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Some Older Male Physicians Don’t Even Realize When They’re Being Inappropriate

A few days ago I read that Dr. Lazar Greenfield, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, resigned as the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons over flak for authoring a Valentine’s Day-pegged, tacky, tasteless and sexist piece in Surgery News. The February issue is mysteriously absent in the pdf-ied archives. According to the Times coverage: “The editorial cited research that found that female college students who had had unprotected sex were less depressed than those whose partners used condoms.

From Pauline Chen, also in the Times:

It begins with a reference to the mating behaviors of fruit flies, then goes on to discuss studies on the menstrual cycles of heterosexual and lesbian women who live together. Citing the research of evolutionary psychologists at the State University of New York, it describes how female college students who had been exposed to semen were less depressed than their peers who had not, concluding: “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.”

Not that I’m OK with any of this, as I’ve known the ickiness of older male physicians who don’t even realize when they’re being inappropriate. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*

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