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Do No Harm Asks SCOTUS To Protect Doctors’ Free Speech

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 28, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm and Dr. Azadeh Khatibi petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to protect free speech in medical training by striking down California’s mandate that Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses contain implicit bias curriculum for physicians. The Pacific Legal Foundation represents both parties in this action.

In 2023, Do No Harm, joined by Dr. Khatibi, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Azadeh Khatibi et al. v. Kristina Lawson et al., arguing that California’s CME mandate violates the First Amendment rights of CME instructors by compelling their speech and placing unconstitutional restrictions on the free exercise of speech. The district court dismissed the complaint, and the Ninth Circuit upheld that decision, claiming CME courses constitute government speech based on the State’s extensive regulation of the medical field—even though the State does not create, review, or edit the content of CME courses.

Now, Do No Harm is asking SCOTUS to decide whether a state can compel private professionals to convey a contested ideological message as a condition of teaching courses required for a professional license. Do No Harm argues California’s law erases the constitutional boundary between government and private speech, threatens the speech rights of countless professionals, and directly conflicts with SCOTUS precedents protecting against compelled speech.

“By mandating ideologically charged racial theories be taught in continuing medical education courses, California infringes on physicians’ free speech rights,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman at Do No Harm. “We are asking the Supreme Court to intervene to protect these critical rights in the field of medicine. Doctors do not need lawmakers telling them what to think when providing medical advice to patients. There is no evidence so-called systemic implicit bias exists in healthcare, and propagating such debunked pseudoscience only deepens suspicion between patients and providers. Physicians must be trained to assess each patient’s unique needs, not focus on immutable characteristics like race. We urge the Court to take up our case and resolve California’s overreach once and for all.”

See Do No Harm’s Cert Petition here.

See the case page here.

More Details:

  • California requires physicians to complete 50 hours of CME every two years to maintain their medical licenses.
  • Under the state’s more recent mandate, nearly every CME course must now include specific “implicit bias” curriculum, including: “[e]xamples of how implicit bias affects perceptions and treatment decisions of physicians and surgeons, leading to disparities in health outcomes,” or “[s]trategies to address how unintended biases in decisionmaking may contribute to health care disparities by shaping behavior and producing differences in medical treatment along lines of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics,” or a combination of both.
  • Courses that omit the mandated content are ineligible for CME credit, and instructors who refuse to teach it face professional consequences, such as loss of business, reputational harm, and barriers to future teaching opportunities.
  • Both Dr. Khatibi, a board-certified ophthalmologist, and members of Do No Harm create and deliver their own original CME content.

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 Urges FTC to Investigate the American Psychological Association for Misleading Statements on Child Sex Changes

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 20, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calling on the agency to investigate whether the American Psychological Association (APA) is engaged in deceptive practices in the wake of the organization’s contradictory guidance on sex-rejecting interventions for children.

The letter calls out the APA for seemingly walking back a more cautious 2025 public comment to the FTC regarding so-called “gender-affirming care” for children and instead doubling down on its earlier policy statement that advocates for minors’ unobstructed access to sex-rejecting interventions.

The APA’s 2025 letter admits that there is a “lack of long-term scientific evidence” supporting child sex change procedures, preaches a more conservative, questioning approach to youth gender dysphoria, and concedes that not all youth who experience gender dysphoria will persist with it into adulthood. Meanwhile, the 2024 statement endorses an affirmation-only approach to treating gender dysphoria, equating “non-affirmation” with “violence” and “discrimination.”

“The American Psychological Association appears to be contradicting itself to have its cake and eat it too: attempting to protect against regulatory action for promoting experimental and dangerous adolescent sex-change interventions, while also staving off anger from the radical gender activists who have captured the organization,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “By promoting two irreconcilable positions, the APA is deceiving the FTC, psychologists, and minor patients and their guardians. Make no mistake, the APA’s original policy position pushes for unobstructed access to sex-rejecting interventions for children, equates non-affirmation with violence, and condemns state protections as human rights violations. By recently doubling down on that position, the APA is contradicting its more measured comments to the FTC, which encourages caution and comprehensive psychological assessments rather than medical intervention. This raises serious questions about the APA’s maneuvering and if serious regulatory action is in order. As the FTC continues to investigate WPATH, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society for potentially deceptive practices in ‘gender-affirming care,’ we recommend that it launch a similar investigation into the APA.”

Contrary to the APA’s claim that the two statements are consistent, Do No Harm’s letter explains they “clearly and irreconcilably conflict” with each other. Do No Harm calls on the FTC to investigate whether the APA made “false or unsubstantiated representations” about pediatric gender interventions.

In recent months, the FTC launched investigations into whether the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are engaged in deceptive practices regarding pediatric medical transition.

See Do No Harm’s letter to the FTC here.

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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Harvard Medical School Cuts Out DEI References from New Mission Statement

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Last week, Harvard Medical School published an updated version of its mission statement that removed explicit references to DEI.

