Social justice should have no place in the study or practice of medicine.
The College Fix reports:
‘Decolonizing Medicine’ class at UMD prompts concerns about politicizing health carePhysicians are raising concerns over new course offerings at the University of Maryland that incorporate identity politics into various public health and medical programs at the public institution.“Decolonizing Medicine: Steps to Actionable Change” is a one-credit undergraduate public health course, first taught in the spring of 2025 and offered again this semester.Designed for students studying medicine, public health, or health policy, it covers how “colonial legacies” impact “global health systems” and the “concept of ‘the White body’” as the standard in medical training, according to the university registrar’s catalog. The “student-facilitated discussion-based” course also is open for registration for the current spring semester as a two-credit elective.However, outside medical educators and field experts raised concerns about the impact of these identity politics-based courses. The College Fix spoke recently with Dr. Jane Orient, executive director at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.“The title of the course as well as the description reflects the ideological view of oppressors (white colonialists) versus the oppressed (people of color), a fundamental anti-white racist view,” Orient said. “The statement that modern medicine has been shaped by ‘colonialism’ makes no sense to me … Modern medicine was shaped by scientific advances.”Orient also expressed her concerns over the politicization of medical education and deviating from high standards of empirical data and hard science. “The purpose of medicine, according to the late Donald Seldin, is to relieve pain, reduce disability, and postpone death. It is not about social reform,” Orient said to The Fix. “Framing medicine through Marxist concepts of oppression is destructive of the art and science of medicine,” Orient added. “Doctors are not called to judge their patients’ worth or to engage in cultural revolution.”Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director at Do No Harm, a nonprofit that works against the politicization of medicine, raised similar concerns.“Framing medicine primarily through an identity‑based lens can lead future doctors to see patients through ideological categories rather than as individuals with specific clinical needs,” Miceli told The Fix in a recent interview.
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