Davis speaks about fingerprinting, which was seen as a physical mark of parentage. This identity of the body cannot be altered by moral, artistic, or human will. Additionally, this “indelibility of corporal identity” (the essence of who we are) simply serves to “mark our body”, just as much as our other physical qualities – intelligence, height and reaction time. Continues Davis about Galton’s theory of fingerprinting, “the identity of people are defined by physical qualities that can be measured.” Davis writes of the fallacy of Quetelet’ s idea of the average human bean and also of the reliance by Karl Marx on Quetelet’s belief in formulating his theory of average wage and abstract wage. Davis writes also about the theory of eugenics, which saw the human body as gaining perfection through selective reproduction to increase the desirable characteristics. Davis is quick to point out that eugenics did not start with Hitler’s “Natzi-like” racial supremacy, but rather, it is embraced in all the theories that support the perfectibility of the human body, a Utopian hope for social improvement. He writes of how these theories, in seeking an average or normal individual, in trying to identify the non-normal or the unfit person, tend to have a strange selection of disabilities [tuberculosis, diabetes, hemophiliac, mental illness, low intelligence, pauperism (yep, being poor!)] merged with other types of human variation (cleft palate, hare lips, deaf-mutism, stub fingers, more than five fingers). Throughout his essay, Davis points out the fallacy of trying to define a norm, and as such, a deviant or a deviation from that norm. He challenges us to always question the idea of what is normal or normalcy. As he says in the last sentence of his article, “One of the tasks for a developing consciousness of disability issues is the attempt, then, to reverse the hegemony of the normal, and to institute alternative ways of thinking about the abnormal. 

All of us who are in this hugely competitive, but even more highly subsidized program, are here in order to acquire the skills and tools so that we can be of service to our community and fellow citizens. Being on this journey to become a physician does not make me more special than the person who is studying to be a teacher of pre-school kids. Becoming a physician will not make me more special than those who I am to serve – if anything, becoming a physician compels me to be more cognizant of the needs of those I will serve, especially since many that I will serve would never have been afforded the opportunities I currently am on a journey to become a physician. So many of our peers will never have the opportunity to go to college, and many of those peers are more brilliant, more artistic, more caring and compassionate than so many of us in this program can hope to be. Being is not about IQ, or being hard working or committed; after all, how exactly do we measure those attributes? Davis’ article attempts to teach us to question “norms, deviants, deviations and outliers.” Someone who believes that they can make executive decisions, is by definition, subscribing to the concept of “normalcy”, or that societal benefit that is supposedly conferred by what we think is structurally normal. It is imperative that all of us who are on this journey listen closely to our patients, understand their needs, and work diligently to ease their suffering as best we can while respecting their desires. We are not here to fix bodies, we are here to heal people and fix our communities. One person at a time. Whether it’s the norm or not.

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