It’s the latest indication that among medical schools, including elite institutions, DEI is becoming increasingly toxic.

Whereas Harvard Medical School’s previous mission statement included a commitment for the school to “nurture a diverse, inclusive community,” these words are absent from the updated statement, which reads as follows: “To improve health and well-being for all through excellence and leadership in teaching and learning, discovery and scholarship, and service and care.”

According to remarks reported by the Harvard Crimson, Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley said that the school’s DEI commitment had been relocated, and the school had “fully endorsed our commitment to a diverse and inclusive community.”

Indeed, the Harvard Medical School’s “Community Values” page contains the follow language: “We are a diverse and inclusive community that aspires to fulfill and advance our mission through a commitment to our HMS values.”

Though this is not a complete elimination of DEI, it’s a significant shift: the statement referencing DEI in the school’s community values is descriptive, not normative, and includes no commitment.

Moreover, removing the DEI commitment from Harvard Medical School’s mission may signify at least a partial public departure from DEI as an organizing, motivating principle.

As Do No Harm has previously shown, the rise of DEI and identity politics in medical education manifested strongly in schools’ mission statements.

That Harvard is now bucking this trend is an encouraging sign.

Additionally, last year, Harvard Medical School renamed its DEI office and removed its diversity statement, which included commitments to health equity and DEI, as well as pledges to “challenge discrimination,” “address disparities and inequities,” and “actively promote social justice.”

We’re optimistic this latest change is a sign of more reforms to come.

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Do No Harm Files Civil Rights Complaint Against Three Healthcare Providers’ Discriminatory Residency Programs

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SALT LAKE CITY, UT; March 31, 2026 – This week, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) alleging that Corewell Health, Texas Tech University (Texas Tech), and HCA Healthcare discriminate on the basis of national origin, favoring foreign-trained physicians in their internal medicine residency programs over American-trained doctors.

Since these institutions receive federal funding, Do No Harm’s complaint alleges the residency programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which prohibit national origin discrimination in “any health program or activity.”

“National origin discrimination is both unlawful and inconsistent with the broader American commitment to equal treatment,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “When residency programs favor foreign trained physicians over American trained doctors, they effectively prevent qualified Americans from accessing valuable, competitive, and prestigious learning opportunities. It is deeply concerning that these programs appear to be discriminating against graduates of U.S. medical schools. Medical institutions and their directors should be hiring residents based on their ability to deliver high quality patient care, not on national origin. We urge HHS to thoroughly investigate these programs and address this alarming display of foreign favoritism.”

Background:

Each of the internal medicine residency programs at Corewell Health, Texas Tech, and HCA Healthcare offers a valuable residency program in internal medicine.

However, all three programs exhibit a consistent pattern: each has excluded nearly all American-trained physicians from its residency; each has filled its cohorts almost exclusively with residents trained in a small set of foreign countries; and each is led by a director or directors who mirror the residents they choose—foreign-trained physicians educated in or near the small set of foreign countries from which these residencies fill their ranks.

  • Corewell Health’s program in Dearborn, Michigan: Of the current 33 physicians, only one attended medical school in the United States, while the remaining 97% trained in foreign medical schools. Those residents are from, among other countries, Sudan, Pakistan, Jordan, Palestine, Bahrain, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The program’s director attended medical school in Lebanon.
  • Texas Tech’s program in Amarillo, Texas: Of the current residents, 95% are from foreign medical schools. They come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria and elsewhere. The program’s directors attended medical school in Iraq.
  • HCA Healthcare’s program in Brandon, Florida: Of the 58 residents, over 70% were trained abroad, and in the most recent cohort, there are no American-trained residents. Residents are from, among other countries, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. The program’s directors received medical training in Egypt and Pakistan.

Residency programs with such highly imbalanced hiring patterns warrant further scrutiny.

Read the complaint against Corewell Health, Texas Tech, and HCA Healthcare.

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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UCSF’s OBGYN Residency Program Embraces Disturbing Ideology

In simpler times, it would be a safe assumption that the primary purpose of a residency program is to train physicians to provide the best possible medical care.

Clinical excellence should be assumed to be the goal of any medical education program, especially in obstetrics and gynecology programs in which physicians are learning to care for mothers and their babies.

But at the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, that assumption would be incorrect.

According to the program’s residency applicant handbook for the 2025-2026 academic year, it seems like clinical excellence takes a back seat to radical ideology.

Figure 1. A screenshot of the UCSF OBGYN residency program’s mission statement.

Indeed, in the very first bullet point of the program’s mission statement, UCSF commits to “Centering health equity, anti-racism, and anti-oppression in clinical care and in education, particularly for Black and Indigenous individuals, people of color, trans and nonbinary individuals, and immigrant populations.”

In other words, the residency program will use radical, discriminatory racial politics as the prism through which it teaches crucial medical care.

