Muslim Medical Students Refusing to Learn How to Treat Female Patients

9:35 PM

Muslim Medical Students Refusing to Learn How to Treat Female Patients

from FrontPage Magazine » The Point by Daniel Greenfield

Every now and then some conservative proposes that we staple green cards to any foreign student’s back right after he receives this diploma. I counter that proposal by proposing that stories like this be stapled to the front of anyone who thinks that’s a good idea.

The October issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics contains a case study involving Muslim medical students who refuse to examine female patients because it’s… against their religion.

A recent article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics grappled with that question in the context of male Muslim medical students refusing to learn how to examine females because they believe it is wrong to touch women to whom they are not married or related. The article argues—persuasively in my view—that medical conscience should not extend this far because it would result in future physicians lacking an “essential competency”:

And by essential competency, we’re talking about medical schools graduating Dr. Mohammed’s who have no ability or interest in treating the medical problems of half the human race. That’s about as essential as we can get.

This isn’t a minor technical issue. I blogged a few weeks ago about what the impact of gender apartheid medicine in Burundi is doing to Muslim women there.

There are only three female and 15 male gynecologists in the whole of Burundi. One of them, who wants to remain anonymous, says that she is always overbooked and that most of her patients are Muslim.

Burundi has some of the worst infant mortality rates in the world. The worst infant mortality rates in the world are in Afghanistan. Even Saudi Arabia, which is wallowing in wealth, has an infant mortality rate that is worse than the Israeli West Bank, which has access to Israeli medical services. As is life expectancy for women in Saudi Arabia.

Muslim gender apartheid has a number of troubling implications, but one of them is the denial of medical services to women. The more Muslim doctors we graduate, the more we will run into this problem.

More glories from the people who "invented medicine."

How long before this crap migrates here?

In what seems to be a case of blatant Muslim appeasement and show of utter disregard to basic hygiene and safety of patients the UK Department of Health has exempted female Muslim Doctors and Nurses from the basic prerequisite of washing their hands before performing medical procedures as this would mean baring the arm up to the elbow, an act that would supposedly compromise their modesty.

UK exempts Muslim docs and nurses from basic hygiene

So long as a license to practice medicine is based upon demonstrated competence in ALL areas of medicine I say go for it.

I'm not a medical professional but I worked in hospital administration for 20 years,working shoulder to shoulder with physicians and nurses during most of that time.There's no way on God's green earth that one can master most of medicine's disciplines without laying hands upon patients.Regarding females,two that come quickly to my mind are OB/GYN and Pediatrics.I'll wager my last dollar that privately,at least,there's not a single faculty member of a single US medical school that would support giving any student a pass on this subject.Of course political correctness may well force the AMA to draw up some sort of exemption before long.In fact,knowing academic medicine as I do (the hospital where I worked is very famous and is affiliated with a very famous medical school) I can guarantee that it will happen eventually.

LOL

Would it help if I said that our current pediatrician is Jewish? And that she sends us to the best doctors in town and that most of those doctors also happen to be Jewish? I have to say that I never would have chosen a Muslim pediatrician, but husband had known him for years. The man is still in practice based on a quick Internet search in the last few minutes. I will have to ask my husband why Doctor moved to the US and why he has stayed.

Our children had a Muslim pediatrician for 3 years. He was a fine doctor if a little difficult for me to understand

Difficult to understand is a huge reason to find another doctor. One misunderstanding or miscommunication could lead to something very bad. Wrong dosage. Wrong treatment. Wrong explaination of symptoms. That's not a risk I'd take for myself much less my kids. We took lil miss in to the ER one night and the only doctor on call was a foreigner who didn't speak English. It was all very scary. Thankfully, there was an American nurse who shoved him out of the way and did his job for him.

Yeah well, the RN at the time has known husband since before his birth, so I figured she would make sure we had all dosages correct. As for communicating with this particular physician, we never had any problems that required complicated treatment. If we had, I know that my husband would have communicated effectively with Doctor and that the two of them would have come up with the answer. My husband does a mean Muslim Indian impersonation as well as a few others. Heh

If we were in that town again and one of our children needed a physician, we would go to this doctor again. There is a trust that this physician would go well beyond his duty as a physician in order to give our children the best care.

Difficult to understand is a huge reason to find another doctor. One misunderstanding or miscommunication could lead to something very bad.

Most people who don't work for the government today have health plans that limit which doctors you can see.Given that,my policy has always been..1)get the insurer's list of who you can see for a particular problem...2) research each one's professional profile (easy to do in most states thanks to the web)...2) check medical school attended (Harvard is better than the University of Guadalajara),check which hospitals he/she trained at (Bellview Hospital is better than Karachi General Hospital) and which hospitals he/she is currently affiliated with (Cook County Hospital is better than Mid State Community Hospital).Choose wisely and you're very likely to get someone who,at least,is fully competent...if not highly skilled.

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