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Do No Harm Urges IRS To Investigate the American Medical Association Foundation’s Tax-Exempt Status

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SALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 8, 2026 – This week, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), urging an investigation into whether the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation should have its tax-exempt status revoked for operating racially discriminatory scholarships.

“Racially discriminatory scholarships are unlawful and morally wrong, to say nothing of the negative impact they have on public confidence in our medical system,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Based on the evidence in our complaint, we believe the IRS should revoke the AMA Foundation’s tax-exempt status for operating a racially discriminatory program. The AMA’s obsession with identity politics is no secret, and it should be held accountable for allowing race to dictate applicants’ eligibility for valuable and lucrative learning opportunities. If the AMA Foundation wants to retain its federal tax advantage, it must open its scholarships to applicants of all races.”

The AMA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Medical Association, funds and oversees the Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship program, which provides lucrative scholarships to third-year medical students. Most scholarship awards include prizes of up to $10,000 along with national recognition and access to resources and support. However, as alleged in Do No Harm’s complaint, several of these scholarships explicitly discriminate based on race and violate established public policy and civil rights laws forbidding racial discrimination. Under Supreme Court precedent, having even one unlawful policy under 26 U.S.C § 501(c)(3), including a racially discriminatory policy, makes the entire organization ineligible for tax-exempt status.

Click here to read the IRS complaint.

Background:

The AMA Foundation’s Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship is an umbrella program encompassing various discrete scholarships. However, several scholarships explicitly hinge eligibility on racial criteria, with two scholarships preferring certain racial minorities over other racial groups and one scholarship preferring certain white racial groups over others.

  • The Dr. Richard Allen Williams & Genita Evangelista Johnson/Association of Black Cardiologists Scholarship awards $5,000 to medical students interested in cardiology, but only if they are “African American/Black.”
  • The Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship awards $10,000 to winners who are “African American/Black, Latine/Hispanic or Indigenous (American Indian, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native).”
  • The Patricia L. Austin Family Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship awards $10,000 to winners and explicitly requires applicants to be “of Eastern European descent.”

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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When Ideology Replaces Accuracy: The ATS’s Spirometry Shift

In recent years, academic medical societies have increasingly issued recommendations and policy statements that seem motivated less by a commitment to scientific rigor and more by an adherence to fashionable ideologies.

The American Thoracic Society is unfortunately no exception to this trend. Its 2023 decision to abandon race‑adjusted reference equations for spirometry—long a straightforward physiological test—does not necessarily make the test more accurate, may not deliver better outcomes, and does not clearly improve certainty in a tool meant to elucidate lung mechanics. By prioritizing broad ideological narratives over data‑driven, objective measures, recent changes risk undermining the core purpose of this diagnostic test and ultimately fail to improve patient care, exchanging one set of uncertainties for another.

Spirometry measures the volume and flows produced after a forced exhalation from total lung capacity. Measurements include the Forced Expiratory Volume in one second (FEV1), Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) (maximal amount exhaled), and the FEV1/FVC ratio. In the right clinical setting spirometry helps distinguish obstructive from restrictive lung physiology. Whether a value is “normal” depends on reference equations from healthy populations. These equations have always adjusted for height, age, and sex. And for two decades, they also included race-based adjustments given datasets consistently showing average FEV1 and FVC values differing across populations. Ironically, this change was an effort to make the equations, which had originally been based on data from Caucasians, more inclusive by including data from multiple ethnic groups while also having some physiologic rationale by accounting for the smaller Cormic index (smaller thorax for a given standing height) seen in observational studies of individuals of African descent as well as others. This approach, while imperfect, was accepted for diagnosing abnormal physiology.

Flash forward to recent times. In 2023, the ATS moved to eliminate race-based adjustment from the reference equations. Thirty-three workshop participants—drawn from both the ATS Pulmonary Function Test Committee and the ATS Health Equity and Diversity Committee—met over the issue. Thereafter an official statement was produced explaining “why race and ethnicity should no longer be considered factors in interpreting the results of spirometry.” If this change had improved diagnostic precision, it would have been welcome.

From the outset, the ATS statement framed the prior race‑adjusted equations as products of “structural racism,” despite their intent to improve accuracy by incorporating data from multiple populations. More than 90% of workshop participants nevertheless endorsed adopting a race-neutral reference equation, citing non-clinical benefits such as affirming that “race and ethnicity are not biological variables.” At the same time, ATS issued a word of caution within its own statement, acknowledging uncertain effects and potential harms with the new approach. Indeed, the full clinical consequences of removing race from the reference equations remain unknown. What is certain is that this change will reclassify some black patients with previously “low‑normal” values as abnormal, and some white patients previously labeled abnormal as normal.

No doubt, clinicians will still interpret pulmonary function tests (PFTs) in context, but this shift introduces new opportunities for misclassification without evidence that diagnostic accuracy or patient outcomes will improve. A patient with exertional dyspnea, for example, may now appear to have obstructive disease when the true cause is something else, like cardiac disease for example. The ATS document itself warns of potential harm because of the race-neutral equation, including, but not limited to unnecessary workups, inappropriate disease labeling, insurance or occupational consequences, and altered surgical risk assessments.

The central issue is simple: the recent race-neutral recommendations do not clearly improve diagnostic accuracy and introduce a different set of uncertainties into a test whose purpose is to clarify physiology. The change appears driven less by data and more by ideology. It risks undermining the primary function of any diagnostic tool, that is, providing clinicians with the best, most accurate information so they can provide exceptional care to their patients.  While an argument could be made for improving the original reference-equation approach—or even abandoning it all together in favor of alternatives like using patients as their own baseline—any change should be driven by data supporting improved clinical accuracy for individual patients regardless of race, and not a particular political agenda.

Dr. Michael Depietro is a pulmonologist and Do No Harm member. 

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New Do No Harm Report Debunks AAMC’s Racial Concordance Narrative

SALT LAKE CITY, UT: March 31, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report debunking assertions by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) about alleged benefits of racial concordance in assessing and treating pain.

