One of the big outstanding COVID crisis questions is, ‘How did the medical care system get things so wrong?’”
That’s how Dr. Robert Malone introduced this essay when he shared it with his readers. “This excellent essay from Dr. Randall Bock uses personal experience and anecdotes from a lifetime of primary care practice spanning rural West Virginia to big city Boston to illustrate and illuminate the sickness at the heart of modern Western medicine.”
He’s right — and the sickness goes far deeper than COVID.
I began my journey into medicine with a sense of curiosity and reverence for science. Organic chemistry at Yale was, for me, not just pre-med’s crucible but a gateway to precision and beauty. But once inside medicine’s formal training, I quickly realized something was off. The structure that once revealed complexity has now flattened it. The education I received prized obedience over insight, memorization over meaning.
I eventually opened a solo primary care office just north of Boston, treating working-class patients the old-fashioned way. No mid-levels. No bureaucracy. I made appointments, yes — but if you were sick, you could simply come in. We didn’t need an app or a portal. I trusted people to know when they needed help.
Before that, I had taken a detour — a year doctoring in West Virginia’s rural “hollers.” In Calhoun County, then the poorest in the nation, I met people whose lives felt 19th century: electricity was patchy, dialects unfamiliar, and trust hard-earned. Yet these were proud, resilient people. And they reminded me that medicine begins not with a lab result or billing code, but with presence.
That ethos followed me back to city practice. I tried to keep medicine personal, human, and truthful. I didn’t follow every protocol when it clashed with the patient’s sense. And when it came to addiction, I didn’t parrot the party line. I believed patients could recover, not just endlessly “maintain”. I tapered people off Suboxone over time. I watched them rebuild their lives around what I called the Five F’s: family, friends, faith, funds, and finally, fun.
The Massachusetts medical board didn’t appreciate this. They fixated on a manuscript I had written — Withdraw to Freedom — and used it to paint me as a heretic. In truth, I didn’t deny addiction’s seriousness. I denied its permanence. I knew people could fall into drugs through grief or trauma, and climb out again, given support and structure. That was my crime: I believed in redemption.
I lost my license. I lost years of income. But I didn’t lose clarity.
Dr. Malone wrote, “What this essay reveals is the systemic medical system dysfunction seen throughout the U.S. and Western medicine during COVID was part of a much broader problem.” He’s seen the institutional rot up close. So have I.
This essay was shared widely on Randoctor.Substack — isn’t just my story. It’s a mirror. If you’ve felt medicine drift away from its soul… if you’ve seen hospitals confuse complexity with care… if you’ve wondered why so many good doctors feel silenced or sidelined — this piece is for you.
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