In a video posted on X, Levine said, “Black Americans are more likely than White Americans to live in areas in housing that increase their susceptibility to climate-related health issues,” and added that “65% of Black Americans report feeling anxious about climate change’s impact.”

This #BlackHistoryMonth I'm honored to join @MinorityHealth in Advancing Better Health Through Better Understanding for Black communities. Explore more at https://t.co/cVkHNKRu7i and don't miss next Thursday's clip to hear insights from another HHS leader. pic.twitter.com/a2QlM9bpdd

— ADM Rachel Levine (@HHS_ASH) February 15, 2024

The Department of Health and Human Services website that viewers are directed to at the end of the video doesn’t provide many additional details.

But there is a tacit implication in the video that if you’re not all-in on climate change policy, you just might be a racist — or that you don’t care about black health and anxiety.

Others have made the argument more directly.

A 2022 article published on BBC’s website explicitly said climate change is a form of both white supremacy and colonialism, arguing countries with populations predominantly of European descent contribute more to climate change than the rest of the world, which is affected more negatively by it.

Environmental justice advocate Peggy Shepard discussed in a 2022 TED talk how minorities in the United States experience greater health problems due to climate change, as well as more old-fashioned pollution, in part due to a lack of distance between industrial areas and poor minority neighborhoods.

Yet, although there may be nuanced conversations worth having about some of these topics, bringing race into the discussions is, at best, a distraction and, at worst, an attempt to shut down debate quickly and malign those who don’t fall in line with one of today’s most in-vogue ideologies.

If members of a poor community are developing asthma or cancer at a disproportionate rate because a nearby factory is releasing harmful chemicals into the environment, that is, by all means, a serious problem that should be addressed. Crying racism, though, isn’t going to help.

However, if people question the worst-case prediction of the latest climate model, want to eat a burger instead of bugs, or want to drive more than 300 miles without having to spend half the day charging their electric vehicle, shouting “racist” just might be sufficient to make them think twice about expressing such concerns or desires again while in polite company.

By no means is this tactic new. It has been used and overused to the point of self-parody by a certain type of progressive looking for another arrow in the quiver against those who fail to support a favored or sometimes floundering cause.

In 2020, one public health advocate wrote that refusing to wear a mask while shopping was an act of racial dominance. In the fall of 2022, university professors looking to maintain pandemic-era masking traditions in their classrooms included statements in their syllabi regarding how not masking indoors was a display of racism.

More recently, a professional gender studier at Oxford Brookes University wrote that wanting to keep biological males such as Rachel Levine out of women’s bathrooms and changing rooms is also racist.

Yet, even if the tactic has become one of self-parody, one only needs to look to Levine to see that we are living in parodic times where quite a few people are willing to embrace the latest slogans and accept all sorts of absurdities as reasonable, even to the detriment of society, if it protects them from being labeled a bigot.

About the Author

Daniel Nuccio holds master’s degrees in both psychology and biology. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in biology at Northern Illinois University studying host-microbe relationships. He is also a regular contributor to The College Fix where he writes about COVID, mental health, and other topics.

At the time, it was accepted that people who suffered from what is now called “gender dysphoria” weren’t suited for military duty. But in today’s military, Klinger would be considered “transgender” or “gender-nonconforming” and would be accepted openly without fear of dismissal.

That’s been the case for pediatrician Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman. In 2021, Levine was named President Joe Biden’s assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Levine began wearing a skirted military uniform after being ceremonially sworn in as a four-star admiral. That makes Levine the highest-ranking official in the U.S. Public Health Services Commissioned Corps. But that doesn’t change what one former Army neuropsychologist considers to be serious issues with allowing those with gender dysphoria into the military.

Transgender soldiers taking hormones are more likely to suffer from mood swings and health problems, making them a higher mission risk when deployed, according to Alan Hopewell, a neuropsychologist in Fort Worth, Texas. The effects of medication taken by “sexually confused individuals” on military induction and retention could be significant, Hopewell told The Epoch Times.

“Nobody has addressed the medication issue,” he said.

Department of Defense officials didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment about whether the effects of transgender treatments on soldiers had been studied.

A large Danish transgender suicide and mortality study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on June 27 showed that transgender individuals had “significantly higher rates of suicide attempt, suicide mortality, suicide-unrelated mortality, and all-cause mortality compared with the non-transgender population.”

Fit to Serve?

Hopewell was asked to write about the issue for Combat Stress magazine. He is a retired U.S. Army major, and he was awarded the Bronze Star as a prescribing psychologist in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Army changed its rules in 2021 to allow those with gender dysphoria—confusion and distress over biological sex—to serve.

