WHAT’S NEW …. IN OUR MEDICAL JOURNALS
Wokeness in editorial offices of medical and basic science journals is still the rule
If we’re already talking about medical journals, it’s worth noting that they still haven’t caught up to the growing anti-wokeness sentiment gaining traction in much of the country. This became especially apparent once again in several recent articles—mostly personal opinion pieces—published in leading medical and science journals. Here are a few examples.
Unsurprisingly, The New England Journal of Medicine led the charge. In one Perspective article, a group of U.S. authors argued that “the deluge of legislative and policy attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts threatens the integrity of the health care workforce and will ultimately worsen the health of the populace” (1).
A similar message was echoed by two Stanford University faculty members, also in a Perspective article in the same issue. They lamented that “a study of a health equity curriculum was stopped in its tracks by the ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in federal agencies, with the study’s leaders seeing the sudden halt as a call to action” (2).
And because medicine loves things in threes, a third Perspective piece in that issue claimed that the voice of the CDC had been “silenced” because one issue of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) wasn’t published on time (3). The article warned, “For more than 60 years, the MMWR has published life-saving information on U.S. public health crises. The Trump administration’s pause on health communications has disrupted that essential mission.”
Seriously?
The rhetorical exaggeration in these declarations is hard to miss. It not only undermines the credibility of the concerns expressed but also discourages genuine engagement with the issues raised. That didn’t seem to bother the editors of The Journal, however, who—true to a pattern that’s become all too familiar—published three essentially unanimous opinion pieces warning of the supposed end of the world as we know it, without finding it necessary to invite a single fact-based, less emotional counterpoint.
Apparently, even a 3-to-1 ratio would have been intolerably “unfair” to the woke crowd, which seems perpetually resistant to alternative perspectives. Perhaps a better way to put it is: woke arguments often struggle to stand up against strong, rational counterarguments—and editorial boards know it.
The depth of ideological capture in some medical journals was further illustrated by an Opinion article co-authored by the relatively new editor-in-chief of the BMJ. In it, the authors argued that “medical journal editors must resist a recent CDC order and anti-gender etiology” (4). The order in question—a poorly conceived directive issued by a temporary CDC official—called for the retraction or withdrawal of papers that contradicted a Trump-era executive order affirming that only two sexes exist and banning gender-transition treatments for minors under the age of 19.
But since when is it the role of medical journal editors to be political activists?
And, as if to drive the point home, the BMJ also published a piece by four U.S.-based authors from Baltimore (likely unable to place their Opinion article in a U.S. journal) arguing that “the elimination of protections against immigration action in health care facilities risks patient care, public health, and moral injury to providers” (5). This is likely the same crowd who claimed that Israeli defense operations against armed Hamas terrorists inside hospitals somehow endangered the hospitals’ function—as if hospitals harboring armed militants were still neutral zones. Oy vey.
References
1. Guerra P, et al., N Engl J Med 2025. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2500489; Online ahead of print.
2. Wang SXY, Chi K, N Engl J med 2025; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp501471. Online ahead of print.
3. Rasmussen et al., N Engl J Med 2025; DOI: 10. 1056/NEJM2501622. Online ahead of print.
4. Clark J, Abbasi K. BMJ 2025;388:r253
5. Page KR, et al., BMJ 2025;388:r304