Professor Steven Kahn
Police and security officers ejected a group of leading diabetes researchers from the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions meeting last week, after the group handed out copies of an editorial criticising the Trump administration.
The incident in New Orleans last Friday has sparked a fierce backlash from endocrinology leaders, with the ADA accused of “craven” conduct over the removal of members for distributing an editorial published in its own journal.
🚨🗣️⬇️BREAKING: Members of @AmDiabetesAssn were escorted by police out of the convention center in New Orleans during the organization’s annual meeting on Friday as they handed out copies of an editorial criticizing Trump administration changes to U.S. biomedical research. pic.twitter.com/k16G7ttFIZ
— MedPage Today (@medpagetoday) June 5, 2026
The group including Diabetes Care editor-in-chief Professor Steven Kahn were outside a conference hall where a senior NIH official had been preparing to deliver a keynote address when they confronted by police and security and ordered to leave the venue, the Washington Post reported [link here].
Media reports indicated they had been distributing copies of an editorial co-authored by Professor Kahn and published in the journal warning that research funding and governance had been “fundamentally reshaped” by Trump-era policy decisions.
Professor Kahn, who had been scheduled to participate in sessions throughout the meeting, was told his services were no longer needed.
In a statement, ADA chief executive Charles Henderson said the clinicians had breached conference policy by distributing materials without prior authorisation.
“Our longstanding organisational policy has been and remains that distribution of any materials must receive prior authorisation and occur only within the exhibit hall,” he said, adding the ejections were based on the policy violation “not because of the viewpoints expressed in those materials.”
The ADA said it regretted the situation had escalated and pointed to its obligations as a not-for-profit to maintain a “strictly nonpartisan environment” at all events.
The response drew little sympathy. ADA president-elect Dr Jennifer Green and scientific sessions planning committee chair Dr Mark Atkinson subsequently resigned from their positions, Medpage Today reported [link here].
Harvard Professor David Nathan, founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital Diabetes Center, published an open letter on Change.org titled An Open Letter to the American Diabetes Association: Shame on You, which attracted more than 6,000 signatures [link here]. The letter accused the ADA of “craven” conduct and said its removal of members for distributing an editorial published in its own journal was “unfathomable.”
Critics on social media were equally pointed. University of California Irvine vice dean Professor Scott Bartell wrote on LinkedIn: “Any scientific society that kicked out a paid attendee for distributing their own work would be pilloried by its members.”
Commenters on the petition said the ejected researchers had done nothing more than share factual information about NIH funding cuts and their consequences for people with diabetes, and described the ADA’s invitation to a political appointee to keynote as “a profound betrayal of the scientific mission.”