Big Bad Pharma: The Indigo Child Concept and Biomedical Conspiracy Theories

Academic interest in the New Age movement has focused primarily on the emic narratives of hope and utopianism that the term “New Age” appears to exemplify. A particular example is the concept of the Indigo Children, described as an intuitive, spiritual generation appearing since the late 1970s to usher in a golden age. In this article I argue that the perceived uniqueness of the Indigo Child and the concept’s demedicalization of problems such as autism and ADHD have created narratives in which “Big Pharma” is seen as conspiring to create disorders, damaging vaccinations, and harmful genetically modified organisms.