, and a sense of moral crisis when doctors cannot fulfill what drew them to medicine.
• Not About Hours or Hard Work:
  • “Studies looking at physician burnout show that it’s not long work hours... It’s when doctors feel that they don’t have meaningful relationships with their patients because other things are getting in the way of that.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 19:30)
• Early Retirement and Attrition:
  • Core reason is the inability to deliver individualized care.

Timestamp: 18:27–20:38

7. Impact of COVID and the Biomedical Security State

• Shift During COVID:
  • Pandemic accelerated surveillance, control, and emergency-driven policies that further eroded trust and bureaucratized healthcare.
  • “Those things were primarily about control... not primarily about public health.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 21:31)
• Loss of Professional Autonomy and Rise of Ideology:
  • Medical education increasingly encroached by social/political agendas, which detracts from traditional Hippocratic care and deters both students and seasoned physicians.

Timestamp: 20:38–24:11

Notable Quotes

• “The human mortality rate continues to hold steady at 100%.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 12:37)
• “The logic of the gift... it’s something given and not taken.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 16:12)
• “If people feel that they can’t deliver appropriate care to their patients because they’re too controlled by these outside forces, that creates a moral crisis of conscience.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 19:58)

Dr. Wilfred McClay: “Jewish Roots of American Liberty”

1. Book Genesis and Historical Context

• Interfaith Collaboration:
  • Dr. McClay co-edited the volume with Rabbi Stuart Halpern, drawing on American and Jewish historic convergence.
• Teaching History in Faith-Based Schools:
  • Foundational connection between American religious liberty and Jewish flourishing in America.

Timestamp: 27:19–30:34

2. The Exodus as American Archetype

• Iconography and Founding Ideals:
  • The Exodus (Jewish liberation from Egypt) deeply influenced America’s sense of itself—as shown by Franklin, Jefferson’s proposals for the national seal.
  • Motto: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
• Biblical Liberty vs. Enlightenment Liberty:
  • The American experiment as an extension of the Hebraic quest for freedom.

Timestamp: 30:34–33:34

3. Hebraic (Biblical) Ideas as Civic Foundation

• Structural Influence:
  • “Almost like the understructure, the skeletal support of so much else.”
  • American identity is a blend: Enlightenment, classical republic, biblical heritage.
• Jewish and American Affinity:
  • “The Jewish heritage and the American heritage are not light years apart from one another. They’re actually very close.” (Dr. McClay, 34:33)

Timestamp: 33:34–35:30

4. Literary and Cultural Legacies

• Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Cautionary Tales:
  • Hawthorne as a “dark naysayer” warning against utopian hubris; biblical motifs (original sin, Tower of Babel) run through his storytelling.
  • “He’s a great believer in original sin, even if he necessarily [doesn’t] call it that... the general judgment that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom...” (Dr. McClay, 36:26)

Timestamp: 36:02–38:21

5. Presidents and Biblical Rhetoric

• Surprise in Presidential Discourse:
  • From Franklin Roosevelt to Reagan, many presidents cited biblical stories, symbols, and language unabashedly.
  • “I think there’s a sort of notion that... the presidents didn’t talk that way. The new thing is to find less religious discourse coming from the Oval Office than we had before…” (Dr. McClay, 39:38)
• Biblical References Endure:
  • Even in moments of national crisis, presidents used scripture to unify and inspire.

Timestamp: 38:21–42:12

6. America, Israel, and the Modern Age

• United Fates of Jews and America:
  • “The fate of those three things—the Jewish people, the Jewish nation [Israel], and the United States of America—are seen not just as a political alliance... but culturally.” (Dr. McClay, 42:40)
• Declining Europe, Persistent West:
  • US and Israel as mainstays of Western heritage and independence, especially as Europe faces crises of identity and guilt.

Timestamp: 42:12–45:49

Notable Quotes

• “Freedom was the right of all... liberty understood different ways by the ancient Hebrews than by Jefferson, perhaps, but still liberty.” (Dr. McClay, 32:39)
• “The Jewish heritage and the American heritage are not light years apart from one another. They’re actually very close.” (Dr. McClay, 34:33)
• “Those who would like the United States to... end [its obligations] abruptly [with Israel] are badly mistaken. In many ways, Israel is carrying the weight for us.” (Dr. McClay, 45:10)

Memorable Moments & Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On Doctor Burnout:
  “It’s when doctors feel that they don’t have meaningful relationships with their patients because other things are getting in the way of that.” (Dr. Kheriaty, 19:30)
• On End-of-Life Ethics:
  “Keeping people alive at all costs and euthanasia... While they may appear to be opposites, they’re really flip sides of the same coin...” (Dr. Kheriaty, 14:26)
• On the National Seal and the Exodus:
  “Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson... felt the seal should depict the Exodus... that encapsulated what America was in the history of the human race.” (Dr. McClay, 31:10)
• On the Bond Between America and the Jewish People:
  “The fate of Jewry, of the Jewish people and the fate of Israel are seen as being bound together... not just as a political alliance.” (Dr. McClay, 42:40)

Key Takeaways

• Medicine’s current crisis is systemic, not personal: Bureaucratic controls and efficiency metrics are harming individualized care.
• Medicalization risks pathologizing normal life: Social and psychological issues are often inappropriately treated as medical problems, with especially concerning trends in “gender medicine.”
• Human mortality and medical limits should be humbly accepted: Both excessive prolongation of life and overreliance on controlling death represent a denial of human limits.
• Ethical clarity is crucial in issues like organ donation: Trust in the medical system depends on transparent, voluntary donation frameworks.
• The doctor-patient relationship is central to meaningful care: Loss of autonomy and human connection drives burnout and early exits from the profession.
• The COVID-19 response accelerated trends of surveillance and ideological capture in medicine, creating longer-term harms.
• America’s political and cultural DNA is deeply Hebraic: The moral and civic foundation of the United States draws significantly from Old Testament ideas and imagery.
• Presidential rhetoric, American literature, and the US-Israel relationship all reflect ongoing biblical and Jewish influence.

For listeners seeking a thoughtful, articulate critique of healthcare’s trajectory and a richer understanding of America’s ideological roots, this episode is compelling and intellectually nourishing.