The Dark Nexus of Politics and Medicine: Ideological Abuse, Killing, and Human Rights Violations from Tuskegee to Khamenei.

Throughout history, numerous instances demonstrate how political and ideological motivations have led to egregious abuses in the medical field. These abuses range from denial of care and forced interventions to outright medical malpractice and killings. Such actions are often deeply intertwined with broader socio-political agendas, including eugenics, racism, authoritarianism, or the misuse of pseudoscience. These historical examples serve as stark reminders of the potential for medical practices to be perverted by external influences, and they provide critical context for understanding similar abuses in contemporary settings.

One prominent theme in these historical abuses is the influence of eugenics, a discredited ideology that sought to improve the genetic quality of a human population by selective breeding. This often-targeted vulnerable populations and was marked by forced sterilizations and other coercive health policies. For instance, during the early 20th century, numerous countries including the United States, Sweden, and Germany, implemented eugenics-based programs that led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of people deemed unfit for reproduction. These programs were not only a gross violation of individual rights but also were often supported by flawed scientific claims and racial prejudices.

Racism has also played a critical role in medical abuses, with non-white populations frequently subjected to discriminatory treatment and experimentation without consent. A notorious example is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the United States, where, from 1932 to 1972, hundreds of African American men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis so that researchers could study the progression of the disease. This study continued for decades, even after the development of penicillin as a standard cure, highlighting a profound disregard for the health and rights of the participants.

Authoritarian regimes have likewise exploited medical systems to enforce their control and eliminate dissent. In the Soviet Union, political dissidents were often diagnosed with fictitious mental illnesses and confined to psychiatric hospitals where they were subjected to involuntary treatment, including the administration of psychotropic drugs. These practices were part of a broader strategy to suppress political opposition and maintain the regime’s grip on power, cloaked under the guise of medical intervention.

Pseudoscience, too, has been a tool for justifying medical abuses, with state and institutional power backing scientifically unfounded practices. For example, during the Nazi regime, pseudoscientific theories about racial purity and genetic superiority directly contributed to the horrors of medical experimentation in concentration camps. Doctors, under the influence of these ideologies, conducted brutal experiments on prisoners, including exposure to deadly pathogens, sterilization experiments, and painful surgical procedures without anesthesia.

These historical examples are grouped by the type of abuse for clarity, each illustrating how medical practices can be manipulated to serve pernicious ends. They underscore the importance of ethical standards and robust oversight in medical practices to prevent the recurrence of such atrocities. By examining these cases, we can better understand the dynamics at play when medical care is subverted by powerful interests and the crucial role of vigilance in protecting human rights within medical contexts.

Forced Sterilizations and Reproductive Abuses

Chisso corporation, Mercury poisoning of Minamata Bay

Ideological Denial of Medical Care or Vaccines

Tuskegee

Tuskegee, the Stain of Syphilis on America (1932-1972): Envision 600 Black men in Alabama—sharecroppers, fathers, dreamers—enticed by free meals and promises of medical care. The U.S. Public Health Service deceitfully infected them with syphilis and withheld penicillin for four decades to observe their deterioration. The result? Blindness, insanity, excruciating deaths—128 men perished, their wives contracted the disease, and their children were born with syphilis. The motive? A racist belief that “Black blood is different.” This atrocity remained concealed under political veils until President Clinton’s apology in 1997. A grotesque misuse of medicine in the name of “science,” leaving 400 men untreated. A manifestation of pure evil.

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany’s era of genetic terror (1933-1945) was marked by Hitler’s obsession with eugenics, termed “racial hygiene.” Physicians like Mengele perverted medical practice into acts of murder, conducting live dissections on twins and implementing “euthanasia” programs that gassed Jews, Roma, and the disabled. Before the Holocaust claimed 6 million lives, 275,000 deemed “unfit” were exterminated. Experiments included freezing victims, starvation with seawater, and typhus injections, all recorded as “scientific data.”

