PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding and Shocking
Review: An excellent description about how political correctness is destroying both American medicine and public health as a profession. Highly recommended.

The book makes a compelling case how the politicalization of public health has seriously diminished the day-to-day practice of public health and ultimately the capacity of public health to save lives. The book gives many examples where people are putting politics above science.

As a former state health officer, I can testify to the truths of this book - it is scary how deep down these bizarre belief systems have taken over the noble, life-saving profession of the public health practitioner. As this continues, many lives will be lost as more institutions of the public health community focus on fighting democracy and capitalism rather than fighting disease, injury, disability, and death.

One of the great things about public health people is their sense they are on a mission from God. Their idealism is striking but makes them prone to political and cultural arguments about the causes of illness and injury. This distraction from science and management can be a fatal flaw when the real world demands pragmatism and results.

In light of recent terrorist attacks much has been written about the poor state of our nation's public health system. The reports, sadly, are true. A primary reason is the painfully low priority public health has received over the years at all levels of government. But a secondary reason is the practical fallout from the politicalization of public health education and practice. As this book demonstrates, public health has been fighting the wrong war.

Rating:
Summary: Right Wing Agenda Vehicle
Review: Don't be fooled. This book is an attack on progressive thinking about psychiatry. Satel is formulating policy - that compulsory drugging of psychiatric patients be extended. She is against ex-patient survivor groups who pose this threat: that people may actually recover from their problems, or even their diagnoses. Read the lengthier critiques written here. Educate yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Real people
Review: Having learned about this book in Objectivist Newsletter, I rushed to buy it and swallowed it all in one day. The assault on rationalism and objectivity is, sadly, a long-standing problem of modern intellectuals, but I was sincerely hoping that this self-defeating irrational approach would be limited to liberal arts. I was wrong. As Dr. Satel very convicingly shows, the field of medicine is not by any means immune to this assault. The problem is, this time we are talking about human lives and well-being at stake. Giving up objectivity and critical thinking of modern science to sentiments like "I don't care how it works or what the studies show, I FEEL it works" is a sure prescription for disaster. Even though I do not share author's pessimism upon the matter, I do think this book is a serious wake-up call for doctors and patients alike.

Rating:
Summary: Poor scholarship
Review: Satel acknowledges the "first-rate" scholarship of her graduate and medical teachers. I only speak to Chapter 2, "Inmates Take Over the Asylum," in which I found six factual errors and a questionable judgement call. In fairness, Satel's paragraph about me correctly and fairly extracts from my 1997 article which Psychiatric Services published. But Satel allows Torrey, who most vilifies them, to define what survivors mean when they use the term (mental health) survivor about themselves (p 46). The National Association of Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Administrators (NAC/SMHA) is not a subcommittee of MadNation (p 46). Pat Deegan is not a Portland colleague (p 47). National Council on Disability (NCD) is the correct name (p 49). Subcommittee on Consumer/Survivor Issues is the correct name (p 53). The correct name is the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Act (p 57). There are 57 Protection and Advocacy programs, not 50 (p 57).

Rating:
Summary: What every doctor wanted to say
Review: Satel has done an outstanding job on this book. I found that as I read it, I had a strong urge to jump up and yell, 'right on!' As a professor at a medical school, I wish that all of my fellow faculty would read this. There are some extreme examples in this book but I don't doubt that they are real. This book exposes what many of us have felt but lacked the words and clear thoughts to express.

Medicine in the modern sense is about empirical proof. Some crackpot ideas have panned out as great ideas. Others are not withstanding the test of reality. An idea must be tested and Satel holds some ideas up and examines them with scientific curiosity. Too many of the ideas advanced as modern or post modern therapies are lacking evidence to support their acceptance.

This is a must read for all of us in academic medicine and public health. Satel's critical thoughts need to be reviewed and discussed. I believe that she has brought together some really important ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Revealing The Truth
Review: The author of this book has done a very excellent job in revealing how the almost cult like mentalities of political correctness, alternative medicine, and paranormal healing have crept into mainstream medicine. She uses logic and a mountain of research data to support her claim that the patient's best interest and scientific research are beginning to take second priority to political correctness and what some would call quackery.

