Medical School Hosts Presentation Dismissing Adverse Health Consequences of Obesity

It might seem obvious that a medical school should teach students pertinent medical information, not promote ideological programming that downplays genuine health concerns.

The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, however, appears to disagree.

This February, the school hosted a presentation that encourages acceptance of obesity and seems to dismiss the serious health risks associated with excess weight.

The presentation, which was offered during the school’s “Doctoring 1” class for first-year medical students, downplays the health risks of obesity and instead paints the focus on such risks as evidence of stigma, bias, and even racism.

First, the presentation appears to endorse the “Weight Inclusive” approach to medical care, including the statement that “Health and well-being are achievable for all regardless of weight.”

It’s hard to believe that this is a genuine claim taught to future physicians at a medical school, but nevertheless it appears in the presentation.

Figure 1. A slide highlighting the “weight inclusive” approach to medical care.

To be clear, excess weight and obesity are strongly correlated with elevated mortality, with severe obesity potentially shortening life expectancy by up to 14 years. In many circumstances, properly selected patients with obesity who lose significant amounts of weight have been shown to live longer, with better quality of life. 

In addition to neglecting the wealth of evidence on the health risks and preventability of obesity, which make it highly irresponsible for a presentation at a medical school, the presentation’s claims are tinged with an ideological flavor.

“This course will make Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other wealthy corporations very happy. So-called ‘fatphobia’ is ideologically driven science denial, specifically, denial of the adverse population-wide health effects of obesity,” said Kevin Jon Williams, MD, Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences and Professor of Medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. “We’re not talking about aesthetics, which change from year to year and culture to culture. Obesity makes people sick, shortens lives, and impairs quality of life.”

Several slides invoke concepts such as “social determinants of health” or SDOH and “implicit bias.”

For instance, the presentation dares to ask the question: “What if obesity is another problematic social construct?”

This framing obfuscates the empirical, physiological realities that obese people face, such as elevated mortality. Is heart disease a “social construct” as well?

Moreover, the presentation references social determinants of health (SDOH), which are social, economic, and environmental conditions that associate with individuals’ health. But associations do not prove causality. 

Figure 2. A slide linking so-called “social determinants of health” to health outcomes.

The role that these so-called “determinants” actually play in determining health outcomes is not well supported.

Although SDOH may be correlated with disparities in health outcomes, the evidence that SDOH actually cause poor health outcomes is shoddy and weak, at best.

Much of the scholarship on the topic confuses social and economic conditions that correlate with poor health outcomes with the actual causes of those outcomes, ignoring other factors such as individual agency and health decisions that contribute to health outcomes. For example, despite its financial cost, smoking is more common among poor people and explains “much of the disparity in health outcomes.”

Unlike targeted interventions to improve obesity, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, targeted interventions to improve SDOH have a poor record. To date, no study has been able to show that the introduction of a full-service supermarket in a so-called “food desert” lowers the body mass index (BMI) of nearby residents. Programs in 19 counties in Texas and Illinois addressed income disparities by establishing a Universal Basic Income (UBI). But recipients of UBI “reported no increase in access to or utilization of health care.” UBI did not lead to lasting “physical or mental health improvements,” and “recipients were four percentage points more likely to report a disability or health problem that limits the work they can do.”

In other words, SDOH have not been shown to “determine” outcomes, as the name implies; the more apt and accurate description would be “Social Associations of Health (SAOH).”

As another example of ideology over science, the presentation on obesity urged medical students in the audience to take an “Implicit Association Test” to evaluate their own biases toward overweight people.

Yet the notion that Implicit Association Tests predict real-world behavior is dubious: these tests fail to meet widely-accepted standards of reliability and validity. A lay summary of the problems with Implicit Association Tests can be found here. 

Moreover, a 2013 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that Implicit Association Tests were “poor predictors” of real-world bias and discrimination.

Figures 3. A screenshot of the commonly-used Implicit Association Test.

In another slide, the presentation on obesity recommends that the future physicians read two articles, including one titled “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity.”

Figure 4. A slide featuring links to two articles arguing that racism and fatphobia are connected.

That latter article argues, among other things, that many health concerns typically associated with obesity are in fact attributable to weight stigma – which, in the case of black women, is racially charged.

The presentation links “anti-fat attitudes” to racism, slavery, and the “Anglo-Saxon Protestant faith,” arguing that “fatphobia” is a “direct consequence of the attempt to rule over Black bodies.” The notion that “fatphobia” is a consequence of the slave trade, while slavery itself is a practice that has occurred across various ethnic groups and nations since the dawn of humanity, is dubious to say the least. Moreover, singling out an ethnicity and a branch of Christianity for this harsh criticism is historically inaccurate, possibly biased, and may engender ethnic and religious biases in these students. 

Figure 5. A slide arguing that “anti-fat attitudes” are linked to racism and slavery.

