EDI can be bad for your health! In this internal document from the @Royal_College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, there is a proposal from the EDI group to prioritize social justice over medical expertise. This is bonkers.
A new model of CANMEDS would seek to centre values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice rather than medical expertise, they say.
Relationships rather than the individual physician as a gatekeeper of professional knowledge, they say.
It seems unlikely that anyone in a position to act on this will pay any attention to it, but still, you have to wonder how people manage to be so absurd and stupid and lost in the fog.
This is the logical consequence of the ideology. Critical disciplines theorize all non-Critical expertise to be an oppressive system that excludes other ways of knowing/doing yadda yadda yadda. You know the routine by now. It’s just Conflict Theory dressed up in modern terms that have more contemporary rhetorical effect than economic class.
That’s all very nice, but personally I’ll take the doctor at the top of the “medical expertise” list and let them have the one at the top of the “anti-oppression, anti-racism and social justice” list, thanks very much.
This is a slightly more convoluted (and much more expensive) iteration of “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” Having an agency or department charged with looking for and offering “solutions” for a “problem,” that “problem” will always be found. There will always be room for improvement.
What other professions should we suggest to prioritize DEI values over their own professional standards? Why all of them, of course. It might have rather nasty side effects, though….
NIGHT; A PILE OF BROKEN MASONERY is mounded in the center of a downtown block, now cordoned off by caution tape. Heavy machinery can be heard digging, pounding and hammering, Sirens, yelling, urgent, garbled voices over walkie-talkies. Teams of rescue personnel clamber over the uneven heaps. Flashing lights of the emergency vehicles surrounding the site illuminate the scene with multicolour strobes, producing a jarring, chaotic effect on our characters as they pick their way through the wreckage, stepping aside to allow EMTs with stretchers pass by.
BUILDING INSPECTOR: (while kicking through rubble) Whoever designed this building didn’t know what they were doing! It was completely under-specified; look at these joints! They’ve been made correctly, but they weren’t sturdy enough for a building of this size. I’m surprised it stood for as long as it did! The engineer who signed off on this should be shot! and whoever hired him should be shot TWICE!
DEI OFFICER: (clearing throat) Hem! Well, he does a GREAT Powerpoint presentation on improving the condition of left-handed albino weavers in Guatamala, and his gluten-free zucchini muffins are to DIE for! (as DEI officer steps aside to allow a stretcher with bloodies body by) Ooops! Sorry! (Yes, he’s Canadian.)
INSPECTOR: Oh. (pauses) I see. That explains a lot. I think I understand. (Looking around, pondering the broken building lying in all directions, looking at his own, very, very pale left hand.) I guess it’s all part of the price of progress. (Shrugging, he turns and looks more pointedly at the OFFICER) Now, tell me more about those muffins!
It seems to me if you want equity and justice in medicine, the answer is to give everyone an equal standard of care, regardless of [fill in preferred list of protected characteristics here]. Not all people need the exact same treatments, of course. Men don’t need screening for ovarian cancer. People of color might need more screening for sickle cell anemia. Women don’t need as much attention (though not none) to being colorblind.
In order to provide equity and justice in medicine, we must be aware of sex, ethnic background, country of origin, and other characteristics. We do not need medicine centered on those characteristics, though. We need medicine centered on medical expertise.
The hatred of expertise by the mob of woke activists is chilling.
With this new model, we can reflect a stance of humility over hubris ….
Wow, Uriah Heep would be proud. Nothing “reflect[s] a stance of humility over hubris” quite like busybody DEI bureaucratic noisemakers telling medical professionals to shut up and sit down when it comes to expert knowledge and competence.
Am I missing something? There doesn’t seem to be a sentence in there even suggesting “this will improve standards of care”. I guess that’s more honest, but it seems like the vibes are “must, because” rather than “we should pursue this objective because it improves our work”.
Must infuse with DEI crap so future generations will infuse everything with DEI crap, so says the religious conservative, or should I say “progressive”?
In order to provide equity and justice in medicine, we must be aware of sex, ethnic background, country of origin, and other characteristics. We do not need medicine centered on those characteristics, though. We need medicine centered on medical expertise.
You’d think that obvious, but this ideology-first movement has been in action for a while now. Sort of like how the warnings of (some) lesbians and (some) feminists regarding nascent Genderism went unheard, so too have the warnings regarding the spread of Social Justice Lysenkoism. Here’s a Boston Review article from March 2021 entitled “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine” that argues for “medical restitution”. One form of redress the authors propose is “race-explicit protocol changes (such as preferentially admitting patients historically denied access to certain forms of medical care).” Yes, you read that right: explicit endorsement of racial discrimination in healthcare.
Pretty good example of DEI gone mad, I should think, but at least it’s not CR … Oh. … Oh, my.
Our path to this realization, as with nearly all advancements in social medicine, took us outside our discipline—through the field of critical race theory (CRT), in particular. … Recognizing this problem, public health scholars Chandra Ford and Collins Airhihenbuwa brought CRT’s legal approach to the public health realm in 2010 with their landmark proposal of a Public Health Critical Race Framework. Following their lead, we have sought to implement that framework in our own advocacy and clinical work on equitable heart failure admissions.
