A Legacy of Scientific Racism: William Osler's "An Alabama Student".

William Osler's essay "An Alabama Student" made John Young Bassett (1804-1851) a widely admired avatar of idealism in medicine. However, Bassett fiercely attacked the idea that all humans are members of the same species (known as ) and asserted that Black inferiority was a justification for slavery. Antebellum physician-anthropologists bequeathed a legacy of scientific racism that in subtler forms still runs deep in American society, including in the field of medicine.

Ending Racial Bias in American Medicine: A Call for Help from the AMA, NMA, AAMC, and the Rest of Us.

Bias based on skin color, religion, immigrant status, gender, and ethnicity are deeply rooted in American culture and have existed within the infrastructure of American medicine from the beginning. Now, medical educators are struggling to find curriculum and experiences that effectively address explicit and implicit bias among our increasingly diverse group of students, house staff, and practitioners. The leadership, experience, and lessons learned needed to scrub present medical school curricula of racial bias, to develop an antiracist curriculum, and to test its effectiveness already lies with the American Medical Association (AMA), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and the National Medical Association (NMA).

Marijuana's Effects on Brain Structure and Function: What Do We Know and What Should We Do? A Brief Review and Commentary.

The recent US Food and Drug Administration approval of the marijuana constituent cannabidiol as safe and effective for treatment of 2 rare forms of epilepsy has raised hopes that others of the 500 chemicals in marijuana will be found to be therapeutic. However, the long-term consequences of street marijuana use are unclear, and recent studies raise red flags about its effects. Changes in brain maturation and intellectual function, including decreases in intelligence quotient, have been noted in chronic users and appear permanent in early users in most but not all studies.

Backstories on the US Opioid Epidemic. Good Intentions Gone Bad, an Industry Gone Rogue, and Watch Dogs Gone to Sleep.

Epidemics of opioid use are old news in the United States, but an epidemic that kills over 200,000 Americans is not. A multiplicity of intertwined factors have brought us to this place. From 30,000 feet, it is the story of good intentions gone bad, a drug industry gone rogue, and government watch dog agencies gone to sleep.

The Underappreciated Doctors of The American Civil Rights Movement. Part I: Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard, MD.

During the fight to end segregation in the United States, most of the 25 or so black physicians who had not already left Mississippi took risks to become active in civil rights locally and nationally. One of the first was T.R.

Novel Findings in HIV, Immune Reconstitution Disease and Strongyloides stercoralis Infection.

We report the successful treatment of an HIV-infected patient with progressive strongyloidiasis as a component of immune reconstitution disease and a review of the literature on this topic. In our experience, pre- and post-antiretroviral therapy intestinal biopsies support a novel mechanism of immune reconstitution disease to Strongyloides stercoralis. We conclude that extended, dual antihelminthic therapy and temporary discontinuation of antiretroviral therapy may be effective in similar patients.

Food Allergy: What We Know Now.

Food allergy is an adverse immune reaction that occurs reproducibly on exposure to a given food. Prevalence rates of food allergy continue to increase worldwide, sparking continual research efforts in finding a suitable and safe cure. Food avoidance, the current standard of care, can be difficult to achieve.

Lessons Learned from Mississippi's Telehealth Approach to Health Disparities.

Many people see telemedicine as a solution to the nation's health disparities and in Mississippi as a solution to our last place in health. More than 13 years ago, the University of Mississippi Medical Center developed a successful TelEmergency program that saved rural Critical Access Hospitals and now provides telehealth services throughout the state. This occurred without acrimony because of partnerships that the University of Mississippi Medical Center developed with telecommunications companies, state government, health professions' licensure boards, and private donors.

An Unwilling Partnership With the Great Society Part II: Physicians Discover Malnutrition, Hunger and the Politics of Hunger.

The civil rights and social legislation of the Great Society following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was slow to provide relief for black in the South. Mississippi Senator James Eastland led an effort to defund Head Start, including his state's program, Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), a program with a strong medical component. A senatorial committee, including Robert Kennedy, came to investigate CDGM in 1967.

An Unwilling Partnership With the Great Society Part I: Head Start and the Beginning of Change in the White Medical Community.

By 1965, the policies and programs of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society brought optimism to black physicians and a new wave of resistance against black civil rights advocates in the American South. The largest of the first Head Start programs, Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), had its roots in Freedom Summer 1964 and the Medical Committee for Human Rights.

The Meeting.

A group of black physicians whose request to attend educational programs at the University of Mississippi Medical Center had been rebuffed by the school's second dean played a central role in helping UMMC survive a federal investigation for non-compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unknown to Dean Robert Marston, these physicians had been active in civil rights activities at both state and national levels and were in dialogue with federal civil rights agencies and with the NAACP who filed the complaint against UMMC. Marston called on them as part of a marathon of preparation for the inspection, and they assisted him in achieving an improbable outcome, a finding of compliance.

Obesity bias, medical technology, and the hormonal hypothesis: should we stop demonizing fat people?

There is adequate evidence to demonstrate that bias toward obese individuals by health professionals is common. Bias predisposes to errors in medical judgment and care. There is also evidence to show that the pathophysiology of obesity is more complex than eating too much and moving too little.

Black physicians and the struggle for civil rights: lessons from the Mississippi experience: part 2: their lives and experiences.

Little information is available on the lives and experiences of black physicians who practiced in the South during the Jim Crow era of legalized segregation. In Mississippi and elsewhere, it is a story of disenfranchised professionals who risked life, limb, and personal success to improve the lot of those they served. In this second article on this topic, we present the stories of some of the physicians who were leaders in the civil rights movement in Mississippi as examples.

Black physicians and the struggle for civil rights: lessons from the Mississippi experience: part 1: the forces for and against change.

The roles of black physicians in the South in the period leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have not been fully disclosed. In Mississippi and elsewhere in the South, it is a story of disenfranchised professionals who risked life, limb, and personal success to improve the lot of those they served. This first of 2 articles on the subject provides an overview of the forces for and against the struggle for civil rights and social justice in medicine in the South.