Of course, it’s unclear how, exactly, these claims alter the reality that obesity poses health risks. And it’s exactly this reality that needs to be taught to medical students so that they can better care for their patients.

The presentation concludes with slides urging students to adopt weight-inclusive practices going forward, including a suggestion that they do not “blame” patients for their weight-related condition.

While physicians should not be cruel to their patients or belittle them, they likewise should not rob patients of their agency or their ability to change their health outcomes through personal choice. Avoiding highly-processed foods, for instance, is just one example. Yet the slides encourage “Increasing nutrient dense foods”. 

Simply put, this presentation is full of claims that are politically charged and irrelevant to the practice of medicine at best, and inaccurate and dangerous at worst. It also plays into the hands of wealthy junk food, beverage, and agricultural interests that push harmful highly processed energy-dense foods and drink.

“The anti-science ideology of ‘fatphobia’ seeks to deny our patients the benefits of lifestyle improvements, medicines, and surgery to improve their lives and quality of life,” said Dr. Williams. “It is damaging and wrong.”

The Lewis Katz School of Medicine should not seek to inculcate its students in ideologies that promote harmful, misleading claims.

Medical Schools Still Discriminate Based on Race, Records Show

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It’s been two years since the Supreme Court banned racial discrimination in college admissions. Nonetheless, at medical schools, evidence suggests that the discrimination continues.

That’s my conclusion after submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to all 93 public medical schools. I asked for several years of admissions data, including on students who matriculated in 2024, following the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. I sought data on race, undergraduate grades, MCAT scores, and admission status, in order to assess whether racial disparities in admission standards persisted after the decision.

Twenty-three medical schools have answered my request, including flagship institutions in states like Tennessee, Wisconsin, Missouri, New Mexico, and Colorado. The data they provided make it clear that schools are at least skirting the Supreme Court’s decision, if not violating it outright.

Read the full article at City Journal.

Trump Admin to Block Medicare and Medicaid Funding to Hospitals Performing Child Sex Changes

The Trump administration is taking an enormous step toward ending child sex change interventions.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is unveiling a proposed rule that would cut off Medicare and Medicaid funding to hospitals that perform child sex changes, according to reporting from National Review. 

If finalized, the rule would make it so “hospitals cannot participate in Medicare or Medicaid if they provide sex trait modification services to minors,” National Review reported. 

An administration official told the outlet that the rule would “effectively end sex-trait modifications for minors nationally.”

“Thanks to the leadership of the Trump administration, children will be safer from radical transgender ideology and the sex changes that threaten their bodies, minds, and futures,” said Do No Harm Medical Director Kurt Miceli, MD. “Taxpayer money has no place going towards hospitals and institutions that perform these experimental procedures on minors, and this new rule will help accelerate the closure of so-called pediatric gender clinics across the country. Congress should follow up on this strong action and further ensure taxpayer dollars don’t fund pediatric medical transition in the next reconciliation bill.”

This is just the start of the rulemaking process, but the proposed rule is an absolutely massive step toward dealing a crippling blow to the child transgender industry.

Almost every hospital depends on Medicare and Medicaid funding, and losing this funding would pose an existential threat to these hospitals’ operations.

This will thus strongly incentivize hospitals to no longer provide child sex change interventions.

Since Trump took office, and following an executive order targeting taxpayer funding of child sex change interventions, hospitals across the country have shuttered their child gender programs.

These include some of the most notorious and prolific providers of these procedures, such as Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Seattle Children’s, who each made Do No Harm’s “Dirty Dozen” list of the worst offenders in the child transgender industry.

Additionally, the Department of Justice has subpoenaed numerous providers of child sex changes for information on their practices, while the Federal Trade Commission hosted a workshop – at which several Do No Harm fellows provided their expertise – on the child transgender industry’s deceptive practices.

Do No Harm welcomes this action from the Trump administration, and will continue our work protecting children from the harms of gender ideology.

Trump Puts University Admissions Data Under the Microscope

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Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

To ensure institutions of higher education are not racially discriminating in the admissions process, President Trump is set to order them to hand over their admissions data, according to a recent report from The Daily Caller.

This is much-needed oversight and an important step toward ensuring that institutions of higher education are complying with federal law.

As revealed in the latest installment in Do No Harm’s “Skirting SCOTUS” series, there is substantial evidence that medical schools are discriminating on the basis of race in the admissions process. This behavior has gone on despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that race-conscious admissions violate the constitution.

However, Skirting SCOTUS Part III used public records requests to obtain admissions data that showed startling racial disparities between the test scores and GPAs of Asian and white applicants compared to black applicants. 

Do No Harm submitted public records requests to 93 public medical schools for their 2024 admissions data; however, only 23 provided the requested data.

Those schools’ admissions data showed that accepted Asian and white applicants had higher MCAT scores than accepted black applicants at all but one school, while at 13 schools, the average MCAT score of rejected Asian or white applicants was higher than that of accepted black applicants.

