Why, exactly, is DEI so harmful to healthcare?
In practice, of course, DEI often manifests as racially discriminatory hiring, admissions, and recruiting policies; it is definitionally anti-merit and degrades the quality of health services; it treats people as members of specific identity groups rather than as individuals and organizes clinical care accordingly; and it views healthcare institutions as vehicles for social and political change, usually at the expense of clinical excellence.
But beyond these more obvious answers is a deeper issue: its premises simply aren’t true.
The premise of “equity” initiatives, for example, is that racism is embedded into the structural fabric of society and is the primary driver of unequal health outcomes between racial groups.
But the extent to which is a far cry from settled fact. As Do No Harm’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kurt Miceli points out, much of the literature on “structural racism” infers causality when there is, at best, only correlation. Tools that purport to measure “racism” instead often track to socioeconomic conditions, confounding attempts to determine causality.
Indeed, much of the research fails to address these confounding factors, proceeding as if the causal effect of racism, whatever that may mean, is obvious.
Is it any wonder, then, that the solutions that stem from this false premise are harmful?
Take a recent course on “health equity” provided to nursing students at Indiana University South Bend that illustrates a more benign example of how healthcare professionals can be inculcated into counterproductive programming.
“Health care inequities are a measurable, systemic, avoidable and unjust difference in health care access, utilization, quality and outcomes between groups, stemming from differences in levels of social advantage and disadvantage,” the course states.
To ameliorate these inequities, the course recommends that healthcare professionals employ skills surrounding “cultural humility,” such as constant monitoring of ones’ own biases.
“Addressing biases is an ongoing process,” the course states. “Recognizing and addressing our biases, while creating an environment where all are comfortable discussing these biases openly, is essential for fostering cultural humility.”
Of course, there is little evidence demonstrating that individual biases actually impact health outcomes. Attempts to measure these “implicit” or unconscious biases fail to predict real-world behavior or even measure “unconscious racism.”
Thus, constant vigilance of one’s own biases is built on an assumption that hasn’t been validated and functions as an ideological directive, not an evidence-based strategy for improving patient care.
Additionally, the course suggests that health equity is downstream of political and structural factors that alter the social and economic conditions of individuals’ lives.
“Understanding the social determinants of health, is an important component of developing cultural humility as is developing trusting partnerships with those we serve,” the course states. “By engaging in these practices, we can create a foundation for health equity and ensure better health outcomes for diverse communities.”
This gestures at another dubious (at best) theory that has become increasingly popular in medicine: the idea of “social determinants of health” (SDOH).
Again, the premise of SDOH is that differences in socioeconomic factors cause disparities in health outcomes between population groups.
Yet, although these factors may well be correlated with disparities in health outcomes, the causal inference is not supported by the weight of the evidence. As researchers have shown, much of the literature on SDOH fails to properly disentangle correlation from causation and infers that social factors “determine” health simply because they correlate with poor health outcomes.
This ignores alternative explanations such as individual decisions which lead to poor health outcomes, and which in turn may lead to the socioeconomic conditions that correlate with those outcomes.
In short, unsubstantiated theories that attempt to explain individuals’ health with vague gestures to societal phenomena do a disservice to medicine by treating healthcare professionals not as healers first and foremost, but as cogs in a large political project.
The focus of healthcare education should be to train future providers to administer the best possible care, above all else.
New Watchdog Report Exposes How Healthcare Providers Can Misrepresent Gender Interventions as Routine Care
COMMENTARY, Press Release, Uncategorized Gender Ideology Medical association Press Release Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT: April 30, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report exposing how healthcare providers may be able to fraudulently skirt medical coding rules to receive insurance reimbursement for so-called “gender-affirming care.”
The report, “Spotting Potential Fraud: How Healthcare Providers May Skirt Coding Rules to Get Paid for Child Sex Changes,” warns how providers can misrepresent the medical procedures they perform to pass off transgender medicalization as routine care unrelated to pediatric medical transitions. The report explains the challenge in exposing this type of deception, as in-depth longitudinal clinical reviews are needed to distinguish legitimate medical care from child sex change interventions.
Do No Harm highlights activist groups like WPATH, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Campaign for Southern Equality, and QueerDoc for their role in publicly promoting alternative diagnosis codes — unrelated to gender dysphoria — to facilitate billing and insurance reimbursement for so-called “gender-affirming care.”
“Medical diagnosis codes are being subverted by gender ideologues to avoid proper reporting, hide their activism from scrutiny, and enable potentially fraudulent billing practices,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Groups like WPATH have publicly promoted the use of misleading diagnosis codes, and our report exposes how providers have financial incentives to do so. By hiding transgender procedures behind codes meant for other conditions, providers are — at minimum — skirting guidelines and ethical standards. Our report highlights the need for greater regulatory oversight and medical review to ensure ICD-10 diagnosis codes are not being fraudulently misused.”
The report identifies eight codes that may be used to hide pediatric medical transitions: 1) Hypopituitarism, 2) Other primary ovarian failure, 3) Testicular hypofunction, 4) Precocious puberty, 5) Other specified endocrine disorders, 6) Endocrine disorder, unspecified, 7) Hormone replacement therapy, and 8) Hypertrophy of breast.