How disturbing this is doesn’t need to be pointed out. It is absolutely imperative that mothers and babies get the best care possible, regardless of race; their physicians should not be viewing them as members of a racial group, but as individual patients.

But that’s not all.

The handbook also includes the school’s “Anti-Racism Commitment.”

Figure 2. A Screenshot of the UCSF OBGYN program’s “Anti-Racism Commitment.”

“We pledge that our actions will purposefully and intentionally advance anti-racist efforts,” the commitment reads. “We pledge to continue educating ourselves both individually and collectively on anti-racism and the tangible ways we can effectively contribute to the dismantling of systemic racism and anti-Blackness.”

It’s essential to point out what “anti-racist efforts” actually involve. Though it’s not clear what UCSF intends, the phrase is commonly invoked by proponents of racial discrimination.

In fact, the most prolific advocate of anti-racism, Ibram X. Kendi, describes the ideology as follows: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

How, exactly, will racial discrimination play out in the OBGYN context?

It’s hard to imagine something more ghoulish than physicians trained to prioritize the health of certain racial groups, especially when these physicians are responsible for the health of our most vulnerable.

Beyond the handbook, in December 2025, UCSF’s OBGYN department hosted a grand rounds session titled “Letting Die: Black Maternal and Infant Deaths after Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard” and hosted by Dr. Khiara Bridges, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

The session focused on ways in which providers could practice “racially concordant” maternal care in the wake of the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard Supreme Court decision that struck down race-conscious admissions.

Racial concordance refers to the dynamic in which patients are treated by healthcare professionals of the same race. The notion that this dynamic improves health outcomes is unsupported by the weight of the evidence, as Do No Harm has shown.

Figure 3. A screenshot of a presentation on racially concordant maternal care hosted by the UCSF OBGYN department.

To support her claim that racially concordant maternal care improves health outcomes, Bridges invoked a long-debunked study claiming that the survival rate of black infants improves when treated by black physicians. However, the researchers behind the study failed to control for the effect of very low birth weight on infant mortality.

When researchers at the Manhattan Institute attempted to replicate the study with the same data, while applying a control for very low birth weight, they found the racial concordance effect disappeared.

Additionally, the researchers intentionally buried a key finding (that white babies died less frequently with white doctors) because it “undermine[d] the narrative” of the study, according to lead author Brad Greenwood.

So not only is the UCSF OBGYN program hopelessly infatuated with DEI, but it is promoting bad science and debunked medical concepts to justify this radical ideology.

Where to begin with reforming this program?

It’s clear that the UCSF needs to have a long, hard look at what kind of institution it wants to be: one that promotes healing and clinical excellence, or one that is merely a vehicle for an insidious and harmful brand of identity politics.

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New Report Exposes Radical Activism and Bias of the American Nurses Association

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; March 24, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report entitled “Activism, Not Advocacy: The Radical Transformation of the American Nurses Association.”

The report exposes a concerning shift within the American Nurses Association (ANA) from supporting nurses’ professional growth to pushing a radical political agenda. The ANA has imbued every facet of the organization with the false idea that the nursing profession is and always has been “systemically racist.”

“The ANA’s descent into extremism is alarming and has contributed to the indoctrination of our nation’s most important frontline workers,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Instead of working to train and support hardworking nurses, the ANA has dedicated time and resources to promoting the ideas of radical activists. Nursing, at its core, is a profession that seeks to serve patients with compassion and foster healing. America’s nurses should have an organization that is focused on supporting their training and development as world-class healthcare providers, not creating a training ground for foot soldiers in a political battle.”

Click here to read the report.

The report highlights:

  • A brief history of the ANA and how leadership changes led to a shift from advocacy to activism.
  • The escalation of political and DEI-focused messaging from 2018 to 2026.
  • The ANA’s fixation on race and promotion of “systemic racism,” including the “Equity in Action” series that is billed as continuing education but is in reality woke indoctrination.
  • That the ANA’s political activities significantly favor one party.
  • The Practice Transition Accreditation Program standards encourage nurse residency and fellowship programs to “demonstrate how diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are integrated throughout the program.”

Do No Harm explains how a small group of activists have steered the ANA away from its original mission. The report urges nurses to reclaim their organization and profession from radicals.

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 Report Reveals Lack of Guardrails Preventing Minors from Obtaining Cross-Sex Hormones Online

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; March 10, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a report titled “The Lack of Barriers to Minors Ordering Cross-Sex Hormones Online,” exposing how online pharmacies may enable minors to access sex-denying interventions without a prescription or age verification.

The report also urges the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to further investigate and regulate online pharmacies selling hormones without requiring prescriptions.

Do No Harm’s report warns about several avenues – including online forums and gender transition websites – where minors can learn how to access and self-administer cross-sex hormones. The report stresses the dangers facing gender-confused children who seek cross-sex hormones from the internet.

Click here to read the report.