The report, “How the AAMC Fails to Read and Correctly Interpret the Research It Cites,” exposes the AAMC’s role in elevating activism over evidence within its amicus brief submitted in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case over race-based college admissions. The brief cites four unreliable studies to defend the discredited theory that racial concordance, in which patients are treated by doctors of the same race, improves health outcomes.

Yet, as Do No Harm’s report shows, not one of them actually supports the asserted benefit of racial concordance in the treatment of pain.

“Our report exposes the tactics employed by activist medical organizations to infuse racial discrimination throughout all of healthcare,” said Jay Greene, PhD, Director of Research at Do No Harm. “The country’s most prominent medical societies either didn’t read or purposely misrepresented the studies used to justify the debunked racial concordance myth. They failed in their responsibility to describe medical research accurately to the highest court in the land. This dereliction of their duty to honestly assess studies raises doubts about the scientific credibility of these organizations more broadly.”

Do No Harm has previously rebutted the general claim of racial concordance and, throughout the latest report, thoroughly addresses the AAMC’s failure to describe research results accurately.

Click here to read the full report.

Background: 

  • The first study wrongly suggests that white trainees are more likely than non-white trainees to hold false medical beliefs about black patients. However, the study focuses on medical trainees (not independently practicing doctors), never compares black trainees to non-black trainees, never examines the treatment of black patients, and conveniently leaves out data showing non-white trainees were actually more likely than white trainees to hold those false beliefs.
  • The second study concludes that black children with appendicitis are as likely as white children with appendicitis to be given an analgesic but significantly less likely to receive an opioid. This study also does not support racial concordance in pain treatment because it never examines that question.
  • The third study is only a review of research on racial differences in pain treatment. Notably, it presents no original findings and fails to examine whether a physician’s race was associated with differences in the treatment of pain.
  • The fourth study finds that non-minority patients were more likely to receive guideline-recommended analgesic prescriptions than minority patients. However, it never examines whether pain treatment for black patients was any different if their physician was also black. It also did not collect data on pain treatment for white patients.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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Do No Harm Files Lawsuit Challenging Discriminatory Federal Health Scholarship Program 

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; March 30, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program (“the Program”) administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“In the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has made historic strides toward ending racial bias in medicine and restoring meritocracy,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman at Do No Harm. “That this program still exists even after the efforts by this administration to course correct proves just how widespread institutional race discrimination has become. Our complaint challenging the Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program is aimed at ensuring well-deserving applicants can qualify to compete for the financial relief the scholarship provides. The criteria in question should be revised so that the program will align with HHS goals to restore excellence and merit in healthcare.”

Read the full complaint here.

Background:

The Program is administered by HHS and provides generous financial aid, including assistance for tuition, living expenses and other costs, for students pursuing certain healthcare careers. In exchange, scholarship recipients agree to provide healthcare services in Hawaii for a couple of years after graduation.

However, to be eligible, applicants must be “Native Hawaiians,” a requirement that is enshrined into federal law. The Program defines Native Hawaiian as a U.S. citizen who is “a descendant of the aboriginal people, who prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the area that now constitutes the state of Hawaii.”

This eligibility barrier is racial discrimination.

Do No Harm represents several of its members in this lawsuit, who, but for their race, would be qualified and competitive applicants. These courageous members are taking a stand because they believe that well-deserving students shouldn’t be denied life-changing opportunities on the basis of race.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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DEI Mandates No More: The LCME Quietly Removes ‘Bias’ and ‘Equity’ Requirements

Earlier this month, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the main accrediting body for allopathic medical schools, quietly updated its 2027-2028 standards.

The change, unannounced and easy to miss, is enormously consequential: the LCME removed the requirement that medical schools inject DEI-oriented content into their curricula.

Previously, the standards required schools to provide “opportunities for medical students to learn to recognize and appropriately address biases in themselves, in others, and in the health care delivery process,” and to include in their curricula “approaches to reduce health care inequities.”

The new standards, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, omit this DEI language entirely.

This is a massive, massive victory for medical education.

With this change, medical schools will no longer be forced to indoctrinate students into a divisive, discriminatory ideology.

And what’s more, they will no longer have the fig leaf of LCME mandates to justify even more radical DEI-infested curriculum content.

The change is the LCME’s second major update to its standards following President Trump’s executive order directly targeting accreditors for imposing divisive and discriminatory policies on higher education; that executive order mentioned the LCME by name.

In May 2025, the LCME removed Standard 3.3, which forced medical schools to have in place “programs and/or partnerships” aimed at achieving diversity, effectively encouraging racial discrimination.

Additionally, the changes follow Do No Harm’s report exposing accreditors for injecting DEI into medical schools and healthcare education programs through accreditation standards.

Since our report, the vast majority of medical and healthcare education accreditors have ditched or suspended their DEI mandates.

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Do No Harm Submits Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Take Up Case and Reject Any First Amendment Right to Racially Discriminate

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Today, Do No Harm, Students for Fair Admissions, and the American Alliance for Equal Rights filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in support of a lawsuit challenging the New Jersey State Bar Association’s discriminatory set asides. The case raises an important issue: whether the First Amendment creates a general right to racially discriminate.

The brief urges the Court to grant certiorari in Saadeh v. New Jersey State Bar Association, a case concerning the New Jersey State Bar Association’s racial preference system employed when filling board seats. The bar association, claiming that such preferences are necessary for it to advocate its DEI goals, reserves these seats for lawyers who are “diverse” or from “underrepresented” groups, including, “Black/African American,” “Hispanic/Latino/a/x,” “Asian/Pacific American,” “LGBTQ+,” and “women.”

In October 2021, Rajeh Saadeh, the plaintiff and petitioner in the case, sued the bar association over this quota system, arguing that it violates New Jersey’s antidiscrimination laws.

Though the trial court ruled that the bar association’s quotas were illegal under state law, New Jersey’s appellate court reversed that decision based solely on the First Amendment. According to the state appellate court, forcing the bar association to end such racial preferences would violate the association’s First Amendment rights because it would “significantly burden the expression of its views”—namely the bar association’s “ability to advocate the value of diversity and inclusivity.”