Although the message is disturbing, I actually found reading this book to be very enjoyable. Where else will you find illogical and deceptive assertions made by politically correct advocates actually challenged? For example, a feminist group claims that only 14 percent of NIH (federal) research funds go to women's health issues. And it turns out that this is actually true. But, as the author discovers, you are not told that less than 7 percent goes to research on male diseases and the rest goes to research on diseases that are not gender specific. The book is full of examples like this, where claims made by the so-called experts don't hold up under further scrutiny.

I strongly recommend this book because it discusses controversial issues that truly are a matter of life and death. Cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Diabetes will almost certainly be delayed, at best, because of political correctness and other problems mentioned in this book. On the other hand, its hard to read this book and not take some comfort in knowing that there are still many people in the medical profession like Dr. Sally Satel who have the intelligence and courage to stand up for the truth!

Rating:
Summary: deceiving title
Review: The title suggest a more wide view of Medicine, but really it's a political pamphlet and furthermore I'm afraid plenty with a generous surplus of political correctness shown in a mirror as a counterimage. Perhaps only readers from USA can be sure of this, but we see: Medicine I think has had an advance comparable to the learning of a foreign language or any difficult art or science: at first it's slow and difficult (protohistory - 1800), secondly there's a phase when one feel that the advance is fast -roughly 1800-1975-, but today it seems there's a third final phase when each minute piece of knowledge costs terribly, in effort and in money. F. e. many times today, older people feels they, more than live, survives a life plenty of sickliness, and some diseases are invincible for all. But Dr. Satel wants to simplify these big problems only focusing about the difficulties of women ort ethnic minorities. Insistence in the difference of quality between rich or poor people is logical, but this isn't the only problem to solve with Health services but the roots of so huge questions surpasses the limited, politized opinions show in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Alice in Wonderland Health Care
Review: This book reminds me of fictional works such as Alice In Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels that celebrate the absurd, but unfortunately the author Sally Satel is talking about reality. Political correctness would be really funny if the results weren't so tragic.

Satel deplores the dismissal of requiring individuals from taking personal responsibility for their health and instead focusing on the supposedly oppressive environment around them that is making them a sick victim of white male-dominated society. People who are pathologically anti-white male and anti-racist have infiltrated key positions in medical education and medical industry and promote their poisonous political views to their helpless patients.

Satel does a critique of alternative medicine particularly regarding therapeutic touch, a medical fad that she says has not been proven to be effective in any clinical studies. She says that PC medicine's theories and remedies for how a person gets sick or well have not been researched properly or their statistical results are flawed and supposed descrimination in medical care can be explained by other reasons such as the physiological and cultural differences between the sexes or races.

PC medicine emphasizes the post-modernism of Michel Foucault in which the dominant culture is oppressing minorities and this oppression results in sickness. The dominant culture of white males must be done away with to improve minority health. It also emphasizes quasi-marxist radical egalitaritarism in which the patients are to participate in their healing instead of relying on the expertise of the doctor. Therefore, psychiatric patients view themselves as victims of their treatment. This egalitarian view tries to explain differences in health care and the health of different groups as a matter of unwarranted privilege and discrimination when other more reasonable explanations are presented by Satel.

This is a well written book that is more interesting than it initially seems. Post-modern political correctness and pseudo-intellectualism was bad enough in the humanities department, but now that it has invaded the practical realms of healing, it has made health-care less efficient. Satel advises getting back to solving health care problems by getting back to the practical basics of health care: personal responsibility for one's own health and scientifically-verified treatments and research studies that actually improve public health.

Rating:
Summary: P.C. M.D., How Political Correctness is corrupting medicine.
Review: This is a fantastic book. It elucidates the degree to which Political Correctness is hurting patients, physicians and hospitals. Dr. Satel discusses "scientific studies", which do not hold up to peer scrutiny, but have been used by those with social agendas to support their ideals. She does not discount the fact that our environment affects our health and well being in certain instances; however, she does show that a much more important factor is personal responsibility for ones health maintenance. This book is especially meaningful to anyone involved in healthcare delivery or policy making. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Piercing, Important
Review: This is a fantastic book. It elucidates the degree to which Political Correctness is hurting patients, physicians and hospitals. Dr. Satel discusses "scientific studies", which do not hold up to peer scrutiny, but have been used by those with social agendas to support their ideals. She does not discount the fact that our environment affects our health and well being in certain instances; however, she does show that a much more important factor is personal responsibility for ones health maintenance. This book is especially meaningful to anyone involved in healthcare delivery or policy making. I highly recommend it.