Two Boston doctors sue Trump regime for censoring articles in an online medical forum

Two Longwood Medical Area doctors today sued the Musk/Trump Administration, including Secretary of Vaccine Denial Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,  for a ukase under which a federal health-care agency has removed "peer reviewed articles" they wrote from a patient-safety Web site because they contained the words "LGBTQ" and "transgender."

In their suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, Dr. Gordon Schiff, a primary-care physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Dr. Celeste Royce, an OB/Gyn at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, said the doctor who supposedly oversees a Web site for doctors to compare notes on how to improve medical diagnoses offered to put their articles back up with just a touch of editing that nobody would notice, in one case, "editing out just three words from a list of risk factors for suicide."

The doctors, represented by the ACLU of Massachusetts, both refused, and said the " unlawful and dangerous suppression of doctors’ speech" by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality can only lead to misdiagnosis, disability and death. Both doctors have done research on improving the outcome of medical diagnoses.

Every year, approximately 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled due to misdiagnosis. Allowing the government to censor research regarding patient safety for political reasons will almost assuredly increase that number.

AHRQ removed these articles to comply with guidance issued by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management ("OPM"), ordering all agencies to "[t]ake down all outward facing media . . . that inculcate or promote gender ideology." OPM issued that guidance to implement President Trump's January 20, 2025, executive order directing federal agencies to remove all statements that "promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology."

Plaintiffs are two doctors and Harvard Medical School professors who refused to censor their medical conclusions to bend to this political fiat. They bring this lawsuit to defend the integrity of medical research and the safety of patients from the government's dangerous, arbitrary, and unconstitutional censorship.

Defendants' censorship violates the First Amendment by imposing a viewpoint- based and unreasonable restriction on Plaintiffs' speech and violates the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") because it is arbitrary and capricious. The OPM guidance further violates the APA because it exceeds OPM's statutory authority. Plaintiffs request that the Court declare this censorship unlawful, restore Plaintiffs' censored research, and enjoin Defendants from further censoring research.

At issue in the suit is the Patient Safety Network, a federal Web site in which doctors post anonymized "morbidity and mortality" case studies - after being reviewed by a panel of medical experts - and other doctors suggest ways the outcomes could be improved.

AHRQ's PSNet aims to aid providers, educators, researchers, clinicians, consumers, and policymakers in efforts to prevent medical errors, design safer healthcare systems, teach principles of safety, and collaborate across disciplines and institutions.

PSNet is the leading patient safety resource in the United States and one of the leading patient safety resources in the world for current patient safety topics. It is particularly valuable to researchers and those in the medical community because it offers a one-stop portal of resources for improving patient safety and preventing medical errors.

According to the complaint, on Jan. 31, the federal agency removed a commentary that Schiff co-authored on "a case on suicide assessment and prevention" which noted that:

High risk groups include male sex, veterans, Indigenous tribes, Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ) as well as more obvious populations such as those with serious mental illness, prior suicide attempts, ideation/attempts, alcohol or substance use, serious recent illness or emotional distress trauma or loss, history of recent trauma or loss.

The same day, the agency removed an article that Royce wrote summarizing "a case of a delayed diagnosis of endometriosis" from a medical conference, and examining "the missed opportunities for a timely diagnosis in a particular patient’s case and explain[ing] the challenges in diagnosing endometriosis." Her article included a note that

[I]t is important to note that endometriosis can occur in trans and non-gender-conforming people and lack of understanding this fact could make diagnosis in these populations even more challenging. Therefore, endometriosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis for any person presenting with chronic abdominal or pelvic pain.

The two doctors note that PSNet editors at least had the bare courtesy to let them know their articles had been censored:

On January 31, 2025, the PSNet Editorial Team’s co-editor in chief, Dr. Romano, emailed Dr. Schiff and his co-authors to inform them that Suicide Risk Assessment was “removed from the PSNet website due to a perception that it violates the White House policy on websites ‘that inculcate or promote gender ideology.’” 

Attached to the note was a copy of an Office of Personnel Management ordering the deletion of any articles mentioning the new cootie words.

The doctors allege they were given the chance to have their articles re-posted, but only by removing the offending references to LGBTQ and trans people. 

Dr. Schiff rejected the option to republish a censored version of Suicide Risk Assessment that omitted "transgender" and "LGBTQ" from the list of high-risk groups because to do so would be factually inaccurate, unethical, and run contrary to the purpose of the article, which was to identify risk factors for suicide. 

On February 7, 2025, Dr. Royce indicated that she would approve reposting Endometriosis Commentary with the editor's note and with the last sentence revised to read, " . . . it is important to note endometriosis can occur in any woman and is a rare but possible diagnosis in men." Dr. Royce wrote she would not approve of deleting the sentence, "since the whole point of the piece is endo[metriosis] is frequently missed or delayed in diagnosis, and this sentence is encouraging readers to have an open mind."