Following the removal of five scientists from its annual conference in June, members of the American Diabetes Association have launched a boycott of the organization that includes halting the review of grants and new articles submitted to the ADA’s flagship journal, Diabetes Care.
Signatories to the boycott have pledged not to participate in the “planning of or attendance of any meetings led by ADA leadership or the board” and will also suspend “all other ADA activities,” according to a Sept. 9 open letter. Past open letters from ADA members have demanded the removal of the association’s CEO Charles “Chuck” Henderson and other leaders.
The ADA told Fierce it is aware of the boycott, but did not respond to questions about any specific actions being considered in response to the boycott.
“We sincerely appreciate all of the professionals who continue to support and make a meaningful difference in the diabetes communities we serve,” the organization said via a statement. “At the ADA, we remain focused on serving the millions of people counting on us to deliver on our mission.”
The boycott letter has already received hundreds of signatures, Steven Kahn, professor of medicine at the University of Washington, told Fierce, including “former presidents of the association, major prize winners, award winners of the association [and] people who are leaders in international diabetes.”
Kahn was one of the five ADA members forcibly removed from the annual conference in New Orleans this year after distributing an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s cuts to federal science spending. Kahn, who is also editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, was lead author of that editorial.
“I grew up in South Africa under apartheid. I know what it is to live in a country where there's no free speech,” Kahn told Fierce. “It is time to stand up, and the ADA is behaving like governments around the world are behaving in trying to do what they want to do without any consideration of the people they're meant to serve.”
The boycott follows a Sept. 1 release from the ADA announcing that the organization’s Audit and Review Committee, which reports to its board, had concluded its investigation into the June incident and found that “five attendees were removed due to conduct that disrupted the event and violated the ADA Attendee Code of Conduct,” unrelated to the contents of the material they were handing out.
Kahn's interpretation of the investigation was that “fundamentally, it said that the police had done nothing wrong, and that we had not sought permission to distribute materials.” Kahn also noted that ADA had admitted that its “communication could have been better.”
Five days later, on Sept. 6, the ADA put out another press release acknowledging that the organization's “initial findings did not take into account the full breadth and depth” of the investigation, with further facts to come.
“Those facts, I'm guessing, are the facts from the interviews of the five of us,” suggested Kahn, referring to interviews conducted with the people removed from the conference. Those interviews took place about a week before the first press release went out, he said.
This back-and-forth, along with the presence of current and former ADA board members on the committee that conducted the review, led the boycotters to decide to not accept the results of the internal investigation.
The boycotters are demanding “a formal review of the overall structure and function of the ADA led by an independent academic leader,” with the goal of ensuring that the organization “properly represent[s] its professional membership.”
But Kahn said he is not confident that the ADA will comply, and is already pondering other measures.
“If the ADA is not willing to talk to us, there are other options,” he told Fierce. Diabetes experts could splinter off and form a new professional organization, or join another existing group relevant to diabetes, like the Endocrine Society or American Heart Association, he suggested.
Given the current GLP-1 boom, these organizations would likely “love to have a bigger footprint in diabetes,” Kahn argued. “ADA is really at a crossroads, and the decision [of] what to do next really lies with the executive and lay leadership.”