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Two doctors and professors from Harvard Medical School are suing the Trump Administration over the removal of two research articles from a government website because they included the words “LGBTQ” and “trans(gender).” The two doctors describe the move as censorship and say it is antithetical to their mission as health care providers and could harm the transgender community.
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The plaintiffs, Gordon Schiff and Celeste Royce are described in the lawsuit as “two doctors and Harvard Medical School professors who refused to censor their medical conclusions to bend to this political fiat,” adding they filed the suit “to defend the integrity of medical research and the safety of patients from the government’s dangerous, arbitrary, and unconstitutional censorship.”
They sued over the removal of two articles from the government-run Patient Safety Network (PSNet). “Endometriosis: A Common and Commonly Missed and Delayed Diagnosis” was co-authored by Royce, and “Multiple Missed Opportunities for Suicide Risk Assessment in Emergency and Primary Care Settings” was co-authored by Schiff. Both articles contained a sentence referencing the transgender, gender-nonconforming, or LGBTQ+ community.
PSNet is run by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
According to the lawsuit, Schiff received an email from Patrick Romano, a co-editor of PSNet, saying the articles were being removed from the site in response to an email directive from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ordering the removal of any content that might be in non-compliance with the White House’s executive order on gender identity.
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Romano provided further explanation of the decision in a follow-up email to the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellevue Literary Review.
“Per this memo, AHRQ staff were given until 5pm ET Friday to ‘Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts etc.) that promote or inculcate gender ideology.’” Romano wrote. “Based on guidance provided to AHRQ staff, this instruction from OPM was interpreted to include anything with the words “transgender,” “nonbinary,” or “gender identity.” The phrase “LGBTQ” is problematic because it includes that letter T for “transgender.”
The doctors are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School.
“Good doctors serve and advocate for their patients, whoever they are,” Royce said in a statement. “We cannot uphold an oath to Do No Harm if our training and research are politicized.”
“This type of wholesale, non-evidence-based removal endangers everyone's safety,” Schiff said in a statement. “Censoring information about transgender people or anyone a politician does not like, who have documented increased risks of negative health outcomes, is antithetical to the very mission of public health.”
“Our clients were given an impossible choice between removing their article from PSNet entirely or censoring parts of it,” Rachel Davidson, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “This is an intentional erasure of knowledge, an attack on the integrity of scientific research, and an affront to the public’s need for accurate, adequate health information.”
The suit argues that the government violated the First Amendment free speech rights of the doctors and the Administrative Procedure Act for removing articles without cause. The OPM, AHRQ, and HHS are named as defendants in the suit.
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