The Boston Globe reported on the resumption of science projects halted by the Trump administration because their subjects were Black, Hispanic, gay, or transgender. Trump is determined to wiped out federal recognition of these categories of people and to stop science research of all kinds.
PROVIDENCE — Four months after her large-scale research study seeking to contain the spread of HIV was canceled by the Trump administration, Dr. Amy Nunn received a letter: the grant has been reinstated.
The study, which is enrolling Black and Hispanic gay men, is set to resume after a June court order in favor of the American Public Health Association and other groups that sued the National Institutes of Health for abruptly canceling hundreds of scientific research grants.
The NIH said in a form letter to researchers in February and March that their studies “no longer effectuate agency priorities” because they included, among other complaints, reference to gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion.
The order from US District Judge William Young in Massachusetts was narrow, reinstating nearly 900 grants awarded to the plaintiffs, not all of the thousands of grants canceled by NIH so far this year. Young called DEI an “undefined enemy‚” and said the Trump administration’s “blacklisting” of certain topics “has absolutely nothing to do with the promotion of science or research.”
The Trump administration is appealing the ruling, and the NIH continues to say they will block diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, prompting ongoing fear from scientists that their studies could still be on the chopping block even as they restart.
“We feel like we’re tippy-toeing around,” said Nunn, who leads the Rhode Island Public Health Institute. “The backbone of the field is steadfast pursuit of the truth. People are trying to find workarounds where they don’t have to compromise the integrity of their science.”
Nunn said she renewed her membership to the American Public Health Association in order to ensure she’d be included in the lawsuit.
Despite DEI concerns, she plans to continue enrolling gay Black and Hispanic men in her study, which will include 300 patients in Rhode Island, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C.
Black and Hispanic men who have sex with other men contract HIV at dramatically higher rates than gay white men, a statistic Nunn aims to change.
The study was just getting underway, with 20 patients enrolled, when the work was shut down by the NIH in March. While Nunn’s clinic in Providence did not do any layoffs, the clinic in Mississippi — Express Personal Health — shut down, and the D.C. clinic laid off staff.
The four-month funding flip-flop could delay the results of the study by two years, Nunn said, depending on how quickly the researchers can rehire and train new staff. The researchers will also need to find a new clinic in Mississippi.
The patients — 100 each in Rhode Island, Mississippi, and D.C. — will then be followed for a year as they take Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, to prevent them from contracting HIV.
The protocol that’s being studied is the use of a patient navigator for “aggressive case management.” That person will help the patient navigate costs, insurance, transportation to the clinic, dealing with homophobia and other barriers to staying on PrEP, which can be taken as a pill or a shot.
The study’s delay means “the science is aging on the vine,” Nunn said, as new HIV prevention drugs are rolled out. “The very thing that we’re studying might very well be obsolete by the time we’re able to reenroll all of this.”
The hundreds of reinstated grants include titles that reference race and gender, such as a study of cervical cancer screening rates in Latina women, alcohol use among transgender youth, aggressive breast cancer rates in Black and Latina women, and multiple HIV/AIDs studies involving LGBTQ patients.
“Many of these grants got swept up almost incidentally by the particular language that they used,” said Peter Lurie, the president of the Center of Science in the Public Interest, which joined the lawsuit. “There was an arbitrary quality to the whole thing.”
Lurie said blocking scientists from studying racial disparities in public health outcomes will hurt all Americans, not just the people in the affected groups.
“A very high question for American public health is why these racial disparities continue to exist,” Lurie said. “We all lose in terms of questions not asked, answers not generated, and opportunities for saving lives not implemented.”
The Trump administration is not backing down from its stance on DEI, even as it restores the funding. The reinstatement letters from the NIH sent to scientists this month include a condition that they must comply with Trump’s executive order on “biological truth,” which rescinded federal recognition of transgender identity, along with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin.
Kenneth Parreno, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he was told by Trump administration lawyers that new letters would be sent out without those terms.
But Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said Wednesday the administration “stands by its decision to end funding for research that prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people.”
“HHS is committed to ensuring that taxpayer dollars support programs rooted in evidence-based practices and gold standard science — not driven by divisive DEI mandates or gender ideology,” Nixon said in any email to the Globe.
The Trump administration’s appeal is pending before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. A motion for a stay of Young’s decision was denied, and the Trump administration is appealing that ruling to the US Supreme Court.
The ongoing push to remove DEI from science has created fear in the scientific community, which relies on federal funding to conduct its research and make payroll.
“Scientific morale has taken a big hit,” Nunn said. “People are apprehensive.”
Indeed, major research institutions have faced mass funding cuts from the federal government since Trump took office. Brown University, the largest research institution in Rhode Island, had more than $500 million frozen until it reached an agreement with Trump on Wednesday.
In exchange for the research dollars to be released, Brown agreed not to engage in racial discrimination in admissions or university programming, and will provide access to admissions data to the federal government so it can assess compliance. The university also agreed not to perform any gender-affirming surgeries and to adopt Trump’s definitions of a male and female in the “biological truth” executive order.
While some have avoided speaking out, fearing further funding cuts, Nunn said she felt a “moral and ethical duty” to do so.