The College Fix

‘Linguistic practices are open to change as LGBTQIA+ advocates refine their perspectives on language’

Indiana University School of Medicine has doubled down on its embrace of gender ideology in contradiction with biological reality, despite widespread media coverage of one of its courses.

Documents obtained by Do No Harm and provided exclusively to The College Fix show the public university continues to teach sex and gender are both “non-binary.”

“Genetic female” and “genetic male” are the “two most common chromosomal patterns,” the slides say, “but there are others.”

The “Sex and Gender Primer” slides also instruct aspiring doctors that what they learn today could become dated – “Linguistic practices are open to change as LGBTQIA+ advocates refine their perspectives on language.”

Medical professionals also should be careful not to associate organs with a person’s sex, according to the slides.

For example, they should say, “People with cervices need to undergo yearly cervical cancer screening,” instead of  “women need to undergo yearly cervical cancer screening.”

The course is taught by Dr. Jessica Byram and Dr. Valerie O’Loughlin, who taught the course first covered by the media in March.

Neither responded to a College Fix request for comment on Oct. 25 that asked how many sexes there are and how many genders exist.

The Fix also asked via email how OB/GYNs should fill out birth certificates when babies are born and if there are not specific conditions or diseases that each sex is more likely to suffer from as a newborn.

Diversity representatives for the university also did not respond to multiple requests for comments on the term.

Do No Harm criticized the university for embracing gender ideology and teaching unscientific information.

“It is an example of how a major medical school is willing to instruct its students in concepts that have no scientific foundation,” Laura Morgan, the program manager at Do No Harm, told The Fix via a media statement.

Morgan said Do No Harm will “continue to call out IUSM for its ongoing use of this course.”

It is especially concerning, Morgan told The Fix, “that, even after major media coverage and public backlash in March, the IUSM is doubling down on pushing unscientific concepts such as ‘sex assigned at birth’ to medical students who are just beginning their academic journeys toward becoming doctors.”

“The activists have tainted the word gender enough that according to their new definition, it can exist on a spectrum,” Ian Kingsbury, the director of research at Do No Harm, told The Fix via a media statement.

Within the slides are references to chromosome mutations as proof that male and female are not the only two sexes.

However, this is not accurate, according to the chairman of Do No Harm who is a medical doctor and former associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told The Fix, “developmental abnormalities are just that, abnormalities.”

So “pointing to cases of intersex and claiming that they represent part of a normal [continuum] is like saying that children born with a congenital heart disease are simply manifesting a spectrum of the way that the heart can develop,” Dr. Goldfarb said in a media statement.

Other slides in the presentation emphasize using “sex and gender inclusive terminology” so as not to discriminate against “sex- and gender diverse patients.”

The slides also say to use “appropriate pronouns (default to they/them) [and] use non-gendered, person-first and anatomy-specific language.”

“Most schools are using language consistent with gender ideology that speaks to gender being on a continuum,” Goldfarb told The Fix.

It will be difficult for students with traditional values to attend these schools; however, Goldfarb encouraged such students to try to “ask probing questions without forcing their own views.”

MORE: Med school accreditor requires DEI ‘commitment’

IMAGES: Do No Harm

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