According to several sources at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a large portion of the scientific information that is normally made public by government health institutions is still on hold.
According to staff, attempts to safeguard Americans’ health within the health agencies are being hampered by the communications halt and the flurry of Trump administration memoranda that contain broad directives to remove all traces of gender identity and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Communications are being halted amid a severe flu season, other respiratory disease outbreaks, and a growing avian flu outbreak.
According to a CDC doctor who was not permitted to comment publicly, their impact on the agency has caused daily operations to almost completely cease.
Directives from the Department of Health and Human Services permit the dissemination of information that might be deemed a serious health and safety issue.
The anticipated end date of the pause was February 1.
In an email on Tuesday, HHS director of communications Andrew Nixon stated that the pause is no longer in effect for a number of external communications and that all HHS divisions have received explicit instructions on how to obtain approval for any other kind of mass communication.
What Nixon meant by “external communications” was not made clear.
There was a multi-day delay in one of the CDC’s weekly reports on flu activity. Additionally, the government hasn’t offered a public briefing on the issue in weeks, while updating its website on bird flu.
Since January 16, the CDC has not released its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, or MMWR.
One CDC employee attested to the fact that their scientific study, along with several others unrelated to DEI, had been removed from peer-reviewed publications just before publication.
Dr. Richard Besser, the president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the previous interim director of the CDC, stated that it is both normal and reasonable for a new government to adopt a different policy approach. However, he claimed that it is unsettling to deny scientific truths and data.
A rush of HHS emails telling government agencies to cease any activity with DEI or gender ideas and remove such messaging from their websites followed the communications blackout, which started almost two weeks earlier. Although it’s unclear if they have been altered, certain websites have been restored.
As of Monday, teams were instructed they could resume meetings behind closed doors, but they were still prohibited from speaking to the media or presenting data at conferences because the results will be made public, according to an NIH scientist. Public speaking was not permitted for the scientist.