US health agencies scrub data to heed Trump order on gender
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal health agencies on Friday took down web pages with information on HIV statistics and other data to comply with Trump administration orders on gender identity and diversity, raising concerns among physicians and patient advocates.
CDC web pages that appear to have been removed include statistics on HIV among transgender people and data on health disparities among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. A database tracking behaviors that increase health risks for youth was offline.
US President Donald Trump had earlier ordered the federal government to solely recognize male and female sex and eliminate DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.
The Office of Personnel Management gave agencies more specific guidance on how to comply with the orders in a Jan. 29 memo, saying they were to be completed by Friday afternoon.
It specified that agencies must end all programs that promote or reflect “gender ideology extremism” and recognize a self-determined gender identity rather than biological sex. The measures include removing references to gender identity online.
Latinos, women
A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the CDC, said any changes to websites follow this guidance.
“There’s a lot of work going on at the agency,” said a source who was not authorized to speak publicly, adding that the CDC is “taking down anything on the website that doesn’t support this executive order.”
Deletions from the CDC’s site include pages with data on HIV in the United States in general, as well as pages with statistics on HIV covering Hispanic/Latino people as well as women, and in terms of age and other races or ethnicities.
In a joint statement, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association warned that the elimination of such data “creates a dangerous gap in scientific information and data to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks.”
For example, a page with information about how people can get HIV tests went offline on Friday, according to the Internet Archive.
A page for doctors with information about testing for HIV and treating patients also became missing.
‘Going dark’
John Peller, head of the AIDS Foundation Chicago, called this development “very alarming.”
“In many cases, basic health information is going dark,” he said.
Timothy Jackson, the foundation’s senior director of policy and advocacy, said the group is going through the CDC website and printing out information used to educate people about HIV that may not be accessible after Friday.
Years of research
Also missing in the CDC website is the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which tracks trends in tobacco use, teen pregnancy, unsafe sexual behavior and other aspects of teen health.
At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an official has urged agency leaders to refuse to implement the Trump administration’s guidance—in an email to acting NIH Director Matthew Memoli and other top officials that was seen by Reuters.
The official, Nate Brought, director of the NIH executive office, said Trump’s orders ran contrary to years of NIH research and findings about sexuality and gender.
“By complying with these orders, we will be denigrating the contributions made to the NIH mission by trans and intersex members of our staff, and the contributions of trans and intersex citizens to our society,” he wrote.
“These policies will lead to mental health crises or worse for tens of thousands of Americans who contribute productively to our communities,” he added.
