Despite the statements of denial that Critical Race Theory even exists, there are two main CRT hypotheses being increasingly used to direct medicine and all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects as well. In medicine, it is that systemic racism is responsible for:
1) Health care outcomes.
2) Disparities in the demographics of the medical profession.
Questioning these is professional suicide. In STEM, questioning the Big Bang theory was also professional suicide, but the James Webb Space Telescope photos have turned that upside down.
By brandishing the spreading power of CRT, its proponents control the lessening standards of stringent Medical College Admission Test for admission to medical school, the extraordinary amount of time spent on racial identity subjects and the firing of tenured professors for the slightest deviation from the party line.
Here’s where the local leftists, expressing pseudo non-racist sentiments, will call me racist, disrespecting Dr. Ben Carson and many others who obtained their advanced levels through the formula of hard work, character and the desire to have excellence as their goal.
Thomas Sowell, Ph.D. a multiple New York Times bestseller, has written volumes on race issues.
Both of them elevated themselves from abject poverty.
Henry Flipper (1856-1940) while born into slavery rose to become West Point’s first Black graduate. He became one of America’s most articulate defenders and a staunch proponent of the Constitution.
He knew America didn’t invent slavery and that, though some enslaved his parents, at least 360,222 Union soldiers died in the Civil War to free them.
As a family, his parents encouraged excellence. One of his brothers was a college president and bishop in the African Methodist Church. Another was a physician and another was a college professor. Flipper was disgusted when President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a former Ku Klux Klan member to the Supreme Court and ignored the 1936 Olympic multiple champion, Jesse Owens, at a White House ceremony, inviting only white athletes.
All humans are of one race. Therefore, people anywhere in the world have the same distribution of mental capacity. That doesn’t mean there are equal academic skills of individuals. Most of the known defects to access are due to past societal deficiencies — for which hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to correct — and individual lack of motivation common to all humans.
The June 28, 1978, Bakke decision by the Supreme Court declared affirmative action constitutional, but invalidated the use of racial quotas. It ruled the University of California’s use of strict racial quotas was unconstitutional, but stated that race could be one criteria used in admission decisions of higher education institutions.
In spite of this ruling, the concept that there is embedded systemic racism is a fundraiser talking point, and another opportunity to divide the country.
Much of the rest of this column is based on an article from City Journal:
“Virtually every major medical organization from the American Medical Association, the American Association of Medical Colleges and the American Association of Pediatrics, has embraced the idea that medicine is an inequity producing enterprise. The AMA’s 2021 ‘Organization Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity’ is virtually indistinguishable from a Black studies department’s mission statement. The plan’s anonymous authors seem aware of how radically its rhetoric differs from medicine’s traditional concerns.
“Thus forewarned, the reader plunges into a thicket of social justice maxims: physicians must ‘confront inequities and dismantle white supremacy, racism, and other forms of exclusion and structured oppression, as well as embed racial justice and advance equity within and across all aspects of health systems.’ ”
Every physician should practice medicine only for the best interest of the individual patient.
“We need to discard ‘America’s stronghold of false notions of hierarchy of value based on gender, skin color, religion, ability, and country of origin, as well as other forms of privilege.’ ”
This statement of the AMA is a straw man to further generate division in the country. Ability is the only item listed that is necessary to be even an average physician.
“A key solution to this alleged oppression is identity-based preferences throughout the medical profession. According to medical and STEM leaders, to be white is to be per se racist; apologies and reparations for that offending trait are now the de riguer.”
Some professional schools are much further on that road than others.
“The demolition of standards rests on an a priori truth: that there is no academic skills gap between whites and Asians, on one hand, and Blacks and Hispanics, on the other.”
I have already stipulated there is no difference in innate abilities, but there are skill gaps.
“No proof is needed for this proposition; it is the starting point. ... Therefore, any test or evaluation on which Blacks and Hispanics score worse than whites and Asians is biased and should be eliminated.”
At the end of the second year of medical school, the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, Step One, “measures knowledge of the body’s anatomic parts, their functioning, and malfunctioning, biochemistry, physiology, cell biology, pharmacology, and the cardiovascular system” and the nervous system. Scoring has changed from a percentile grade on each subject, to pass-fail as a group. Therefore, no one knows how much knowledge a student really has. Where is the fail line?
In the third year, the Medical Student Performance Evaluation measures clinical abilities. “Faculty bias” is almost always the cause of some students doing less well.
It’s fairly easy to cover up medical mistakes. It’s very hard to cover up human error causing an aircraft accident, which will increase with weakened STEM standards. I was an Army flight surgeon involved with investigating military aircraft accidents, of which 50% were caused by human error.
The long march of the left through the institutions of learning is obvious, funded by exorbitant student tuition. But, as a patient, be assured newer medical school graduates from some schools know “intersectionality” much better than medicine.
Eggleston, M.D., is a retired ophthalmolgist. His email address is rjegglestonmd@gmail.com.
