AMA Apologizes for Discrimination Against Black Doctors

Posted By Jacob Goldstein On July 11, 2008 @ 7:34 am In Ethics,
Doctors | 10 Comments

“For more than 100 years, many state and local medical societies
openly discriminated against black physicians, barring them from
membership and from professional support and advancement. The American
Medical Association was early and persistent in countenancing this
racial segregation.”

Those are the conclusions of a panel convened by the AMA to look into
the “historical roots of the black-white divide in U.S. medicine.” The
panel’s report was published online by JAMA yesterday, as the AMA
issued a formal apology for “its past history of racial inequality
toward African-American physicians.”

The report doesn’t offer any revelations; it was no secret that black
physicians were largely barred from the AMA as late as the 1960s. Nor
will the apology change the past. “In offering an apology, the AMA
recognizes that contrition cannot remove the stain left by a legacy of
discrimination,” Ronald Davis, the association’s immediate past
president, wrote in a JAMA commentary that was published in
conjunction with the report.

But the National Medical Association, which was founded in the 19th
century by black physicians who were barred from the AMA, welcomed the
apology. “We commend the AMA for taking this courageous step and
coming to grips with a litany of discriminatory practices that have
had a devastating effect on the health of African Americans,” the
group’s president said in a statement.

The report, and Davis’s commentary, were scheduled to appear in next
week’s JAMA. JAMA published them online yesterday after news of the
apology was reported in the Washington Post.

The Post, for its part, said it did nothing wrong. “I’m not the
science editor. I don’t normally deal with [JAMA],” Steven Holmes, an
assignment editor on the Post’s national desk, told the Chicago
Tribune. “The tip came to me and we worked it. I didn’t even know
there was an embargo on it until we had it confirmed. … We felt we had
enough for the story, so my contention is we didn’t break the embargo
because we didn’t get the information from JAMA.”

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-black-doctors/