I'm reluctant to wade into this debate at all. There's so little upside to saying anything but parroting the party line.
I'm reminded a little of the oft cited "To Err Is Human" study that is the foundation of the absolutely sacred and unquestioned belief by some that medical errors are the #3 cause of death in the United States.
Do medical errors occur? Are they a problem? Should we work diligently to reduce them? Of course, yes, and absolutely.
Are they the #3 killer in the US? Of course not. This idea doesn't remotely pass even casual scrutiny. Yet the discussion is framed and the (poorly done) statistics are presented in such a way that anyone who questions the "fact" that we're in the midst of an epidemic of medical error carnage is dismissed or vilified. There's an entire industry of CMS and JC and hospital safety specialists whose careers depend on this politically motivated exaggeration, this lie. They descend in coordinated, aggressive fashion upon anyone who's so callous, so careless, so awful to question the foundation of their livelihood. Indeed anyone who questions the "fact" that medical errors are the #3 cause of death in the US is a dinosaur, a careless apathetic fool who's probably responsible for a lot of those errors!
I'm an anesthesiologist; decades ago the core of my specialty was grounded in incremental advances in patient safety, and the goal of zero patient deaths. I take safety very seriously. Part of my consent spiel is to assure each patient that my primary job and focus is to keep them safe, and I'm not joking or BS'ing them. Ensuring safety isn't just my primary job, it's really my ONLY job.
The high risk and high prevalence of sexual assault in the military (and college campuses, and, and, and, name the locale) has taken on similar mystic truth status. One can't even enter a discussion without reciting a ritual acknowledgement of its pervasiveness, the way 2nd graders start their day with the Pledge Of Allegience, or the way our enlisted start their day in formation by reciting the Sailor's Creed.
I have no idea what the real risk of sexual assault is in the military. I don't know if it's higher or lower than what civilians face. (I'm not sure anyone really knows.)
I suspect it's higher in the enlisted ranks, because of demographic reasons and especially because of the rank/power structure and an indoctrinated follow-orders culture.
The studies concerning sexual assault are plagued with problems with definitions, statistics, extrapolation, assumptions, study design, bias, funding, conflicts of interest, and other issues that we wouldn't tolerate for an instant in the scientific journals that advance our practice of medicine.
But every year when I sit through my mandatory training on human trafficking, sexual assault, and related topics, the epidemic is unquestioned.
It's not worth participating in the in-person sessions because these events are intended to be echo chambers, not discussions. It's frustrating.
But here's what frustrates me most: the self-licking ice cream cone that is this industry of "awareness" has gone unquestioned and unchecked for so long that we now have a person who aspires to become a military physician - an intelligent, educated, thoughtful person - whose primary concern about joining the military is whether or not she'll be raped.
Not deployment frequency.
Not the rewards and difficulty of service.
Not training quality or options.
Not professional opportunities.
Not practice environment.
Not case load.
Not collateral duty requirements.
Not contract or commitment details.
Rape.
That's pretty sad.
