Nice piece. But “taking politics out of medicine” can mean more than one thing. Calls to take politics out of the curriculum are not generally aimed at teaching about health disparities and social policy. These topics clearly have a rightful place in any curricular attempt to situate the medical profession in society—as most if not all medical schools seek to do. One may favor such topics in the medical curriculum but also favor taking politics in the form of political indoctrination or advocacy out of the curriculum. Medical education should aim to teach future doctors about health and society but should seek to do so without foreclosing political debate.
At the risk of sounding disparaging, there is real value in allowing the students exposure to Tiny and her production. It’s an interesting study in psychosocial behavior and perspectives of medicine by skeptics. There are a large population of patients who are not only skeptical or fearful of healthcare providers and evidence based medicine, and many who believe they are being deceived, extorted, subjected to non-consensual testing and treatments, despite the best communication and respectful implementation of care.
Being in an urban center on the North American West Coast has provided myself ample anecdotal evidence of the high concentration of “Tinys” in these populations. So at best this was a half day immersion with a living model whose best instincts are working against their own interests, and trying to empathize with their situation to best create a reasonable plan of care and at least address some of their problems. At worst this is school faculty tacitly endorsing ideology and claims that run contrary to best practices and shows little regard for real problem solving and data driven policies.
My radical egalitarian friends have long been allergic to disciplined prioritizing of health and environmental targets grounded in evidence of disease, disability and premature death. Why focus on such mundane and limiting matters when you can be endlessly “critical” of so much more?
"We depend on our physicians to use evidence-based processes ... to generate actionable and falsifiable hypotheses based on current knowledge"
As it should be. With that in mind, what becomes of the noted disparities between the incidence of diabetes and hypertension among blacks versus their prevalence among whites if you control for body mass index?
Nice piece. But “taking politics out of medicine” can mean more than one thing. Calls to take politics out of the curriculum are not generally aimed at teaching about health disparities and social policy. These topics clearly have a rightful place in any curricular attempt to situate the medical profession in society—as most if not all medical schools seek to do. One may favor such topics in the medical curriculum but also favor taking politics in the form of political indoctrination or advocacy out of the curriculum. Medical education should aim to teach future doctors about health and society but should seek to do so without foreclosing political debate.
At the risk of sounding disparaging, there is real value in allowing the students exposure to Tiny and her production. It’s an interesting study in psychosocial behavior and perspectives of medicine by skeptics. There are a large population of patients who are not only skeptical or fearful of healthcare providers and evidence based medicine, and many who believe they are being deceived, extorted, subjected to non-consensual testing and treatments, despite the best communication and respectful implementation of care.
Being in an urban center on the North American West Coast has provided myself ample anecdotal evidence of the high concentration of “Tinys” in these populations. So at best this was a half day immersion with a living model whose best instincts are working against their own interests, and trying to empathize with their situation to best create a reasonable plan of care and at least address some of their problems. At worst this is school faculty tacitly endorsing ideology and claims that run contrary to best practices and shows little regard for real problem solving and data driven policies.
My radical egalitarian friends have long been allergic to disciplined prioritizing of health and environmental targets grounded in evidence of disease, disability and premature death. Why focus on such mundane and limiting matters when you can be endlessly “critical” of so much more?
"We depend on our physicians to use evidence-based processes ... to generate actionable and falsifiable hypotheses based on current knowledge"
As it should be. With that in mind, what becomes of the noted disparities between the incidence of diabetes and hypertension among blacks versus their prevalence among whites if you control for body mass index?