The cultural revolution is just getting started in medicine. And when it’s done, medicine will consist entirely of venting about “white men” as the real “disease”.
What began with tearing down Confederate statues has now moved on to taking down portraits of people who are not even being accused of racism. They’re just… white men.
Nabel said no one on staff has objected to taking down portraits of past department heads, which include Dr. Harvey Cushing, the “father of neurosurgery,” who studied at Harvard and Yale and became surgeon-in-chief at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1913.
Cushing operated on hundreds of patients each year with “remarkable results,” and his meticulous notes and case studies provided the “history of neurological medicine from its beginning.”
Sorry, dad. You’re not diverse enough for today’s neurosurgery.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, is taking down its prominent display of its past medical legends because too many are white men.
Diversity and inclusion initiatives prompted the removal of 30 portraits from the hospital’s Bornstein Amphitheater because the paintings reinforce “that white men are in charge,” one professor said. The Boston Globe first reported the news, writing that past white male luminaries will be dispersed to “put the focus on diversity.”
Dr. Betsy Nabel, the president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said she made the decision to get rid of white men after reading the minds of minority students looking at the portraits.
“I have watched the faces of individuals as they have come into Bornstein,” Nabel told the Globe. “I have watched them look at the walls. I read on their faces ‘Interesting. But I am not represented here.‘”
Represented as doctors? As human beings? Nah.
If your tribe isn’t on the wall, it doesn’t count. For almost two centuries, Americans of varied and different backgrounds were able to respect great achievement wherever it was found. Now we don’t respect achievement. Like some third world country on the verge of genocide, if it’s not our tribe, it doesn’t count.
Sure, you may be the father of neurosurgery. But we need to see more women of color. Merit, schmerit. Neurosurgery is just another self-esteem panacea.
“That got me thinking maybe it’s time that we think about respecting our past in a different way,” she said.
By disrespecting it.
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