The emails at the top of my inbox filled me with dread. They came from the National Institutes of Health, and they put years of scientific research at risk.

When I opened those emails on a Friday evening in March, I found that the NIH had cancelled all my research grants, effective immediately, because they focused on gay, lesbian and transgender health. The agency described my research as “antithetical to the scientific inquiry.”

Let me set the record straight: I’m not promoting radical ideology, woke ideology, gender ideology or any kind of ideology at all. I’m a scientist. I work to keep people healthy.

And I’m outraged that the federal government has abruptly — and, I believe, illegally — terminated contracts to support work that I and hundreds of my fellow researchers have been pursuing to better understand and combat cancer, heart disease, maternal mortality, depression, Alzheimer’s disease and countless other threats to health and well-being.

On April 2, I joined several fellow scientists, the American Public Health Association, a reproductive health organization and a labor union whose members rely on NIH grant funding in filing a federal lawsuit to contest the arbitrary termination of research grants. The suit names several defendants, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

We contend that the terminations amount to a “reckless and illegal purge” to stamp out scientific inquiry on topics and among populations that the administration disfavors, in violation of both........

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