In the interest of introducing an alternative viewpoint to their readerships, I submitted the following article to a string of general medical journals, including those representing my specialty. Seeing as all have foreclosed this opportunity to engage in a discussion that is truly inclusive of other viewpoints, I make it available to you, dear reader of Crisis.
“I haven’t taken seriously anything the mainstream medical organizations have said for several years,” Tom declared with a tone of bitterness. “So many of their viewpoints on social issues are antithetical to why I became a doctor. They’ve ruined medicine by politicizing everything.”
Tom and I also have in common extensive careers in graduate medical education; he chose to leave academic medicine some years ago in no small part because of the disillusionment he described. I, on the other hand, have persisted in my faculty role despite sharing Tom’s consternation regarding the direction taken by medicine’s thought leaders.
How would you respond if you felt the institutions leading your profession’s public pronouncements on existential issues contradicted your most deeply held values? If the associations purporting to speak for the principles of the discipline which you have made your professional vocation not only disagreed with the tenets of your worldview, but actually disparaged them? …
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