Do No Harm chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb believes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the healthcare industry "poisons the American experience" because everyone is treated differently based on appearance.
"DEI in healthcare turns out to be a real problem. It is quite dangerous," Goldfarb told Fox News Digital.
In 2022, Goldfarb started Do No Harm, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting back against "radical progressive ideology" in the healthcare industry. He feels that when DEI considers people based on their group characteristics, it is essentially identity politics, which doesn’t belong in the medical world.
DERMATOLOGISTS LIKE ME ARE BEING DOXED FOR OPPOSING DEI
"If a patient comes into the office, and we see a patient… DEI is telling us we need to think about that patient, not as an individual, not as a human being with their own problems, but rather as, for example, a Black person who happens to have this illness," Goldfarb continued. "It really calls for us treating that person differently because of these racial characteristics, as opposed to treating them as an individual based on what their individual problems really are."
Goldfarb, a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, hopes to raise awareness about what’s happening on medical school campuses and in doctor’s offices across the country.
"The real problem that minority groups have is that their health outcomes are poor compared to White people. And all of us in medicine are concerned about that," he said.
"DEI says that the reason for this is because White physicians, particularly male White physicians, are treating patients poorly because they're Black, as opposed to really trying to understand the basis for why these health care disparities exist, which turns out to be because people do not avail themselves of adequate health care," Goldfarb continued. "They don't come in with their early symptoms, they wait until it's late in the course of disease and their outcomes are much worse. And this is true over and over again for a whole variety of illnesses."
Goldfarb said DEI in healthcare not only compromises care but also creates divisiveness.
"Once you have divisiveness, patients start to lose trust in their physicians. If they're told that their physicians have been discriminating against them, then they're obviously not going to trust them. They're not going to follow their recommendations, and their outcomes are even going to be worse. So, it undermines the quality of health care and it also, sort of, poisons the American experience, which ought to be treating everybody the same, unrelated to the way they look," he said.
Goldfarb is also alarmed that DEI is impacting how people are recruited into medicine and promotions of faculty at medical schools.
"There's a great desire to create this increasingly diverse physician workforce. Now, I have nothing against diversity. Diversity is fine as long as you don't sacrifice quality in the name of diversity. And unfortunately, that's what goes on in medical school applications," Goldfarb said.
He said there are roughly 22,000 openings in medical schools each year, but approximately 44,000 applicants are vying for those spots.
"So, if someone gets picked because of their skin color, someone else who is academically more qualified may not get picked simply because the other person has the, so-called, right skin color. And this is obviously a problem, because if this goes on year after year after year, there's going to be more and more less-qualified people that are entering health care and people that are more qualified are going to not have that opportunity," Goldfarb said.
Do No Harm is determined to force change, and Goldfarb testified last week at a House Committee on Education & the Workforce hearing titled, "Divisive, Excessive, Ineffective: The Real Impact of DEI on College Campuses."
"We want to see change. And that particular change I want to see is that the admissions policy in medical school focuses on people of the highest quality academic achievement. To have the public get the best out of American health care. They need the best clinicians. And the only way that's going to happen is we don't sacrifice merit on the basis of diversity," Goldfarb said.