“Our report reveals how online pharmacies may enable minors to obtain cross-sex hormones with alarming ease,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “From websites listing online vendors across the globe to marketplaces for ‘homebrewed’ hormones, we found a multitude of troubling pathways that appear to bypass basic safeguards and regulatory oversight. Gender-confused kids should not be able to purchase potent, experimental medications with just a few simple clicks. These hormones carry significant risks, including effects that can be irreversible. We urge the FDA and other federal agencies to investigate any potential unlawful sellers and, where appropriate, for states to do the same when their laws are being violated. Protecting minors from unsafe and unregulated access to powerful cross-sex hormones must remain a priority.”

Key Findings:

  • DIYHRT.Market: A database of pharmacies and “homebrewers” that appear to lack proper safeguards preventing minors from accessing cross-sex hormones.
  • HRT Cafe: A resource website listing “unregulated” pharmacies and hormone vendors that do not require prescriptions.
  • Inhouse Pharmacy: A foreign online pharmacy that boasts a dedicated product webpage for transgender-related drugs and states that it is “permitted” to process orders without prescriptions.

Do No Harm has previously exposed the dangers of hormonal interventions on minors. This report calls upon the FDA to investigate and further monitor online vendors, urges federal lawmakers to develop more restrictive legislation as necessary, and asks the states to prosecute online sellers that violate existing restrictions on cross-sex hormones.

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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Florida University Board of Governors Takes the LCME to Task Over Gender Ideology

Last week, Alan Levine, Chairman of the Florida State University System’s Board of Governors, sent a letter to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The letter asked the LCME whether it is properly enforcing its accreditation standards given that many of the medical schools it accredits perform sex-denying interventions (such as prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and/or performing surgeries) on minors.

“In reviewing the standards of the LCME, I am curious how our nation’s medical schools have led the way, in the absence of clear evidence, to such broad use of interventional and altering treatments and procedures where permanent disfigurement and irreversible damage to the reproductive systems of minors was so accepted,” Levine wrote.

Levine cited the ever-increasing body of evidence showing that so-called “gender-affirming care” for children poses serious health risks, and that these practices are not supported by sufficient evidence.

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.

In 2024, the Cass Review, commissioned by the United Kingdom’s National Health Services, found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for gender distressed children.

And earlier this month, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons came out against sex-denying surgeries for minors, citing the lack of evidence behind such procedures.

Under the LCME regime, medical schools and associated hospitals have become vehicles for the child transgender industry; Do No Harm has documented these activities in our Stop the Harm Database. 

It is clearly within the purview of the LCME to ensure that medical schools are not serving as vectors for gender ideology or, worse, committing harmful medical interventions on minors. The LCME should take action to prevent such abuses.

Levine’s letter further pointed out how existing LCME standards, such as its standards related to professionalism, would presumably already prevent medical schools from engaging in this behavior.

“Do professional standards require that there be clear evidence of a benefit before subjecting a minor to permanent, body-altering surgery?” Levine asked. “In the accreditation process, how does LCME ensure this standard is applicable in a manner such that patients are protected from experimental or other procedures which may be driven more by ideology than by clinical evidence?”

Levine’s questions are well worth asking. 

It is the duty of medical education accreditors to ensure that accredited medical schools are not engaging in experimental, unsupported medical interventions that impose massive harms upon society’s most vulnerable. Indeed, it is an ethical predicate for the practice of medicine that physicians “do no harm.”

It’s also worth noting that the LCME is currently proposing changes to its accreditation standards that would remove language requiring medical schools to adopt curricula teaching about, among other things, the “importance of health care disparities and health inequities.”

A group of medical education administrators, physicians, and others, called the Coalition for Structural Competency in Medical Education, organized a petition protesting these changes.

The petition additionally calls for the LCME to incorporate medical education standards that “[c]learly define the knowledge and skills students must learn to understand how social, economic, and political structures affect health and healthcare.”

Needless to say, it’s essential that the LCME does not yield to these demands. It is not the province of medical schools to inculcate students into particular politically-charged explanations of public health phenomena. 

Rather, schools have a duty to train future physicians to provide the best possible medical care.

The LCME’s job is to make sure schools fulfill that duty.

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Standing Up to DEI

“We must wash our hands of DEI in medical schools.”

That’s what Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville said in a speech last month at the Alabama Hospital Association’s Healthcare Leadership Summit.

“DEI has plagued our federal government, academic institutions, and other aspects of our society for far too long, all while disregarding merit in the process,” he continued.

We couldn’t agree more. 

It’s encouraging to see elected representatives highlight the issues on which Do No Harm has worked tirelessly, and it’s essential that we all reinforce this simple truth: DEI has no place in medicine. 

In practice, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” invariably involves racial discrimination. Merit is subordinated to skin color and ideology.

Needless to say, that is incompatible with the core mission of medicine.

“We want Alabama students, our brightest young minds from every corner of the state, to have places at Alabama medical schools based on their hard work, talent and qualifications, not on divisive quotas or identity politics,” Senator Tuberville continued. “We want them to stay right here and practice in Alabama, building our communities, serving our rural areas, and strengthening our health infrastructure for generations to come.”

