A video circulating on social networks shows a scene that looks like a ceremonial in a sect. Like a prayer in a too solemn tone, that people share in a quasi-trance state.
Amazingly, this video features students admitted to the University of Minnesota Medical School. They take an oath. Not the famous Hippocratic oath specific to doctors. They take a fashionable oath of 2022, pledging to fight white supremacism, colonialism and gender binary.
They obviously recognize that they are acting on unceded indigenous territory. They imply that what has been built in Minnesota, including the university where they are located, represents Evil incarnate. The colonizer must therefore apologize for existing and blame his ancestors.
But all this is not serious. It’s the fashion of the moment: a mix of genuine desire to correct past mistakes and self-flagellation to look cool. Hurricane Woke, which swept away an episode of Daughters of Calebhits the universities.
Future doctors?
What is really worrying is something else. These future physicians also take an oath “to honor all Indigenous healing methods that have historically been marginalized by Western medicine.”
Here, I’m not sure I understand. Medicine is a science that has evolved on evidence. Studies and research, over centuries, have sorted out what works and what doesn’t. Placebo effects have been studied, excluding beliefs, with the goal of prolonging the lives of healthy humans and alleviating suffering.
Medicine is one of our greatest advances in civilization. Think of progress on infant mortality or life expectancy.
This must be said without any disregard for the methods used by all peoples throughout the ages to heal people and reduce suffering. The Aboriginals, like other peoples, had made brilliant and welfare-relevant observations. My grandmother, Georgianna, who had 16 children, also had her share of healing and relief stuff.
A science for all
But in 2022, medicine is a universal science. If indigenous knowledge has been overtaken by a more effective medicine, medicine must turn the page. If a plant used by Aboriginal people turns out to contain a molecule that cures beyond doubt, this new approach must be made available to the entire population.
There cannot be two medicines.
The curiosity is that when it comes to climate change, the woke movement wants to close any debate by invoking science.
On other issues, when the right of a minority is invoked, they organize high masses to minimize the importance of science.
By the way, the French philosopher Jean-François Braunstein has just published religion woke. Here are future doctors solemnly promising to put their religion ahead of medical science.