Health Care Blog July 3, 2024
“A reform,” wrote a 19th-century British parliamentarian, “is a correction of abuses. A revolution is a transfer of power.”
As we celebrate the American Revolution, catalyzed by men who broke ranks with their peers to overthrow a power structure that seemed immutable, let’s also celebrate those physicians who broke with their peers and declared independence for American patients.
The British Empire believed it was exercising “benign colonialism.” Physicians, similarly, traditionally believed “that patients are only in need of caring custody,” observed psychiatrist Jay Katz in his 1984 book, The Silent World of Doctor and Patient. As a result, doctors thought it their moral duty to act as “rational agents” on the patient’s behalf.
The first spark to set that notion...
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