iatrogenic 

A condition induced internally by a practitioner, not from external factors. Something which is created by ourselves, a contractor, or an internal service organization, making things worse instead of helping or making more efficient. Something that's done internally, supposedly within span of control and with a common mission, that works against a solution instead of towards it. The term is co-opted from medicine, where it means a condition induced by a physician.

The outage was iatrogenic in that it was nothing external to the company. The IT department itself caused it by not duplicating existing parameters when it replaced the firewall.

iatrogenic by Hot.East October 14, 2011

iatrogenic addiction 

addiction caused by medical treatment (e.g., liberal use of opiate analgesics in a hospital setting or by a physician that leads to opiate addiction).

I went in for back surgery and they kept giving me morphine. Now that I was sent home they gave me a prescription for OxyContin. I just can't seem to stop taking them. Now my doctor says that I have iatrogenic addiction. WTF am I supposed to do now?

iatrogenic addiction by Big Momma Stanley September 23, 2010

e-iatrogenesis 

patient harm caused at least in part by the application of health information technology

Some e-iatrogenic events (or those events resulting from e-iatrogenesis) will represent the electronic version of "traditional" medical errors, such as a patient receiving the wrong drug dosage due to a human click-error.

e-iatrogenesis by dean sittig January 10, 2008

iatrogenia

Of or pertaining to infectious diseases contracted through exposure to a medical treatment or facility or to medical complications caused by a physician's prescribed course of treatment.

Every episode of the popular series, House, MD is an entertaining study in the horrors of iatrogenia.

iatrogenia by Russell Clark December 7, 2006

iatrogenocide

a genocide caused by scientists, doctors, nurses, and/or public health officials, often with the support of official state actors and the corporate sector (especially the pharmaceutical industry). Coined by Charles Ortleb in his book, Iatrogenocide: Notes for a Political Philosophy of Epidemiology and Science.

The business model of the pharmaceutical industry is to release ineffective drugs that cause iatrogenic injuries, which then require a lifetime of expensive treatments. Once all wealth is drained from a family via this method the person is allowed to perish. Collectively this is referred to as the iatrogenocide.

iatrogenocide by Otis Strudelmaker June 1, 2026