The controversy regarding MOC (maintenance of certification) flourishes. However, there is not so much controversy as much as there is opposition. The ABIM continually ignores the doctors speaking out against the process. They labeled the dissident voices as complainers. They act as we are wayward children who they need to educate for our own good because we are not capable of doing it ourselves. The simple fact is that only 3% of doctors polled on SERMO (the largest social network exclusive for physicians) agreed with the MOC process. So, with only 3% supporting their viewpoints, they call out the 97% as disruptive and unruly. Why? It is all about the money. Anyone following the news witnessed the corruption that leaked into the management of the ABIM. As if that weren’t bad enough, a new low was whipped out by a former ABIM board member, Dr. Robert Wachter.
In his most recent blog article, he calls out the anti-MOC troops, as he calls the 97% who found some fault with the ABIM and MOC process. He calls us unhappy. Didn’t know they were psychoanalyzing us as we write and tweet. Perhaps he thinks we should all start on Prozac? No, I am not unhappy. I, in fact, am a very happy person. I just call injustice when I see it.
The rest of his post tries to detail where he and the 3% are correct and the rest of the 97% wayward children strayed. He concludes his article comparing those who voice their opposition to the MOC process to the protesters of the Arab Spring. This is a foul and offensive comparison. My husband is Egyptian and most of his family and friends still live there. We know people who DIED standing up to a corrupt regime. Many that we know are still suffering in the crashed economy that resulted after the Arab Spring. The youth graduating college cannot find jobs and children cannot afford bread to eat. Some children cannot get an education because they are needed to work to support their families. Police officers were attacked and killed in the line of duty. Schools were closed for weeks at a time. Churches that were more than a thousand years old were destroyed and set on fire. People hid in their homes afraid to step out in the streets for fear of their lives. And just earlier today, the former chief prosecutor, who tried and jailed many Muslim Brotherhood members, was assassinated in a car bomb in Cairo. There are expectations that the Brotherhood, in retaliation will step up their fighting once again. But they do not do theirs by tweeting or writing blog posts. They use pipe bombs and knives. They throw innocent people from roofs of tall buildings, thrown to their deaths. And the country sits in uncertainty as it has for the past several years.
Really, do we want to make this comparison of someone speaking up against something they see as unfair to people being killed? I find it offensive, not just to the Egyptian people but to dear friends who lost their lives in the Arab Spring. Should the atrocities that were committed during this revolution be so trivialized? What has civilization come to if someone’s death is equated to a mere disagreement?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2015 Linda Girgis, MD, FAAFP
