Doctor Warns That Removing Merit From the Study of Medicine Will be Dangerous
“Bad medical schools and poorly educated physicians, regardless of race, never benefit patients.”
Roger B. Cohen, MD, teaches Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at U. Pennsylvania. He is sounding alarm bells about DEI in medicine.
He writes at the Tom Klingenstein blog:
The End of Merit in Med Schools Will Be Deadly
The United States enjoys a reputation as a bastion of excellence and scientific rigor in medical education. Our country also leads the world in medical progress and innovation. That has not always been the case. It is hard to imagine the backwardness of American medical schools before a man named Abraham Flexner set out to transform them into institutions built on rigorous science.
Flexner was a non-physician commissioned in 1910 by the Council on Medical Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to analyze and improve a woefully inadequate medical education system. Flexner recommended closure of all but 31 of 155 American medical schools, which included 80% of the white schools (119 out of 148) and 71% of the black schools (5 out of 7).
Recently, Flexner has gone from hero to villain in the wake of the “woke” tsunami that has engulfed American medicine. In 2020, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) stripped the reformer’s name from its prestigious Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education. David J. Skorton, AAMC’s president and CEO, admitted that “the Flexner report recommended valuable changes in medical education, many of which still have positive impact today.” Yet Skorton demurred:
But that report also contained racist and sexist ideas, and his work contributed to the closure of five out of seven historically Black medical schools. Our action today recognizes the long-standing negative impact of the Flexner report on the training of Black physicians and the health of the Black community in the United States.
A year later, a paper in the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics denounced the Flexner report’s “racist legacy,” charging that the reforms it inspired “damaged and marginalized historically Black medical schools.”
The anti-Flexner activists make the truly remarkable claim that Flexner’s recommendations to close shoddy schools gutted the ranks of future black physicians who would have rendered exceptional care to their fellow minority citizens. Of course, that is a pernicious fantasy. Bad medical schools and poorly educated physicians, regardless of race, never benefit patients. Quite the opposite. Better schools produce the best physicians who deliver the high quality medical care that everyone should receive. To claim that Flexner was motivated by a racist desire to deplete the ranks of capable black physicians is both preposterous and slanderous.
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Comments
“Hi, everrybody, we’re Doctor Nick!”
Too late. The medical “profession” in the United States is already toast.
Affirmative action destroyed standards.
The covid fraud destroyed credibility.
Rampant wokeness destroyed trust.
??? That should have been a stand-alone comment.
No problem, it lets me feel appreciated.
I concur completely., having worked and taught at three different medical schools.
There is truth is what you say. and I might ad incompetence.
DEI reduces everything down to the lowest common denominator. Med schools will be reducing standards to that of unknown Caribbean medical college?
“If you know what I know /
You wouldn’t try no /
Caribbean Gyno…”
–SNL (Eddie Murphy sketch)
As opposed to KNOWN Caribbean medical college?
(Graduate of St. George’s University School of Medicine, in private practice)
Still gave you a thumbs up. One has to be able to laugh at oneself..
The inevitable return of witches and witch doctors. Now where did I put that trephine?
Statically, the report does not appear to be racist. (It rejected 80% of medical schools, while only 71% of black medical schools were rejected.
The report is not politically correct by today’s standards. (Example: the report assumes black doctors will only treat blacks.)
You can find the 1910 Report here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235368754_The_Flexner_Report_of_1910_and_Its_Impact_on_Complementary_and_Alternative_Medicine_and_Psychiatry_in_North_America_in_the_20th_Century
Chapter XIV’s title is THE MEDICAL EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO
Here is the report’s discussion of the Black schools:
Of the seven medical schools for negroes in the United States,’ five are at this moment in no position to make any contribution of value to the solution of the problem above pointed out; Flint at New Orleans, Leonard at Raleigh, the Knoxville, Memphis, and Louisville schools are ineffectual. They are wasting small sums annually and sending out undisciplined men, whose lack of real training is covered up by the imposing M.D. degree.
