Medical Paranoia in Stephen King’s The Institute (2019)

Stephen King published The Institute to positive but unspectacular reviews in 2019, the 60th novel (and that excludes the numerous short story and novella collections he has authored, as well as his small number of non-fiction books) of his near 50-year career. I didn’t read it at the time. I still enjoy his works but it is hard for any but the most dedicated reader to keep up. I read it this month, which proved a disorientating experience and reminder of how far our societal debates and priorities have travelled in the last two years of pandemic restrictions.

The Institute concerns a top-secret government camp way out in the Maine woods to which children who have telekinetic or telepathic abilities are kidnapped to be abused and exploited for reasons related to national security. While resident in the Institute, the children are subject to all manner of forced medical interventions, about which they feel an understandable paranoia:

‘Only what if they’re not taking out? What if they’re putting in? They say they’re taking samples, but they lie about everything!’

Holder & Stoughton, 2019, p. 194

Not only are medical paranoia and forced medical interventions central to the young protagonists’ life in the Institute, but it begins much earlier. The gifted children are chosen for abduction to the Institute through being surreptitiously tested for psychic abilities at birth:

Almost all newborns were tested for BDNF [brain-derived neurotrophic factor]. Children such as the two whose files Mrs Sigsby was now reading were flagged, followed, and eventually taken.

p. 284

BDNF testing, along with the heel-stick PKU and the Apgar score, was routine for infants born in American hospitals, but of course not all babies were born in hospitals, and plenty of parents, such as the ever more vocal anti-vaxxer contingent, forwent the tests.

p. 324

Thus the “anti-vaxxer contingent” is potentially able to shield children from the Institute, while all those who submit to standard hospital procedures for their new borns risk coming to its attention, which, given the brutal sadism King describes there, is a very serious risk. Indeed, there are frequent allusions to Nazism and its parallels to what the US deep state is up to in the Institute. Finally, it is confirmed that there is more than parallels and the Institute is a continuation of Nazi schemes:

‘The first Institute, although not by that name, was in Nazi Germany.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Tim said.

p. 538

In taking this hard line on medical interventionism, King foresaw the vaccine wars which have begun in earnest since the introduction of Covid vaccines. To read The Institute is to experience the paranoia some feel about vaccines and, particularly, the universal mandating of same. King seems to be promoting a deep scepticism about them, and an anti-authoritarianism which places him at odds with the emergence of the Big State 1 2 in the last 21 months and the movement of authoritarianism from the right to the progressive left.

King is an outspokenly leftist figure, so it is unexpected to read his instinctive alliance with the side of medical paranoia. It is a reminder that this book was published in 2019 rather than 2021 and that public discourse and the shape of progressive western politics in the US and elsewhere has changed very quickly in recent months. Whether that is for good or ill is a question beyond the scope of this blog, but it will certainly be investigated and experienced intensely over the coming years. King’s novel is a reminder of the complexities of the situation, as well as being a work somewhat prophetic, if not exactly telepathic, in its interest in the deep ethico-philosophical issues at stake in the current debates and conflicts over our medical futures. We live in interesting times.