New study finds top medical schools value left-wing activism over science

Forget anatomy or physiology: Many of the medical students heading back to class this m🅺onth are taking courses that focus more on social justice and diversity. 

That’s my conclusion in a new study that analyzes the curricula at medical schools across the country. 

Future physicians are spending more time on divisive political topics and less time on the medical science on which individual and public health depend — a fact that should terrify policymakers and pa💮tients alike.

My study 🐼— the — focuses on schools’ publicly available course catalogs. 

Using the US N𝔉ews and World Report ranki🥂ngs, I started with the top-ranked institutions in the country, then worked my way down the list. 

While many institutions don’t disclose their cou🅷rsework, the top 20 that publicly list their course♑s show how political ideology is displacing traditional medical education.

I searched for how often specific keywords appea♒r in each catalog’s courses, a widely used research technique known as “.”

Specifically, I looked for the usage of eight poli✅ticized words and eight scientific or medical terms that directly bear on 🐷medical education. 

Think “race/racism” and “equity” compare🌜d to “chemistr🥂y” and “physiology.”

Al🌼l told, across the course catalogs I analyzed, politicized words appeared more than 2,400 times — while scientific and medical terms appeared about 1,900 times. 

In th⛎e top 10 medical schools with publicly accessible course catalogs, including top-ranked Harvard Medical School, on♈ly those at Duke University and Washington University skew more scientific than political, though not by much of a margin.

At Stanford’s School of Medicine, ideological terms appeared more than twice as often as scientific ones — and a look🥃 at specific Stanford courses makes it obvious how things have gone astray. 

Stanford offers a course called “Global Lﷺeaders and Innovators in Huma✃n and Planetary Health” that focuses on “environmental sustainability” and “social and environmental justice and equality.”

By contrast, the word “obesity” does not appear a single time in Stanford’s course catalog♎ue, even though it poses one of the greatest challenges to American health.

The Baylor College of Medicine in Texas offers a course on “Human Rights and Medicine” that covers “immigration refღorm,” “the uꩲse of torture,” “gender issues” and “issues of distributive justice affected by militarization in society.” 

Judging from its catalog’s complete lack of words that are commonly used in medical research, like “randomized” and “placebo,” teaching medical 🌳🀅students how to interpret — let alone conduct — research appears not to be Baylor’s priority.

Even courses with titles that seem to cover traditioওnal medical topics have been infected by ideology, according to their descriptions. 

For example, ⭕Harvard Medical School offers “Integrated Human Pathophysiology” — which somehow incorporates topics such as “health e🌳quity” and “climate change.”

The Icahn School of Medicine’s catalog lists “Introduction to Anesthesiology,” wh𒀰ich despite the title is described as “a core component of the Human Rights and Social Justice Scholars program” that’s “intended to provide students with a space for building critical thinking and community around social justice work.” 

It’▨s unclear whether students also learn how to administer anesღthesia.

The degree to which ideological goals are eclipsing scienti𒊎fic ones extends well beyond top-ranked medical schools.

In 2022, the Association of American Medi𒅌cal Colleges issued competencies that effectively control what all these institutions teach. 

The list of topics that medical students must master  everything from “intersectionality” to “colonization”🐎 to “systems of power, privileges, and oppression.”

While non-elite schools tend to have less politicized language today, that’s all but certain to change over time: The ac🌠tivists who dictate medical curriculum are demanding more radicalism.

Yet the de-empha♐sis on medical education will inevitably create a crisis of physician quality, which is already closer than Americans realize. 

UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine, which doesn’t publicly detail its curricula, is already well known for introducing divisive politics into its courses. 

According to internal documents shared with the , the percentage of UCLA students who fail the frequent standardized “shelf exams” has soared, with more than half in some recent years failing routine tests on emergency medicine, pediatrics and other crꦓiti🍌cal fields.

Such is the predictablꦕe result of medical school curricula that talk about r🅘acism and diversity more than randomized controlled trials. 

Then again, the activists behind this disturbing trend are cꦡonducting a trial of their own — namely, on what will happen to Americans’ health when physicians who didn’t learn medicine try to treat them.

Jay P. Greene is a senior fellow at Do No Harm.