67-year-old retired biomedical scientist Malcolm Needs in the UK was struck off from the profession after a tribunal concluded that his social media posts were “inflaming gender discrimination.”
In one of the posts, Needs wrote: “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.”
The social media posts were reported by another biomedical scientist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, according to the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCTPS).
The person who reported Needs said that his social media rants were “a deeply unpleasant tirade of racist, misogynistic, transphobic, and nationalistic tweets.”
The tribunal agreed, saying that his social media posts created “a stream of deplorable invective” that showed “prejudice against immigrants [and] feminist issues.” The tribunal added that the posts also inflamed gender discrimination as well as racial hatred.
In a tweet about illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel, Needs wrote: “And make them pay, like they paid the people smugglers to come over in the first place, and give our own taxpayers a rest.”
An image he shared stated: “Putting illegal immigrants up in 5* hotels has saved the hotel industry. So let’s save the airline industry by flying the fuckers back home!!”
In another tweet, he said that the Black Lives Matter movement was “trying to rule this country.”
Needs did not attend the tribunal hearing. He sent an email stating that he was “happily retired.”
In its decision to strike Needs from the profession, the tribunal said that he showed no “remorse, reflection or remediation” and there was a chance he would repeat his behavior.
