If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 25 years combatting quackery, it’s that physicians are no less prone to ideological capture than anyone else. Worse, members of our profession appear more, not less, prone to the Dunning-Kruger effect than most people.
Cassidy though understands the quackery just fine. He also understands he will be primaried if he does not toe the line.
Basically, because they’re so highly educated and trained, a lot of physicians think they can just teach themselves highly specialized esoteric disciplines with no teaching.
That’s how during the pandemic we saw oncologists, cardiologists, ophthalmologists, radiologists, and primary care and ER docs (and docs who never did residencies) suddenly becoming “experts” in infectious disease, virology, immunology, public health, PCR, materials design (masks) and vaccinology.
I had a doc tell me that the Plaquenil I take for other reasons would protect me from Covid. 🙄 I'd already had covid...
Have you seen this dismissive statement from the American Medical Association in response to their own members very real concerns? The dictum was delivered via email to members last week.
Fuck the AMA so hard. I have refused to be a member for the last 20+ years, because I don't believe they had patients' best interests at heart. But this is truly a new low.
They don’t give a single fuck about us or patients. All physicians <45 should simply strike. These old fucks put us in massive student loan debt —so we can pay to work for them— and take care of their old asses while they sell the country to fascist neo-Nazis? Any doctor w integrity would strike.
And this is why I am not a member
I’ve seen it from the inside. The American Medical Association is a cult of blind ambition and individual quest for power. It’s 90% performative. Fake people doing a bunch of shit that only truly matters if 1) it advances the professions elite status, 2) works PhRMA, AHIP ect to max $$$, ect.
WTAF
#BoycottTheAMA Fuck them.
That is what is called weak sauce.
Wow, that’s some condescending shit.
This article is 🎯 #MedSky
I can't take credit for this but I've seen them appropriately. rebranded as MAGAMA
If 'time' were only our friend.
Less than 2 weeks later. #MedSky www.aamc.org/news/press-r...
And that is why they have never gotten a membership fee from me. Their reflex response to any hot button is always to avoid controversy. They lead from behind. (They lobbied against both Medicare and Medicaid, for example).
Not only did the AMA lobby against Medicare/Medicaid, their effort was absolutely epic in its scope, leading a viral marketing campaign called “Operation Coffeecup.” In 1939 the AMA went hard against “Socialized medicine” led by President Dr. Morris Fishbein. www.huffpost.com/entry/operat...
Vomit. Does AMA believe all diseases can be prevented, treated or cured by fresh air, sunshine and organic food?
The AMA actually doesn’t care about the answer to that question. All the AMA cares about is American doctors ability to maximize profit in any way they want without any regards to ethics, and to do anything they want and not be held accountable under any circumstance. That’s the AMA way.
CPT codes still. Sigh. The email stunk. I feel badly for physicians.
It’s really bad for American physicians, however, much worse for patients. Problems have the same root cause: organizations like the AMA and all medical specialty societies are run by retired doctors who sold their practices to corporations and private equity and don’t care about any of us.
I know. I follow medical board actions and federally regulated research. Patients and research subjects are barely chattel. It's maddening because I respect the practice of medicine.
Medicine has the potential to be a very respectable profession but not with the current leadership in place, including and especially medical boards. Every state. Doesn’t matter. They’re worthless. They should be disbanded.
Weak sauce
If they can't call the pausing and gutting of science and medical research an actual problem, then... wtaf?
They won’t even support their own policies written and implemented by their own physician delegates. They don’t care about younger doctors and they absolutely don’t care about you. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Ah yes. The panacea for failing institutions is……an even more institutional approach? I wonder if the individual writing this had to do a double take at that crazy run-on sentence of all the horrible shit that’s happened over the last 2 weeks.
It’s a masterclass in bureaucratic nonresponsiveness, cloaked in the language of strategic patience. The AMA literally have policies in support of all these things, but haven’t taken any meaningful steps to support them. It’s old guard protecting their control over younger physicians.
A microcosm of current Democratic Party politics. The APhA is the same way. Only they’ve put out 0 statement…..
I listened to an ED doc (that I recognized from twitter) give a blanket announcement with what should happen in schools without any nuance to the situation & how difficult it would be to navigate. It was at that moment that I realized some people will say anything for attention. Expertise be damned.
It's an extreme lack of humility and empathy.
I heard a philosopher remark this was epistemic trespass. I wish I could recall who that was because he was brilliantly correct.
So you are saying I should not be thinking of becoming an anti-regime revolutionary like Che? I mean, how difficult would it be to learn to shoot an AKay and make Mol0t0vs?
I know when more self-employed solo practitioners managed their own retirement funds they were frequently targeted by scamsters for this reason.
Hey, finance is easy, right? I should be able to do some Googling and figure it out.😏
“I t has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise” Perhaps they are no more likely to succumb, but they are more likely to be quoted. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_d...
I was at a AI in Medicine conference and one of the presenters talked about doctors learning “just enough to be dangerous”. Similar sentiment to what you are expressing. So frustrating.
People need just look at physician-written diet books to see this
Intelligent people (a lot of physicians are) are ALSO good at defending their bad ideas from insight and correction. Lawyers and judges also suffer from a similar problem where they can and do develop arcane defenses of positions that they should not be defending.
I’m still dismayed over the course of the pandemic my doctor turned against vaccines and became pro-infection 😩 I had to get a new doc. I thought she was smarter than that
Wow. That is gob-smacking.
Some of the most ignorant assholes about vaccines I know are nurses.
😬
I’d agree with you. Nurses are also prone to quackery but I think for different reasons.
One of our professors in library school used to say, "Remember. Doctors are stupid". (He felt they notoriously couldn't use technology). I wouldn't go that far, but he was just pointing out that smarts in one area doesn't mean smarts in all areas.
A friend in med school said they joked that “D is for Dr” about the people who barely passed. Of course, nobody in the public knows which doctors graduated last in their class or were notorious a-holes or cheaters…
The money in the grift certainly doesn’t help, either. Even if they know better, it doesn’t mean they’re of sound character.
💯 Dear doctor, P.A., Nurse Practitioner… please stop telling PwMS to follow ‘MS diets’ promoted by functional, integrative and/or holistic practitioners. They are all pseudoscientific nonsense. Signed, a #multiplesclerosis dietitian.
Please note "RDN" the bona fide health care credential 😀
Absolutely! I am a RDN
Yeah I think that’s across the board with healthcare. My MAGA sister is a PT and I know a bunch of crazy nurses that have become radically anti-vaxx. They’re typically very conspiratorial and tend to victimize themselves easily.
Some MDs don't like it when you point out that the vast majority never took organic Chem, physics, or general chemistry beyond what the MCAT tested for. But it's true. They don't even cover the mechanisms used by viruses until 3 and 400 level classes, and usually not until grad school.
Thank you for this. I’m made to feel like I’m crazy when I say I don’t trust the profession anymore BECAUSE I respect science and reality and too many practitioners don’t.
📌