Facts versus fantasy: Debunking the woke narrative

April 19, 2022. Doctors should follow the science and not the political "science;" support the police, not BLM. Here is some relished wisdom from an experienced medical and academic professional and an astute Black conservative. First, the medical wisdom, the article and the opening graphs.

Keep Politics Out of the Doctor’s Office - WSJ.pdf

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Healthcare is being infected by the radical ideology that has corrupted education and public safety. But while critical race theory and crime waves have been in the news, the public is largely unaware of medicine’s turn toward division and discrimination. Americans deserve to know that their health and well-being are at risk.

At the heart of this is the claim that healthcare is systemically racist— that most physicians are biased and deliver worse care to minorities. Health disparities do exist among racial groups, but physician bias isn’t the cause. The psychological test at the root of this narrative, the 1998 Implicit Association Test, has been widely discredited, and I know from long experience as a medical educator and practitioner that physicians address the needs of each patient, regardless of skin color. Moreover, attacking physicians is dangerous. It degrades minority trust in healthcare while undermining health outcomes for everyone.

Consider what’s happening in medical research. The National Library of Medicine database shows more than 2,700 recent papers on “racism and medicine,” which generally purport to show physician bias leading to racial disparities in health outcomes. Yet the most commonly cited studies are shoddily designed, ignore such critical factors as pre- existing conditions, or reach predetermined and sensationalized conclusions that aren’t supported by reported results. These papers in turn are used to source even more shoddy research. This is a corruption of medical science in service to political ideology.

Prominent medical journals are complicit in the crusade against medical professionals. The New England Journal of Medicine touts its “commitment to understanding and combating racism as a public health and human rights crisis,” while Health Affairs is implementing a strategy to “dismantle racism and increase racial equity” in healthcare. They publish piece after piece calling, explicitly or implicitly, for a fundamental change in the medical profession. They’re also bringing race and other nonacademic factors into the peer-review process, threatening the scientific analysis on which physician practice and patient health depend.

Medical schools increasingly are preparing physicians for social activism at the expense of medical science. Such student groups as White Coats for Black Lives demand that administrators reframe curriculum around reparations for slavery, decarceration of prisoners, and other topics with no bearing on training doctors to care for individual patients. Medical schools and residencies are lowering admissions standards. The result will be fewer talented physicians providing high-quality care to fewer patients.

Physicians are being pushed to discriminate. Hospitals, state health authorities and the federal government have all authorized race-based formulas for rationing Covid treatments. Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston (Harvard’s teaching hospital) is moving toward “preferential care based on race” across the board. And the Biden administration is offering higher Medicare reimbursement rates to hospitals and physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.” To fight their supposed bias, physicians are being bribed into discriminating by race.

Here, Jason Riley expose the hypocrisy an absolute absence of integrity of the Black Lives Matter leadership. First, the article and the opening graphs.

BLM’s Anti-Police Racket Is Coming Undone - WSJ.pdf

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In the 2021 movie “Old,” a group of vacationers is stranded on a secluded beach where the aging process is accelerated. Decades, they soon realize, pass in a matter of hours. Alas, the premise is better than the film, but it suffices as a metaphor for Black Lives Matter, a movement that has quickly aged into a racket.

BLM got its start in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. It gained traction a year later, when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo. According to a national poll published by the Daily Kos, support for BLM peaked at 52% in June 2020, a month after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. Its popularity has declined since then, and recent revelations about the organization’s spending habits are unlikely to reverse that trend.

After the New York Post reported in April 2021 that a BLM co-founder had purchased four homes for a total of $3.2 million, the head of a local BLM chapter in New York City called for an independent investigation into how money was being spent. In July, BLM leaders in Canada, with help from its U.S. affiliate, purchased another multimillion dollar mansion in Toronto, which prompted several activists in the local chapter to resign. And earlier this month, New York magazine reported that BLM leaders purchased a $6 million California home in cash with money that had been donated to the organization.

“The transaction has not been previously reported, and Black Lives Matter leadership had hoped to keep the house’s existence a secret,” the article said. “Internal emails dating to 2016 show activists voicing concern about how donations were being spent and how the organization was being run. . . . The families of some Black victims of police violence have complained that they have seen little of the funds that have flowed to the movements most visible facet.” Floyd’s death produced a windfall for the group. In October 2020, it took in $66.5 million in contributions. Weeks later, it purchased the California property. BLM told the magazine that it had “always planned” to disclose the purchase, but didn’t explain why it hadn’t.

On my better days I feel that the tide is turning, that the vast, silent majority of decent, traditional, industrious, productive, contributing and sharing people are realizing the importance of their values to them and to the country and, even more important, they realize that they are the majority of people and recognize that the majority still rules, for a reason. These articles are two examples of that tide turning, people waking up, flexing their muscles if only by using their reasoning. Let's call it the triumph of real critical thinking.