Billionaire owner of X Elon Musk recently sat down for an interview with former CNN host Don Lemon, where he attempted to explain the potential danger of lower standards across society for the sake of pursuing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Speaking about the medical field, Musk illustrates the hypothetical danger of allowing unqualified doctors to practice in the medical industry by lowering standards for medical school and board certification exams. According to Musk, this could lead to more people dying as a result of receiving substandard care.
Despite Musk heavily emphasizing that he was explaining a hypothetical scenario as to what might happen in a scenario in which medical standards were lowered across the board to accommodate more diverse doctors, Lemon was seemingly unable to grasp the concept.
“I believe that if we lower the standards for what it takes to become a doctor,” Musk began, before being interrupted by Lemon. “If we lower the standards,” Lemon said. “Do you believe people are dying because the standards are being lowered?”
“I don’t think that it’s yet an issue, but it could become an issue,” Musk replied, emphasizing that he is illustrating a hypothetical scenario. “Ok, but the actual evidence in history shows the exact opposite,” Lemon claimed, without substantiating this claim.
Lemon proceeded to illustrate that DEI was necessary for the medical industry to combat racism. “If you look at how minorities are treated by the medical system, most doctors — most doctors now are white, and there are lots of mistakes in medicine,” Lemon continued, not seeming to grasp the point Musk was making.
“The probability that someone will die, I think at some point, is high,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it’s happening,” seemingly unable to grasp Elon’s hypothetical scenario. “I didn’t say it was happening,” Musk responded. “You didn’t say it was happening,” Lemon repeated.
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Musk added, “I said it will. I said if we lower standards, people will die.” Lemon, who appeared frustrated by this point in the conversation, questioned why Tesla CEO would “put something out there” if it had not occurred yet. “Because I don’t want it to happen,” Musk answered.
Watch a clip from the interview between Musk and Lemon below:
Lemon returned to the idea that there is racial discrimination in the medical field, citing a statistic that only 5% of doctors are black. “If the majority of doctors are white, are you saying that — and there are still these inequities, right? And people still — there are still mistakes. Are you blaming DEI for that?” Lemon asked the entrepreneur.
“No,” Musk told Lemon, emphasizing the point he had been trying to make the entire time that he was only suggesting what would happen if medical standards were lowered in accordance with diversity goals. “More people will die than if we don’t lower the standards. Therefore we should not lower the standards,” he said.
Recently, there has been tension between Musk and Lemon after X decided to cancel “The Don Lemon Show” just after the debut episode was filmed with billionaire entrepreneur. Musk criticized Lemon’s show for essentially bringing CNN’s antics to social media.
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.