Do No Harm has done extensive work and continues to actively work toward establishing distinct medical diagnosis codes for gender transition, desistance, and detransition. This new report urges payors and regulators, particularly in the states that have legislation restricting such interventions on minors, to remain vigilant of the misuse of ICD-10 codes.
Click here to read the full report.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
Stanford School of Medicine Rebrands DEI Department After DOJ Probe
COMMENTARY California DEI Stanford University Medical School Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffFollowing a federal investigation announcement, an elite medical school is quietly altering its online materials.
On March 25, the Department of Justice commenced an investigation into potentially discriminatory admissions practices at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The government seeks applicant-level information (like MCAT scores and GPAs) as well as internal messages about DEI, according to reporting by The New York Times.
Recent alterations to the Stanford Medicine website, such as office name and title changes, suggest that the institution may be attempting to scrub any evidence of its commitment to DEI.
For example, among Stanford Medicine’s administrative units is the Office of Community Health and Engagement (OCHE). As an archived history of the office’s website makes clear, the OCHE was, until at least March 30, the Office of Diversity in Medical Education, “committed to eliminating the nation’s health inequities through patient care, education, research, and advocacy.”
This change appears to be largely cosmetic, as OCHE’s team remains mostly in place.
Felipe D. Perez, previously assistant dean for diversity in medical student education, is now assistant dean for community health and engagement.
Sara Clemente, until recently diversity program manager, is now graduate medical education program manager.
Marisa Madrigal, previously diversity coordinator, has been rebranded as graduate medical education coordinator.
The question is whether new business cards signal an end to DEI operations at the medical school. The available evidence suggests that they don’t.
Later this spring, Stanford Medicine will host as planned the 9th Annual Diversity and Inclusion Forum, designed to help participants become “effective agent[s] for change in diversity, equity, and inclusion in medical education.”
Stanford Medicine’s library proudly displays on its website its voluminous “Multicultural Health” resources, which include extensive material on “cultural competency,” “indigenous health,” “Hispanic/Latine health,” “medical racism & antiracism,” and other preoccupations of the DEI movement.
Although the institution has taken down a website declaring its leadership-development apparatus to be a fit for those interested in “activism and advocacy,” “local health equity initiatives,” and “social determinants of health,” the initiative itself remains active.
Indeed, it is difficult to find any evidence that Stanford Medicine is backing away from its DEI-obsessed activities.
If the institution wishes to recommit to merit-based instruction for all medical students, it will need to make more than cosmetic changes.
Do No Harm Asks SCOTUS To Protect Doctors’ Free Speech
Uncategorized California DEI Press Release Judicial Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 28, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm and Dr. Azadeh Khatibi petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to protect free speech in medical training by striking down California’s mandate that Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses contain implicit bias curriculum for physicians. The Pacific Legal Foundation represents both parties in this action.
In 2023, Do No Harm, joined by Dr. Khatibi, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Azadeh Khatibi et al. v. Kristina Lawson et al., arguing that California’s CME mandate violates the First Amendment rights of CME instructors by compelling their speech and placing unconstitutional restrictions on the free exercise of speech. The district court dismissed the complaint, and the Ninth Circuit upheld that decision, claiming CME courses constitute government speech based on the State’s extensive regulation of the medical field—even though the State does not create, review, or edit the content of CME courses.
Now, Do No Harm is asking SCOTUS to decide whether a state can compel private professionals to convey a contested ideological message as a condition of teaching courses required for a professional license. Do No Harm argues California’s law erases the constitutional boundary between government and private speech, threatens the speech rights of countless professionals, and directly conflicts with SCOTUS precedents protecting against compelled speech.
“By mandating ideologically charged racial theories be taught in continuing medical education courses, California infringes on physicians’ free speech rights,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman at Do No Harm. “We are asking the Supreme Court to intervene to protect these critical rights in the field of medicine. Doctors do not need lawmakers telling them what to think when providing medical advice to patients. There is no evidence so-called systemic implicit bias exists in healthcare, and propagating such debunked pseudoscience only deepens suspicion between patients and providers. Physicians must be trained to assess each patient’s unique needs, not focus on immutable characteristics like race. We urge the Court to take up our case and resolve California’s overreach once and for all.”
See Do No Harm’s Cert Petition here.
See the case page here.
More Details:
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
The Dangers of False DEI Dogma
COMMENTARY Indiana DEI Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffWhy, exactly, is DEI so harmful to healthcare?
In practice, of course, DEI often manifests as racially discriminatory hiring, admissions, and recruiting policies; it is definitionally anti-merit and degrades the quality of health services; it treats people as members of specific identity groups rather than as individuals and organizes clinical care accordingly; and it views healthcare institutions as vehicles for social and political change, usually at the expense of clinical excellence.
But beyond these more obvious answers is a deeper issue: its premises simply aren’t true.
The premise of “equity” initiatives, for example, is that racism is embedded into the structural fabric of society and is the primary driver of unequal health outcomes between racial groups.
But the extent to which is a far cry from settled fact. As Do No Harm’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kurt Miceli points out, much of the literature on “structural racism” infers causality when there is, at best, only correlation. Tools that purport to measure “racism” instead often track to socioeconomic conditions, confounding attempts to determine causality.
