The VERY people DEI wants to help, DEI will hurt. In about 12 years...when the current crop of DEI med students hit their stride, people will just avoid them. Everyone is willing to virtue signal, but no one wants an unqualified doctor to treat them. I'd bet my life on it. And so will the virtue signalers. Imagine how PISSED you'd be, if you're in the DEI class because of your phenotype and you *ARE* highly qualified. Were it me, it would drive me bat shit crazy.
“(1) Direct, compel, or incentivize students, faculty, or staff of the medical school to personally state, pledge, recite, affirm, or otherwise adopt any of the following tenets”
Dr. Prasad conveniently left out “incentivize” which could be widely interpreted. For example, an optional elective to learn about how/if Jim Crow affects medical practice today could be seen as an “incentive” because it counts toward graduation.
Dr. Prasad is incredibly smart and I love how he challenges me, but it’s details like this that make me think he writes these articles without good faith, because he’s too smart to not know or analyze an issue from all angles.
He also leaves out “affirm” and “adopt” which could be interpreted as “believe”
So the school cannot offer any subject matter that would “incentivize” one to “affirm” the idea, for example, that the effects of Jim Crow continue today.
The bill as you’ve described appears to address overt manifestations of DEI in medical schools. It’s a start….and it should be broadened to include all post secondary institutions and all programs therein. And absolutely, threatening funding is the only logic these woke folk seem to understand.
However, I don’t think you can legislate away the soft pedalling and covert existence of some of these ideas. As you say, they won’t be able to chant that idiocy but they can still teach it. For the culture to truly change (and for the curriculum to reflect that) will take time as societal values slowly permeate the thick walls of the ivory towers and the thick skulls of the folks who frequent them.
I’m apprehensive of the next few years when we will start to see members of the leading edge of the Gen Z cohort enter fellowship training (which is generally where I interact with trainees). I’ll get to see first hand the work-product of modern day med schools.
"...the only way to stifle bad ideas is to propose better ones". It's this kind of thing that makes me always defend you online when people say you're controlled opposition etc. I often disagree with you on some fundamentals (like vaccines!); but I always admire your courage in speaking truth to power, making those kinds of statements like the one above, and practising what you preach, i.e. Sensible Medicine is a platform for diverse views. I also know I'm not the only person who thinks that way. Keep on keeping on, Dr Prasad.
I think this is critical. I read with horror a report about a 6-week class at UCSF for first year med students entitled "Justice and Advocacy in Medicine" - the content of which included recommendations for direct action that praised civil disobedience (including one act that specifically endangered transplant organs en route to the hospital.) My first thought was, "they spend six weeks on this?!?" What actual medical knowledge are they foregoing to make time for such myopic, polarized nonsense? I am sure a six-week course on nutrition would serve them and their patients far more down the road. Or a research class on community disease spread, or visiting lecturers presenting their most interesting grand rounds. Honestly - they could take those six weeks off and be better human beings. I told my kid applying to med school to take UCSF off the list. It may be a top med school now, but with that sort of curriculum it will not remain one.
It sends a clear message that, although these ideas can be privately held and can even be publicly discussed, they cannot be institutionally imposed, which seems perfectly reasonable since DEI and wokeness in general operates more like a religion than a conventional political ideology. A medical school should no more require a Statement of Faith or indoctrination in DEI than in any other religion. Medicine ought to be based solely on empirical facts and dedicated solely to restoring patient health. Anything else is an opportunity cost that detracts from patient outcomes. Digression into stigmatizing entire classes of people is particularly a blatant violation of "First Do No Harm" and betrayal of the profession's responsibility to treat all in need equally.
They aren't actually banning anything. They are simply withholding government funding. Of course, government has no business funding education to begin with. Eliminate all government funding and a robust free market in schooling will emerge. Even now parents all around the country go on waiting lists and pay a premium (in addition to their taxes) in order to obtain a decent education for their children.
It boils down to this...if I need a doctor for some reason do I want him to be confident and competent or do I want him to be DEI and holding down a position for the sake of "equality"? This is why I plan to never need a doctor.
DEI is a poisonous ideology for all concerned. For the accused, it actively encourages a cringing guilt for acts those people have neither chosen nor committed. For the recipients, it actively encourages adopting a stance of self-pity and victimhood.
Legislation like the proposed bill can have a very “slippery slope “, and generally needs careful consideration by a wide audience before moving it forward. The author seems to have a strong bias for passing such a bill while suggesting that a number of provisions can be ignored, worked around or simply followed. Legislation is a much different beast than guidelines or even school policy and for my part I’d prefer other possible remedies than new laws on the books.
