The End of Medicine
The End of Medicine explores how dangerously close the human population is to complete antimicrobial resistance, the government’s complicity and collaboration with the animal agriculture industry, and how unprepared we are for what’s to come if we continue to ignore the evidence around us. Executive producers Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix, together with producer Keegan Kuhn (Cowspiracy, What the Health), and director Alex Lockwood (73 Cows, Test Subjects) highlight how the way in which we exploit and manipulate animals on a massive scale to consume them, drives the emergence of existential health threats such as zoonotic disease, chronic and acute disease, and perhaps even more terrifying—antimicrobial resistance.
The film features an impressive and compelling array of medical physicians, molecular biologists, pulmonary and critical care doctors, research professors, wildlife epidemiologists, a pig veterinarian and a chicken farmer–that discuss the frighteningly real concerns that link the inhumane and horrific way we raise animals today for food, and the infectious zoonotic diseases and major pandemics that result from our consuming these animals. The End of Medicine clearly sounds the alarm for humanity, and if we don’t change the way we eat, our diet, and the way we treat animals–there will be worse pandemics and infectious disease resistance to come.
Film Premier: 2022
Film Length: 1 Hour, 9 Minutes
List of Zoonotic Pandemics from Animals
Major pandemics caused by and related to our use of animals:
1918 – Influenza (Spanish Flu) from pigs and chickens, Killed 50 million humans
1957 – H3N2 – Asian Flu, from ducks, chickens (avian), came from mainland China, Killed 1.1 million humans
1968 – Hong Kong Flu H3N2, from chickens, Killed 1 million humans
1981 – HIV/AIDS from monkeys in Africa, Killed 35 million humans so far
2002 – SARS-CoV, from live animal markets in China, 770 human deaths
2009 – Swine Flu H1N1, from pig factory farms in China, Killed 500,000 people so far
2012 – Avian Influenza H5N1 and H7N9, caused by live poultry markets in China, Killed 616 humans so far (reported)
2012 – Middle East Respiratory Syndrome MERS-CoV, caused by bats infecting camels, Killed 858 humans so far
2020 – COVID-19, from wet markets/wildlife trade in China, Killed over 12 million humans so far
Quotes from the Film
“Getting to a sustainable civilization, is a civilization that is aligned with the truth. We have to transform ourselves if we really want to transform the world.”
“Our governmental agencies are in bed with agri-business, which is a total crime – for humanity. The factory farm industry has government in its pocket.”
“Factory farming is causing major chronic, systemic and acute health problems for humans.”
“Eating meat for protein and milk for calcium—is an outright lie. Blatant lie.”
“We are dealing with ‘sick care’ instead of ‘health care in the U.S.”
“Everything will just stay the same, if no one speaks out.”
“AMR (Antibiotic Resistance Infection) will kill us long before climate change–it’s a slow growing increase. Bugs are evolving resistance to the very antibiotic medications we depend on. The driving force is the over-use of antibiotics in farm animals. The animal industry and consumption of animals is causing the over-exposure of antibiotics for humans.”
“We see antibiotic resistance within the animals themselves, there is no doubt the feeding of animals’ antibiotics so they will grow faster and bigger – is causing human antibiotic resistance. We are heading to an antibiotic apocalypse.”
“Things are going in the wrong direction – the prediction is that 10 million people will die in the next 10 years, because we didn’t treat the problem of giving farm animals too many antibiotics causing human resistance. It’s clear we are doing many, many things wrong and our government is funding it.”
“We see a wide variety of illnesses with people who live and work around factory farms – zoonotic infections, respiratory illnesses, drug-resistant bacteria illnesses. There’s a huge decrease in air quality due to chemicals, pesticides, waste, urinary and fecal bacteria.”
“A chicken farmer who shared his concern about chicken farming today in the U.S. had his license revoked and contract terminated because he spoke out against the company.”
“The industry works very hard to stop people from speaking out against animal farming and factory farming today.”
“Can I just say that we should all be vegan? Growing animals is the most inefficient way to produce food, it’s not sustainable at all. The science tells us we must stop eating animals to survive on this planet.”
“I can smell the hog waste 2000 feet in the air, it’s a human disaster. These factory farms create huge waste pools that they then spray all over the surrounding land, which goes into the sea and rivers contaminating them, causing death to wildlife and disease to humans.”
“We are hypocrites—we ignore the parts of the wildlife trade that serve our purpose, and we condemn the parts of wildlife trade that are awful. We are consumers of many of those products – we destroy wildlife when we destroy their forests and habitat. With the logs comes the wildlife and disease, we see the blood sucked out of the forests.”