Indeed, much of the research fails to address these confounding factors, proceeding as if the causal effect of racism, whatever that may mean, is obvious.
Is it any wonder, then, that the solutions that stem from this false premise are harmful?
Take a recent course on “health equity” provided to nursing students at Indiana University South Bend that illustrates a more benign example of how healthcare professionals can be inculcated into counterproductive programming.
“Health care inequities are a measurable, systemic, avoidable and unjust difference in health care access, utilization, quality and outcomes between groups, stemming from differences in levels of social advantage and disadvantage,” the course states.
To ameliorate these inequities, the course recommends that healthcare professionals employ skills surrounding “cultural humility,” such as constant monitoring of ones’ own biases.
“Addressing biases is an ongoing process,” the course states. “Recognizing and addressing our biases, while creating an environment where all are comfortable discussing these biases openly, is essential for fostering cultural humility.”
Of course, there is little evidence demonstrating that individual biases actually impact health outcomes. Attempts to measure these “implicit” or unconscious biases fail to predict real-world behavior or even measure “unconscious racism.”
Thus, constant vigilance of one’s own biases is built on an assumption that hasn’t been validated and functions as an ideological directive, not an evidence-based strategy for improving patient care.
Additionally, the course suggests that health equity is downstream of political and structural factors that alter the social and economic conditions of individuals’ lives.
“Understanding the social determinants of health, is an important component of developing cultural humility as is developing trusting partnerships with those we serve,” the course states. “By engaging in these practices, we can create a foundation for health equity and ensure better health outcomes for diverse communities.”
This gestures at another dubious (at best) theory that has become increasingly popular in medicine: the idea of “social determinants of health” (SDOH).
Again, the premise of SDOH is that differences in socioeconomic factors cause disparities in health outcomes between population groups.
Yet, although these factors may well be correlated with disparities in health outcomes, the causal inference is not supported by the weight of the evidence. As researchers have shown, much of the literature on SDOH fails to properly disentangle correlation from causation and infers that social factors “determine” health simply because they correlate with poor health outcomes.
This ignores alternative explanations such as individual decisions which lead to poor health outcomes, and which in turn may lead to the socioeconomic conditions that correlate with those outcomes.
In short, unsubstantiated theories that attempt to explain individuals’ health with vague gestures to societal phenomena do a disservice to medicine by treating healthcare professionals not as healers first and foremost, but as cogs in a large political project.
The focus of healthcare education should be to train future providers to administer the best possible care, above all else.
Do No Harm Submits Amicus Brief in Support of Detransitioner’s Lawsuit
COMMENTARY North Carolina Gender Ideology Hospital System Commentary Judicial Do No Harm StaffThis week, Do No Harm submitted an amicus brief to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in support of a lawsuit brought by detransitioner Prisha Mosley to hold accountable those healthcare professionals who she alleges subjected her to sex-rejecting interventions as a minor.
Mosley, a biological female, filed suit in North Carolina after receiving cross-sex hormones and having her breasts removed. She alleged her medical providers misrepresented basic facts about pediatric medical transition and deceived her into undergoing these procedures.
The trial court had initially dismissed Mosley’s medical malpractice claim as untimely. But following the dismissal of this claim, the North Carolina legislature enacted a new law that extended the statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims and should have helped paved the way to revive Mosley’s claim. Yet the trial court refused to reinstate her claim and granted summary judgment to the defendants on Mosley’s remaining fraud-related claims.
Do No Harm’s amicus brief urges the appellate court to reverse the trial court, laying out the science and evidence – or lack thereof – on sex-rejecting procedures for minors.
The brief demonstrates that sex-rejecting medical interventions such as cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures lack reliable evidence as methods to “treat” children suffering from gender dysphoria, or psychological distress resulting from the discontinuity perceived between one’s sex and one’s “gender identity.”
The brief cites the Cass Review, the United Kingdom’s comprehensive independent evaluation of gender identity services and the evidence base for youth gender medicine, which found that the research supporting so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is very weak and of low certainty. Likewise, among other included examples is a recently published Finnish study, which found that sex change interventions failed to improve the mental health of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.
The brief also explains that the only reliable clinical approach for kids suffering from gender dysphoria is psychosocial support, rather than medical interventions.
Do No Harm will continue to support efforts to ensure accountability for, and protect minors from, the harms of so-called “gender-affirming care.”
Do No Harm Files Civil Rights Complaints Against Two Major Healthcare Systems Over Discriminatory Scholarship Programs
COMMENTARY DEI Press Release Executive Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; April 21, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Beacon Health System and Valley Health System for operating discriminatory student healthcare scholarship programs exclusively available to racial minorities. The complaints ask the OCR to thoroughly investigate both programs for apparent violations of multiple federal anti-discrimination laws.
“It is unjust and unacceptable for Beacon Health and Valley Health to use race in determining awards for hands-on learning opportunities,” said Dr. Kurt Miceli, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “A devoted student, with the skills and desire to learn, cannot be denied participation based on factors as arbitrary as skin color or ancestral background. Political activists who push the idea that only certain racial groups are most equipped to deliver quality care to those in need affirm a demeaning and an inaccurate assumption. We will continue to hold these institutions accountable to the law and root out the brazen race-based discrimination infecting medical education today.”