In other words, the court accepted the theory that New Jersey’s bar association had a First Amendment right to racially discriminate. The New Jersey Supreme Court then denied Saadeh’s petition for certiorari.

Do No Harm’s brief explains why this theory is bogus and why it is imperative for the United States Supreme Court to take up this case.

First, the brief highlights numerous examples of cases, including Do No Harm cases, in which defendants accused of illegal racial discrimination have attempted to mount a constitutional Free Speech defense, demonstrating a growing need for the Court to make clear that there is no First Amendment right to racially discriminate.

Then, the brief explains why the logic of a purported First Amendment right to racially discriminate falls apart. Essentially, there is a difference between expressing beliefs and practicing them. The First Amendment protects expression; but antidiscrimination laws forbid racial exclusion and discriminatory practices.

As the brief further explains: “The Free Speech Clause theory” recognized by the New Jersey appellate court and advanced in rising numbers of cases across the country is “not merely novel” but “also incompatible with decades of [Supreme] Court[] precedent and the decisions of most other courts.” In addition, the theory has “no logical stopping point” given that “every entity that discriminates could claim the same ‘expressive’ interest in the bare act of discrimination.”

“The ‘expression’ supposedly found in DEI programs—at bottom, the economic or social advancement of certain racial groups and the exclusion of others—merely restates the fact of race discrimination. Allowing that ‘expression’ to serve as the basis for evading antidiscrimination laws would nullify those laws, for every entity that discriminates could claim the same interest in conveying support for such discrimination.”

Do No Harm urges the Court to grant certiorari.

As defendants scramble to keep unlawful DEI policies in play, many now regularly seek to evade racial nondiscrimination laws and Supreme Court precedent through a purported First Amendment right to discriminate as their “expression.” It is imperative that the Court firmly decide the obvious: DEI activists cannot rely on the First Amendment to racially discriminate.

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Do No Harm Proposes CDC Adopt New Medical Diagnosis Codes for Gender Transition and Detransition

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; March 17, 2026 – Today, Kurt Miceli, MD, Do No Harm’s Chief Medical Officer, will present to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the need for new medical diagnosis codes (known as ICD-10 codes) for gender transition and detransition.

“Refining the medical diagnosis codes for gender transition and detransition is urgently needed. Currently, the lack of a specific code for detransition makes these individuals effectively invisible to the healthcare system, obscuring their medical needs and limiting real-world research, follow‑up care, and outcome monitoring that responsible practice requires,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “The new diagnosis codes we’re proposing would help generate valuable research data, support evidence-based health standards, and enhance patient care. We commend the CDC for taking important steps toward this goal by accepting for October implementation the code we introduced at the last ICD-10 meeting: gender identity disorder in remission, or desistance. We encourage the agency to adopt our newly proposed codes so that we can further improve the quality of research and care for those suffering from gender dysphoria.”

The CDC meeting will begin at 9:00 a.m. ET. Click here for the agenda and livestream.

Why new codes are needed:

  • To more accurately document an individual’s clinical state to support the appropriate delivery of care
  • To provide clinical data that will support and improve research, quality, and standards of care
  • To inform public health needs in this evolving area of medicine
  • To improve clinician-to-clinician communication within the medical record
  • To give visibility to patients facing these clinical conditions

Do No Harm’s proposed codes aim to more precisely capture the various aspects of gender transition, distinguish those aspects from disorders of sex development, and make sure detransitioners are fully visible to the healthcare system.

These codes include:

  • Personal history of social gender transition
  • Personal history of medical gender transition
  • Personal history of surgical gender transition
  • Personal history of intersex surgery
  • Personal history of unspecified gender transition
  • Personal history of gender detransition

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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A Woke Gamble in Medicine?

Academic Medicine, the flagship journal of Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recently published an article advocating for a lottery-based residency match system to replace the current match system that, in the authors’ words, emphasize “a narrow set of comparative achievements—standardized test performance, publication counts, and honor society memberships.”

The article, written by several authors including the Associate Dean for Admissions at Stanford University School of Medicine, starts out with the premise that this more merit-oriented approach is actually harmful to medical education.

Instead, the authors argue that residency programs should adopt a “modified lottery” system in which applicants who are deemed “qualified” by their medical schools are assigned, through an algorithm, to interview with certain residency programs.

The crux of the argument is as follows:

“We argue that the current residency selection process must be upended to achieve several important aims: facilitating the implementation of [competency-based medical education], promoting a growth mindset among students, eliminating the use of metrics that foster harmful bias, ensuring optimal preparation for patient care, and improving equality within the selection process.”

Notice the sections on “bias” and “equality.”

And here’s the kicker: the authors argue that this process should include diversity objectives so that residency programs can achieve their DEI goals.

“Inclusion of diversity-related programmatic outcomes in the modified lottery process could help align applicants and programs with similar interests in caring for diverse patient populations, advancing health equity, or promoting inclusive practices,” the authors write.

To be clear, it is not the lottery itself that is the issue. Indeed, Do No Harm’s founder Dr. Stanley Goldfarb explained in National Review how, in the context of medical school admissions, instituting a lottery system past a certain threshold of academic achievement would prevent racial preferences in admissions while ensuring that medical schools preserve merit.

Each medical school should announce a minimum MCAT score and undergraduate GPA  necessary for admission, then institute a lottery system for applicants who clear those bars. This approach would not only end racial discrimination overnight — it would also strongly incentivize medical schools to admit the best-qualified students.

Instead, it is the article’s premise that more merit-oriented methods of selection should be devalued, and that the lottery process should be used to achieve DEI goals, that is disturbing. It’s a system in which “good enough” replaces “the best” for selecting into the most competitive training programs.

The authors give the game away elsewhere in the paper, arguing that more achievement-oriented metrics of residency selection “confer demonstrable bias (e.g. racial, ethnic, gender, and/or socioeconomic), potentially limiting the entrance of applicants with identities considered underrepresented in medicine into residency positions.”

How, exactly, merit-based metrics of selection confer bias while consideration of diversity objectives does not is anyone’s guess.

Additionally, the article is remarkably light on details as to what counts as a qualified applicant, instead calling for widespread adoption of a standardized “programmatic assessment.”

