Tell Duke their racial ideology is dangerous and divisive

PETITION:
Stand Against Duke’s Unscientific, Unethical Racial Agenda

What you need to know

Duke University Health System has deemed racism a “public health crisis” despite having no legitimate clinical data with which to substantiate such a dark and disturbing claim.

Duke Health is a major health care provider in America’s ninth largest state and oversees a prestigious medical school that trains the next generation of doctors. Duke has boldly integrated its divisive political ideology into hiring and training, and may potentially be compromising patient care. Duke has offered no scientific explanation as to why their focus on race is medically beneficial or ethical, and even fired a doctor who questioned the legitimacy of Duke Health’s views and actions.

These are the facts. We have committed to providing you with the relevant sources.

SOURCES

Your Voice Is Essential to Turn Things Around

We need to let Duke University and Duke Health know that those it serves and influences take their health and communities seriously. Duke cannot continue with unethical, dangerous, and potentially illegal practices in hiring and training.

As a major educator and health care provider, the quality of training and care that North Carolina residents and others receive from Duke is critically important and cannot be based on anything other than science and merit. Judging applicants, employees, or patients according to things like skin color is shockingly inappropriate and completely unacceptable.

The primary function of any doctor or employer of doctors is to take care of patients, not promote political activism or racial ideology. With medical mistakes being the third leading cause of death in the US, can you really afford to leave your health in the hands of potentially inferior health care professionals or brazenly biased doctors? North Carolinians deserve the best care available according to the highest possible standards.

Duke University, the Duke University School of Medicine, and Duke University Health System have been infiltrated by dangerous non-medical and unscientific thinking. The boards of these institutions must be approached and challenged. By signing this petition and informing them of your opposition to these policies, you agree to have your voice represented to the board members of Duke as we challenge them to renounce their supposedly antiracist pledge, their biased hiring practices, and their unscientific, political, and racially charged rhetoric.

Petition

I am deeply concerned and appalled at what I have learned about the misguided diversity initiatives at Duke Health and the Duke University School of Medicine. The ideas and practices are unscientific, divisive, unethical, possibly illegal, and potentially dangerous to the citizens of North Carolina. There is no place in medicine for unscientific and non-clinical racial and political ideologies that preference race in hiring. The only thing that matters in health care is finding the best professionals available based on merit – regardless of skin color or gender.

The claim that “racism is a public health crisis” is as unscientific as it is unsettling. Duke’s emphasis on skin color is completely inappropriate and dangerous.

Duke’s stated goals of increasing staff diversity are completely misguided. This is not because diversity is a negative or undesirable thing, but because diversity is not what creates better healthcare outcomes. The only thing that matters in medicine is having the very best professionals regardless of skin color.

I respectfully – yet unapologetically – ask that you remove the unscientific and divisive race based ideologies, training, rhetoric, and hiring practices from your institution and its affiliates. Unproven and unscientific concepts like ‘implicit bias,’ dubious claims of racism being a ‘public health crisis,’ and race based hiring practices do not serve the best interests of Duke patients or the community at large.

Duke Health’s so-called antiracism pledge – while presumably well meaning – contains political rhetoric and fallacies that have no scientific basis or value in medicine. The pledge must be renounced along with Duke’s other inappropriate practices and ideologies.

What North Carolinians deserve is to be treated by the best health care professionals available using the best possible practices and technologies available.

We the undersigned stand against Duke Health’s dangerous and unethical practice of pushing divisive and dangerous racial ideology into medical care and hiring, and their vilification of North Carolinians based on race.

Join us in speaking out against the DEI and sign the petition.

All names are confidential.

If you are not ready to sign the petition but would like to be kept informed of our effort, sign up here.

