In April, I decided to make public a filtered letter from the acting American prosecutor for the Columbia district to the editor in chief of Chest“ A leading pulmonology magazine and a critical care newspaper. I did it because the letter represents an authoritarian threat to science, and I knew it was an isolated and strange incident. It is a warning signal, another movement in a broader campaign to exercise control over research, medicine and media.
The letter states that “publications such as Chest Journal are admitting that they are supporters in several scientific debates.” It was written by the recent interim prosecutor EE. UU. Edward R. Martin, Jr., who does not give examples that may demonstrate partisanship; Nor does he quote any legal law or principles to indicate an issue that should concern the United States government. On the other hand, without justification or jurisdiction on a private medical magazine based in Illinois, he simply invokes his federal office to demand that chest explain whether he accepts “competitors views” and how he is developing “new standards” to adjust his editorial methods in view of his alleged valuables.
Since I shared this publicly, at least four additional magazines, including the New England Journal of Medicine, have confirmed the similar receipt or letters, according to MedPage today, Statistics newsHe New York Times and Science. Apart from Eric Rubin in the Nejm, None of the specific editors have been willing to register, for fear of the remuneration of the Trump administration. It is likely that letters be sent to many more magazines; Chest‘S was simply the first to filter.
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Because Chest? It is a specialized exit, not only among the 50 main medical magazines. Is this a campaign based on keywords like the ones we have seen in the CDC and NIH? Under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., terms such as “diversity”, “minority” and “equity” have been systematically marked. This has led to the elimination of federal positions and programs, the cancellation of research grants and the scrubbing of websites and government statistics, all related to these words.
A search for ChestThe “transgender” archive, for example, returns 33 hits: articles that recognize the clinical implications of the care of trans patients (CE, the fan configuration may be adjusted). Add other terms aimed at Trump as Race, disparity, woman and Disability, And we can see the contours of a new front led by the DOJ in the administration campaign to attack minorities for the denial of attention, legalized discrimination and bureaucratic erase.
Kennedy has also been previously opposed to medical magazines that do not publish studies that support their discredited and without low theories, as false statements that vaccines cause autism, declaring a plan to “create our own magazines” to publish. Last year, while executing his own presidential campaign, he declared that he would undertake legal actions against the editors in response: “I will litigate against you under the extortion laws, under the general laws of grievance. I am in a form in a way in a way of Wyte how it will begin to publish real sciences.” Kennedy is not a scientist and has no training in medicine. It has not been voluntary to present their statements to the types of reviews of anonymized experts and criticisms that are designed to support scientific rigor in scientific journals.
Kennedy frequently claims without evidence on podcasts and television programs and now in government press conferences, regardless of the consequences. However, magazines reviewed by peers such as Chest It requires extensive scrutiny as part of its evaluation process. External scientists examine the studies presented for prejudices, errors and claims or conclusions not supported, and the authors must include statements on conflicts of interest, including the reasons of the appearance equally of the eyes of others or others. This is a newspaper routine procedure, on which Martin’s letter indicates that he knows surprisingly little.
We do not know the specific motivations of Martin, Kennedy or Trump to send a letter to ChestBut it is clear that Martin’s threat to magazines is not a unique trick. Like Trump’s Actions that cut off or Thread Federal Research Funding at Columbia, Harvard and Other University, it appears to be part of a calculated strategy to identify, isolate and intimidate Refracchers Who, and Inituties That, SacnowLedes And Stescuals, and Intituals, and Intituals, and Stescuals, and Stescuals, and Stescuals, and Stescuals, and Stescuales, and StewowLedes, and Stewowledes, and Stescualsis, and Stewowate, and Stewowledes, and Stewowate, and Stewowate, and Intitrity, and StewowLedes, and intital violence.
American health institutions have long been entangled with state violence: forced sterilizations of black and indigenous women, repression of civil rights protesters, collaboration with anti-immigrant surveillance, the impulse to classify queer people as pathological and dangerous, and the denial of reproductive and gender care.
These alliances are enabled by a professional culture that rewards compliance and punishes dissent. In that sense, the growing ideological control of the Trump administration about medicine repeats not a historical breakup, but rather a continuation of the sordid legacies.
To understand what is happening now, it is important to keep in mind that Martin never before the Prosecutor’s Office. He has no experience in criminal litigation, designated for his position to serve political ends. Since he assumed the position, he has hired the Covid Covid spokesman first of Michael Caputo-Trump, who infamously accused government scientists of “sedition”, as adult in the United States prosecutor’s office. The message is clear: it is not about the application of the law. It is about using state power to intimidate scientists and suppress dissent.
In this context, if magazine editors refuse to speak and organize to defend academic freedom, not only will they not protect themselves already their magazines. They will also sacrifice the directed communities.
When they face the intimidation of the government promoted by personal ideological agendas found in the public good, silence is complicity, not neutrality. We must deny ourselves to commit when the Trump administration is the first for stigmatized and vulnerable slurry, such as trans people, disabled people or immigrants who describe as “criminals”, as a means to normalize state violence and itsticional expansion.
This is not the time to issue hollow statements that condemn the supposed “politicization of science”, a line that combines partisan interests with what should be bipartisan political principles on which the rigorous scientific practical health. Science is always political, and we must organize politically to defend it against authoritarian threats. That requests to call the Trump administration intimidation campaign for what it is: an attempt by McCarthyite to purge science or inconvenience and ethical bases.
The production of knowledge, the assignment of attention and the same questions we ask and answer, are formed by energy systems. When medical professionals pretend otherwise, we create a void. And that emptiness is quickly filled by the loudest ideologues and most cranky opportunists.
To defend themselves, we need coordinated action and solidarity with the most attacked. And we must stop pretending that defending science means staying above politics. Caused by the revelation of Martin’s letter, The lancet-A world leading medical review based in London-Kennedy. Other editors of magazines and health leaders should now unite to take such political stands of principles. To do so, they must give up the naive fantasy that, if they keep their heads low enough, they can avoid becoming goals and simply wait for the Trump administration, since it destroys essential scientific infrastructure.
Martin’s letter is a statement that scientific research is no longer sure unless it is aligned with state ideology. If we let that stand up, not only do we lose our newspapers. We lose the right to ask questions that matter, and the ability to take care of the most needy.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the opinions expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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