TBD‘Disparate-Impact’ Thinking Is Destroying Medicine, States President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)
06 Junio 2024 - 3:02PM
Any notion that medicine was immune to the culture shocks in our
nation was destroyed by the intersection of the George Floyd
response and COVID-era policy, writes ophthalmologist Jane Lindell
Hughes, M.D., F.A.C.S., in the summer issue of the Journal of
American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Hughes serves as president of
the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
“Those who deviated from dogmas on racism, vaccines, public
health management, or virus origin risked personal, financial, and
in some cases physical harm. The ‘mostly peaceful’ Black Lives
Matter protests destroyed millions of dollars in property…. The
powerful entities determining the COVID narrative threatened loss
of licensure, good name, credibility, and means of livelihood to
dissenters,” Dr. Hughes writes.
The response to these two events shows the changes occurring in
our culture and long-held beliefs.
The views of the most affluent and influential one percent of
the population differ greatly from those of ordinary Americans, Dr.
Hughes notes. For example, 47 percent of the elite (vs. 16 percent
of voters) think that Americans have too much freedom.
The emphasis on disparate impact with its demands for diversity,
equity, and inclusion (DEI) is affecting standards in medicine, Dr.
Hughes writes, while imposing onerous bureaucratic requirements and
ceding more power to centralized agencies. COVID policy likewise
transfers decision-making to designated experts to meet goals
decided by remote entities, sometimes international ones.
The coupling of censorship of dissent and the setting of policy
mandates by nonaccountable bureaucracy perpetuates ideas and
actions representing cultural shifts the gravity of which needs to
be understood by practicing physicians and the majority of the
public.
“It is up to us to restore our rapidly crumbling cultural ideal
of meritocracy coupled with equal opportunity,” she concludes.
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by
the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a
national organization representing physicians in all specialties
since 1943.
Contact: Jane Lindell Hughes, M.D., janehughesmd@gmail.com, or
Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, janeorientmd@gmail.com