Yesterday, I wrote about one way that the people and institutions advocating the politicization of medicine are reacting to even the slightest amount of pushback against their effort: playing the victim, despite their considerable success and the immense resources behind their cause.
And they’re doing so even as they make actual victims of people such as Sheldon Rubenfeld, a doctor long affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine. Rubenfield is now on the outs because of a drawn-out bureaucratic process initiated by an “anonymous grievance” filed by a med-school student offended by his use of the word “Palestinian” in a lecture he gave warning students not to let their own biases affect their practice of medicine.
Richard T. Bosshardt, another doctor, has been stuck in wokeness’s waiting room as well. A member (of sorts) of the American College of Surgeons, he once took issue with that organization’s embrace of DEI. This placed him in the bizarre situation of being banned from communicating with other surgeons through ACS channels, while the organization claims he remains a member “in good standing.”
But from his unique vantage point in but not of the ACS, Bosshardt has continued to document its transformation. It, too, has encountered opposition to its DEI push. And its strategy has, similarly, not been to stop that effort, but to disguise it. Bosshardt wrote in City Journal last week that the organization has embraced the concept of “Inclusive Excellence” as its DEI replacement.
In truth, it is no replacement at all. “A perusal of the materials reveals that little if anything has changed in the program’s content and focus,” Bosshardt wrote. “It adopts the same underlying DEI premise: that disparities of representation always indicate discrimination.” It still cites the misleading study, popular among DEI-in-medicine advocates, that claims black babies are likelier to survive if a black doctor cares for them. A particular telling detail Bosshardt found is that what was formerly the “Office of Diversity” on the ACS website now directs to the “Office of Inclusive Excellence.”
It’s a good sign that woke-medicine advocates are starting to feel some pressure. But they are not giving up. Those who, for the sake of the medical field, oppose them must neither relent nor be fooled by these deceptions.