Do No Harm is fighting for these types of merit-based policies. Indeed, back in 2022, we submitted federal civil rights complaints against the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s medical school over three scholarships awarded to students on the basis of race; those scholarships are no longer active.

Recently, we sued the University of California, Los Angeles’s medical school for its race-conscious admissions policy.

And we exposed evidence of racial discrimination in the admissions processes of many other medical schools.

“Let’s reject this poisonous ideology in our education and health care systems once and for all,” Senator Tuberville concluded.

We applaud Senator Tuberville for spreading this message.

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New Report Exposes Ideological Capture of Continuing Medical Education

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SALT LAKE CITY, UT; February 4, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released its newest report entitled “The Ideological Capture of Continuing Medical Education.”

The report exposes the American Medical Association (AMA) for developing Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses that prioritize political activism and fashionable social issues rather than fostering professional growth in doctors to ensure enhanced patient care.

“Given their track record of bias and ideological activism, it’s no surprise the AMA is pushing thinly-veiled political propaganda to medical professionals under the guise of education,” said Naomi Risch, report author and Senior Research Associate at Do No Harm. “Such programs, injected with divisive narratives, undermine the integrity of medical education and disregard the necessity of scientific rigor. Patients want to have confidence that they are receiving the highest quality care from doctors and nurses, free from the influence of a particular political agenda. These biased CME programs not only waste professionals’ time that could otherwise be spent learning about the latest medical breakthroughs, but also diminish patient confidence in the quality of care they’re receiving.”

To audit CME course content, Do No Harm identified the top breakthroughs in medicine in the last century and conducted a keyword search that compared the mentions of politicized buzzwords to the mentions of relevant medical terms.

The results reveal that CME courses prioritize advancing political narratives, rather than offering content aimed at sharpening medical professionals’ ability to provide exceptional medical services to patients. Do No Harm also evaluated the information presented in the AMA’s additional online educational resources to unveil further commitment to radical identity politics.

Results from Do No Harm’s report confirming the AMA’s push of ideological content within CME:

  • In the CME courses evaluated, the words “equity,” “health equity,” and “racism” appear over one thousand times; far more than words associated with medical breakthroughs, including “CRISPR,” “mRNA,” and “gene therapy.”
  • AMA offers DEI-focused CME modules that rely on “academic” papers written by individuals without medical degrees.
  • Additional AMA resources falsely claim that so-called “gender-affirming care” is “medically necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.”

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 Applauds ASPS for Rejecting Sex-Denying Surgeries for Children

Today, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) released a position statement recommending surgeons do not perform sex-denying surgical procedures on minors.

The ASPS is the first major medical association to reject such harmful interventions.

“High praise to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for taking an important step toward ending the unscientific and harmful practice of sex-rejecting procedures on minors,” said Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, MD. “The ASPS becomes the first major medical organization to support evidence-based and ethical medicine and reject, in their words, these harmful and irreversible procedures.” 

“The ASPS’s thoughtful, scientific, and well-reasoned statement today is a model for other medical organizations — namely the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others — to follow and disavow their previous support for experimental and unscientific interventions,” said Dr. Goldfarb. “This fight is not over, and we will continue to protect American children by exposing any organization that spreads gender lies.”

The ASPS position statement cited the Department of Health and Human Services’s May 2025 comprehensive review of the evidence supporting sex-denying interventions for children, as well as the United Kingdom’s 2024 Cass Review; both reviews found that the evidence supporting these interventions was weak.

The ASPS position statement further stated that there is insufficient evidence supporting “endocrine” interventions in children. 

The ASPS position reads as follows:

“Consistent with ASPS’s August 2024 statement that the overall evidence base for gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions is low certainty, and in light of recent publications reporting very low/low certainty of evidence regarding mental health outcomes, along with emerging concerns about potential long-term harms and the irreversible nature of surgical interventions in a developmentally vulnerable population, ASPS concludes there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents. ASPS recommends that surgeons delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old.”

Do No Harm applauds the ASPS for following the evidence and urges other medical associations to follow suit.

Simply put, sex-denying medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions are not well-supported as treatments for minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

These interventions pose serious risks and may cause major irreversible harm.

Indeed, several European countries already recognize the experimental nature of so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors and have limited children’s access to these interventions.

Although the ASPS did not endorse laws restricting these interventions, its position statement is a crucial step forward for the medical field and a sign that the tide is turning against gender ideology.

The ASPS position statement also drew praise from the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We commend the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for standing up to the overmedicalization lobby and defending sound science,” said Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “By taking this stand, they are helping protect future generations of American children from irreversible harm.”

Do No Harm once again applauds the ASPS for standing up to gender ideology and following the evidence.

We urge other medical associations to do the same.

