Last Friday, Do No Harm founder and board chair Stanley Goldfarb, MD, took to the debate stage at the University of South Florida to consider the question “Does ‘DEI’ Help or Hurt Medicine?”
Our man did stellar work, and we encourage readers to dig into his opening statement here or watch the full debate here.
Among the contentions produced by Dr. Goldfarb’s opponents were a number of claims that misrepresent the scientific record or fail to grapple fully with available data.
The following is an analysis of some of those claims, offered for the edification of readers who have watched the debate — and of those who haven’t.
Claim #1: Small MCAT Score Differences Don’t Matter
Appealing to fairness, Dr. Bonzo Reddick, district health director for Georgia’s Coastal Health District, asked the debate audience to imagine two medical-school applicants: one with an MCAT score of 520 and one “from rural Georgia who got a 510” (1:25:30).
Dr. Reddick would have us think that such a score disparity is insignificant. Yet, as Dr. Goldfarb pointed out (1:29:12), what may seem to be a small difference in MCAT achievement does matter. As the AAMC’s own data reveal, an 11.2-point difference represents one full standard deviation. While differences between a 510 and 520 may sound small, they are big, and they lead to a big difference in applicants’ future performance.
Claim #2: MCAT Scores Are “Kind of a Wash” Above a Certain Threshold
Referencing his years as chair of the Community Medicine Department at the Mercer University School of Medicine, Dr. Reddick contended that “[o]nce you get to a certain [MCAT] score … it’s kind of a wash at that point.” For example, “[e]very student who got a 503 or higher on their MCAT had unimpeded access” — i.e., academic success — “through medical school” (52:16).
But national data do not align with the phenomenon Dr. Reddick claims to have observed. AAMC studies using the current MCAT find that scores continue to predict medical-school outcomes and performance on licensing examinations. Other research has linked licensing performance with later practice outcomes.
The observation that students above 503 can succeed is one thing. (For what it’s worth, an MCAT score of 503 represents the 58th percentile, a relatively low bar considering that 55,000 applicants vie annually for 23,000 medical-school slots.) But that observation should not be treated as the equivalent of concluding that a 503 and, say, a 520 tell admissions committees the same thing.
Claim #3: “Mission-Aligned Admissions” Are Valid Even if “Holistic Admissions” Aren’t
In his opening statement, Dr. Reddick conceded that “you hear a lot of people moving away from the term ‘holistic admissions’ because it kind of gets juxtaposed against ‘merit’.” Instead, Reddick continued, admissions committees have begun thinking in terms of “mission-aligned selection,” in which decisionmakers create “a selection process that helps us achieve the goals of our mission” (46:20).
As Do No Harm has previously written, so-called mission-aligned selection is merely a fig leaf used by medical-education programs intent on engaging in ideologically motivated or racial admissions policies. The AAMC’s “Mission-Aligned Selection and Retention” guidance makes this clear, urging medical schools to consider applicant criteria (e.g., “attributes” and “experiences”) that are neither academic nor objective.
In short, just as “holistic admissions” deemphasized academic merit as an admissions criterion, so does its replacement, “mission-aligned selection.” That is unacceptable.
Claim #4: Medical-School Applicants Should Be Screened for “Soft Skills”
In his own opening statement, Dr. Henri R. Ford, dean and chief academic officer at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, voiced his preference for medical-school applicants who possess “the four C’s” and are thus “caring, considerate, compassionate, and collaborative.” Ford went on: “If we relied strictly on MCATs and GPAs, we could end up with individuals who lack those ‘soft skills’” (32:08).
The problem with this line of thinking is that, as a Do No Harm member and academician points out in an email to us, “[e]ven if we are to assume that ‘soft skills’ are important, they — unlike MCAT scores and GPA — are subjectively evaluated. Who is to say one student has more ‘soft skills,’ empathy, and leadership than another? How is it measured and by who?”
Exactly so.
Claim #5: The Casper Situational-Judgment Test is a Valid Measure of “Soft” Attributes
Taking up Dr. Ford’s theme, Dr. Reddick suggested that the Casper test, which bills itself as an “an open-response situational judgment” exam, is appropriately used by some medical schools “to actually assess how … people think when [they] get presented with an ethical challenge” (1:26:36).
Unfortunately, like the AAMC’s PREview exam, which purports to assess such attributes as “reliability, resilience, adaptability, [and] ethical responsibility,” the Casper test ought to provoke skepticism. Both represent another way for medical schools to devalue traditional metrics of merit and competence in favor of admissions methods that make room for the DEI agenda.
By all means, medical schools should teach future doctors to be ethical and adaptable. (At institutions with reasonable academic standards, medical students will necessarily learn reliability and resilience.) As Dr. Goldfarb rightly pointed out, however, “we should take in the most talented students, and if we are interested in inculcating [soft skills] in them, well, we should inculcate those skills in medical school” (59:03).
Claim #6: DEI Isn’t About Lowering Standards
Dr. Ford contended that DEI in medical education “has never been about lowering the standards” (1:36:10). But if that’s true, why do standards keep lowering?
As Do No Harm has chronicled, pre-clinical grades in American medical schools are now practically non-existent, having given way to less predictive “pass/fail” measures. A number of medical schools have paused their chapters of Alpha Omega Alpha, a national medical honor society. And, as Dr. Goldfarb reminded listeners, Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination moved to “pass/fail” precisely because “underrepresented in medicine students were hurt by generally having lower ‘step’ scores” (1:48:11).
That these moves have accompanied the intrusion of DEI ideology and practice into medical education is highly instructive. The timing is no coincidence.
We invite readers to watch the debate on their own and consider these and other assertions. We think you’ll come away in agreement: DEI has no place in medical-school admissions. Merit alone should be our guidepost.
In British Columbia, a Warning on ‘Transing Kids’
COMMENTARY Canada Gender Ideology Commentary Do No Harm StaffGood neighbors warn one another when something is awry. Perhaps without meaning to, a Canadian province’s official pediatric transgender apparatus provides a warning to American readers about where “gender” ideologues will take this country if not opposed.
The official site in question, Trans Care BC, is a “provincial clinical program” operated by the publicly funded Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) in British Columbia.
Though many of Trans Care BC’s services seem designed for adults, an entire page on the program’s website is explicitly pitched to “Youth.”
On this page, one learns that “[c]onnecting with other trans, Two-Spirit[,] and non-binary youth can be a wonderful way to make friends, talk about issues that are important to you[,] and learn from others who may be going through similar experiences.”
One reads about Queer Straight Alliances (QSAs), groups that focus in part “on support, raising awareness about the issues faced by … trans people, and challenging discrimination based on gender identity.”
In a “Peer Support Directory” linked to on the page, “children” are invited to “[f]ind peer support groups and services.” Among the groups listed if one clicks the “Children & youth” audience button are
If anything, matters are even worse back on the homepage, where scrolling down produces options for “Supporting children under 12” and “Supporting youth 13–18.”
Horrifyingly, clicking on the former brings up options for “Affirmation & social transition” (bad enough) and “Medical options” (the stuff of nightmares).
The second of those pages introduces site visitors to puberty blockers (“These medications may be started soon after puberty begins”), hormone therapy (“Some youth who take puberty blockers early in adolescence go on to initiate hormone therapy when they are older”), and so-called gender-affirming surgeries (“Gender-affirming surgeries are procedures that some older adolescents and adults may access”).