Beacon Health, a nonprofit healthcare provider that benefits from substantial federal funding, prides itself for “[f]ostering, cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion.” Its ‘Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship’ program offers a student training rotation in family medicine for fourth-year medical students and a generous stipend (among other benefits). While applicants must be in good academic standing at an accredited U.S. medical school, the scholarship is only offered to individuals of select races. Reserved for “traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic minority group[s],” who Beacon Health presumes have “faced significant socioeconomic disadvantage,” whites and other disfavored racial groups are unlawfully excluded from the opportunity.
Similarly, Valley Health, a nonprofit community healthcare organization that receives a host of federal financial aid and grants, “proud[ly]” offers the ‘Minority Healthcare Scholarship’ to its patients for pursuing careers in medicine, health sciences, or health administration. Recipients receive awards of $5,000. Those interested in applying to this “prestigious” opportunity must be a member of “a minority racial or ethnic group,” a requirement that communicates to individuals of other races that they need not apply, regardless of their academic ability, character, skills, experiences, and perspectives.
Both entities’ programs advance the notion that certain racial groups achieve “diversity” over others; and Beacon Health’s program further asserts that all (and only) certain racial minorities face “disadvantage.” These health systems’ blatant racial stereotypes and race-based exclusions are in direct violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Read the complaint against Beacon Health here and the complaint against Valley Health here.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
Do No Harm Urges FTC to Investigate the American Psychological Association for Misleading Statements on Child Sex Changes
Uncategorized Gender Ideology Press Release Executive Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 20, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calling on the agency to investigate whether the American Psychological Association (APA) is engaged in deceptive practices in the wake of the organization’s contradictory guidance on sex-rejecting interventions for children.
The letter calls out the APA for seemingly walking back a more cautious 2025 public comment to the FTC regarding so-called “gender-affirming care” for children and instead doubling down on its earlier policy statement that advocates for minors’ unobstructed access to sex-rejecting interventions.
The APA’s 2025 letter admits that there is a “lack of long-term scientific evidence” supporting child sex change procedures, preaches a more conservative, questioning approach to youth gender dysphoria, and concedes that not all youth who experience gender dysphoria will persist with it into adulthood. Meanwhile, the 2024 statement endorses an affirmation-only approach to treating gender dysphoria, equating “non-affirmation” with “violence” and “discrimination.”
“The American Psychological Association appears to be contradicting itself to have its cake and eat it too: attempting to protect against regulatory action for promoting experimental and dangerous adolescent sex-change interventions, while also staving off anger from the radical gender activists who have captured the organization,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “By promoting two irreconcilable positions, the APA is deceiving the FTC, psychologists, and minor patients and their guardians. Make no mistake, the APA’s original policy position pushes for unobstructed access to sex-rejecting interventions for children, equates non-affirmation with violence, and condemns state protections as human rights violations. By recently doubling down on that position, the APA is contradicting its more measured comments to the FTC, which encourages caution and comprehensive psychological assessments rather than medical intervention. This raises serious questions about the APA’s maneuvering and if serious regulatory action is in order. As the FTC continues to investigate WPATH, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society for potentially deceptive practices in ‘gender-affirming care,’ we recommend that it launch a similar investigation into the APA.”
Contrary to the APA’s claim that the two statements are consistent, Do No Harm’s letter explains they “clearly and irreconcilably conflict” with each other. Do No Harm calls on the FTC to investigate whether the APA made “false or unsubstantiated representations” about pediatric gender interventions.
In recent months, the FTC launched investigations into whether the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are engaged in deceptive practices regarding pediatric medical transition.
See Do No Harm’s letter to the FTC here.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
Harvard Medical School Cuts Out DEI References from New Mission Statement
COMMENTARY, Uncategorized Massachusetts DEI Harvard Medical School Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffLast week, Harvard Medical School published an updated version of its mission statement that removed explicit references to DEI.
It’s the latest indication that among medical schools, including elite institutions, DEI is becoming increasingly toxic.
Whereas Harvard Medical School’s previous mission statement included a commitment for the school to “nurture a diverse, inclusive community,” these words are absent from the updated statement, which reads as follows: “To improve health and well-being for all through excellence and leadership in teaching and learning, discovery and scholarship, and service and care.”
According to remarks reported by the Harvard Crimson, Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley said that the school’s DEI commitment had been relocated, and the school had “fully endorsed our commitment to a diverse and inclusive community.”
Indeed, the Harvard Medical School’s “Community Values” page contains the follow language: “We are a diverse and inclusive community that aspires to fulfill and advance our mission through a commitment to our HMS values.”
Though this is not a complete elimination of DEI, it’s a significant shift: the statement referencing DEI in the school’s community values is descriptive, not normative, and includes no commitment.
Moreover, removing the DEI commitment from Harvard Medical School’s mission may signify at least a partial public departure from DEI as an organizing, motivating principle.
As Do No Harm has previously shown, the rise of DEI and identity politics in medical education manifested strongly in schools’ mission statements.
That Harvard is now bucking this trend is an encouraging sign.