Meharry at Nashville and Howard. at Washington are worth developing, and until considerably increased benefactions are available, effort will wisely concentrate upon them. The future of Howard is assured ; indeed, the new Freedman’s Hospital is an asset the like of which is in this country extremely rare. It is greatly to be hoped that the government may display a liberal and progressive spirit in adapting the administration of this institution to the requirements of medical education.
Meharry is the creation of one man, Dr. George W. Hubbard, who, sent to the south at the close of the war on an errand of mercy, has for a half-century devoted himself singly to the elevation of the negro. The slender resources at his command have been carefully husbanded; his pupils have in their turn remembered their obligations to him and to their school. The income of the institution has been utilized to build it up. The school laboratories are highly creditable to the energy and intelligence of Dr. Hubbard and his assistants. The urgent need is for improved clinical facilities— a hospital building and a well-equipped dispensary. Efforts now making to acquire them deserve liberal support.
The upbuilding of Howard and Meharry will profit the nation much more than the inadequate maintenance of a larger number of schools. They are, of course, unequal to the need and the opportunity; but nothing will be gained by way of satisfying the need or of rising to the opportunity through the survival of feeble, ill-equipped institutions, quite regardless of the spirit which animates the promoters. The subventions of religious and philanthropic societies and of individuals can be made effective only if concentrated. They must become immensely greater before they can be safely dispersed.
Statically [sic], the report does not appear to be racist. (It rejected 80% of medical schools, while only 71% of black medical schools were rejected.
To be fair, how would you close 5.6 (80% of 7) black medical schools? 😉
Small-number statistics gets wonky because of stuff like this. For example, suppose you flip a coin 3 times and get 2 heads and one tails. Should you conclude from that small sample that this coin is weighted and is twice as likely to land on heads? Of course not!
But you are correct. The Flexner report said that overall about 80% of the medical schools of the day were sub-standard and produced sub-standard physicians. With only 7 black schools, statistically that would be 5 or 6 (since it can’t be 5.6). So the number of sub-standard black schools was consistent with the total number of sub-standard schools. That tells anyone with any sense that it probably was NOT motivated by racism or bigotry, but simply a reasonable desire to train better doctors.
(Let’s just play this out: If it HAD been motivated by racism, one of two things would have happened: EITHER all black medical schools would have closed so there were very few black doctors, OR all black medical schools would have been kept open so there were a lot of sub-standard doctors for the black community. Neither of those happened.)
The people fomenting outrage over the 5 closed black schools have to omit the part where 119 white schools were also closed for the exact same reasons. Their argument completely falls apart if they include that.
Or they have to admit that their real argument is that closing black schools is never okay for any reason, even if they’re producing poorly-educated and poorly-trained physicians. (But closing any number of white schools is fine.)
It just drives me nuts how everything has to be made into a race issue, as if poorly-trained black doctors primarily treating black patients wouldn’t create bigger problems for the black community than impartially closing objectively bad schools to ensure better doctors for everyone.
Working in a University Hospital/Medical School and having 30 years in the medical field I can tell you that about half of the “doctors” we will be graduating over the next decade make me fear for the future of medicine.
This is almost the same scenario that happened a decade or so ago when there was a big push to make medical school “more affordable” to give people who hadn’t actually earned the privilege to be able to afford Medical School. My argument at the time was simple, who do you want treating you the person who paid 50 grand a year to go to Medical School or the one who made the commitment knowing they were going to be at least 500k in debt at best?
Always remember the person that barely graduated medical school you still call Doctor.
merit is the whitemans measuring stick that lefty cannot compete with
To be replaced by the Kermit Gosnell Award for Distinguished Abortion Service.
I want every one of these DEI promoters to have stenciled across their chest:
“I want the most DISadvantaged DEI-recruit to do my heart surgery. Give the DEI a break!”
You can bet it’s NOT in the criteria for any of the woke pols medical menu plan.
The Bride and I are reluctant to have any medical professional under the age of 50 treat us, but that may be problematic as the practioners get older. My dentist, a woman probably not older than 35, occasionally has trouble spelling on her dental lab Rx forms. She seems competent but there’s that little concern.
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