Like several other pages on the Trans Care BC website, an eye-catching banner offers those who “need support” the option to “[c]ontact our team of experienced health navigators for information about gender-affirming care in B.C.”
All of this is paid for by regular Canadians. Indeed, the site shocks the conscience in part because it is so user-friendly, well-designed, thorough, and official — in a word, costly. Someone put together Trans Care BC’s website with attention to detail and a big enough budget to facilitate that careful work.
Let us have no doubts: That person has ideological allies on this side of the border. Some American states already point residents to “gender-affirming care” online, just not yet with British Columbia’s slick and seductive polish. Those allies would happily close the gap.
We can’t say we weren’t warned if we let them.
The Lancet Does Politics Again
COMMENTARY Europe DEI Medical Journal Commentary Do No Harm StaffWhen medical journals waste their time chasing ideological rainbows, they undermine the authority of physicians and the scientific basis of medical practice. That is as true in Britain as it is here.
Case in point: The Lancet, founded in 1823 by the English surgeon Thomas Wakley. Recent (and not so recent) articles in that august publication have forsaken the journal’s pledge to provide “[t]he best science for better lives” and have delivered instead run-of-the-mill progressive orthodoxies.
Among the lowlights:
We could go on but won’t. Suffice it to say that the journal’s interest in wading into political waters has not diminished.
No other conclusion is possible when one examines “A guide to anti-racist medicine,” Dr. Sruthi Saravanan’s October 24, 2026, review of the edited collection Anti-Racist Medicine: An Essential Guide to Advancing Equity in Medical Education, Research, Technology, Policy, and Practice.
That volume, edited by Zeshan Qureshi (a physician) and Mehrunisha Suleman (a “medically trained bioethicist”), bills itself as a “first-of-its-kind textbook address[ing] increasingly important questions associated with race, ethnicity, and medicine.”
Needless to say, Saravanan’s review is overwhelmingly positive.
To begin with, Saravanan sets forth the highly ideological contention that “[f]ar-right movements in many countries are fuelling xenophobia and racism and gaining traction through policy and media.”
It is “in this context,” the author continues, that the “timely” book under consideration “challenges the racist narratives and misconceptions that have been instilled in medicine.”
What are those racist narratives and misconceptions, exactly? Though Saravanan’s review is curiously short on specifics, one particular complaint does emerge — that “physicians and researchers must be,” and presumably have not been, “careful in how we define and describe racism in our scholarly efforts and clinical practice, as [racism] continues to be a determinant of health equity within minority communities.”
Note the circular reasoning thus employed. Doctors must “define” racism carefully because racism affects the health of “minority communities.” Yet how do we know that racism does that grim work until we define it? Moreover, do we have any reason to believe that insufficiently expansive definitions of racism will be accepted?
This is but one moment in Saravanan’s piece in which ideological assumptions get ahead of the evidence. Elsewhere, the author joins the book itself in calling for medical practitioners and researchers to bring an “intersectional perspective [to their work] to ensure equity is achieved.”
He suggests that “[c]linicians’ own racial biases and presumptions about people can be harmful, affecting diagnostic judgement and outcomes for patients.”
He argues that “[a]ntiracism should underpin admission processes, medical school curricula, and postgraduate training, as racial biases and prejudice can lead to differential attainment.”
He insists that “institutional racism persists in health-care systems.”
No proof of these claims makes its way into the article. Indeed, the thoughtful reader is likely to experience the piece not as an argument but as a dashed-off list of progressive medical talking points.
Perhaps most damagingly, the article repeats the book’s call for the further politicization of medical scholarship, approvingly informing us that “[t]he authors also call for medical journal editors to uphold the diverse scholarship that is necessary to advance scientific knowledge and promote equitable health care.”
In fact, accurate, evidence-based, replicable scholarship will advance scientific knowledge and promote better health outcomes for patients of all races. Whether that scholarship is “diverse” matters not.
Saravanan concludes by remarking that “Anti-Racist Medicine provides the blueprint for creating a more equitable health-care system.”
Whether or not that’s true, keeping politicized book reviews out of medical journals is certainly part of the blueprint for rescuing medicine from ideological capture.
Do No Harm Files IRS Comment on Private-School Nondiscrimination
COMMENTARY DEI Federal government, Private university Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffEarlier this week, Do No Harm submitted an official comment to the IRS on the proposed rule “Racial Nondiscrimination in Private Schools.”
We strongly support this codification of the longstanding requirement that a private school must maintain a racially nondiscriminatory policy in order to qualify for tax exemption.
Our reasons for submitting the comment are these. First, we explain why a school’s asserted good intentions should not excuse race-based discrimination. A student denied an educational opportunity because of his or her race or the race of other applicants suffers the same injury regardless of whether the school calls its discriminatory policy “benign” or “remedial.”
Second, we write in support of applying this principle to private schools claiming tax exemption. A school engaging in racial discrimination should not be able to preserve federal tax benefits (in the form of tax-exempt status) simply because it does not receive federal financial assistance in the form of actual payments.
Finally, we recommend that the IRS guard against the use of facially neutral criteria as disguised racial preferences. The Supreme Court addressed that danger directly in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard: Universities may not use application essays or other means to recreate the admissions regime the Court held unlawful. A student’s experience may be considered for what it reveals about that individual’s qualities — not as a device for awarding a preference based on race.
Do No Harm commends the Treasury Department and the IRS for a rule that equips the government to flag and eliminate racial discrimination in private education, regardless of the purpose offered to justify it.
Please read our full comment here or below.
Do No Harm Files HRSA Comment on Children’s Teaching Hospitals and Sex-Rejecting Procedures
COMMENTARY Gender Ideology Hospital System Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffEarlier today, Do No Harm submitted an official comment in support of a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) proposal that would help the government track the extent to which it is funding pediatric sex-rejecting ideology.
Though complicated, the proposed change deserves the backing of all who wish to protect children from damaging and unproven medical interventions.
The Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) Payment Program exists to provide federal funding to freestanding children’s teaching hospitals.
Such institutions usually treat fewer Medicare patients than do general teaching hospitals and consequently received less federal support until the creation of the CHGME Payment Program in 1999.
By statute, institutional grant recipients of CHGME Payment Program funding must provide annual data about their operations to the federal government. HRSA’s new proposal would add to the required data collection an additional dropdown option for three questions.
Specifically, the revised data-collection instrument would
In short, the government would gain a clearer sense of how taxpayer money is being used to train physicians in pediatric “gender-affirming care.”
HRSA asks public commenters to address “the necessity and utility of the proposed information collection for the proper performance of the agency’s functions.”
The proposal meets that standard for three reasons.
First, sex-rejecting procedures have been performed on minors at scale in the very hospitals the CHGME Payment Program funds. A Do No Harm analysis of the period 2019–2023 identified 12 hospitals as the worst-offending children’s hospitals promoting sex-rejecting procedures to minors. Every one of those 12 children’s hospitals was a CHGME Payment Program grantee.
Second, the federal government has no reliable means of collecting this information at present, and this collection supplies one, thus allowing policymakers responsible for a training program of more than $370 million a year to know whether the program is preparing physicians to deliver interventions with “very uncertain” benefits and substantial evidence of harm.
Third, given the current state of the evidence, whether a federally funded training program teaches these procedures speaks directly to the quality of the education the program provides. Training residents and fellows to deliver interventions with “very uncertain” benefits and “less uncertain” harms is not high-quality graduate medical education.
