Politically Correct or Just Correct?

Recently the staid, establishment surgical journal,Annals of Surgery, attracted some undesirable attention regarding a Presidential Address to the European Surgical Society theypublishedin last month's issue. The transcribed speech---- "Modern Surgeon: Still a Master of His Trade or Just an OPerator of Medical Equipment? ---by Polish surgeon Marek Krawczyk MD was roundly vilified on Twitter and elsewhere for the alleged crime of only using male pronouns when referring to surgeons. Following the backlash,Annalstook the extraordinary step of retracting the entire piece. Their statement on the retraction is below:In an era of expected gender equality and, furthermore, in a medical field (surgery) where women are increasingly closing the disparity gap (for the past 5 years, women have represented 40% of all general surgery residents) the idea that such an august surgical publication would perpetuate gender stereotypes is certainly unacceptable. But a deeper dive into this episode raises some questions. The speech by Dr Krawczyk was a rather lumbering, anodyne review of the relationship between surgical excellence and evolving technology, i.e. can a surgeon be truly great or is greatness contingent on having the right tool at the right time. He does a pretty standard historical overview of surgical innovation, from the Napoleanic Wars through the era of transplantation and robotics. His conclusion is what you expect: the truly great surgeons...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - Category: Surgery Authors: Source Type: blogs