Look -- losing weight is hard. This writer has struggled with weight for years. Losing weight takes discipline -- calorie counting, making better food choices, and consistent exercise -- but it can be done.
Obesity is a major health problem. It's tied to diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and kidney dysfunction. It's dangerous to be morbidly obese.
But the UCLA medical school has to woke-ify healthcare, to the detriment of patients.
Here's an alarming thread about what they're doing:
NEW: UCLA medical school's mandatory health equity class teaches students that weight loss is a "hopeless endeavor" and that "ob*sity" is a slur "used to exact violence on fat people."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
The full syllabus has shocked prominent doctors—the former dean of Harvard Medical School.🧵
We like how they censored 'obesity'.
All first year students are assigned an essay by Marquisele Mercedes, a self-described "fat liberationist," who "describes how weight came to be pathologized and medicalized in racialized terms" and offers guidance on "resisting entrenched fat oppression," per the syllabus.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
WTF is a 'fat liberationist'?
Mercedes claims that "ob*sity" is a slur "used to exact violence on fat people"—particularly "Black, disabled, trans, poor fat people"—and offers a "fat ode to care" that students are instructed to analyze, taking note of which sections "most resonate with you."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
'Exact violence' on fat people.
Sure, Jan.
The assignment shocked Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world’s foremost experts on obesity, who said the curriculum "promotes extensive and dangerous misinformation."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
Recommended
It is extensive and dangerous misinformation. It'll get people killed.
UCLA "has centered this required course on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate," said @jflier, who reviewed the full syllabus and several of the assigned readings. "As a longstanding medical educator, I found this course truly shocking."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
Shocking is an understatement.
One required reading lists "anti-capitalist politics" as a principle of "disability justice" and attacks the evils of "ableist heteropatriarchal capitalism." Others attack "growth-centered economic theories" and call for "moving beyond capitalism for our health."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
Oh, good gravy.
Snapshots of the curriculum have been leaking for months and and left the school doing damage control. The full syllabus—which we are publishing today—is more extreme than anything that's been reported.https://t.co/ED6S0kLSTF
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
Extremism in medical school. What could possibly go wrong?
The course is littered with the lingo of progressive activism—"intersectionality" is a core value of the class, according to slides from the first session—and states outright that it is training doctors to become activists. https://t.co/5OdFjinQ1y pic.twitter.com/ILN7EXYsxS
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
Ah, intersectionality.
Students will "build critical consciousness" and move toward a "liberatory practice of medicine" by "focusing on praxis," according to the slides. pic.twitter.com/IEFLnpSpOm
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
'Liberatory practice of medicine.'
A section called "Our Hxstories" adds that "[h]ealth and medical practice are deeply impacted by racism and other intersectional structures of power, hierarchy, and oppression—all of which require humility, space and patience to understand, deconstruct, and eventually rectify." pic.twitter.com/Rmp5TBmgoe
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
'Hxstories'; this is how you know it's really Left wing bat s**t crazy.
That jargon reflects a worldview with clinical implications. In a unit on "abolitionist" health,students are assigned a paper that argues police should be removed from emergency rooms, where 55 percent of doctors have been assaulted—mostly by patients—per a 2022 survey.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
So DEI not only makes things less safe for patients, but for medical staff as well.
Here come more shortages of doctors and nurses.
They're not going to tolerate being assaulted on the job.
Flier said the syllabus was so bad it called for an investigation—and that anyone who signed off on it was unfit to make curricular decisions.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
The school's dean, Steven Dubinett, should "review the course and the curriculum committee that approved it," Flier said.
This curriculum was already approved. They're okay with it.
"If that body judged the course as appropriate, he should change its leadership and membership."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
Complete gutting of the membership and leadership.
Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician at Yale University, who has spent decades providing medical care to underserved communities, including in the South Side of Chicago, called the curriculum "nonsensical."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
'Nonsensical' is putting it mildly.
The thread is very long. We suggest you read the entire thing.
For more on the class, including links to the various readings, check out my full article in the @FreeBeacon. https://t.co/VSNiUViQWG
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 24, 2024
This is bad, very bad, for healthcare. Patients and staff. And it needs to end.
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