Bucks Montgomery Physician Spring 2021 - 12

FEATURE

Can W
e
Keep
Politi
c
s
Out o
Medic f
ine?

by She

r r y L.

Blume

nthal,

MD, M

t has been necessary for organized medicine to
maintain and fund Political Action Committees
(PACs). We monitor legislation and advocate for
issues affecting both patients and physicians. However,
a crisis over the past year has highlighted the dangers of
political actions which undermine medical evidence. We
have seen the vast harm of denial of medical and scientific
knowledge, however incomplete, in this pandemic. While
2020 and 2021 are dominated by COVID-19, climate
change/environmental issues have had irrevocable effects
on health also. Both of these ills have been politicized,
to the detriment of all of us, and the demise of many.
As a Resident in the early '80s, I was often told that much
of what we did was based upon the premise that " this is
how I was taught " or " this is how we have always done
it. " Luckily, this philosophy was supplanted by our reliance
on evidence-based medicine. We looked for experimental
verification of the practice paradigm, learned more about
when statistics are valid, and when to be skeptical of the
sample size, methods, and reproducibility of the data. We
started to question results based on conflicts of interest.
My premise is that we must separate political goals and
partisanship from the scientific treatment of patients,
and our general practice of medicine. Of course, there
will be disagreements, but they should be based on the
medical information that has been reliably researched.

10 BUCKS/MONTGOMERY PHYSICIAN

spring 2021

SEd.,

FACO
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Disagreements may be based upon personal beliefs, moral
or religious, but if we are to practice honest medicine,
we need to approach our patients with evidence and
integrity, not with our implicit or learned biases. We
first need to be honest with ourselves and respect the
properly done accumulated research and knowledge.
I have strong concerns about several issues. Of course,
the major issue is the " Elephant in the room, " COVID19. Articles in several medical journals have projected
that 130,000 deaths in the United States could have
been prevented by leadership that encouraged or
mandated basic infection control measures, such as
social distancing, mask-wearing, and handwashing.
" Anti-vaxxers " ignoring science and believing false
information are a threat to attempts to attain the herd
immunity we need to help combat the pandemic.
Physicians have been complicit in the misinformation
campaign, aiding some politicians in endangering the
public. In an Editorial in the British Medical Journal, Kamran
Abbasi, MD, the executive editor, opined that politicians
who did not respond " aggressively " enough to the
COVID Pandemic should be held responsible for their
actions, and he accuses them of " social murder. " The
phrase " social murder " was first coined by philosopher
Friedrich Engels in the 19th Century, describing those
whose behavior " inevitably led to premature and

Bucks Montgomery Physician Spring 2021

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