Two schools had particularly egregious disparities: At the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, a black applicant had nearly 10 times the odds of admission compared to an Asian or white applicant with the same MCAT score and GPA.

And at Eastern Virginia Medical School, there was an eleven-fold increase in odds of acceptance for black applicants compared to GPA- and MCAT-equivalent Asian or white applicants.

This order will shine a light on medical schools’ admissions practices and potentially reveal any evidence of unlawful behavior.

UNM Wants Administrators – and Students – to Be All-In on DEI

Common sense would dictate that healthcare education programs should seek the most qualified administrators and faculty, so as to produce the best possible education for future healthcare professionals.

But, at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Sciences Center, ideology and diversity are central considerations.

To direct the school’s Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program, UNM is searching for candidates with qualifications including “[a] demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and student success, as well as working with broadly diverse communities,” according to a job listing posted on UNM’s website.

Another position listing, for the New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium Partner Schools Director position, likewise states that applicants should have a “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion.”

This institutional posture extends to scholarships and clerkship programs for students as well.

The URiM for Visiting Students program at the UNM medical school’s OB/GYN department, for instance, is “designed to expose Underrepresented in Medicine (URiM) and non-traditional students from across the country to our outstanding residency training programs.”

The eligibility criteria links to the now-defunct definition of “underrepresented” promulgated by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which defined underrepresented populations as “those racial and ethnic populations that are underrepresented in the medical profession relative to their numbers in the general population.”

As another example, the Department of Emergency Medicine offers a clerkship – which happens to come with a $2,000 stipend – to medical students, giving special preference to applicants who are “socioeconomically disadvantaged, first-generation medical students and/or who identify as part of a group underrepresented in medicine, or have themselves demonstrated support and advocacy for underrepresented groups in medicine.”

The clerkship description then cites the AAMC’s definition of “underrepresented” while adding the following caveats:

“Characteristics in addition to race and ethnicity are additionally considered. In New Mexico, for example, students of the following backgrounds could identify as underrepresented: African American and/or Black, Hispanic/Latino, Native American (American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians), Pacific Islander, Vietnamese, mainland Puerto Rican, first general college student, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or part of a minority group related to gender or sexual orientation (LGBTQIA+).”

These preferences reflect UNM’s core institutional values, as UNM admits in a value statement on UNM’s DEI webpage.

“We are committed to addressing issues of under-representation in medicine and biomedical research,” the statement reads. “Under-representation most commonly refers to racial/ethnic populations that are under-represented in the medical and scientific research workforce relative to their numbers in the general population.”

“The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have traditionally defined these groups as: Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Alaska Natives/American Indians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders,” the statement continues.

It’s clear from these programs and job descriptions that UNM not only seeks to use racial preferences when distributing opportunities to students, but wants to hire personnel on board with that agenda.

When opportunities are conditioned on an applicant’s “underrepresented” status or their commitment to diversity, future medical professionals suffer on the basis of their immutable characteristics.

Editor’s Note: Following the publication of this article, UNM removed its diversity webpage. The archived link can be found here.

Oregon drops Medicaid coverage for risky surgery except in cases of ‘gender affirmation’

In Oregon, Medicaid no longer covers high-risk surgery to remove excess skin from the lower abdomen unless it’s part of “gender-affirming care,” raising questions about whether gender ideology is actually harming those it purports to help.

The Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission agreed June 12 to exclude panniculectomy surgery from its list of covered medical expenditures, citing concerns about the high rate of complications, except when performed as part of “gender-affirmation surgery.”

“Panniculectomy Surgery to remove extra skin after significant weight loss (panniculectomy) comes with high risks, including serious problems and even death,” the commission’s Value Based Subcommittee said in its meeting materials. “Staff recommend adding the codes for this treatment to the gender affirmation surgery line only. In other cases, these surgeries should not be covered because the risks are so serious.”

Read the full story at The Washington Times.

White House anticipates ‘ultimate victory’ against child sex-change regime despite Letitia James-led lawsuit

President Donald Trump declared war on gender ideology and the corresponding child sex-change regime upon retaking office. Despite the efforts of non-straight activists and overreaching federal judges, the campaign is off to a great start.

Pursuant to the president’s Jan. 28 executive order titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” the Department of Justice has launched criminal investigations into several hospitals that have provided children with destructive sex-change procedures, and the administration has threatened offending medical institutions’ federal funding.

In the face of this crackdown, some of the worst institutional offenders listed in the medical advocacy group Do No Harm’s Stop the Harm Database have closed shop.

Read the full story at The Blaze.

Columbia Med School’s Ideological ‘Anti-Bias’ Guidelines

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The Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) is instructing faculty to adhere to curriculum guidelines that inject ideology into medical education, all in the name of “anti-bias” and inclusivity. 

The guidelines, advertised on the VP&S website, are described by the school as a means to “combat systemic racism and bias which decrease our ability to provide equitable medical care, and to increase inclusion within our medical school.”

