No, the CDC did not ban a list of words
“The assertion that H.H.S. has ‘banned words’ is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process”
Friday, the Washington Post reported the Center for Disease Control and Prevention banned a handful of words during a budget meeting including: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based and science-based.
The WaPo reported:
The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in 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 terms 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 terms 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 Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, “will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans,” HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd told The Washington Post. “HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.”
By Sunday, the CDC was publicly correcting the record, saying the WaPo’s report had mischaracterized budget discussions.
I want to assure you there are no banned words at CDC. We will continue to talk about all our important public health programs.
— Dr Brenda Fitzgerald (@CDCDirector) December 17, 2017
You may be understandably concerned about recent media reports alleging that CDC is banned from using certain words in budget documents. I want to assure you that CDC remains committed to our public health mission as a science- and evidence-based institution.
— Dr Brenda Fitzgerald (@CDCDirector) December 17, 2017
HHS statement addressing media reports: "The assertion that HHS has 'banned words' is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process. HHS will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans."
— Dr Brenda Fitzgerald (@CDCDirector) December 17, 2017
A report in the NYT suggests the budget discussion, from which the WaPo report came, suggesting side-stepping certain words in order to secure budget funding from Congressional Republicans. Neither report cites their source for the supposed word blacklist.
PBS reports:
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said the reported decree on banned words was a misrepresentation.
“The assertion that H.H.S. has ‘banned words’ is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process,” Matt Lloyd, an agency spokesman, said in a statement. “H.H.S. will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans. H.H.S. also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.”
Sometimes the outrage is too good to be true.
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On the subject of the deep state, and now the CDC, it is worth mentioning that the CDC has never been held accountable for the ebola debacle in 2014 and no one has gotten to the bottom of the cause of its major malfunction in that regard. CDC either bent to the policy to support Obama, or was extremely incompetent in providing the policy advice it gave. Specifically, CDC stated that a travel ban was not mandatory (and might be worse than no travel ban) and that any ordinary hospital, even one without a specialized biocontainment facility and specially trained people with special SOP’s, could handle treatment of an ebola patient if the virus reached the US.
So what happened when the BHO acted in accordance with the forgoing policy support from CDC? Ebola entered the country and the patient infected hospital staff, who in turn traveled and caused a mild panic about the spread of the virus. The CDC looked stupid and undermined the public’s confidence in it and the reliability of big, expensive government.
So why did it happen?
Was the CDC [honestly but abjectly] wrong and displaying incompetence?
Or was the CDC being a good political apparatus for BHO and providing the factual justification for the arbitrary political policy and rectal reasoning that he wanted to employ?
The public deserves to know the answer, but the issue has never been adequately pursued.
Having dealt with that at the time and long afterwards, the answer to your question is:
BOTH.
And we won’t even talk about the CDC Emergency Command Center’s horrible design makeover–including WINDOWS, which afterwards were dubbed, “RPG Slits”. When the Japanese toured the EOC, they thought it was unprofessional and poorly designed. They were right.
After all these years, I have yet to see the government do an assigned task well. Not…A…Single…One.
“Not. A. Single. One.
Really? Ask the people who’ve been through a hurricane on the Gulf Coast about that. Because U.S. Coast Guard.
The guilty player, once again, is the wapo. More fake news aimed at undermining President Trump.
The Clinton forbidden terms are “Vince Foster,” “Clinton Foundation ,” “loser,” “trailer park,” “billing records,” “quid pro quo” and “Ken Starr.”
WaPo = Fake News
If the NYT reportage is accurate, it thrills me that some govt. flunkies are trying to drop abnormal speech and adapt to normal language, in order to get their money.
Whatever separates the govt. from the lefties is good with me.
Strange, for much of the last eight years, we had a much stronger ban on certain words:
Illegal alien
Global Cooling
Climate pause
Fast and Furious
Homeless people
voter fraud
Government waste
ID theft
and of course the plutonium of forbidden words
black criminal
You left out the biggest of them all. Radical islamic terrorist. I am concerned about it because they really weren’t radical at all just muslims doing their thing. obama just couldn’t bring himself to call his brethern terrorists.
But Nancy Pelosi called the Tea Partiers terrorists.
“Neither report cites their source for the supposed word blacklist.”
That is because it did not come from this administration.
I’ve seen this before, in action. This is the kind of fake speculation somebody pulls out of thin air, out of hostility to the new administration.
Called it.
Revealed: Bogus ‘Trump Banned Words at the CDC’ Story Was Rooted in Suggested Guidelines From Liberal Bureaucrats
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/12/19/fake-news-no-trump-admin-conservatives-at-the-cdc-didnt-try-to-ban-words-like-fetus-and-transgender-n2424580