El-Sayed preterm birth study

News · Heat 1.6 / 10 · 2 shows · 8m airtime

Townhall reported in October 2026 on a University of Michigan study Abdul El-Sayed co-authored as a doctoral student, which found roughly an 18% higher chance of premature birth for Arab-American mothers with non-Arab fathers. The hosts of Ruthless Podcast say they obtained the published study itself rather than relying on Townhall's account. Gutfeld has since claimed that El-Sayed's 2011 Columbia research said Arab women should mate only within their own group or risk birth abnormalities. The discussion weighs the 18% finding against the published paper and contests how the earlier research is characterized.

How 2 podcasts covered it

Ruthless Podcast, 2026-10-22 (12:21 to 16:12)
Reads the 18% preterm figure as a purity argument
Picks up the Townhall report on El-Sayed's doctoral study and reads the 18% preterm birth figure as an argument for racial purity, tying it to his Senate bid and Black voters in Detroit.
New angle: Townhall reported that El-Sayed's study found about an 18% higher preterm birth risk for Arab-American mothers with non-Arab fathers.
Ruthless Podcast, 2026-10-22 (16:10 to 19:16)
Pivots to Obama stumping for El-Sayed
Pivots from the study to the campaign trail: the hosts say Obama is stumping for El-Sayed and want reporters to ask the former president about the paper, since he is himself the child of an interracial marriage. They confirm they tracked down the published report.
New angle: The hosts say they obtained the published study itself, not just Townhall's account of it.
Gutfeld! Monologues, 2026-10-24 (10:03 to 11:31)
Reads the study as a case for separatism
Gutfeld reads a claimed 2011 Columbia research finding by Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as a scientific case for resisting assimilation, then links separatism to poverty and Minnesota's Somali population.
New angle: Gutfeld claims El-Sayed's 2011 Columbia research said Arab women should mate only within their own group or risk birth abnormalities.