“In order for a modified lottery for interviews to be successful, this would require UME institutions to agree upon a set of outcomes to determine qualification and develop rigorous programmatic assessment to ensure those outcomes are met,” the authors write.

But apparently the “standardized test performance, publication counts, and honor society memberships” are excluded from the qualification discussion? This doesn’t make much sense.

In short, the article’s proposal would indeed upend residency selection, but make it much less fair. Objective measures of academic excellence would be devalued, and non-academic considerations would be promoted.

We shouldn’t gamble on the future of medicine like this.

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Detransitioners Are Righting Medicine’s Wrongs

Lobotomies and pediatric gender interventions have a lot in common. Both treatments were developed to address forms of psychological distress, have resulted in patient harm, and sparked concerns surrounding informed consent from a vulnerable population.

But the medical community abandoned lobotomies without legal restrictions, while pediatric gender interventions are being wrestled away from “gender-affirming” clinicians by twenty-seven state bans, multiple federal executive orders and the threat of Medicare and Medicaid defunding.

Despite the similarities, the two interventions have one important difference: pediatric gender interventions are rooted in ideology while lobotomies were not. The medical establishment was able to self-regulate and stop performing lobotomies without legal prohibitions after an increasing number of patients suffered poor outcomes, likely because doctors were not ideologically invested in the procedures. Compelling clinicians to alter a practice motivated by deeply-held beliefs rather than objective evidence has proven to be difficult. But the adverse complications are becoming too obvious to ignore.

A growing population of patients harmed by pediatric gender interventions are redirecting medicine away from ideology and back to objective facts. Detransitioners who were deemed by their clinicians to be transgender and subsequently underwent irreversible procedures before coming to realize that their gender distress was due to something else are the truth serum restoring medical integrity. Legal prohibitions, restrictions in funding, and now a two million dollar judgement in favor of a harmed patient are the inevitable result of belief-directed medicine that failed to right itself.

Shaking clinicians out of their transgender fever dream has been challenging. Queer theory believers unquestioningly affirm children’s musings of gender nonconformity, sometimes leading to life-altering gender interventions. They assert gender is a social construct untethered to biological sex. Children who struggle with gender distress are treated as if they are expressing a distinct and authentic identity — despite its departure from biological reality — and one that must be affirmed without reservation.

This confident conclusion conflicts with standard clinical practice that requires an objective evaluation of a patient’s symptoms and, especially in children, a careful exploration of the psychosocial factors that often underlie gender distress. Yet, in many contemporary frameworks, questioning a child’s newly-declared gender identity is perceived as pathologizing gender nonconformity itself, and therefore discriminatory to those seeking to express an inner sense of self.

In 2023 the American Psychiatric Association’s publishing house released Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care (GAPC), an exhaustive guide to gender nonconforming patients. This textbook recommends medical and surgical transition as appropriate treatment options for patients of all ages with gender distress, even when significant co-occurring conditions — such as autism, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and serious mental illness — are present.

According to GAPC, some gender-affirming clinicians believe an investigation of a patient’s reported gender distress that delays medical affirmation — which would be required for a comprehensive evaluation — is a form of gender-identity discrimination, and even conversion therapy.

Detransitioners who were subjected to irreversible medical interventions that damaged healthy organs and bodily functions are the unfortunate result of this detour away from objectivity.

This isn’t the first time patients have suffered from ideology infiltrating medicine. The eugenics movement is one such example that led to the coerced sterilization of as many as seventy thousand people. Eugenicists in the early twentieth century sought to improve the human race by limiting the reproduction of people deemed to be “feebleminded,” convincing even the U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously quipped in his opinion favoring the forced sterilization of twenty-one-year-old Carrie Buck, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Detransitioners injured by gender interventions are a reminder of how ideological capture of medical institutions can lead to harm rather than healing.

March 12 is Detransition Awareness Day — an opportunity for the medical community to acknowledge the dangers of ideologically-driven medicine and reaffirm a commitment to objective and compassionate care that limits preventable injury.

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The AAMC Changes Course on ‘Cultural’ Competencies

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is continuing to walk back some of its more overt references to diversity in its public materials. It’s a sign that the AAMC is moderating the outward manifestations of its long-historied DEI infatuation, even if it hasn’t given up the ideology wholesale just yet.

At some point last month, the AAMC updated the language used in its “Premed Competencies for Entering Medical Students.” These “competencies” refer to the traits and skills that incoming medical students should possess to succeed and become effective physicians.

An archived version of the article, dated February 1, 2026, included a competency titled “cultural humility,” which it defined as the skill in which one: “Seeks out and engages diverse and divergent perspectives with a desire to understand and willingness to adjust one’s mindset; understands a situation or idea from alternative viewpoints; reflects on one’s values, beliefs, and identities and how they may affect others; reflects on and addresses bias in oneself and others; and fosters a supportive environment that values inclusivity.”

Similarly, the page previously included the competency of “Cultural awareness”: “Appreciates how historical, sociocultural, political, and economic factors affect others’ interactions, behaviors, and well-being; values diversity; and demonstrates a desire to learn about different cultures, beliefs, and values.”

Now, “Cultural humility” is known as “Self-awareness,” and “Cultural awareness” has become “Understanding others.”

The definitions of the new competencies do not make direct references to diversity and related concepts.

Furthermore, the AAMC’s resource page on its PREview exam has changed as well.

As Do No Harm previously reported, one of the goals of the PREview exam is to promote “inclusivity” and “level the playing field” for applicants. The exam was also assessed by “experts” in DEI.

“In discussing the exam with our DEI constituents, the sentiment has always been that it would help level the playing field for applicants,” said David Acosta, MD, AAMC chief diversity and inclusion officer, in a 2022 statement.

Previously, the resource page contained the following language: “The PREview exam provides medical schools with a more complete view of each applicant by assessing skills such as resilience and adaptability, service orientation, ethical responsibility to self and others, empathy and compassion, cultural awareness, cultural humility, and teamwork and collaboration, among others.”

The current resource page, however, makes no mention of “cultural awareness” or “cultural humility.”

