Nature readers last summer (Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)
In Joe Biden’s first speech following his election victory, the future President assumed the role of the nation’s doctor. Pledging to “heal America”, he promised to “marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope” to combat two viruses. The first, of course, was Covid, which has killed more than 560,000 Americans and left many more unemployed and impoverished. The second, which arose almost in tandem, is equally pernicious, if not quite so deadly: the “racism virus”.
The outbreak of this second virus was confirmed earlier this month by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, which issued a statement declaring racism an “epidemic” that posed a “serious public health threat”. Citing a “growing body of research”, the CDC director called on her agency — and America at large — to “confront the impact of racism”.
This is, on the face of it, a peculiar focus for America’s leading public health agency; one might think it would be preoccupied with the other pandemic ravaging the country. And yet the CDC’s statement was all too typical of today’s medical establishment. The American Psychological Association recently announced that America was “living in a racism pandemic”; the American Medical Association has called racism an “urgent public health threat”; and The Lancet has declared it a “public health crisis we can no longer ignore”.
It is easy to dismiss such rhetoric as “woke” nonsense, typical of “progressive” America’s obsession with race. But there is something striking — and troubling — about the way in which racism has evolved from a social problem into a medical one. For it is not simply a case of well-meaning medical practitioners parroting the language of social justice to “assuage their liberal guilt”, as a former member of President Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board put it. From a public health perspective, it has potentially fatal ramifications.
Take, for example, the “anti-racist agenda for medicine” recently published in The Boston Review by two Harvard doctors. In it, the pair argue that, because colour-blind solutions have failed to achieve racial equity in health care, they have had to introduce “race-explicit interventions” in their Boston hospital. These have culminated in a pilot programme of preferential care for black and “Latinx” heart failure patients, due to launch this spring; instead of triaging their patients according to the seriousness of their condition, race has become a mitigating — and deciding — factor.
In effect, it will mean that a black person with a less serious condition could be prioritised over a white patient on account of their skin colour. “Building on calls for reparations,” the two doctors explain, “we call this a vision for medical restitution.” Here, writ large at the heart of the medical establishment, was Critical Race Theory — the idea that the US is a fundamentally racist country and that race is a social construction designed to oppress and exploit people of colour.
In many ways, it was only a matter of time. As far back as 2010, the American Journal of Public Health published an article titled “Critical Race Theory, Race Equity, and Public Health: Toward Antiracism Praxis”, in which two Professors of Public Health argued that only a “race-conscious” approach to healthcare would be able to combat racial inequities. Based on “race equity and social justice principles”, they encouraged the development of solutions that “bridged gaps” in health, housing and employment.
In the years since, this medicalisation of Critical Race Theory remained purely academic, largely confined to Professors looking to rack up a few journal citations and bask in the warm glow of approval from fellow Left-wing academics. But after the death of George Floyd, that changed overnight.
As Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the country, politicians began likening the scourge of racism to a health emergency, calling it a “pandemic on a pandemic”. The mood was captured by Austin’s mayor, who cried out: “Racism is literally killing black and brown people. It’s a public health crisis, and it’s beyond time to treat it as such”.
Public health officials agreed. “While everyone is concerned about the risk of Covid,” said one infectious disease expert, “there are risks with just being black in this country that almost outweigh that sometimes”. Meanwhile Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President who had previously denounced anti-lockdown protests, was decidedly more equivocal about BLM: “It’s a delicate balance because the reasons for demonstrating are valid, but the demonstration puts one at additional risk.”
Soon after, America’s public health bodies began discussing racism in terms formerly only used to describe Covid-19. The American Medical Association, for example, recently announced that it wanted to increase funding into the “epidemiology of risks and damages related to racism”, while the CDC’s new Racism and Health Program seeks to “build a healthier America for all” by confronting racial and health disparities.
Yet the most striking feature of these statements is their similarity. Each one promises to “acknowledge” the damaging effects of structural and systemic racism and supports the “development” of policy to combat racism.
But what does this mean in practice? In New York, for instance, the City Department of Health, in an attempt to address low testing and high positivity rates among minority communities, launched a hyper-local testing programme. It proved a success and resulted in 8,730 tests across the two postcodes. So far, so sensible.
