An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald on Sunday addressed a report that President Donald Trump’s administration had banned the CDC from using seven words or phrases in next year’s budget documents. The terms are “fetus, ” “transgender, ” “vulnerable, ” “entitlement, ” “diversity, ” “evidence-based” and “science-based, ” according to a story first reported on Friday in The Washington Post. But Fitzgerald said in a series of tweets on Sunday said there are “no banned words, ” while emphasizing the agency’s commitment to data-driven science. “CDC has a long-standing history of making public health and budget decisions that are based on the best available science and data and for the benefit of all people — and we will continue to do so, ” she said. A group of the agency’s policy analysts said senior officials at the CDC informed them about the banned words on Thursday, according to the Post’s report. In some cases, the analysts were reportedly given replacement phrases to use instead. But in follow-up reporting, The New York Times cited “a few” CDC officials who suggested the move was not meant as an outright ban, but rather, a technique to help secure Republican approval of the 2019 budget by eliminating certain words and phrases. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said the reported decree on banned words was a misrepresentation. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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CDC Director Says No Words Are Actually Banned At the CDC
