Sawt Falasteen - Silencing science: How Trump is reshaping US public health

Here's a look at some of the biggest impacts.

- Key medical journal goes silent -

Days after President Donald Trump took office, the Department of Health and Human Services imposed an indefinite "pause" on communications, silencing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) for the first time in it 60 years of existence.

The journal, which once documented the first AIDS cases, has missed two editions with no return date.

MMWR "is really important for states to read to have a more in-depth understanding of what might be going on and what to do about it," Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, told AFP, calling the pause a "radical departure" from norms.

The overall communications freeze has also prevented federal officials from updating the public or even state and local officials on bird flu, which has so far killed one person and sickened dozens, said Nuzzo.

Meanwhile, CDC scientists have been instructed to retract or revise all papers submitted to external journals to remove language deemed offensive -- including the word "gender," Jeremy Faust, a physician and Harvard instructor who runs the Inside Medicine Substack, was the first to report.

Nuzzo stressed that gender identity, not just biological sex, is crucial in targeting interventions, as seen with mpox, which disproportionately affects men who have sex with men and transgender women.

- Critical resources for doctors scrubbed -

Doctors were blindsided by the sudden removal of a CDC app that assessed contraceptive suitability based on medical history -- for example, progestin-only pills are advised for patients with liver disease.

Also deleted: CDC pages containing clinical guidance for PrEP (a critical HIV-prevention tool), resources on intimate partner violence, guidelines on LGBTQ behavioral health, and more.

"I'm really not sure what is so radically leftist about treating gonorrhea," Natalie DiCenzo, an obstetrician-gynecologist and member of Physicians for Reproductive Health, told AFP, on the removal of STI guidelines.

Some pages have since been restored but now carry an ominous disclaimer: "CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders."

Jessica Valenti, a feminist author and founder of the Abortion, Every Day Substack, has been archiving deleted materials on CDCguidelines.com to preserve their original, inclusive versions.

"The hope is to have it be a resource for the people who need it," she told AFP, adding that even if documents are later restored, words like "trans" may be scrubbed from them.

"Deleting data of groups of people who are clearly not prioritized by this administration is essentially erasing them," Angela Rasmussen, a prominent US virologist told AFP. "It's going to cause people to suffer, and die."

- Infectious outbreaks unreported -

As medical associations sound the alarm over the lack of federal health communication, outbreaks are slipping under the radar.

In Kansas City, Kansas, what is reportedly the largest tuberculosis outbreak in modern US history is unfolding -- with 67 active cases since 2024. Yet no national health authority has reported on it.

"The National Medical Association (NMA) is calling for a swift resolution to the federal health communications freeze, which has the potential to exacerbate this outbreak and other public health threats," wrote the group, which represents African American physicians.

Caitlin Rivers, senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, writes a weekly newsletter updating readers on disease outbreaks in her free time, relying on CDC data for influenza tracking.

"The last two weekends, I have had to compile data by hand because key data sources have been unavailable," she told AFP.

Z.Ramadan--SF-PST