RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-medical-establishments-persistent-zeal-to-impose-dei-in-education/

No matter election outcomes, presidential executive orders, and the ebbing support for the “woke” agenda among the general public, the medical establishment — epitomized by the New England Journal of Medicine — continues to push DEI ideology in medical school admissions policies.

A recent advocacy article in the NEJM pledges fervid fealty to DEI, primarily focusing on gender ideology. From, “Facing Political Attacks on Medical Education — The Future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Medicine” (citations omitted):

In recent years, the United States has seen an onslaught of legislation aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education, including medical education. Although these legislative actions are often construed as focusing only on race, they also explicitly or implicitly target members of sexual and gender minority (SGM) groups. The deluge of legislative and policy attacks, including a slew of executive orders in the current administration, is a component of a larger political movement that seeks to exclude people who have been historically underrepresented and marginalized in many sectors of society, including medicine.

Baloney. Opposing the invidious DEI agenda isn’t about excluding anybody from a fair shot at personal achievement. It’s about ensuring that the doctors of tomorrow are the most excellent practitioners we can license, and so students’ acceptance into medical school should be based on merit. In other words, capability should matter most. Identity should be irrelevant.

The authors believe otherwise:

The goal of DEI in health care and public health is to ensure that leaders of health care systems value all people equally and that all people can obtain the power, knowledge, resources, conditions, and opportunities that enable them to achieve optimal health. In medical education, this goal requires addressing disparities in recruitment and retention of people who have historically been excluded from the profession, as well as directly addressing inequities in patient outcomes. In health care, a diverse workforce including people with a range of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities can serve patients better than a workforce that is far more homogeneous than the population itself.

https://www.newsmax.com/sallypipes/medicaid-cuts-entitlement/2025/03/05/id/1201567/

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a budget resolution by the narrowest of margins. The most controversial component of the bill concerns Medicaid.

Democrats have castigated the resolution on the grounds that it would make steep cuts to the joint federal-state public healthcare entitlement. Even some Republicans have expressed unease about that possibility.

But the hand-wringing about Medicaid cuts is misplaced.

The program is bloated and rife with fraud and waste, and it has veered significantly from its original intent of caring for the poor and disabled. It’s long overdue for paring.

First, some background.

Back in 2010, Obamacare loosened the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, extending coverage to all Americans earning up 138% of the federal poverty level, or $44,367 for a family of four as of this year. In order to entice states to go along with this scheme, Obamacare stipulated that the federal government would cover 90% of the cost of covering this “expansion population” in perpetuity.

The rest of the Medicaid population — which is to say, even poorer people and disabled Americans — receive much less federal support. For these beneficiaries, the feds cover anywhere from half to a little over three-quarters of the cost, leaving the rest to the states.

https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-nih-cuts-debate?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Two cancer doctors debate whether Trump’s slashing of billions to the National Institutes for Health will boost public health or destroy it.

During his testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Wednesday, Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the National Institutes of Health, seemed to side with the president’s plan to cut billions of dollars from the nation’s scientific research budget, most of which is controlled by the NIH.

“I have a background as an economist as well as being a doctor,” Bhattacharya told the committee. This helps him “understand that every dollar wasted on a frivolous study is a dollar not spent. Every dollar wasted on administrative costs that are not needed is a dollar not spent on research. The team I’m going to put together is going to be hyper-focused to make sure that the portfolio of grants that the NIH funds is devoted to the chronic disease problems of this country.”

Some of Trump’s cuts have already been made, including the firing of over 1,000 “probationary” workers, and the blocking of this year’s grants through a bureaucratic loophole. The Trump administration also wants to stop paying indirect costs for building space, expensive equipment, and oversight of medical research, though so far that has been stopped by a judge’s temporary order.

What should we make of these cuts? Are they a sensible way to make medical research even more efficient? Or will they threaten the development of cures that could save millions of lives?

We asked two oncologists we trust to debate this important issue.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/surgery-safe-american-college-of-surgeons

I have been a surgeon for 38 years. Three of those I spent as a general surgeon in the Navy, the remainder as a plastic surgeon in private practice. I have never been more alarmed about the state of my profession than I am today.

My concerns began surfacing about 25 years ago. I was collaborating with a newly trained general surgeon on a bilateral breast reconstruction, a procedure that utilizes tissue flaps from the patient’s abdomen. This is a significant and lengthy operation, and I appreciated the young surgeon’s offer to close the abdominal donor site. To my horror, however, he began taking excessively wide needle “bites” of the abdominal wall using a heavy-gauge suture, visibly distorting the abdominal wall as he pulled these sutures tight. After watching in disbelief for a few minutes, I thanked him and said that I could manage without help. The young surgeon subsequently gained a reputation for handling tissues roughly and for being difficult to work with. It came as no surprise when he left our hospital after less than a year.

Every colleague whom I have spoken with has noticed the same thing: an alarming number of surgical residency graduates are unprepared for professional practice. The problem has only gotten worse. I recently worked with another young surgeon on a breast cancer patient, for example, and was shocked to discover that he had never performed an axillary node dissection—a common operation to remove lymph nodes from a cancer patient’s armpit. How could a surgeon have completed five years of training without learning how to do this?

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-england-journal-of-medicine-transgender-activists

The New England Journal of Medicine is the world’s most prestigious medical journal. It publishes only 5 percent of the original research submissions that it receives. Physician Marty Makary, President Trump’s nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration, has written that publishing a study in the journal “is rocket fuel for your academic career.”

But like so many other institutions, NEJM has allowed a dubious commitment to “social justice” to overtake its pursuit of excellence in medical science—particularly when it comes to youth gender medicine. NEJM’s coverage of this controversial field has abandoned even the pretense of objectivity, declining to hold researchers to scientific standards or air alternative views that would advance scientific knowledge.