We urge our members to file comments of their own, particularly (but not exclusively) if they have firsthand experience of witnessing or engaging with gender ideology at a children’s teaching hospital funded by the CHGME Payment Program and believe that ideological intrusion to be indicative of poor quality.
Public comments needn’t be formal, lengthy, or formatted in a specific way. A few sentences will do.
Please join us in telling the HRSA that the federal government should ask CHGME Payment Program grant recipients for the information described above.
Email [email protected] to make a public comment of your own. (Be sure to mention the title “Bureau of Health Workforce Performance Data Collection, OMB No. 0906-0086-Revision.”) Deadline: Nov. 9.
Or click here, or scroll down, to read Do No Harm’s full comment.
The American Academy of Family Physicians’ Radical ‘Gender’ Tradition
COMMENTARY Gender Ideology American Academy of Family Physicians Professional organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffChronicling pediatric “gender” radicalism at the American Academy of Family Physicians’ annual conference has become something of a fall tradition at Do No Harm.
We would just as soon break the habit if allowed.
Sadly, AAFP seems determined to politicize medicine anew each year, unapologetically departing from the evidentiary standard and throwing in their lot with vogue ideology.
In 2024, for example, one AAFP conference speaker stated falsely that “[t]here’s no question that it [pubertal suppression and cross-sex hormones] works; there’s no question that it saves lives,” ignoring the fact that the exhaustive Cass Review had recently determined that the evidence for such procedures is of “poor quality.”
A 2025 session, titled “Gender Affirming Puberty Suppression: Initiation and Management,” instructed attendees to give into a 12-year-old’s easily manipulable desires “over and against the counsel of both his parents and the mass of emerging medical evidence,” as the Washington Stand would later characterize the presentation.
This year’s conference, held October 20–24 in Nashville, continued the trend, not least in a session titled “Family Physicians’ Role in Caring for Transgender Youth,” led by Kevin S. Wang, MD.
There, Dr. Wang delivered a presentation so steeped in ideology that one questions whether a single word had scientific value.
The problems started with the Learning Objectives themselves, three propositions that took for granted the desirability of “gender-affirming medical care,” including “surgical care,” for children.
Shortly thereafter, Wang’s presentation featured a legal map dedicated to “adolescent transgender healthcare services” and composed from an explicitly ideological perspective.
(Specifically, the map revealed which states ban “medically necessary medication and surgical care for transgender youth,” a framing that begs the question whether any such “care” is, in fact, “medically necessary.”)
Things got worse later in the presentation. One slide argued falsely that “[t]ransgender healthcare is lifesaving care,” a claim clearly meant to apply to the “youths” mentioned elsewhere on the slide.
Another purported to offer a “summary of the current evidence” concerning “the provision of healthcare services to transgender and gender-diverse adolescents” but included a graphic implying that some of the so-called evidence comes from WPATH, a discredited medical “authority” currently being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for helping providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents.
A grotesque slide near the presentation’s midway point concerned “[t]alking with families at visits” and presented a series of leading questions (e.g., “Do you feel more like a boy? A girl? Both? Neither?”) with which children might be inducted into pediatric transgender ideology.
Still later slides considered how best to treat “[y]ounger gender-diverse patients” less than 11 years of age, with the second slide in that sequence urging physicians and parents to “support” gender-dysphoric young children with “clothing” and “pronouns.”
The same slide promised without evidence that such actions “provid[e] significant behavioral and mental health relief and improvement.”
This is ideological radicalism, not science. It belongs at a political convention, not the flagship annual gathering of an influential medical professional organization.
As previously stated, Do No Harm would love to wake up to a world in which the AAFP can be trusted to stick to the facts, stop advocating for damaging, irreversible medical procedures, and draw the line at manipulating children.
Will 2027 be the year? We have few reasons to suspect so, but we hope for it.
Judgment Day for the American Psychological Association
COMMENTARY DEI American Psychological Association Professional organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe bill may be coming due for unchecked antisemitism at the American Psychological Association (APA). All who oppose the politicization of scientific professional organizations should welcome that outcome.
Though the APA has long allowed political ideology to seep into its work as “the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States,” its current trouble can be traced to a recent campaign objecting to an APA resolution on antisemitic and anti-Jewish prejudice, amended in 2007.
There, among other observations, the APA Council of Representatives noted (accurately) that “the link between extreme anti-Israel rhetoric and deeds directed against Jewish individuals and communities has become an observable global trend and has at times unleashed demonization and dehumanization of Jews.”
Put simply, criticism of the state of Israel too often provides cover for Jew-hatred of the basest kind.
This concession to reality did not sit well with Psychologists for Justice in Palestine (PJP), a “collective of psychologists, psychology students, and affiliated mental health professionals … who are in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian Liberation.” In 2025, PJP delivered a petition to APA leadership calling for the organization to “reject the conflation of antisemitism with criticism of the nation-state of Israel and [to] recognize that this conflation is discriminatory.”
PJP’s petition made for uneasy reading. Arguing that the 2007 amended resolution had “been used to obstruct efforts to promote and protect human rights,” PJP complained of Israel’s “violence and racism toward Palestinians,” as well as the Jewish state’s “genocidal actions.”
Tellingly, the latter phrase was hyperlinked and took readers to a United Nations website featuring commentary by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, an “expert” with her own history of antisemitic commentary.
This unhappiness on the part of an APA faction might have mattered less had that faction’s views not come to be represented at the highest level of the organization. But they did.
Among the signers of PJP’s petition was Candice Hargons, who, earlier this month, was elected the 2028 APA president. (Hargons will spend 2027 as president-elect.)
Nor is Hargons’s relationship with PJP limited to her name on a single document. Instead, PJP formally endorsed Hargons’s candidacy, a move that Hargons publicly declared herself “honored and deeply grateful to share.”
Coming several months before this exchange was the APA Council of Representatives’ February adoption of a new 2026 resolution on antisemitism, a vote celebrated by PJP.
Unlike the 2007 amended resolution, the 2026 document invokes “the weaponization of antisemitism” — defined therein as “the manipulative or bad faith invocation of accusations [of antisemitism] to silence legitimate criticism, scholarship, or activism.”
Such weaponization, the document continues, “creates significant adverse consequences for Jews and non-Jews who oppose the state of Israel’s actions and support Palestinian rights.”
Notable as well in the 2026 resolution is a “Therefore Be It Resolved” clause stating “that the American Psychological Association will conduct regular impact assessments to ensure that our antisemitism policy addresses the harms of antisemitism along with intersecting forms of oppression” (emphasis added). One might reasonably ask why a concept from Critical Race Theory has intruded into a document guiding institutional policy toward antisemitism.
By late July, the situation had worsened. As Psychologists Against Antisemitism executive board member Daniel Balva recounted in the Times of Israel, a PJP email in advance of the August 2026 APA conference urged attendees to “show solidarity by wearing a keffiyeh or ‘Palestine colors,’ [to] read a prewritten ‘Land and Genocide Acknowledgement’ before professional presentations, [and to] attend programming focused on Palestinian liberation.”
One weeps to recall that many academic psychologists attending the annual gathering may have done so on the taxpayer’s dime.
Happily, the federal government is taking steps to oppose the politicization of the nation’s largest association of psychologists. In September, a Department of Education advisory committee on accreditation recommended suspending recognition of the APA’s Commission on Accreditation over the organization’s continued failures to address antisemitism.
