By Julie Steenhuysen
(Reuters) – Scientists are struggling to respond to a Trump administration order to review papers already submitted for publication for content now banned by the federal government, according to interviews with six researchers.
The directive issued on Jan. 31 applies to all research that features work from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists, including collaborations with external academic institutions.
It aims to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing only two sexes – male and female – by excising terms such as gender, nonbinary, transgender and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) from government communications.
The researchers say the edict requires them to deny realities grounded in science across fields critical to public health. In addition to work that focuses squarely on issues affecting minority communities, many broad-based papers routinely include demographic tables with detailed information on populations by race and gender.
“It is egregious that a country’s public health agency, or any government authority, should demand the erasure of any terminology, particularly medically relevant terminology,” British Medical Journal editors Jocalyn Clark and Kamran Abbasi wrote in an editorial published on Tuesday, calling the order “sinister and ludicrous.”
“This amounts to the censorship of scientists, breach of rights to free expression, dehumanization of LGBT individuals, and indifference for the American taxpayers and human beings worldwide who support CDC’s research.”
In one example, the order has sidelined a paper on the successful U.S. mpox outbreak response in 2022 that was co-authored by CDC scientists, according to its lead researcher.
The mpox paper had undergone months of peer review at a scientific journal as well as extensive internal review at the CDC. It received final acceptance in January and was in page proofs when the withdrawal order was issued last Friday, said the researcher, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing federal grant funding.
On Monday, the researchers learned that the CDC had reviewed the paper and decided it could not be published because it was not aligned with the president’s executive orders.
The agency did not specify what in the paper was prohibited. The work includes demographic data according to race and information on men who have sex with men and LBGT populations, the researcher said.
The CDC authors – who had contributed significantly to the work – chose to remove their names to give the paper a chance to be published, the researcher said. The journal’s publisher said that all study contributors must agree in writing to have an author dropped. A CDC spokesperson did not immediately comment.
“Taking your name off a submitted paper may not be as simple as just, please cross me off,” said Dr. John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors issued new guidance this week due to the CDC recall, saying “there may be extenuating circumstances in which a journal editor may choose to honor an author’s request to be removed despite lack of agreement of all coauthors, but all coauthors should be notified of this decision.”
Dr. Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist and director of the Duke Global Health Institute, has worked closely with CDC researchers through a U.S. collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health in Thailand.
Their studies include a clinical trial testing the use of HIV prevention medications or PrEP in young gay men and transgender women sex workers in Thailand.
“We have published a number of papers, and we have a number ahead of us,” said Beyrer, although none are currently in review. “I’m sure that we will not be able to have CDC people on these papers because of the content.”
Nearly three quarters of new HIV infections in the United States are in gay and bisexual men and transgender women, he said.
“If you can’t use the words, how are we supposed to do HIV surveillance? How will we understand what is happening in this country?” he said.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Additional reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Deepa Babington)
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