The Danger of Woke Medicine

Can we be confident that we will receive the best care from medical professionals who prioritize ideology over medicine?

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One of my favorite movies is a 1994 Chinese film titled "To Live." It's about one ordinary Chinese family's ups and downs in China from the 1940s to 1970s. Their lives were shaped and twisted by various historical events and political turmoil. One scene I'd never forget is when the daughter of the family, Fengxia, was about to give birth. Her parents and her husband Wang Erxi rushed her to the hospital. Since it was at the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the hospital was run by young doctors who didn't know much about medicine but were well-versed in Marxist ideology. Older and more experienced doctors were sent to re-education camps to do hard labor.

Fengxia experienced postpartum hemorrhage after giving birth to a baby boy. Since those young doctors didn't know how to stop the bleeding, Erxi used his connection to get one experienced doctor temporarily released from the labor camp to save his wife. Unfortunately, the starving doctor couldn't do anything at this crucial moment because he gorged on several buns Erxi provided and passed out. Fengxia's loved ones hopelessly watched her bleed herself to death.

Since my mom was a doctor during the Cultural Revolution, I asked her how realistic the movie scene was. She told me the reality was much worse. During the Cultural Revolution, the Communist regime divided Chinese people into "red" and "black" social classes. Medical schools didn't care about applicants' grades as long as they came from "red" social classes. Medical students spent less time learning medicine but more time on political indoctrination, including putting professors who received their medical training in the west through brutal public struggle sessions. Mastering the ideological language was a must-have skill for one's survival.

Once graduated, these young doctors didn't know much about how to treat patients in real life. But their employment was guaranteed by the government. Every hospital had a Chinese Communist Party branch and the party secretary, who seldom had any medical training, was usually the real head of the hospital. These party secretaries spent most of their time and energy on keeping hospitals ideologically pure by getting rid of doctors who came from "black" social classes or hadn't demonstrated a sufficient grasp of Marxism and Maoist thoughts. Often, hospitals would not even treat patients who came from "black" social classes.  My mom said during those years, hospitals were not places where lives were saved, but rather hells where lives unnecessarily perished. That's what people got when ideology took over medicine.

Since I immigrated to the United States, I had counted my blessings that, unlike my parents' generation, I got to live in a place where the medicine was not contaminated by political ideology. But since last year, I haven't been so sure anymore. 

After the woke left successfully captured American cultural institutions, education systems, entertainment, media, and corporations, it is turning healthcare into woke medicine. It became noticeable last summer when anti-racism protests erupted across the United States. Many public health experts who condemned anti-lockdown protests as hazardous and had urged people to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly claimed that not all protests were dangerous, depending on who's protesting what as if the coronavirus has an ideology preference. Then over 1,000 health professionals signed an open letter, lending further support to these anti-racism protests because "White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19." 

Early this year, Podcaster Katie Herzog detailed how wokeism has captured medical schools where future doctors are trained. Some of this country’s top medical schools are denying the biological sexes are real by claiming it as nothing but a social construct. One professor had to stop in the middle of a lecture to apologize for using the term “pregnant women” instead of “pregnant people.” Furthermore, “young doctors are being taught to declare their pronouns upon meeting patients and ask for patients’ pronouns in return.” What’s even worse is that some students, like Mao’s radical red guards, have taken upon themselves to publicly name and shame instructors for “wrong speak.” Not surprisingly, few instructors dare to speak out and push back the absurdity and danger of ignoring the physical differences between men and women.

We've already witnessed the real life consequence of woke medicine in America. According to independent journalist Abigail Shrier's reported that too many doctors see their role to help minors transition to a gender they identify with without questioning the wisdom of the long-term health and psychological effect of such transitioning. Some doctors have no issue with prescribing puberty blockers to children as young as nine. The result of such an approach is what Shrier called "irreversible damage" -- "Between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender-reassignment surgeries for girls in the US quadrupled."

The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization supposed to dedicate itself to the health and wellbeing of all young people, stifled debate about affirmative care at its national conference, even though data from other countries raised questions about the safety of such affirmative care.

Recently, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) have released a document titled, "Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts," which instructs medical professionals to incorporate wokeness into their practice. The document began with a "Land and Labor acknowledgement," which states that AAMC's headquarters is located on traditional homelands of native American tribes and both the AAMC and AMA also acknowledge "the extraction of brilliance, energy and life for labor forced upon millions of people of African descent for more than 400 years." Such land and labor acknowledgment apparently have become a standard practice among the woke left these days. 

In the following 50 pages, the document gives a detailed guideline on how medical professionals can advance health equity by using the appropriate language and terms. For example, don't call anyone with a disability "disabled" if they don't identify as "disabled." Instead of saying "people who do not seek healthcare," using the equity-focused term "people with limited access to (specific service/resource)." Out the word "disadvantaged" and replace it with the equity-focused term "historically and intentionally excluded; disinvested."  

The document also includes a glossary of "key terms and concepts that are frequently used in health equity discussions" to serve "as a starting point for reflection." The dictionary includes terms such as class, class conflict, and class structure. People who lived under Communism immediately  recognized that some of this glossary literally parrots textbook Marxist definitions. 

Comparing today’s wokeism in America to China’s Cultural Revolution has become a cliché. Still, the resemblance is too strong to ignore. Chinese history has already demonstrated the harm ideology-driven medical care would cause. Americans should be concerned about the adverse consequences we will face if woke medicine continues because we are all vulnerable and are at the mercy of medical professionals when seeking healthcare.

How can we be confident that a doctor who is more concerned about pronouns and class struggles knows how to diagnose the real cause of illness and give you the proper treatment you need? Carole Hooven, author of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us, and a professor at Harvard, warned, woke medicine will “perversely handicap our understanding and our ability to increase human health and thriving.” If future medical professionals prioritize ideology over medicine, all patients will suffer.

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New Op-ed at the Federalist

Chinese Tennis star Peng Shuai mysteriously “disappeared” after accusing a senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official of sexual assaults on social media. Her disappearance and the Chinese authorities’ clumsy cover-up only have raised fear among fans of her safety and confirmed the despicable nature of the CCP. Read it more here.