Just yesterday, the House Committee on Education & Workforce released “Antisemitism at the American Psychological Association,” a scathing majority staff report concluding that “radical activist-academics have successfully co-opted the APA to politicize the association and promote ideology that demonizes Israel, minimizes Hamas terrorism, and portrays Jews as white oppressors.”
Thus do Hargons and other APA leaders find themselves in an increasingly difficult position. Whereas at one time the politicization of science could be quietly effected, reformers are now watching. So is Uncle Sam.
No longer will the APA and similar organizations be automatically treated as neutral expert bodies, especially where their role in academic accreditation is concerned. That trust will have to be re-earned.
The way out of this mess is simple enough, though admittedly not easy given the apparent beliefs of the association’s incoming regime. Depoliticize, stop giving cover to antisemites, and stay out of the “Palestine” business altogether.
Hargons et al. should take that advice seriously. The APA’s continuing relevance as a representative of American psychologists may depend on it.
DSM, Not DEI
COMMENTARY DEI Medical Journal Commentary Do No Harm StaffA series of commentaries in the May 2026 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry plots a future “roadmap” for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a new version of which is currently being planned by the American Psychiatric Association’s Future DSM Strategic Committee.
For the sake of patients of all races and ethnicities, we hope these stated plans for the future DSM are seriously reconsidered.
Our reason is that at least two of the articles approach psychiatric diagnostics from a politicized angle. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the principles of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) are among the most important philosophical — we do not say scientific — pillars holding up the proposed DSM edifice.
Take, for example, “The Future of DSM: A Strategic Vision for Incorporating Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Environmental Determinants and Intersectionality,” whose lead author, Milton L. Wainberg, MD, is chair of the Future DSM Strategic Committee’s Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Environmental Determinants of Mental Health Subcommittee.
Wainberg et al. argue that “future DSM models could embed culture and … intersectionality not only as contextual variables that modify stressors, access, and stigma, but also as central, transdiagnostic processes shaping diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.”
They propose that viewing so-called socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental determinants of health (SCE-DoH) “through an intersectional lens places emphasis on the fact that structural advantages and disadvantages do not affect everyone equally due to differential exposure to risk and access to support.”
They argue, moreover, that “[a] richer integration [of] SCE-DoH as both context and process is essential to capturing the complexity of lived experience and ensuring diagnostic equity and accuracy.”
As is often the case with bad ideas, there is a kernel of truth here. Psychiatrists should consider the extent to which their patients’ psychiatric illnesses have a cultural context. And it is certainly the case that one’s environment, real or virtual (e.g., social media), can adversely impact one’s mental health.
Nevertheless, the thinking expressed by Wainberg et al. is dangerous. Proposing that intersectionality and its perceived “systems of oppression” be treated as “central, transdiagnostic processes shaping diagnosis” risks placing ideological constructs on equal diagnostic footing with the appearance, duration, and clinical significance of actual psychiatric symptoms.
More than that: By focusing on patients’ “intersectional” identities — i.e., their presumed victimization as a result of their race and gender and disability status, religion, et cetera — psychiatrists risk reducing individual care-seekers to representatives of crass political categories.
The second commentary in question, “Initial Strategy for the Future of DSM,” offers more of the same, contending, for example, that “entrenched responses to racial characteristics … have an impact on psychiatric assessment” and that the future DSM has a goal of “integrating … socioeconomic, cultural and environmental determinants of mental health.”
As lead author María A. Oquendo, MD, PhD, chair of the overall Future DSM Strategic Committee, notes, the Dahlgren-Whitehead model of health determinants “recommends consideration of socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental determinants in clinical formulations and treatment planning.” They add that the future DSM should “integrate these determinants and intersectionality into psychiatric assessment.”
That plan isn’t a good one for patients of any race. Yes, psychiatrists must take into account the cultural contexts of mental-health disorders, as previously acknowledged, but to wed “social determinants of health” ideology to “intersectionality,” as Oquendo et al. propose, is necessarily to go beyond scientifically grounded diagnostics and treatment into the realm of political theory.
Moreover, as Do No Harm has previously explained, it is not the role of medical professionals to become activists or reformers. Such activities naturally follow from “social determinants of health” ideology and are well beyond the purview of physicians. (Again, we grant that doctors must seek to understand the context in which a particular disease presents.)
As for nonpsychiatric medicine, so for psychiatric medicine: The mission creep that occurs when psychiatrists chase the Dahlgren-Whitehead rainbow comes at the detriment of medicine’s core focus. Diagnostic accuracy and proper treatment will follow when psychiatrists examine the patients in front of them as individuals, not as representatives of intersectionally victimized classes.
If the next version of the DSM encourages that framework instead of the one described in these commentaries, it will have done very well.
Do No Harm Expands IRS Complaint Calling for Investigation into American Medical Association Foundation’s Tax-Exempt Status
COMMENTARY DEI Medical association Press Release Do No Harm StaffSalt Lake City, UT: October 28, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm expanded its complaint against the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation concerning the operation of racially discriminatory scholarships in violation of 501(c)(3) requirements, calling on the IRS to investigate the organization’s continued eligibility for tax-exempt status. The addendum to Do No Harm’s earlier-filed complaint presents evidence that multiple scholarships continue to discriminate against medical students based on race and documents the AMA Foundation’s insufficient attempts to address the issues raised in Do No Harm’s original complaint.
“The AMA Foundation has done little to remedy the substantial problems identified in our original complaint regarding its Physicians of Tomorrow program,” said Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer at Do No Harm. “Months later, race-based scholarships remain in place, having undergone only superficial changes. For one such scholarship, replacing one racial preference with another does nothing to cure the underlying discrimination or end the harm that persists. Moreover, our complaint addendum provides evidence pointing to the Foundation’s reliance on proxies that obscure the continued use of racial preferences. Simply put, these valuable and lucrative scholarship opportunities cannot be awarded based on race. The IRS should include the revised scholarships in any investigation related to Do No Harm’s original complaint and hold the Foundation accountable under federal law, which grants the organization a significant tax advantage at a cost ultimately borne by taxpayers.”
Background
Filed on April 7, 2026, Do No Harm’s original complaint highlighted various AMA Foundation medical-school scholarships that favored certain racial groups over others in violation of 501(c)(3) requirements, which prohibit tax-exempt organizations from engaging in activities contrary to established public policy, including racial discrimination. The scholarships in question initially included the Dr. Richard Allen Williams & Genita Evangelista Johnson/Association of Black Cardiologists Scholarship, which required applicants to be “African American/Black”; the Patricia L. Austin Family Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship, which restricted eligibility to applicants “of Eastern European descent”; and the Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship, which limited eligibility to black, Hispanic/Latino, and “Indigenous” applicants.
Within 10 days of Do No Harm’s April complaint, the Foundation quietly removed the discriminatory scholarships in question from its “Physicians of Tomorrow” program website.
However, now, the AMA Foundation has attempted to revise the Austin Scholarship by swapping the previous racial-eligibility criterion for a new one. Instead of a preference for certain European racial groups, the scholarship now states that it gives “preference” to “students who are enrolled members of, or otherwise affiliated with, a federally recognized American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) tribe or group.”
