Gag order on the CDC -- "7 no-no words"

The Washington Post reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has, for the first time in anyone's memory, issued a list of words and phrases that the Trump administration has prohibited from use in any official documents that will be used in preparing next years budget requests.

Here is the forbidden list:  "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based," and "science-based."

In some cases, alternatives were suggested.   For example, instead of "science-based," they suggest:  "CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes."  That last phrase is code for the creationists, "religious freedom" (aka freedom to discriminate) proponents, anti-vaccine zealots, and other dubious ideas that reflect religious belief or junk science.

One person attending the presentation said the reaction in the room was "incredulous," . . . "are you kidding?"    The presenter informed them that she was merely "relaying the message."

In the first place, there was no mention of the issues that have actually caused the most trouble during the Trump administration's first year:  sexual orientation, gender identify, and abortion rights.   And how will they ask for funds for continued research into birth defects caused by the Zika virus without using the word "fetus"?

The CDC is part of the Department of Health and Human Services;  and this attitude seems to come at least from that level, given that the HHS website has removed any references to gay, lesbian, and transgender -- for example, no longer collecting statistics on numbers of LGBT individuals, nor providing information about services available to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and related diseases among individuals and their families.

The massive CDC programs have a budget of about $7 billion and more than 12,000 employees working across the nation and around the world on issues like food and water safety, heart disease and cancer, and infectious disease outbreak prevention.   Usually it has strong bipartisan support, although there was a politically motivated ban, during the Bush II administration, against any research on gun violence as a public health problem.

But even that pales in comparison to this word censorship.   Maybe the CDC/ HHS folks are the good guys who know there are some right-wing kooks in Congress that would torpedo their budget if the wrong words set them off.

But what kind of world have we become when our elected lawmakers can't be told that some recommendation is "based on scientific evidence?"

We progressives like to point to the lack of any major legislation passed by the Trump administration as a measure of its failure.   We're fooling ourselves that they are ineffective.    They are accomplishing a quiet but major upheaval in what they are undoing and destroying.

Ralph