It’s not clear, exactly, how focusing on combatting “systemic racism” rather than on providing the best possible medical education improves one’s ability to provide medical care.

Regardless, the guidelines, justified on the basis of that premise, feature several principles that appear more concerned with promoting radical ideology than ensuring quality medical education.

These include a conception of gender as distinct from sex, with the statement that an individual identifying as a woman may have a penis.

Gender is rooted in socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender non-binary people. In fact, the relationship between gender and an individual’s genetic makeup may be overdetermined.

For example, of two people who identify as women, one may carry a Y chromosome while the other does not; one may have a uterus or ovaries or breasts or a penis while the other does not.

Reinforcing this point, VP&S asks its faculty to refrain from using the term “women” in certain situations.

Us[e] precise gender-related language, e.g., “people with uteruses” instead of “women” if the relevant point is about the presence of a uterus rather than the person’s expressed gender identity.

Moreover, the guidelines instruct faculty to attribute differences in health outcomes between racial groups to factors such as “structural racism.”

Conversations that focus on the structural reasons for health outcomes (e.g. racism, education, housing, immigration status) may help students move from the misguided notion that genetic/biological differences between “races” drive such health disparities to developing a more nuanced understanding of how structural racism, socioeconomic status, unconscious bias, and other factors impact health care.

Dismissing wholesale the role of biological differences in health outcomes is misleading and harmful.

For instance, as Do No Harm’s Director of Research Ian Kingsbury notes using the example of preeclampsia, in which about 55 percent of risk is estimated to be genetic, “West African ancestry is linked to risk variants in a gene called alipoprotein L1 (APOL1) that dramatically increase the likelihood of developing preeclampsia or kidney disease.”

Unfortunately, the VP&S guidelines appear to simply be one of the more visible manifestations of the school’s commitment to woke ideology.

According to a document hosted on the VP&S website dated from October 2024, the medical school is advertising a number of student research opportunities – many of which include substantial funding – that are targeted at “underrepresented” students.

The vast majority of these programs are offered externally, and VP&S appears to be promoting them rather than administering them.

These include the since-rebranded American Society of Hematology (ASH) Minority Medical Student Award Program, which was the subject of a Do No Harm civil rights complaint. The program, which was part of ASH’s Minority Recruitment Initiative, was restricted to “Indigenous American Indians or Alaska Natives, Blacks or African Americans, Hispanics or Latinos, Native Hawaiians or other Pacific Islanders, African Canadians, Inuit, and First Nation Peoples.”

Now, however, the program has become part of ASH’s Hematology Inclusion Pathway (HIP) Initiative, which still aims to advance DEI. 

As ASH recently described it, “t]he new HIP Initiative better aligns with ASH’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and reflects an evolving understanding of the communities that are underrepresented in hematology.” That language has since been removed from the HIP website.

Other programs are less explicit, but nonetheless invoke language commonly used to refer to programs targeted toward racial minorities.

For instance, per the description of the Medical Student Summer Research Fellowship in Psychiatry at Columbia University, the fellowship “aims to expose students who belong to historically underrepresented groups to the breadth of career opportunities in psychiatry.”

The program’s eligibility criteria note that individuals will receive special consideration if they have, “either as a result of their socio-economic background, their status as a member of an historically underrepresented group in medical school, their disability status, their LGBTQ status, or other challenging life experiences, overcome obstacles on their journey to medical school.”

VP&S should focus on providing the medical education necessary to train the next generation of competent physicians – not force radical politics into the school curriculum.

Good News: Child Gender Clinics Are Finally Shutting Down

Here’s some good news you may not have heard. From coast to coast, child gender clinics are shutting down, thanks to the leadership of the Trump administration. Children are safer because of these closures – protected from radical transgender ideology and the sex changes that threaten their bodies, minds, and futures.

The latest gender clinic to announce its closure is at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, which confirmed this news on July 23. Just one day earlier, the gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles closed. The L.A. clinic was one of the first and largest in the country, subjecting hundreds of children to invasive and irreversible transgender treatments, including hormones and surgeries. Do No Harm, where I work, has documented nearly 20 gender clinics and programs either pausing child sex changes or shutting down since the start of the year.

Read more at RealClearPolitics.

Do No Harm Publishes Report Finding Medical and Healthcare Education Accreditors Are Abandoning DEI

RICHMOND, VA; July 24, 2025 – Today, Do No Harm published a new report titled “Are Medical And Healthcare Education Accreditors Abandoning DEI?” The report, a follow-up to Do No Harm’s previous report exposing accreditors for injecting identity politics into medical and healthcare education, found that the accreditation landscape has changed dramatically since President Trump’s executive order to reform accreditation. Seven of the ten accrediting bodies identified in the previous report have either eliminated diversity requirements, proposed eliminating them, or pledged not to enforce these requirements.

