The American Medical Association voted Tuesday to recommend that hospitals ban doctors' iconic white lab coats, citing evidence that the garment contributes to the spread of infection. Indeed, a number of studies have shown that the coats harbor potentially harmful bacteria (and may cause "white coat hypertension"). If white coats are so bad, why do doctors still wear them?
Because a white lab coat says "I am a scientific healer." The knee-length coat in medicine crossed over from the laboratory sciences at the turn of the 20th century. Before that time, medicine was generally seen as the haphazard province of quacks and frauds, and physicians wore street clothes even in the operating room. As the field developed into a respected branch of applied science in the early 1900s, doctors adopted the costume of the laboratory as a way of bolstering their scientific credibility.
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