Is Woke Medicine Metastasizing?

By Eileen F. Toplansky | Am Thinker | July 13, 2025

In 2022, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb exposed the alarming takeover of health care and medical training by woke political ideology.

Goldfarb… tackle[d] two disturbing trends in medicine: the dumbing down of standards for entrance into medical schools and the capitulation of medical school curricula to woke posturing at the expense of rigorous clinical training.

Goldfarb maintained that “abandoning the traditional values such as treating all patients equally and recruiting the best and the brightest students… [would] aggravate health disparities and undermine the trust of patients of all races.”

The book was a wake-up call regarding the destructive nature of woke medicine and the American Medical Association’s (AMA) adoption of the “Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity.”

Many U.S. medical schools have embraced the idea that American healthcare is systemically racist, that White physicians and other providers are infected with racial bias, that racism accounts for the disparities in health outcomes between Blacks and Whites, and that the only antidote to racism is ‘anti-racism.’

Goldfarb is the founder of Do No Harm, a nonprofit formed to eliminate identity politics in medicine. Wokeness, he argues, is profoundly destructive. The predictable result: Woke medicine will harm African Americans and other marginalized groups it purports to help.

Yet, between April 2012 and December 2024 a report by the Do No Harm organization indicated that “dozens of medical school mission statements became significantly more woke… raising genuine concerns whether “doctors have a stronger command of ideological doctrine than medical science.”

In 2024 “UCLA’s first-year medical students were required… to sit through a two-hour lecture on the subject of ‘Housing (In)Justice’ that was part of a mandatory course on ‘structural racism’ at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.

Furthermore, UCLA’s guest lecturer was a left-wing homeless advocate, Lisa Gray-Garcia, told her captive audience of aspiring doctors that modern medicine is ‘white science.’ Her pagan prayers to ‘Mama Earth,’ …included a blessing for ‘black,’ ‘brown,’ and ‘houseless people’ who, she claimed, die because of the ‘crapatalist lie’ of ‘private property.’”

Wearing a Palestinian scarf, Ms. Gray-Garcia, a Hamas sympathizer who once posted on X that ‘Israel is Amerikkklan,’ led UCLA’s medical students in chants of ‘Free, free Palestine.’

In February 2025 the organization Do No Harm compiled a list which originally contained 78 medical schools that still had their own DEI offices despite Trump’s DEI crackdown. As of July 8, 2025, a review of medical school websites shows this number to be 62 medical schools.

While some inroads have been made in the anti-DEI movement, there is much to be done. Renaming DEI the “Office of Belonging and Engagement” is a smoke and mirrors act. Will identity-based favoritism still continue? DEI activists will not go down without a fight. In fact, John Sailer exposes how DEI administrators use “diversity checks” to influence the hiring process, thus effectively engaging in discrimination.

Moreover, “[c]oncerns about anti-Semitic incidents at the University of California, San Francisco’s (UCSF) medical center have reached a boiling point, with faculty members expressing concern that Jewish patients are ‘hiding their identities’ to avoid discrimination.

The fact that jihadist influencers are now part of the medical teaching landscape shows how the Red-Green Alliance poses a dual threat for American medical care.

In fact, serious anti-Semitism exists in medical organizations as documented here so much so that the author states that “it would be advisable for Jews to avoid enrollment in medical schools like Michigan State and Yale that abide or encourage extremism.”

Additionally, “[m]ore than 75% of medical professionals and students who identify as Jewish say that they have been exposed to anti-Semitism, and since Oct. 7, 2023, medical publications and social media posts by those in the field about Jew-hatred have increased by five times and posts by medical professionals promoting anti-Semitism are up by four times.”

So while DEI and Critical Race Theory attempt to replace the Hippocratic Oath, Hamas simultaneously gains a foothold in U.S. medicine.

In this 2019 article titled “Physician Jew-Hatred is alive and well in America,” Lara Kollab, an American-born Muslim tweeted that “everyone who supports Israel should have their immune cells killed so that they can see what it feels like not to be able to defend yourself against foreign invaders.” Kollab allegedly said she would give Jewish people the wrong medication.

That the Cleveland Clinic fired her is not enough. It should be a goal to make sure that another clinic doesn’t hire her and that she never gets a permanent license to practice anywhere in America.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ, headed by Jay Sekulow) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA, headed by Mort Klein) filed a complaint with the Ohio State Board of Medical Examiners asserting that Kollab violated the Medical Practice Act, the American Medical Association Code of Ethics, and the American Osteopathic Code of Ethics.

The fight to expose DEI and concurrent Islamic hatred continues. In 2024 “Do No Harm, reviewed 158 medical school mission statements and found that 77% could be classified as ‘woke’ in 2024, a number that increased substantially from 68% in 2021[.]” The report also found that “Higher ranked medical schools were more likely to increase the wokeness of their mission.”

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which administers the Medical College Admission Test, represents 171 US and Canadian medical schools along with more than 400 teaching hospitals and health systems. One of its key roles is developing standards for the topics and concepts medical students must learn, e.g., diversity, equity and inclusion.

Oppression is a consistent theme. Graduates must describe ‘the impact of various systems of oppression on health and healthcare,’ including ‘colonialism, White Supremacy, acculturation, [and] assimilation.’ They must also identify ‘systems of power, privilege and oppression,’ including ‘white privilege, racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, [and] religious oppression.’ Once graduates identify the oppressed, they are expected to practice ‘allyship,’ which is defined as ‘recogniz[ing] their privilege’ and ‘work[ing] in solidarity with oppressed groups in the struggle for justice.’

But pushback has occurred. Ken Altucker at USA Today writes that “[c]iting state crackdowns on diversity, equity and inclusion the Liaison Committee on Medical Education voted to eliminate diversity programs and partnerships as criteria when it grades the performance of medical schools that confer ‘MD’ degrees to students.”

The National Medical Association (NMA) which represents black physicians, opposes the changes. It has condemned recent decisions by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) to remove or weaken accreditation.

Then there is the American Association for Physician Leadership (AAPL, formerly ACPE) which claims that it “is the only association focused on the personal transformation of all physicians, and through them the organizations they serve.” Whatever that means!

The AAPL claims that “the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI programs could exacerbate an unexpectedly steep drop in diversity among medical school students [.]”

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, black enrollees declined 11.6%, new students of Hispanic origin fell 10.8% and American Indian or Alaska Native student enrollment fell 22.1%.

But wasn’t affirmative action supposed to increase minority representation these past 60+ years?

Peeling back these claims, it is important to realize that banning DEI programs has financial consequences for institutions of higher learning. For example, the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota reportedly lost a $6.8 million federal grant after the Trump administration deemed it DEI-related.

Sacrificing patient care on the altar of political correctness, be it left-wing ideology or hateful jihadist dogma, should have no place in America. Physicians brazenly posting vile comments against “Zionist doctors” are a chilling reminder of the evil of anti-Semitism.

The twin pillars of the Red-Green Alliance must be eradicated, as lives literally depend on it.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com

Hat Tip: Marsha S.

Image: Magic Studio