Straight Dope on Medicine: Modern Witch Doctors

Author

Scott Ganser
March 08, 2023

Woke is the mind virus of our times. I’ve been railing against it for some time now. There is nothing admirable about it. It’s totalitarian, racist, sexist, irrational, destructive, violent, sexually and intellectually depraved.

In a word, its suicidal.

It is also everywhere in our institutions.

Even our medical schools and hospitals are not immune to this virus.

Applying Wokeness to medical students is a defenestration of ethical values and an act that makes the whole endeavor worthless, floccinaucinihilipilification.

Responsible, moral adults are supposed to be the watchmen of our society. Children should enjoy an age of innocence, where they are protected from the wolves in our society. It is the duty of the parents, teachers, pastors, rabbis, coaches, and relevant adults in children’s lives to develop them and bring them into a healthy adulthood.

We are not supposed to be mutilating them and confusing their gender roles.

No one should be “transitioning” from male to female or vice versa. It is insanity. We are hard-wired at the cellular, tissue and organ level to be what we are.

Sex-Based Differences in Normal Physiology

One consequence of differences in genetic attributes and circulating levels of sex steroid hormones is that there are structural/morphological differences between males and females. The differences between the sexes in body composition are well known males typically have proportionately more muscle mass, more bone mass, and a lower percentage of body fat than women. These differences are, in a large part, the consequence of the well-documented effects of gonadal steroid hormones on skeletal muscle and bone metabolism.[i]

What is less commonly recognized is that there are structural/morphological differences between adult males and females for many (if not all) organ systems that can have significant impact on physiological function.[ii] For example, sex differences in lung size have important consequences. Men have larger lungs, wider airways, and greater lung diffusion capacity than women, even when these values are normalized to height. An important consequence of this structural difference is that in contrast to healthy young men, maximal exercise capacity may be limited by pulmonary capacity in women, especially as they age .[iii]

There are well-defined differences in brain structure that result from fetal exposure to gonadal steroid hormones.[iv] These morphological differences, in concert with the effects of sex steroid hormones on neuronal function, are proposed to support diverse non-reproductive differences between males and females such as differences in pain threshold and cognitive style and the greater glucocorticoid response to stressors exhibited by females compared with males.

Physically sculpting a body to present as the opposite sex does not alter immutable attributes. It’s a mask and not a transformation. Combining plastic surgery with hormone treatments will almost assuredly shorten a life and make it more painful.

When I worked at Enzytech/Alkermes, I would walk past many of the Boston area hospitals. I enjoyed a hearty walk. These hospitals had stellar reputations, and many were associated with either Harvard or M.I.T... Their credentials were impeccable.

Now, I am aghast at what they are doing and prefer that they would shut down instead of genuflecting to the zeitgeist of our times and complying with the Kafkaesque metamorphosis they are inflicting on children and adults.

Wokeness of Medical Schools

Prior to being unleashed on society at large, physicians have to traverse the demanding landscape of medical schools. This is daunting to the extreme, and they have to want it, not just be talented.

Many medical schools now are being politicized and becoming too woke. Getty Images

Just how woke is your nearest medical school? Likely very woke — yet the organization that helps oversee medical schools thinks it’s not woke enough.

So says the Association of American Medical Colleges, which last week released the first-ever analysis of the extent to which “diversity, equity and inclusion” have infected the institutions training future physicians.[v]

Diversity, equity, and inclusion should just die. Everyone would be better off. Competence, meritocracy, character, and personality make the physician, not the gender, skin color or sexual escapades.

In a review of the application process for America’s top 50 medical schools. Nearly three-quarters of these institutions — and 80% of the top 10 — ask applicants about their views on diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism, and other politicized concepts. The clear goal is to find the students who will best advance divisive ideology, not provide the best care to patients.[vi]

The AAMC asked medical schools to answer 89 yes-or-no questions on whether they have specific DEI activities. The results are shown as a kind of report card. Schools that score 80% are colored green, and those that score between 61% and 80% are yellow. Institutions below the 60% threshold are red — a sign of failure.

Medical schools should fear a failing grade from the AAMC, which helps determine whether they get accredited.

How are medical schools most woke? 

Affirmative action, for one: 100% have “admissions policies and practices for encouraging a diverse class of students.” Fully 85% have leaders who’ve “used demographic data to promote change” within their institution. In other words, medical schools are giving skin color and gender a consistently bigger emphasis in recruiting. This approach risks de-prioritizing merit, leading to a lower quality of medical students.

Ninety-nine percent have leaders who routinely participate in local, state, or national DEI forums, diverting their focus from actual education. Some 98% have created a system for students to report bias, which risks self-censorship from educators who fear reprisals for teaching health care’s more difficult topics. The same percentage have launched new initiatives or funding streams for DEI, while 97% have “a dedicated office, staff, and resources.”

More than 40% of medical schools offer tenure and promotions to faculty who conduct DEI scholarship. The Indiana University School of Medicine, for instance, implemented this policy in July. The message to current and potential faculty is clear: If you want to advance in your career, you better toe the party line. Yet politicizing faculty research will worsen, not improve, medical education and care.

Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) told The Star News Network DEI programs “should be called what they are: anti-white, anti-excellence, anti-science, and anti-Christian.”

Treat the Patient?

Doctors are supposed to examine their patients as individuals, analyzing their symptoms and behavior without regard to race or economic status. For hundreds of years, that’s what medical schools taught doctors to do.

Not anymore.

If you don’t check the right boxes, you might be denied care, put at the bottom of the list, or given shoddy care. It’s all up for grabs now.