This fear-mongering around DEI is more propaganda than reality. It's a reverse witch hunt that allows people to project fear onto trans and other left-leaning activist communities and also at the same time allows people in power (for example your employer) to weaponize these sentiments and play games of political capture. It's not black and white, it works actually against both sides -- the activists that want the changes in society in good faith and for actual justice, and it also works against the anti-activist types by making many red herring arguments that serve as a distraction while perpetuating everything in the framework of consumerism.
It is naive to take these at face value. There are substantive arguments for holding people benefitting from the past actions of their ancestors accountable for how those ancestors accumulated their wealth. For example, "old money". Yes, nobody "did" anything, they were the inheritors of wealth, yet that wealth was achieved from slavery. You are saying that the people who inherit wealth from slavery should just get a free ride then?
I don't think so. If you want to hold people accountable you have to do it fairly. To pretend like there aren't profoundly privileged people who haven't gamed the system using class and race in order to maintain their wealth that was originally created via slavery is just pretending like history doesn't exist.
People aren't blank slates. We are responsible for what we inherit.
"If you want to hold people accountable you have to do it fairly. To pretend like there aren't profoundly privileged people who haven't gamed the system using class and race in order to maintain their wealth that was originally created via slavery is just pretending like history doesn't exist."
That is indeed a fine sentiment. Question is how do you make it work without witch hunts?
I know a married women ("Vivian") whose plantation was taken over during Sherman's march to the sea and at the end of the civil war they were basically back to square one. The family records suggest her ancestors who owned the plantation had strong anti-slavery sentiments and there are no known records that they held slaves. This woman got a BA is social work by putting herself through with no financial help from her family. She is now married to a successful medical professional and lives an upper middle class life with two cars, a home in the city and a vacation home.
How would it be determined if her current family of four "was profoundly privileged and gamed the system using class and race in order to maintain their wealth"? If so, what how should this woman be "held responsible for gaming the system"? What would be a "fair" penalty should be imposed on her or or current family?
Perhaps there may be some obvious, juicy targets like Rhode Island's Brown family who were major slave owners and also whose wealth was crucial to the establishment of Brown University. Should the Brown ancestors get any credit of opening Brown U to blacks in 1870 (same time as Yale)?
There simply is no just way to adjudicate the tens of millions of people, like Vivian, who are now well off and may have a family history that sometime between 100 to 400 years ago that may have benefited from slavery
It is not time for witch hunts. It is time for equal opportunity for all regardless of race, religion, sex, family background. It is time for self denial, hard work, dependability, honoring one's word, and meritocracy. Incidentally, none of those are absolute guarantees of equal outcomes either. But they certainly increase the odds.
Utter garbage. If my family inherited wealth 7 generations ago, or didn’t inherit it, I am neither responsible for, nor a beneficiary of that wealth. My parents, my grandparents, POSSIBLY. Just as I am not responsible for, nor guilty of anything my ancestors did or did not do.
Holding "old money" accountable for the actions of their ancestors is very different than the DEI and affirmative action policies we are dealing with. DEI / affirmative action just segregates the population into groups based on gender and or skin color arbitrarily assuming one group has been wronged by the other. "Old money," both liberal and conservative, love to keep the population, the lower 90%, fighting about these inherently toxic policies while they manage their families' generational wealth, buying their way through the ivy league schools. It isn't DEI fear mongering to the individual who was passed over for a job or declined from medical school, despite having better credentials, because they were born a male or the "wrong" race. Wishing for a country and community that is merit based and supports building the strongest individuals and teams. This will require helping all those that need a hand up to build a firm foundation to operate from, regardless of race or gender.
Your argument could be made in the reverse, founded in fear based mongering and stereotype rather than the merit of an individual - which is the least -ism based method of interaction. You claim to want to hold people accountable fairly but then suggest making people responsible for the actions of their ancestors, hardly fair and largely difficult to prove remembering that only a very small percentage of people actually owned slaves. People have “gamed the system using class and wealth” which is another reason supporting merit of individuals helps to raise all.
