June 09, 2021
A paper published last year that argued against affirmative action in medicine, and was subsequently retracted, may have had the unintended effect of broadening discussions around inclusivity and underrepresentation of minorities in clinical and academic circles, a newly published viewpoint suggests.
According to Saima Karim, DO (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH), and colleagues, the “white paper” written by electrophysiologist Norman Wang, MD (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, PA), which was widely condemned on social media after its publication in the
Journal of the American Heart Association,
essentially showed why concerted efforts are needed to address biases and institutional racism that harm healthcare workers and patients. Among other things, Wang suggested that mandatory affirmative action programs meant to promote diversity and inclusion can result in unqualified applicants entering medical school or CVD training programs, and tha
What Do You Think of the AMA s Plans to Address Racism? medscape.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from medscape.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The front of Tuesday’s
New York Times Science section featured science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli taking a break from decrying the theory into a possible leak of the coronavirus from a Wuhan virology lab as racist to claim that scientific journals both practice and deny systemic racism, both in the medical field and in the United States.
She reported under a headline that impressively combines two left-wing assumptions into four words: “Journals Understate Systemic Racism.” Succumbing to woke pressure, the top editor of the
Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Howard Bauchner,
resigned over comments about racism made by a colleague on a JAMA podcast that was later vanished from the web.
A recent ‘controversy’ reveals how politically correct ideology is harming health care.
Four hundred years ago, Italian astronomer Galileo was persecuted for advancing Copernicus’s theory that the earth and other planets rotate around the sun. This heliocentric theory violated the prevailing belief dating back to Aristotle and engrained in Christian theology that the sun and planets rotate around a stationary earth. Galileo was tried for heresy and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Science would eventually vindicate Galileo.
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Today’s scientists and physicians face a different orthodoxy that explains all disparate health outcomes as the result of structural or systemic racism. Doubters and those who investigate genetic and scientific alternative explanations face their own latter-day inquisition. Just ask Howard Bauchner, editor in chief of