Atheist doctors more likely to care for the poor

[Doug]

Atheist doctors more likely to care for the poor than religious ones

Atheist doctors are likely to practice medicine among the underprivileged than religious physicians, even though most religions call on the faithful to serve the poor, according to the results of large cross-sectional survey of US medical practitioners published in Annals of Family Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious—as measured by "intrinsic religiosity" as well as frequency of attendance at religious services—practiced among the underserved, compared to 35 percent of physicians who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or none.

"This came as both a surprise and a disappointment," study author Farr Curlin, MD, said. "The Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist scriptures all urge physicians to care for the poor, and the great majority of religious physicians describe their practice of medicine as a calling. Yet we found that religious physicians were not more likely to report practice among the underserved than their secular colleagues."

Read the rest of the article here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I find the title misleading, since the group most likely to be tending to the poor was the "spiritual" as opposed to "religious" group. That group may or may not be aetheist. As to the findings that the "religious" don't walk the walk, no matter how much they talk the talk - so what else is new. Hypocrasy wasn't invented for the Republican Party. However, I think the results would have been different (same percentages, but the other way) if the study had been done before the RC church sold off their non-profit healthcare clinics and hospitals to the for-profit Mercy Healthcare System.