Book Review: Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine
I finally finished up Dr. Stanley Goldfarb's book Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine. Dr. Goldfarb lays out the irrefutable case that America's medical schools, once some of the finest in the world, are now more expensive versions of our undergraduate colleges and universities, more concerned with woke indoctrination than they are with giving the best possible candidates the best possible medical training to provide the best possible patient outcomes.
I have referenced this book before, Is There A (White) Doctor In The House?, as have many others who are sounding the warning about the degradation of the medical profession. Goldfarb lays it out early in the book:Black students with a middling GPA in college and a 50ish percentile rank on the MCAT had a ninefold greater chance of admission than Asian students and a sevenfold greater chance than White students. In other words, while only 20 percent of White applicants with such mediocre grades and scores were admitted to a medical school, 85 percent of comparable Black applicants were.
Goldfarb MD, Stanley. Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine (p. 46). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition. This means that right now there are black and mestizo students enrolled in medical schools that have no business being there and there are Whites and Asians that ought to be in medical school but are not because some black or mestizo kid got their slot. This is not just a case of racial solidarity, these lowered standards mean worse care for everyone. Here is my review on Goodreads:
It is an accepted fact that most of the university system is overrun with leftist nonsense. This has been true for a very long time, but when I was in college in the early 90s most of it was confined to the liberal arts departments where it could do limited damage. Now we are seeing it spread to the hard sciences and that is a very dangerous trend. This is especially true when it impacts the future physicians in our nation's medical schools.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb lays out for the reader how deeply the medical school system has been infected, something we as parents have seen for ourselves first hand. In a nutshell, medical schools are lowering their entry requirements for black and mestizo students (underrepresented in medicine is how they are described), giving preference to less qualified black and brown applicants at the expense of White and Asian applicants to achieve a desirable racial mix regardless of how it impacts patient outcomes. A black applicant with mediocre MCAT scores that would disqualify a White or Asian applicant is almost certain to be accepted to a medical school, often the formerly "elite" schools.
As you would expect, these less qualified medical school students struggle mightily so in response the standards within medical school have been loosened to ensure that these underqualified students make it through. From the book:
"The inarguable reality is that Blacks are preferentially admitted to medical school. Once admitted, they are virtually guaranteed to graduate. And once graduated, they are likely to find training programs more than eager to accept them in the name of diversity."
The result is a new crop of doctors who should never have been in medical school in the first place and only were admitted and pushed through in the name of "equity", a term which can be summarized as guaranteeing results for blacks and mestizos equal to Whites and Asians regardless of their actual performance, effort and ability. In the name of equity, people will receive worse medical care and people will die. As Dr. Goldfarb writes:
"Unlike other social justice programs, this program is lethal. It will tangibly reduce the quality of medical care, and almost every American will suffer its side effects."
The book is full of data and Dr. Goldfarb is doing what most woke medical school administrators refuse to do: asking questions before acting on assertions. As everyone will end up needing medical care at some point, you owe it to yourself to read this book and make your decisions about the medical providers you choose for yourself and your family with the information it provides.
In a nutshell, and this is something I assume most of my readers as well as everyone with an ounce of common sense already knows, you should avoid black and mestizo doctors under the age of 50 or so. They might be great doctors but they are more likely to be people accepted and pushed through medical school because of their race. This is increasingly true the younger the doctor. You can't tell so the safest route is to avoid them. There are crappy White and Asian doctors as well but at least most of them got into and then graduated from medical school on their own merit and in spite of the barriers erected because of their race.
The quality of your physician will make a significant difference in your medical care. Choose wisely, especially for those of us in middle age and older. I would recommend avoiding people who have the initials "M.D." after their name solely because of their race.
As my buddy Doctor Samizdat likes to say, Don't Get Sick. The best way to avoid woke medicine is to stay healthy.