Social Justice Medicine
DEFINITION: When the rights of patients to receive top notch medical care are superseded by the rights of students to be trained in medicine based on “identity politics” over merit.
Canada’s newest medical school will select students not for their ability, but their identity. Great, as if Canada’s healthcare system wasn’t bad enough already.
The school, which opens next fall at Toronto Metropolitan University, will reserve 75 per cent of its seats for Indigenous, Black, and other “equity-deserving” groups including 2SLGBTQ+. These students will need an undergraduate GPA of only 3.3 on a 4-point scale, and maybe not even that; for comparison, the University of Toronto medical school’s average accepted GPA is 3.95. Able-bodied straight white students can’t apply for these seats. It’s TMU’s affirmative action school for doctors who can’t get in on their merits. Canada now has full-blown racial and gender discrimination.
SOURCE: https://aristotlefoundation.org/columns/at-tmu-medical-school-some-students-are-more-equal-than-others/
The sign of our times.
How did a civilization of human beings survive and thrive for eons without affirmative action? (You may be asking yourself this question LOL)
How much did “survival of the fittest” play a role?
What was the source of the saying: “the crème always rises to the top” if merit was not a primary factor of success?
How did we get here?
Medical doctors and research scientists were once among the most trusted and respected professionals in society, but a veil of suspicion now hangs over them.
I applied to McMaster Medical School in 1978 and passed all of their tests for entry except one. A Saturday morning workshop was arranged for about twenty potential students to discuss and debate a few topics in a freeform format. The purpose was for Admissions personnel to gage each applicant’s critical thinking and problem solving abilities within a team setting. It was a very competitive, stressful event in which I was out-competed by others.
I now look back and feel grateful that I found a better career for my aptitudes and temperament than Medicine as it is micro-managed today under the monopoly control of the state. I don’t respond well to being told what to do without knowing why and having the freedom of informed choice to OPT OUT.
Thank you Bruce.
Every Canadian owes a debt of gratitude to Bruce Pardy for writing this article for the National Post and pointing out the flaws of “woke thinking” when it comes to supplying Medical Doctors to meet the needs of an aging society.
However, allow me to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.
AI and Medicine.
Perhaps there is some wisdom in the TMU plan to produce more doctors with slightly lower levels of academic achievement. Obviously, the element of ‘identity politics’ selection criteria is downright nutty.
In any profession, training is just one ingredient for success. Experience gained on the job over time is an enormous factor. In Medicine, as in most professions, the evolving ‘tools of the trade’ are fast becoming the most significant factor for success in the future of medical care.
AI and robotic instruments for diagnosis and treatment are going mainstream in medicine and research particularly in the USA where medical professionals compete for patients.
If the state of health of Canada’s current medical care system was consider a “patient”, most Canadians would diagnose it as very ill because:
Wait lists abound.
Processes are slow and bureaucratic.
Information about one’s status as a patient undergoing diagnosis and treatment is spotty and/or difficult to access.
Care is very expensive in reality, but the public is told it’s “free”. Everyone knows that governments struggle to staff and fund it.
The productivity gap.
In the private sector, advances in technology hand been applied to increase productivity since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Efficiencies have improved manyfold especially since the onset of the Information Age. Consider all of the changes that have occurred over recent decades in customer service delivery, manufacturing & product engineering; supply chain management & logistics; retailing & advertising; research data capture & analytics; information retrieval and “googling” by anyone on any and all topics.
When I worked for IBM Canada in the late 1970s, a 14-level hierarchical structure of increasing authority managed its 10,000 employees. This management structure began to flatten after I left due to the individual and process improvement gains that came with successive generations of Information Technology. Today, I bet that no Canadian ‘for profit’ corporation operates under a 14 level pyramid structure of “command and control”. A much flatter and more flexible “hour glass” structure predominates thanks to the advances of the Digital Age.
Meanwhile, our public institutions keep getting bigger, increasingly bloated and more insular.
They are also more expensive, authoritarian and less responsive to expressed needs and interests of the public.
Why!!!??
Personal Responsibility
My health motto is:
“an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
Peter Attia MD is my favourite source of information about my body and how to strengthen and preserve my health and performance. I also read and investigate other credible sources, but Peter’s The DRIVE podcast makes useful and current information accessible and interesting.
Knowledge is power.
Information is liberating.
Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
While I don’t agree with his politics, Kofi offers great advice to everyone who aspires to a long and active life. Notice that no recommendation was made for Dr. Anthony Fauci’s “The Science” which offers “safe and effective” remedies to all that ails you. This is a risky proposition, yet “The Science” is now synonymous with Public Health institutions and their crony capitalist ‘partners in profit’ within the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex and the Medical Industrial Complex.
Genuine science is conducted and found where corrupting influences are not present to “spin” the data to satisfy a self-serving narrative.
It takes some effort to acquire the knowledge to discern misinformation from facts in the health sciences arena, but the effort is worth it.
Time for competition?
What if Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) existed as part of a private sector initiative to train medical professionals for private sector hospitals (PSH) in Canada.
What if the these PSH organizations were initially financed through crowd funding to get them to an operational stage, then transitioned to a direct ‘pay for services’ model thereafter. Merit over state granted privilege would become the prevailing ethic.
Think of the potential ramifications if a robust health care services ‘market’ was allowed in which governmental and non-governmental serve providers competed for ‘clients’.
Private sector enterprises compete daily on price, performance, convenience and service levels. Their owners are free to explore and adopt dynamic service delivery models which can readily adapt as new Digital Age technologies become available to improve competitive performance.
In the immortal words of James Earl Jones spoken on the Field of Dreams …
My husband had a wart on his elbow and went REPEATEDLY to the doctor for an obviously NON EFFECTIVE treatment. I told him to go to a dermatologist that charged him a couple of hundred dollars and it was permanently dealt with, saving my husband's time and the health system time AND money. Shortly after I got a letter in the mail from ALBERTA HEALTH SERVICES asking to know the nature of the services rendered. At first I thought NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, but then I realized I needed to write back, telling them none of your business - but also the fact that if I wanted to spend MY MONEY getting a wart removed, who in hell were THEY to interfere???!!!! A few weeks later I get a call from AHS wanting to discuss this issue. Essentially the AHS BOSS was trying to tell me my husband was jumping the que and THAT IS NOT FAIR!!! I pointed out the obvious SAVING OF TIME AND MONEY TO THEIR SYSTEM, and that many things in life ARE NOT FAIR, including that my husband drove a brand new BMW while this was driving a 1992 Oldsmobile that my father gave me (all by my choice, of course) and that it was not his business WHAT I chose to do with my money - fair or unfair. I also pointed out that if my DOG had a wart, I could simply take him to a clinic, lay down my credit card and have it dealt with within minutes. We treat our dogs better than people. We were on the phone for a good 45 minutes!!!! I finally told him I HAD TO GET BACK TO WORK, and did HE NOT HAVE MORE PRESSING MATTERS TO ATTEND TO than be chatting on the phone for a better part of an hour? I concluded the call with asking him to please NOT FORCE ME TO TAKE MY HUSBAND TO THE VET TO GET TIMELY AND EFFECTIVE SURGERY should a wart reappear. This AHS MANAGER obviously had a lot of time on his hands!!! Try to keep as healthy as you can, ansmd stay away from these people as much as possible!