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Medical Resident Union Is Working to Inject DEI Into Healthcare

The Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), a union representing interns, resident physicians, and fellows and a subdivision of the massive Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is working to inject DEI into clinical practice.

The organization’s “priority issues” include “Immigrant Rights” which, a keen observer may notice, has nothing to do with healthcare or medicine.

But most troubling is the union’s vision of healthcare and healthcare education.

The organization’s “Diversity, Inclusion & Anti-Racism” priority issue states the following: “Our national strategy and local organizing around health justice, racial justice, and social justice ensure our patients, members, and communities have what they need to thrive.”

Indeed, CIR maintains a committed DEI task force with the goal of advancing identity politics in healthcare.

“The members of CIR’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-racism (DIAR) Task Force develop a national strategy and advance local organizing around health equity, racial justice, and improving social determinants of health for our patients, members, and communities,” the task force webpage reads.

This alone is cause for alarm: for one, “health equity” in practice often entails policies aimed at equalizing health outcomes between racial groups. This reduces people to group identities rather than treating them as individuals, opening the door for racial discrimination.

And “social determinants of health” refers to the unsupported notion that social and economic factors such as income determine an individual’s health outcomes, such that policy responses aimed at improving health should target these determinants.

The issue with this theory, however, is that while these factors may be correlated with disparities in health outcomes, the evidence that they actually cause poor health outcomes is shoddy and weak, at best. 

Worse, the broad framing of social determinants of health opens the door to precisely this boundless line of reasoning: once every aspect of life can be construed as a health factor, virtually anything can be recast as a medical concern. 

In practice, this invites an ever‑expanding role for government and health institutions to intervene in domains far beyond the proper scope of medical care. And it shifts medicine away from its core mission of diagnosing and treating illness, redirecting its focus toward managing broad social conditions that lie far outside the clinical domain.

Next, per the webpage, the task force’s work includes “Advancing language justice initiatives to support patients’ access to healthcare” and, most concerningly, “Negotiating DIAR curriculum and resources into workers’ contracts.”

It’s unclear exactly how this work will impact healthcare in reality, but needless to say, injecting DEI into the healthcare system by way of worker contracts is at the very least concerning.

Physicians should be focused on providing the best care possible, not working to inject divisive and discriminatory ideology into clinical practice.

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Evidence Lacking for Claim That the Stress of Racism Shortens Lives

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If researchers produced a study finding that poor and minority people tend to be more likely to have health problems and die at a younger age, it probably wouldn’t be published in a leading medical journal or covered with articles in national newspapers. It would rightly be seen as a restatement of the well-known, sad reality that for a variety of reasons poor and minority people tend to have worse diet and exercise and are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, contributing to worse health and earlier death.

But if researchers relabel the problems poor and minority people experience as “cumulative lifespan stress” and suggest those problems are the result of “systemic and explicit discrimination,” those same banal observations can earn a spot in one of the American Medical Association’s top journals and be covered in The Washington Post under the headline: “New evidence shows how discrimination shortens lives in Black communities.”

To be clear, the study published in JAMA Network Open does not demonstrate in any way that discrimination shortens lives in black communities. All it does is show that five measures, which they combine and call “cumulative lifespan stress,” are correlated with indicators of inflammation and are also correlated with dying younger. They also observe that black subjects scored higher on the index they called “stress,” had higher measures of inflammation, and also tended to die at an earlier age. The study’s research design does not allow them to identify whether the five measures they combine and label as “stress” caused inflammation or earlier death, nor can their study exclude whether other factors that they did not examine could have caused both the measures of inflammation and dying at a younger age.

Let’s consider the five measures the researchers use as an index for the physiological stress over one’s life to see how weak the study’s research design is. To capture this cumulative lifespan stress, researchers surveyed study participants to collect information on “(1) childhood maltreatment[…], (2) adult lifetime trauma exposure[…], (3) researcher-verified stressful life events[…], (4) discrimination[…], and (5) indices of socioeconomic status.”

The researchers combine these five measures into a single indicator that they call “cumulative lifespan stress,” but it is far from clear that these five measures actually capture physiological stress. In fact, many of these five measures include information on health problems or factors that could contribute to health problems. For example, the survey used to capture “adult lifetime trauma exposure” includes measures of whether subjects had “experienced a life threatening illness,” “experienced a miscarriage,” and was involved in an accident or otherwise received a serious injury. The measure of “stressful life events” includes information on serious illness or injury and whether a close relative had died.

These health challenges may be stressful, but it would be highly misleading to conclude that the stress associated with serious illnesses caused people to die at a younger age as opposed to the illnesses themselves. The researchers never control for the actual illnesses that subjects have when examining the correlation between their “cumulative lifespan stress” measure and the probability of early death. A subject could have chronic diabetes, uncontrolled blood pressure, or cancer and the researchers would conclude that they died of stress rather than these various diseases.