Additionally, last year, Harvard Medical School renamed its DEI office and removed its diversity statement, which included commitments to health equity and DEI, as well as pledges to “challenge discrimination,” “address disparities and inequities,” and “actively promote social justice.”
We’re optimistic this latest change is a sign of more reforms to come.
Do No Harm Urges IRS To Investigate the American Medical Association Foundation’s Tax-Exempt Status
Medical Association, Press Release United States DEI American Medical Association Medical association Press Release Executive Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 8, 2026 – This week, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), urging an investigation into whether the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation should have its tax-exempt status revoked for operating racially discriminatory scholarships.
“Racially discriminatory scholarships are unlawful and morally wrong, to say nothing of the negative impact they have on public confidence in our medical system,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Based on the evidence in our complaint, we believe the IRS should revoke the AMA Foundation’s tax-exempt status for operating a racially discriminatory program. The AMA’s obsession with identity politics is no secret, and it should be held accountable for allowing race to dictate applicants’ eligibility for valuable and lucrative learning opportunities. If the AMA Foundation wants to retain its federal tax advantage, it must open its scholarships to applicants of all races.”
The AMA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Medical Association, funds and oversees the Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship program, which provides lucrative scholarships to third-year medical students. Most scholarship awards include prizes of up to $10,000 along with national recognition and access to resources and support. However, as alleged in Do No Harm’s complaint, several of these scholarships explicitly discriminate based on race and violate established public policy and civil rights laws forbidding racial discrimination. Under Supreme Court precedent, having even one unlawful policy under 26 U.S.C § 501(c)(3), including a racially discriminatory policy, makes the entire organization ineligible for tax-exempt status.
Click here to read the IRS complaint.
Background:
The AMA Foundation’s Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship is an umbrella program encompassing various discrete scholarships. However, several scholarships explicitly hinge eligibility on racial criteria, with two scholarships preferring certain racial minorities over other racial groups and one scholarship preferring certain white racial groups over others.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
When Ideology Replaces Accuracy: The ATS’s Spirometry Shift
COMMENTARY DEI Medical association Commentary Michael Depietro, MDIn recent years, academic medical societies have increasingly issued recommendations and policy statements that seem motivated less by a commitment to scientific rigor and more by an adherence to fashionable ideologies.
The American Thoracic Society is unfortunately no exception to this trend. Its 2023 decision to abandon race‑adjusted reference equations for spirometry—long a straightforward physiological test—does not necessarily make the test more accurate, may not deliver better outcomes, and does not clearly improve certainty in a tool meant to elucidate lung mechanics. By prioritizing broad ideological narratives over data‑driven, objective measures, recent changes risk undermining the core purpose of this diagnostic test and ultimately fail to improve patient care, exchanging one set of uncertainties for another.
Spirometry measures the volume and flows produced after a forced exhalation from total lung capacity. Measurements include the Forced Expiratory Volume in one second (FEV1), Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) (maximal amount exhaled), and the FEV1/FVC ratio. In the right clinical setting spirometry helps distinguish obstructive from restrictive lung physiology. Whether a value is “normal” depends on reference equations from healthy populations. These equations have always adjusted for height, age, and sex. And for two decades, they also included race-based adjustments given datasets consistently showing average FEV1 and FVC values differing across populations. Ironically, this change was an effort to make the equations, which had originally been based on data from Caucasians, more inclusive by including data from multiple ethnic groups while also having some physiologic rationale by accounting for the smaller Cormic index (smaller thorax for a given standing height) seen in observational studies of individuals of African descent as well as others. This approach, while imperfect, was accepted for diagnosing abnormal physiology.
Flash forward to recent times. In 2023, the ATS moved to eliminate race-based adjustment from the reference equations. Thirty-three workshop participants—drawn from both the ATS Pulmonary Function Test Committee and the ATS Health Equity and Diversity Committee—met over the issue. Thereafter an official statement was produced explaining “why race and ethnicity should no longer be considered factors in interpreting the results of spirometry.” If this change had improved diagnostic precision, it would have been welcome.
From the outset, the ATS statement framed the prior race‑adjusted equations as products of “structural racism,” despite their intent to improve accuracy by incorporating data from multiple populations. More than 90% of workshop participants nevertheless endorsed adopting a race-neutral reference equation, citing non-clinical benefits such as affirming that “race and ethnicity are not biological variables.” At the same time, ATS issued a word of caution within its own statement, acknowledging uncertain effects and potential harms with the new approach. Indeed, the full clinical consequences of removing race from the reference equations remain unknown. What is certain is that this change will reclassify some black patients with previously “low‑normal” values as abnormal, and some white patients previously labeled abnormal as normal.
No doubt, clinicians will still interpret pulmonary function tests (PFTs) in context, but this shift introduces new opportunities for misclassification without evidence that diagnostic accuracy or patient outcomes will improve. A patient with exertional dyspnea, for example, may now appear to have obstructive disease when the true cause is something else, like cardiac disease for example. The ATS document itself warns of potential harm because of the race-neutral equation, including, but not limited to unnecessary workups, inappropriate disease labeling, insurance or occupational consequences, and altered surgical risk assessments.
