While trolling the NYT this morning for interesting political news, my eye was averted by this story, about the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons resigning the post before even taking it because of a controversial editorial (leader) he wrote in the publication Surgery News.
It was February, and in an attempt to tie that issue's editorial to St. Valentine and l'amour..well, I'll let the Times take it from here:
The editorial cited research that found that female college students who had had unprotected sex were less depressed than those whose partners used condoms. It speculated that compounds in semen have antidepressant effects.
"So there's a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there's a better gift for that day than chocolates," it concluded.
If you wish to dismiss this as mere political correctness, I beseech you to ask yourself if you would have written and published, in a respected journal that goes to fellow surgeons no less, that last sentence. Wowzers. Epic brain fail, as the kids say (they say something like that, don't they? Jabs?)
The article goes on to discuss a more general set of greivances held by women surgeons, and one can well imagine that that is a field in which female practitioners have a difficult time of it. Surgeons are rock stars in the medical profession, and these 2009 statistics show that while half of all medical school enrollees are women, only 20% of surgeons are female, so it's a pretty male preserve.
I still have a crystal clear memory of an All in the Family episode from maybe 1973. The debate is over feminism and the proper place of women. Gloria presents a riddle. A father and a young boy are driving in a car and have an accident. The father has minor injuries and is taken to the (yes, the - this was America) hospital. The boy suffered more serious injuries and was rushed into surgery.
The surgeon showed up and said, "I can't operate on that child. That's my son." How, Gloria asked, could this be possible?
Well, it's a marker of our progress that it's obvious to us today what the answer is. But in 1973, no one knew. I didn't. My mom didn't. Even Meathead, the liberal sword-bearer, didn't know.
Finally at the very end, Edith says in her gravy-thick New York accent, "I know! Da soigeon was da boy's muthah!" At which point there was a loud collective "aaaahhh" of recognition from the audience, which means the audience didn't know either.
As is the case on so many of these fronts, we've come a long way, but we've still got a long way to go.
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