It appears that the Trump Administration will now prohibit the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from using certain words. The Washington Post reports that the administration will prohibit CDC from using several words in official documents used in next year’s budget.
At a meeting on Thursday, the agency was informed by those who oversee the budget. The administration is prohibiting the agency to use the following words: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
While these words are prohibited, policy analysts were provided with some alternatives, per Post: instead of using “science-based” or “evidence-based,” the suggested wording was “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” Unlike this suggestion, the agency were not provided with any alternative wording for other words that are prohibited.
These words being prohibited from official documents comes as the government works on next year’s budget. That’s when individual agencies will submit their proposals to the Office of Management and Budget, and that’s when it goes into the proposed national budget. A spokesperson for the CDC told the Post that the agency “will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans.”
