PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine Book

The shenanigans of political correctness have been well documented. But most people, even those who keep up with these debates, probably assume they're confined to the liberal arts, rather than the hard sciences. Think again. As Sally Satel shows in PC, M.D., political correctness has also infected the world of medicine and public health--with results that may actually threaten everybody's well-being. Satel begins her well-told exposé by describing the presumption of some health professionals that because the sickest people in society are also disproportionately the poorest, the practice of medicine must address matters of social justice. "Many public health experts see their mission literally as attacking the conditions that lead to poverty and alienation in the first place," writes Satel, a practicing psychiatrist who also lectures at the Yale University School of Medicine. Unfortunately, this has led to the diversion of resources away from what the medical profession does best--the treatment and prevention of injury and disease. "Worse, putting social justice at the core of the public health enterprise undermines individual accountability. People who practice unsafe sex, stick dirty needles in their vein or fail to take their TB medications daily are too often seen as passive victims of malign social forces," writes Satel. She argues that radical feminism and race-obsessed multiculturalism have no place in the world of medicine. When they have actually secured a place, Satel shows the harm they've done. She describes, for instance, how the Harvard School of Public Health teaches that racial discrimination causes hypertension among African Americans--in short, racism makes you sick. Yet there's no credible evidence to back this startling claim, which may in fact divert attention away from behavioral steps that really can lower blood pressure. Satel has a wonderfully clever term for the people advancing this type of lab-jacket hokum: "indoctrinologist." Theirs is a political vocation, not a medical one. Satel is adept at countering their offensive, but her voice is a lonely one: Indoctrinologists are making steady inroads in medicine. They now sit at the helm of professional associations and hold impressive posts in schools of public health. They have changed medical school admissions criteria and have infiltrated respected academic journals. They are outspoken, if not shrill, participants in many legislative and political debates.... Their numbers and influence are growing. That's the bad news. The good news is that Satel has written an outstanding book that exposes their agenda. --John J. Miller Read More

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  • Product Description

    From one of the most outspoken critics of the American health-care system, a searing account of how the wholesale intrusion of political correctness into medicine is creating a toxic system of medical care.

    Drawing on a wealth of information, much of it never before revealed, PC, M.D. documents for the first time what happens when the tenets of political correctness-including victimology, multiculturalism, and the rejection of fixed truths and individual autonomy-are allowed to enter the fortress of medicine. Consider these examples:

    1. A professor at the Harvard School of Public Health teaches her students that racial discrimination causes high blood pressure among blacks-an unsubstantiated and dangerous "truth"

    2. Nationwide, consumer-survivors preach against involuntary commitment of the severely mentally ill, arguing for their "right" not to be treated

    3. Baltimore's Commissioner of Health proposes distributing heroin to addicts, claiming they are too oppressed to help themselves

    The consequences of putting politics before health are far-reaching, argues Sally Satel. Patients are the ultimate victims of these disturbing trends. Meanwhile, PC medicine diverts taxpayer money that could be better spent delivering health care, providing proven therapies, and rigorously investigating new ones. PC, M.D. is a powerful wake-up call to the medical profession and to patients.

  • 0465071821
  • 9780465071821
  • Sally Satel
  • 5 February 2001
  • Basic Books
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 256
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