There isn't enough data to show that medical students or doctors are more susceptible to cults, but there's enough to show that intelligence doesn't protect against them. In fact, sometimes it has the opposite effect. From my own experience, three things happen in medical school: most people stay the same, while others diverge into two extremes. One becomes very religious, while the other often goes from being very religious to being an atheist. The closest example I can think of is Japan's Aum Shinrikyo from the 1990s, which notoriously recruited elite doctors and medical students. You will find a lot more examples in Southeast Asia. The cult systematically integrated them into its horrific chemical and biological warfare programs. It established its own pseudo-government, including its own "ministry of health", which was led by a highly respected US-trained cardiovascular surgeon 😀 They had their own underground medical experimentation lab where they did all sorts of things on dissident members. Still, the worst of it was when they travelled to Zaire under the guise of medical aid to get samples of the Ebola virus to use as a biological weapon. The enquiries and reviews that followed taught many lessons. Still, the common thread was that many med students/Drs were socially isolated, thrown into a rigorous academic environment very early on, and naive and vulnerable. Medical training also conditions students to defer to absolute authority, endure extreme sleep deprivation, & accept intense self-sacrifice. B/c they were already habituated to a high-control environment, transitioning into a totalitarian cult felt dangerously familiar, almost natural.

The desire for a "Nigerian Temu" or "Nigerian Amazon" sounds great until you look at the graveyard of Nigerian tech. From DealDey & OLX to countless artisan platforms, if you can think of an idea, a Nigerian startup has tried it, burned millions, & pivoted or died. In healthtech at least, think of anything; I can tell you it's been tried—concierge care, home-visit services, even elderly care. When discretionary income collapses, tech inevitably becomes a luxury. You cannot build a recurring subscription model when your target audience is forced to choose between paying for an app or buying food. Software may operate on the digital layer, but business lives and thrives in the physical layer. An e-commerce platform needs reliable supply chains, cheap power for warehouses, & functional transit routes. In Nigeria, the physical layer is broken, & a lot of those things can't be fixed with private funding alone. This is why everything connects, including every vote that leads to an incompetent governor or minister. The app is rarely the problem; the operating environment is. Software cannot innovate its way out of structural poverty and infrastructural collapse, and no one is going to build a digital skyscraper on flooded ground.