There’s an old saying in that for every rat you see, there could be 10 more you don’t see. This holds true in homes, restaurants, and even hospitals, where you really don’t want to see one.
But rats seem to abound in our hospitals. Here in Utah we are seeing headlines and social media posts about Dr. David Broadbent, the Provo OB-GYN accused of sexual assault by about 100 women. While he, of course, denies any wrongdoing, the judge handling his case described the charges “appalling.”
As a point of journalistic ethics (and to protect ourselves legally), we are required to use words like “accused” and “allegedly” – but this an instance where it’s very doubtful that anyone will give the accused their trust again. Regardless of any legal outcome, Broadbent’s medical career is over.
Which makes one really wonder why we ever gave this job to men?
This problem seems particularly rampant on college campuses. So-called progressive universities keep getting in trouble for their on-staff gynecologists molesting thousands of vulnerable young women. This has happened at University of Michigan, Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University, Michigan State University, and Southern California – and doubtless many more places because, again: rats.
In many cases, university leadership knew that criminal misconduct was going on, but did nothing to protect their reputation. University leadership likes to insist how much they empower! women! … but not if it might interfere with alumni donations.
Those universities with medical schools have proven to be even worse. News has come to light that medical schools routinely order their students to perform mass pelvic exams on non-consenting women under anesthesia. Many states rushed to ban the horrifying practice once it came to light, but there’s no undoing the fact that lots of doctors decided that violating helpless women was an essential part of medical education.
This is particularly disturbing given that the sexually degrading procedure has almost zero medical value. Indeed the American College of Physicians has found that its “harms outweigh any demonstrated benefits.” You know: harm? That thing doctors make a big deal of swearing they won’t do?
NPR once asked that, “Teen Girls Don’t Need Routine Pelvic Exams. Why Are Doctors Doing So Many?” – but couldn’t bring itself to respond with the most obvious question: because they can.
So this isn’t a case of one rogue doctor sneaking around; this is an industry that is diseased to the core. As a society we told ourselves that this kind of criminal behavior couldn’t happen because the possibility was too dreadful to consider; but now we know the reality is too dreadful to ignore.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, women were required to get a pre-marital exam that sounds more like prima nocta than medicine. The entire field’s troubled history goes back to when its founder tortured slave women in horrifying medical experiments.
So, the question is not if there will be no men in the field but when. The AMA reports that 83 percent of residents who pursue the field are female – and the more gender equality a society achieves the more likely women are to pursue traditionally feminine fields. (There’s a reason the word “midwife” has the word “wife” in it.)
Lawmakers probably won’t ever act on a gender-based ban, but the free market probably will. When it came to light that John Hopkins gyno Nikita Levy had secretly recorded patients 2,000 times, the hospital had to pay out almost $2 billion damages. (In his suicide note, he told his wife he loved her – what a sweetheart.) Given the risk of enormous payouts for criminal behavior, inevitable that insurance companies will stop insuring male OB-GYNs.
But none of this will help 100 women in Provo, who even after criminal charges were filed had to see Utah Magazine honor the man accused of violating them! Rats are cunning, stealthy survivors. If you see one, you call the exterminator. You certainly don’t give them an award.
Jared Whitley has worked in the US Senate and White House. He has an MBA from Hult business school in Dubai. For his work in Utah Policy, the Top of the Rockies competition this year named him the best columnist in the Intermountain West.
