Tag: doctor

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education and schooling ideological culture regulation

To Die for DEI

hospital, doctor, D.E.I. DEI, diversity, equality, inclusion

Next time you’re being operated on, you probably don’t want your doctor to be someone trained and hired solely because he satisfied affirmative-​action criteria.

We’ll have to especially worry about this possibility, though, if trends at certain institutions continue — including at universities such as UCLA Medical School. There, up to half the students are now flunking basic tests of medical knowledge.

By design.

In November 2021, a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, “exploded in anger” because an admissions officer had doubts about admitting a black applicant whose academic credentials were way below the average of other students at the school.

“Did you not know African-​American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” she wanted to know, demonstrating a capacity for non sequiturs. Forget scores: “we need people like this in the medical school.”

The time for UCLA professors and admissions officers to raise hell about Lucero’s illegally race-​conscious admissions policies was then, or sooner. At least now, though, many are speaking out.

“I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors,” one instructor tells the Free Beacon. “Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”

“I wouldn’t normally talk to a reporter,” says another. “But there’s no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school.”

Well, word is out now — and in abundant detail. Let’s hope it’s not too late to set this school and others back on the right track.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders

De- and Re-certified

doctor, medicine, association, group think, censorship

“Around the country, a slew of doctors had board certifications removed and licensure threatened for sharing their COVID-​related opinions,” explains The Epoch Times, in an article devoted to one of those persecuted, Dr. John Littell of Florida.

Early in the pandemic, “Dr. Littell, a longtime family physician in Ocala and a medical school professor, began posting videos sharing his thoughts about COVID-​19 testing, treatments, and vaccines early in the pandemic,” Natasha Holt’s Epoch Times article narrates. “He was frustrated to find his content often was pulled down from his YouTube channel.” 

But the establishment’s efforts didn’t stop there. “[I]n January 2022 and again five months later, he received warning letters from the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), the organization that issued his certification for his medical specialty.”

His videos on YouTube and then the safe, free-​speech haven Rumble, spread “medical misinformation,” the board charged, warning that he could lose certification. But these were warnings. The board got a bit more serious and physical when they removed Littell from a public meeting, giving him the bum’s rush.

And then the board de-​certified him.

It’s a long story, but appears to have a happy ending, with Littell re-​certified and organizing a support group for medical professionals’ free speech rights, and the basic need to practice independent, patient-​centered medicine, and to disagree with the gimcrack “consensus” policies that establishment organizations impose.

While there are multiple medical certification boards in America, these are not free-​market concerns competing for customers. The government is heavily involved at every level. And the policies and “science” that Dr. Littell and others ran up against were not only political, but wrong — medically and morally. 

As we are increasingly discovering.

Which makes medical freedom more important than ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture individual achievement national politics & policies

Ditch Your Male Doctor

woman, female, doctor, gender, medicine, illsutration

It’s the Christmas season, so wait to do this until the New Year, but … be sure to fire your male doctor.

He’s a quack.

At least, that seems to be the gist of James Hamblin’s “Evidence of the Superiority of Female Doctors,” a report in The Atlantic on a new Harvard School of Public Health study.

“Patients cared for by female physicians,” Hamblin writes, “had lower 30-​day mortality than did patients treated by male physicians.” The rate for female physicians was 11.07 percent and for males 11.49 percent.

Though a “modest” difference, it’s still “clinically meaningful.”

The study (conducted by an all-​male team) tracked more than 1.5 million Medicare patients treated by nearly 60,000 general internists.

“If male physicians were as adept as females, some 32,000 fewer Americans would die every year — among Medicare patients alone,” concludes Hamblin. “[T]hese numbers may be what it takes to spur equal (or better) compensation and opportunity for female physicians.”

NBC News played the equal pay angle as well: “Many hope the new study pushes hospitals to promote and pay women equally.”

Still, in a poignant moment of concern for the lesser sex, correspondent Kristen Dahlgren advised, “Maybe not a reason to ditch your male doctor, but there might be lessons to learn from his female colleagues.”

Indeed, the study explained that “physician sex by itself does not determine patient outcomes,” arguing instead that “differences in practice patterns between male and female physicians” must be investigated.

Smart.

The other thing, of course, is that every doctor, male or female, is an individual — not merely an XX- or XY-​chromosome carbon copy.

Sex isn’t everything.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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woman, female, doctor, gender, medicine, illsutration