DEI Spells DIE

In "Medicine Without Merit," Forrest Bohler describes his struggles to be accepted into medical school. Not because he wasn't qualified--he more than met the qualifications--but because so many spots were being reserved for less qualified minority applicants. He begins:

    When I applied to medical school in the midst of the pandemic and in the wake of the death of George Floyd, I had reason to think I was a competitive applicant, particularly for my state’s public medical school, which favors in-state candidates with strong academic records. I didn’t assume I was entitled to admission, but I thought I would get in somewhere. I didn’t.

    So I did what failed applicants are told to do: I sought feedback. Eventually, I spoke with an admissions officer at one of the schools that rejected me. He told me that I was extremely qualified and had everything the school looked for in an applicant. He said he couldn’t give me a concrete reason I wasn’t accepted, other than that I didn’t fit the demographic the school was prioritizing, and that other applicants were viewed as having “traveled a longer distance” to medicine. My application, he said, was evaluated through that lens.

    That conversation unsettled me in a way I didn’t immediately recognize. I was being told I was qualified, capable, and deserving but simultaneously that those qualities were not enough due to certain immutable characteristics. I had spent years learning about discrimination as something that happened to other people. Nothing in my education had prepared me to think that it could happen to people like me. 

    Then it did.

    Perhaps I should have seen it coming. The requirements for admission into medical school vary markedly depending on who the applicant is. According to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the academic thresholds required for acceptance differ substantially between racial groups. The average MCAT score of a white applicant who is accepted into a medical school is 512.4, approximately the 85th percentile nationally. By contrast, the average MCAT score for accepted American Indian applicants is 502.2 (56th percentile), for accepted black applicants 505.7 (67th percentile), and for accepted Hispanic applicants 506.4 (69th percentile).

    The disparities are even more pronounced when we look at the applicant pool as a whole. White applicants overall, including those who are rejected, have an average MCAT score of 507.8, roughly the 73rd percentile. In other words, accepted black, Hispanic, and American Indian medical students matriculate with lower MCAT scores, on average, than white applicants who have not yet been accepted to medical school. The same pattern appears when we turn to undergraduate GPA. White applicants apply with an average GPA of 3.7, but require an average GPA of 3.8 to gain admission, while accepted black, Hispanic, and American Indian applicants matriculate with average GPAs of 3.59, 3.66, and 3.64, respectively.

But admissions wasn't the end of it. He describes having to undergo DEI and "anti-Racist" indoctrination classes, as well as similar requirements at other medical schools. He was subjected to discriminatory language such as derogatory comments about "old white men" in medicine or questioning how his adoptive Asian sister could feel safe in a white family in Montana. Terms like fallopian tube was no longer acceptable because the name came from Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio--a white person. DEI activities were factored into consideration for awards and scholarships. 

    And the consequence is fewer white men in medicine. As the author writes:

In medical education, more diversity means fewer white men. In 2014, white men made up roughly 31 percent of US medical students, a figure closely aligned with their share of the national population. If the stated goal of equity initiatives in medicine were for the field to achieve roughly proportional representation of the national population, that number would not have been treated as a problem in need of correction. And yet, over the following decade, it fell substantially. By 2025, white men accounted for just 20.5 percent of medical students, a 30.6 percent decrease, placing the demographic well below its population share. 

But because medical training take so long, the consequences of admitting and promoting less qualified medical students had been delayed. As the author notes, "When those cohorts eventually emerge as attending physicians, the costs will be borne not by institutions or administrators, but by patients and by a profession that depends on competence to maintain public trust."

    Although Bohler was finally admitted and did very well, he nevertheless suffered the three prohibited practices of racial discrimination: harassment which created an uncomfortable learning environment, disparate treatment because he was white male forcing him to obtain additional post-graduate education before he was finally admitted, and disparate impact because of policies enacted to reduce the number of white male students. This seems like a case ripe for either a suit by the DOJ or a class action suit against the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)--the group that accredits medical schools--the individual medical schools, and the specific employees or officials that engaged in the discrimination. In fact, over the long run, it might be better for the Federal government to take over accreditation from the LCME and then perhaps we could more medical schools and work on graduating more doctors.