Affirmative Action in Medicine: Reflecting on the Recent Supreme Court Ruling

Written by A Midwestern Doctor on July 6, 2023. Posted in Current News

Diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) is an immensely controversial subject

I believe this controversy has arisen since people have strong reasons to support either side of the argument and because it is being forced upon us by both the government and multinational corporations.

For example, ESG scores have been used as a metric to calculate the social value of corporations, and a vital component of an ESG score is the company’s commitment to advancing diversity both within the company and in society.

Since ESG scores are used by many (such as Blackrock—the largest asset holder in the world) to determine which corporation to invest in, a lot of money is at stake, and many corporations have gone to great lengths in promoting causes that hail from a certain political leaning to attract ESG-focused investors.

Note: In 2023, Vanguard (the second largest asset holder) distanced itself from ESG investing, with its CEO arguing that ESG investing is incompatible with Vanguard’s fiduciary duties to the investors. Fewer than 1 in 7 of Vanguard’s active equity managers outperformed the broad market in any five-year period, and none of them relied exclusively on a net-zero (ESG) investment methodology.

Depending on how one looks at it, I believe any of the following can be argued about DEI:

•It’s an attempt to address a legitimate issue.

•It’s a smokescreen.

•It’s a power play.

•It’s a mass formation.

Although many of the initial justifications for DEI were valid, at this point, it has transformed into something accomplishing the opposite of what was initially intended.

In many cases, the harm of DEI is only evident if you are actively involved in the field it affects. Since I am in medicine, my focus will be on how DEI has affected medicine, but much of what I say holds for other fields as well.

Inequality and Discrimination

There are two ways to amass wealth and power:

•Producing something of immense value.

•Stealing from others.

The first sometimes happens. For example, after World War 2, since the war didn’t touch America’s soil, America had an intact industrial base the rest of the world was eager to purchase from and America rapidly experienced a boon in wealth that saturated the society.

For context, in the 1950s, a black high school dropout working reasonable hours in a factory could afford to buy a house and support a stay-at-home wife raising his family.

Typically, however, the second happens.

One of the primary issues of our era (which became much worse during the pandemic) is that the wealth that used to be available to all of America has been sucked up by the one percent, which amongst other things, has created a situation now where jointly-employed married couples, trapped in debt, cannot afford to start a family let alone buy a home.

Note: the most significant acceleration in this trend occurred during COVID-19. As many lost their livelihoods (e.g., 34% of small businesses closed during the pandemic), the combined wealth of all U.S. billionaires increased by $2.071 trillion (70.3 percent) in only 19 months.

Furthermore, a 123 percent increase happened for the five wealthiest billionaires (Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Page, and Musk), almost all of whom used the tools available to them to both push the pandemic narrative and censor anyone who challenged it (e.g., by providing ways to treat COVID-19 and end the pandemic that no one could patent and profit off of).

I believe this shift was deliberate and enacted by a globalist group that preceded the World Economic Forum and came to prominence during the Carter administration (Carter was elected in 1976) with the stated goal of creating a society revolving around economic feudalism.

This model replaced the lords of the feudal era with large corporations, and rather than using armies to force the general populace (who in the feudal period were known as serfs) to work for those lords, economic incentives (e.g., needing a job) is used to enforce their compliance.

One awful illustration of the power of this model were the unjustifiable (and later ruled to be illegal) vaccination mandates enacted across corporate America which put many in the position of having to choose between not supporting their families or taking a severe risk to their health.

Many felt gravely violated by this policy but ultimately complied, which, as Ed Dowd showed, had catastrophic consequences for America:

Note: many have argued both the DEI “mandates” and the vaccine mandates have functioned as loyalty tests designed to remove right-wing individuals who did not wish to comply with either from positions of influence.

This issue appears to be the most evident within the military, and quite a few people I know directly who were loyal to their country and fellow Americans have left the armed services due to the current administration’s actions.

Throughout history, colonial powers have also acquired wealth by stealing it (colloquially known as exploiting colonial subjects). Implementing these policies, in turn, required negative attitudes to exist toward the colonial subjects so that there would be no guilt in enslaving and exploiting them.

Since many (but not all) of the colonies were of different ethnicity, these economic policies encouraged racial discrimination toward the colonial subjects.

As a result, tremendous racism can be found worldwide, and far too many books can be written about the horrific deeds both Western and non-Western nations have committed to advance their national economic interests. For example:

Indigenous people both north and south were displaced, died of disease, and were killed by Europeans through slavery, rape, and war.

In 1491, about 145 million people lived in the western hemisphere.

By 1691, the population of indigenous Americans had declined by 90–95 percent, or by around 130 million people.

Since the degree of racism in America has massively declined over the last century, it is difficult to appreciate the attitudes that used to be widespread throughout the nation or the degree of horrific exploitation which were previously normalized against many “undesirable” segments of society.

Divide and Conquer

The struggle the ruling elite always faces is how, with their limited resources, they can effectively control a much larger segment of the population, which understandably does not want to be exploited and cannot be if they stand together.

One of the most commonly utilized approaches is to take advantage of the tribalistic attitudes inherent to the human species and use them to split the exploited populace into two camps that each blame the other for what the parasitic ruling elite is doing to both of them.

I first really grasped this after I read A People’s History of The United States (a progressive classic) and learned that in addition to African slaves, European slaves (known as indentured servants) also came to America and worked on the plantations.

Both the white and black slaves were treated poorly by the landowners, and once the landowners realized their slaves were becoming friends, they pitted their slaves against each other through racial divisions (which was largely successful).

Note: the slavery we used to see worldwide has largely been outsourced to the third world (e.g., in sweatshops or largely invisible forced labor) since that, rather than overt slavery, is now the most efficient way to profit off other human beings.

