You might expect that medical students today are learning more than ever about medicine as time, research, and experience improve our understanding of human health. You might expect our medical schools would be producing the finest doctors ever with all this new knowledge. You would be wrong.

What’s wrong? Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says DEI is what’s wrong. Dr. Goldfarb is chairman of Do No Harm and a former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He’s been an outspoken critic of woke medical education and his articles have been referred to before in this blog. (Woke Medical Education Update)

For those of you unfamiliar with DEI, it stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Those are fancy terms for what amounts to reverse discrimination; a misguided attempt to undo past discrimination against people of color. Rather than heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to judge people by the “content of their character, not the color of their skin,” DEI attempts to judge people only by the color of their skin, and white is always wrong.

How has DEI impacted medical education?

Dr Goldfarb explains, “For years, medical schools have emphasized discrimination and indoctrination at the expense of merit and excellence, to the detriment of patients. While the Trump administration has taken steps to right this wrong, a more far-reaching response is needed. For the sake of every American’s health, the president should reform the accreditation system for medical schools. The crisis in medical education is directly connected to DEI. For years, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits M.D.-granting programs, required medical schools to establish programs “aimed at achieving diversity.”

Goldfarb goes on to tell us medical schools responded by embracing diversity in hiring and admissions. They changed their curricula to teach economic and social lessons that ladder up to the false claim that America is systemically racist. The LCME has tacitly approved this shift by issuing vague standards that give medical schools far too much leeway. The resulting lack of rigor allows unprepared students to slide through undemanding courses while undercutting the preparation needed to become excellent doctors.

The traditional medical school curriculum is comprised of two years of classroom study of all the subjects needed to complete a comprehensive medical education. The next two years are spent in clinical applications of those subjects while treating patients.

Goldfarb says the traditional two years of pre-clinical education required to become a doctor has been significantly reduced at more than a third of medical schools. This gives short shrift to the foundational curriculum in genetics, biochemistry, biostatistics and epidemiology. A senior associate dean at Rutgers told the American Medical Association in 2021, “It’s better, to me, to shorten the foundational science curriculum.” That leaves students with a diminished ability to understand medical literature and make health recommendations.

At UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, according to reporting based on interviews with faculty members, more than 50% of students failed basic tests on family medicine, pediatrics and emergency medicine. Nationwide, the percentage of medical students who pass the first part of the licensure exam has fallen every year since 2020, dropping from 97% to 89% for students pursuing an M.D. Clinical skills have declined for years, made worse by DEI’s distraction from clinical education.

President Trump is addressing the problem. He signed an executive order calling out the LCME by name. The committee responded by formally abandoning its diversity mandate. Yet the LCME has kept a separate mandate that medical schools teach students to “recognize and appropriately address biases in themselves, in others, and in the health care delivery process.”

Unfortunately, this committee is sponsored by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges, both of which continue to champion DEI. (The AMA today represents only about one in four medical doctors. I personally dropped my AMA membership many years ago when I couldn’t tolerate their stance on abortion.)

The solution to the current problem is finding a new accreditor for medical schools. The Department of Education should be soliciting applications for a replacement, but this process will take time and the medical licensing exam and graduate medical education programs would also have to acknowledge the new accreditor.

I am proud to say as a Floridian that Florida and five other states are leading the way. They established the Commission for Public Higher Education to accredit their public university systems. They need to add a medical school accreditation component.

Dr Goldfarb says “Florida’s public medical schools are the best candidates for ditching the LCME. They’ve largely rejected DEI and embraced merit. That’s exactly what a new accreditor should do—for the benefit of physicians, patients and public health. Ultimately, this is about ensuring Americans have the best physicians providing the best care. DEI has distracted medical schools from their purpose, and while it’s vital to cure the ideological disease, it’s just as important to refocus medical education on its lifesaving mission.”

The truth about marijuana is finally being revealed. Even the liberal New York Times has been forced to reverse its position on marijuana.

The New York Times editorial board just published an opinion called “It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem.” The editorial board admitted it has long supported marijuana legalization and even published a six-part series comparing the federal ban on marijuana to the prohibition of alcohol, advocating for the ban to be repealed.

Marc Tamasco, writing for Fox News, says the Times admitted “Much of what we wrote then holds up – but not all of it does.” At the time, supporters of legalization predicted that it would bring few downsides. In our editorials, we described marijuana addiction and dependence as ‘relatively minor problems.’ Many advocates went further and claimed that marijuana was a harmless drug that might even bring net health benefits. They also said that legalization might not lead to greater use.”