It is also important to note that only one of the five measures that they claim capture stress includes indicators of discrimination. And that measure asks whether subjects believe they had been treated “unfairly” in employment, housing, or other matters for a variety of reasons, only one of which is race. To conclude that this information, which is part of one of five measures that collectively are associated with early death, means that “discrimination shortens lives” would be completely irresponsible.

The reason this shoddy research receives such favorable treatment by a leading medical journal and alarmist coverage from national newspapers is that people wish to advance a political argument blaming racism for higher rates of health problems and early death in the black community. But nothing in this research demonstrates societal discrimination is to blame. By failing to control for the health challenges associated with diet, exercise, and alcohol and drug use, and by falsely relabeling reports of serious illness or risks of getting serious illnesses as “cumulative lifespan stress,” the study is attributing to racism what could easily be explained by medical comorbidities, individual choices, and community dysfunction.

If you are wondering who is paying for this shoddy research, the answer is you are.

Taxpayers funded this research through grants awarded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The last source of funding is particularly ironic since the study did not examine the obvious possibility that alcohol abuse could be part of the explanation for the results they observe. It’s bad that the American people must be falsely blamed for causing their black neighbors to die because of stressful discrimination, but even worse that they have to pay for such chicanery. Perhaps paying to be falsely blamed is also dangerously stressful.

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Department of Justice Moves to Intervene in Do No Harm Lawsuit Against UCLA Medical School

Today, the Department of Justice moved to intervene in Do No Harm’s lawsuit against the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

In May 2025, Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions filed a major class action lawsuit against UCLA for its discriminatory DEI medical admissions policy. 

Our lawsuit alleged that, under the guise of “holistic admissions,” UCLA has been violating the Constitution and ignoring federal law in an effort to continue discriminating against applicants on the basis of race.

This critical case has been moving forward in federal court as we fight for all students who have faced, or may face, racial discrimination in UCLA’s medical school admissions. 

On January 28, 2026, the United States government filed its motion to intervene in the case and stop these harmful discriminatory practices from continuing to persist at UCLA.

“The United States was right in its move to join this case, which is of great public importance,” said Do No Harm Executive Director Kristina Rasmussen. “We look forward to the Justice Department’s additional efforts here to get to the bottom of what appears to be an effort by UCLA to continue a race-based medical school admissions process in contravention of the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions.”

The Department of Justice complaint cites admissions data showing that black and Hispanic matriculants have on average lower MCAT scores and GPAs than white and Asian applicants, and alleges that this indicates racial discrimination in admissions.

A favorable resolution of this lawsuit will help ensure that universities across the country think twice before discriminating on the basis of race.

Read the Department of Justice’s Motion to Intervene here.

Read the Department of Justice’s complaint here.

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Trump Administration Takes Action to Cut Off Funding for DEI, Gender Ideology Overseas

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Today, the State Department issued rules aimed at preventing taxpayer dollars from funding DEI and gender ideology initiatives overseas. 

These rules are a critical step toward ensuring that Americans are not subsidizing discriminatory programs, radical identity politics, and harmful medical interventions on children.

One rule, “Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance,” adds new requirements to grant awards aimed at ensuring that recipients of State Department dollars do not spend these funds on promoting various tenets of gender ideology, with a particular focus on minors.

In particular, the rule targets organizations that provide sex-denying medical interventions for minors. It prevents funds from going toward any organization that “either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism.”

The rule also cites the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) 2025 report, which found that there is no solid evidence to support sex-denying medical interventions on minors, and that these interventions may impose serious long-term harms (such as infertility) on children. 

This rule reflects the reality that so-called “gender-affirming care” is harmful to children, and that the federal government has no business funding these harms.

Another rule, “Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology in Foreign Assistance,” adds requirements to grant awards with the intent to prevent recipients of State Department funds from engaging in discriminatory DEI practices.

Under the rule, recipients of certain State Department awards agree that they will not “promote discriminatory equity ideology, engage in unlawful DEI-related discrimination, or provide financial support to any other foreign NGO or IO that conducts such activities.”

The rule defines “Discriminatory equity ideology” as an “ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of generalizations.”

Considering how many health-focused organizations are funded by State Department grants, this rule will provide essential protections to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not subsidizing initiatives that degrade the quality of healthcare and that subject patients to unequal treatment.

Do No Harm applauds these rules. 

It’s critical that the federal government not only cuts off funding for radical identity politics, but ensures recipients of grant awards are not themselves ideological actors.

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Do No Harm Report Debunks Prominent ‘Racial Concordance’ Study 

Salt Lake City, UT; January 27, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm released a report entitled “Debunking Frakes and Gruber’s New Study on Racial Concordance.”

The report refutes a recent study, authored by economists Michael Frakes and Jonathan Gruber, that misleadingly claims racially diverse military medical facilities improve care for black patients. However, the study fails to actually examine whether black patients have better outcomes when treated by black doctors, and buries a key finding that undermines the thrust of the study’s conclusion.

