On Thursday, The American Medical Association (AMA), which is currently the most important US physicians’ group, publicly issued an apology to black doctors for the discriminatory actions they have been subjected to. Although it may be regarded as a slightly over-due move and may not be worth that much by itself, the simple occurrence of such actions and their potential repercussions are extraordinary. If the follow-up is taken care of accordingly, it may become a landmark moment in the association’s history.

AMA assured everyone it would make the necessary efforts in order to better integrate minority physicians in the association’s programs. According to Dr. Ronald Davis, the AMA's immediate past president, the apology was made to show that association members and leaders are well aware of how AMA’s policies have treated African American physicians in the past and that now things are way different.

The changes in the association’s practices will be released sometime next week on the website of AMA's Institute for Ethics, as well as in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The statement was very well received by black physicians; however, everyone is expecting further action now. As Dr. Lucius C. Earles III, a Chicago dermatologist (and former president of the black doctors' group called the National Medical Association), sees things, an apology is good, but the process must not stop there; what he wants to see, in order to be convinced of how the system has changed, is “a steady stream of black physicians” inside medical schools and residencies.

According to NMA President Dr. Nelson Adams, although African Americans represent about 13 percent of the entire population of the United States, they merely reach a 3 percent quota in the medical domain (both practices and schools).