Similarly, although the Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship now states that it is open to applicants “who come from economically disadvantaged and vulnerable communities and/or demonstrate a dedication to serving vulnerable or underserved populations,” there is evidence that the Foundation is using these facially race-neutral categories as a proxy for prohibited race-based preferences. For example, among other indications, the AMA promotes and plays some role in candidate selection for the Foundation’s Underrepresented in Medicine award and describes it as being “for African American, Latino/Hispanic, or Native Americans/Native Hawaiians/Alaska Natives scholars.”
Click here to read the addendum to our complaint.
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 26 countries.
Wisconsin Voters to Consider Discrimination Amendment
COMMENTARY Wisconsin DEI Medical School, State government Commentary Do No Harm StaffThis election cycle, Wisconsinites will vote on Question 3, a legislatively referred amendment to the state constitution formally known as the “Prohibit Government Discrimination or Preferential Treatment Amendment.”
The discourse surrounding the question has not been thorough, and additional analysis is warranted.
First the text. Wisconsinites will see the following on their ballots:
While both the U.S. and Wisconsin constitutions already mandate legal equality, race-based programs and preferences have continued to exist at the state and local levels of government. The proposed amendment would further strengthen the prohibition on governmental discrimination for any reason.
At stake, as acknowledged by both supporters and opponents, is the ability of Badger State officials to balance disparities by enacting policies that favor certain groups.
State Senator Chris Larson explained his opposition to the amendment in a January press release on the grounds that the amendment would “preven[t] any government program in Wisconsin from … attempting to reverse [the] state’s shameful racial, ethnic, and gender disparities.”
State Senator Stephen Nass has argued for the amendment on strikingly similar grounds: “Past discrimination, however wrong, cannot be corrected with more discrimination. Old Wounds cannot be healed by inflicting new ones.”
However, what has been largely missing from the debate is analysis of how the amendment would affect Wisconsin’s healthcare pipeline, most prominently by impacting which candidates are admitted to the state’s public medical schools.
This is a serious matter. As Do No Harm chronicled last year, black applicants to the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH) had nearly 10 times the odds of admission compared to Asian or white applicants with the same MCAT score and GPA, according to the institution’s 2024 admissions data.
Black students accepted to UWSMPH had an average MCAT score in the 62nd percentile, whereas whites were in the 86th percentile and Asians in the 87th.
Based on that year’s data, the acceptance rate for black applicants to UWSMPH was more than six times greater than that of Asian applicants.
Given the clear link between MCAT scores, medical-school outcomes, and performance on licensing examinations, these elevations of race and ethnicity over academic merit have legitimate public-policy consequences.
At least arguably, Wisconsin is not training the most promising future physicians who knock on its institutional doors.
Badger State voters should consider carefully the specifically medical consequences of Question 3.
How Will Colorado Protect Children?
COMMENTARY Colorado Gender Ideology State government Commentary Do No Harm StaffTwo Colorado ballot initiatives are asking voters to help determine how the state will interact with gender-dysphoric minors.
The first, Proposition 134 (previously Initiative 109), concerns the use of sex-based categories in school sports.
It asks
The text of the proposition is worth perusing in its entirety. Debate, however, has largely concerned questions of fairness and safety, values claimed by both opponents and supporters of the measure.
Nadine Bridges, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group One Colorado, told news outlet Colorado Politics, for example, that the proposition in question is “written … vaguely” and “open[s] the door to unintended consequences that can cause serious harm to all of our kids.”
Proponent organization Protect Kids Colorado, meanwhile, states that “[b]igger, stronger biological males are invading girls’ sports in Colorado, taking away our girls’ dignity, safety, and opportunity.”
Do No Harm adds that male athletic advantage is a physiological finding, not a matter of opinion, as institutions as disparate as the U.S. Supreme Court and the International Olympic Committee now agree.
Differences in lean mass, cardiac output, and skeletal geometry appear before puberty and widen sharply after it, a process affecting not only the respective sexes’ athletic performance on average but also female-athlete safety during competition.
Crucially, published research finds that testosterone suppression narrows but does not close the performance gap, which is why the eligibility question does not resolve itself pharmacologically when female-identifying males undergo hormone therapy.
While the performance capacity of individual male and female athletes will obviously vary, science shows that post-pubescent biological males retain significant physical advantages over biological females.
The second measure, Proposition 135 (previously Initiative 110), would modify existing Colorado law “by prohibiting surgery on a minor for the purpose of altering the minor’s biological sex characteristics.” (The full text, which governs both what healthcare professionals may do and what state or federal funds may pay for, is available online.)
Here, too, both opponents and supporters of the measure lay claim to the mantel of child protection, with Families Not Politics, the One Colorado–led campaign against the measure, maintaining that the change could “interfere with medically necessary care for serious conditions that affect kids well beyond transgender youth” and Protect Kids Colorado pointing to the “irreversible” nature of such procedures.
Important for Colorado voters to keep in mind is that Proposition 135 is about minors’ access to “gender-affirming care.” The measure in question is about age, not the ability of adults to consent to medical procedures performed on their adult bodies.
Systematic reviews commissioned by national health authorities in England, Sweden, and Finland found the evidence for pediatric gender interventions to be weak or of low quality, and each of those health systems has narrowed pediatric transgender practice in response.
Moreover, loss of future fertility is a foreseeable consequence of some of these procedures, and consent doctrine treats such irreversible interventions in minors severely.
Even the terminology attending the debate can teach us something. “Treatment,” a word used often by advocates of pediatric “gender-affirming care,” implies a diagnosis, an endpoint, and a demonstrated benefit.
Both ballot measures have lasting consequences for how children can be protected from potentially harmful activities and interventions.
That is the crux of the matter and the question that Centennial State voters should answer this fall. Colorado voters should take their time to familiarize themselves with these proposals and understand the full implications before casting their ballot.
Gender Identity and DEI Ballot Initiatives in Arizona
COMMENTARY Arizona DEI, Gender Ideology State government Commentary Do No Harm StaffAmong the decisions Arizonans must make this election season are whether to approve two ballot measures, one concerning transgenderism and another concerning “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). Both require thoughtful consideration on the part of Grand Canyon State voters.
Proposition 318 addresses how both public- and private-school athletic competitions will henceforth be governed.
According to the ballot language, the proposition would:
A “no” vote would “have the effect of maintaining the current laws relating to student athletics.” Current law bars male public-school students from participating on girls’ teams but does not apply to many private schools and does not address locker rooms.
As is frequently the case when such questions come before the public, advocates and opponents of Prop 318 posture themselves as focused on how best to protect Arizona children.
The Arizona ACLU argues, for example, that the measure would “insert politicians and lawyers into our bathrooms, locker rooms, and coaches’ offices,” while the supportive organization the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) stresses the dangers associated with forcing biological women and girls to share playing fields with men and boys.
Do No Harm asks Arizonans to consider the finding that males have a physiological athletic advantage, as institutions as disparate as the U.S. Supreme Court and the International Olympic Committee now agree.
Differences in lean mass, cardiac output, and skeletal geometry appear before puberty and widen sharply after it, a process affecting not only the respective sexes’ athletic performance on average but also female-athlete safety during competition.
Crucially, published research finds that testosterone suppression narrows but does not close the performance gap, which is why the eligibility question does not resolve itself pharmacologically when female-identifying males undergo hormone therapy.
While the performance capacity of individual male and female athletes will obviously vary, science shows that post-pubescent biological males retain significant physical advantages over biological females.
