Thanks. Finally a framework around the horror we’ve been forced to endure since Al Ahli. “The epistemicide of community-specific medical knowledge—including the erasure of Indigenous, ancestral, or local healing practices, and the exile or murder of elder physicians and educators” 👏 Iatrocide must be a settler colonial structure that follows the targeting of indigenous healers, shamans, and midwives because of their roles in connecting the sacred to land, ie organic opposition to extraction and its associated health evils in contaminating air and water, indigenous knowledge of local herbs and concoctions that leads to biopiracy, and coexistence with sibling beings that opposes the loss of biodiversity. The war on the ghost dance is an in between stage where a health vacuum is created so colonial authorities could position themselves as "benevolent" providers—despite systemic exclusion, primarily due to the cost of receiving healthcare and responding to disease vectors in colonial currency and the indenture to bullshit jobs that build centralized monopolies.
I support the introduction and use of the term ‘iatrocide’ as defined in this work, for the deconstruction of the genocide spectrum. Let the public lexicon make room for all purposes related to the stated ends.
This paper will be referenced as a monumental turning point in the field of genocide studies! The amount of time and effort required to compile this research is staggering. Words and concepts are applied with the surgical precision of a scalpel.
The point is it's a word that already has a specific meaning. Which ironicly means the exact opposite of how you want to use it. Nobody was arguing that this is not a blatantly obvious act of genocide. It clearly is.
In this case Genocide is the word being used as it defined.
No one was trying to tell you how to write or what to say. That comment was obviously just trying to give helpful advice. They absolutely were not trying to say a genocide is not happening.
Insist on using a repurposed word that has a clearly opposite definition to your intended purpose if you want.
I don't see how that could possibly help to get your point across. It's your writing use any word you want.
That's not pushback thats simply understanding a words definition.
Definition and meaning matters if the clarity of your message is important to you.
Iatrocide did not exist. Search the archives, the literature, the terminological databases of genocide studies, public health, and international humanitarian law—you will not find a single framework or lexicon that defines iatrocide as I have articulated it. This is not repurposing; it is creation. It is a necessary act of scholarly precision and conceptual innovation in the face of systematic atrocities that remain unnamed.
"Iatrogenesis" refers to unintended medical harm. Iatrocide is the intentional, systematic weaponization of medicine as a tool of genocide—through the bombing of hospitals, assassination of health workers, blockade of medical supplies, and denial of life-saving care to targeted populations. This violence is not collateral—it is strategic. It demands its own definition.
Raphael Lemkin coined genocide to describe crimes the law could not yet name. I follow that tradition. The refusal to name new forms of atrocity is not caution—it is complicity.
Do not confuse academic conservatism with intellectual rigor. Iatrocide is not a distortion—it is a revelation. And it’s long overdue.
I think this person (letterwriter) makes an excellent point. Definitions matter if you want to be clear and understood. Confusion will not help anyone get their point across.
From letterwriter's comment:
"It really is already a word and it means to be killed by a medical treatment. Iatrogenic injury is to be injured by a medical treatment. This is the 3rd leading cause of death in America, with some estimates that over 200k American deaths annually, and approximately 400k American injuries annually, are due to preventable medical error.
Please find a set of words for Israel’s actions that do not undermine the existing patients rights advocacy.
As well, please know that there is an extremely large population of disabled and medically dependent people who are very aware of the existing meaning of these words. Attempts to convert the word into essentially a 135 degree alteration of its meaning may lead these people to misunderstand the Palestinian situation as the citizens being killed by terrible medical decisions made by their own doctors. It could lead these people to conclude that Palestinian patients would be better off in a system run by Israel or some other non-Palestinian government. Please reconsider this attempt to invert the meaning of this concept".
What’s being defended here isn’t “clarity.” It’s narrative control.
The pushback against iatrocide isn’t about confusion — it’s about discomfort. Discomfort with naming genocide when it’s enacted through the denial of dialysis, the bombing of hospitals, the blockade of cancer meds, the assassination of doctors.
The claim that this term might confuse people into thinking Palestinians are harmed by their own doctors is not just absurd — it’s violent erasure. Palestinians are not confused. They’re surviving iatrocide.
Every genocide weaponizes medicine. Every genocide has iatrocide.
