Forget anatomy and physiology: Many medical students returning to class this month are taking classes focused on social justice and diversity.
That's the conclusion I came to in a new study analyzing medical school curricula across the country.
The doctors of the future are spending more time on divisive political topics and less time on the medical science on which personal and public health depends — a fact that should frighten policymakers and patients alike.
My study is the first to document the prevalence of ideology in medical school curricula, focusing on schools’ publicly available course catalogs.
Using the U.S. News and World Report rankings as a guide, we started with the top-ranked universities in the country and worked our way down the list.
While many universities do not publish their syllabus, the top 20 that do show how political ideology is superseding traditional medical education.
I looked at how frequently certain keywords appeared in courses across each catalog.Content Analysis.”
Specifically, we examined the usage of eight political words and eight scientific or medical terms that are directly relevant to medical education.
Consider “race/racism” and “fairness” compared to “chemistry” and “physiology.”
Overall, political terms appeared more than 2,400 times across the course catalogs I analyzed, while scientific and medical terms appeared approximately 1,900 times.
Of the top 10 medical schools with publicly available course catalogs, including number one-ranked Harvard Medical School, only Duke and the University of Washington have courses that skew more scientific than political, but the difference is not that great.
At Stanford University School of Medicine, the ideological term Twice A look at one particular course at Stanford University reveals just how wrong things have gone.
Stanford University offers a course called “Global Leaders and Innovators in Human and Planetary Health,” which focuses on “environmental sustainability” and “social and environmental justice and equity.”
In contrast, the word “obesity” never appears in Stanford University's course catalog, despite being one of the greatest challenges to American health.
Baylor College of Medicine in Texas offers courses on “Human Rights and Medicine” that address topics such as “immigration reform,” “the use of torture,” “gender issues,” and “issues of distributive justice affected by the militarization of society.”
Judging by the fact that the catalog contains no words commonly used in medical research, such as “randomization” or “placebo,” teaching medical students how to interpret research, let alone conduct it, appears not to be a priority at Baylor.
Even courses with titles that seem to address traditional medical themes are, by their description, tainted by ideology.
For example, Harvard Medical School offers a course called “Integrative Human Pathophysiology” that incorporates topics like “health equity” and “climate change” in some way.
The Icahn School of Medicine catalog lists “Introduction to Anesthesiology” and, despite its title, describes it as a core component of the Human Rights and Social Justice Scholars program, “intended to provide students with a space for critical thinking and community building around social justice activism.”
It's unclear whether students will also learn how to administer anesthesia.
The degree to which ideological goals trump scientific goals goes far beyond the top medical schools.
In 2022, the Association of American Medical Colleges issued competencies for all these institutions to effectively manage the content they teach.
A list of topics that medical students must master What's Included Everything from “intersectionality” to “colonization” to “systems of power, privilege, and oppression.”
Non-elite schools tend to use less politically charged language today, but that will surely change over time, as activists who dictate medical school curricula are calling for more radical language.
But neglecting medical education will inevitably lead to a crisis in the quality of doctors — a crisis that is already closer than Americans realize.
UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine does not release details of its curriculum, but it is already well known for injecting divisive politics into its classes.
According to the internal document: Washington Free BeaconThe percentage of UCLA students failing frequent standardized “shelf tests” has soared, with more than half failing regular exams in emergency medicine, pediatrics and other key areas in recent years.
This is a predictable outcome of medical school curricula that talk more about racism and diversity than randomized controlled trials.
Meanwhile, the activists behind this disturbing trend are conducting their own experiment into what would happen to Americans' health if untrained doctors tried to treat them.
Jay P. Green is a senior fellow at Do No Harm..
