Doctors sue Trump administration over removed health data
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A national physicians group sued the Trump administration Tuesday for removing thousands of pages of health data and information from federal websites.
The big picture: Doctors for America claims that in taking public health data offline without advance notice, agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration abused their discretion and arbitrarily deprived clinicians and researchers of tools necessary to treat patients.
State of play: The complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also named Health and Human Services and the White House Office of Personnel Management, which directed agencies to remove or modify websites in accordance with executive orders from President Trump.
- The White House and HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zoom in: The lawsuit seeks to compel the CDC, the FDA and HHS to restore webpages and datasets and to stop the agencies from further removing or substantially modifying significant health information, when doing so would prevent timely public access to the information.
- The physicians group, which claims 27,000 members, is represented by lawyers from Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer advocacy organization.
Context: Federal agencies on Friday started removing swaths of webpages, including CDC information on topics including contraception, HIV and vaccine guidelines.
- Some pages have come back online without clarity on what's been changed or removed, and with disclaimers noting that the pages may be further modified.