This word doesn’t distort meaning — it forces truth into the open.
https://open.substack.com/pub/genospectra/p/no-i-wont-rename-iatrocide-to-protect?r=3lzdaf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you for this excellent analysis and arguing, translated in French on my Substack here https://zanzibar.substack.com/p/liatrocide-ou-la-militarisation-de
Thanks. Finally a framework around the horror we’ve been forced to endure since Al Ahli. “The epistemicide of community-specific medical knowledge—including the erasure of Indigenous, ancestral, or local healing practices, and the exile or murder of elder physicians and educators” 👏 Iatrocide must be a settler colonial structure that follows the targeting of indigenous healers, shamans, and midwives because of their roles in connecting the sacred to land, ie organic opposition to extraction and its associated health evils in contaminating air and water, indigenous knowledge of local herbs and concoctions that leads to biopiracy, and coexistence with sibling beings that opposes the loss of biodiversity. The war on the ghost dance is an in between stage where a health vacuum is created so colonial authorities could position themselves as "benevolent" providers—despite systemic exclusion, primarily due to the cost of receiving healthcare and responding to disease vectors in colonial currency and the indenture to bullshit jobs that build centralized monopolies.
I support the introduction and use of the term ‘iatrocide’ as defined in this work, for the deconstruction of the genocide spectrum. Let the public lexicon make room for all purposes related to the stated ends.
This paper will be referenced as a monumental turning point in the field of genocide studies! The amount of time and effort required to compile this research is staggering. Words and concepts are applied with the surgical precision of a scalpel.
The point is it's a word that already has a specific meaning. Which ironicly means the exact opposite of how you want to use it. Nobody was arguing that this is not a blatantly obvious act of genocide. It clearly is.
In this case Genocide is the word being used as it defined.
No one was trying to tell you how to write or what to say. That comment was obviously just trying to give helpful advice. They absolutely were not trying to say a genocide is not happening.
Insist on using a repurposed word that has a clearly opposite definition to your intended purpose if you want.
I don't see how that could possibly help to get your point across. It's your writing use any word you want.
That's not pushback thats simply understanding a words definition.
Definition and meaning matters if the clarity of your message is important to you.
Iatrocide did not exist. Search the archives, the literature, the terminological databases of genocide studies, public health, and international humanitarian law—you will not find a single framework or lexicon that defines iatrocide as I have articulated it. This is not repurposing; it is creation. It is a necessary act of scholarly precision and conceptual innovation in the face of systematic atrocities that remain unnamed.
"Iatrogenesis" refers to unintended medical harm. Iatrocide is the intentional, systematic weaponization of medicine as a tool of genocide—through the bombing of hospitals, assassination of health workers, blockade of medical supplies, and denial of life-saving care to targeted populations. This violence is not collateral—it is strategic. It demands its own definition.
Raphael Lemkin coined genocide to describe crimes the law could not yet name. I follow that tradition. The refusal to name new forms of atrocity is not caution—it is complicity.
Do not confuse academic conservatism with intellectual rigor. Iatrocide is not a distortion—it is a revelation. And it’s long overdue.
I totally agree with your critique. I suspect the author has a problem with reality if this urge to redefine existing words is anything to go by.
From iatro- (“doctor/healer”) + -cide (“murder/killing”).
End of discussion for any normal person.
I think this person (letterwriter) makes an excellent point. Definitions matter if you want to be clear and understood. Confusion will not help anyone get their point across.
From letterwriter's comment:
"It really is already a word and it means to be killed by a medical treatment. Iatrogenic injury is to be injured by a medical treatment. This is the 3rd leading cause of death in America, with some estimates that over 200k American deaths annually, and approximately 400k American injuries annually, are due to preventable medical error.
Please find a set of words for Israel’s actions that do not undermine the existing patients rights advocacy.
As well, please know that there is an extremely large population of disabled and medically dependent people who are very aware of the existing meaning of these words. Attempts to convert the word into essentially a 135 degree alteration of its meaning may lead these people to misunderstand the Palestinian situation as the citizens being killed by terrible medical decisions made by their own doctors. It could lead these people to conclude that Palestinian patients would be better off in a system run by Israel or some other non-Palestinian government. Please reconsider this attempt to invert the meaning of this concept".
https://substack.com/profile/12626241-letterwriter/note/c-121209912
What’s being defended here isn’t “clarity.” It’s narrative control.
The pushback against iatrocide isn’t about confusion — it’s about discomfort. Discomfort with naming genocide when it’s enacted through the denial of dialysis, the bombing of hospitals, the blockade of cancer meds, the assassination of doctors.
The claim that this term might confuse people into thinking Palestinians are harmed by their own doctors is not just absurd — it’s violent erasure. Palestinians are not confused. They’re surviving iatrocide.
Every genocide weaponizes medicine. Every genocide has iatrocide.
This word doesn’t distort meaning — it forces truth into the open.
🔗 https://genospectra.substack.com/p/no-i-wont-rename-iatrocide-to-protect