Doctors

The doctor will kill you now

It’s the stuff of nightmares. You wake up on a cold metal table, fully conscious but unable to move or communicate as masked figures prep you for some unknown procedure – it turns out to be your last. This isn’t the plot of a Criminal Minds episode, but quite possibly a far too common reality in an American medical system that seeks to harvest organs from donors who are very much alive. It’s the latest example of modern progressive institutions committing harm in the name of help. A recent New York Times investigation revealed the disturbing lengths procurement agencies go to retrieve organs. Historically, organ donation occurred only from patients declared brain-dead, an “irreversible state.

Organ transplant in Paris (Getty)

America’s top medical schools still hire by race

The institutions just won’t quit. Even after the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that race-based admissions violate the Constitution, many of America’s top medical schools are digging in their heels – and, apparently, digging graves for meritocracy. A new report by Do No Harm, a group of physicians and health policy experts, reveals that public medical schools continue to admit students with dramatically different qualifications based largely on race. In other words, the diversity-industrial complex is alive and well – just operating in the shadows. The numbers don’t lie. According to the report, black students admitted to these schools had average MCAT scores significantly lower than their white and Asian counterparts.

Hospital

Doctors are embracing identity politics – and harming babies

“Why did I ever order those tests?” This is the question that Dr. Sharon Ostfeld-Johns of Yale Medical School now asks herself of every drug test she ever ordered for newborns with mothers who were heavy users.The pediatrician is one of a growing cadre of doctors who think that at risk babies should not be screened for drug exposure because positive tests lead to interactions with child welfare services and exacerbate what they see as racial bias in the system. Like so many new policies in this field, though, the efforts to reduce racial disparities only end up harming the most vulnerable children.   Dr.

Babies

The lessons of ancient Rome’s dangerous doctors

"I died of a surfeit of doctors,” read one Roman funerary inscription. But where did this surfeit come from? Let Pliny the Elder (d. AD 79) explain. Pliny devoted book twenty-nine of his Natural History (a vast encyclopedia of Roman life) to the history of medicine. Claiming that no discipline “undergoes more frequent changes, and none is more profitable either,” Pliny pointed the finger at Greek doctors. These had been welcomed into Rome from the third century bc with their fancy philosophical ideas — all different — which their eloquence persuaded people immediately to adopt in place of the good old experience-based Roman herbal treatments, overseen by the trusty master of the house.

doctors

How political activism in medicine is failing patients

Trust in the public healthcare system declined among Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s no wonder: public health bureaucrats pushed for various insane policies that ran counter to common sense, admitted to deceiving the American people and worked to shutter debate surrounding the national and global coronavirus response. But instead of doing everything they can to restore trust in the system (and prove that they’re still deserving of it), government officials and medical associations have continued to politicize the healthcare field, sowing discord between patients and their doctors.  A consistent theme throughout the pandemic was that while Americans were less likely to trust the medical establishment, they mostly liked their personal doctors.

The hypocritical oath

'Please tell me you’re Republicans,' President Ronald Reagan joked with his doctors as he headed into surgery after an assassination attempt against him in 1981. The joke worked in part because it was obviously absurd to think any doctor would alter their standard of care based on the politics of their patient. In 2020, can anyone be so sure? In the age of COVID, medical opinion has often become indistinguishable from politics. Laypeople cherrypick statements and studies that seem to confirm their biases, and when all else fails, glob on to anecdotal evidence from a friend, family member, or celebrity who got the virus. Sadly, too many doctors are no better.

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