The central issue is simple: the recent race-neutral recommendations do not clearly improve diagnostic accuracy and introduce a different set of uncertainties into a test whose purpose is to clarify physiology. The change appears driven less by data and more by ideology. It risks undermining the primary function of any diagnostic tool, that is, providing clinicians with the best, most accurate information so they can provide exceptional care to their patients. While an argument could be made for improving the original reference-equation approach—or even abandoning it all together in favor of alternatives like using patients as their own baseline—any change should be driven by data supporting improved clinical accuracy for individual patients regardless of race, and not a particular political agenda.
Dr. Michael Depietro is a pulmonologist and Do No Harm member.
Do No Harm Files Civil Rights Complaint Against Three Healthcare Providers’ Discriminatory Residency Programs
Uncategorized Florida, Michigan, Texas DEI Hospital System Press Release Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT; March 31, 2026 – This week, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) alleging that Corewell Health, Texas Tech University (Texas Tech), and HCA Healthcare discriminate on the basis of national origin, favoring foreign-trained physicians in their internal medicine residency programs over American-trained doctors.
Since these institutions receive federal funding, Do No Harm’s complaint alleges the residency programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which prohibit national origin discrimination in “any health program or activity.”
“National origin discrimination is both unlawful and inconsistent with the broader American commitment to equal treatment,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “When residency programs favor foreign trained physicians over American trained doctors, they effectively prevent qualified Americans from accessing valuable, competitive, and prestigious learning opportunities. It is deeply concerning that these programs appear to be discriminating against graduates of U.S. medical schools. Medical institutions and their directors should be hiring residents based on their ability to deliver high quality patient care, not on national origin. We urge HHS to thoroughly investigate these programs and address this alarming display of foreign favoritism.”
Background:
Each of the internal medicine residency programs at Corewell Health, Texas Tech, and HCA Healthcare offers a valuable residency program in internal medicine.
However, all three programs exhibit a consistent pattern: each has excluded nearly all American-trained physicians from its residency; each has filled its cohorts almost exclusively with residents trained in a small set of foreign countries; and each is led by a director or directors who mirror the residents they choose—foreign-trained physicians educated in or near the small set of foreign countries from which these residencies fill their ranks.
Residency programs with such highly imbalanced hiring patterns warrant further scrutiny.
Read the complaint against Corewell Health, Texas Tech, and HCA Healthcare.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
New Do No Harm Report Debunks AAMC’s Racial Concordance Narrative
COMMENTARY DEI Association of American Medical Colleges Press Release Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT: March 31, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report debunking assertions by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) about alleged benefits of racial concordance in assessing and treating pain.
The report, “How the AAMC Fails to Read and Correctly Interpret the Research It Cites,” exposes the AAMC’s role in elevating activism over evidence within its amicus brief submitted in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case over race-based college admissions. The brief cites four unreliable studies to defend the discredited theory that racial concordance, in which patients are treated by doctors of the same race, improves health outcomes.
Yet, as Do No Harm’s report shows, not one of them actually supports the asserted benefit of racial concordance in the treatment of pain.
“Our report exposes the tactics employed by activist medical organizations to infuse racial discrimination throughout all of healthcare,” said Jay Greene, PhD, Director of Research at Do No Harm. “The country’s most prominent medical societies either didn’t read or purposely misrepresented the studies used to justify the debunked racial concordance myth. They failed in their responsibility to describe medical research accurately to the highest court in the land. This dereliction of their duty to honestly assess studies raises doubts about the scientific credibility of these organizations more broadly.”
Do No Harm has previously rebutted the general claim of racial concordance and, throughout the latest report, thoroughly addresses the AAMC’s failure to describe research results accurately.
Click here to read the full report.
Background:
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
Do No Harm Files Lawsuit Challenging Discriminatory Federal Health Scholarship Program
COMMENTARY Hawaii DEI Federal government Press Release Executive Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT; March 30, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program (“the Program”) administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“In the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has made historic strides toward ending racial bias in medicine and restoring meritocracy,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman at Do No Harm. “That this program still exists even after the efforts by this administration to course correct proves just how widespread institutional race discrimination has become. Our complaint challenging the Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program is aimed at ensuring well-deserving applicants can qualify to compete for the financial relief the scholarship provides. The criteria in question should be revised so that the program will align with HHS goals to restore excellence and merit in healthcare.”
Read the full complaint here.
Background:
The Program is administered by HHS and provides generous financial aid, including assistance for tuition, living expenses and other costs, for students pursuing certain healthcare careers. In exchange, scholarship recipients agree to provide healthcare services in Hawaii for a couple of years after graduation.
However, to be eligible, applicants must be “Native Hawaiians,” a requirement that is enshrined into federal law. The Program defines Native Hawaiian as a U.S. citizen who is “a descendant of the aboriginal people, who prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the area that now constitutes the state of Hawaii.”
This eligibility barrier is racial discrimination.
Do No Harm represents several of its members in this lawsuit, who, but for their race, would be qualified and competitive applicants. These courageous members are taking a stand because they believe that well-deserving students shouldn’t be denied life-changing opportunities on the basis of race.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
UCSF’s OBGYN Residency Program Embraces Disturbing Ideology
Uncategorized California DEI University of California San Francisco Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffIn simpler times, it would be a safe assumption that the primary purpose of a residency program is to train physicians to provide the best possible medical care.
