How to Reognize Oppression

 

Amanda Gorman

Many Canadian universities now require an essay to apply for competitive programs. Most competitive of all, reputedly, is McMaster Medicine. And many of the essay topics assigned are concerning. They seem designed to elicit one’s political position; and could be used to select and exclude on this basis.

Here is one example from a recent intake:

OPTION A: In The Hill We Climb (2021), National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman wrote "...being American is more than a pride we inherit. It's the past we step into and how we repair it." What aspect of the past will you play a role in repairing?

It is not possible, of course, to either step into or change the past. If there are wrongs in the past, they cannot be “repaired.”

This sounds as though one must embrace the current leftist call for “equity” in order to enter medical school. One must endorse and practice discrimination on the grounds of physical appearance or ethnic identity. 

In justice, granted, if harm is done to an individual, they deserve compensation--by whatever party or corporate entity caused the harm.

One cannot, however, simply look at someone—say, their skin colour--and know they have been mistreated; any more than you can look at their skin colour and know they are lazy, or avaricious. This is the essence of prejudice.

Nor can you rely on people self-reporting the matter. If saying you are abused gets you privileges or payouts, many who aren’t will claim to have been abused.

However, there actually is a way to tell—and doctors are best positioned to do so. 

The Center for Disease Control, official arm of the US government, notes that, “In one long-term study, as many as 80% of young adults who had been abused met the diagnostic criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder at age 21.”  Psychology Today maintains that “In almost every case of significant adult depression, some form of abuse was experienced in childhood, either physical, sexual, emotional or, often, a combination.”  

A recent study by Martin Teicher at Harvard, confirmed by other researchers,  demonstrates that childhood abuse causes permanent changes in the brain.  

The Wikipedia entry for “Depression” accordingly gives, at this writing, under “Causes”:

Adversity in childhood, such as bereavement, neglect, mental abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and unequal parental treatment of siblings can contribute to depression in adulthood. Childhood physical or sexual abuse in particular significantly correlates with the likelihood of experiencing depression over the life course.  

Childhood abuse has also been found also to correlate strongly with panic attacks, dissociation, dissociative identity disorder, bipolar disorder (manic depression), schizophrenia, alcoholism, addiction, drug abuse, and eating disorders.  

Childhood abuse has also been found to produce higher rates of cardiovascular disease (heart disease), lung and liver disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, asthma, and obesity.  

A summary meta-analysis by Judith Carroll and colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US), concludes that the psychological damage resulting from childhood abuse and its effects on physical health are “well documented.”

Medical doctors are thus in a favourable position to diagnose abuse, from its established symptoms—not just current child abuse, but past abuse. This could be a genuinely just basis for determining compensation.

But if a student suggested this to McMaster, would he or she be permitted to become a doctor?