Diabetes researchers ejected from conference after criticizing White House

Five diabetes researchers, including the editor of a leading journal, were removed from the field’s premier conference in New Orleans on Friday morning, after handing out copies of an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s “dismantling” of the biomedical research enterprise.

The incident occurred outside a conference hall where a keynote address had originally been scheduled to be given by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, at a gathering organized by the American Diabetes Association. A group of about 10 researchers, including some of the field’s leaders, were quietly handing out printouts of an editorial published in Diabetes Care, a journal the association publishes, according to three of the participants. Security and police told them to leave at the direction of event organizers and confiscated some of their lanyards and ability to attend the conference.

One of those ejected from the meeting was Steven Kahn, a University of Washington professor of medicine who is the editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care and the director of a federally funded diabetes research center. Kahn said in an interview that he had 1,000 copies made of an editorial that he had co-authored that called scientists to action to oppose changes to federal biomedical research funding that endangered diabetes research.

“A number of people who come to this meeting are scientists, who feel their livelihoods are threatened by what NIH is doing to science,” Kahn said.

Bhattacharya had been scheduled to give the keynote address, but it was instead given by Richard Woychik, a senior adviser to the NIH director for the agency’s Make America Healthy Again strategy. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.

Kahn said he was set to present a poster, give a talk and chair a session at the ADA Scientific Sessions meeting, which runs from Friday until Monday — but has since been informed by the scientific society’s leaders that he has been relieved of those duties.

Irl Hirsch, a University of Washington endocrinologist who was among the group handing out the editorials but did not have his badge confiscated, said that the group was peaceful and that there were no signs or chants. Hirsch described the situation as “censorship” by the scientific society — of leaders in the diabetes field who were sharing an editorial that pointed out that the NIH’s stewardship of biomedical research was having a destructive effect on diabetes research.

“It’s going to take generations to fix where we are now,” Hirsch said.

The incident was first reported by MedPage Today.

In a statement, the American Diabetes Association said that five people were removed “for violating the conference code of conduct, which they agreed to during the registration process. Our conference code of conduct expects that all participants will conduct themselves in a professional and respectful manner. … These attendees were escorted out by our on-site event security because they demonstrated behavior not consistent with this code of conduct.”

In a video provided to The Washington Post, Kahn is standing outside the conference center, arms full of copies of the editorials and a cup of coffee, while security members surround him and ask for his lanyard.

“They physically grabbed us, forced us out of the conference center and now are telling us we can no longer attend this meeting. They’re taking our lanyards. It really has come to this in America. Censorship is real,” Aaron Kelly, co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota, said in the video. In an interview, Kelly said his comments do not represent the views of his institution.

Louisiana State Police trooper Kyle Wagner said that troopers working a security detail “were requested by event organizers to assist with removing several individuals from the event. Troopers assisted by escorting the individuals from the private event, no arrests were made, and all individuals left peacefully.”