This article is part one of a two-part series. Read part two here. The national racial reckoning over reparations and critical race theory is taking over the world of medicine and health care. Prestigious medical journals, top medical schools and elite medical centers are adopting the language of social justice activism and vowing to confront “systemic racism,” dismantle “structural violence” and disrupt “white supremacy” in their institutional cultures. Some activist physicians describe the present-day health care system with such ominous terms as a “medical caste system” or “medical apartheid,” the latter locution taken from the title of a 2007 book about America’s history of medical experimentation on enslaved blacks and freedmen. “Modern American medicine has historical roots in scientific racism and eugenics movements,” according to a February article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “How Structural Racism Works—Racist Policies as a Root Cause of U.S. Racial Health Inequities.” …