Medical Schools Quietly Maintain Affirmative Action

In Lionel Shriver’s most recent novel, “Mania,” the U.S. has been overtaken by an ideology known as mental parity. Adherents refuse to acknowledge any differences in intelligence or ability. Testing becomes pointless because no one is allowed to fail. Medical degrees are issued regardless of competence, and people lose trust in doctors. Those who can afford it travel abroad for healthcare.

The book is a shrewd and funny send-up of diversity, equity and inclusion hysteria. What’s not so funny is how far down this path we’ve traveled already. The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard made it illegal for colleges and universities to use race as a factor in admissions, yet a new study accuses medical schools of evading the ban.

Do No Harm, a watchdog group that opposes racial preferences, analyzed 2024 admissions data from 23 public medical schools. It found that at 22 of the schools Asian and white applicants who were accepted had higher Medical College Admission Test scores than their black peers.

Read more on the Wall Street Journal (paywall).