“A man should share the action and passion of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
In 1965, Fitzhugh Mullan, a medical student and activist at the time, wrote that the “characteristic of the American medical student … seem[ed] almost designed to breed social lethargy”. [1] This ‘social lethargy’ that Mullan speaks of remains an issue of contention within the medical field. With so many roles and responsibilities that the modern medical student must fill, staying up to date on current events can be the last item on one’s “to do” list. Yet it is important not to lose sight of the qualities that make us human and that drove us to pursue such a humanistic field.
In our country’s current political climate, we are at a point where ignorance towards global events is no longer an excuse and politics is no longer avoidable. Recently, college campuses have exploded with protests highlighting the healthcare catastrophe in Gaza. In light of the student-led activism that has mobilized thousands and inspired heated debate, I wanted to take a dive into the history of medical student anti-war protests and global activism.
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Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, American medical students, interns, and residents organized to form the Association of Internes and Medical Students (AIMS), which functioned to raise awareness of social and economic disparities in medical care. [2] AIMS had also cultivated ties with the International Union of Students (IUS) in 1946, which unified under a staunch opposition to European colonialism and other major political questions of the time. AIMS participated in the establishment of an international initiative for supply drives to under-resourced hospitals internationally and facilitated students completing residencies abroad.
AIMS and the growing American Medical Association (AMA) were head to head on public health issues such as the nationalization of healthcare, which the AMA staunchly opposed. Ultimately, the rise of post-WWII McCarthyism led to the downfall of AIMS in a national effort by the AMA to link them to communist organizations. [3,4] Since then, the AMA has prevailed as the national lobbying group for physicians’ interests.
A resurgence of medical student global activism came in the 1960’s and 70’s, a time known for its zealous Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war activism amongst college campuses. This generation of activists moved on to join medical school classes and brought with them the desire for civil disobedience and changemaking.
During this period, medical students engaged in anti-war protests at institutions such as Yale University School of Medicine, set up first aid stations for students who were injured at protests, raised bail money for incarcerated members of the Black Panther Party, held teach-ins against the Vietnam war. [5,6] The generational gap between the students of the era of civil disobedience and school faculty and administrators led to tensions amongst many institutions, yet students managed significant wins in being able to serve on faculty committees. The AMA had proven to be a conservative body, with a longstanding history of opposing black physician membership, and the Student American Medical Association (SAMA) changed its name to the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) with a more liberal collective mission of diversifying the medical field.
As the Vietnam war came to an end, so did the commotion made on medical school campuses. Medical schools became more heavily influenced by political conservatism, and institutions became largely apathetic to the global context in which they existed. [7] Students continued to rally for public health concerns at home and abroad, particularly with respect to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s-90’s, but the era of medical student anti-war movements had come to an end.
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We have witnessed the rise and fall of medical student anti-war activism over the years, and the pacifism of student demands over time. As medical training has become more rigorous and residency applications more competitive, Mullan’s concern for ‘social lethargy’ echoes on.
As of May 10th, over 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and over 78,000 injured, with more than 60% of the infrastructure destroyed, no fully functional hospitals remaining, and the rampant spread of disease and an approaching famine devastating displaced Palestinian civilians. College students across the world have taken on the impossible task of calling out these injustices and holding their institutions accountable for their financial investments in weapons manufacturing and militant operations in Gaza. These demands are nearly identical to those of the student-led anti-Apartheid protests in the 1980’s which led to the United States enacting a divestment policy from all companies maintaining the racist South African apartheid system. College students today have faced police brutality, with excessive physical force and chemical weapons being used to force them into compliance, in addition to counter-protest violence and chemical attacks. The use of riot police on college campuses is reminiscent of the Kent state massacre, in which the Ohio national guard shot and killed 4 students and injured 9 for their opposition to the US invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam war. With so many parallels to this fateful time in US history, why is it that this time around the medical student community has been unable to organize?
We should not become desensitized to global events that are shaping the lives of our fellow classmates, patients, and other members of our medical community. It is time for us as medical students and future healthcare professionals to question our inattention to current events and global conflict. We will all be touched by a patient at some point in our careers that will open our eyes to the context in which their illness came to be, and the part that our complacency played in it.
References:
- Mullan F. The new dynamic. Amer J Dis Child. 1968;116(5):505-508.
- Merlin Chowkwanyun, The Fall and Rise of Mid-Century Student Health Activism: Political Repression, McCarthyism, and the Association of Internes and Medical Students (1947–1953), Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 74, Issue 2, April 2019, Pages 127–144, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrz026
- Harmon, Robert G. (1978). “Intern and Resident Organizations in the United States: 1934-1977”. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society. 56 (4): 500–530. doi:10.2307/3349574
- Mullan, Fitzhugh (2006). White Coat, Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician. University of Michigan Press. pp. 51–. ISBN 0-472-03197-X.
- “How the 1960s Affected the School of Medicine.” Yale School of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, 27 Nov. 2011, medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/how-the-1960s-affected-the-school-of-medicine/.
- Michael L. Charney papers. Historical Library, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/10/archival_objects/3692801 Accessed May 08, 2024.
- John Colombotos and Corinne Kirchner, Physicians and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 115–133.
Dalia Koujah is a third year medical student at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. She graduated from UCSD, majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Human Developmental Sciences when she wasn’t at the beach. Dalia enjoys painting, trail running, and reading in her free time. Please feel free to reach out at dkoujah@arizona.edu.