As much as I see her case, and I see all the madness around me, I think she left a lot on the table. Medical school is four years of one's career, when one isn't actually treating patients. It isn't everything.
So here are some more problems: physicians train in residency programs, which are accredited by one national body, the ACGME (there used to be more but this is the consolidated authority now). That body is captured, so now everyone trains on required milestones that can include some DEI talking points. You have to do what they say to have a career in medicine. It would be very, very difficult to litigate around that, and who would try with their career on the line?
But again, residency is 3-7 years and then you're done. What's really important is all the regulation that comes thereafter. There are states that require implicit bias training to maintain a medical license. You need a license to practice medicine. Roland Fryer can start his evidence-based DEI company when he's suspended from Harvard. Colin Wright can start a substack when he gets blacklisted from academia. These are not great options, but it's better than what I face. I need a license, or I'm not a doctor.
But licenses are at the state level, so maybe you can pick a state that you like. Okay. But to be hired and to get reimbursed, you probably need to be board certified (this is the thing that makes you a pediatrician or a neurosurgeon or whatever other specialist you are). There is one national board for each specialty, which is a non-governmental agency. They set requirements. They can take your certification away if they don't like you. Being board certified is not a constitutional right, so you have no due process. You cannot practice in a specialty if the board doesn't want you to. Rand Paul once tried to create a separate ophthalmology board in recognition of this monopoly problem, but it didn't go anywhere. The specialty boards can impose ideological commitments nationwide if they want to. This hasn't really happened yet, not in the way it could. You think defunding the police is bad, wait until the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology tells psychiatrists you can't involuntarily commit a black person, for any reason. Wait until the surgeons aren't allowed to give Sally Satel another kidney because she hold the wrong views; how's that for cancel culture? What if keeping one's political opponents alive through medical treatment becomes construed as causing "harm" using the prevailing rhetoric? These are real possibilities.
And this is to say nothing of the decline of independent private practice medicine, subjecting physicians to being employed by places with HR departments. The CMS regulations. The Joint Commission. The clinical guideline committees. The regulatory agencies. Every one of these systems is an opportunity for capture. Non-meritocracy med school admissions is bad, but when whatever integrity all of these other bodies have completely collapses, it will dwarf anything we've seen so far in the Woke Era.
As much as I see her case, and I see all the madness around me, I think she left a lot on the table. Medical school is four years of one's career, when one isn't actually treating patients. It isn't everything.
So here are some more problems: physicians train in residency programs, which are accredited by one national body, the ACGME (there used to be more but this is the consolidated authority now). That body is captured, so now everyone trains on required milestones that can include some DEI talking points. You have to do what they say to have a career in medicine. It would be very, very difficult to litigate around that, and who would try with their career on the line?
But again, residency is 3-7 years and then you're done. What's really important is all the regulation that comes thereafter. There are states that require implicit bias training to maintain a medical license. You need a license to practice medicine. Roland Fryer can start his evidence-based DEI company when he's suspended from Harvard. Colin Wright can start a substack when he gets blacklisted from academia. These are not great options, but it's better than what I face. I need a license, or I'm not a doctor.
But licenses are at the state level, so maybe you can pick a state that you like. Okay. But to be hired and to get reimbursed, you probably need to be board certified (this is the thing that makes you a pediatrician or a neurosurgeon or whatever other specialist you are). There is one national board for each specialty, which is a non-governmental agency. They set requirements. They can take your certification away if they don't like you. Being board certified is not a constitutional right, so you have no due process. You cannot practice in a specialty if the board doesn't want you to. Rand Paul once tried to create a separate ophthalmology board in recognition of this monopoly problem, but it didn't go anywhere. The specialty boards can impose ideological commitments nationwide if they want to. This hasn't really happened yet, not in the way it could. You think defunding the police is bad, wait until the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology tells psychiatrists you can't involuntarily commit a black person, for any reason. Wait until the surgeons aren't allowed to give Sally Satel another kidney because she hold the wrong views; how's that for cancel culture? What if keeping one's political opponents alive through medical treatment becomes construed as causing "harm" using the prevailing rhetoric? These are real possibilities.
And this is to say nothing of the decline of independent private practice medicine, subjecting physicians to being employed by places with HR departments. The CMS regulations. The Joint Commission. The clinical guideline committees. The regulatory agencies. Every one of these systems is an opportunity for capture. Non-meritocracy med school admissions is bad, but when whatever integrity all of these other bodies have completely collapses, it will dwarf anything we've seen so far in the Woke Era.