Meet the New Influential Player in Transgender Health Bills

Do No Harm, a nonprofit organization that was launched last year to oppose diversity initiatives in medicine, has become a major leader in state legislatures seeking to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. , producing model legislation that, according to an Associated Press analysis, has been used in fewer than three states.

The nonprofit organization, not well known outside of conservative medical and political circles, describes itself on its website as a collection of doctors and others coming together to “protect health care from radical ideology, divisive and discriminatory”.

Do No Harm representatives declined the opportunity to speak to The Associated Press and sent an email statement explaining the group’s position.

WHO IS BEHIND DOING NO HARM?

The founder, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, is a kidney specialist and professor emeritus and former associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Goldfarb retired in 2021 and incorporated Do No Harm in January 2022.

Initially, Do No Harm focused on race in medical education and recruitment. “The same radical movement behind ‘Critical Race Theory’ in the classroom and ‘Defund the Police’ is coming after health care, but hardly anyone knows it,” he warns on his website.

Goldfarb declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press, but said in an email that “Do No Harm works to protect children from extreme gender ideology through original research, coalition building, testimonials from parents and patients who they have had deeply disturbing experiences and advocated for the rigorous and apolitical study of gender dysphoria.”

Goldfarb has published a book, “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors Into Social Justice Warriors Is Destroying American Medicine,” along with a similar opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

He said the new york post office in September 2022: “This focus on diversity means we’re going to cast someone with a certain skin color because we think they’re okay, they can do the job. But we’re not going to look for the best and brightest. We’re going to look for people who are doing well to make sure we have the right mix of ethnic groups in our medical schools.”

The organization joined a civil rights lawsuit brought by two doctors and several states challenging a federal rule that allows higher compensation for doctors who adopt an “anti-racist” plan. The claim was dismissed.

The organization’s executive director, Kristina Rasmussen, was previously chief of staff to former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, and served as president of the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, according to her LinkedIn profile.

WHERE DOES NO HARM WORK?

An AP analysis of state bills to restrict gender-affirming care for youth found passages identical or nearly identical to model Do No Harm legislation in Mountain, arkansas and Iowa.

The organization had registered lobbyists in at least three states (Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee) as of 2022 and in Florida as of 2023. People associated with the group have appeared as witnesses in parliaments, including 18-year-old Chloe Cole, who is listed on her website as a “patient advocate” who has spoken to lawmakers about her gender transition reversal.

In states like Idaho, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Ohio, Cole described starting her transition at age 13, surgery to remove her breasts at 15, and stopping it a year later saying it was a mistake. Republican supporters of bills restricting or banning gender-affirming care often cite Cole’s story.

Cole told Kansas news outlet The Reflector earlier this year that Do No Harm was reimbursing her travel expenses while testifying before state lawmakers. She and her lawyer did not respond to AP requests for comment.

IS DO NO HARM A LOBBYING GROUP?

Do No Harm was originally organized as a charity whose tax-exempt status would be jeopardized by major lobbying.

On March 9 of this year, after the group had already made significant inroads in legislatures with its model bill, hearing lobbyists and witnesses, it incorporated Do No Harm Action as a separate nonprofit with a status prosecutor that allows more lobbying, according to the records obtained. from the Virginia Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs.

Goldfarb did not directly respond to questions about lobbying by Do No Harm, nor did another representative for the organization.

In the nonprofit status application obtained from the Virginia agency, Do No Harm projected revenue of $910,000 in 2022, more than $1.1 million in 2023, and more than $1.5 million in 2024.

The organization is so new that federal tax forms that typically reveal the details of nonprofit spending have not been received or processed.

He won a $250,000 prize last year called the Gregor Peterson Award. His past recipients include the Center for American Freedom, run by Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign and who is representing Cole in his lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente over the gender transition treatments he now He says he’s sorry. The award was announced in December at a summit organized by the American Legislative Exchange Councila leading provider of conservative model legislation.

HOW IS THE GROUP’S WORK RECEIVED?

More than 150 Penn medical school alumni signed a letter criticizing Goldfarb in 2019 for his Wall Street Journal op-ed. And last year, he was the subject of an online petition after he reacted to a scientific journal article about the academic success rates of medical students of color by suggesting in a tweet that they were simply “less good at being residents”.

Cole’s testimony at the Tennessee state house was praised by House Majority Leader Lamberth, who said he “described much better than I did about why no child should go through this.” Lamberth, who sponsored the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, also thanked Cole for sharing “the most private things that can happen to someone.”

Is model legislation on gender-affirming care has been criticized for using technical medical terminology as political rhetoric to scare people.

“Every line of this contains some kind of falsehood,” said Dr. Meredith McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale Medical School.

“My overall takeaway from this is that there are a lot of recycled false claims about gender dysphoria, standards of care, safety, evidence, and medical authority that seem straight out of the misinformation playbook.”

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Associated Press writers Kavish Harjai and Amy Beth Hanson, along with AP News researcher Rhonda Shafner, contributed to this report. Harjai is a staff member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on covert issues.

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