Clinical excellence should be assumed to be the goal of any medical education program, especially in obstetrics and gynecology programs in which physicians are learning to care for mothers and their babies.
But at the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, that assumption would be incorrect.
According to the program’s residency applicant handbook for the 2025-2026 academic year, it seems like clinical excellence takes a back seat to radical ideology.
Figure 1. A screenshot of the UCSF OBGYN residency program’s mission statement.
Indeed, in the very first bullet point of the program’s mission statement, UCSF commits to “Centering health equity, anti-racism, and anti-oppression in clinical care and in education, particularly for Black and Indigenous individuals, people of color, trans and nonbinary individuals, and immigrant populations.”
In other words, the residency program will use radical, discriminatory racial politics as the prism through which it teaches crucial medical care.
How disturbing this is doesn’t need to be pointed out. It is absolutely imperative that mothers and babies get the best care possible, regardless of race; their physicians should not be viewing them as members of a racial group, but as individual patients.
But that’s not all.
The handbook also includes the school’s “Anti-Racism Commitment.”
Figure 2. A Screenshot of the UCSF OBGYN program’s “Anti-Racism Commitment.”
“We pledge that our actions will purposefully and intentionally advance anti-racist efforts,” the commitment reads. “We pledge to continue educating ourselves both individually and collectively on anti-racism and the tangible ways we can effectively contribute to the dismantling of systemic racism and anti-Blackness.”
It’s essential to point out what “anti-racist efforts” actually involve. Though it’s not clear what UCSF intends, the phrase is commonly invoked by proponents of racial discrimination.
In fact, the most prolific advocate of anti-racism, Ibram X. Kendi, describes the ideology as follows: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
How, exactly, will racial discrimination play out in the OBGYN context?
It’s hard to imagine something more ghoulish than physicians trained to prioritize the health of certain racial groups, especially when these physicians are responsible for the health of our most vulnerable.
Beyond the handbook, in December 2025, UCSF’s OBGYN department hosted a grand rounds session titled “Letting Die: Black Maternal and Infant Deaths after Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard” and hosted by Dr. Khiara Bridges, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
The session focused on ways in which providers could practice “racially concordant” maternal care in the wake of the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard Supreme Court decision that struck down race-conscious admissions.
Racial concordance refers to the dynamic in which patients are treated by healthcare professionals of the same race. The notion that this dynamic improves health outcomes is unsupported by the weight of the evidence, as Do No Harm has shown.
Figure 3. A screenshot of a presentation on racially concordant maternal care hosted by the UCSF OBGYN department.
To support her claim that racially concordant maternal care improves health outcomes, Bridges invoked a long-debunked study claiming that the survival rate of black infants improves when treated by black physicians. However, the researchers behind the study failed to control for the effect of very low birth weight on infant mortality.
When researchers at the Manhattan Institute attempted to replicate the study with the same data, while applying a control for very low birth weight, they found the racial concordance effect disappeared.
So not only is the UCSF OBGYN program hopelessly infatuated with DEI, but it is promoting bad science and debunked medical concepts to justify this radical ideology.
Where to begin with reforming this program?
It’s clear that the UCSF needs to have a long, hard look at what kind of institution it wants to be: one that promotes healing and clinical excellence, or one that is merely a vehicle for an insidious and harmful brand of identity politics.
DEI Mandates No More: The LCME Quietly Removes ‘Bias’ and ‘Equity’ Requirements
COMMENTARY United States DEI Liaison Committee on Medical Education accrediting organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffEarlier this month, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the main accrediting body for allopathic medical schools, quietly updated its 2027-2028 standards.
The change, unannounced and easy to miss, is enormously consequential: the LCME removed the requirement that medical schools inject DEI-oriented content into their curricula.
Previously, the standards required schools to provide “opportunities for medical students to learn to recognize and appropriately address biases in themselves, in others, and in the health care delivery process,” and to include in their curricula “approaches to reduce health care inequities.”
The new standards, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, omit this DEI language entirely.
This is a massive, massive victory for medical education.
With this change, medical schools will no longer be forced to indoctrinate students into a divisive, discriminatory ideology.
And what’s more, they will no longer have the fig leaf of LCME mandates to justify even more radical DEI-infested curriculum content.
The change is the LCME’s second major update to its standards following President Trump’s executive order directly targeting accreditors for imposing divisive and discriminatory policies on higher education; that executive order mentioned the LCME by name.
In May 2025, the LCME removed Standard 3.3, which forced medical schools to have in place “programs and/or partnerships” aimed at achieving diversity, effectively encouraging racial discrimination.
Additionally, the changes follow Do No Harm’s report exposing accreditors for injecting DEI into medical schools and healthcare education programs through accreditation standards.
Since our report, the vast majority of medical and healthcare education accreditors have ditched or suspended their DEI mandates.
New Report Exposes Radical Activism and Bias of the American Nurses Association
Uncategorized United States DEI Nursing organization Press Release Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT; March 24, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report entitled “Activism, Not Advocacy: The Radical Transformation of the American Nurses Association.”
