Multiculturalism And Medicine: A Deadly Combination

I had hoped that practicing medicine would allow me a noble career guided by objective science and the pursuit of truth. Unfortunately, I have come to realize that the ethos of egalitarianism has corrupted my profession. Below are a few thoughts after a recent informal review of the medical literature’s attitude toward race.

Race and medicine often make the headlines these days. But I hadn’t realized that entire journals are dedicated to this burgeoning area until I stumbled upon The American Journal of Multicultural Medicine: Moving Toward Culturally-Effective Care [V1:2 2004]

To my surprise, I found very matter-of-fact positions regarding the biological reality of race.

From the first article based on a panel discussion of osteoporosis: [Osteoporosis And Bone Health, Achieving Multicultural Goals]

“African-American girls in particular have greater bone density using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, or Dexa scanning, than Caucasian women. So it falls in line that genetically there is a predisposition to an increase in bone density particularly in African Americans.”

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It warrants comment that these discussions would not be out of place on the pages of American Renaissance—which nevertheless has been named a “Hate Group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Apparently, the medical community implicitly accepts Philippe Rushton’s hypothesis that three major ancestral genetic pools exist. Beyond that, taxonomy becomes somewhat complex. However, physicians as a practical matter undoubtedly work with Steve Sailer’s definition that races can be considered to be extended families.

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Now the bad news. After honest discussion about varying racial predispositions to disease, most health care articles descend into obligatory diatribes about discrimination, bias, and needed government programs. It is ominously reminiscent of the quasi-Marxist race/gender/class deconstructionism that now goes on in English departments across the country after reading one of the Western classics.

One unfortunate article perfectly captured the danger of flouting racial genetic differences in the pursuit of social justice.

The authors actually proposed increasing overall morbidity in order to decrease the disparity in the allocation of kidney transplants between racial groups—itself a function of the fact that African-Americans and other minority groups are disproportionately prone to kidney disease. [And for a variety of reasons, less likely to be donors.] They suggested attempting fewer actual transplants in whites and accepting more organ rejections in minorities—because less compatible kidneys would have to be used—in order to equalize the statistical rate of transplantation.

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