The ideology was based on Aryan supremacy, enforced politically by the Nuremberg Laws. Abuses included the sterilization of 400,000 individuals and escalated to what can only be described as medical genocide. Post-war, the Nuremberg Trials convicted 23 doctors, revealing how deeply their “research” had corrupted scientific integrity for years to come.

Russia

Chernobyl, 1986—A catastrophic nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union. The reactor explosion released vast amounts of radiation across Ukraine, killing 31 immediately. The subsequent cover-up underscored the communist regime’s doctrine of infallibility, with Gorbachev remaining silent for days. Firefighters suffered internal melting; unprotected “liquidators” faced dire risks. The aftermath saw a surge in thyroid cancers among children and leukemia, with estimated cancer deaths ranging from 4,000 to 90,000 and millions affected.

Political pressures enforced silence while medical data was manipulated. The deserted city of Pripyat stands as a grim reminder that ideology can lead to mass casualties.

Such early abuses—from ideology to atrocity—include racism, eugenics, and totalitarian manipulations of medicine. Yet, the question lingers: Are we truly safer today? The troubling pattern seems to be accelerating.

China

In China, particularly from 2017 to the present, with a peak between 2022 and 2025, the situation in Xinjiang has been dire. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), driven by an ideology of Han supremacy, has aggressively targeted Uyghur Muslims through a series of brutal policies. These include forced sterilizations, the compulsory insertion of intrauterine devices (IUDs), and mandated abortions, leading to a staggering 60% reduction in birth rates in the most affected areas.

Men have not been spared; many have been subjected to either surgical or chemical castration as part of a broader strategy to suppress what the CCP labels as “extremism.” This has been part of a larger campaign that has seen over a million people detained in camps where human rights abuses are rampant. Women, particularly those with several children, have been beaten and punished under these draconian measures.

Leaked official documents have chillingly instructed officials to “Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.” Medical practices, instead of healing, have been perverted into tools of erasure. Reports indicate that millions of Muslim women have been sterilized, with their ability to have children forcibly removed, shattering families and echoing the horrific eugenics practices of the Nazis.

The Escalating HPV Crisis in Iran: From 2022 to 2025

Since 2022, Iran has been facing a severe Human Papillomavirus (HPV) crisis, which continues to devastate lives as of October 2025. HPV is known to cause 99% of cervical cancer cases. Globally, a safe and 90% effective vaccine is available and typically administered to girls aged 9 to 14. However, in Iran, the national government has refused to implement a vaccination program, influenced by the Health Ministry’s efforts to placate religious clerics who argue that vaccination could encourage promiscuity.

This refusal has dire consequences for millions of Iranian girls, placing them at high risk of cervical cancer, now the second leading cause of death among women in the country. A staggering 41% of tested Iranian women are HPV positive. The situation is exacerbated by cultural practices such as child marriage and “temporary marriage” or sigheh, a Shia practice that allows fixed-term marital contracts, sometimes lasting only a few hours without requiring the woman’s consent.

Statistics highlight the grim reality: from 2017 to 2022, 184,000 girls under the age of 15 were married, and the trend has worsened by 2025. The legal marriage age for girls is 13, often justified by poverty and clerical influence as a form of “protection.” Sigheh particularly victimizes girls as young as 9, subjecting them to multiple partners and leaving them without any protective measures against diseases like HPV, which proliferates due to early sexual activity, physical trauma, and multiple partners, leading to a high risk of developing cervical cancer in their 20s.

Despite the approval of the HPV vaccine in 2022, it remains unavailable nationally as of 2025. There is no active immunization program, even though a local version of the vaccine, Papilloguard, is available. The consequences of this neglect are severe, with countless girls being married off, trafficked under the guise of sigheh, and suffering from cancer. The prevailing ideology prioritizes “purity” over the lives of young women, with the political landscape dominated by religious leaders who perpetuate these harmful practices, effectively endorsing what some critics call “halal prostitution.” The result is a tragic increase in preventable deaths among young women.

*Iran and China: 2025’s twin terrors. Millions of girls—innocent, voiceless—sacrificed. Child marriages chaining Iranian daughters; castrations silencing Uyghur futures.