“We are pleased that many of the accreditors responsible for injecting identity politics into medical education are backing off their DEI requirements,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm. “While these early results are encouraging, there is still much work to be done to rid our institutions entirely of the rot of racial politics. Removing DEI from accreditation standards is necessary, but to fully reform medical education, schools must also abandon DEI in favor of merit everywhere it is found.”

Do No Harm’s first report examined the role that accreditors played in imposing diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements on medical education programs. These requirements complicate efforts to reform discriminatory and abusive DEI practices, as medical schools could point to accreditation standards to justify their DEI programs.

This updated accreditor report identifies the accreditors that are backing off DEI, and the accreditors that continue to push divisive identity politics.

Click here to read the latest report.

Click here to read the first accreditor report.

Key Findings:

  • Do No Harm found that seven medical and healthcare education accreditors have either eliminated diversity requirements, proposed eliminating them, or pledged not to enforce these requirements.
  • Do No Harm found that three accreditors have not made any changes to their diversity requirements.
  • The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the accrediting body for medical residency programs, suspended enforcement of two key diversity requirements, citing state DEI bans.
  • The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education removed diversity requirements and the phrase “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from its standards.  
  • The Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education removed a requirement to promote a culture of “JEDI” or “justice, equity, diversity, [and] inclusivity,” as well as “anti-racism.”
  • The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, The American Dental Association’s Commission on Dental Accreditation, and The Accreditation Council on Optometric Education all have retained their diversity requirements.

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Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With over 22,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.

The American Board of Internal Medicine Places Equity Over Excellence

As a medical board tasked with certifying internal medicine physicians, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is supposed to be a gatekeeper for medical excellence.

But under the guise of promoting “health equity” and DEI, ABIM has increasingly injected identity politics and racialism into its mission.

ABIM’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategic Plan lays bare this agenda.

The plan’s goals include: “Develop and implement programs that address the racial and ethnic disparities in health care”; “Influence the education and training of board certified internists to equip them with the skills and awareness to recognize and prevent healthcare disparities and to promote health equity”; and “Intentionally create and foster partnerships to exponentially expand the impact of ABIM’s efforts in addressing systemic racism and disparities in health care, in the healthcare profession, in the provision of health care and the outcomes of that care.”

This politicization isn’t limited to internal statements. Consider how ABIM is staffing its Approval Committees – the groups that approve the assessment content for certification and maintenance of certification. 

When seeking a new cardiologist for its Cardiovascular Disease Approval Committee, ABIM made a point to especially “encourage” applications from “under-represented minorities.” 

It also stated a preference for candidates with expertise in “health equity, health disparities, and/or social determinants of health.” These are ideological criteria, not clinical ones.

To further demonstrate how these ideas have pervaded the certification process, consider the ABIM’s “Health Equity Statement.”

This statement explicitly states that ABIM “include[s] health equity content in our assessments, based on science and evidence related to health disparities.”

“Equity” should not be a concern when deciding whether physicians meet certification standards. 

Rather, merit and medical expertise should be the sole focus determining that a physician meets board certification standards. The certification process should select for physicians who have the requisite medical knowledge, skills, and clinical judgement to provide high-quality patient care; whether or not they are versed in certain political narratives regarding the causes of health disparities is irrelevant to that mission.

An ABIM-certified physician should have expertise in the field of internal medicine, not expertise in navigating a divisive ideology.

Do No Harm Publishes Third Report Exposing Medical Schools for Skirting SCOTUS Ban on Race-Conscious Admissions

RICHMOND, VA; July 17, 2025 – Today, Do No Harm published a new report titled “Skirting SCOTUS Part III: How Medical Schools Continue to Practice Racially Conscious Admissions.” The report, a follow-up to Do No Harm’s two earlier “Skirting SCOTUS” reports, reveals definitive evidence that American medical schools have continued to racially discriminate after the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) that such practices are illegal.

“Our research reveals evidence that a number of medical schools continue to pursue identity politics and employ discriminatory, racially conscious admissions policies,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm. “These policies were deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court, and these schools are shirking their duty to train the most qualified group of future healthcare professionals. Do No Harm will continue to file complaints and lawsuits in order to restore merit and excellence to medical education.”

Do No Harm’s first Skirting SCOTUS report documented responses from medical schools and medical organizations signaling a continued commitment to race-based admissions. Skirting SCOTUS Part II observed suggestive evidence that schools had devised workarounds to maintain a racially biased admissions system. Now, this third report provides evidence of continued racial discrimination in American medical schools.

Key Findings

  • Do No Harm’s analysis of 23 public medical schools’ 2024 admissions data shows that accepted Asian and white applicants had higher MCAT scores than accepted black applicants at all but one school.
  • At 13 schools, the average MCAT score of rejected Asian or white applicants was higher than that of accepted black applicants.
  • At the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health a black applicant has nearly 10 times the odds of admission compared to an Asian or white applicant with the same MCAT score and GPA.
  • At Eastern Virginia Medical School there is an eleven-fold increase in odds of acceptance for black applicants compared to GPA- and MCAT-equivalent Asian or white applicants.