Of course, the PREview exam itself does not appear to have changed, but it is worth noting that the AAMC is trying to subtly rebrand its purpose after explicitly linking it to DEI just a few years ago.

And once again, if there is truly a change of heart in the AAMC leadership regarding DEI, we should expect the AAMC to publicly state this to be the case.

Until that point, we should remain skeptical.

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The AMA Wants to Have It Both Ways on Gender Ideology

Recently, the AMA investigated one of its continuing medical education courses that was rife with gender ideology and unscientific endorsements of pediatric gender transitions, finding it did not comply with accreditation standards. But the AMA’s handling of the matter reveals the organization is still on board with gender activism.

Here’s the timeline:

In December, Do No Harm Medical Director Kurt Miceli, MD, submitted a complaint to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) over a course on pediatric gender medicine produced by the American Medical Association (AMA) that is best described as promoting gender ideology.

The complaint explained that the course, titled “LGBTQ+ Patient-Centered Practices,” violates the ACCME’s standards, which require that all educational recommendations for patient care be grounded in current science, supported by clinical reasoning, and presented in a fair and balanced manner.

As Do No Harm previously reported:

  • The course refused to acknowledge the fact that the overall quality of evidence for so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is very low.
  • It ignored the numerous evidence reviews that have shown sex-denying medical interventions to be an unsupported means of addressing gender dysphoria in children.
  • It failed to properly acknowledge the numerous and substantial risks of these procedures.
  • And it even cited activist groups who seek to push gender ideology in the political realm.

Ultimately, the ACCME initiated an investigation and the AMA took the course down; the link to the course redirects to the AMA’s general CME webpage.

Then, in February of this year, the AMA Education Center sent out an email broadcasting the fact that the course did not meet the requisite accreditation standards.

Figure 1. A screenshot from an email sent by the AMA Education Center.

Here’s the relevant section:

After a recent review, we discovered the activity “LGBTQ+ Patient-Centered Practices” did not fully meet Standard 1 of the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education, specifically subsection 4: “Although accredited continuing education is an appropriate place to discuss, debate, and explore new and evolving topics, these areas need to be clearly identified as such within the program and individual presentations. It is the responsibility of accredited providers to facilitate engagement with these topics without advocating for, or promoting, practices that are not, or not yet adequately based on current science, evidence, and clinical reasoning.”

At first blush, this seems encouraging.

One reading of this statement is that the AMA recognizes that its course was “advocating for” practices that are not based on current evidence.

But surely this conclusion was evident to any reviewer prior to the course’s publication. Why only now, after backlash against the course’s content, is the AMA deciding the course does not fully meet standards? 

What’s more, the AMA email then directs members to sources that it describes as providing “comprehensive, evidence-based guidelines and recommendations regarding appropriate and safe approaches for the problems or symptoms presented during” the course.

In other words, these sources are what the AMA considers authoritative sources of information on pediatric gender medicine. 

Of course, they are anything but.

The listed sources include the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and UpToDate.

The AAP simply has not produced comprehensive evidence-based guidelines on pediatric gender medicine at all.

Instead, it has issued a policy statement, which it reaffirmed in 2023, that it clarifies is “not a comprehensive review of clinical approaches and nuances to pediatric care for children and youth that identify as” transgender. That policy statement includes the claim that puberty blockers are “reversible” treatments for gender dysphoria, a claim that is outright false.

Moreover, the AAP has criticized recent efforts to actually review the evidence behind sex-denying interventions for minors, dismissing the Department of Health and Human Services’ recent evidence review as prioritizing “opinions over dispassionate reviews of evidence.” This is, of course, a complete inversion of the truth.

UpToDate, meanwhile, is a clinical resource that provides clinicians with comprehensive summaries and detailed health information on a broad array of medical topics.

One of its resources is co-authored by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a prominent advocate for and provider of so-called “gender-affirming care.” Reportedly, Olson-Kennedy had initially refused to publish the results of a multi-million dollar, federally-funded study which, according to The New York Times, had found that “puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements” in children.

UpToDate’s resources do not engage with the wealth of evidence on the harms of child sex change interventions and the corresponding lack of evidence supporting the procedures’ effectiveness.

What’s the takeaway from all of this? 

It seems like the AMA is talking out of both sides of its mouth.

For one, that the AMA believes these sources are authoritative indicates that it still is failing to grapple with the reality that the weight of evidence does not support so-called “gender-affiriming care.”

And second, that the course was created at all, and that it took a complaint to cause serious evaluation of the course’s content, does not inspire confidence in the AMA’s attitude regarding sex-denying interventions for minors.

The AMA’s attempt to distance itself from the more excessive promotions of gender ideology in its course is notable, to be sure.

But much more is necessary.

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Why Medicine Should Avoid the ‘Money-cillin’ Treatment

Two professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school have identified an exciting new treatment to improve health outcomes. It consists of basically giving people money. The marketing department has developed better sounding terms for this treatment, like cash transfers or guaranteed income, but if the marketing folks were really clever, they would be calling it “money-cillin.” That worked for penicillin, right?

Whatever we call it, the idea being advanced by Drs. Aaron Richterman and Harsha Thirumurthy in The Atlantic is that this new treatment is one of the most important interventions in medicine: “when designed with the right basic ingredients, cash transfers are one of the most powerful levers that governments have to alleviate poverty and improve health.” As prominent professors at an Ivy League medical school, we can imagine that Drs. Richterman and Thirumurthy think that “money-cillin” should be studied by leading medical researchers and taught to future doctors. Sure, anatomy and physiology are important for healing patients, but so is welfare policy.

The only problem is that the effects of cash transfers on health outcomes have been rigorously studied and the results have been very disappointing. There was a large-scale experiment in the U.S. in which low-income people were given $1,000 in cash per month for three years and compared to a randomized control group that was given $50 per month. The evaluators, including leading economists from the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley, produced two studies, one describing results on health outcomes and another describing results on labor outcomes. It is worth quoting their findings at length. On health outcomes they found:

Over the three year time horizon that we study, we find no effect of the transfer across several measures of physical health, and we can rule out even very small improvements. The transfer also did not improve mental health after the first year and by year 2 we can again reject very small improvements. We also find precise null effects on self-reported access to health care, physical activity, sleep, and several other measures related to preventive care and health behaviors. We find no effect of the transfer on the health of participants’ children, but we do find that children in treated households were more likely to be up to date on their vaccinations.

