Banning Words In The Trump Administration’s War On Truth
The Orwellian list of forbidden words is worse than you thought — and it extends beyond the CDC
The Trump administration’s ban on certain words and phrases in official budget documents is even more extensive than initially reported, encompassing additional terminology and extending beyond the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Washington Post reported on Friday night that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the nation’s top public health agency — had been given a list of seven forbidden terms, including the words “science-based,” and “evidence-based,” during a briefing on Thursday.
CDC officials said they were also told not to use the words “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” or “fetus,” in any documents related to the agency’s 2018 budget.
But according to a new report by the Post, the ban extends beyond the CDC, and applies to multiple agencies across the Department of Health and Human Services. It also encompasses more than the seven words cited in the initial report.
Officials from two HHS agencies told the Post that they had also been given a list of forbidden words similar to the one given to the CDC on Thursday. At one HHS agency, officials were told not to use the phrases “entitlement,” “diversity,” and “vulnerable” in documents. The agency was also told to use “Obamacare” instead of the “Affordable Care Act,” and to refer to “marketplaces”— where consumers buy health insurance—as “exchanges.”
Similar directives were issued at the State Department, where employees were told to refer to sex education as “sexual risk avoidance,” a term that generally refers to abstinence-only education. This is in line with the contents of a White House memo that was leaked in October, revealing the administration’s plans to wage war on women’s health and reproductive freedom.
In a separate report, one medical leader said CDC employees had also been directed not to use the term “health equity” in presentations or public talks, suggesting that the ban may not be limited to budget documents.
The list of prohibited words provides a revealing look at the ideological underpinnings of the Trump administration’s escalating war on science and collective knowledge, which builds on long-running conservative attacks on society’s central information-gathering and -disseminating institutions. It also serves as a chilling reminder that although Trump’s assault on truth may be most glaring when he lies on camera, it is most dangerous when it plays out behind the scenes.
During Thursday’s briefing, CDC officials were given alternative phrases to use for some of the forbidden terms. Instead of “science-based” or “evidence-based,” they were directed to say “[the] CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” It’s not clear what community this statement is referring to, but including the “wishes” of any community in the assessment of scientific evidence undermines the objectivity of science-based conclusions.
In other instances, the agency was not told how they should refer to the now-banned words—some of which, like “fetus,” are standard medical terms that can’t simply be replaced with another word. That’s not an accident. In fact, that seems to be the entire point of this new Orwellian directive.
By prohibiting the use of the word “fetus,” the Trump administration is trying to force government health agencies to adopt clumsy and/or medically inaccurate terminology favored by anti-abortion advocates— phrases like “unborn child” and “baby,” which have moral but not medical or scientific meaning.
By including the “wishes” of unspecified communities in the assessment of scientific evidence, the administration is leaving the door open to rejecting certain scientific conclusions based on moral or political objections. In health and medicine, a procedure (or drug, treatment, or other medical intervention) must meet certain standards to be described as “evidence-based.” Undermining those standards not only compromises the scientific process—it compromises the health and safety of millions.
Consider the case of anti-vaccine beliefs: Diseases like measles—which was once almost eliminated in the United States—have now made a comeback, thanks to an increasing number of parents refusing to vaccinate their children. Must we take their alternative facts into account when assessing the effectiveness of vaccines?
Furthermore, by prohibiting our nation’s health agencies from using terms like “vulnerable,” “diversity,” “transgender,” and “health equity,” the Trump administration is laying the groundwork to dismantle efforts to reduce health disparities—a term used to describe preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, death, and disability based on age, gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, neighborhood/geographic location, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other group classifications.
Disparities also include systematic and preventable differences in access to and quality of health care services. The CDC has a robust agenda to eliminate health disparities, with initiatives ranging from data collection and surveillance, to policy advocacy, awareness campaigns, partnerships with local communities, research fellowships and grants, and much more. Based on the Trump administration’s list of forbidden words, the future of such initiatives may now be in jeopardy.
After all, it’s hard to run an effective program if you can’t describe it in a proposal for funding.
Attacking Science
While the Trump administration pushed back on the Washington Post’s reports about banned words, they also pushed back on the leaked women’s health memo in October — the contents of which have proven to be entirely accurate thus far. Furthermore, in the face of uncertainty surrounding the scope of the ban, many government employees are already considering avoiding the prohibited words entirely because they don’t know if and when they’re allowed to use them.
As one medical leader told the Associated Press:
Everybody’s afraid to do their job right now.
This latest move is part of a broader pattern, carried out by officials in the Trump administration, of reducing and undermining the role of science in public policy, giving industry and corporate interests an oversized role in decision-making, creating hostile workplaces for government scientists, and reducing, manipulating, and sometimes even cutting off public access to scientific information.
Just days after Trump took office, scientists and other staffers at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service were told to stop releasing “any public-facing documents,” including “news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content … until further notice,” according to an internal email obtained by BuzzFeed. The ban was later rescinded following public outcry.
Six months later, employees at the USDA and several other government agencies were ordered to stop using the term “climate change.” Instead, they were directed to reference “weather extremes.” The phrase “reduce greenhouse gases” was also blacklisted and replaced with “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient efficiency,” while “climate change adaption” was changed to “resilience to weather extremes.”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The consequences of scientific censorship extend far beyond the phrases, topics, and agencies specified in the Washington Post report. Science is the best tool we have for understanding and describing the world around us. If scientific terminology is restricted and shared vocabulary discarded, science will suffer. People will too.
Perhaps most perilously, censorship of this kind not only undermines the scientific process —it threatens to erode the very concept of objective truth.
Stay tuned—I’ll break this down in more detail in a post coming soon.
