In a reversal of its original findings, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) said members who were kicked out of its annual meeting in June did not violate its code of conduct.
Instead, the final report of its governance committee, which the ADA shared publicly, said one of the members threatened in an email to “disrupt and protest” a keynote address, raising security concerns.
Notably, in the press release that accompanied the report, CEO Charles Henderson apologized to three of the five researchers who were expelled from the meeting: Steven Kahn, MBChB, Desmond Schatz, MD, and Maureen Gannon, PhD.
Aaron Kelly, PhD, and Justin Ryder, PhD, whom the report said initially distributed materials inside the keynote session hall and did not comply with requests from security to move outside of the room, did not receive an apology.
Kelly disagreed with the report’s characterization of events involving him.
“They’re looking for scapegoats,” Kelly told MedPage Today. “They’re missing the forest for the trees because they’ve been coming up with excuses trying to justify why they kicked us out of the meeting.”
A shakeup of the ADA continues, with Chief Science and Medical Officer Rita Kalyani, MD, leaving the organization for unknown reasons last week. ADA Board Chair James Tai also resigned for unknown reasons last week.
Other resignations came soon after the five researchers were booted from the meeting, including Scientific Sessions Planning Committee Chair Mark Atkinson, PhD, and President-Elect Jennifer Green, MD.
There’s also an ongoing boycott of the organization.
It’s unlikely that the latest version of events will change any minds, though the report does provide more context from the organization’s perspective — notably regarding their security concerns. It references the December 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson as a reason for heightened alarm among healthcare organizations.
The report says that on March 19, Kelly wrote an email to two ADA staffers that he was unhappy with the selection of NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, as the meeting’s keynote speaker. (Bhattacharya ultimately did not attend and sent another NIH official instead.)
“I am excited to attend and disrupt and protest this presentation and plan to mobilize my colleagues to do the same,” Kelly wrote in the email. The report stated that Ryder was copied on the email.
Kelly said he did indeed send the email: “That was my reaction when I first read that they were going to invite [Bhattacharya],” he said. “This is on the heels of Operation Metro Surge where I live in Minneapolis, and people were getting killed. I’m a passionate guy, I’m a principled guy, and I was like, what in the world are they thinking? So I shot off that email.”
The next day, Kelly said, cooler heads prevailed and he had a 30-minute Zoom call with Kalyani: “We talked and everything was fine,” he said. “And then I hear she was so scared she was going to wear a bulletproof vest.”
“We’re a bunch of geeky scientists handing out an editorial. We’re not Luigi Mangione,” he added.
The report discusses ADA’s security strategy, hiring two off-duty uniformed police officers, which is typical for every meeting. It also added two additional off-duty New Orleans Police Department officers, one for each side of the stage of the keynote address. Louisiana State Troopers were also on site at the direction of the governor, not the ADA, according to the report.
The report stated that Kelly approached Henderson “quickly” as he was walking toward the hall to introduce the speaker, and that security held him back.
Kelly said this was “completely made up” and he never approached Henderson.
It also stated that Kelly and Ryder were inside the keynote hall near the stage, and resisted requests from security and police to leave the room and stop handing out editorials — actions considered “disruptive,” according to the report.
Kelly acknowledged handing out copies of the editorial inside the keynote hall, but he said he did so peacefully. Nonetheless, in minutes, he said he was “surrounded by law enforcement and conference security.”
Actions taken by the other three members who were expelled — Kahn, Gannon, and Schatz — were not disruptive and they should not have been ejected from the event, the report stated.
Henderson had previously apologized to all five researchers not long after the meeting ended, and Kahn disagreed with the move to apologize to only three of the researchers now. “They deserve an apology as well,” he told MedPage Today. “The argument would appear to be that they had threatened to protest more actively than just handing out the editorial. They did not do so, and are owed an apology.”
The report also stated that Henderson and Kalyani were not involved in decisions to remove the members. Rather, security asked an ADA vice president if badges could be collected after the members failed to stop distributing materials. That ADA official called the organization’s chief operating officer to make sure they concurred on revoking the credentials.
The report acknowledged that the organization’s code of conduct doesn’t specifically address the distribution of materials by attendees — rather it just says attendees must act in a “respectful and professional manner” and prohibits disruptive conduct such as protesting.
It concluded there was no censorship, and that members’ First Amendment rights weren’t violated because it doesn’t apply to conduct at a private event in a leased conference facility. The report also said that the content of the materials had no role in the organization’s actions.
In its press release, the ADA outlined additional steps for moving forward, but those didn’t appear to satisfy the expelled researchers.
“Unless Mr. Henderson steps down,” Kelly said, “this association will be brought to its knees.”
