"The scrubbing could affect the ways researchers and companies test drugs and medical devices"
"An effort by the Trump administration to pull down Food and Drug Administration website pages focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion has ensnared many pages focused on ensuring that clinical trials used to test drugs and medical devices include people of different ethnic and economic backgrounds.
The purging of the pages provides a window into the ways in which the well-established opposition of President Trump and his aides to DEI initiatives is having far-reaching effects just days after they took office. While many DEI initiatives focus on hiring practices and communications in ways the administration disdains, efforts to diversify clinical trials have been widely seen as important scientifically — that is, to test experimental products on various populations who would ultimately derive benefits or incur risk.
The deletion of references to DEI issues appears to be playing out across government sites. STAT identified webpages run by key health agencies, including the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that previously included diversity and equity goals from their mission statements but now do not. The National Institutes of Health has taken down pages for its Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office and the NIH Sexual & Gender Minority Health Scientific Research Group, as well as the Office of Research on Women’s Health sex and gender landing page. The Trump administration even shut down the White House’s Spanish-language page."
Matthew Herper and Lizzy Lawrence report for STAT News January 23, 2025.
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