“Gender-affirming care” for youth involves the use of puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat children who experience distress associated with their sex. Once embraced by many Western countries, this protocol has faced criticism in recent years for lacking credible evidence of its safety and benefits, for its potential harms, and for imposing life-altering treatments on children unable to give informed consent. In the U.S., though, medical associations have bucked the growing international consensus, maintaining their commitment to what they regard as a nonnegotiable human right.

In his first days in office, President Trump signed executive orders designed to starve the pediatric gender industry of federal funding. Transgender advocacy groups and several Democratic attorneys general filed lawsuits to block the administration from achieving its goal.

Commentators on all sides lament that this issue has become so politicized. But the politicization is the result of scientific and medical institutions failing to impose high standards and to facilitate open debate.

NEJM’s conduct is a good illustration of that failure. Its refusal to hold the research it publishes to high scientific standards and its documented track record of suppressing debate on these novel, invasive, and risky procedures has directly contributed to the politicized environment we see today.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/jama-article-promotes-neurodiversity-in-medical-school/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

This is a delicate matter, but I think it must be confronted. The Journal of the American Medical Association has published an article that urges “neurodiversity” be given “holistic” consideration when accepting students into medical school in keeping with diversity goals. From “Embracing Neurodiversity in Medicine — Building a More Inclusive Physician Workforce:”

The benefits of diversity have long been recognized with respect to persons with minoritized racial and ethnic backgrounds, women, persons who are LGBTQ+, and others, and there has been a wide range of efforts to increase the representation of these individuals among physicians. Currently, however, these same programs and institutions do not similarly prioritize neurodiversity, the range of developmental neurocognitive differences that underlie individual variation in thinking, learning, and behavior.

What conditions are we discussing?

The term neurodiversity broadly describes the breadth of neurocognitive variation in a group or population, similar to variation along any other axis of diversity. However, in an organizational context, it frequently refers to the inclusion of minoritized “neurodivergent” individuals who identify as having 1 of a range of neurodevelopmental conditions (eg, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], Tourette syndrome, learning disabilities such as dyslexia or dyscalculia).

This idea seems particularly perilous. Obviously, if someone with a neurodiverse condition has the ability to enter medical school and eventually practice medicine, he or she should not be discriminated against. But because the responsibilities of doctors are so profound, acceptance must not be based on adjusted or “holistic” considerations.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/02/16/researchers-clash-over-covid-vaccine-safety/

EXCERPT

Concerns Over Clinical Studies 

Dr. David Gortler, a former career FDA medical officer, senior medical analyst, and drug safety expert who later served as the senior advisor to the FDA commissioner under Donald Trump’s first term told The Daily Signal, “The FDA has a history of being remarkably political and selective on how it sees fit to both collect and evaluate product adverse events … mRNA injections are far from being a one-off.”   

He added, “The new FDA commissioner [Dr. Marty Makary] needs to have a very carefully thought through clinically and epidemiologically sound strategy on how to overhaul and centralize safety data collection and evaluation going forward.”   

Dr. Robert Chandler, an orthopedic surgeon and graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine, began working on Pfizer-BioNTech’s documents on COVID vaccines three years ago. He told The Daily Signal he saw concerning trends while reviewing preclinical studies. 

“What I encountered was a series of very disturbing items, beginning with the animal studies,” he said. 

Chandler explained that COVID vaccines are genetically active products that contain manmade genetic code (RNA). Synthetic RNA may cause toxicity, leading to a range of reactions such as cancer, inflammation, or autoimmune disorders. 

By February 2021, over 1,000 disease types were reported to Pfizer and the FDA in relation to COVID vaccines, according to Chandler.  

When asked why few in the medical community are seeking market removal of COVID vaccines, Chandler responded, “It’s almost too big to acknowledge.”

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/02/05/realclearfoundation_launches_the_journal_of_the_academy_of_public_health_1089515.html

The RealClearFoundation announces today the launch of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, a revolutionary new scientific journal publishing cutting-edge, peer-reviewed and open access research from the world’s leading scholars of epidemiology, vaccinology, global public health, health policy and related disciplines.  

The Journal was co-founded by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, formerly of Harvard University. Their shared vision is presented in Dr. Kulldorff’s inaugural paper, “The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward.” 

The Journal of the Academy of Public Health is led by Dr. Kulldorff and Dr. Andrew Noymer, of UC Irvine, as co-Editors-in-Chief. Drs. Kulldorff and Noymer are joined by an Editorial Board of leading public health scholars from a diversity of countries and research specialties, including Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford, and Dr. Peter Gøtzsche of the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Bhattacharya is on leave from the JAPH.  

The inaugural issue of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, published online today, includes original peer-reviewed research as well as essays on the state of public health as a global discipline and a review of previously published vaccine literature. 

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/03/ny-ag-letitia-james-defies-trumps-eo-orders-hospitals-to-comply-with-state-laws-allowing-transgender-procedures-on-children/

In open defiance of President Trump’s January 28 executive order to “protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday warned hospitals that pausing so-called “gender-affirming care” for gender-confused minors violates state law.

Trump specified in his executive order that the term “child” or “children” referred to individuals under 19 years of age, and the phrase “chemical and surgical mutilation” meant “the use of puberty blockers, including GnRH agonists and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex; the use of sex hormones, such as androgen blockers, estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone, to align an individual’s physical appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex; and surgical procedures that attempt to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex or that attempt to alter or remove an individual’s sexual organs to minimize or destroy their natural biological functions.”

The EO notes that the above procedures are often referred to as “gender affirming care.”

“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” the EO states. “Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”

The EO continues: “Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”