Frakes and Gruber instead offer two flawed explanations for the study’s claims: 1) black doctors teach their peers how to better connect with black patients, and 2) the presence of black doctors in hallways increases black patients’ trust in non-black providers. 

“We cannot allow politically motivated activists to push debunked racial theories that have no positive impact on patient care,” said Jay Greene, Director of Research for Do No Harm. “Studies like this are designed to codify DEI doctrine to pave the way for re-establishing affirmative action and enshrining race-based hiring. The report ignores the very question it purports to answer: whether black patients actually fare better with black doctors. Our report systematically exposes the study’s shoddy methodology and baseless conclusions. Americans of all races and backgrounds deserve high-quality medical research, not political ideology disguised as science.”

Flaws in the Frakes & Gruber Study:

  • The study never actually examines whether black patients fare better when treated by black doctors.
  • The study buries the finding that black patients actually do best when treated by non-black doctors in facilities that happen to have more black doctors, which undermines the claim that black patients need to be served by black doctors
  • The study not only relies on debunked research but also fails to cite systematic reviews that already found no evidence that racial concordance benefits patients.

Do No Harm’s report also notes that co-author Jonathan Gruber is infamous for bragging about relying on the “stupidity of the American voter” while helping mislead the public with opaque analyses to pass the Affordable Care Act.

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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Medical School’s DEI Scholarship Is Cause for Alarm

A.T. Still University (ATSU) is offering a scholarship through its Diversity Department ostensibly intended to support “students who learn and serve in diverse, underserved, urban, and rural communities across the globe.”

The Graduate Health Professions Scholarship (GPS) promises recipients “significant financial support during their residential education.”

But the program description, while not explicitly limiting eligibility to applicants of certain racial groups (and even containing a non-discrimination disclaimer), contains some suspicious language. Additionally, the scholarship encourages recipients to engage in DEI activities.

First, the scholarship is intended to “attract and educate students whose life contributions and experiences are consistent with the ATSU mission to serve in underserved areas.”

This language in itself may seem benign, but consider the following context: the scholarship next includes a definition of “underrepresented minorities.”

“A. T. Still University defines ‘Historically Underrepresented’ and ‘Underrepresented Minorities (HUGs)’ as those persons identified by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).”

The HRSA defines underrepresented minorities as “American Indian or Alaska Native”; “Black or African American”; “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander”; and “Hispanic.”

Although the scholarship application criteria does not explicitly contain language discriminating on the basis of race or sex, it’s certainly alarming that the scholarship would include this definition at all, and it’s likewise unclear what purpose it serves.

And there’s a further wrinkle: per a brochure containing a list of scholarship recipients on ATSU’s website, none of the listed recipients appear to be white or Asian.

The scholarship also contains requirements stating that recipients are encouraged to participate in “campus-wide Diversity Department programs and initiatives,” and must “meet with [the] program administrator or [the] D&I (Diversity & Inclusion) representative at least once monthly.” 

Needless to say, this is more than a little troubling, especially when viewed in conjunction with the other language in the program description.

ATSU should make clear that its scholarship is available to all, and ensure that it is not seeking to award the scholarship only to members of certain racial groups. 

A non-discrimination disclaimer alone isn’t going to cut it.

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Virginia Legislation Would Subject Nurses to ‘Bias Reduction Training’

Legislation introduced in Virginia this year could force healthcare professionals to endure ideological programming under the guise of combating “unconscious bias.”

One bill, SB 22, would require certain healthcare professionals to submit to “bias reduction training” in order to maintain their licenses.

Specifically, the bill directs “the Board of Medicine and Board of Nursing to require certain licensees to complete bias reduction training as part of their continuing education and continuing competency requirements for licensure.”

The legislation explicitly identifies “unconscious racial bias [that] affects care during pregnancy and the postpartum period” as a target.

This legislation is not new. Indeed, a very similar bill was introduced last year that also sought to target “unconscious bias”; then-Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed the bill in May.

The notion that unconscious or implicit bias contributes to any real world impact is unsupported by solid evidence.

The tests used to evaluate or identify implicit bias fail to meet widely-accepted standards of reliability and validity and have been found to be “poor predictors” of real-world bias and discrimination. 

And what’s more, Ohio State University psychology professor emeritus Hal Arkes described the test as “an extremely feeble predictor of behavior.”

It’s common sense that healthcare professionals should not be forced to undergo training grounded on false premises that accuses them of racism.

Virginia’s healthcare boards best serve their state when they focus on ensuring healthcare professionals adhere to standards of clinical excellence, and not when they inject dubious and divisive scientific concepts into healthcare education.

It’s also worth noting that SB 22 is just one of a flurry of bills introduced this year that seek to advance DEI and related discriminatory practices within the Commonwealth.

These efforts are already attracting the attention of the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon.

Given this scrutiny, it would be wise for state officials to avoid expensive lawsuits and ensure that taxpayer funds do not go toward the costs of defending racist laws.