Posted on 11/29/2021 8:03:41 AM PST by rxsid
Doctors Warn New Medical School Guidance Would Lead to Unqualified Physicians and Unscientific Medicine
Accreditation guidelines call meritocracy 'malignant,' suggest genetic screening is racist
The two accrediting bodies for American medical schools now say that meritocracy is "malignant" and that race has "no genetic or scientific basis," positions that many doctors worry will lower standards of care and endanger lives by discouraging vital genetic testing.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits all medical schools in North America, is cosponsored by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Association for Medical Colleges (AAMC)—the same groups that on Oct. 30 released a controversial guide to "advancing health equity" through "language, narrative, and concepts." (See below)
Those concepts include the ideas that "individualism and meritocracy" are "malignant narratives" that "create harm," that using race as a proxy for genetics "leads directly to racial health inequities," and that medical vulnerability is the "result of socially created processes" rather than biology.
Integrating these ideas into medicine, five professors and practicing doctors told the Washington Free Beacon, would be a catastrophe, resulting in underqualified doctors, missed diagnoses, and unscientific medical school curricula.
The guidance won't just influence the way doctors talk, these practitioners said, but also what they know and how they treat patients. It could even make them unwilling to screen racial minorities for serious conditions—including many types of cancer—that they are more likely to inherit, on the mistaken belief that genes play no role in racial health disparities.
"Some vulnerability isn't about economic or social marginalization," said Jeff Singer, a general surgeon in Arizona. "A lot of conditions"—such as Tay-Sachs, which disproportionately impacts Ashkenazi Jews, and triple-negative breast cancer, which disproportionately affects black women—"vary based on genetics. We’re talking about matters of life and death here."
Singer's warning echoes the argument that five black professors in March made in the New England Journal of Medicine, where they described genetic denialism as "a form of naive ‘color blindness'" that would "perpetuate and potentially exacerbate disparities."
The guide is part of an ongoing and controversial effort to institutionalize progressivism as public health's lingua franca. It was "deeply informed" by the "Inclusive Communication" guide that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in September, as well as by the AMA's "Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity" published in May. A few members of the AMA this month spoke out against that plan, arguing that it amounted to racial discrimination, while others said the AMA's focus on language would alienate patients and inject ideology into medicine.
That ideological injection has been administered by an incestuous network of nonprofits that supply and legitimize the language of activist physicians. The guide's citations include Race Forward, which lobbied against the Trump administration's executive order on critical race theory, and the Narrative Initiative, which promotes "durable narrative change" to "make equity and social justice common sense."
These groups in turn receive support from some of the largest and best-financed foundations in the country. Race Forward is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, while the Narrative Initiative, per the group's website, "was conceived and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies and Ford Foundation."
Such nonprofits have played a pivotal role in turning medical accreditation against genetics. The guide cites a report from George Soros's Open Society Foundations that says the practice of DNA testing "weaves together dominant narratives of racism and individualism into a biological determinism." The chief medical officer of New York City, Michelle Morse, participated in the creation of that report, as did critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw and anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour.
"They're trying to superimpose social science onto medical science," Singer said. "But as a consumer of health care, I'd just like to know that whoever is treating me is qualified. Because my life is on the line."
Several doctors also sounded the alarm about how the guide would impact admissions standards and curricular content at medical schools, which, in one professor's words, "are at the total mercy of" their accreditors.
The guidance potentially implicates every stage of a doctor's education: where they get in, what they're tested on, how they're graded, and who gives them residencies. In effect, it could change the way medicine measures merit—from objective criteria like grades and test scores to subjective criteria like diversity statements, which are increasingly common at medical schools.
One doctor predicted that the guide would result in a "disastrous" reluctance to flunk low-performing medical students and a "tripling down on affirmative action." Another was even blunter: "This can kill people."
The AMA and AAMC did not respond to requests for comment.
The guide is the latest move by medical school accreditors to sideline merit in favor of diversity. The AMA and AAMC in 2012 implemented diversity standards that effectively mandated racial preferences at all medical schools. And in March 2020—as the coronavirus began to strain hospital services in New York City—the AAMC announced that the "Step 1" medical licensing exam would move from numerical scoring to pass-fail, a change many doctors said would make it harder to objectively evaluate residency applications.
One reason for the shift, an AAMC report said, was that numerical scoring "negatively impacts diversity based on known group differences in performance"—with whites and Asians significantly outscoring blacks and Hispanics.
