The Changing Face Of American Medicine

The Washington Post has a front page story today about the rapidly increasing proportion of American medical students and young doctors of foreign origin, or who have no parents or grandparents born in the United States.

Most readers will be interested in the article’s evidence that

[f]rom 1980 to 2004, the fraction of medical school graduates describing themselves as white fell from 85 percent to 64 percent. Over that same period, the percentage of Asians increased from 3 percent to 20 percent, with Indians and Chinese the two biggest ethnic groups.

Counted in the “white” category, moreover, are a moderate number of ethnic Persians whose families fled the 1979 Iranian revolution, and a smaller number of more recent arrivals from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the “black” category is an unknown number of graduates whose families recently arrived from Africa, predominantly Nigerians and Ghanaians.

The fact that a substantial proportion of the black medical students seem to be of recent African origin is itself a matter of ongoing concern (as we have seen before; see here and here, among others). “This,” the article reported, “is a touchy subject in the black medical community.”

A half-dozen people at the Student National Medical Association — the main U.S. organization of black medical students — did not respond to inquiries.

Lauree Thomas, an African American physician who is associate dean for admissions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, estimated that “20 to 30 percent of the black applicant pool” at her school is students who were born in Nigeria, or of Nigerian parents. Foxwell, the Maryland dean, estimates that close to half the black students there have recent ties to Africa.

….

Albert Morris Jr., a diagnostic radiologist in Memphis who is president of the predominantly black National Medical Association, said he recently talked to black students at Pennsylvania State University’s medical school in Hershey. Afterward, several took him aside and quietly complained about the rising number of Africans.

“It was a big topic — that people were coming in and getting slots that they thought should be going to African Americans,” he recalled.

Of course, foreign black medical students probably provide more “diversity” than would be achieved by reserving all the black “slots” for domestic blacks. (Oh, wait. Medical schools don’t have any black slots; that would be look too much like a dreaded quota.)

All this is interesting enough, but what I found even more interesting than the changing face of American medicine is the unchanging face of mainstream media editorializing in news stories. Consider the following prime example from this article:

There is a small amount of evidence that a diverse student body may be more attuned to disparities in medical care than a homogeneous one. A study published in 2004 found that black, Hispanic and Asian medical students (in descending order) are more likely than white ones to think that U.S. medicine often “treats people unfairly” based on race, ethnicity, insurance status, income or ability to speak English.

I have some news for David Brown, the WaPo author of this article, and whatever editors (if any) reviewed it before publication: there may well be “disparities in medical care” based on race, ethnicity, etc., but the fact that black, Hispanic, and Asian students are more likely than whites to think there is does not provide even “a small amount” of evidence that such disparities actually exist.

Recently a Rasmussen survey found that

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.

Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.

Would an article appearing on the front page of the Washington Post report that this survey provides some evidence (whether “a small amount,” or any at all) that Democrats are “more attuned” to Bush’s advance knowledge of the attacks than Republicans?

Well, maybe it would.

Say What?