Medical schools embrace obesity, DEI
Most American medical schools remain in the throes of woke culture, says a new report, which leads to many of them embracing harmful ideologies like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and “weight inclusivity.”
The report, published by nonprofit Speech First and first reported by National Review, found that out of 54 medical schools investigated by Speech First, 99% enforce discrimination against Whites.
“Students are required to adopt a worldview that frames whites as inherently racist and physicians as agents of social reform, tasked with addressing historical injustices against minority groups,” said the report.
Gender ideology
Eighty-nine percent of medical schools enforce compliance with gender ideology, which requires dismissing biological science and supporting “gender-affirming care” for children, or what ethical doctors refer to as medical mutilation. These include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, double mastectomies, and genital surgeries, interventions that irreversibly sterilize and castrate children. Although scientific evidence confirms that these harms are irreversible, medical students are falsely told they are not.
“Students must commit to affirming gender identity as superseding biological sex, with required practices such as performing or supporting gender-affirming medical procedures—even for children. Policies and mandatory rotations ensure that dissenting views are silenced,” the report explained.
Weight inclusivity
A third of the medical schools Speech First analyzed also embrace weight inclusivity. This ideology views obesity not as unhealthy but as a body type to be accepted and celebrated. Faculty and students alike are warned against being “fatphobic” and are trained to use euphemisms like “larger people” to describe patients who are overweight or obese. The University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School teaches students to allow patients to opt out of being weighed. The University of Vermont, in its Weight-Inclusive Nutrition (WIN) program, describes it thusly:
A weight-inclusive approach to health contends that weight is not an important indicator of health, people of all sizes can be healthy, and it is not possible for everyone to reach a ‘normal’ weight. In this approach, weight is not seen as a health behavior, so health/nutrition interventions are not designed to impact one’s weight, but rather to encourage health behaviors such as rejecting diet culture, eating a wide variety of food, listening to one’s hunger/satiety cues, respecting one’s body, and moving one’s body in a way that feels good.
Anti-White racism
Many medical schools begin demanding DEI compliance during the admissions process by requiring applicants to make statements about “diversity” and “inclusivity” in their applications. Some admissions committees also discriminate against White applicants, which has been shown to impact medical standards.
Officials at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, for example, have blamed the school’s illegal diversity practices for an alarming drop in medical competence among students. The school’s acceptance rate was just 1.3% in 2023, which was reserved for the crème de la crème. But while a 3.8 GPA and an MCAT score in the 88th percentile might be a standard for White students, the school has been openly admitting Black and Hispanic students who fall short of that standard. Since then, the medical school has plummeted from 6th place to 18th place in medical research, a 300% drop. In some cadres that were admitted, over 50% of the students failed standardized medical tests after their clinical rotations. The national failing rate is 5%.
"I have students on their rotation who don't know anything," a UCLA admissions committee member said. "People get in and they struggle."
Applicants for faculty positions at these medical schools must also demonstrate their observance of DEI and gender orthodoxies.
Many medical students pledge their commitment to DEI in statements added to their Hippocratic Oaths, which contain vows to view medicine through the lens of “anti-racism,” to “advance health equity,” and the like.
“This should raise urgent concerns about academic freedom, viewpoint discrimination, and the erosion of scientific rigor and medical excellence— threatening the future quality of healthcare in the United States,” Speech First’s report says.
Most medical schools are woke
A report published last month by the nonprofit Do No Harm contained similar findings. The organization analyzed the mission statements of 155 medical schools nationwide between 2021 and 2024. It found that 77% were committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology in 2024, up from 68% in 2021. Over those three years, 78 schools had altered their mission statements—36 made them more "woke," 32 maintained the level of "wokeness," and 10 reduced their commitment to "woke" orthodoxy.
“These results indicate that between 2021 and 2024, dozens of medical schools scrambled to rewrite their mission statements to signal how committed to woke values they were. They were not scrambling to signal how focused they were on science,” said Do No Harm. “As our previous research on woke and scientific terms in medical school curricula indicates, the dramatic rise in emphasis on wokeness is inevitably pushing out the focus on scientific rigor in medical education.”
Trump targets DEI in medical schools
Immediately upon his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withholding federal funds from institutions that impose DEI ideology. Last week, he signed another executive order taking specific aim at the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits medical schools and requires them to implement woke ideologies like DEI. LCME, which is run by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the American Medical Association (AMA), requires medical schools to “engage in ongoing, systematic, and focused recruitment and retention activities, to achieve mission-appropriate diversity outcomes among its students.”
“American students and taxpayers deserve better, and my Administration will reform our dysfunctional accreditation system so that colleges and universities focus on delivering high-quality academic programs at a reasonable price,” said the EO. “Federal recognition will not be provided to accreditors engaging in unlawful discrimination in violation of Federal law.”
