This is never seen before by Trump’s team
The CDC and the public have no access to health information: An update on the CDC’s news program, but the HHS has redirected additional questions to NPR
In response to a query from NPR, the CDC emailed a statement all federal health agencies have been sending since the pause was imposed and referred additional questions to the HHS:
The agency published some regular weekly updates Friday but not others. It updated one page on the agency’s website about the overall activity of respiratory viruses across the nation and another that specifies how widely COVID-19, RSV and the flu are spreading.
The CDC has not published the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in decades due to the agency failing to release on Thursday.
“Preventing CDC from publishing scientific data via the MMWR represents a radical departure from protocol that will undermine the public’s trust in the Trump Administration,” Jennifer Nuzzo, who runs the Pandemic Center at Brown University, wrote in an email to NPR.
Americans rely on this publication to learn about the health of their communities and for advice on how to protect themselves. “This obvious political tampering with that process will only cast doubts on the administration’s intentions to keep Americans safe.”
Mass communications and public appearances that are not related to emergencies or critical to preserving health have been stopped by the HHS. “This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization. There are exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical, but they will be made on a case-by-case basis.”
Scientists are unclear whether the pause on travel only applies to federal scientists or all federally funded scientists, for example, he says. He says that they don’t know if the DEI information in their grant proposal should still be included or if it would result in their grant being rejected.
“There’s just a lot of confusion and misinformation about exactly what researchers should be doing right now,” says David Gillum, the associate vice president of compliance and research administration at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Donald Trump took office as the 47th US president this week, causing confusion and anxiety within the health- research community. The president of the National Institute of Health has stopped funding research-grant reviews, travel and training for scientists. Adding to the worry: the Trump team appears to have deleted entire webpages about diversity programmes and diversity-related grants from the agency’s site.
There was no response from the officials about whether grant-review panels were public appearances, why they were canceled, or whether the pause will affect the agency’s mission.
These panels, called ‘study sections’ and ‘advisory councils’, are sometimes scheduled a year in advance and can include more than 30 participating researchers, so it will take time to reschedule and might result in a ‘domino effect’ of cancellations. If funding is uncertain or delayed, researchers could be laid off or forced to look for a new job. She adds researchers are particularly at risk as it can endanger hiring, promotion and tenure decisions.
On Bluesky, Esther Choo, an emergency medicine physician at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, wrote about the study section that was supposed to be canceled this week. She shared that, as a reviewer, you constantly read suggestions for research projects that could be a game-changer in health. She added: “I hope we get back on track soon. There are real people waiting on the science.
The US’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it hasn’t been able to share scientific data with the public as a result of the Trump administration’s order to stop all federal agencies from publishing information online. Earlier, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had ordered the agencies to not share any information with the public.