“No, I Won’t Rename Iatrocide to Protect Your Comfort”
Medical Apartheid, Genocide, and the Audacity to Police the Language of Resistance
They said: “Iatrogenic already means something. Please don’t confuse people.”
I say: That’s not confusion. That’s denial.
Let’s be clear: Iatrocide is not a misuse of “iatrogenic.” It is a deliberate neologism to name a deliberate atrocity — the targeted use of medicine, healthcare denial, and biological destruction as tools of genocide. If that makes you uncomfortable, good. Comfort has always been the currency of silence in the face of atrocity.
What Is Iatrocide?
Iatrocide refers to the intentional use of medical systems to harm, eliminate, or erase a targeted population — including the destruction of health infrastructure, obstruction of care, weaponization of disease, and exploitation of medical vulnerability as a tool of mass death. It is not error. It is not collateral. It is calculated.
It is genocide by design — through the scalpel, the blockade, the broken ventilator, and the sniper who targets ambulances.
Iatrocide: The Weaponization of Medicine as a Strategy of Genocidal Erasure
Story Ember leGaïe, Founder of Genospectra | Genocide Scholar | Developer of the Genospectra: Framework Theorem for Deconstructing the Genocide Spectrum
“But iatrogenic already means something…”
Yes, in clinical language, iatrogenic refers to accidental injury or death caused by medical treatment. And that word is important — especially in U.S. contexts where medical negligence is the third leading cause of death.
But iatrocide is not iatrogenic. This isn’t a redefinition. It’s a necessary evolution.
If anything, the demand that I abandon the term iatrocide to “avoid confusion” with iatrogenic is a form of intellectual imperialism — one that protects colonial medical frameworks at the expense of people being annihilated by them.
Genocide Always Includes Medical Warfare
You think iatrocide is new? Then you haven’t been listening to the survivors.
In Gaza, hospitals are bombed, doctors assassinated, cancer care denied, and ambulances targeted. This isn’t new. It’s escalation.
During the Nazi genocide, doctors didn't just assist — they led. From Mengele’s human experiments to the Aktion T4 program, genocide was medicalized.
In U.S. settler genocide, Indigenous people were subjected to forced sterilizations, experimental surgeries, and intentional infection. Survivors still carry that pain.
In Rwanda, patients were killed inside hospitals. Medical workers actively participated.
In Bosnia, denial of care and medical abuse were forms of ethnic cleansing.
In the Armenian genocide, medical care was denied to the dying, and physicians who resisted were executed.
Every genocide in recorded history includes iatrocidal mechanisms. They just weren’t named before. Now they are.
You’re Not Protecting Patients. You’re Silencing the Dying.
Your post claimed to be about protecting “patients’ rights.” But it wasn’t about patients — it was about preserving settler linguistic authority. You worried people might get confused and blame Palestinian doctors for genocide.
You know who’s not confused?
The families whose children died of dehydration because Israeli forces cut off IV lines.
The cancer patients denied exit permits to receive care outside Gaza — and died slow, state-engineered deaths.
The surgeons working under siege without gloves, power, or antibiotics.
The Palestinians forcibly experimented on in prisons, or buried without their organs.
They’re not confused. They’ve been screaming it for decades.
Medical Apartheid Is Not a Side Note — It’s the System
Don’t patronize me with stats about iatrogenic deaths in the U.S. as if I don’t know them. Americans live under American medical apartheid. Racialized, disabled, and trans people in the U.S. are systemically harmed by design — and they know it. That’s not a contradiction. That’s solidarity.
So no — I won’t rename Iatrocide. I won’t dilute it. I won’t apologize for using the precise language of genocide. Not to make you feel safer. Not to spare Western medical systems from scrutiny. And certainly not to erase the voices of Palestinians, Indigenous people, and disabled survivors who have already been medically brutalized in silence.
If You’re Confused, Start Listening
If you’re still confused, maybe it’s because you’ve never had to watch someone you love die on the floor of a bombed-out hospital. Maybe you’ve never been denied care for who you are. Maybe no one has ever designed a system to let you die in silence.
But for millions, that’s not theory. That’s not metaphor. That’s genocide.
That’s iatrocide.
Iatrocide is not yours to rename.
I created the term Iatrocide to name the deliberate use of medicine as a weapon of genocide — from Gaza’s bombed-out hospitals to the sterilization wards of settler states. It is not a corruption of “iatrogenic.” It is an indictment of settler colonialism’s use of medicine to exterminate.
You don’t get to overwrite that truth with Latin gymnastics and condescending hypotheticals about confused readers. Palestinians, Indigenous survivors, and disabled people living under medical apartheid are not confused. They’re dying.
And they deserve language that names the hand holding the scalpel.
So no — I won’t repackage iatrocide into your linguistic Rubik’s cube to make genocide more palatable.
If you’re uncomfortable with the word, maybe you’re finally beginning to understand what it names.
And to address the comment:
“The "cide" suffix is Latin not Greek”
Yes, “-cide” is Latin. And?