Medical journal 'cartel' that demonized lab leak, hydroxychloroquine shown the door by Kennedy | 29 May 2025 | The legitimacy of prestigious medical and scientific journals is under siege as the Trump administration threatens to take federal research elsewhere and scrutiny falls on their alleged coziness with regulators, interest groups and drugmakers, with perhaps the most serious consequences in the integrity of COVID-19 origin research. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called out The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet as "corrupt," on The Ultimate Human podcast Tuesday. The National Institutes of Health will "probably" stop publishing its scientists' research there, and each institute will set up its own journal "unless these journals change dramatically," he said.