A retired British biomedical scientist has been struck off from his profession after a tribunal ruled he was “inflaming gender discrimination” by posting on Twitter that “only women have a cervix.”
67-year-old blood expert Malcolm Needs was accused of posting a series of social media posts that a disciplinary panel found were “seriously offensive and discreditable.”
One of the posts the medical expert was punished for sharing said: “Only women have a cervix.
“There, I said it, it’s not difficult.
“Women also have a right to women-only spaces.
“Speaking up in defense of women’s rights doesn’t mean we can’t respect how others wish to live their lives.”
Another criticized the use of “cis” or “cisgender,” a term used by the “woke” Left to describe a person who “identifies” with the gender they were born with.
“I swear my head will explode if another person classes me as a ‘cis woman’,” the post shared by Needs said.
“I am NOT a cis woman but I AM a woman,” the post added.
“I have a cervix which no man can claim to have and biologically that will never change.
“I am not just tired of this insanity but I’m fed up of being labeled.”
A decorated medical expert, Needs previously served as the chief examiner in transfusion medicine for the Institute of Biomedical Science.
However, the 67-year-old scientist’s social media rants led to Needs being struck off after a panel found his posts “seriously offensive and discreditable.”
But a defiant Needs refused to attend the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS) disciplinary hearing.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I want NOTHING to do with your Kangaroo Court, and that, if I get one or email about this, I will take legal advice about harassment,” he told the panel.
The HCPTS hearing was told that a senior biomedical scientist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine alerted regulators to Needs’ tweets.
The complaint claimed that Needs’ social media activity was “a deeply unpleasant tirade of racist, misogynistic, transphobic and nationalistic tweets.”
Married father-of-one Needs, who spent more than four decades working chiefly in London in blood transfusion before retiring in 2016, was found to have engaged in “inappropriate” or “unprofessional” online conduct during an eight-month period in 2021 between February and October.
The panel found that his tweets and retweets formed “a stream of deplorable invective” which demonstrated “gender discrimination” and “prejudice against immigrants [and] feminist issues.”
He was also accused of “inciting racial hatred” for criticizing the Black Lives Matter organization.
In one post, Needs stated that BLM is trying “to rule this country.”
Needs, now of South Devon, “voluntarily absented himself” from the disciplinary hearing by sending an email telling the tribunal that he was “happily retired.”
Deciding to strike him off, the tribunal said that there had been no evidence of “any remorse, reflection or remediation” on Needs’ part, and there remained a “high risk of repetition.”
