Check it out: The Trump administration has given a list of banned words to the CDC. “Vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based”…with “honor”, “integrity” and “self-respect” probably soon to follow. :rolleyes:
Meanwhile, France is poaching US scientists.
This will only hurt the US.
So now the CDC won’t, for example, be able to publish a paper showing how a new surgical technique can save the life of a fetus vulnerable to heart disease?
Perhaps they could do a mass search and replace - replacing those words with “Fuck you, Trump.”
Since there’s seven of them, the obvious one-for-one substitution would be the Seven Words you weren’t allowed to say on TV back in the day. Per George Carlin (just google ‘george carlin seven words’), they are:
shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.
Notify the CDC. 
It’s limited to documents prepared for next years budget. Maybe they’re worried Trump will actually read them and be triggered.
Fortunately there’s this thing called a thesaurus, so the idiocy of the administration is, for now, easily circumvented.
https://twitter.com/shannongalloway/status/942019871663120384
Seen several of these, so this isn’t necessarily original though.
For humans, it’s an embryo at conception until 9 weeks. After that it’s a fetus til birth.
Something can be based on the truth but not really Scientific. E.g., “I have never killed an elephant.” is truthful but not establishable by Scientific methods.
Lighten up. It’s a twitter joke.
The administration have suggested some alternatives themselves according to the article. Instead of science based they suggest the bizarro “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,”
Community: “We wish there wasn’t a problem with zika-infected mosquitos”
CDC: “Were well, we will adjust our recommendation accordingly”
Notify Pence, too. Maybe with a skywriting airplane visible from the White House.
At least we can still use “comrade.”
That is almost worse. “We’d say vaccines are effective against the current strain of flu, but the community objects so we can’t.”
I favour replacing ‘fetus’ with either ‘genetically human parasite’ or ‘happy accident’, depending on the context.
How does this not violate the 1st amendment?
It’s arguably not a First Amendment issue, applying as it does only to formal communications such as budget estimates and internal memoranda. The Centers for Disease Control is a federal agency operating within the Department of Health and Human Services, and the while their isn’t any real precident for the White House setting these kinds of detailed regulations on domestic agency communications, it is within their purview just as much as it can dictate foreign policy. On the other hand, using intentionally obfuscative language to stifle scientific research is not a good look on anyone. If these dictums were actually applied to scientific literature resulting from CDC-funded research, however, that would be a different story, and I would expect lawsuits galore.
It does not speak well for the future of the United States as a leader in science and technology to not only be losing technical expertise to nations like China and South Korea, but also trying to suppress any research that is ideologically unpalatable to conservative leadership. This didn’t go well for the Catholic Church, the former Soviet Union, and there is no reason to think such an approach will do anything for the United States than to undercut its future viability.
Stranger
Those French! They’ll poach anything. And then apply a delicate white-wine sauce.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/454752/cdc-did-not-ban-words-yuval-levin
Apparently, the words were not banned and nothing came from the Trump administration.
Now I’m picturing lab-coated American scientists gently simmering in a sous vide pouch. Thanks for the visual. :mad: