18 months ago, a medical school student named Daniel Michelson decided it was a good idea to spray-paint on the George Floyd mural in Minneapolis.

Michelson “Xed” out Floyd’s mouth and eyes. Not sure why he did, the damage was minor, but he got chased down right out of his flip-flops. Someone in the “George Floyd Square” security force said she “held back” people who wanted to issue some restorative justice, AKA: to beat Michelson to a pulp. Michelson was quickly identified because he turned around and smiled for the camera. Smart. As quickly as it took to mark X on Floyd’s mouth, Michelson was out of medical school. Some of his classmates wanted his head on a stake. In 2020, there was nothing worse than not making a full-flowering virtue statement on Twitter. A Michelson classmate, Londyn Robinson, jumped in.

A member of my medical school at the U of Minnesota defaced the George Floyd memorial.

When we say we have work to do, we mean within our own class. We mean med students are JUST as harmful & racist as the rest of medicine. https://t.co/LJ46TH98XC

— Londyn Robinson, MD (@londyloo) August 20, 2020

The medical school’s dean penned a letter of contrition. It included most of the bended knee bullet points, including “openly condemning the death of George Floyd.” That wasn’t enough for Robinson. She wanted expulsion and she was horrified that the dean failed to include sufficient contrition and “support for Black and brown classmates”.

Update: the Dean sent this letter. It is VERY confusing. He is suspended. This is the ONLY email we have gotten from U of M leadership. We want expulsion.

It fails to address how Med student harmed Mpls. Doesn’t mention anything about supoort for Black and brown classmates. pic.twitter.com/6lye2EH6xO

— Londyn Robinson, MD (@londyloo) August 20, 2020

Spray paint on a mural of Floyd you’re out of med school and marked for life. Michelson’s college got wind of his antics and quickly notified everyone at his former university. It read in part:

“My heart ached as I read about another act of violence and hatred toward the Black community… This vandalism, along with any instance of racism or discrimination, has no place in our community.”

What Michelson did was dumb. I know I don’t want a doctor stabbing me with anything if he (or she) has demonstrated such poor judgment, but what he did wasn’t a medical ethics breach, nor did he purposely injure a patient. But his medical career was ruined unrelated to medical ethics.

Fast forward to March 2022. A medical student named Kychelle Del Rosario is a fourth-year medical student at Wake Forest. She is also a transgender activist. Before she removed all her social media accounts, she was very public about it.

Sometime on or before March 29, 2022, she committed a crime. Not only did she stab a patient because of something the patient said, she committed a breach of the most sacred canon of the medical field which is “Do no harm”.

Del Rosario wears a nametag that identifies her, as a She/Her. A patient read her nametag with her She/Her pronoun pronouncement. According to Del Rosario the patient:

“Loudly laugh[ed] to the staff ‘She/Her? Well of course it is! What other pronouns even are there? It?’

What did Del Rosario do in response? She didn’t ignore the comment. She didn’t ask someone else to draw blood. She decided to stab the patient. Apparently a joke is enough for a (potential) doctor to commit a battery and commit an ethical breach because she didn’t like the patient’s joke. Not only did she commit a battery and breach her ethical duty to “do no harm” – she decided to brag about. In a since deleted tweet, she was loud and proud about her crime:

Rest assured, Wake Forest is looking into it. There wasn’t a lengthy open letter about how horrified the dean was. No vow to “do better.” There was no “We’re seeking restorative justice for patients,” or the seeking of a “healing moment.” Just a tweet announcing that the school was “taking measures to address this with the student.”

Fortunately, Del Rosario didn’t spray-paint an “X” on a George Floyd mural. That would have been bad. Very bad.