Not only did “money-cillin” fail to improve health outcomes, but it actually harmed people’s motivation to work. Again, quoting the results at length, the economists found:

The transfer caused total individual income excluding the transfers to fall by about $1,800/year relative to the control group and a 4.1 percentage point decrease in labor market participation. Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount. Among other categories of time use, the greatest increase generated by the transfer was in time spent on leisure. Despite asking detailed questions about amenities, we find no impact on quality of employment, and our confidence intervals can rule out even small improvements. Treated participants broadly increase expenditures, led by spending on non-durable goods and services, with smaller increases in spending on durable goods and human capital. We observe no significant effects on degree attainment, though the magnitudes of the estimated effects generally appear larger among younger participants. Measures of subjective well-being are higher among treated participants in the first year of the transfers but then revert to control group levels. Overall, our results suggest a moderate labor supply effect that does not appear offset by other productive activities.

Not surprisingly, giving people cash allows them to work less and spend more on leisure.

In The Atlantic article, Drs. Richterman and Thirumurthy briefly mention that guaranteed income pilot programs in the U.S. “haven’t delivered the dramatic health improvements associated with cash-transfer programs elsewhere.” Without mentioning the large-scale randomized controlled trial described above, they (falsely) assert that these programs have “seemingly produced only modest health gains in the United States.”

But don’t worry. Even when the evidence is against them, these scientists are so smart that they still know they are right. They offer a variety of hypotheses, unsubstantiated by research, to rationalize why money-cillin has not produced the results they expected in the U.S.

First, they falsely describe past efforts as providing too little money to make a difference: “a few hundred dollars a month for a relatively short period of time, typical of guaranteed-income pilots, rarely matches the steep costs of housing, child care, and health care.” The experiment described above provided $1,000 per month for 3 years.

Second, they suggest that cash transfers are insufficient given deeper societal problems: “In the U.S., the dominant health problems are chronic diseases shaped by neighborhood environments, structural inequities in housing and health care, and years of accumulated risk from unhealthy diets and other long-term exposures. These problems are far less responsive to short-term financial boosts. Cash can reduce stress and improve stability, but it cannot, on its own, undo the deep roots of these conditions.”

But if this were true, then it would be a pretty convincing argument against expanding cash transfer programs. Short of revolutionary change, simply providing money would make no difference. Along these same lines, they argue that cash transfers won’t work unless millions get them: “U.S. pilots have been small, reaching only hundreds or thousands of families—too limited to change the broader conditions that shape health outcomes.”

Third, they suggest that cash transfers need to be conditioned on other behaviors to be effective: “cash works best when it is woven into social infrastructure that families already rely on. In many low- and middle-income countries, payments are linked with health visits and other essential services.”

But if that were true, then they are really advocating for traditional welfare programs that place conditions on support rather than arguing for cash transfers or guaranteed income programs. And even though they have no evidence to support this hypothesis, any success of conditional cash transfers would leave it unclear whether the cash or the required behavior was producing any benefits.

After offering all of these rationalizations (and falsehoods), they point to food stamps to prove that expanding cash transfers is essential for improving health outcomes. But they have no experimental evidence—the kind typically required for approval of a new drug—-to support this claim and instead point to observational evidence reliant on complicated and opaque research designs to draw this conclusion. The problem with this kind of evidence is that the results are highly sensitive to researcher choices about research design and model specification, making them very easy to manipulate. When presented with conflicting evidence, we should believe the results of experiments over observational studies.

Arguments like those made by Drs. Richterman and Thirumurthy in this Atlantic article are the equivalent of advocating for communism because it’s never really been tried. It reveals an ideological commitment that is impervious to empirical evidence or scientific examination. Medical research and education should not be wasting time on money-cillin and should instead be focused on scientifically backed medical interventions that doctors can use to help their patients.

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Do No Harm Files Civil Rights Complaints Against Kaiser Permanente and CommUnityCare for Operating Discriminatory Patient Programs

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; March 3, 2026 – Do No Harm filed two complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Kaiser Permanente and CommUnityCare for operating race-based patient programs that violate multiple federal anti-discrimination laws.

Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest private not-for-profit healthcare organization, runs the “Center for Black Health and Wellness,” an “equity in action” program meant to provide primary healthcare to black patients and “even out” alleged health disparities between black and white individuals. The center’s inherently discriminatory mission, coupled with its name (which makes clear an explicit racial preference for black patients), communicates to members of other racial groups that they are unwelcome. Kaiser Permanente’s operation of the center violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.

CommUnityCare, based in Austin, Texas, operates a “Black Men’s Health Clinic,” which is similarly designed to discriminate on the basis of race. As one of the state’s largest Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), CommUnityCare receives a host of federally allotted benefits and is subject to multiple federal anti-discrimination laws including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which forbid discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, and national origin.

In illegally singling out individuals for healthcare services based on race, both programs are premised on the pernicious stereotype that individuals of the same racial group are all the same—that one’s race says all the doctor needs to know about that person’s medical needs.

“Not only are medical providers like Kaiser and CommUnityCare flouting federal law, but they are also intentionally creating wider disparities in care among patient groups,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Separating patient care based on race is illegal, immoral by nature, and deprioritizes high quality care in favor of identity-based care. We filed these complaints because the healthcare industry must stop the practice of racial discrimination.”

In addition to discriminating against patients based on race, Do No Harm’s complaints point to other disturbing indications that both clinics prioritize hiring black providers based on the myth of the benefits of racial concordance, which falsely claims patient care is better when provided by a doctor of the same race. Do No Harm has shown that the weight of evidence does not support the notion that racial concordance improves health outcomes.

Read the complaint against Kaiser Permanente and the complaint against CommUnityCare.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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Do No Harm, AAER, and Buckfire Law Agree to Amicably End Litigation over Buckfire’s Diversity Scholarships

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SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: March 2, 2026 – On November 13, 2025, Do No Harm and the American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a lawsuit against Buckfire & Buckfire, P.C., alleging that the Michigan-based law firm’s diversity scholarships were not equally open to all participants. Buckfire denied the allegations, contending that the diversity scholarships were open to all students regardless of race or ethnicity.