The report exposes a concerning shift within the American Nurses Association (ANA) from supporting nurses’ professional growth to pushing a radical political agenda. The ANA has imbued every facet of the organization with the false idea that the nursing profession is and always has been “systemically racist.”
“The ANA’s descent into extremism is alarming and has contributed to the indoctrination of our nation’s most important frontline workers,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Instead of working to train and support hardworking nurses, the ANA has dedicated time and resources to promoting the ideas of radical activists. Nursing, at its core, is a profession that seeks to serve patients with compassion and foster healing. America’s nurses should have an organization that is focused on supporting their training and development as world-class healthcare providers, not creating a training ground for foot soldiers in a political battle.”
Click here to read the report.
The report highlights:
Do No Harm explains how a small group of activists have steered the ANA away from its original mission. The report urges nurses to reclaim their organization and profession from radicals.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
Do No Harm Submits Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Take Up Case and Reject Any First Amendment Right to Racially Discriminate
COMMENTARY New Jersey DEI accrediting organization, Federal government Commentary Judicial Do No Harm StaffToday, Do No Harm, Students for Fair Admissions, and the American Alliance for Equal Rights filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in support of a lawsuit challenging the New Jersey State Bar Association’s discriminatory set asides. The case raises an important issue: whether the First Amendment creates a general right to racially discriminate.
The brief urges the Court to grant certiorari in Saadeh v. New Jersey State Bar Association, a case concerning the New Jersey State Bar Association’s racial preference system employed when filling board seats. The bar association, claiming that such preferences are necessary for it to advocate its DEI goals, reserves these seats for lawyers who are “diverse” or from “underrepresented” groups, including, “Black/African American,” “Hispanic/Latino/a/x,” “Asian/Pacific American,” “LGBTQ+,” and “women.”
In October 2021, Rajeh Saadeh, the plaintiff and petitioner in the case, sued the bar association over this quota system, arguing that it violates New Jersey’s antidiscrimination laws.
Though the trial court ruled that the bar association’s quotas were illegal under state law, New Jersey’s appellate court reversed that decision based solely on the First Amendment. According to the state appellate court, forcing the bar association to end such racial preferences would violate the association’s First Amendment rights because it would “significantly burden the expression of its views”—namely the bar association’s “ability to advocate the value of diversity and inclusivity.”
In other words, the court accepted the theory that New Jersey’s bar association had a First Amendment right to racially discriminate. The New Jersey Supreme Court then denied Saadeh’s petition for certiorari.
Do No Harm’s brief explains why this theory is bogus and why it is imperative for the United States Supreme Court to take up this case.
First, the brief highlights numerous examples of cases, including Do No Harm cases, in which defendants accused of illegal racial discrimination have attempted to mount a constitutional Free Speech defense, demonstrating a growing need for the Court to make clear that there is no First Amendment right to racially discriminate.
Then, the brief explains why the logic of a purported First Amendment right to racially discriminate falls apart. Essentially, there is a difference between expressing beliefs and practicing them. The First Amendment protects expression; but antidiscrimination laws forbid racial exclusion and discriminatory practices.
As the brief further explains: “The Free Speech Clause theory” recognized by the New Jersey appellate court and advanced in rising numbers of cases across the country is “not merely novel” but “also incompatible with decades of [Supreme] Court[] precedent and the decisions of most other courts.” In addition, the theory has “no logical stopping point” given that “every entity that discriminates could claim the same ‘expressive’ interest in the bare act of discrimination.”
Do No Harm urges the Court to grant certiorari.
As defendants scramble to keep unlawful DEI policies in play, many now regularly seek to evade racial nondiscrimination laws and Supreme Court precedent through a purported First Amendment right to discriminate as their “expression.” It is imperative that the Court firmly decide the obvious: DEI activists cannot rely on the First Amendment to racially discriminate.
Do No Harm Proposes CDC Adopt New Medical Diagnosis Codes for Gender Transition and Detransition
Press Release United States Gender Ideology Federal government Press Release Executive Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; March 17, 2026 – Today, Kurt Miceli, MD, Do No Harm’s Chief Medical Officer, will present to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the need for new medical diagnosis codes (known as ICD-10 codes) for gender transition and detransition.
“Refining the medical diagnosis codes for gender transition and detransition is urgently needed. Currently, the lack of a specific code for detransition makes these individuals effectively invisible to the healthcare system, obscuring their medical needs and limiting real-world research, follow‑up care, and outcome monitoring that responsible practice requires,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “The new diagnosis codes we’re proposing would help generate valuable research data, support evidence-based health standards, and enhance patient care. We commend the CDC for taking important steps toward this goal by accepting for October implementation the code we introduced at the last ICD-10 meeting: gender identity disorder in remission, or desistance. We encourage the agency to adopt our newly proposed codes so that we can further improve the quality of research and care for those suffering from gender dysphoria.”
The CDC meeting will begin at 9:00 a.m. ET. Click here for the agenda and livestream.
Why new codes are needed:
Do No Harm’s proposed codes aim to more precisely capture the various aspects of gender transition, distinguish those aspects from disorders of sex development, and make sure detransitioners are fully visible to the healthcare system.
These codes include:
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.