Click here to read Skirting SCOTUS Part I.

Click here to read Skirting SCOTUS Part II.

Click here to read the latest installment, Skirting SCOTUS Part III.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With over 22,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Hasn’t Ditched Its DEI Ways Just Yet

In 2023, Do No Harm reported on a racially discriminatory grant program operated by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS): the Underrepresented Minority Medical Student Research Program, which was only available to 2nd-to-4th-year medical students who were “Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino(a), American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander.”

Now, it appears that the grant program has been removed from the LLS’s website; its link redirects to the LLS’s general research page.

But a host of other programs, initiatives, and public statements promoting DEI remain, indicating that the LLS isn’t quite so far removed from its discriminatory past.

Take, for instance, LLS’s Equity in Access grants, which are intended to “generate new evidence that can guide policy reform and changes in healthcare practice” to mitigate the impact of “social, economic and environmental disadvantages and reduce barriers to care.”

As part of that mission, and the LLS’s adherence to DEI ideology, the organization is seeking applicants of certain backgrounds.

“Consistent with LLS’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we encourage applications that have investigators and/or research team members from backgrounds historically underrepresented in research disciplines as a result of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, or other factors,” the LLS’s application guidelines stated.

The LLS also runs its IMPACT grant program, which provides funding to cancer centers to expand access to clinical trials.

“LLS is setting out to improve access to clinical trials for underrepresented patients, including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), Hispanic, Latinx, and people from rural communities,” the program description states.

The LLS even has a statement on its website expressing its commitment to DEI.

“Our commitment to justice, dignity, and belonging takes two forms: a culture of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI); and a focus on advancing health equity for all,” the webpage states.

“We’re helping to advance new state and federal laws that require a deliberate approach to recruiting underrepresented patients to participate in clinical trials – because everyone deserves a fair shot at accessing cutting-edge treatment, regardless of their background, age, income, or location,” the webpage continues.

To be clear, medical organizations absolutely should work to expand access to treatment; but targeting certain racial groups in the name of equity is not “fair.”

Additionally, LLS maintains employee resource groups that appear to be catered to specific racial groups; these include the “Black Employee Forum” and “Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi Middle Eastern American Forum.”

Racial segregation is hardly welcoming or inclusive, but such contradictions are hardly out of place in the regressive ideology of DEI. 

To reiterate, expanding access to care is a worthwhile and admirable goal.

But the methods of achieving these goals should not involve racial discrimination, and successes for certain racial groups should not come at the expense of others.

Do No Harm Fellows Provide Expertise at FTC’s Workshop on Child Transgender Industry

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Today, several Do No Harm fellows had the honor to participate in the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop, The Dangers of “Gender-Affirming Care” for Minors.

The workshop featured expert testimony from medical professionals, detransitioners, and parents of children harmed by gender ideology, and highlighted the misleading and deceptive practices employed by the child transgender industry. 

This is a massive step toward holding this industry accountable for its harmful behavior. 

Take it from us: we know just how often medical associations and doctors make misleading statements and downplay the harms of sex change interventions for children.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson opened the event explaining why the FTC is interested in investigating the child transgender industry.

“If a medical claim is false or misleading, it is the commission’s sworn duty to protect American citizens from that claim, no differently than it would for any other false or misleading claim,” Ferguson said. 

“Refusing to investigate these health claims and the potential consumer harm to parents and children merely because one political party supports those claims as a matter of its ideology would be the politicized choice,” he continued.

Additionally, Do No Harm Senior Fellow Dr. Miriam Grossman gave a presentation that focused on how the child transgender industry has long been inherently deceptive. 

Dr. Grossman discussed the origins of pediatric gender medicine and how activists have used shoddy research for decades to promote dangerous and harmful medical procedures. Her presentation focused on deceptive practice in language, in medical records, and in therapists’ letters for support of hormones and surgeries.

“Language is an instrument,” Dr. Grossman said, referring to euphemisms used by gender activists to obscure the true harms of sex change interventions. “It can be shaped for a particular purpose. It can change the way we think.”

Do No Harm Senior Fellow Simon Amaya Price shared his own experiences with the child transgender industry, detailing his encounters with a pediatrician who pressured him into transitioning. Simon was joined by his father, Gareth.

“The pediatrician asked my dad in front of me, ‘would you like a dead son or a living daughter?’ This isn’t just a line used by activists,” he said. “This is a line used in healthcare settings by the doctors that your kids are seeing in your communities all across this country.”

Later, a panel discussion focusing on the lack of evidence for child sex change interventions, Do No Harm Senior Fellow Dr. Lauren Schwartz, a psychiatrist, pointed out the false premises employed by the child transgender industry to justify medical interventions.

