Leaders Resign From ADA After Experts Booted From Meeting

NEW ORLEANS — In the wake of clinicians and researchers being kicked out of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) meeting here, at least two of the organization’s leaders have resigned.

President-Elect Jennifer Green, MD, and Scientific Sessions Planning Committee Chair Mark Atkinson, PhD, have both left their positions with ADA, several sources confirmed to MedPage Today.

Reports of at least two additional experts abdicating their positions with ADA could not be confirmed as of press time.

The resignations come amid a flood of support for the five experts — referred to as the “New Orleans five” — who were kicked out of the meeting for sharing printed copies of an editorial in the ADA’s flagship journal Diabetes Care.

Dozens of attendees walked out of the presidential plenary on Sunday morning, during which ADA Chief Scientific and Medical Officer Rita Kalyani, MD, and ADA President of Medicine & Science Enrique Caballero, MD, were set to speak. They held a sign that read, “We stand with science.”

There were other signs of support for the group throughout the meeting, including a commentary by John Buse, MD, PhD, of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, during which Steven Kahn, MBChB, was supposed to speak but could not because he’d been dismissed from the meeting. Kahn is the lead author of the editorial at the center of the story, and the editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care.

Buse said Kahn and the other four experts were quietly and respectfully handing out copies of the papers. “There were no protests, no speeches, no placards, no bullhorns,” Buse said, “but within minutes they were escorted out of the building and banned from returning.”

He called on ADA to apologize to the researchers, and for attendees to applaud Kahn’s “standing up for science,” which prompted a standing ovation from the crowd, as shown in a video provided to MedPage Today.

A change.org petition started by David Nathan, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, also circulated and as of Monday afternoon had almost 4,700 verified signatures.

Nathan told a podcaster who shared the comments with MedPage Today that in his 50 years as a member of ADA, the decision to eject Kahn and four others from the meeting was “the single most destructive thing” that has happened in that time.

ADA did not return a request for comment about the resignations as of press time.

On Saturday, ADA sent an email about the events, noting that “about a dozen attendees were distributing a Diabetes Care editorial” and that its “longstanding organizational policy has been and remains that distribution of any materials must receive prior authorization and occur only within the exhibit hall. Approval was not obtained to distribute these materials prior to or at Scientific Sessions.”

It stated that the actions were taken because of the violation of that policy, “not because of the viewpoints expressed in those materials.”

ADA CEO Charles Henderson signed off on the statement, as did Atkinson, who subsequently resigned.

The next day, ADA issued a separate statement on non-partisanship.

Kahn told MedPage Today that after the first widely distributed email went out, he and the four others who were ejected from the meeting received an email that they could have their badges back. None of them accepted the offer, however, because they felt the ADA email accused them of causing the disruption. Only one of them reclaimed the badge, but only to keep it as a reminder of what happened at the meeting, Kahn said.

Kahn said the five of them would have preferred that ADA apologize to the group for kicking them out in the first place.

He also noted that ADA cancelled the Diabetes Care editorial board meeting that was to have taken place on Saturday, and a separate editors meeting scheduled for Monday.

Kahn pointed out that the events as they unfolded brought his editorial more attention than he ever imagined, with page views shooting up to 76,000 as of Monday afternoon, and a flood of views on social media through various channels.

“Our goal was to hand out 1,000 copies of those editorials, and if we got 200 people to read them, we were lucky,” Kahn told MedPage Today. “By the actions of the ADA, we’ve actually got millions of people to think about it.”