American Diabetes Association Boycott Grows to About 1,200 Members After Disputed Internal Review

Five researchers, one editorial, one police escort

On June 5, 2026, security removed five diabetes researchers from the American Diabetes Association's Scientific Sessions in New Orleans. The five were Steven Kahn, MB, ChB, of the University of Washington; Maureen Gannon, PhD, of Vanderbilt University; Aaron Kelly, PhD, of the University of Minnesota; Justin Ryder, PhD, of Northwestern University; and Desmond Schatz, MD, of the University of Florida, according to Healio.

They were handing out printed copies of an editorial, published in the ADA's own journal Diabetes Care in April, that criticized Trump administration cuts to National Institutes of Health funding. They distributed it outside the hall where NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya was scheduled to give the keynote address, according to Retraction Watch.

Kahn, editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, told Skift he printed 1,000 copies at his own expense and recruited about 10 colleagues, including past ADA presidents, to hand them out. He said ADA officials knew in advance the group planned to distribute the material but that no one contacted him beforehand to say it wouldn't be allowed. "I had stuff grabbed out of my hands by a non-uniform security person that can be seen on video," Kahn said. He called the ADA's response "completely disproportionate" and disputes the association's later claim that the group refused instructions from security.

The five were escorted out by individuals wearing New Orleans Police Department uniforms.

ADA apologizes, then a review muddies the picture

ADA CEO Charles Henderson apologized to the five researchers after the incident and promised an independent review, according to Medical News Today.

That review came on September 1, when the ADA announced its Audit and Governance Committee had concluded the five were removed because their conduct disrupted the meeting and violated the attendee code of conduct, not because of the editorial's content. The committee also said the uniformed individuals were contracted security personnel, not actual police called by the ADA, and that security "acted appropriately." The report acknowledged "communication shortcomings" and proposed reforms, including additional staff training, according to Medical News Today.

Critics immediately objected that a review conducted by an internal ADA committee isn't independent in any meaningful sense. That objection got harder to dismiss five days later. On September 6, the ADA issued a second statement saying the September 1 findings hadn't considered the "full breadth and depth" of the investigation and that additional information could change some of the earlier conclusions. A final report is expected to go to the ADA board in the coming weeks, Medical News Today reported.

The boycott

On September 9, a group of diabetes leaders published a letter, delivered via Google Forms, announcing a boycott of the ADA. Signees pledged to skip all ADA-led meetings, including the 2027 Scientific Sessions scheduled for June 18-21 in Washington, D.C., and to stop participating in grant reviews, manuscript reviews, journal submissions, fundraising and position statements, according to Healio.

The letter said the boycott will continue until the ADA board allows a formal, independent review of the organization's structure led by outside academic membership.

The numbers moved fast. MedPage Today reported more than 400 signatures within roughly two days of the letter going up, as of Friday, September 11. By roughly a week after the September 9 launch, John Buse, a former ADA president and deputy editor of Diabetes Care, told Skift the count had reached about 1,200. Kahn gave Skift the same figure and said it continues to grow.

Buse has attended every ADA meeting for 45 years, since he was 12 years old. "I hate to see the boycott happen," he said. Kahn, who has attended nearly every Scientific Sessions since the mid-1980s, said: "Unless something changes, I'm skipping it for sure."

The ADA's position

The ADA's position, as laid out in its own committee findings, is that this was never about censoring the editorial. Conference organizers argue that any group distributing printed materials and disrupting the area outside a scheduled keynote, regardless of what the material says, creates a legitimate crowd-control and code-of-conduct problem that has nothing to do with the political content involved. That's a defensible operational position for any large convention to take, and the ADA's report did find real communication failures on its own side leading up to the incident.

The unresolved problem is that the ADA's own walk-back of its September 1 findings five days later undercuts confidence that the internal review settled anything. No outside, truly independent investigator has examined the incident. Video Kahn references shows materials being taken from his hands, but no source in this record establishes whether that footage has been reviewed by anyone outside the ADA's own committee.

Skift, which covers the conference and meetings industry, noted the ADA's Scientific Sessions is one of the largest diabetes meetings in the world and raised open questions about how much revenue the event generates and whether pharmaceutical and device sponsors might redirect support to competing conferences if the boycott holds. Neither the ADA nor sponsors have said publicly whether that shift is happening. The ADA board's promised final report, due "in the coming weeks" per its own September 6 statement, is the next concrete marker to watch, along with whether the 1,200 boycott signers actually stay away from the Washington, D.C. meeting next June.