High civil servants of the American Veterans Department ordered that the doctors of the AV and scientists do not publish in medical journals or do not speak with the public without first having the authorization of the names Donald TrumpThe goalkeeper learned.
The edict, deposited in the emails on Friday by Curt headthe assistant secretary of the VA for public and intergovernmental affairs, and John BartrumA main advisor to the secretary will go Doug Collins, came a few hours after the prestigious New England Medicine Journal published a perspective Co-author of two pulmonologists who work for the VA in Texas.
“We have advice on this subject,” wrote Cashour, a former republican assistant in the congress and campaign consultant, joining the article in the journal. “These people did not follow him.”
The article warned that the canceled contracts, the layoffs and a planned Reduction of staff of 80,000 employees In the largest integrated health system in the country compromises the health of a million veterans looking for aid for conditions linked to toxic exposure – ranging from Vietnam veterans exposed to the Orange agent to the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who developed cancer after being exposed to the smoke of toxic toxic waste.
“As pulmonologists from the Veterans Department (VA), we have seen an increasing number of veterans with chronic bronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis, asthma and other respiratory conditions,” wrote the doctors Pavan Ganapathiraju and Rebecca Traylor.
The authors, who train in the VA in Austin, Texas, noted that in 2022, the congress considerably extended the number of alleged medical conditions linked to military service. “But the legislation does not care about the patients, people do,” they wrote.
The article sparked an immediate reprimand of Trump’s politicians, according to internal emails obtained by the Guardian. “We have recently noticed a number of academic articles and press articles,” wrote Bartrum, joining a copy of the review of the journal. “Please remind the field and the academic community that they must follow the policy.”
Cashour, the deputy secretary, wrote that the approval of publication in National Media was delegated to his office. Local and regional directors had to inform Washington “as soon as possible” when situations exist “which have a potential for negative national exposure”.
In an email press release, VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, said that agency policy on publications and public comments “simply obliges employees to coordinate properly with public affairs staff before speaking with the media. The quasi-tailor-made organization inside and outside the government has similar policies. ”
Politics “has been in place for several years in democratic and republican administrations,” he said.
Ganapathiraju told The Guardian that the article was in full compliance with the VA regulations, which indicate that employees are encouraged to publish in “professional or learned journals”. Coordination with public affairs agents is encouraged, but not required, when sharing personal or academic opinions, depending on the rules.
Ganapathiraju said that neither he nor his co-author had yet been inflicted. “We have received emails and messages from other EVAs across the country (including doctors, heads of department, the chief of drugs and the chief of staff) supporting our article,” he wrote in an email. “No communication from our local or national va.”
However, the workers of the VA and the defenders of the veterans say that Friday warnings correspond to a censorship scheme of the Trump administration, which, according to criticism, leads a “war». Since taking office, Trump administration officials have canceled billions of dollars in medical research at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Nearly 2,000 leading scientists, including dozens of Nobel Prize winners, Signed an open letter Released in April saying that science was “decimated” by research cuts and an increasing “climate of fear” that endangered independent research.
In his declaration, the Kasperowicz of the VA declared that it was “absurd” to suggest that the application of the media policy of the agency was part of a “war on science”.
Trump published a decree of May 23 entitled “Restoration of the science of golden standards». This accused his predecessor, Joe Biden, of misunderstanding scientific evidence during the development of climate change policies, public health during the COVID-19 pandemic and other questions. Thousands of academics signed a new open letter This protested this decision, arguing that it opens the door to political interference.
On May 28, the secretary of health and social services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said that he was Considering a ban Edition government scientists in high -level journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, qualifying these publications as “corrupt”.
The Ministry of Veterans has long been one of the country’s most important medical research centers. Funded by the congress with nearly $ 1 billion per year, scientists will operate on 102 research sites and are engaged in 7,300 projects in progress, while publishing more than 10,000 articles in scientific journals last year.
Scientists go invented Nicotine patch and cardiac stimulator and have developed computed tomography. The agency manages the National Center for Post Post Traumatic Stress Dol, which has a pioneer of mental health treatments which benefit not only to veterans but also to victims of rape and survivors of natural disasters and other violent crimes.
Harold Kudler, a psychiatrist and researcher who was the leader of national mental politics for the AV under the Obama and the first administrations of Trump, said that the reprimand in the article in pulmonologists was “powerful in its impact and its scary in the threat it represents”.
It was “another attack on freedom of expression,” he said. “Veterans will suffer. In addition, all research programs will note it. ”