An HIV expert at the CDC was asked to scrub data on trans people. He quit...

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

An HIV expert at the CDC was asked to scrub data on trans people. He quit instead.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/12/an-hiv-expert-at-the-cdc-was-asked-to-scrub-data-on-trans-people-he-quit-instead/ 🔗

Greg Owen (27 Dec 2025)

Early one morning in April, John Weiser checked his email, worried that a colleague at the Division of HIV Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was on the list for another round of firings.

Beginning in February, CDC staff "scurried to erase data about transgender persons from numerous existing surveillance reports and research papers, and to stop collecting information about the gender of MMP participants."

Weiser had been preparing a paper based on MMP data that addressed opiate use among transgender people with HIV. Data showed those individuals didn't receive drug treatment in numbers comparable to other populations. Research indicated that addressing that disparity could improve outcomes targeting HIV transmission.

"We were getting ready to publish this study, but when I put the paper through CDC's clearance process, I was told to remove data about the prevalence of opioid misuse among transgender people," Weiser told POZ magazine.

"I thought carefully about that, and I decided not to do that, because it's bad science to suppress data for ideological reasons and because erasing people from the story harms actual people. I thought about my transgender patients and how I would face them, and what I would say to them while I'm sitting with them in the exam room, knowing that I had erased their existence from the CDC.

"I withdrew the paper," he said.

After being fired and then brought back to the agency in June, Weiser ultimately resigned.