DEI and wokeness in healthcare are a danger to medicine and lives. There's no clearer case of this than the woke doctors who removed racial differences in kidney function, a move that messed up transplant lists and bumped critically ill patients down the waitlist behind less sick patients. Such wokeness is integrated into medical schools across the country, including UCLA, Wake Forest, and others. At UCLA, the woke standards mean students don't know how to test for serious conditions like sepsis.
Now we can report that the same woke ideology is alive and well at the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM). In documents obtained by Do No Harm and shared with Townhall, it's clear the school is teaching identity politics and pseudoscience instead of actual medicine.
In March of 2023, Fox News reported about IUSM's "sex and gender primer," which included ideas such as gender being a "social construct," that sex and gender are different concepts, and instructions on how to be a "more inclusive" healthcare provider for "gender diverse patients."
Now, more than two years later, Do No Harm has obtained an updated version of this presentation, and while the presentations have been tweaked, the DEI nonsense remains. In the PowerPoint slides for the "Sex and Gender Primer," Dr. Jessica Byram and Dr. Valerie O'Loughlin continue the argument that sex and gender are separate concepts.
They define sex as "a set of biological attributes in an organism determined by chromosomal pattern, gene expression, and hormones," and that it's "mostly a biological construct," but say gender "refers to how an individual identifies" and that gender is "based on socially constructed roles, norms, and relationships." Transgender individuals, they argue, "do not identify with their sex assigned at birth." That phrase — "sex assigned at birth" — was added to this presentation sometime after the 2023 story. This contradicts their own argument on sex, which says gender is "determined by chromosomal pattern" — something that occurs at conception. They even allude to a "biological basis" for gender identity, arguing "prenatal and prepubertal sex hormones may play a role in determining gender identity."
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What does that mean? They're arguing that infants and young children can know they're trans because of these "prenatal and prepubertal sex hormones."
They added an expanded "affirmation of identity" to the updated presentation, and continued to refer to "suicidality in adolescents" (a long-debunked argument from trans activists).
"Inclusive sex education significantly reduces depression and suicidality in lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents," the slide reads.
One of the things removed from the presentation was the "Genderbread Person," a cartoonish image that explained who a person is sexually attracted to, which included "identity, sex, and expression" as traits.
The documents also emphasize that healthcare professionals are "likely to care for transgender and non-binary patients" and warn of "health disparities...linked to stigma, discrimination, and denial of services." The slides also tell students to use "appropriate pronouns," "non-gendered, person-first language," and "anatomy-specific language."
In a presentation titled "Cultural Awareness & Patient-Centered Healthcare," UISM talks about "unconscious bias," which they define as "mental associations without awareness, intention, control," and "microaggressions," which they describe as "a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group." The slides equate microaggressions to "mosquito bites" and argue, "Some people get bitten by mosquitoes a lot more than others," and that mosquito bites "carry diseases that can kill you." UISM embraces the disproven notion that "implicit bias" leads to "adverse health outcomes." That presentation was last updated in May of this year.
All of this matters because these presentations lack any evidence-based, scientific information about medicine and healthcare.
Instead, they focus on woke DEI concepts that have been disproven. They also violate Indiana state law. Earlier this year, Indiana passed legislation cracking down on DEI in higher education. One of the things that legislation does is "prohibits requiring as a condition of licensure that a person affirm that a person with a certain personal characteristic: (1) is inherently superior or inferior to a person with a different personal characteristic; (2) should be blamed for actions committed in the past; or (3) has a moral character that is determined by a personal characteristic of the person." The UISM documents provided by Do No Harm violate that principle, as graduating from medical school is a condition of licensure, and UISM is requiring students to affirm all those things.
It is also dangerous. Biological differences between men and women are real and require different medical approaches. Failure to acknowledge biology, and not "microaggressions" or "implicit bias," is what leads to actual adverse health outcomes. For example, men who are having a heart attack present with classic symptoms, including chest pain that radiates down the left arm, shortness of breath, and sweating. Women, on the other hand, have atypical symptoms including indigestion, extreme fatigue, jaw/back pain, nausea, and anxiety. A failure to acknowledge actual gender and biological differences could cost people's lives.
In September, Do No Harm launched the Center for Accountability in Medicine, as well as "anti-woke medical school ratings" to track precisely the kind of things happening at UISM. "The Center for Accountability in Medicine and the Medical School Excellence Index are urgently needed to combat the tide of wokeness in healthcare," said Dr. Ian Kingsbury, PhD, and Director of the Center for Accountability in Medicine. UISM received a B ranking from Do No Harm.
Laura Morgan, Do No Harm's Senior Director of Programs, issued a statement on these documents, saying "The IU School of Medicine owes its students an education that develops them into competent doctors, not activists. It seems IUSM is bent on indoctrinating them with absurd theories produced by ideologues, though. Even if IUSM removed the ridiculous 'Genderbread Person' from its presentation, why is the medical school still offering the course? 'Sex assigned at birth' is a concept divorced from science and evidence, the very things medical students should prioritize. The cultural awareness presentation is also unfit for a medical class. 'Cultural competency' is a term rebranded by DEI proponents to include implicit bias training. IUSM needs to stop gaslighting students into seeing 'microaggressions' everywhere; it should focus on preparing them to deliver high-quality patient care."
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