A second Arizona ballot measure, Proposition 142, would amend the state constitution to prohibit
An important part of the analysis of Prop 142 is how Arizona’s healthcare pipeline might be affected by what is, at heart, a set of anti-DEI provisions.
Should Prop 142 be approved by voters, public medical schools would be prevented from using candidates’ agreement or disagreement with DEI standards — “[their] support [for] preferential treatment or discrimination based on race” — as criteria in the hiring and admissions processes. Opponents argue that this result risks narrowing talent pipelines, limiting innovation, and reducing access to opportunity for otherwise qualified candidates.
Arizona voters should take their time to familiarize themselves with these proposals and understand the full implications before casting their ballot.
Washingtonians Consider ‘Gender’ Initiatives
COMMENTARY Washington Gender Ideology State government Commentary Do No Harm StaffTwo citizen-initiated ballot measures in the State of Washington are asking voters to consider protections for girls in school sports and the rights of parents to know and oversee how schools interact with their children where healthcare matters are concerned.
The first, Washington Initiative 638, otherwise known as the Sex Verification Requirements for Female School Sports Initiative,
The second, Washington Initiative 001, the Parental Right to Review Education Materials, Receive Notifications, and Opt Out of Sexual-Health Education Initiative,
A closer inspection of both measures is helpful. As Ballotpedia makes clear (quoting from the Washington Secretary of State’s website), “Initiative 638 would require school districts and nonprofit organizations that regulate interscholastic activities to ‘prohibit biologically male students from competing with and against female students’ in sports [that have] separate team or individual competitions for male and female students.”
Furthermore, the initiative “would require students seeking to participate in athletic activities designated for female students to submit documentation from their healthcare provider verifying ‘the student’s biological sex [based on] … reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels’.”
Male athletic advantage is a physiological finding, not a matter of opinion, as institutions as disparate as the U.S. Supreme Court and the International Olympic Committee now agree.
In addition, differences in lean mass, cardiac output, and skeletal geometry appear before puberty and widen sharply after it, a process affecting not only the respective sexes’ athletic performance on average but also female-athlete safety during competition.
Published research finds that testosterone suppression narrows but does not close the performance gap, which is why the eligibility question does not resolve itself pharmacologically when female-identifying males undergo hormone therapy.
While the performance capacity of individual male and female athletes will obviously vary, science shows that post-pubescent biological males retain significant physical advantages over biological females.
Concerning Initiative 001, Ballotpedia advises that the measure would “re-enact the following rights, which HB 1296 repealed” in 2025:
Initiative 001 is perhaps best thought of as restoring parents’ right to be notified in a medical context. Current U.S. Supreme Court precedent considers parents to be the primary decisionmakers for their child’s healthcare, and the availability of health-related instruction or services at a school probably does not change that fact, though the Court has not specifically ruled on the question.
Do No Harm urges Washington voters to carefully consider the proposed measures and evaluate the consequences prior to voting.
Do No Harm Stands with California Dad in Supreme Court Bid Concerning ‘Gender’ Interventions and Parental Consent
COMMENTARY California Gender Ideology Federal government, Health system, University System Commentary Judicial Do No Harm StaffToday, Do No Harm filed an amicus brief in Hudacko v. Regents of the University of California supporting a dad who is fighting back against the University of California system, its UCSF hospital personnel, and his ex-wife, among others, who he alleges worked together to have a sex-rejecting surgical procedure performed on his minor son in violation of his parental rights. Ted Hudacko is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case and revive his claims against the California state actors following the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ dismissal.
At issue are important questions concerning parental rights and the rules by which state actors can be held accountable for violating those rights.
We urge the Court to grant Hudacko’s petition and consider his case.
The circumstances of Hudacko’s alleged claims make for an appalling read. During Hudacko’s 2020 divorce from wife, Christine Underhill, a California family court judge stripped his parental rights because he would not affirm Underhill’s claim that their son was “transgender.”
Yet the custody order contained an important carve-out: Any “gender identity”–related surgery on their minor son had to have Hudacko’s written consent or be approved via court order.
Nevertheless, without either, state medical providers at the UC San Francisco Child & Adolescent Gender Center surgically inserted a cross-sex hormone–dispensing implant into the young man’s arm. As Hudacko explains it, he learned of the situation only after receiving a billing statement from his insurance provider for over $200,000 for “surgery.”
The Ninth Circuit dismissed Hudacko’s claims against the UCSF state defendants, determining that they were protected by the qualified immunity doctrine because it was not clear that the procedure in question was “surgery.”
In our brief, we explain that harmful and unproven sex-rejecting procedures for minors have become a serious medical scandal, demonstrating the need for the Court to clarify the rules under which parents may protect their children from becoming the next victims.
Specifically, we explain in our brief that the defendants in the case are proponents of a radical ideology that erases sex and enshrines gender identity. Yet, sex isn’t so easily eliminated. Sex is objective, binary, and immutable — every single cell of the body is forever encoded and operating as either male or female. “Gender identity,” by contrast, is based on a psychological state. At bottom, it is about “feelings,” and it is thus subjective and mutable. As we note in our brief, there are many good reasons that parents of children with symptoms of gender dysphoria may approach such a diagnosis with skepticism — among them, the documented “likely” “role of social influence,” such as media and peers, to shape one’s feelings.
Given these realities, it is unsurprising that there is a complete lack of reliable evidence for any benefit resulting from sex-rejecting procedures for minors and that these interventions can further inflict serious harms.
As we point out, “all well-designed systematic reviews — conducted by experts in Finland, England, Sweden, and elsewhere — conclude that the evidence for sex-denying interventions is weak.” Moreover, experts (and even some commendably candid, though reckless, proponents of these interventions) have catalogued the various risks of sex-rejecting procedures, which demonstrate the danger of subjecting young people to them. These potential risks include adverse effects on fertility, brain development, and much more.
To the extent that parents like Ted Hudacko object to sex-denying interventions for their children, they do so wisely.
Science is already explaining why pediatric “gender-affirming care” is unjustified and dangerous. It is now up to the Supreme Court to determine the rules by which state practitioners who disregard that evidence may be held accountable.
Will Virginia Voters Codify Transgender Ideology This Year?
COMMENTARY, Gender Ideology, State Government, Virginia Virginia Gender Ideology Commentary Do No Harm StaffEarly voting has already begun in the Old Dominion, and Virginians are currently answering two questions that could permanently embed transgender ideology into the commonwealth’s constitution. Our Virginia readers should familiarize themselves with these major proposals.
Although neither proposed constitutional amendment is, on its face, “gender”-related, they both have broad language that may implicate “gender”-related issues.
Question 1, for example, reads as follows and seems on its face merely to concern the legality of various reproductive decisions:
Question 2, meanwhile, appears as a straightforward codification of the judicially guaranteed right to same-sex marriage:
However, both questions contain words or clauses that could place beyond the reach of future voters broad issues concerning how the commonwealth treats gender-dysphoric children.
For example, whereas Question 1 purports to only establish a constitutional right to reproductive freedom, its list of pregnancy-related categories includes “fertility care,” an umbrella phrase so broad it could potentially encompass sterilizing procedures, including those employed during pediatric “gender transitions.”
The reader will note that the text is silent on the question of age. Finally, as noted by the Guttmacher Institute, Virginia’s abortion laws are currently quite permissive compared to the rest of the United States.
