Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Killing Patients with Kindness: Indoctrinology

The debate about political correctness often seems inconsequential: a mere spat between good manners and plain speakers. Sometimes, however, the ramifications of PC involve fantastical constructs of such obscurantist, neo-superstitious lunacy that they cry out to be demolished.

Take medicine, where the rigours of impartial medical science are increasingly threatened by the self-regarding dogmas of social engineering. AIDS, for example, is described in a paper from Brown University as a "biological expression of social inequality."

Plenty more examples of that kind of idiocy can be found. This article, from New Criterion, refers to it as "indoctrinology", the work of "indoctrinologists". A new if not especially catchy name for the old practice of killing patients with kindness - or, to give it an un-PC name, wilful stupidity.

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