newYou can now listen to Fox News articles.
Ibram X. Kendi’s gravy train may soon come to a screeching halt. The professor’s famous “anti-racist research center” was released after a Boston University investigation revealed that his “anti-racism research center” wasted tens of millions of dollars and produced virtually no research results. Professors are under intense public and institutional scrutiny.
But while the ideologue was disgraced, his ideological imprint is still imprinted on academia. Nowhere is the impact of anti-racism more concerning than in medical research. In medical research, racialized pseudoscience has effectively replaced scientific rigor when it comes to understanding issues of life and death.
Antiracists argue that racially insensitive policies allow bigoted attitudes and beliefs to flourish, and that disparities between racial groups are evidence of racism. Following this ideology, major medical institutions now uncritically and reflexively assert that racial health disparities must be the result of racism masked or fueled by race-neutral policies. ing.
Surgeon gives patient update one month after experimental pig heart transplant: ‘There’s hope now’
The CDC now claims in a document on “The Impact of Racism on the Health of the Nation” that racism is a “fundamental” cause of “health inequalities, health disparities, and disease.” Furthermore, “These health disparities are the root cause of racial and ethnic health inequities and highlight the urgent need to address systemic racism as a core component of public health efforts.” “We are doing so,” he said. The National Institutes of Health similarly says that structural racism is “at the heart” of health disparities.
Ibram X. Kendi speaks on stage at the world premiere of Netflix’s ‘Stamped from the Beginning’ during the Toronto International Film Festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on September 9, 2023 in Toronto, Ontario. Dr. (Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Netflix)
Until now, leading health experts have calmly embraced intellectual curiosity and scientific methods for understanding and addressing health disparities. Take, for example, a health and welfare initiative launched in 2000 called “Healthy People 2010.” Eliminating health disparities among populations has become one of the overriding goals of this initiative.
The final review concludes that these disparities are due to “biology, genetics, individual behavior, [and] Access to health services. ”
The 560-page review of Healthy People 2010 never speculated or claimed that the disparities were caused by racism, and for good reason. Across society, racist beliefs are rare and declining. Doctors in particular are focused on treating each patient as an individual, regardless of skin color.
But now, in response to anti-racist demands that health care be viewed through the lens of race, racism is blindly stated as fact. As Yascha Mounk points out in his recent book, The Identity Trap, why attempts to dismantle unexamined individual racism through training and other coercive measures create systemic problems. It remains puzzling that it is even thought to be solved. Orthodoxy supersedes not only facts but also basic logic.
Issues aside, anti-racist ideology relies on peer-reviewed information banks that journalists, judges, and legislators commonly rely on to understand what “science” says about important issues. It is forced and disseminated through medical journals.
For example, the American Medical Association’s “Organizational Strategic Plan to Incorporate Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity” lists research as a “lever for change.” It also states that “methods will be informed by social epidemiology and critical race theory.”
The American Medical Association’s strategy is perverse. Research is fundamentally a pursuit of knowledge, not a “lever” for social change. Once the purpose of research is determined to be something other than the pursuit of knowledge, it is no longer research, but opinions weaponized as “facts” operating in the name of “science.”
For example, consider a recent meta-analysis (i.e., a compilation of studies) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They found that black patients in the emergency room were more likely to be physically restrained.
An example of an advertising campaign from the New England Journal of Medicine and the nonprofit organization Do No Harm targeting so-called woke ideology in medicine. (Image provided by: Do No Harm)
Curious scholars might investigate whether this finding is related to factors such as the disproportionate number of black people treated in emergency departments for substance abuse disorders or schizophrenia. Rather, “researchers” dismiss this possibility, saying that racial differences in these measures also provide evidence of racism.
For more FOX News opinions, click here
This radicalism is not limited to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Health Affairs, another widely cited journal, also featured “structural racism” in its October 2023 issue, essentially accepting the argument that disparities are evidence of racism.
The New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s most widely cited medical journal, is committed to anti-racism, which is demonstrated daily in its pages. For example, a commentary published in early October noted that a disproportionate number of Black medical residents face remedial interventions and dismissal from programs, which it claims are signs of racial discrimination.
The CDC now claims in a document on “The Impact of Racism on the Health of the Nation” that racism is a “fundamental” cause of “health inequalities, health disparities, and disease.”
But Occam’s Razor would point to significantly lowering medical school admission standards for black students who are likely to be unprepared for the demands of the job.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Kendi’s fall from grace at Boston University led to little soul-searching among his most devoted followers in academia. But reflection and honesty are urgently needed, especially in medical school and research.
Anti-racism has destroyed the intellectual foundations of the medical enterprise, replacing scientific rigor with racial obsession. Antiracist doctrine may be a shortcut to publication in the most prestigious journals, but patients stand to gain nothing and much to lose from that ideology’s conquest of medical academia.
Click here to read more from Ian Kingsbury
