We have to teach doctors about injustice

Doctors can’t solve inequality, so why should they try? 

So goes the argument of an essay written by our medical school’s former dean of curriculum back in April. Writing under the headline “Med School Needs an Overhaul: Doctors Should Learn to Fight Pandemics, Not Injustice,” Stanley Goldfarb advocates for gutting “social and organizational topics” from medical school curricula. He argues that teaching students about these subjects distracts from necessary training in areas like pandemic response and critical care. “The medical profession,” Goldfarb maintains, “should abandon the fantasy that physicians can be trained to solve the problems of poverty, food insecurity, and racism.”