Despite these prior claims, the Times argued that it is “now clear that many of these predictions were wrong,” and that the legalization of the drug “has led to much more use.” The outlet cited data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which suggested that approximately 18 million Americans have used marijuana almost daily, or about five times a week, in recent years, up from about 6 million in 2012 and less than 1 million in 1992.

This dramatic uptick in marijuana consumption in the United States has “caused a rise in addiction and other problems,” according to the Times.

“Each year, nearly 2.8 million people in the United States suffer from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which causes severe vomiting and stomach pain. More people have also ended up in hospitals with marijuana-linked paranoia and chronic psychotic disorders. Bystanders have also been hurt, including by people driving under the influence of pot,” the outlet pointed out.

Professor Bertha Madras of Harvard University, in a letter to The Wall Street Journal, tells us cannabis use disorder, or CUD, is neither rare nor benign. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the prevalence of CUD among adolescents and young adults (15.8%) is comparable to that of alcohol use disorder (14.4%)—even though the number of alcohol users exceeds the number of marijuana users and the proportion of the population affected by CUD far exceeds that of other illicit substance use disorders. An estimated 25% to 30% of users develop CUD, with adolescents doing so at roughly twice the adult rate.

Research published in the journal Psychological Medicine found that a shocking 30% of schizophrenia cases among men aged 21 to 30 could have been thwarted if they had averted cannabis use disorder (CUD). Scientists examined recent cases of schizophrenia, an abnormal interpretation of reality resulting in hallucinations, delusions or disordered thinking. The study’s authors stated that in 2021, CUD played an integral role in 15% of cases occurring in men aged 16 to 49, and in 4% of cases affecting women in the same age range. This new study examined data concerning 6.9 million people ages 16 to 49 collected in Denmark from 1972 to 2021.

The truth is the cannabis being used today is not your cannabis of the hippie era in the 1960s. The concentration of THC is roughly 20 times that of the marijuana in the hippie era.

This is not news to those who have been reading my blog. Previous posts on this subject include High-THC Cannabis Linked to DNA Changes, Marijuana and Violence, Marijuana and Traffic Deaths, and Cannabis and Schizophrenia. These articles can be viewed by using the search engine for my archives.

Here’s some good news for a change – life expectancy is getting better!

Jennifer Calfas, writing in The Wall Street Journal, tells us life expectancy in the U.S. reached a record high in 2024 following a substantial decline of drug-overdose deaths, according to figures released by the federal government recently.

The life expectancy at birth for the average American was 79 years old in 2024, up 0.6 year from the year prior, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The increase signals a rebound from declines in life expectancy during the coronavirus pandemic and progress in combating the opioid crisis.

The agency reported that deaths related to drug overdose decreased by more than 26% between 2023 and 2024, marking the largest year-to-year drop in those types of fatalities recorded by the federal government.

What are the current life expectancy rates for men and women?

How long can we reasonably expect to live? The Bible tells us people lived over 900 years at one time. Methuselah lived 969 years! But after the great flood that destroyed mankind except for the family of Noah, life expectancy sharply declined. According to Psalm 90:10, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years.”

Improvements in healthcare have improved these numbers slightly, but if you live to be eighty you should be thankful. Here are the latest statistics for America: The average life expectancy at birth for women and men in 2024 increased to 81.4 years and 76.5 years, respectively, the report said. While the U.S. has made progress in lengthening its life expectancy, it still lags behind peer nations. The drug-overdose epidemic and stalled progress in cardiovascular disease mortality rates have played a role in slowing the U.S.’s momentum.

U.S. life expectancy decreased by 1.8 years during the pandemic in 2020, with Covid-19 becoming the third-leading cause of death at the time.

The overall mortality rate in the U.S., adjusted for age, dropped in 2024 by nearly 4%, from 750.5 deaths per 100,000 Americans in 2023 to a rate of 722.1 deaths per 100,000 in 2024. Death rates decreased across races and ethnicities. Heart disease, cancer and unintentional injuries remained the top-three leading causes of deaths, the agency said, while Covid-19 was no longer among the top 10 causes of death. Death by suicide was the 10th-leading cause of death in 2024, the report said.

With improvements in healthcare and better understanding of what causes disease, we may see further improvements in life expectancy. But only God knows how long each individual is going to live.