A Diabetes Society Had Police Remove the Editor of Its Own Journal. Then It Apologized.
"Diabetes research saved my life," one patient wrote. A proposed rule would let political appointees kill any grant.
What happened in New Orleans
On the first morning of the American Diabetes Association’s annual meeting, police walked five doctors out of the convention center in New Orleans. The doctors were not shouting. They were handing out copies of an editorial. It warned that cuts to federal research money were taking apart American science. It had been published a few weeks earlier in Diabetes Care, the ADA’s own journal.
One of the five was Dr. Steven Kahn, the editor of that journal. Another was a past president of the ADA. Video of the scene spread within hours, and MedPage Today, Washington Post, and the New York Times had the story the same day.
What the researchers say
Dr. Kahn told me the ADA was “tipped” in advance that his group planned to pass out 1,000 copies of the editorial, and that the scale of the police response had to be a leadership decision. “The final decision to have those people be there had to be from the top of the organization,” he told me, “because I cannot believe that somebody at the middle level of the organization would give an order that there’d be not one or two, but a large number of police folks there.”
He disputes the ADA’s account on almost every point. The society said the group was asked to stop and refused. “That statement by the ADA is completely wrong,” Dr. Kahn said. “100% wrong.” He says they were standing outside the lecture hall, handing the paper to people who wanted it. “Somebody’s handing out an ad to a pizza joint. You say yes, you’ll take one. No, you won’t. That’s what we were doing.”
The ADA also said badges were taken only because people would not give up their papers. Dr. Kahn calls that “a total lie.” He says the official running the removals asked for “one more” badge, and staff then took the badge of a senior member who held no papers and was not even an author.
Dr. Kahn also says the ADA quietly added two disclaimers to his editorial after he approved the final proof, distancing the society from its own editors. He said, “What all it is, in my mind, is a CYA for the Trump administration.” He added that no one from the government had complained about their handing out copies of the editorial.
The backlash built fast. More than 6,500 people signed an open letter to the ADA. Two ADA leaders resigned, including the chair of the committee that planned the meeting, who Dr. Kahn says, told colleagues the society’s defense “did not reflect” his view.
The apology
This week, after days of silence on whether anyone would say sorry, the ADA’s CEO, Chuck Henderson, released a video. “I want to personally apologize to Dr. Steven Kahn, Dr. Desmond Schatz, Dr. Aaron Kelly, Dr. Maureen Gannon, and Dr. Justin Ryder, who were escorted out and denied access to scientific sessions,” he said. “I am deeply sorry for the hurt, frustration, and the pain that resulted.” This video was emailed to me in response to my request for comment. The ADA press office did not respond to my specific questions.
Henderson said the society would “commission a thorough independent review of the events that occurred, as well as the policies, procedures, and decision-making process that guided our actions.” He added a line that Dr. Kahn and others will likely hold him to: “Trust, once shaken, must be earned back through actions and not just words.” He closed by saying, “What transpired is not reflective of who I am, the values I hold, or the way I was raised.”
What the fight is really about
Federal research works a lot like the highway system. The government builds the roads, and car companies build the cars that drive on them. Research money mostly pays for the slow, early science that no company will fund, because there is no product at the end of it. Pharmaceutical companies then turn that science into the treatments you can pick up at your local drug store. That groundwork is the reason we have many of the diabetes drugs people use now.
Take teplizumab. It is the first drug shown to delay type 1 diabetes in children. It exists because the NIH spent about 20 years and tracked more than 200,000 relatives of people with type 1 diabetes to learn how the disease starts. A company then turned that science into a product.
Or take GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic. The hormone behind them was mapped in the 1980s in university and government labs, and the first drug in the class grew out of a federally funded study of Gila monster venom. No company would have paid, up front, to test lizard venom on a hunch.
Even when the government does not invent a drug, it often shows how to use it. The NIH-funded Diabetes Prevention Program showed that metformin and lifestyle change can prevent diabetes before it starts. Another NIH study, DCCT, proved that tight blood-sugar control prevents blindness, amputation, and kidney failure. No company would fund a 30-year study with no drug to sell.
What is being cut
Grant Witness, a group tracking the cuts, counts more than 1,200 canceled NIH grants, with about $513 million in committed money left unspent when the work was stopped. Ninety-three of those grants name diabetes. The diabetes institute at NIH has made 533 fewer awards this year than it had by the same point in 2024.
But researchers like Dr. Kahn say the bigger threat is a rule still on the table. A proposed Office of Management and Budget rule would let a political appointee review every grant before it is awarded and end any grant whenever it “no longer advances agency priorities or the national interest,” with no appeal. The public comment period is open until July 13th, and more than 14,000 comments have already poured in, nearly all opposed. One called the plan “a deadly attack on science and democracy” and “the death knell for scientific research in our country.” Another wrote that “science has already been greatly hindered by this administration, and this particular revision just continues this trend.” A young researcher said the rule left them “horrified,” “furious that science is being politicized,” and “terrified of the precedent this regulation would set about government censorship of fact.” As that commenter put it, “We’ve all read 1984.”
Many of the comments are personal. A diabetes patient wrote simply that “diabetes research saved my life.” A prostate cancer survivor described an MD Anderson study that found his cancer when earlier scans could not, and asked the government to “continue and increase funding for life saving science.” A pediatric endocrinologist pointed to continuous glucose monitors, automated insulin delivery, and prevention research “that have reduced morbidity and improved the lives of children with diabetes.” Another commenter named what is at stake: “lung cancer... pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, brain cancer, kidney cancer, and stomach cancer.”
If the OMB rule is finalized, Dr. Kahn said, it would not matter how strong a grant application was. “They could just decide, ‘It’s Steven Kahn. We’re not funding him.’”
Dr. Kahn said he spoke with the ADA’s Chief Scientific and Medical Officer, Dr. Rita Rastogi Kalyani. “I made it clear that I wanted to see them make the case for biomedical research and speak out about the damage being done,” he said. “But it cannot be just through the halls of Capitol Hill as they have been doing, but publicly.”
He added, “One hopes this energizes people to fight for research funding.”
Thank you for the deep dive on this mess. I saw a very short piece earlier. This behavior by ADA appalls me.