Medical Internship Program Under Fire for Rejecting Anyone Who Doesn’t ‘Identify’ as Black

A medical internship program is under fire for allegedly racially discriminating against otherwise qualified applicants, requiring that applicants must “identify” as black or African American.

Do No Harm filed a complaint on behalf of a member on Thursday requesting the federal government investigate an internship offered by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM). The anonymous member was qualified academically and met all other requirements but was rejected because of his race.

The complaint was filed to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against ARM for their internship program, GROW. The program offers paid opportunities in regenerative medicine for black undergraduate and graduate students, the website states.

“Once you sacrifice the opportunity to take a more qualified person for a less qualified person simply because of the way they look, you’ve sacrificed the opportunity to really do the best research,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, Do No Harm board chair, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“We just want them to do the right thing,” Goldfarb said. “We want them to obey the law, and we want them to deal with people based on their individual merit and not based on their racial and immutable characteristics.”

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