Question 2 is, if anything, even broader in its potential implications. By “affirm[ing] that two adults may marry regardless of sex [or] gender” (emphasis added), the proposed amendment asks Virginians to embed those classifications into their constitution as distinct and separate legal categories. That distinction of “sex” and “gender” is rooted in transgender ideology.
Such a codification could have massive consequences for future adolescents, not only in healthcare settings but in private spaces and on the courts and playing fields on which boys and girls are meant to have equal athletic opportunity.
Additionally, Virginians considering this amendment should know that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Obergefell v. Hodges and Loving v. Virginia already mandate same-sex and interracial marriage, respectively, in the Commonwealth and all other 49 states.
Both of these constitutional amendments may have broader implications for the Commonwealth and its laws than first appears from the text. Virginia voters should take their time to familiarize themselves with these proposals and understand the full implications before casting their ballot.
Medical Schools Should Teach Medicine, Not Environmentalism
COMMENTARY DEI Emory University School of Medicine Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffDo No Harm grades medical schools according to measurable standards of academic excellence and resistance to politicized ideology. The Planetary Health Report Card (PHRC), founded by medical students in 2019, grades them on how tightly they embrace “climate” orthodoxy.
PHRC’s members say of their initiative, “As future health professionals, we must be prepared to address the impacts of human-caused environmental changes on our patients’ health, and to understand and mitigate the environmental impact of clinical care.”
As such, the report card itself, now evaluating “over 100 medical schools in 15 nations,” grades institutions according to the muscularity of their
Take, for example, the Emory University School of Medicine, the top-ranked American medical school in PHRC’s 2026 report. As the following screen capture indicates, the Georgia institution scores an overall grade of “A,” with “A+’s” in every category except “Campus Sustainability.” (Time to order some recycling bins, Emory.)
Or take the 54th-ranked (and last-placed) American medical school, the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria. That institution earns an overall “D” with outright “F’s” in “Planetary Health Curriculum” and “Community Outreach & Advocacy.”
Perusing one of the narrative reports to which these rankings link helps us to unpack the grades. The Emory University School of Medicine’s report card, for example, explains that the institution “is in its sixth year of implementing a faculty and student co-created climate change & environmental health pre-clinical curriculum.”
Moreover, 2026 will be “the fourth year of a longitudinal Climate Change and Environmental Health (CCEH) ‘Thread’ (or longitudinal portion of the curriculum) spanning all 4 years, with the last 1.5 years seeing significant focus on content and immersive activities integrated into the clerkship or clinical phase of the required curriculum.”
PHRC sums up, “As Emory envisions transforming to a symptom-based pre-clinical curriculum, the curriculum team is re-imagining planetary health content as [an] authentic context for patient pathophysiology and narratives.”
Here we come to the problem with grading medical schools on the basis of their conformity to non-medical values. While there is obviously nothing wrong with “Campus Sustainability” (or, more specifically, with recycling bins), medical educators err seriously when their curricula veer away from the foundational sciences, clinical training, and patient-care instruction that students need if they are to become effective doctors.
In medical school as elsewhere, the days, weeks, months, and years are necessarily limited. Every time one devotes part of the curriculum to climate change, less of the curriculum remains for actual medical science.
Disappointingly, Emory not only earns but celebrates its Planetary Health Report Card marks. So, to give a few more examples, do the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine (second place among American medical schools), the UConn School of Medicine (fifth place), and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (eighth place).
If we had our way, medical schools such as Loma Linda University, with its “D” in the PHRC’s “Planetary Health Curriculum” category and “A” in our own rankings, would put out a press release plugging that contrast: “That’s right, guys. We just do medicine here.”
Perhaps that would set an example for other institutions to follow.
Do No Harm Files FCC Comment on E-Rate Program Review
COMMENTARY Gender Ideology Federal government Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffEarlier today, Do No Harm submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a formal comment in response to the notice of proposed rulemaking “FCC to Review E-Rate Program to Ensure Congress’s Vision.”
We strongly support the proposed rule.
The FCC’s E-Rate program, administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company, funds networks and devices in public schools around the country. Such educational institutions rely heavily on the program for connectivity, student access, and electronic instruction.
Yet, as our comment makes clear, E-Rate-funded networks have become a channel through which radical gender ideology reaches children, often without their parents’ knowledge.
Congress has already attached to E-Rate limitations that, properly enforced, empower parents to better protect their children, and we urge the FCC to affirm and strengthen those measures.
Please read the full comment here or below.
Do No Harm Files Series of Support Briefs Coast to Coast, Stands with Girls and Women for Safety and Fairness in School Athletics
COMMENTARY Washington Gender Ideology State government Commentary Judicial Do No Harm StaffOver the past several weeks, Do No Harm has filed a series of amicus briefs to aid courts throughout the country as they continue grappling with questions concerning the legality of permitting biological males to participate in female sports.
In June, the Supreme Court confirmed that Title IX and the Constitution permit states to mandate sex-segregated sports teams. However, now percolating through various courts is the issue of whether states and federal-funding recipients may separate school sports by sex but then carve out exceptions based on athletes’ self-described “gender identity.”
Do No Harm stands with those who say “no” — and, by extension, with law and science.
The first case, Brown v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, was recently escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court through an emergency request by a young girl who alleges she was assaulted by a transgender-identifying male athlete during a girls’ sports tournament. She’s asking the Court to require Washington state officials to protect girls’ sports and uphold Title IX’s guarantee of safe and equal opportunities for women.
On October 9, 2026, Do No Harm filed its third amicus brief in the case, supporting this courageous girl. In briefs filed with the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court, we argue that “Title IX forbids — and science does not support — identity-based exceptions to sex-based sports teams.”
Specifically, we argue in our brief to the Supreme Court that, while the sex of the participants matters in sports, participants’ self-declared “gender identity” does not. Moreover, we make plain that sports programs that prioritize “identity” over sex violate Title IX.
The first of these points relies on the fact that sex is rooted in science, a reality inextricably tied to safety and fairness in sports. “Identity,” by contrast, is a psychological concept or feeling. Feelings do not matter more than biology in competitive sports and do not override concerns related to male participation in sporting events designed for adolescent girls.
In our second point, we explain that current practices enforced by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association and state officials violate Title IX. Under Title IX, recipients of federal funding may either create co-ed teams or sex-based teams. However, the choice is mutually exclusive, and, whichever arrangement is chosen, an “equal athletic opportunity” must be afforded for members of both sexes.
As our briefs recognize, in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (2026), the Supreme Court made clear that, under Title IX, biology provides the safety and fairness justifications for dividing school sports teams by biological sex. And since, often, mixed-sex teams could deny an equal athletic opportunity to females, funding recipients must “typically maintain separate women’s and men’s sports teams” to comply with Title IX.
When Washington chooses to separate teams by sex but then allows biological males to play on the women’s and girls’ teams, its separation of the sexes is not sanctioned by Title IX’s exclusive safety and fairness rationales for separation. In addition, by forcing women and girls to compete alongside biological males, Washington fails to afford an equal athletic opportunity to women and girls, endangering them and denying them fair play in contravention of Title IX’s prohibition on discriminating on the basis of biological sex.
Moreover, as B.P.J. confirms, the ongoing debate of medical and scientific evidence has not settled the claim that subjecting a male athlete to sex-rejecting interventions removes the advantage he has over female athletes.