“To think that a child can make a decision whether or not they should go through unhindered puberty; that doesn’t seem like a medical decision or conversation we should be having with anyone, let alone a child,” Dr. Schwartz said.

“So when I think about what I do as a psychiatrist and I support mental health and wellness and well being of my patients throughout their entire lives, not just in that moment, my job is not to ‘affirm’ in that moment what the child thinks that they need or a vulnerable young adult thinks that they need,” she added.

And finally, Do No Harm Senior Fellow Jamie Reed, a whistleblower who previously worked at a pediatric gender clinic, provided an inside look at how “gender-affirming” practices are anything but scientific or evidence-based.

“The entire diagnosis is based on progressive stereotypes and self-described feelings for minor children and their parents,” Reed said. “My clinical experience shows that these […] assessments are not consistent, comprehensive or truly diagnostic.”

We’re enormously proud of our fellows for providing their insight and expertise on this crucial topic.

The child transgender industry has long misled parents, minors, and the public at large about the true nature of gender medical interventions.

These are not harmless medical procedures – these are life-altering interventions that are simply not supported by the evidence.

We commend Andrew Ferguson and the Federal Trade Commission for taking action.

North Carolina Governor Vetoes Legislation Cracking Down on DEI

North Carolina Governor Josh Stein vetoed several bills last week that would prevent public schools, institutions of higher education, and state entities from engaging in discriminatory DEI practices.

Now, the bills go back to North Carolina’s legislature, where lawmakers seek a supermajority to override Stein’s veto. 

The vetoed legislation ensures that public entities are not using their perch – and taxpayer money – to promote radical DEI ideology.

Senate Bill 558 ensures publicly-funded institutions of higher education, such as medical schools, do not engage in or promote discriminatory practices, and do not maintain offices to promote divisive and discriminatory practices.

Senate Bill 227 applies similar protections to public schools, while House Bill 171 ensures that state agencies do not use taxpayer money to fund DEI initiatives or maintain their own discriminatory DEI policies.

In his statement on the veto, Stein implied the legislation was in some way bigoted.

“These mean-spirited bills would marginalize vulnerable people and also undermine the quality of public services and public education,” Stein said.

But the legislation does just the opposite: the bills protect individuals from enduring discrimination on the basis of race, and ensure that institutions of higher education are not vectors for divisive and discriminatory ideology.

Stein’s veto prevents these protections against racial discrimination.

DEI, by its very nature, demands discriminatory hiring practices, admissions policies, and other race-conscious selection criteria to achieve its goal of “diversity” and equitable outcomes between racial groups.

Curbing these practices in higher education is essential to restore universities and medical schools to the pursuit of fairness, merit, and excellence.

North Carolinians should not be subjected to racial discrimination under the guise of “diversity” and “equity.”

Victory for Talk Therapy – And Children – In Virginia

Last week, a Virginia court ordered the state to cease enforcing a law that prohibited, among other things, licensed counselors from using talk therapy to treat minors suffering from gender distress.

The order, issued as part of a consent decree between counselors John and Janet Raymond and the Virginia Department of Health Professions, stated that the law violated the plaintiff’s religious rights under the Virginia constitution; Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares signed the decree.

This is a massive win for therapists seeking to treat children suffering from gender distress without simply “affirming” their self-professed gender identity – and, of course, a massive win for Virginia children. 

Bans on talk therapy to treat gender dysphoria harm children and reinforce the so-called “affirmation” approach to pediatric gender medicine. 

Contrary to the claims of activists, talk therapy is not “conversion therapy,” and therapy related to so-called “gender identity” should not be conflated with attempts to change a patient’s sexual orientation.

Rather, the idea that talk therapy to treat gender dysphoria in minors is tantamount to “conversion therapy” implicitly assumes that a child’s self-professed “gender identity” is correct and must be affirmed. Under this assumption, attempts to treat gender dysphoria without simply affirming this belief are “converting” the child from their true self.

This notion in itself is dangerous, as it forces children onto the medicalization pathway and leads to harmful medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures.

Additionally, children experiencing gender dysphoria often have concurrent or underlying mental health conditions that deserve treatment.

Allowing children suffering from gender distress to receive non-invasive treatment is essential to ensure their mental well-being and to protect them from the harms of child sex change interventions. 

Gender dysphoria is very real, and forcing children experiencing it to undergo so-called “gender-affirming care” as the only means of medical “treatment” is cruel and unscientific.

Do No Harm applauds Attorney General Miyares and the Youngkin administration for acknowledging the law’s harms and agreeing not to enforce it.

