Advil wants you to know that the medical profession is filled with racists who want to see Black people writhing in pain. Or, perhaps, that doctors subconsciously believe what some slavemasters once claimed, that Blacks don't feel pain. 

I don't know, really. The theory is a bit of a mess, but it all boils down to: doctors don't hand out enough pain meds or something. 

Advil has gone full DEI. A new ad campaign claims that black people suffer more pain on average compared to white people and that it’s time for “pain equity.” pic.twitter.com/m7EEOBeNMw

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 15, 2024

My first thought was that I really don't want people to start redistributing pain. The easiest way to do that--I say this as someone who has chronic pain that has never responded well to treatments--is to start whacking healthy people around until they hurt as much as those most wracked by pain. 

But of course, they don't mean that. 

I hope. Since Advil sells pain meds, perhaps they would be OK with that solution. 

This is definitely the first time I’ve heard the term “pain equity.”

Does everything have to be about race—even pain? https://t.co/PVy0Mwp3S7

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) March 15, 2024

Advil's pitch is somewhat different: doctors are a bunch of bigots and need reeducation. And they have just the consultants to make that happen. 

They arrived at this conclusion by asking Black people if they believe they have been discriminated against by medical professionals, which is about as revelatory as asking workers if they are getting paid what they are worth in the workplace. 

I don't know about you, but my answer is a big fat NO! For that matter, as much as I like my doctors, I have more than once left the doctor's office frustrated that they were unable to treat my pain to my satisfaction. It has something to do with a combination of a reluctance to overprescribe narcotics (for obvious reasons) and, frankly, fear that they will be second-guessed by bureaucrats who can take away their medical licenses or their jobs. 

Then there is the chance of liver damage from overusing some drugs and the justifiable suspicion that some people seek out unneeded prescriptions for use or sale. 

Whatever the cause, I sincerely doubt that doctors are genuinely indifferent to others' pain. 

This is all about satisfying ESG requirements and getting on board with the current "Equity" fad; it's easy enough to hire some consultants, toss some money at Black institutions, and loudly announce solidarity and "allyship" with Black voices. 

What this most certainly is not is science or medicine. Asking people if they are satisfied with pain management is guaranteed to get you answers that you want, especially if you bring together a group of DEI activists whose goal it is to attack the medical profession. 

That, and make some cool, hard cash. DEI is, as much as it is an ideology, a damn good business for the people who have made a living out of it. 

Advil, with guidance from Morehouse School of Medicine, surveyed 2000 people in America to assess the real impact of pain on their lives. Topics included pain experience, life impact, pain management, and perceived bias. The study found that 64% of Black individuals felt their healthcare providers treat people of their race and ethnicity worse than people of other races and ethnicities.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but given that Black people constantly are told that they are getting especially screwed in every aspect of life, I am mildly surprised that only 64% believe that they are getting screwed. That means that 36% have already been red-pilled. Good on them. 

The launch of Advil’s Pain Equity Fund included grants to both Morehouse School of Medicine and BLKHLTH. Part of the grants will be used to partner with other leading experts to begin to develop a pain-equity-focused training for medical students that will be piloted next year.

Ah, money. Money was thrown at Morehouse and BLKHLTH to figure out what to do about this horrible injustice, and they came up with the radical solution of giving Morehouse and BLKHLTH more money to build a nice industry in which they will be the prime participants. 

I wonder what the salaries of those people will be and how long the project will last. Will it include a nice travel budget and dinners at fine restaurants? 

We partnered with iOne Digital, the Number One source for urban content, to develop a video series featuring healthcare professionals diving into reproduction and mental health issues—two topics that are prevalent in the Black community and are greatly impacted by implicit bias.

"Implicit bias" is one of the great scams of all time since, by its nature, it will persist forever. At no point will this kind of bias ever disappear because it has the mushiest of definitions, and its measures will change as needed. 

iOne Digital, in the meantime, will have a steady source of funding from a major corporation. 

No doubt this project will be a nice tax write-off for Advil and internally can be justified to the higher-ups as a form of advertising to the Black community, who might get warm and fuzzies about the brand. I'm not sure that it actually will, though, because Advil is just a branded version of a commonly available generic drug, Ibuprofen.

I buy Ibuprofin by the bucketload from Amazon in generic form. Why pay brand prices for the same drug? 

What's so wrong about Advil's project? 

It's a ridiculous waste of resources, and by that I don't mean the company's. If they want to blow money to virtue signal, then fine. 

It's the stupid "education" program aimed at medical professionals who should be spending time on improving medical care. Instead they will be forced to endure DEI reeducation, be subjected to lectures on how racist they are, and of course deal with a whole new problem: Black patients coming in convinced that their doctors don't care about them. 

This will ultimately lead to poorer care for everyone--especially Black people. Doctors notoriously overprescribe to patients who demand drugs they don't need because doing otherwise is a misallocation of resources--they are forced to answer accusations of racism by higher-ups. Time is taken away from other patients who can be treated properly. 

It's a delicate balance for doctors. They don't want to overtreat the particular patient, but they also have hundreds or thousands of others they need to treat as well. The more time they waste with one who will insist on the wrong thing, the less they can spend on others they can help. 

Doctors aren't perfect. None of us is. But it is ridiculous to assert that doctors as a class are racist and indifferent to the pain of their patients. It's offensive, a disservice to the supposed beneficiaries of this program, and will harm healthcare for everyone. 

But the virtue signaling is priceless.