Several US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention websites and datasets related to HIV, LGBTQ people, youth health behaviors and more have been removed after the agency was directed to comply with executive orders from President Donald Trump.

Key information and datasets have vanished from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s websites, alarming epidemiologists, other scientists and concerned American citizens.

CDC data’s “explicit purpose” is to guide researchers toward the places and people who most need attention, Patrick Sullivan, an epidemiologist at Emory University and a former CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, told me. As the changes unfold before him, he said, “it’s hard to understand how this benefits health.”

Large sets of data are being scrubbed of references to transgender and LGBTQ+ people, among others, which could compromise their use in research.

Websites on HPV vaccinations, data on high schoolers’ health habits, information on programs to end violence against women and girls: all began disappearing from government websites this week, as agencies scrambled to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order against “gender ideology.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appeared to take down webpages that related to gender identity and sexual orientation.