Biomedical scientist struck off for posting 'only women have a cervix'
Biomedical scientist who posted ‘only women have a cervix’ on Twitter is struck off after tribunal ruled he was ‘inflaming gender discrimination’
- Malcolm Needs has been booted from the health profession after his tweets
- The 67-year-old shared a string of ‘deplorable’ posts that ‘incited racial hatred’
- The OAP lashed out at migrants and blasted the Black Lives Matter movement
- He also shared tweets about feminist ‘bra-burners’, a disciplinary hearing heard
- The father-of-one’s posts were found by a senior biomedical scientist in London
A retired biomedical scientist who posted ‘only women have a cervix’ has been booted from the profession after a tribunal ruled he was ‘inflaming gender discrimination’.
Blood expert Malcolm Needs was accused of uploading a string of social media posts that a disciplinary panel found were ‘seriously offensive and discreditable’
One of the now-deleted posts he 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 defence of women’s rights doesn’t mean we can’t respect how others wish to live their lives.’
While another added: ‘I Swear my head will explode if another person classes me as a “cis woman”. I am NOT a cis woman but I AM a woman. 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 labelled.’
Malcolm Needs used social media to take aim at immigrants, black people and feminist ‘bra-burners’, a disciplinary hearing was told
The 67-year-old’s social media rants led to the former chief examiner in transfusion medicine for the Institute of Biomedical Science 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 67-year-old had been the former chief examiner in transfusion medicine for the Institute of Biomedical Science. He is pictured collecting an award from the organisation
The 67-year-old’s social media activity was slammed by the whistleblower as ‘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 between February and October in 2021.
The panel found that his tweets and retweets formed ‘a stream of deplorable invective’ which demonstrated ‘prejudice against immigrants [and] feminist issues’, as well as ‘inflaming gender discrimination’ and ‘inciting racial hatred’.
Several of Needs’ ‘highly unprofessional’ tweets were found by the panel to demonstrate ‘sarcasm, hostility and an offensive and derogatory attitude’ towards ‘protected’ groups including stating that ‘only women have a cervix’, and another referring to feminists as ‘bra burners’.
In one tweet, Needs posted a picture of his former colleagues along with a comment saying that ‘ignorant people’ have accused him of hating ‘women in work’, particularly if they are people of colour.
Needs explained the picture showed the staffing in his laboratory just before he retired, and said that the ‘three ‘non-POC’ women are a Portuguese woman and two Australian women’ – content that the panel found ‘both inappropriate and unprofessional’.
While in another post, the pension targeted migrants crossing the Channel, tweeting: ‘And make them pay, like they paid the people smugglers to come over in the first place, and give our own taxpayers a rest”, while sharing an image stating, ‘Putting illegal immigrants up in 5* hotels has saved the hotel industry. So let’s save the airline industry by flying the f***ers back home!!”.
The committee also found that Needs’ Twitter activity was ‘dismissive and offensive towards black people’ – citing a tweet stating that ‘Multiculturalism destroys culture’, which the panel found to be ‘inflammatory, divisive and prejudiced’.
Another post, which asked if there is ‘ANYTHING that is not racist?’, was found to intentionally ‘inflame a controversial and heated situation’.
Several social media posts disparaged the Black Lives Matter movement – which Needs believes ‘is tying [sic] to rule this country’ – as well as Black History Month, which the biomedical scientist said ‘demean[s] and insult[s] non-black history’.
Mr Needs refused to attend his disciplinary hearing, saying he wanted ‘nothing to do’ with the ‘kangaroo court’
In one such post on September 14, 2021. he said: ‘It would appear that Black Lives Matter, but not those of other ethnicities. ANOTHER knife crime Cressida Dick and Sadiq Khan. What is your “score” for this year?”
Three days later he tweeted ‘Black Lives Matter Then’ along with a post by another user regarding an incident of theft.
And on the following day he wrote: ‘Gang members jailed for a “brutal” street stabbing murder of NHS worker… Yet another case of Black Lives Mattering.’
In other posts, Needs tweeted an image stating that homing ‘illegal immigrants in 5* hotels’ had ‘saved the hotel industry’ and suggesting saving ‘the airline industry by flying the f***ckers back home’.
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.
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