However, compare that to the approach of the Milwaukee Health Department, which, in order to “own the work of racism being a public health issue”, devised its own “health equity initiative”. Contained within a “three-step process”, it proposed the introduction of racial equity training, the development of “a racial equity framework” and the creation of safe spaces and a “welcoming, inclusive” organisation.
This latter approach is characteristic of Critical Race Theory, which disregards evidence-led specifics in favour of ideology-based generalities. But in the field of medicine, this is particularly dangerous. American medical insurance companies, for example, now attribute lower levels of depression among black people and Latinos to under-diagnosis, even though suicide rates among white people are three times higher. Yes, depression doesn’t always manifest itself through suicide, but it is strange, as Wesley Yang notes, that Blue Cross, which provides insurance to a third of Americans, “sees ‘not enough depressed black people’ as a problem that has to be fixed”.
Elsewhere, certain states are adopting race-prioritised vaccine rollouts — a move first mooted by the CDC last year. These states, including Vermont and Montana, claim that, even after controlling for income, underlying health conditions and other variables that potentially affect the disease, there is still a racial disparity.
Put to one side the disturbing historical parallels of dividing Americans by their skin colour — it is not even clear that this racialised approach to vaccines makes sense from a public health perspective. After all, there are a number of other issues — such as education, access and outreach — that are also hindering the vaccine rollout to non-white communities. Moreover, as one former Biden official warned, it could even have the opposite effect and deter uptake if minorities fear that they are being treated like “guinea pigs”.
In reality, all that has resulted from this policy is a racially distorted vaccine rollout that is likely to fuel resentment in an already divided country. Today’s doctors are, of course, doubtlessly well-intentioned in their attempts to cure America’s societal ills. But shifting attitudes on race is a long and difficult process — and not something that can be remedied with a three-step public health initiative.
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SubscribeI have a good Canadian friend who is a retired GP. A few years ago, while Carney was still Governor of the Bank of England, he told me that Carney was disliked in his native Canada, and that Canadians were glad to see the back of him when he was appointed to the BoE by the Labour socialist Prime Minister, Gordon ‘Grim’ Brown.
Carney occupies a place at the apex of the Woking Class elite. He was bad news as Governor or the BoE – very political – pushed Net Zero, did everything he could to discredit and destroy the Brexit initiative, Climate Change fanatic, into the whole notion of transferring wealth from the developed nations to the developing world, socialist in outlook, DEI enthusiast, etc. I hope we never again see his like running our national bank. He did us no favours.
I hope he does not grab power in Canada as he will be bad news for you too!
As a Canadian, I can say that you are right on about Carney being disliked in Canada. A lot of Canadians felt sorry for Brits when he became the governor of BoE. However, Canada is as polarized as the rest of the western countries, and many diehard Liberals are cheering on Carney’s campaign. I hope that the wind of change is coming to Canada and the Liberal Party gets wiped out in the next election.
I will be praying for you, Joanne, and your Canadian compatriots!
I do hope Carney is not elected leader of the Liberals. He is the only member of that carnival of fools with an outside chance of beating Poilievre.
Does Carney not realise he is the symbol par excellence of an ideology and class that are now almost universally loathed – along with their annual festival of greed and narcissism that we will be forced to watch yet again next week.
Poillievre’s Conservatives are bound to rightly crow: He’s an outsider alright! A citizen of Europe, not Canada.
Trudeau’s dirt has hung on the Canadian scene for so long that it’s now covered his entire party, and anyone who looks or sounds like him. Carney is likely to serve as the Liberals’ sacrificial goat at the next election, much as Michael Ignatieff did 16 years ago, and as Kim Campbell did for the Tories back in the ?90’s. Canadians despise an unlelected incumbent. At least let’s hope that’s still true.
Looking at this man, you realize from his face and eyes, that he is dead and hollow.
The liberals are definitely not trading up.
Canadians would be insane to elect this man – or tolerate his presence in any public office. Take it from a Brit who has already experienced the consequences of his galloping dishonesty, incompetence and political naivety.
So this guy’s never held any political office and never been elected to anything. But seems to think he can just rock up and become leader of a political party and even Prime Minister without any of this experience. Who does he think he is ? Donald Trump ?
Why would anyone want to save Canada’s liberal establishment? In 40 years Canada has gone from ~90% of the US per capita GDP in 1980, to 80% in 2010, to 60% today, while their average home price is double the US.
The liberal establishment and their war on natural resource extraction have devastated Canada economically.