On February 27, 2026, the parties agreed to amicably resolve the litigation and filed a joint stipulation of dismissal.

To make clear that the scholarship programs are open to all, Buckfire will remove all references to race as eligibility or selection criteria. Buckfire will also clarify that it does not limit “diversity” to any one experience, characteristic, or circumstance, and that its scholarships do not give any preference to any student based on race or ethnicity.

“Do No Harm believes scholarships should be equally open to all races and is thankful that Buckfire agrees,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm.

“We’re grateful to Buckfire for working with us to resolve this matter without the need for further litigation,” said Edward Blum, President of American Alliance for Equal Rights.

“Helping students achieve their educational dreams is a core mission of our law firm. We look forward to providing scholarships that fulfill our commitment to diversity for many years to come,” said Lawrence Buckfire, President of The Buckfire Law Firm.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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Castle Connolly Once Again Promotes ‘Racial Concordance’

Castle Connolly, a company that ranks medical professionals, hospitals, and practices, is out with the 2026 edition of its “Top Black Doctors” report. 

And, like the 2025, 2024, and 2023 editions on which Do No Harm reported, Castle Connolly references the notion that racial concordance, in which patients are treated by physicians of the same background, improves health outcomes.

In an article related to its “Top Doctors” awards, Castle Connolly, in a section titled “Representation matters, while access remains a challenge,” writes the following: “About one in three Black patients say it is important to have a doctor who shares their race, gender, or personal identity. Yet 40% report having difficulty finding a physician with these characteristics.”

This appears to be an implicit nod to the idea that it is desirable for patients to see physicians of the same race.

“This gap adds another layer of challenge to the already time-intensive process of selecting a doctor, and underscores the value of credible resources that help patients identify clinicians who understand their experiences,” Castle Connolly writes.

The company first released its list of “Top Black Doctors” in 2023 as a part of Castle Connolly’s efforts toward expanding DEI practices. 

In this first announcement of the “Top Black Doctors” Steve Leibforth, Managing Director at Castle Connolly, stated, “For patients, having access to a doctor with a similar background or shared experience can improve the quality of care and positively impact health outcomes.”

Castle Connolly appears to be promoting the notion that it is desirable for patients to be seen by physicians of the same race. 

These lists encourage patients to search for physicians who share their racial identity, which Castle Connolly appears to suggest has some undescribed benefit on health and well-being.

To be clear, the weight of the evidence shows that racial concordance has no impact on health outcomes.

What’s more, Castle Connolly has also recognized top doctors from other identity groups; these include: “Top Asian and Pacific Islander Doctors,” “Top Hispanic & Latino Doctors,” “Top LGBTQ+ Doctors,” and “Exceptional Women in Medicine.” 

As we remarked last time, this is the road toward segregation and division.

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The AAMC Just Can’t Quit Gender Ideology

Given recent statements from organizations like the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommending against certain sex-denying medical procedures for minors, one might think that prominent medical associations would think twice before endorsing the dangerous and experimental practices of the child transgender industry.

But last week, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) submitted comments on two rules recently proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that would restrict taxpayer funding of sex-denying interventions for minors.

The CMS rules would both prevent hospitals from performing sex-denying procedures on minors as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as require state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) plans to provide that they will not pay for these procedures for minors.

Cutting off taxpayer funding for such harmful, life-altering interventions would appear to be common sense. 

As a wealth of recent research, including the review published by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2025, has shown, the evidence base for so-called “gender-affirming care” is very weak.

But apparently, the AAMC thinks otherwise. 

Although the AAMC comments make several legal arguments, it’s the medical arguments that are particularly noteworthy for their dubious (at best) claims.

“Medical decisions are best made by patients and their families, in consultation with their physicians, based on clinical evidence, professional judgment, and the individual needs and values of the patient,” the AAMC writes.

This statement may be true in a vacuum, but it is simply not the case that decisions regarding child sex change interventions are made based on “clinical evidence” or “professional judgment,” much less the “individual needs” of the patient.

As mentioned, the “clinical evidence” for the efficacy of so-called “gender-affirming care” is effectively nonexistent. Instead, ample research has shown that these interventions impose serious harms upon vulnerable children who cannot meaningfully consent to these irreversible, life-altering procedures.

“Gender-affirming care” in practice simply does not adhere to these standards.

Next, the AAMC declares that “It is inappropriate for government policies (such as this proposal that would prohibit funding for an entire class of services) to intrude into the physician-patient relationship – undermining both quality of care and patient trust.”

Perhaps nothing has undermined patient trust, or at least public trust in major medical institutions, in the past few decades more than the rise of gender ideology in medicine. 

Rather than confront the reality that “gender-affirming care” is unsupported and dangerous, medical associations often defer to activists and gender ideologues more interested in imposing their worldview onto the medical field, to the detriment of children across the country.

Unfortunately, this embrace of gender ideology is par for the course for the AAMC. 

According to leaked footage obtained by The Daily Wire from last fall, the organization’s leadership pledged to continue backing efforts to oppose laws and regulations cracking down on sex-denying interventions for minors.

If this isn’t a wake-up call for medical schools to seriously reckon with the ideological infiltration of the AAMC, then what is?

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Do No Harm Submits Comment on Federal Rules Restricting Funding for Child Sex Changes

This week, Do No Harm submitted a comment on two rules proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that seek to restrict taxpayer funding of sex-rejecting interventions for minors.

The first rule would prevent hospitals from performing these procedures on minors as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs. 

The second rule would require state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) plans to provide that they will not pay for sex-rejecting procedures for minors; this would effectively cut off Medicaid/CHIP funding for these interventions.

Do No Harm’s comment begins by laying out the need for these rules. It explores the lack of evidence supporting child sex change interventions as a means of treating gender-distressed children, citing the fact that every comprehensive review, including the review published by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2025, has found the evidence base for these procedures to be weak.