Signatures: 13,744

Goal: 10,000

Duke’s Disturbing Developments

Duke Health’s antiracism pledge speaks of recognizing “implicit bias” – a dynamic that cannot be scientifically proven in an individual despite attempts by academics. This is little more than a self righteous and misguided attempt to brand certain people as racists and offers nothing of value to minorities.
Duke has openly communicated to its physicians that white males are “agents” of “oppression” and “discrimination” who are “privileged by birth.” Anyone who isn’t a white male is ominously identified as a “target.”
Duke Health admits to prioritizing DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in hiring. The only thing a healthcare provider should be prioritizing in hiring is trying to onboard the best available candidates – regardless of skin color or any other irrelevant characteristics.
Duke School of Medicine policy allows illegal immigrants to be admitted as students and receive institutional financial aid.
Duke Health (in 2023) shockingly began “reviewing” HR policies around background checks, drug screening, and attendance to “ensure equitable hiring and retention strategies.” This is both racist and unethical. The implication is that Duke believes it needs to forgo background checks and drug testing in order to hire minorities. These types of policies can also potentially put patients and staff members in danger. What happened to “Do No Harm”?
Earlier this year, Duke Health surgeon Dr. Vignesh Raman said his “heart drops” when he walks into a patient’s room to find them watching FOX News or wearing Trump clothing. A highly trained and educated physician making judgements on patients based on political affiliation or their choice of programming is seriously disturbing and raises ethical questions about the level of care provided. Duke Health’s pledge states “We value each other’s differences.” Dr. Raman, a respected medical professional, isn’t speaking as if he values his patient’s “differences.” In fact, an apparent patient of Dr. Raman said of the doctor in an online review, “I didn’t feel respected.”
Dr. Raman said it was good that Duke serves majority “non-white” patients. What difference does a patient’s race make? Dr. Raman also admitted that Duke is “abandoning all sorts of metrics” when evaluating potential surgeons. He spoke of using people’s “life stories” to evaluate their fitness for being onboarded. Anything other than bringing in the highest quality individuals to care for North Carolinians – regardless of race or other irrelevant factors – is shockingly unethical and potentially illegal. The statements were made in a video of an internal meeting of Duke Health staff posted to Duke’s website. The video was removed after Duke came under fire in the media earlier this year.
Duke also recently terminated emergency room physician Dr. Kendall Conger for questioning the institution’s ideology on race and its place in medicine.
Duke Health admits that it could not substantiate the narrative that worse health outcomes for Black patients were specifically tied to the “implicit bias” of health care providers. SO MUCH FOR SCIENCE!!!
Duke has mandated its employees take unscientific and divisive DEI Training. Ironically, Duke issued a disclaimer stating that it doesn’t necessarily hold the views outlined in the training it forced its employees to take! The doublespeak was described as “pathetic” and “slimy” by a respected physician familiar with Duke. Some of the training centers around the concept of implicit bias. Duke’s antiracism pledge states, “We recognize our own implicit biases.” By definition, a person cannot recognize his own implicit bias. A well known test – used at Duke and other institutions – designed to measure implicit bias is unable to measure racism and prejudice according to the well respected researcher who developed it. Duke must spend more energy helping its employees offer world class healthcare and less time trying to convince them that they are racists.
Duke has the backing of many powerful figures who serve as board members and trustees – a who’s who of CEOs, venture capitalists, and other wealthy and influential power brokers. One notable major donor is former Foundation for the Carolinas president and former university trustee Michael Marsicano. Marsicano’s son James is an Ivy league graduate and recent UNC law student who was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in 2023 following an attack on Atlanta police officers.
Further underscoring the political and nonsensical nature of Duke’s stances and practices, is the fact that their joint medical school initiative in Singapore has zero mention of DEI or race based policies on its website. This is a far cry from the trove of information on race and DEI publically available on Duke’s U.S. sites. The Prime Minister of Singapore recently stated that “wokeness” was a western concept that makes life “burdensome.” If Duke’s racial and political ideologies are supposedly beneficial to Americans, why has Duke conveniently distanced itself from such ideas in multi-ethnic Singapore?

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