The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal health agencies on Friday took down webpages with information on HIV statistics and other data to comply with Trump administration orders on gender identity and diversity, raising concerns among physicians and patient advocates.
CDC webpages that appear to have been removed include statistics on HIV among transgender people and data on health disparities among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. A database tracking behaviours that increase health risks for youth was offline.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to solely recognise male and female sex and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The Office of Personnel Management gave agencies more specific guidance on how to comply with the orders in a January 29 memo, saying they were to be completed by 5pm ET (2200GMT) on January 31.
It specified that agencies must end all programmes that promote or reflect “gender ideology extremism” by recognising a self-determined gender identity rather than biological sex. The measures include removing references to gender identity online.
A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the CDC, said any changes to websites follow this guidance.
“There’s a lot of work going on at the agency to comply,” said a source who was not authorised to speak publicly, adding that the CDC is “taking down anything on the website that doesn’t support this executive order.”
Deletions from the CDC’s site include pages with data on HIV in the United States in general, as well as pages with statistics on HIV in Hispanic/Latino people, women, by age, and by race and ethnicity.
The elimination of such data “creates a dangerous gap in scientific information and data to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks,” the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association said in a joint statement.
