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Science-based, transgender, diversity: Trump administration gives CDC list of forbidden words


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The ban is related to the budget and supporting materials that are to be given to Centers for Disease Control's partners and to Congress, an analyst said

Trump administration officials are forbidding officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases – including “fetus” and “transgender” – in any official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or “evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.

The question of how to address such issues as sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion rights – all of which received significant visibility under the Obama administration – has surfaced repeatedly in federal agencies since President Donald Trump took office. Several key departments – including Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC, as well as Justice, Education and Housing and Urban Development – have changed some federal policies and how they collect government information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

In March, for example, HHS dropped questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in two surveys of elderly people.

HHS has also removed information about LGBT Americans from its website. The department’s Administration for Children and Families, for example, archived a page that outlined federal services that are available for LGBT people and their families, including how they can adopt and receive help if they are the victims of sex trafficking.

At the CDC, the meeting about the banned words was led by Alison Kelly, a senior leader in CDC’s Office of Financial Services, according to the CDC analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. Kelly did not say why the words are being banned, according to the analyst, and told the group that she was merely relaying the information.

Other CDC officials confirmed the existence of a list of forbidden words. It’s likely that other parts of HHS are operating under the same guidelines regarding the use of these words, the analyst said.

At the CDC, several offices have responsibilities for work that uses some of these words. The National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention is working on ways to prevent HIV among transgender people and reduce health disparities. The CDC’s work on birth defects caused by the Zika virus, for example, includes research on the developing fetus.

The ban is related to the budget and supporting materials that are to be given to CDC’s partners and to Congress, the analyst said. The president’s budget for 2019 is expected to be released in early February. The budget blueprint is generally shaped to reflect an administration’s priorities.

Federal agencies are sending in their budget proposals to the Office of Management and Budget, which has authority about what is included.

Neither an OMB spokesman nor a CDC spokeswoman responded to requests for comment Friday.

The longtime CDC analyst, whose job includes writing descriptions of the CDC’s work for the administration’s annual spending blueprint, could not recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial.

The reaction of people in the meeting was “incredulous,” the analyst said. “It was very much, ‘Are you serious? Are you kidding?’ ”

“In my experience, we’ve never had any push back from an ideological standpoint,” the analyst said.

News of the ban on certain words hasn’t yet spread to the broader group of scientists at the CDC, but it’s likely to provoke a backlash, the analyst said. “Our subject matter experts will not lay down quietly – this hasn’t trickled down to them yet.”

The CDC has a budget of about $7 billion and more than 12,000 employees working across the nation and around the globe on everything from food and water safety to heart disease and cancer to infectious disease outbreak prevention. Much of the CDC’s work has strong bipartisan support.

Kelly told the analysts that “certain words” in the CDC’s budget drafts were being sent back to the agency for corrections. Three words that had been flagged in these drafts were “vulnerable,” “entitlement” and “diversity.” Kelly told the group she had been authorized to give verbal instructions about the remaining banned words.

This is idiotic. You can't use 'science-based' or 'evidence-based' but can still use a 13-word replacement that still contains the phrase 'bases its recommendations on science'. This is going to make every budget report more complicated than they already are, especially if its read by government officials without a science background. It won't even flow well because it'll be obvious every time the researcher had to whip out a thesaurus. What the hell is fetus going to become? 'Organism in development'? 

 

So many of these words (vulnerable, entitlement, diversity) are used in so many different contexts. This will affect so much more than just abortion and transgender discussion. This will just make communication so much harder for an organization that needs to effectively communicate to the people stifling them.

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19 minutes ago, Art Vandelay said:

The thing about language, is there is always more than one way to say something. 

 

So this has no purpose. This has got to be a fake story, or atleast someone is screwing around (because they can).

There'll be other ways to say what they need to say but it won't be as concise or as exact as the proper term. English has such nuances in meaning, that saying something another way with other words won't be quite the same.

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The only stupid word on that list is fetus...

 

evidenced-based and science-based should be an automatic given in the context of any report they submit anyways, so banning them should be irrelevant...

 

I don't really see why any of  “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” should be in a report anyways, so meh

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1 hour ago, Dral said:

The only stupid word on that list is fetus...

 

evidenced-based and science-based should be an automatic given in the context of any report they submit anyways, so banning them should be irrelevant...

 

I don't really see why any of  “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” should be in a report anyways, so meh

Can you give us any good reason why they shouldn't?

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1 hour ago, Dral said:

The only stupid word on that list is fetus...

 

evidenced-based and science-based should be an automatic given in the context of any report they submit anyways, so banning them should be irrelevant...

 

I don't really see why any of  “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” should be in a report anyways, so meh

Vulnerable could be used to describe the population of people who cannot be vaccinated and rely on herd immunity. 

 

Entitlement can refer to what benefits one is granted through his/her health insurance (or having insurance in and of itself may be an entitlement).

 

Diversity may refer to the full gamut of pathogens that threaten us. 

 

Transgender refers to a whole demographic of people who are actually at higher risk of transmission of certain disease and less likely to receive quality healthcare.

 

All of those terms are easily relevant in a budget proposal if CDC is laying out who and how they're targeting. 

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2 hours ago, Dral said:

The only stupid word on that list is fetus...

 

evidenced-based and science-based should be an automatic given in the context of any report they submit anyways, so banning them should be irrelevant...

 

I don't really see why any of  “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” should be in a report anyways, so meh

With time and reflection, one day I hope you can appreciate what a dumb thing you just said.

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1 hour ago, Dral said:

The only stupid word on that list is fetus...

 

evidenced-based and science-based should be an automatic given in the context of any report they submit anyways, so banning them should be irrelevant...

Agreed... rarely does this administration find the context to use such terms. Phrases like or "I am hearing" or "many people are saying" would more accurately reflect the collection process of their information... 

 

Using the term "evidence-based" should be reserved for information that is firmly grounded in scientific research. Makes sense to put it on the shelf for a while until there is someone in office who is capable of understanding it. 

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This is going to happen here. I know there were restrictions in the past about what gov't scientists could say, but it will come back and be worse pls. don't lose sight of that. I see signs of it here everyday. Don't think that it can't move outward from here. 

 

There isn't another word for fetus. It's not a baby,It's not an embryo, It's a FETUS.

 

I wonder if they will try and block biodiversity as well. It seems like that would be in line with their goals.

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So how does Hell Toupee sign an executive order to have Astronauts to the moon, yet ban "science-based" wording for the Centre of Disease Control?

 

CDC should be a non-partisan agency, that is not subject to political football. Hell the NRA has limited the research into gun deaths to $125,000 to the CDC All because of lobbying. 

 

Personally I'd rather see the FBI or better yet the ATF try and do unbiased research as it seems more applicable to those departments. 

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, otherwise said:

This is going to happen here. I know there were restrictions in the past about what gov't scientists could say, but it will come back and be worse pls. don't lose sight of that. I see signs of it here everyday. Don't think that it can't move outward from here. 

 

There isn't another word for fetus. It's not a baby,It's not an embryo, It's a FETUS.

 

I wonder if they will try and block biodiversity as well. It seems like that would be in line with their goals.

More like "stuff you can hunt, and stuff you can't" :P

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