Well, now I have to take a look at that 2010 proposal. … … … Holy wow. No hiding the CRT here, just pure praise. We even get the discipline’s usual straw man version of colorblindness:
Colorblindness, which is both an attitude and a school of thought, posits that nonracial factors (e.g., income) fundamentally explain ostensibly racial phenomena. … Only colorblindness, however, precludes explicit examination of racism’s potential contributions to inequities.
If only these people, like Narcissus, would become hypnotized by their own reflection and leave the rest of us alone.
This is the logical consequence of the ideology. Critical disciplines theorize all non-Critical expertise to be an oppressive system that excludes other ways of knowing/doing yadda yadda yadda. You know the routine by now. It’s just Conflict Theory dressed up in modern terms that have more contemporary rhetorical effect than economic class.
That’s all very nice, but personally I’ll take the doctor at the top of the “medical expertise” list and let them have the one at the top of the “anti-oppression, anti-racism and social justice” list, thanks very much.
This is a slightly more convoluted (and much more expensive) iteration of “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” Having an agency or department charged with looking for and offering “solutions” for a “problem,” that “problem” will always be found. There will always be room for improvement.
What other professions should we suggest to prioritize DEI values over their own professional standards? Why all of them, of course. It might have rather nasty side effects, though….
NIGHT; A PILE OF BROKEN MASONERY is mounded in the center of a downtown block, now cordoned off by caution tape. Heavy machinery can be heard digging, pounding and hammering, Sirens, yelling, urgent, garbled voices over walkie-talkies. Teams of rescue personnel clamber over the uneven heaps. Flashing lights of the emergency vehicles surrounding the site illuminate the scene with multicolour strobes, producing a jarring, chaotic effect on our characters as they pick their way through the wreckage, stepping aside to allow EMTs with stretchers pass by.
BUILDING INSPECTOR: (while kicking through rubble) Whoever designed this building didn’t know what they were doing! It was completely under-specified; look at these joints! They’ve been made correctly, but they weren’t sturdy enough for a building of this size. I’m surprised it stood for as long as it did! The engineer who signed off on this should be shot! and whoever hired him should be shot TWICE!
DEI OFFICER: (clearing throat) Hem! Well, he does a GREAT Powerpoint presentation on improving the condition of left-handed albino weavers in Guatamala, and his gluten-free zucchini muffins are to DIE for! (as DEI officer steps aside to allow a stretcher with bloodies body by) Ooops! Sorry! (Yes, he’s Canadian.)
INSPECTOR: Oh. (pauses) I see. That explains a lot. I think I understand. (Looking around, pondering the broken building lying in all directions, looking at his own, very, very pale left hand.) I guess it’s all part of the price of progress. (Shrugging, he turns and looks more pointedly at the OFFICER) Now, tell me more about those muffins!
END
It seems to me if you want equity and justice in medicine, the answer is to give everyone an equal standard of care, regardless of [fill in preferred list of protected characteristics here]. Not all people need the exact same treatments, of course. Men don’t need screening for ovarian cancer. People of color might need more screening for sickle cell anemia. Women don’t need as much attention (though not none) to being colorblind.
In order to provide equity and justice in medicine, we must be aware of sex, ethnic background, country of origin, and other characteristics. We do not need medicine centered on those characteristics, though. We need medicine centered on medical expertise.
The hatred of expertise by the mob of woke activists is chilling.
Wow, Uriah Heep would be proud. Nothing “reflect[s] a stance of humility over hubris” quite like busybody DEI bureaucratic noisemakers telling medical professionals to shut up and sit down when it comes to expert knowledge and competence.
Am I missing something? There doesn’t seem to be a sentence in there even suggesting “this will improve standards of care”. I guess that’s more honest, but it seems like the vibes are “must, because” rather than “we should pursue this objective because it improves our work”.
Must infuse with DEI crap so future generations will infuse everything with DEI crap, so says the religious conservative, or should I say “progressive”?
iknklast:
You’d think that obvious, but this ideology-first movement has been in action for a while now. Sort of like how the warnings of (some) lesbians and (some) feminists regarding nascent Genderism went unheard, so too have the warnings regarding the spread of Social Justice Lysenkoism. Here’s a Boston Review article from March 2021 entitled “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine” that argues for “medical restitution”. One form of redress the authors propose is “race-explicit protocol changes (such as preferentially admitting patients historically denied access to certain forms of medical care).” Yes, you read that right: explicit endorsement of racial discrimination in healthcare.
Pretty good example of DEI gone mad, I should think, but at least it’s not CR … Oh. … Oh, my.
Well, now I have to take a look at that 2010 proposal. … … … Holy wow. No hiding the CRT here, just pure praise. We even get the discipline’s usual straw man version of colorblindness:
Great googly moogly.
File that under things likely to increase the world’s racism quotient…
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