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Donald Trump removes trans & HIV information from CDC website in “Orwellian” purge
February 04 2025, 08:15

The Trump administration’s crusade to erase transgender identity from the federal government continued on Friday with a late-day deadline to remove any references to transgender people from the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Groups with overlapping interests, as well as decades of work by researchers and scientists, were caught up in what experts are calling an “Orwellian” purge to pretend transgender people don’t exist.

Related

I work at NIH. The fear among staff is palpable.
“It felt like all functions of our job had just been completely stripped away, like the system had been completely crippled.”

A memo sent to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials on Wednesday directed agencies, including the CDC, to remove “all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology” by 5 p.m. on Friday.

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Agency staff members were given a list of about 20 words and phrases to be removed from websites as a “guide,” according to a screenshot shared by one employee with The Washington Post.

In accordance with Trump’s Day One “gender ideology” executive order, the words gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, biologically male, biologically female, and he/she/they/them were scrubbed.

Also, all references to DEI and inclusion were ordered removed to comply with the administration’s anti-DEI order.

Together, they eviscerated the federal government’s role in supporting LGBTQ+ health and wiped out access to decades of science and research.

“It is Orwellian, it really is,” Steven Woolf, director emeritus and senior adviser at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health, told The Post. “The fact that so many websites are being scrubbed, it is an alarming development and endangers public policy and makes it difficult for decision-makers around the country, including doctors like myself, to make informed choices.”

Whole pages about HIV testing, guidelines for use of HIV medication, and information on supporting transgender and LGBTQ+ youth health were no longer available late Friday.

The page that lists vaccines recommended by the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee was taken down, including the mpox virus.

While those vaccine-specific recommendations were back online Saturday, the mpox vaccine was no longer listed.

CDC guidance for prescribing and using PrEP was also removed.

CDC’s clinical guidelines for PrEP — which all but eliminates HIV risk — have been removed from CDC’s website. This is what you get when you search. Expanding PrEP access is essential to end HIV infections. They want people to get HIV as some sort of punishment for being immoral.

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— Senator Scott Wiener (@scottwiener.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 8:00 PM

Material removed or edited includes extensive data collected and used by researchers around the world, two employees told The Post.

Removed pages included key CDC information on the rate of HIV diagnoses, breakdowns of infections by race and gender, and the probability of HIV transmission by various forms of sex.

The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a national survey system that collects various habits on teenagers as well as their gender identity, is also no longer available.

Some pages might be returned to public view after the language is reviewed and removed, officials at  HHS and the CDC told ABC News.

Information about HIV, for example, has been consolidated and simplified on a page titled, “About HIV.” References to transgender people or any other groups affected by the disease have been removed.

Researchers confirmed to ABC on Friday they were scrambling to collect and archive as much data as possible from the sites before they were taken down.

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