Our comment lists multiple European countries that have restricted access to sex-rejecting procedures due to such findings.

The comment also cites the recent position statement by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons in which the organization recommended against sex-denying surgeries for minors, citing the lack of evidence.

Do No Harm’s comment also proposes several revisions to the language of the proposed rules.

First, our comment proposes definitions for “female,” “male,” and “sex” borrowed from the Chloe Cole Act, legislation that seeks to prevent healthcare providers from performing sex-rejecting medical interventions on children.

Considering that the proposed rule is targeting procedures that modify a child’s body to appear different than that of the child’s natal sex, the definitions of these terms are critical for the functioning of the rule. Do No Harm’s revised definitions are intended to guard against ambiguity.

Female is a person who naturally has, had, will have, or would have but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that produces, transports, and utilizes the large gamete (ova) for fertilization. 

Male is a person who naturally has, had, will have, or would have but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that produces, transports, and utilizes the small gamete (sperm) for fertilization. 

Sex means a person’s immutable biological classification, determined at the moment of conception, as either male or female.

Next, our comment proposes altering the definition of “sex-rejecting procedure” to more clearly encompass a broader array of medical interventions. The proposed rule currently defines sex-rejecting procedures as procedures that attempt to “align a child’s physical appearance or body with an asserted identity that differs from the child’s sex” by:

“(1) Intentionally disrupting or suppressing the normal development of natural biological functions, including primary or secondary sex-based traits; or

(2) Intentionally altering a child’s physical appearance or body, including amputating, minimizing or destroying primary or secondary sex-based traits such as the sexual and reproductive organs.”

However, these descriptions of “sex-rejecting procedure[s]” may not cover a broader range of “gender-affirming care” procedures that do not “destroy” sex-based traits, such as body contouring (among others). For this reason, Do No Harm proposed revisions to make clear that these broader range of procedures are included in the definition of “sex-rejecting procedure.”

Our proposed language would expand this universe of prohibited procedures to those that alter a child’s physical appearance by “intentionally changing a child’s body, including the child’s external appearance or biological functions, when the change is purposed to align the child’s body with the opposite sex.” The comment also proposes alternative revisions to this definition.

And third, the comment proposes language to clarify that restrictions on Medicaid/CHIP coverage for sex-rejecting procedures should explicitly exclude treatments for precocious puberty, a well-recognized pediatric endocrine condition.

You can read the full comment here.

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American College of Physicians Goes All-In on Radical Political Activism

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In November 2025, the American College of Physicians (ACP) published its most recent “policy compendium” showing the particular policy positions for which the ACP is advocating.

The compendium is rife with endorsements of discriminatory practices, as well as gender ideology, and represents a radical streak within the ACP’s mission. 

Indeed, one section of the compendium is devoted entirely to DEI initiatives, with the justification that a “diverse, equitable, and inclusive physician workforce is crucial to promote equity and understanding among clinicians and patients and to facilitate quality care […].”

In short, the ACP is promoting radical identity politics and racial discrimination to the detriment of clinical excellence and patient care.

Key Takeaways

Racial Discrimination in Admissions

Several of the ACP’s policy positions explicitly call for racial discrimination in medical school and healthcare education admissions:

  • “Medical and other health professional schools should revitalize and bolster efforts to improve matriculation and graduation rates of racial and ethnic minority students.”
  • “Institutions of higher education should appropriately consider a person’s race and ethnicity as one factor in determining admission in order to counter the impact of current discriminatory practices and the legacy of past discrimination practices and better reflect the current composition of the population.” 
  • “Programs that provide outreach to encourage racial and ethnic minority enrollment in medical and other health professional schools should be maintained, reinstated, and expanded, including diversity/ minority affairs offices, scholarships, and other financial aid programs.” 

Needless to say, prioritizing race and ethnicity for enrollment and academic progress is textbook racial discrimination, regardless of the justification for it. Were the ACP’s policy proposals to be implemented, medical schools would reject many qualified candidates who have the rigor and dedication to attend medical school in favor of those who tick the correct racial boxes. This obviously harms the future physician pool, leading to downstream negative effects on patient care.

Racial Discrimination in Healthcare

The ACP’s endorsement of racial discrimination also extends outside of the medical education context to healthcare more broadly:

  • “All arenas of the health care workforce should be incentivized to implement evidence-based best practices in the recruitment, retention, and advancement of health professionals of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and other persons affected by discrimination.”
  • “Developing a hiring diversity strategy to recruit racial and ethnic minority candidates by drafting open job descriptions, broadly advertising open positions outside of traditional venues, better understanding the pathway of diverse talent, and conducting outreach to develop more relationships with diverse candidates.”
  • “Implementing health care career pathway programs to engage and connect Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and other students affected by discrimination and expose them to and advance their readiness for careers in medicine.” 

Hiring and recruiting should, especially in the medical context, be about selecting the best candidate for the job. The stakes of healthcare are significantly higher than other domains, and it is irresponsible (and obviously unfair and unethical) to implement a “hiring diversity strategy” that sacrifices merit at the altar of identity politics.

When the best candidate is hired, regardless of race, it is patients who win. 

Endorsement of Sex-Denying Interventions on Minors

Moreover, in December 2025 the ACP sent a letter to Congress, alongside several other medical associations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, and the American Psychiatric Association, expressing its endorsement of child sex change interventions.

“Health care for transgender young people is individualized, age-appropriate, provided according to longstanding expert clinical guidelines, and supported by leading American medical organizations,” the letter states.

This ignores the volume of evidence demonstrating the harms of so-called “gender-affirming care” and the comparative lack of support for these interventions. The Department of Health and Human Services in 2025 published a comprehensive review of the evidence behind sex-denying interventions for minors and found there to be insufficient evidence to support these practices, while the United Kingdom’s Cass Review found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors.

And for the record, the last claim has a significant caveat: the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has now come out against sex-denying surgeries for minors.

All told, these policy positions demonstrate just how determined the ACP is to advance discriminatory, divisive ideology.

This is unbecoming of a medical association, and indicates a derogation of the ACP’s fundamental duty to work to advance the health of patients everywhere.