Here Are 7 Words That The Trump Administration Is Reportedly Banning At CDC

Here Are 7 Words That The Trump Administration Is Reportedly Banning At CDC

Bruce Y. Lee, CONTRIBUTOR

Dec 16, 2017 6:46 AM 34,892

A reported meeting at the Centers for Disease Control and [+]

What the bleep? Lena Sun and Juliet Eilperin reported for the Washington Post that the Trump Administration has now identified 7 words that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) can no longer use in official budget documents. According to the article, Alison Kelly from the CDC’s Office of Financial Services met with senior CDC officials for 90 minutes on Thursday and gave them the following list of banned words, not in any particular order because they all supposedly will be banned:

vulnerable
entitlement
diversity
transgender
fetus
evidence-based
science-based

Are you bleeping kidding me? If this is true and actually goes through (and part of me is still waiting for Ashton Kutcher to walk out and tell us that we’ve all been Punk’d), then one can think of at least 7 words or phrases that are traditionally banned from network TV to describe this new development. And none of these words are nice and one of them rhymes with “loopid.” Twitter certainly reacted to the proposed bleeping of these 7 words. For example:

I try to keep my head down, but this crosses the line. It’s time for @NIH@NIHDirector@US_FDA@SGottliebFDA@CDCgovto stand up to this form of censorship. Please.

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 16, 2017

This is the most disturbing part — or equally disturbing. The CDC has to give equal weight to superstition, imaginary friends, hang ups, prejudices. #CDC7wordshttps://t.co/IRfS0QXWO9pic.twitter.com/SPbO6pwWlt

— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) December 16, 2017

The@realDonaldTrump Administration is MAKING AMERICA STUPID AGAIN. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention banned from using “science-based” and “evidence-based” terms. Are we now going to use Voodoo & leeches to treat diseases?#MASAhttps://t.co/f77yrSbMFQ

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 16, 2017

This wouldn’t be the first time that the Trump Administration has tried to take down words that have long been used by scientists. As Madison Park reported for CNN, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Scott Pruitt apparently scrubbed the words “climate change” from its web site. Because the best way to prevent something from actually happening is to not say it, right?

To ban any of these 7 words would be absurd and frankly a gigantosaurus waste of time. Saying the word “fetus” is a whole lot easier than saying how is your “unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind” doing? Banning the word “ vulnerable” certainly won’t make 28.2 million Americans under the age of 65 who are uninsured or the over 46 million who live in poverty go away. Similarly what exactly will prohibiting the words “transgender” and “entitlement” do besides force people to search their thesauruses or thesaurusi? Plus, “entitlement” has other uses such as “what sense of entitlement gives one the right to override science and reality”?

Regarding the word “diversity, OK, there are already a lot of places where diversity doesn’t really exist, such as many boardrooms, executive suites, Hollywood films, etc. But that doesn’t mean that the word shouldn’t be used since there is an abundance of evidence that diversity is good for business, health, knowledge, your intestines, salad bars, and many other aspects of society. And blocking the words “evidence-based” and “science-based” would be “stupidity-based.” Next time you have a major health problem, how would you like your doctor to use “roulette-wheel-based” or “voodoo-based” or “eye-of-newt-based” or “let-me-let-my-personal-judgments-of-you-and-how-you-should-live-your-life-based” or “I-don’t-really-know-what-I-am-doing-based” medicine?

Words cannot describe how discouraging it has been watching what has happened to science this year. Science has long been the source of America’s strength. Science helped life expectancy jump from less than 40 years in the 1850′s to over 78 years now (sorry, Judge Roy Moore, but you probably would not have reached your current age if you had lived during times of slavery). But trying to cut the budgets of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), CDC, and other federal scientific agencies, appoint people who are not scientists to key scientific positions (as Steven Salzberg described for Forbes), and ban scientific words will reverse a lot of the gains that have occurred during past Presidencies, cause lasting damage, and make America fall behind other countries again.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2017/12/16/here-are-7-words-that-the-trump-administration-is-reportedly-banning-at-cdc/

The Trump administration's ban on certain words reportedly extends beyond just the CDC

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-admin-reportedly-banned-certain-words-at-multiple-hhs-agencies-2017-12

The Trump administration has reportedly banned multiple agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services from using certain words in budget documents - not just the CDC.The banned words include "vulnerable," "entitlement," and "diversity." Even the State Department has reportedly received guidance to refer to sex education as "sexual risk avoidance."

The Trump administration's ban on certain words from official budget documents reportedly extends beyond the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and applies to multiple agencies across the Department of Health and Human Services, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Health experts were aghast after the newspaper reported the previous day that CDC officials were barred from using seven words or phrases, including "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based," and "science-based."

But officials at a second HHS agency were similarly guided against using "entitlement," "diversity," and "vulnerable," one official who was briefed on the changes told the Post. The official added that the agency was also instructed to use "Obamacare" to refer to the Affordable Care Act and "exchanges" rather than "marketplaces."

The State Department has also received guidance to refer to sex education as "sexual risk avoidance" in certain documents, the Post reported.

The HHS official, who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity and did not want to name the agency, said that no explanations were given for the new guidance, which came from a document from the Office of Management and Budget. It's unclear whether the OMB has provided similar guidance to other agencies.

"Here's a word that's still allowed: 'ridiculous,'" Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,.told the Associated Press in a statement.

'Absurd and Orwellian'

Workers arrive at the Department of Health and Human Services Tuesday after the federal government shutdown.Thomson Reuters

One medical leader who works with CDC staffers but is employed by a separate agency told the Associated Press that the language ban may not be limited to budget documents.

He added that two CDC employees told him they were instructed not to use the term "health equity" in presentations or public talks. The term refers to the goal of providing equal access to health care and removing obstacles such as poverty or racial discrimination.

Others, however, have said the language ban is likely intended only for budget documents in an effort to appease Republicans who might otherwise not approve it.

"It's absurd and Orwellian, it's stupid and Orwellian, but they are not saying to not use the words in reports or articles or scientific publications or anything else the CDC does," one former federal official told The New York Times. "They're saying not to use it in your request for money because it will hurt you."

HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd told the Associated Press in a statement that it's a "complete mischaracterization" to say the CDC was "banned" from using the words.

"HHS will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans. HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions," Lloyd said.