According to some doctors, these pressures have already lowered the quality of medical care. "I've certainly seen residents' intellectual capability dropping over time," said one professor who belongs to the AMA and who told the Free Beacon he would be fired if he went on the record. "Residents are just not as capable of caring for patients as they were 20 years ago."
A professor at one Ivy League medical school agreed, telling the Free Beacon that the curriculum has gotten easier over time because administrators want to avoid failing less qualified admittees. "In order to get them through, the standards for everyone have been lowered," the professor said.
Mistakes in medicine can be deadly: According to a 2018 study by Johns Hopkins medical school, medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States.
In light of such grim statistics, some doctors see the guide as a distraction. "It strikes me as a waste of time," said Sally Satel, a psychiatrist who's written extensively about the opioid epidemic. "Yes, trainees need to appreciate the life context of their patients, but it's not clear how many of these social justice-based innovations will help medical students be better doctors."
In part...
Vision for equity and justice in medicineLand and Labor Acknowledgement:
We acknowledge that we are all living off the taken ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. We acknowledge the extraction of brilliance, energy and life for labor forced upon people of African descent for more than 400 years. We celebrate the resilience and strength that all Indigenous people and descendants of Africa have shown in this country and worldwide. We carry our ancestors in us, and we are continually called to be better as we lead this work.
Equality, equity and justice distinctions
While we, philosophically, have intrinsic and “equal” value resulting from our shared humanity, it is the lottery of birth that arbitrarily defines the conditions, environments and opportunities that largely shape our life experiences and outcomes. We operate in a carefully designed and maintained system that normalizes and legitimizes an array of dynamics—historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal—over time that routinely advantage white (also wealthy, hetero-, able-bodied, male, Christian, U.S.- born) people at the expense of Black, Latinx, Indigenous and people of color (also low wealth, women, people with disabilities, non-Christians, and those foreign-born) and that is currently reinforced by policies that are blind to power (political and financial) imbalances and realities.
Replacing Medicine and Science with Social Science will be catastrophic to our health care system overall.
Doctors Warn New Medical School Guidance Would Lead to Unqualified Physicians and Unscientific Medicine
I thought these people "believed in science"?
Woke insanity continues
Just wait until Calculus, Engineering and Physics are replaced with Social Science.
We won’t have any new products. Productivity will decline to horrific levels. Nobody will be able to invent anything, build anything, or repair anything. Everything will crumble. People will freeze and starve.
The adoption of “Woke” in education guarantees it. My sister has been teaching math to high school kids for over 40 years and sees this happening every day.
We are headed to the lowest common denominator regarding intelligence and learning. We will have super humans running everything and 99% progs at the bottom living like rats.
Whoever thought the day might come when Americans would have to go to Russian or Hungary for valid, state of the art medical treatment?
With IT now destroyed as a via career path prepare for the medical H-1B invasion. I guess we should all be small business tycoons retailing Chinese goods to each other....
Since so many existing physicians have caved to the vaccine propaganda does it really make any difference who the future physicians are?
This horse has already left the barn. The majority of new grads from physician and advance practice provider programs are female. I just retired from 46 years of continuous active practice as a P.A. and some of the new grads I have encountered have a poor understanding of the basic tenets of quality medical care but they sure have a lot of knowledge about LGBTQ “issues”.
Putting grease under an already DOWNHILL SLIDE.
What...is that something new.??
This is an excellent point, to which I can personally attest to unfortunately.
They won't be able to graduate "equity" quick enough, so they will invariably resort to importing equity.
In 1910, The Flexner Report revolutionized medical education in North America by forcing the closure of proprietary (for-profit) medical schools in favor of rigorous science-based medical education, and yes, meritocracy-based education, largely after the German model of medial education.
Prior to this sea change in medical education, it has been estimated that a patient had only a 50-50 chance (or less) of being helped by a “physician” of the era.
Well, 100 years was a good run for rational thought!
The Idiocracy has triumphed!
I’d just be happy if I could find a neurologist anywhere that doesn’t look and speak like he should be fixing street food in Coimbatore
“Just wait until Calculus,,,”
Calculus has been dropped, I forgot where, already, as being too white. I read it on an FR, non BB, article.
We aren’t headed for Star Trek’s meritocracy, we’re headed for Idiocracy’s idiocracy.
The past two years has convinced me that a great many doctors no longer believe in science.
They are simply cogs in the deep state wheel who are happy to cash payment checks and process they are smart.
They only believe in weird science.🙄
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