In the wake of the 2020 riots, the Association of American Medical Colleges is trying to change fundamentally how medicine is practiced. This will be hazardous to your health .

The association started initiatives to “promote social justice in a comprehensive manner.”[vii]

“Inequities cannot be understood or adequately addressed if we focus only on individuals, their behavior, or their biology,” read an AAMC DEI document. Instead, “health equity work requires” the identification and disruption of “dominant narratives” that “limit our understanding of the root causes of health inequities.”

The tendentious ideological mumbo-jumbo continues: “Narratives grounded in white supremacy and sustaining structural racism, for example, perpetuate cumulative disadvantage for some populations and cumulative advantage for white people, especially white men,” the guide explained in a passage filled with enough buzzwords and jargon to choke a camel. “Narratives that uncritically center meritocracy and individualism render invisible the genuine constraints generated and reinforced by poverty, discrimination, and ultimately exclusion.”

In other words, instead of thinking, “How can my patients protect themselves against health problems?” the AAMC asks medical students to think, “What kind of public collective action is necessary to confront health inequity across identifiable populations?”

Maybe a straight white male might have to lose a leg unnecessarily to compensate for a Native American losing a leg to diabetes. Who knows where “equity” will take us?

This type of discriminatory treatment has already happened.

“During the height of the COVID pandemic, New York, Minnesota, and Utah issued guidance for allocating monoclonal antibodies that heavily prioritized racial and ethnic minorities.”[viii]

How about giving the best medicine to everyone who enters your door?

When doctors are at work, they should focus exclusively on the well-being of each patient, whom they should treat as an individual deserving of an individual's human dignity. They should not be treated as a marker of some social ill identified less by genuine observation than by the doctor's ideological prejudices.

Seeing patients as members of a racial or gender group instead of as individuals with scientifically explainable health problems is precisely the opposite of good medicine.

Missouri takes a stand

Will Missouri be the first state to stop the woke takeover of medical schools? Yes, if State Rep. Ben Baker’s new bill passes. It’s called the “Do No Harm” Act – and it’s a model piece of legislation for any state lawmaker who wants to ensure their medical schools teach medicine, not divisive and discriminatory ideology. [ix]

Missouri might even be ahead of Florida in confronting this scourge.

The decline of our state’s medical schools was made clear by a recent expose on the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. A lecturer was caught declaring that students shouldn’t debate her on matters of “systemic oppression” and Critical Race Theory, which is a divisive ideology that sees racism basically everywhere and in everyone. The lecturer warned that if students dared contradict her, she would “shut that [expletive] down real fast.”

The medical schools at Washington University and the University of Missouri are spending more and more time – and more and more taxpayer dollars – on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as well as so-called “anti-racism.” These divisive concepts are used to justify outright racial discrimination, supposedly in pursuit of righting past wrongs. The leading proponent of anti-racism has explicitly stated that “future discrimination” is in fact necessary and praiseworthy.

 -State Rep. Ben Baker

My bill would stop the decline and corruption of our medical schools. To start, it would require every taxpayer-funded Missouri medical school to get the legislature’s approval before lowering standards for admission. This policy is common sense: Medical schools should look for the best qualified students, because they will provide the best care as physicians.

My bill would also stop taxpayer-funded medical schools from forcing applicants, students, and faculty to hold political views on matters like Critical Race Theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The schools would also have to publish their course materials in a public database, so taxpayers can learn exactly what medical students are being taught.

And beyond education, my bill would prevent state medical boards from forcing physicians and nurses to take woke training to receive or keep their license. Medical professionals should focus on treating individual patients, not identity politics.

 

Do No Harm

This group is fighting the good fight.

One of their targets is Indiana.

The Indiana University School of Medicine is planning to force professors to prove how woke they are. It recently proposed “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Standards” that will determine who gets promoted or tenure on the school’s faculty. These standards have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with radical ideology.

On May 14th, Do No Harm submitted an official comment letter to IUSM’s Faculty Steering Committee, which is pushing this mandate. In the letter, our chairman, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, describes the damage this policy would do to the faculty:

“Forcing candidates to declare their support for DEI when so many of them undoubtedly oppose it would compel dishonesty. Forcing candidates to show a track record of involvement in DEI would compel participation in and allegiance to a belief system. All of this is deeply illiberal and violates IUSM’s own professed commitment to academic freedom.“[x]

He also points out this policy will lead to discrimination at IUSM:

“Additionally, the standards will incentivize faculty to engage in racial discrimination in who they hire, promote, mentor, and to whom they provide scholarships and grants. Similar standards at other institutions have directly led to discrimination.”

Conclusion

We really need to dispense with our “grievance culture.” Arguably the most successful, privileged society that ever existed should not be engaged in seeking victimhood as a measure of status and enforcing that in our culture and institutions.

Instead, we should marshal the best of our resources to treat patients as individuals.

When I was young, my parents always said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” That is the ideology of the woke religion. Anti-discrimination to combat and correct discrimination is their rallying cry. Count me out.

This heinous ideology needs to be eradicated from our medical schools, our hospitals, and our lives.

Amen.

·[i]Brown M. Skeletal muscle and bone: effect of sex steroids and aging. Adv Physiol Educ 31: 0000–0000, 2007.

·[ii]Legato MJ(editor). Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine. London: Elsevier, 2004.

·[iii]Harms CA. Does gender affect pulmonary function and exercise capacity? Respir Physiol Neurobiol 151: 124–131, 2006.

·[iv]McCarthy MM, Konkle ATM. When is a sex difference not a sex difference? Front Neuroendocrinol 26: 85–102, 2005.