After President Donald Trump suggested reinvesting the $3 billion in research funding he is withdrawing from Harvard University into trade schools, Trump administration Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he might ban government scientists from publishing in medical journals including the venerable New England Journal of Medicine and the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA, which is published by the American Medical Association.
[NOTE: Dictating where and how research can be shared or published — a form of government censorship — is antithetical to the ethos of modern scientific inquiry “centered on the values of universalism, communalism, organized skepticism, and disinterestedness” as Robert Merton famously elucidated, an ethos already under siege.]
Dr. Adam Gaffney, a physician, public health researcher and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, responded to Kennedy’s announcement in an email to The Washington Post. Gaffney wrote: “banning NIH-funded researchers from publishing in leading medical journals and requiring them to publish only in journals that carry the RFK Jr. seal of approval would delegitimize taxpayer-funded research.”
Gaffney also criticized Kennedy last week when the HHS Secretary announced that his agency was “ready to implement the Medicaid work requirement passed by the House,” and that the new work requirement “will bring a renewed sense of purpose to millions of Americans receiving government assistance.”
Personally, I’m skeptical that taking healthcare away from millions of working-class people by imposing yet more red-tape — and causing many medically-preventable deaths — will give these individuals “a renewed sense of purpose.” pic.twitter.com/Q8tIvdVZGv
— Adam Gaffney (@awgaffney) May 22, 2025
Gaffney responded on X: “Personally, I’m skeptical that taking healthcare away from millions of working-class people by imposing yet more red-tape — and causing many medically-preventable deaths — will give these individuals ‘a renewed sense of purpose.’”
Note: Gaffney is the former president of Physicians for a National Health Program, an advocacy organization of more than 20,000 American physicians, medical students, and health professionals that supports a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health insurance program.
Note: At his Senate confirmation hearing in January, Kennedy inaccurately claimed that Medicaid is fully paid for by the federal government when both states and federal taxpayers fund the program. He also spoke about Medicaid’s “high premiums and high deductibles.”
But as KFF reports: “Federal law limits the extent to which states can charge premiums and cost sharing in Medicaid because the Medicaid population is low-income. States may not charge premiums to Medicaid enrollees with incomes below 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL). Maximum allowable cost-sharing in Medicaid varies by type of service and income, with total family out-of-pocket costs (premiums and cost-sharing) limited to no more than 5% of family income.”
52 Republican Senators voted for Kennedy, with 48 opposing votes. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote “nay.”