It’s hard to choose a single example. Still, if I had to, I’d argue the most devastating implementation of the divide and conquer strategy was conducted by the British Empire.

The British intentionally had the boundaries of their colonies (which later became national boundaries) drawn, so they contained opposing groups and encouraged divisions between those tribes during their rule.

In many cases, this resulted in war breaking out between those tribes after the British left, and many of the longest-running conflicts in the world are a product of this approach.

Since learning all of this, more and more, I’ve come to appreciate how much society trains us to focus on how we are different from our fellow Americans (when the reality is that we have so much more in common than where we differ).

Likewise, as the years have gone by, I’ve gotten better and better at noticing how often polarized divisions (e.g., gender is a common one now) are created to wedge us apart.

Note: a common way those in power neutralize parties that threaten their power (e.g., activist groups) is by encouraging divisions in the groups opposing them so the group turns on itself. I’ve seen this take place in many causes I’ve participated in, and this is why I’ve repeatedly spoken out against attacking leaders in the vaccine safety movement that I believe is trying to do the right thing.

Recently, a reader sent me a 1947 “propaganda” video the US military made to prevent Nazisim from entrenching itself within the United States. What I found so fascinating about this ancient video is that it perfectly describes the divisions now being created in the name of DEI:

Throughout history, people who were able to productively dismantle the structures used by those in charge to control the general populace have periodically emerged. Two of the most well-known examples were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. (who was inspired by Gandhi).

Each of them emphasized non-violent protest (as using violence would be turned against the protestors) and working to reverse social divisions so the common people could unite and would no longer permit the exploitative systems to remain in place.

This sentiment is encapsulated within MLK’s famous speech, which stated:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

It is thus quite tragic that those who cite MLK in their push for DEI are working so hard to again make race be the primary determinant of how people are treated.

Discrimination in Medicine

Throughout modern history, doctors have always been agents of the state that advanced whatever policy the government put forward.

One of the most well-known horrific examples occurred in Nazi Germany, where the German medical profession, rather than honoring their Hippocratic Oath, facilitated and often encouraged the eugenics policies of Nazi Germany (e.g., executing or sterilizing the members of society deemed to be unfit for the nation).

The medical profession has also supported many other abhorrent policies (e.g., the abysmal and arguably genocidal treatment of colonized communities).

There has also been a long history of unethical human experimentation in the United States (some of which is summarized here), and in most cases, that research was done on marginalized members of society (since they are the easiest groups to use as Guinea pigs).

Many of these experiments thus were conducted on ethnic minorities, and sadly the Tuskegee experiments are just the tip of the iceberg of what transpired (e.g., consider the abhorrent work of Marion Sims or the radiation experiments conducted by the military).

Likewise, the quality of medical care is often highly dependent on how wealthy someone is. As a result, minority groups that are also economically disadvantaged frequently receive much poorer medical care and are even more distrustful of the medical system.

Since the DEI movement has encouraged drawing attention to societal inequalities, the push for DEI has also entered the medical profession. Over the last few years, it has grown to the point it has become an ideology, and many are trapped within a mass formation where anything that supports DEI is good.

In contrast, anything that criticizes it is terrible, irrespective of how much the specific policy benefits patients.

As the years go by, I hear more and more examples of this. These include:

•Medical education openly promotes the “woke” ideology, even if it is at odds with basic medical science.

•Hearing stories of individuals questioning the rush for DEI being excommunicated for doing so. For example, this was shared with me by Richard T. Bosshardt, MD, FACS:

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd’s death, the leadership of the ACS assembled its own Task Force on Racism to deal with, as they explicitly stated, “structural racism in the ACS,” declaring that its own (white) surgeons were implicitly racist and that the practice of surgery was racist as well.

The only evidence given for any of this was disparities in representation of blacks in the ACS and some studies showing poorer outcomes in surgery in black patients compared to white patients.

Racism was to blame and no other causes for these disparities were entertained. The ACS went so far as to suggest that black patients might have better outcomes if their surgeon was also black.

The task force recommendations were essentially a primer on how to incorporate DEI/CRT into an organization. These included adding antiracism to the ACS values, installing a Department of Diversity with its own Director as part of the leadership of the ACS, implementing training in implicit bias, microaggressions, and ally/active bystander, and even adding a sixth, Diversity Pillar, to the other five pillars in the ACS.

All of this struck me as terribly wrong. It was a slap in the face of all surgeons of every race and ethnicity who do their very best, every day, for every patient regardless of the patient’s race or ethnicity, and I said so in a post on the online discussion forums of the ACS website.

I was then banned for life from the ACS  in clear violation of the ACS own bylaws for disciplinary matters.

Likewise, another surgeon I’ve corresponded with, James Miller, shared that before COVID-19, DEI had taken over his hospital to the point that surgeons were not allowed to question harmful things they saw being done in the name of DEI, and minor “discriminatory” verbal missteps surgeons there made (which had no malice behind them) resulted in severe sanctions being leveled against those surgeons.

Conversely, once the COVID-19 vaccines became available, he observed active discrimination against unvaccinated patients (which repeatedly directly harmed those patients), but no one objected to it.

This put Dr. Miller in the awkward position of having to either follow his longstanding creed as a surgeon and treat every patient he saw to the best of his ability (regardless of how he disagreed with them) and upset his colleagues or fail to uphold his responsibility as a physician.

He chose to do the former, set up a free clinic to help these patients, and eventually had to leave the state to protect his medical license because of the retaliation he faced for his choice.

This is taken from a long document, read the rest here substack.com

Header image: Jakson Group

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