Smearing Sally Satel, Part 2
NEJM admits mistake.

By NRO Staff
February 16, 2001 1:15 p.m.

n editor at the New England Journal of Medicine has apologized for identifying a book reviewer who is not a physician as an "M.D."

"We regret the error," deputy editor Edward Campion told NRO on Thursday. "A correction will be printed as soon as we can do it."

As NRO reported yesterday, Daniel M. Fox attacked Sally Satel's new book, PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine, on the journal's pages. Fox labels Satel "an unreliable guide" and says she "invents data." Fox himself is identified as an "M.D.," but he does not hold any kind of medical degree.

"This mistake is just a clerical error, and the fault is ours rather than Fox's," explained Campion.

Campion would not promise to publish a brief letter Satel has written in response to the Fox review.

As of this morning, the book review on the NEJM website still listed Fox as an "M.D." ( Read the full review.)

Because there is no guarantee Satel's letter will ever be published in the NEJM, even though she has already submitted it, we publish it here in its entirety.

February 13, 2001

To the Editor:

Daniel Fox's review of my book PC, M.D. How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine (February 8) contains a number of misleading and erroneous statements. In interest of space, I will comment on a few.

Fox faults me for "exaggerating the influence" of politically correct medicine, asserting that the PC philosophy has "little discernible influence on public health practitioners." But this simply dismisses out of hand the seven chapters of detailed evidence showing how political correctness is indeed corrupting American medicine. Fox himself notes that "nurses who embrace New Age rhetoric and alternative therapies embarrass many nursing leaders." The indignant reaction of responsible professionals does not show the harm is negligible; it attests to its seriousness and growing influence.

Fox also claims that I "overstate" the harms of PC medicine in the field of public heath, this time noting that courts are now "increasingly skeptical of persons who, during therapy recover memories of sexual and physical abuse." Here too, the skepticism of the courts is not evidence of my overstating the case against PC but reason to be doubly concerned when, despite the well-founded skepticism of judges and juries, federal funds are spent on so-called trauma therapy — a veritable set-up for engendering more false memories — is administered to vulnerable patients.

Other criticisms are downright puzzling. For example, Fox says I omit "pertinent information that would weaken [my] case" when I describe how politically correct nursing in the United Kingdom had brought about the closing of all traditional nursing schools by 1995 and how "patient care suffered as a result" but that I then fail to point out that "nursing education in Britain has [recently] been integrated in higher education." How would supplying this "omitted" information have weakened my contention that PC had caused the demise of traditional training?

In his final and most reckless remark, Fox says that "Satel invents data" in reporting that "California approved legislation requiring their public medical schools to increase the number of training slots for primary care physicians and to decrease slots for specialists."  "Not so," says Fox. "[I]n 1993 the  California legislature twice passed and Governor Wilson twice vetoed bills to achieve this purpose." It's true that Wilson vetoed the bills giving as his reasons that the medical schools had already reformed their practice in ways that made the legislation unnecessary. But to call my reporting what the California legislature did "inventing data," is downright irresponsible. "Inventing" data is a serious charge and Fox points to no manufacturing of statistics, numbers, or study findings.

Some readers of The New England Journal of Medicine will surely have genuine disagreements with me, but I am certain they would want them debated with a decent regard for critical reason and elementary fairness.

Sally Satel, M.D.

Editor's note: For more about PC, M.D. , read read NRO's interview with Sally Satel.