The VERY people DEI wants to help, DEI will hurt. In about 12 years...when the current crop of DEI med students hit their stride, people will just avoid them. Everyone is willing to virtue signal, but no one wants an unqualified doctor to treat them. I'd bet my life on it. And so will the virtue signalers. Imagine how PISSED you'd be, if you're in the DEI class because of your phenotype and you *ARE* highly qualified. Were it me, it would drive me bat shit crazy.
https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s4115/BILLS-118s4115is.pdf
“(1) Direct, compel, or incentivize students, faculty, or staff of the medical school to personally state, pledge, recite, affirm, or otherwise adopt any of the following tenets”
Dr. Prasad conveniently left out “incentivize” which could be widely interpreted. For example, an optional elective to learn about how/if Jim Crow affects medical practice today could be seen as an “incentive” because it counts toward graduation.
Dr. Prasad is incredibly smart and I love how he challenges me, but it’s details like this that make me think he writes these articles without good faith, because he’s too smart to not know or analyze an issue from all angles.
He also leaves out “affirm” and “adopt” which could be interpreted as “believe”
So the school cannot offer any subject matter that would “incentivize” one to “affirm” the idea, for example, that the effects of Jim Crow continue today.
The bill as you’ve described appears to address overt manifestations of DEI in medical schools. It’s a start….and it should be broadened to include all post secondary institutions and all programs therein. And absolutely, threatening funding is the only logic these woke folk seem to understand.
However, I don’t think you can legislate away the soft pedalling and covert existence of some of these ideas. As you say, they won’t be able to chant that idiocy but they can still teach it. For the culture to truly change (and for the curriculum to reflect that) will take time as societal values slowly permeate the thick walls of the ivory towers and the thick skulls of the folks who frequent them.
I’m apprehensive of the next few years when we will start to see members of the leading edge of the Gen Z cohort enter fellowship training (which is generally where I interact with trainees). I’ll get to see first hand the work-product of modern day med schools.
"...the only way to stifle bad ideas is to propose better ones". It's this kind of thing that makes me always defend you online when people say you're controlled opposition etc. I often disagree with you on some fundamentals (like vaccines!); but I always admire your courage in speaking truth to power, making those kinds of statements like the one above, and practising what you preach, i.e. Sensible Medicine is a platform for diverse views. I also know I'm not the only person who thinks that way. Keep on keeping on, Dr Prasad.
I think this is critical. I read with horror a report about a 6-week class at UCSF for first year med students entitled "Justice and Advocacy in Medicine" - the content of which included recommendations for direct action that praised civil disobedience (including one act that specifically endangered transplant organs en route to the hospital.) My first thought was, "they spend six weeks on this?!?" What actual medical knowledge are they foregoing to make time for such myopic, polarized nonsense? I am sure a six-week course on nutrition would serve them and their patients far more down the road. Or a research class on community disease spread, or visiting lecturers presenting their most interesting grand rounds. Honestly - they could take those six weeks off and be better human beings. I told my kid applying to med school to take UCSF off the list. It may be a top med school now, but with that sort of curriculum it will not remain one.
Here's a link to the article:
https://freebeacon.com/campus/advocacy-workshops-anti-racist-audits-inside-a-top-medical-schools-radical-curriculum-overhaul/
They need to, & it won’t be done from the inside. Academic and Institutional medicine has become a hive of wokeness.
It sends a clear message that, although these ideas can be privately held and can even be publicly discussed, they cannot be institutionally imposed, which seems perfectly reasonable since DEI and wokeness in general operates more like a religion than a conventional political ideology. A medical school should no more require a Statement of Faith or indoctrination in DEI than in any other religion. Medicine ought to be based solely on empirical facts and dedicated solely to restoring patient health. Anything else is an opportunity cost that detracts from patient outcomes. Digression into stigmatizing entire classes of people is particularly a blatant violation of "First Do No Harm" and betrayal of the profession's responsibility to treat all in need equally.
They aren't actually banning anything. They are simply withholding government funding. Of course, government has no business funding education to begin with. Eliminate all government funding and a robust free market in schooling will emerge. Even now parents all around the country go on waiting lists and pay a premium (in addition to their taxes) in order to obtain a decent education for their children.
DEI=DIE. There is no such thing as reverse discrimination, discrimination is still discrimination.
It boils down to this...if I need a doctor for some reason do I want him to be confident and competent or do I want him to be DEI and holding down a position for the sake of "equality"? This is why I plan to never need a doctor.
And that Sensible Medicine is giving it any air time whatsoever.
I can’t believe law makers are spending time developing a bill like this when there are so many more pressing issues in medical care.
DEI is a poisonous ideology for all concerned. For the accused, it actively encourages a cringing guilt for acts those people have neither chosen nor committed. For the recipients, it actively encourages adopting a stance of self-pity and victimhood.
