Do No Harm
This content was last updated Nov. 9, 2023, 8:18 p.m. UTC
Do No Harm (DNH) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization created by Stanley Goldfarb and incorporated in Virginia. Originally founded to oppose diversity initiatives in the field of medicine, DNH has evolved into an anti-trans organization in a very short time and has produced a template for model anti-trans legislation that has been pushed in various states to restrict gender-affirming care to transgender youth. Members include conservative medical professionals including Goldfarb (a kidney specialist) and psychiatrist Miriam Grossman, as well as activists such as parents’ rights advocate January Littlejohn and anti-trans detransitioner Chloe Cole.
Researchers from the left claim ‘anti-racist’ initiatives to be a cure-all for a long list of social issues. More and more of these so-called ‘researchers’ are striving to be ‘politically’ correct rather than factually correct.
Founding
DNH was founded in 2022 by Stanley Goldfarb, a kidney specialist and former associate dean for curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Goldfarb has a history of criticizing social and racial diversity in health care, as shown by his 2019 Wall Street Journal editorial, “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns.” In the article, he claims health care students are over-educated on social issues, and “concerns about social justice have taken over undergraduate education.”
Initially, DNH focused specifically on racial diversity and inclusivity initiatives in the health care sector, according to the group’s founding press release. Specifically, they stated their goal to “[protect] patients and physicians from woke healthcare,” and “stop this infiltration of politics in the healthcare system and particularly into medical education before it impacts quality and access to care.”
By the end of 2022, DNH had filed three lawsuits opposing diversity initiatives, followed by a fourth in early 2023.
Finances
Having formed in 2022, tax information for DNH as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization has yet to become publicly available. However, the Associated Press reported the organization’s application to become a nonprofit included projected revenues of “$910,000 in 2022, more than $1.1 million in 2023 and over $1.5 million in 2024.” The group also won the Gregor G. Peterson Prize at the end of 2022, a $250,000 grant paid out over three years, which was awarded to the Center for American Liberty (CAL) in 2020. The CAL is headed by Harmeet Dhillon, former vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party and lawyer representing Chloe Cole in her lawsuit against Kaiser Hospitals.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, DNH cannot be directly involved in major lobbying without threatening its status. As such, Do No Harm Action was incorporated as a separate charity with a more lenient code for direct lobbying.
History of Anti-LGBTQ+ Activism
DNH filed an amicus brief in the case of Dekker, et al., v. Weida, et al., a lawsuit raised in opposition to Florida’s ban on allocating Medicaid funds to gender-affirming treatments. In the request, they describe themselves as a “diverse group of physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients, and policymakers whose goal is to protect healthcare from a radical ideology.”
DNH filed an amicus brief in the case of Poe et. al. v. Drummond et. al., a lawsuit raised in opposition to Oklahoma’s sweeping ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The brief opens by claiming “No reliable scientific evidence justifies the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria in minors,” and incorrectly asserts gender-affirming care “achieve[s] no proven benefit.”
In June of 2023, Goldfarb made an appearance on Fox Business, speaking as the chairman for DNH, in a segment decrying the use of puberty blockers for transgender minors. During his appearance, he notes “over 95 percent of children who start these puberty blockers wind up on the [sic] hormones,” which is framed as a negative outcome. He claims puberty blockers are non-reversible and are associated with “severe side effects,” including bone density issues, (the standards of care for gender dysphoria in youth recommends that patients’ bone density be routinely checked during treatment and supplemented when necessary).
Miriam Grossman, who introduced herself as a senior fellow for DNH, testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on 14 June 2023. During her testimony, Grossman downplayed the risk of suicide by trans youth and cited Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish doctor who is known for claiming transgender minors will “grow out of it” at a rate of 80 percent, a claim that runs contrary to the actual rate of 1 to 3 percent.
Model Legislation
DNH’s primary contribution to anti-trans activism was to provide a template for anti-trans legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors. This model legislation has been adopted and tweaked by various states for use in various bills that ban easy access to health care for minors, with wording and statistics that contradict the findings of all major medical organizations in the U. S.
In a section with similarities to Iowa's Senate File 129, the template claims “a substantial majority of minors who experience discordance between their sex and perceived sex or perceived gender will outgrow the discordance.” Studies have shown between 1 and 3 percent of transgender youth discontinue treatment as they age, and those who do “report doing so for reasons unrelated to a change in gender identity, such as pressure from family, difficulty obtaining employment, or discrimination.”
A commonly repeated passage about the risk of suicide among trans youth shows up in three bills: Georgia House Bill 653, New Hampshire House Bill 619, and West Virginia Senate Bill 692. This section claims “This climate of misinformation, at the heart of which is the unfounded belief that minors in distress who are not able to access drugs and surgeries are at imminent risk of suicide, cannot conceivably ground an informed consent process.” 80 percent of trans individuals have contemplated suicide and 40 percent have attempted suicide at some point in their lives, with minors representing the highest risk section of the population. Comparatively, 14 percent of youth overall have reported a suicide attempt in their lives.
In a section that surfaced in Montana’s Senate Bill 99, the template outlines several forms of explicitly outlawed forms of treatment for minors, mostly including gender-affirming surgeries, which are extremely rare. Less than 800 cases of top surgery occurred for those between 13 and 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis between 2019 and 2021, out of 40 million annual patients who are minors.
The template offers punitive examples for doctors who break these health care bans, which shows up in Montana’s Senate Bill 99, alongside similar wording in Missouri House Bill 916 and New Hampshire House Bill 619.
The most commonly cited passage is the legal definition of “sex,” which appears nearly verbatim in eleven different bills. Given all compared examples, language written by the DNH or nearly identical to that written by the group appears in anti-trans bills that have been proposed or passed in at least twelve states.