Originally posted by DarkChild
i dont know why i'm getting involved with this 
i would really appreciate it those anti-AA's could get back to me on each one of my positions:
1) AA isnt about reparations its about representation.
I think there are a number of misperceptions floating around AA especially as it pertains to med school admissions. But I think these misperceptions stem from misperceptions about the relationship between society and medicine. First, and I think this is a point many pre-meds fail to fully appreciate, medical education isnt about taking the best and the brightest, its about doing what good for the society at large. A doctor's primary responsibility is to serve his patients. Those folks who are in charge of medical education are in a unique position to look after the long term well-beings of the overall patient population - i.e. society. The point I'm making is that for the same reason that med schools dont want to churn out doctors who have problems relating to people (after all its not to society's benefit to have doctors who they dont feel comfortable with), choosing who becomes a physician isnt about taking the best and the brightest, its about choosing those who can best serve the community.
I believe we can all agree that racism and discrimination still exist today - perhaps we disagree as to its extent, but we all acknowledge that its out there. I believe that its precisely because of this societal problem that we need AA. Racism in general is an expression of a deep seated mistrust of one race for another. Given that society at large still has some level of racism, it is natural that when a black patient meets a white doctor he does not feel as comfortable as he could if he had a black doctor. Keep in mind that medicine is about doing whats best for the patient and if the race of the doctor matters to the patient (even though it shouldnt) then in keeping with its creed to do whats best for the patient, medicine should police itself to see that more doctors of a given race are created. Whenever people mention one race relating better to the same race - usually blacks relating to blacks, someone always brings up "because of things like Tuskegee..." IMO this misses the point. Its not about medicine and doctors. Its about society at large: when patients come to doctors with an entire slew of perceptions and fears - one of the most insidious is the paranoia of racism. Due to the particular nature of racism, it aggressively undermines the feeling of trust that should exist between a patient and his doctors. This is why I think the URM designation is appropriate - it suggests that there is a level of black/hispanic/native american representation that society needs to see in its doctors. ORMs - simply put there are more asians in medicine than suits society's need, cut down on the number of asian admissions to med school. Gays and lesbians arent adequately representated in medicine... increase their numbers. Poor folks arent adequately representated... well, increase their numbers. As I see it, AA is merely an extension of a general understanding to match the diversity of society (the endgame patient population).
2) AA does not create "inferior" doctors.
My second point is AA doesnt ipso facto create inferior doctors. Minority doctors still pass the same standard licensing exams and have to pass all the same classes that white doctors do. Its not as if on the USMLE a computer says - oh Michael Jordan, sounds like a black guy, we've got a special scoring system for you. Or as if the teachers all go... well Jose over here didnt pass the final exam, but we can just overlook that, wink wink. Once in med school, minorities are held to the same standard that everyone else is - so in what way dont they deserve to be there? because their MCAT/GPA stats werent high enough? They sure seem to be doing fine.
To sum this up, this is the way I look at med school admissions:
There are many more applicants than seats.
This requires some sort of admissions bar. Set the bar high enough that the number of qualified applicants meet the number of seats. But wait - fewer blacks and hispanics than we need are getting in... so lets lower the bar for them. At the same time, more asians are getting in than we need... ok so raise the bar for those guys. Simply put its a process of supply and demand where med schools can shift the demand curve such that an appropriate number of minorities are recruited. What is the appropriate number? Well the composition of an incoming med school class should match the composition of the community that school serves...
About the representation point, that is your philosophy. You believe that, in medicine, the demographic makeup of physicians should match that of society. (As an aside, to what other areas of life would you extend this idea or, rather, what areas would you *not* extend this?) Too many Asians? Raise the bar. Too few Hispanics? Lower the bar.
I cannot say, in an absolute sense, that this is philosophy is wrong (just as Americans cannot say that our capitalism is "better" than Europe's version), but I think history has proven that this sort of tinkering from above is a flawed approach (e.g., Communism). PS - Your representation idea presents AA in its rawest form, which even the most staunch of AA supporters would cringe at.
About the inferiority point, you might be correct. Let's assume you are and that AA does not create inferior doctors. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of medical school seats. A system that takes a person who is considered "GOOD" instead of someone who is considered "GREAT", by itself, does not create incompetent doctors. However, the system clearly does not maximize the talent available to it.
To get into less theoretical terms, healthcare suffers because we took good doctors and not great doctors. (To pre-empt what I know you are going to say, because you've said it 90 times before: "High stats doesn't mean good doctors." As I've responded before, then your goal should be to find better measurements of predicting good doctors, not implementing AA.)
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I've taken the time to answer your points. Now I ask for a thoughtful response to mine (please, no more run-on sentences):
1. What's wrong with the idea of finding race-neutral methods of promoting diversity?
2. Why don't we apply AA to the National Basketbal Association? Since blacks only make up ~15% of the population, we can raise the bar real high for them and only allow in a proportional number. This should boost the number of whites, Asians, etc. to a fair amount that resembles community that the NBA serves. Heck, if we feel really ambitious, we can make half of the league women! So long as everyone is "qualified" and pass a certain standard, they deserve to be in there just as much as anyone else.
3. Do you believe that it is proper for US citizens to pay prices many times higher than in other countries for the same drugs (i.e., price discrimination), in effect limiting citizen's access to drugs in the US that would have otherwise been available elsewhere?
that is soo funny, but soo ignorant... haha I seriously can't stop laughing. Listen guys, if you want to argue about something pointless, then do it somewhere else. This site is meant to be a somewhat neutral ground concentrating on the exchanges of ideas, answers to medical school and premed questions and suggestions. To use this forum to dispel some of the tacky things I've read from people, is ridiculous. I'm disappointed in the management of the moderators on this site for allowing this crap on here. Whether it's allowed or not, it's asinine to debate about this dead horse. Suck it up, AGREE TO DISAGREE and move on. No one is going to change anyone's mind on here. I can't believe some of you people will actually be my colleagues one day.