It’s mostly fabricated nonsense so yes they should
Legislation like the proposed bill can have a very “slippery slope “, and generally needs careful consideration by a wide audience before moving it forward. The author seems to have a strong bias for passing such a bill while suggesting that a number of provisions can be ignored, worked around or simply followed. Legislation is a much different beast than guidelines or even school policy and for my part I’d prefer other possible remedies than new laws on the books.
This fear-mongering around DEI is more propaganda than reality. It's a reverse witch hunt that allows people to project fear onto trans and other left-leaning activist communities and also at the same time allows people in power (for example your employer) to weaponize these sentiments and play games of political capture. It's not black and white, it works actually against both sides -- the activists that want the changes in society in good faith and for actual justice, and it also works against the anti-activist types by making many red herring arguments that serve as a distraction while perpetuating everything in the framework of consumerism.
It is naive to take these at face value. There are substantive arguments for holding people benefitting from the past actions of their ancestors accountable for how those ancestors accumulated their wealth. For example, "old money". Yes, nobody "did" anything, they were the inheritors of wealth, yet that wealth was achieved from slavery. You are saying that the people who inherit wealth from slavery should just get a free ride then?
I don't think so. If you want to hold people accountable you have to do it fairly. To pretend like there aren't profoundly privileged people who haven't gamed the system using class and race in order to maintain their wealth that was originally created via slavery is just pretending like history doesn't exist.
People aren't blank slates. We are responsible for what we inherit.
"If you want to hold people accountable you have to do it fairly. To pretend like there aren't profoundly privileged people who haven't gamed the system using class and race in order to maintain their wealth that was originally created via slavery is just pretending like history doesn't exist."
That is indeed a fine sentiment. Question is how do you make it work without witch hunts?
I know a married women ("Vivian") whose plantation was taken over during Sherman's march to the sea and at the end of the civil war they were basically back to square one. The family records suggest her ancestors who owned the plantation had strong anti-slavery sentiments and there are no known records that they held slaves. This woman got a BA is social work by putting herself through with no financial help from her family. She is now married to a successful medical professional and lives an upper middle class life with two cars, a home in the city and a vacation home.
How would it be determined if her current family of four "was profoundly privileged and gamed the system using class and race in order to maintain their wealth"? If so, what how should this woman be "held responsible for gaming the system"? What would be a "fair" penalty should be imposed on her or or current family?
Perhaps there may be some obvious, juicy targets like Rhode Island's Brown family who were major slave owners and also whose wealth was crucial to the establishment of Brown University. Should the Brown ancestors get any credit of opening Brown U to blacks in 1870 (same time as Yale)?
There simply is no just way to adjudicate the tens of millions of people, like Vivian, who are now well off and may have a family history that sometime between 100 to 400 years ago that may have benefited from slavery
It is not time for witch hunts. It is time for equal opportunity for all regardless of race, religion, sex, family background. It is time for self denial, hard work, dependability, honoring one's word, and meritocracy. Incidentally, none of those are absolute guarantees of equal outcomes either. But they certainly increase the odds.
Utter garbage. If my family inherited wealth 7 generations ago, or didn’t inherit it, I am neither responsible for, nor a beneficiary of that wealth. My parents, my grandparents, POSSIBLY. Just as I am not responsible for, nor guilty of anything my ancestors did or did not do.
Holding "old money" accountable for the actions of their ancestors is very different than the DEI and affirmative action policies we are dealing with. DEI / affirmative action just segregates the population into groups based on gender and or skin color arbitrarily assuming one group has been wronged by the other. "Old money," both liberal and conservative, love to keep the population, the lower 90%, fighting about these inherently toxic policies while they manage their families' generational wealth, buying their way through the ivy league schools. It isn't DEI fear mongering to the individual who was passed over for a job or declined from medical school, despite having better credentials, because they were born a male or the "wrong" race. Wishing for a country and community that is merit based and supports building the strongest individuals and teams. This will require helping all those that need a hand up to build a firm foundation to operate from, regardless of race or gender.
Your argument could be made in the reverse, founded in fear based mongering and stereotype rather than the merit of an individual - which is the least -ism based method of interaction. You claim to want to hold people accountable fairly but then suggest making people responsible for the actions of their ancestors, hardly fair and largely difficult to prove remembering that only a very small percentage of people actually owned slaves. People have “gamed the system using class and wealth” which is another reason supporting merit of individuals helps to raise all.
My "disagree" button is stuck, it's been depressed so many times reading your post.