Perception is reality and this works very well for Carney. He can say he had nothing to do with Liberal Party over the last decade – something Freeland simply can’t do. He will probably support scrapping the carbon tax, which is very much hated in Canada, even though he was likely the architect of that very policy. Carney is very intelligent in the very worst way. He is an unwavering convert to the cult of climate change hysteria and has relentlessly pushed net zero behind the scenes. He believes in all the progressive ideas so in vogue with the technocratic intelligentsia today, like ESG and DEI. Carney will be an unmitigated disaster for Canada, but he’s infinitely smarter and more presentable than Trudeau, and that makes him very dangerous.
The Liberals are very good at spin however the Conservatives are going to have a field day with all the video of him endorsing the policies that are driving Canadians insane. Look for another 10 minute video called “Who is Mark Carney” or some such. One was circulating today where he says ‘as a European…..”. Shades of Ignatieff.
He is being nicknamed Justin Carney, also Carbon tax Carney.
Another champaign socialist pushing the green agenda.
He will espouse the same smug progressive pro-immigrant, anti-business, anti-freedom and net zero policies that the uniparty has applied to the ruination of Europe and Canada.
His UN Net Zero investment club is literally falling apart in real time. A bunch of US heavyweights pulled out a few days ago and the Bank of Montreal pulled out today.
All I can say is that, as the theoretically apolitical Governor of the Bank of England, he was a thoroughly disingenuous and highly politically-motivated partisan player in the anti-Brexit camp. I happened to agree with him, but he acted in a manner of which he should still feel ashamed.
The Liberal Party clearly thinks the problem is Trudeau – not their policies. I am not a Liberal supporter and would be pleased if Carney is their leader. He is very closely aligned with their current policies and general mindset and will have to convince voters he has turned a new leaf. What they really need is a newcomer who has a proven fiscally conservative and practical track record. Christy Clark (former Premier of British Columbia) – who dropped out of the race – would have fit that bill nicely. I think her French was too weak. I would have worried if she were their leader.
For Canada’s sake I’m praying for Pierre Poilievre’s rising Conservatives to win decisively in the next election.
Carney is Trudeau v2.0 – albeit less glamourous. The Liberals are looking at decimation in the next election, which will come despite Trudeau’s desperate machinations to delay it. There’s still a faint home among some that “maybe a new face will make a difference”. I doubt it. And the polls doubt it too.
Carney is a card-carrying member of the WEF/Net Zero club that Trudeau and most of his cabinet belong to which makes him a laughable choice to take over just as the failed DEI, ESG and Net Zero ideologies are disappearing off the corporate radar. Freeland is a fellow traveler (famous for her post-pandemic bon mot “we have to restart the economy but it must be a green economy”) yet the word is Trudeau dumped her to make room for Carney as finance minister. The idea that Carney is selling anything like a “new direction” for the Liberals is a sick joke.
Conservatives pundits are correct when they say Carney went to the Daily Show simply because Stewart didn’t have the background knowledge to challenge his “I’m an outsider” baloney.
Carney also tried to sell the ‘just a regular guy from small town western Canada’ story but a western newspaper pundit knew better.
“For instance, he left out Ottawa and London, where he was governor of the respective national banks. He missed New York City, where he’s both the United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance and chair of the board of the huge international corporation Bloomberg. He also missed his community in Davos, Switzerland, where he and fellow Europeans (he also has U.K. and Irish citizenship) make up the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, and Toronto, where he’s chair of the Canadian multi-national Brookfield Asset Management, with its US$900 billion in assets. (my note- he’s since stepped back from Brookfield to run for leader) Carney has also said he sees himself he’s a member of the same social movement as radical climate activist Greta Thunberg.”
He is far from an outsider. He is the brain behind Trudeau’s disastrous policies. He is the godfather of a child of Chrystia Freeland, the executor of Trudeau’s policies. What a puppet show! Trudeau’s drama skills are finally peaking!
As to winning Alberta, good luck! An out of touch elite and textbook hypocrite, he was the one who blocked the Energy East pipeline and the Northern Gateway pipeline, while his firms invested billions in foreign energy in UAE, America, India etc., outsourcing Canadian emissions to achieve Canada’s net-zero goals and simultaneously destroying the Canadian economy.
A true globalist and opportunist with three passports, Ignatieff 2.0 is just visiting!