Refining Diagnostic Precision: The Impact of Race in Clinical Labs

Samantha Anderer’s Medical News in Brief, Thyroid Disease May be Overdiagnosed, Study Finds, recounted an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine which found that variables, including race, may significantly influence thyroid hormone levels and affect diagnostic accuracy.[1],[2] 

Compared to current laboratory reference values, the distribution of thyroid disease diagnosis greatly changed when accounting for race. According to the Annals article, 50.1% of whites diagnosed with subclinical hypothyroidism under current standards moved to the normal category once age-, sex-, and race-specific reference intervals were considered. For blacks, it was 14%. Moreover, for blacks, 60% moved from the subclinical hyperthyroidism to normal. The same was true for 17.3% of whites under an age-, sex-, and race-specific reference range.[3] 

The authors concluded: “These findings should help establish more accurate reference intervals for thyroid disease […].”[4] If correct, then a change in parameters partly based on race would improve diagnostic precision, minimize unnecessary treatment, and lower avoidable healthcare costs.

This appeal to accuracy in diagnosis comes in contrast to the debate over estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). In that setting a race correction was called “race-based medicine” given race’s “social construct.”[5] Yet, have we sacrificed clinical precision in pursuit of an illusory sense of equity? 

It seems so. Proponents of a race-neutral equation claim that the race-corrected calculation underestimates renal disease severity in many black patients leading to delayed treatment. However, in his article, “Retaining Race in Chronic Kidney Disease Diagnosis and Treatment,” Paul Williams compares in great detail the race-corrected 2009 Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration formula with the race-free 2021 version, showing that the 2009 formula better aligns with the true measure of GFR.[6]

Joel Velasco and Brad Snodgrass echoed this point in highlighting the harm to black patients by removing the race correction. They specifically noted the safe and effective prescribing and dosing of metformin necessitates an accurate eGFR.[7] Likewise, certain antibiotics, anticoagulants, and antihypertensives require a precise eGFR, not a political one. Even more critically, eGFR guides decisions on dialysis and transplant eligibility – making accuracy vital.

Delivering the highest quality care requires precision. While we have a moral obligation to treat people fairly, disregarding race when it can be clinically meaningful is misguided and can result in unequal treatment. May the same rigor being applied to thyroid diagnostics return to measures like eGFR, which were hastily politicized in the name of equity and at the expense of truth.

[1] Anderer S. Thyroid Disease May Be Overdiagnosed, Study Finds. JAMA. 2025;333(24):2134–2135. doi:10.1001/jama.2025.6466

[2] Qihang L, Yida T, Xuefeng Y, et al. Thyroid Function Reference Intervals by Age, Sex, and Race: A Cross-Sectional Study. Ann Intern Med. [Epub 6 May 2025]. doi:10.7326/ANNALS-24-01559

[3] Qihang L, Yida T, Xuefeng Y, et al. Thyroid Function Reference Intervals by Age, Sex, and Race: A Cross-Sectional Study. Ann Intern Med. [Epub 6 May 2025]. doi:10.7326/ANNALS-24-01559

[4] Qihang L, Yida T, Xuefeng Y, et al. Thyroid Function Reference Intervals by Age, Sex, and Race: A Cross-Sectional Study. Ann Intern Med. [Epub 6 May 2025]. doi:10.7326/ANNALS-24-01559

[5] Cerdeña JP, Plaisime MV, Tsai J. From race-based to race-conscious medicine: how anti-racist uprisings call us to act. The Lancet. 2020;396(10257):1125-1128

[6] Williams P. Retaining Race in Chronic Kidney Disease Diagnosis and Treatment. Cureus. 2023;15(9). doi: 10.7759/cureus.45054

[7] Velasco JD, Snodgrass B. The Use of Race in eGFR: Why Racial Justice Requires Accuracy. The American Journal of Medicine. 2021; 134(7):827-828

CMS Could Cut Funding for Children’s Hospitals Performing Sex Change Interventions on Minors

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is considering cutting off funding for children’s hospitals that provide sex change interventions to minors, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week.

The report comes on the heels of a CMS letter warning several children’s hospitals that child sex change interventions “lack reliable evidence of benefits.” 

The letter gave the hospitals a 30-day deadline beginning May 28 to provide information and data related to their sex change services.

The hospitals include Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Hospital, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, Children’s Hospital Colorado, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the WSJ reported.

These hospitals are ALL on Do No Harm’s “Dirty Dozen” list of the most prolific providers of child sex change interventions.

This list was created as part of Do No Harm’s Stop the Harm Database, a first-of-its-kind national database of hospitals and medical facilities administering irreversible sex change interventions on children in the United States.

Do No Harm has worked to shed light on these hospitals’ practices, profiling them and their gender activism. For instance, Do No Harm launched a digital campaign targeting the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, highlighting the hospital’s devotion to gender ideology.

This is welcome scrutiny from CMS: Do No Harm supports efforts to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to support dangerous and experimental procedures to which children cannot consent.

The Do No Harm in Medicaid Act, sponsored by Representative Dan Crenshaw and endorsed by Do No Harm, would codify prohibitions on Medicaid funding for child sex change interventions.

Several of the hospitals have suspended their sex change services in the wake of pressure from the Trump administration; Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, citing the CMS letter, announced last month it would no longer provide so-called “gender-affirming care” to children.