Gender identity would “no longer be a basis for involuntary separation or military discharge, denied reenlistment or continuation of service, or subjected to adverse action or mistreatment,” according to an explanation of the policy changes on the U.S. Army website.

As a neuropsychologist able to write prescriptions, Hopewell spent much of his career determining whether soldiers were fit to serve in the Army. While the military is allowing transgender personnel, it appears no studies have been done on how the prescription drugs that are needed to maintain a “gender transition” may affect combat readiness, he said.

As a general rule, Army soldiers who need more sophisticated health monitoring can’t be deployed on a mission to a place where medical access is limited, he said. Army policy requires deployed soldiers to be treatable by a general practitioner because specialized care isn’t available in places such as Iraq, where he served, he said.

Hopewell pointed to testimony from transgender patients before the Texas Legislature this spring—one testified that receiving care from anyone other than an endocrinologist was difficult.

Medications that transgender patients need could even cause health and mental problems, he said. Testosterone, the male hormone used to help women appear more masculine, has been connected to sudden outbursts of intense anger termed “roid rage.”

Transgender patients take “massive” doses of testosterone or estrogen, which disrupt brain function and the entire physical system of the body, he said.

“There are substantial issues” that likely affect transgender people who join the military, Hopewell said.

“I’m not saying that nobody [transgender] could serve. But we have to recognize that this is a very complicated, serious issue and many of these people aren’t going to be able to be retained.”

Challenging, Expensive Medical Needs

And even if they are allowed to serve, it could take significant medical resources to deal with transgender medical needs, he said.

High doses of hormones have contributed to erratic behavior exhibited by some gender dysphoric people, he said, and Army medics aren’t equipped to deal with such issues in the field. But some military officials, such as Coast Guard Capt. Jay Caputo, have dismissed medication concerns surrounding transgender soldiers.

Hormone treatment for transgender soldiers is no different from birth control pills for female soldiers, Caputo wrote in a December 2017 article published by the U.S. Naval Institute magazine.

“Military members deploy worldwide every day while taking the same medications transgender persons use, just for different reasons,” Caputo wrote. “While the situation is not ideal, it would not limit a person’s ability to perform their duties.”

Caputo, a transgender service member who has served openly since June 2017, chalked up resistance to transgender soldiers to “transphobia.”

“Many do not understand what it means to be transgender,” Caputo wrote. “They think it is a mental illness (it is not). They think it is a choice (it is not). They think the costs are exorbitant (they are not). They worry transgender persons will flood into the military for a taxpayer-funded sex change (not realistic). Once the myths are debunked and the facts established, what is left?”

Hopewell, who treated people with gender dysphoria decades ago, disagrees. Patients he saw in the 1970s while working at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston struggled with mental illness, he said.

Transgender patients often have other mental issues, such as depression and anxiety, Hopewell said, and giving hormones to a person already under mental stress could produce adverse outcomes. Testosterone abuse in weightlifting and bodybuilding circles brought attention to the issue when a law against steroid use was passed in 1990.

As Caputo pointed out, critics of allowing transgender people to serve in the military have speculated that many join for free sex-change operations and hormones and that that would burden the health care system for the military.

The U.S. Department of Defense spent $11.6 million on psychotherapy for service members with gender dysphoria from Jan. 1, 2016, to May 14, 2021, according to Military.com. Within the department, 637 service members received hormone therapy for gender dysphoria during the same time at a cost of $340,000. And there were 243 “gender-transition” surgeries, performed at a cost of $3.1 million.

The Pentagon’s total annual medical budget for health care programs in 2016 was $33.5 billion. The proposed budget for fiscal 2022 called for $35.6 billion in discretionary spending for health care, according to the website, which is run by a private company that tracks news on all branches of the U.S. military.

Gender-Altering Care for Veterans

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) also appears poised to cover gender transition surgery under a new policy being reviewed by VA Secretary Denis McDonough. But resistance to the policy change is building.

In June, the Congressional House Appropriations Committee crafted a budget prohibiting the use of federal dollars for gender-transition hormones and surgeries at VA facilities.

It would be hard to prove that gender-confused people sign up for the military to get sex-change operations and treatment paid for at taxpayer expense, Hopewell said. Yet once they’re in the military, their ongoing care would be covered under the Veterans Administration, including after discharge.

“So the reality is that we’re going to have a tremendous cohort of people that maybe come in for a year” and get care for a lifetime, he said.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.