“The bushmeat trade and logging practices caused the first HIV infections and Ebola infections. When we destroy the natural habitat of animals, we are causing the wildlife trade.”
“We are the exploiters of the planet right now.”
“Anywhere we treat animals badly now, it leads to problems for them.”
“Because I was a whistleblower against the pig industry and factory farming, the Veterinary Association is legally coming after and threatening me.”
“I was euthanizing animals daily as a pig vet because they were so utterly miserable, diseased and dying from the farming conditions. I had nightmares every night.”
“The use of animals for food is what causes disease. On the farms themselves, and in slaughterhouses – spillage of intestinal contents go all over the meat that people consume. You see products contaminated with bacteria.”
“I think the whole of the community is mindful and slightly fearful that eventually there will come a time that such a virus cannot be contained.”
“Nature has its own set of laws, and when we humans violate nature, then nature responds with a consequence all its own — and it may be that we humans cannot tolerate it.”
“Why did you leave being a pig veterinarian? I struggled with the concern of enormous threats to humanity due to how pigs were farmed causing disease and microbial resistance.”
“We should look at our own back garden and see how we are treating animals here.
“Animal agriculture is causing all kinds of major issues, but no one is joining the dots.”
“Wet markets in China – frogs, turtles, wild animals are caged in crowded cages, are not fed, housed in unnatural conditions, the animals are highly stressed, stacked on top of each other, waste is everywhere — they are living in filth and waste. When we humans treat animals badly, we see disease – and diseases develop and spread. Both in wet markets and in factory farms.”
“For every human on this planet (8 billion humans) there are about 10 land animals raised and killed for food for each person per year, 80 billion land animals raised and killed for food every minute. We are crowding them into as tight a space as we can. Their immune systems are decreased; they are too densely packed causing viruses to spread.”
“Causing these problems is our obsession with cheap food, cheap meat. This is the driver for these infectious diseases.”
“We do a lot of unnatural things to animals – we routinely mutilate animals without pain killers including we cut off their teeth, tails, beaks, horns, it’s enormously stressful and painful for them; we remove baby calves from their mothers and don’t give them mother’s milk.”
“The pigs live in their own waste and filth, that’s another reason why we see so much disease.”
“Small farms have some of the worse health concerns for animals – the farmers don’t have the money to spend on needed medical or veterinary care.”
“Small farms or factory farms – it’s just not sustainable to kill 80 billion animals, and all the feed we grow to feed animals, and all the forests we cut down to eat these animals. We cannot feed the whole world this diet.”
“Most of Britain’s beautiful forest land was cleared and razed to grow animals.”
“It’s a lose-lose situation if we continue down this road of razing forestland and rainforests, to raise animals, that we should not be eating.”
Statistics in the Film
75 percent of all “emerging diseases” come from an animal source.
50 percent of infectious diseases can be spread from animals to humans, they are called Zoonotic diseases.
In 1997, the H5N1 disease came from chicken farms in China. It killed 60 out of 100 people that it infected. It came from animal agriculture. It is still out there, mutating – it’s a ticking time-bomb due to what is happening on factory farms.
Over 12 million people have already died from COVID-19 caused by wet animal markets in China.
If humans ate crops directly, rather than feeding those crops to farmed animals, 76 percent less land would be required. We are feeding animal resources that could be fed directly to humans.
Film Credits
Director and Producer: Alex Lockwood
Writer and Producer: Keegan Kuhn
Producer: Nishat Rahman
Executive Producers: Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix
Executive Producers: Nirva Patel, Paresh Patel, Sebastiano Castiglioni, Jaine Rao, Sailesh Rao
Starring:
- Dr. Alice Brough, DVM, Former Livestock Vet, Whistleblower
- Dr. Chidi Ngwaba, MD Physician & Lifestyle Medicine Specialist
- Dr. Aysha Akhtar, CEO, Center for Contemporary Sciences; National Institutes of Health; Homeland Security
- Dr. Tina Joshi, Lecturer in Molecular Microbiology, University of Plymouth
- Professor Dame Sally Davies, Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance; Former Chief Medical Officer for England; Chief Scientific Adviser, The Department of Health
- Dr. Priyumvada Naik, Pulmonary, Critical Care & Lifestyle Medicine
- Dr. Jolene Bowers, Research Associate Professor, Pathogen & Microbiome Division, Translational Genomics Research Institute
- Dr. Andrew Cunningham, Professor of Wildlife Epidemiology, Deputy Director of Science, Zoological Society of London
- Iain Tolhurst, Owner, Tolhurst Organic Farm
- Rudy Howell, Poultry Grower, Whistleblower for Perdue Farms, Anonymous Company
A Lockwood Film
