About Me
Henry H. Lindner, MD
Here in late 2022, I'm a 64-year-old physician and philosopher. I live in rural Northeast Pennsylvania where, in the late 1800s, my father's grandfather came from Germany to work as an engineer in the anthracite coal mines. He saved enough money to buy 100 acres of land to farm. I attended the local public school and then Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA. I decided to pursue medicine—as a compromise with my devout Christian mother’s wishes. I graduated Magna Cum Laude from Jefferson Medical College in 1984. I chose to specialize in psychiatry in order to pursue my intellectual interests—to understand the human mind and its problems. However, I was appalled at the false theories and ignorance that dominated the specialty. I resigned the psychiatry residency and became a general medical office in the US Air Force.
I lived overseas most of the time from 1985 to 2001. I worked as a general practitioner for Air Force in Izmir, Turkey and then Denver, Colorado. I then took a position in Saudi Arabia, as a physician for US defense contractors and their families in Saudi Arabia.
However, I did not like general practice. Fortunately, in 2004, I learned about the importance of human hormones for health and well-being. I found a way to use my medical training and licensure to directly improve people's lives, to make a living, and to enjoy learning about a fundamentally new field of medicine. Eventually, I realized that the reason that I never like general practice medicine was that, like psychiatry, it was just a diagnosis and drug scheme run by the pharmaceutical corporations.
In 2018 I was forced to consider that my daughter’s severe chronic fatigue and psychological problems were caused by two chronic infections unknown to current medical authorities: bartonellosis and babesiosis. I soon realized that most of the fatigued, brain-fogged persons who had consulted me had one or both of these infections. Chronic bartonellosis is now well-studied and proven, thanks to the work of Dr. Edward Breitschwerdt and colleagues at North Carolina State. However, it is still ignored by the US Centers for Disease Control and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. They also know nothing about chronic babesiosis. It is caused by Babesia odocoilei, which is found in 20% of the deer ticks in the eastern US and Canada. It is a stealth parasite that is easy to obtain from ticks and is responsible for a large portion of the chronic fatigue and other physical problems in the population. Also, because these organisms inhabit the blood vessels of the brain, they are the cause of a large proportion of the unexplained mental and emotional dysfunction and suffering in the population. So I actually ended up coming back to psychiatry, but with a valid theory of causation.
How did I escape the Matrix and learn to think for myself? I was raised in a traditional Protestant Christian American home and didn’t seriously question what I learned in church or school until I left home for college. I had doubts before that time, but I suppressed them. Then at the age of 21, while in medical school, I realized that I didn’t understand the world at all. Fortunately, having always been a top student, I retained some confidence in my own mind. I believed that I could figure anything out if I just looked objectively at the facts. So I decided to try to figure out the world. I thought that it must be possible to produce a theory of the nature and causes of all Cosmic phenomena, including astrophysics, psychology, and human society.
While in medical school I found Ayn Rand’s book, Philosophy: Who Needs It? She revealed to me the importance of ideas,
and the power of philosophical cognition to cut through the confusion, identify
underlying assumptions, and produce better theories. It also helped me tremendously
to get outside of my birth culture by living in Izmir, Turkey for 2 years. Izmir
is in the heart of Ionia: the birthplace of philosophy. There I fell in love
with history, and with the Turkish people and their utterly non-Protestant
ability to relax, express themselves, and enjoy life.
Upon returning to the US after Turkey, I spent 2 years reading Will Durant’s 11-volume Story of Civilization. I then read hundreds of books in my attempt to figure out the world and everything in it. As I came to understand the ideas that shape our society, I found it increasingly difficult to find any more books worth reading and I started to write. In 1990, while in Saudi Arabia, I sat down with my new IBM 2086 computer and Lotus Symphony word processor and created an outline of Cosmic organization from physical, to chemical, to biological, to neurological, to psychological, and intellectual. I realized that every higher level of Cosmic complexity was just a new arrangement of lower level entities—that interacted in new ways to produce new phenomena. The biological evolution described by Darwin was just one part of a much larger process of Cosmic evolution: from space, light and subatomic particles to living creatures, to humans with their language, culture, and technology. It had taken me twenty years to deprogram myself from the brainwashing I had received from Church, School, and State and reprogram my mind with a rational, working theory of the Cosmos and the human mind. I am still deprogramming and reprogramming myself.
About my Family
My wife is the daughter of Armenian parents. Her family originated in Eastern Turkey and were victims of the horrific ethnic cleansing carried out by the Ottoman government in 1915-16. She grew up in the Armenian refugee camp in Quarantina, by the port of Beirut. She graduated from the American University of Beirut and we met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We have two wonderful daughters whom we have tried to raise in the best possible way to best promote their mental and emotional development. We gave them only love, respect, and freedom. They were breast-fed from birth and allowed to sleep with us as long as they wanted. They were allowed to think for themselves and express themselves without inhibition. We did not control them in any way. We never sent them to school or schooled them at home. They grew up free and responsible for their own learning. They were, perhaps, the first children of the internet as they grew up without schooling and with unlimited computer/internet access. They are natural philosophers, as are all children until they are shamed and controlled by authoritarian parenting and schooling. My eldest daughter had no formal education until she started taking college courses at age 14. She is proof that unschooling works. In spite of her chronic infections and very poor brain stamina, she graduated from a major university with degrees in physics, astronomy/astrophysics and mathematics. She was chosen as the top student by all three departments. Professors loved her because she questioned, confronted, and corrected them. They knew that she actually wanted to learn everything she could from them, unlike all their other unfortunate overschooled students.