I did not see the police officers muscle the five diabetes experts out of the convention center in New Orleans at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) meeting because I was inside the meeting room where the opening session of the conference was about to unfold and they were in the hallway outside. I was already seated in the cavernous General Session hall, opening my computer, getting ready to take notes on the keynote presentation by Richard Woychik, PhD -- the last-minute substitute for NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, who had to cancel because, we were told, he was speaking in person with the president instead.
The five experts were pushed by the police outside of the conference hall for handing out printed copies of an editorial from Diabetes Care, the flagship journal of the ADA, that details the alarming effects of the Trump administration's cuts to NIH staffing and changes to grant review procedures, as well as the looming threat of Trump's proposed budget calling for $5 billion in cuts to the NIH.
The experts were subsequently stripped of their conference credentials and barred from the remainder of the meeting. The ADA leadership's decision to eject them has sparked outrage across the scientific and medical community.
