One doctor issued a stark warning against woke ideology in medicine after a Fox News Digital exclusive revealed first-year students at the Indiana University School of Medicine are exposed to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) content as part of a basic anatomy class.
Do No Harm Board Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb joined "Fox & Friends First" to discuss his stance on the matter, arguing it is "dangerous" for the medical world to pick one side on controversial social topics over fears of patient mistrust.
"It's dangerous for one major reason, and that is that these kinds of ideas are very controversial amongst Americans, and to have a medical world pick one side, if you will, pick one sort of approach in a very controversial ideological area just breeds mistrust," Goldfarb said Monday.
"The patients that… feel that this shouldn't be taught to medical students here, that their physicians are engaging in this kind of educational activity, are going to have less trust in their physicians when they feel that this is the wrong thing to be teaching students," he continued.
Students in the class received a "sex and gender primer" lesson that includes instruction on gender being a "social construct," that sex and gender are not the same thing, and on how to be a "more inclusive" health care professional when it comes to "gender diverse patients."
The class features a series of PowerPoint slides, one of which claims sex is not the same thing as gender. It defines sex as "mostly biological" while defining gender as "mostly" a "social construct."
A following slide mentions that neither sex nor gender are "non-binary," and categorizes them both as "oversimplifications."
"This was a course in structural anatomy," Goldfarb said. "The notion about the relationship between gender and sex is an incredibly controversial area, and it ought to be taught, if it's taught at all, as an incredibly controversial area in a very objective way to students. It shouldn't be taught in a way that's trying to indoctrinate students."
"Politicization of the idea about gender is something that's harming children in America, and that's something we're very much against, and political ideas shouldn't be taught in a course on anatomy," he continued.
Goldfarb noted there is a "crisis" in America over the far-left's bid to indoctrinate children with gender ideology as the nation faces a growing trend of children who seek to transition during adolescence.
He argued that although it is important for medical students to learn about the science surrounding transitions, the topic should not be accessible to children.
"I think it's important to teach about the medical needs of transgender adults," he said. "It's a big mistake to sort of indoctrinate medical students into these ideas that children should be exposed to this so-called transition, either social transition or actual gender transition."
His comments come as a majority of states have moved to implement restrictions on child sex changes, which has become widely known as "gender-affirming care."
As of November, Arkansas and Alabama are the only two states to have passed legislation, issuing a total ban on transgender treatments for minors, although such are presently in legal limbo following court injunctions.
Arizona, Tennessee, Texas and Florida have effectively issued partial bans. The restrictions in Texas and Florida did not emerge from legislation.
"We're taking physicians away from learning basic science and spending time learning about social issues about which they can do nothing," Goldfarb said. "And the education includes issues about improving housing, improving violence in communities, improving the availability of food in communities that health."
"Physicians can't do anything about this, so what's the point of spending hours and hours in the curriculum on these issues?"
Fox News Digital reached out to Indiana University for comment but did not receive a response.
Fox News' Brandon Gillespie, Andrew Mark Miller, and Jon Brown contributed to this report.