These are not mere legal abstractions. In Brown v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, a 15-year-old female wrestler, K.M.K., alleges she was matched against and sexually assaulted by a male athlete during a girls’ tournament. In her complaint, K.M.K. details multiple sexually offensive acts, which she describes as not only horrific and humiliating but also as what led her to lose the match and, ultimately, her place as a winner in the tournament.
What courts decide in this and similar cases will affect the present and future safety of women and girls on athletic courts and fields.
Yet the gender-dysphoric male athletes subjected to dangerous medical interventions are themselves a second class of victims. As Do No Harm’s briefs detail, these so-called treatments lack evidentiary support for treating pediatric gender dysphoria; may worsen psychiatric symptoms; and can lead to a range of long-term health consequences, including adverse effects on bone health, cardiovascular and metabolic function, fertility, and much more.
Washington errs both by denying female athletes an “equal athletic opportunity” and by tacitly encouraging a regime of risky and unproven pediatric sex-rejecting interventions.
Other cases unfolding along these lines make equally vivid the need for courts to protect American children from the consequences of transgender ideology.
U.S. v. Maine Department of Education, now pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, asks whether the Pine Tree State’s “inclusive” school-athletics policies deny female athletes the opportunity to engage in fair competition. (Read our amicus brief here.)
Female Athletes United v. Ellison and U.S. v. Minnesota Department of Education, both pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, ask similar questions in the North Star State.
Do No Harm eagerly awaits the outcomes of these cases and the cessation of efforts by states and other federal funding recipients to undermine or ignore Title IX in the name of transgender ideology.
Justice demands that state lawlessness be condemned.
Debate Analysis: Setting the Record Straight
COMMENTARY DEI Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffLast Friday, Do No Harm founder and board chair Stanley Goldfarb, MD, took to the debate stage at the University of South Florida to consider the question “Does ‘DEI’ Help or Hurt Medicine?”
Our man did stellar work, and we encourage readers to dig into his opening statement here or watch the full debate here.
Among the contentions produced by Dr. Goldfarb’s opponents were a number of claims that misrepresent the scientific record or fail to grapple fully with available data.
The following is an analysis of some of those claims, offered for the edification of readers who have watched the debate — and of those who haven’t.
Claim #1: Small MCAT Score Differences Don’t Matter
Appealing to fairness, Dr. Bonzo Reddick, district health director for Georgia’s Coastal Health District, asked the debate audience to imagine two medical-school applicants: one with an MCAT score of 520 and one “from rural Georgia who got a 510” (1:25:30).
Dr. Reddick would have us think that such a score disparity is insignificant. Yet, as Dr. Goldfarb pointed out (1:29:12), what may seem to be a small difference in MCAT achievement does matter. As the AAMC’s own data reveal, an 11.2-point difference represents one full standard deviation. While differences between a 510 and 520 may sound small, they are big, and they lead to a big difference in applicants’ future performance.
Claim #2: MCAT Scores Are “Kind of a Wash” Above a Certain Threshold
Referencing his years as chair of the Community Medicine Department at the Mercer University School of Medicine, Dr. Reddick contended that “[o]nce you get to a certain [MCAT] score … it’s kind of a wash at that point.” For example, “[e]very student who got a 503 or higher on their MCAT had unimpeded access” — i.e., academic success — “through medical school” (52:16).
But national data do not align with the phenomenon Dr. Reddick claims to have observed. AAMC studies using the current MCAT find that scores continue to predict medical-school outcomes and performance on licensing examinations. Other research has linked licensing performance with later practice outcomes.
The observation that students above 503 can succeed is one thing. (For what it’s worth, an MCAT score of 503 represents the 58th percentile, a relatively low bar considering that 55,000 applicants vie annually for 23,000 medical-school slots.) But that observation should not be treated as the equivalent of concluding that a 503 and, say, a 520 tell admissions committees the same thing.
Claim #3: “Mission-Aligned Admissions” Are Valid Even if “Holistic Admissions” Aren’t
In his opening statement, Dr. Reddick conceded that “you hear a lot of people moving away from the term ‘holistic admissions’ because it kind of gets juxtaposed against ‘merit’.” Instead, Reddick continued, admissions committees have begun thinking in terms of “mission-aligned selection,” in which decisionmakers create “a selection process that helps us achieve the goals of our mission” (46:20).
As Do No Harm has previously written, so-called mission-aligned selection is merely a fig leaf used by medical-education programs intent on engaging in ideologically motivated or racial admissions policies. The AAMC’s “Mission-Aligned Selection and Retention” guidance makes this clear, urging medical schools to consider applicant criteria (e.g., “attributes” and “experiences”) that are neither academic nor objective.
In short, just as “holistic admissions” deemphasized academic merit as an admissions criterion, so does its replacement, “mission-aligned selection.” That is unacceptable.
Claim #4: Medical-School Applicants Should Be Screened for “Soft Skills”
In his own opening statement, Dr. Henri R. Ford, dean and chief academic officer at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, voiced his preference for medical-school applicants who possess “the four C’s” and are thus “caring, considerate, compassionate, and collaborative.” Ford went on: “If we relied strictly on MCATs and GPAs, we could end up with individuals who lack those ‘soft skills’” (32:08).
The problem with this line of thinking is that, as a Do No Harm member and academician points out in an email to us, “[e]ven if we are to assume that ‘soft skills’ are important, they — unlike MCAT scores and GPA — are subjectively evaluated. Who is to say one student has more ‘soft skills,’ empathy, and leadership than another? How is it measured and by who?”
Exactly so.
Claim #5: The Casper Situational-Judgment Test is a Valid Measure of “Soft” Attributes
Taking up Dr. Ford’s theme, Dr. Reddick suggested that the Casper test, which bills itself as an “an open-response situational judgment” exam, is appropriately used by some medical schools “to actually assess how … people think when [they] get presented with an ethical challenge” (1:26:36).
Unfortunately, like the AAMC’s PREview exam, which purports to assess such attributes as “reliability, resilience, adaptability, [and] ethical responsibility,” the Casper test ought to provoke skepticism. Both represent another way for medical schools to devalue traditional metrics of merit and competence in favor of admissions methods that make room for the DEI agenda.
By all means, medical schools should teach future doctors to be ethical and adaptable. (At institutions with reasonable academic standards, medical students will necessarily learn reliability and resilience.) As Dr. Goldfarb rightly pointed out, however, “we should take in the most talented students, and if we are interested in inculcating [soft skills] in them, well, we should inculcate those skills in medical school” (59:03).
Claim #6: DEI Isn’t About Lowering Standards
Dr. Ford contended that DEI in medical education “has never been about lowering the standards” (1:36:10). But if that’s true, why do standards keep lowering?
As Do No Harm has chronicled, pre-clinical grades in American medical schools are now practically non-existent, having given way to less predictive “pass/fail” measures. A number of medical schools have paused their chapters of Alpha Omega Alpha, a national medical honor society. And, as Dr. Goldfarb reminded listeners, Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination moved to “pass/fail” precisely because “underrepresented in medicine students were hurt by generally having lower ‘step’ scores” (1:48:11).
That these moves have accompanied the intrusion of DEI ideology and practice into medical education is highly instructive. The timing is no coincidence.
We invite readers to watch the debate on their own and consider these and other assertions. We think you’ll come away in agreement: DEI has no place in medical-school admissions. Merit alone should be our guidepost.