A Northwestern researcher and several other diabetes experts were escorted out of a medical conference Friday for handing out copies of an editorial criticizing President Donald Trump’s attacks on America’s long-established system of scientific research.
The incident happened at the annual meeting for the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans. Five attendees were handing out copies of the editorial published recently in the association’s flagship journal, according to MedPage Today, which first reported the news.
At that point, local officers escorted the group out as a security guard snatched away copies of the editorial, which can be seen in videos published by MedPage Today.
The incident happened before Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, was scheduled to deliver the keynote speech, but he backed out at the last minute, media outlets reported.
Justin Ryder, a pediatric obesity specialist who works at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Lurie Children’s Hospital, was among the five forcibly removed from the meeting and had their badges confiscated. No one was arrested.
Also in the group was the lead author of the editorial titled: “Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!”
“It’s absolutely censorship,” Ryder told the Sun-Times. “…This was an editorial published in their own journal, and it’s not like it was an inflammatory pamphlet spreading political views.”
The police told Ryder and the others they would be arrested if they tried to return. Ryder, who has attended the annual conference for the last decade, said it’s normal to see people passing out materials to participants at the conference.
Ryder, who is not speaking on behalf of his employer, said he has yet to receive an apology or an explanation from the American Diabetes Association.
In a statement to MedPage Today, the organization said five attendees were removed for violating the meeting’s code of conduct. An ADA spokesperson did not respond to a Sun-Times request for comment.
“As a 501(c)(3) organization, the ADA has safeguards in place to ensure that it complies with all IRS regulations,” the association said in a separate statement about the incident. “This includes maintaining a strictly nonpartisan environment at all organizational events and functions while engaging across party affiliations to advance our mission.”
The editorial — published in the latest edition of Diabetes Care — called out the Trump administration’s plans to cut $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health in next year’s federal budget. The writers also detailed the other ways Trump has hindered diabetes research and health outcomes.
This comes as researchers and scientists in Illinois and across the country are raising alarms about sweeping changes proposed on May 29 to a federal rule on how the government handles the management of research grants and other forms of financial assistance.
An editor’s note on the editorial says the views expressed don’t represent the American Diabetes Association, nor did the organization help write it.
“People are going to lose their lives because we’re not going to be able to create new treatments or vaccines that can be really beneficial for human health,” Ryder, of Northwestern, said. “I feel like we, as a scientific community, have that knowledge. We need to distribute that knowledge and not be censored for that knowledge.”