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National Cancer Institute’s annual DEI spending comes with $218 million taxpayer price tag

February 24, 2025 | | Print Article

Efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs exposed more divisive waste with an annual price tag of over nine figures from the government’s main cancer research agency.

Time and again, DEI had been proven to be a guiding principle under then-President Joe Biden’s administration. Now, as President Donald Trump seeks to eliminate such discriminatory agendas, the watchdog group Do No Harm has uncovered $218 million in annual spending from the National Cancer Institute specifically geared toward hiring “underrepresented” individuals.

Detailed by Fox News, the nonprofit found roughly 3% of NCI’s grant funding was being doled out to institutions with the express purpose of addressing “racism” and hiring minorities.

According to the report, this included two active grants from the agency under the direction of the National Institutes of Health that focused on hiring minority faculty members and scientists which included a grant of $10.5 million to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai supporting “Inclusive Excellence.”

The grant was described as a plan to “modify the Mount Sinai Health System Task Force To Address Racism Roadmap for Change with key strategies as the basis for an Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Roadmap for Inclusive Excellence,” while another active grant sought the recruitment of 12 scientists specifically from “underrepresented groups.”

“The National Cancer Institute has been taking advantage of taxpayers to push a DEI agenda on the medical field,” expressed Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb to Fox News Digital. “They dole out $218 million each year for grants prioritizing ‘underrepresented’ in medicine, which has generally been defined as anyone from a racial minority group, except Asian Americans. The National Cancer Institute should not be rewarding racial discrimination with taxpayer money. Racial discrimination has no place in medicine.”

During his administration, Biden set a target 25 years in the future to cut cancer deaths in half, with the aim “to turn more cancers from death sentences into chronic diseases people can live with.”

That effort was readily stymied during his tenure as ongoing shortages proved improperly addressed to provide cancer patients with access to even currently available treatments and cancer-fighting drugs.

Along with the wasteful spending from NCI, Do No Harm brought attention to major medical associations that were continuing to peddle DEI programs which included the American College of Physicians, American Nurses Association, American Society of Hematology, American Academy of Family Physicians and National Association of School Psychologists.

Additionally, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and the Association of American Medical Colleges were said to “have largely elected to remain silent, despite their institutional commitments to DEI, and not outwardly oppose the executive orders,” that were signed by Trump.

While the Department of Government Efficiency is estimated to have already saved American taxpayers billions in what is considered to be “waste, fraud, and abuse” from agencies, Goldfarb unequivocally asserted that NCI “stop promoting a politically motivated DEI agenda.”

Kevin Haggerty
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