The Wellcome Trust, named after pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome, is the UK’s largest non-governmental funder of scientific research. And it’s the third wealthiest charitable foundation in the world, just behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2021, Wellcome’s endowment topped $38 billion – making it richer than most British universities combined.
You’d expect an organisation with such a vast endowment to be a serious affair – to be run by serious people with a serious agenda. But as with so many organisations nowadays, this appears not to be the case.
On August 10th, a notice appeared on the organisation’s website titled ‘An update on Wellcome’s anti-racism programme’. It was written by the organisation’s director. (You can probably see where this is going.)
“Two years ago,” the notice begins, “Wellcome made a statement recognising that we have perpetuated racism, and made a commitment to becoming an anti-racist organisation. We committed to developing anti-racist principles and an anti-racist programme, and to an external evaluation of our progress.”
How exactly had the organisation “perpetuated racism”? We are told that black staff are less likely to describe it as “inclusive”, black applicants are less likely to be awarded research grants, and the museum collections reflect a history “that has its roots in imperial and colonial power structures”.
In other words, Wellcome had not done anything remotely racist. But they felt the need to admit to being racist because doing so became fashionable in the summer of 2020 – following the death of George Floyd.
Back to the recent notice, which continues: “This evaluation of our work to become an anti-racist funder and employer has now reported. It has found that Wellcome is still an institutionally racist organisation, and that we have yet to act on this with the urgency required.”
So in 2020, Wellcome admitted to being “institutionally racist”. Two years later, after developing “anti-racist principles” and an “anti-racist programme”, the organisation is still “institutionally racist”. They can’t catch a break!
The notice links to an official-looking report prepared by the Social Investment Consultancy and the Better Org – two consultancies that make money by telling organisations that they are racist. I can’t claim to have read the full report, which is 85 pages long. But the fact that “diversity” appears 64 times, and “inclusive” appears 92 times, tells me everything I need to know.
After accepting the report’s conclusion, Wellcome’s Director apologises for “the pain and disappointment it has led to”. (You can’t make this up.)
The identify of Wellcome’s Director may interest you. It’s Jeremy Farrar. He’s the pro-lockdown scientist who dismissed the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory”, and then later wrote a book stating he initially believed there was a 50% chance the virus leaked from a lab.
If organisations like the Labour Party want to engage in phoney self-flagellation around racism, that’s fine – they should be free to do so. But the Wellcome Trust is meant to be concerned with science. It’s a scandal that money needed for important research is being wasted on fake ‘anti-racism’ reports, and the organisation’s director takes them seriously.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
If any money is being fed to this fake charidee that has it’s origins in taxpayers pounds, shillings and pence then the outfit must have its charity status revoked. And now.
It is absolutely incomprehensible that a so-called charity can have all the perks of charitable status – to help promote their “charitable” work, supporting the poor and underprivileged, while in reality it is nothing more than a front organisation for money-laundering and dodgy research and experimentation, with an income of £38 billion!
This corrupt shill organisation should be closed immediately for the benefit of all.
FFS!
On their ‘Who we are” page it claims ‘climate change’ (of course) to be one of the “biggest health challenges facing humanity”. Yeah, I bet their “solutions” will have us cold and dead in winter, but I digress. As we know it’s not the only one to draw this direct connection between climate change & health but in all reality anything could be attributed to climate change if ‘the weather’ is one of the greatest challenges to our wellbeing. Granted we’re living on this planet and extremes in our environment can of course have a deleterious effect but this attributing ‘the climate’ with any ideological drive for societal change is pretty easy – just put the two together in a sentence. With this “climate” front and centre alone I propose it’s a grifter, anything to signal that virtuous currency to help bring in those genuine ones but anything that calls itself a Charity or Foundation should at least set the alarm bells ringing (not saying they’re all dodgy but deserve further scrutiny).
“Income of £38 billion”. I may be wrong but I think this figure may represent the current value of the charity not it’s income. Huge sum however and what power they can wield. Maybe it’s time to break up these powerful politicised charities for the same reason Teddy Roosevelt took on the Robber Barons with his trust busting laws.
Unless and until it is recognised that we need to stop talking about racism, we’re lost.
The really sad part of all of this is that there actually is a lot of racism in virtually every society, but none of it is addressed by the virtue signalling, narcissistic nonsense of the kind displayed in this report. Ironically the insistence upon the ubiquity of institutionalized racism absolves the individual of responsibility for his or her behaviour – if everyone is equally racist without knowing it, then individual attempts to treat people equally regardless of race are essentially futile.
Ultimately all of this woke psychosis is about removing agency from the individual and pushing us towards a world in which it’s easier for globalist organizations to manipulate and control us en masse. Hence, nebulous “climate change” is much more important than local habitat loss or pollution. Global pandemics are more important than taking care of our individual health and wellness. Feigned compassion for refugees is more important than addressing poverty and violence in our local communities. And it goes on and on. The truth is that the woke left likes abstract groups of people but hates actual people.
Jeremy Farrar salary £515,216.
Just in case you wanted to know where your donations were going.