CDC gets list of forbidden words

Censoring the CDC, of all organizations. What a travesty. The entire world looks to the US CDC for guidelines.

Let's be clear: The political right in the US pretends to care about free speech until they get serious political power.

It wasn't too long ago that conservatives were strongly against the depiction of violence and sex in video games.

This is not about free speech. It is perfectly acceptable for an organization to offer guidance and perhaps impose restrictions on how their own employees portray a topic publically in the name of PR and hopefully even compassion for their human audience. In other words the government can agree not to use certain words in public communications. This is very different from policing the general public when say talking about the CDC. That would be unconstitutional.

Do I agree with this personally? I dont know. It's probably better to offer a style guide for reasons other comments have already covered.

Yes, free speech does not apply to private companies. It does apply, somewhat different, to federal organizations. Same with copyright law (federal works cannot be copyright).

This particular issue gets very murky with the CDC and official documentation designed to inform the public.

> Censoring the CDC, of all organizations.

This isn't the first time it's happened. The Dickey Amendment in 1996 forced the CDC to stop research on gun-related injuries because the NRA was upset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996)

Wow. Holy cow. Why aren't doctors pushing back politically on this?

Neither end of the political spectrum is interested in free speech right now, they just use different justifications to ban the undesirable thought.

Interestingly that seems to be a result of the CDC's own political leanings. They seemed to pursue the research with an explicit political goal, rather than research the effects of gun violence, and then find a goal[1]. Further, the Dickey amendment doesn't actually force the CDC to avoid researching the issue but rather preventing it from using federal money . to promote gun control:

"none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control"[2]

[1]https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/12/why-we-cant-tr... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996)

>conservatives were strongly against the depiction of violence and sex in video games.

Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh and Jay Rockefeller were all Democrats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protectio...

I suspect the sets of actual doctors (I mean, those that work on healing people) and people wanting to use the mantle of CDC to institute gun control regulations have rather small intersection.

Unlike the left, of course, which would never even think of instituting speech codes, banning people they don't like from speaking, violently attacking them, suppressing dissenting opinions and using governmental prosecution to win scientific disputes. Let's be clear here - nobody likes the speech they disagree with. That's why we have 1st amendment - so that people won't be tempted too much to go there. They still try all the time - I think that's why it's the first one, because it was clear that's what will start happening immediately, it was the most obvious concern.

If i remember my history right it was Hillary Clinton that championed the attempts to ban Mortal Kombat during Bills presidency.

If you don't understand that barring a conclusion from receiving federal funding is effectively barring the research itself, then you don't understand academic research. Even if you legitimately don't find gun control to be a solution from your research, that you would lose your funding if you did means there is necessarily a financial incentive with no basis in fact to have or not have certain results - invalidating the research. The actual effect is that it bars research into gun violence, even if that is not the letter of the law.

What if it turns out that research suggests gun control is effective in reducing gun violence? Note, I'm not saying that it is effective; I have no dog in this fight and don't know enough. But the law effectively says to the CDC "You're allowed to research this health issue, but if you come to a conclusion that's politically unacceptable, you can't share it."

The result is that the CDC now believes any gun violence research to be likely to result in political reprisal against them come budget time.[1]

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/14/...

[1] is an unsourced op-ed by a representative of the NRA's lobbying arm, who advocated for the amendment in the first place. Here's an opposing view:

http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.as...

They are:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dickey-amendment-gun-vi...

The firearms industry wields a great deal of power in Washington through its lobbying and advocacy organization, the NRA.

Nope. There was never any concerted effort to ban Mortal Kombat in the US, and Hillary Clinton was not involved with it. You may be thinking about Tipper Gore, who was part of the campaign in the '80s that resulted in the infamous "Parental Advisory - Explicit Content" label on records.

> It wasn't too long ago that conservatives were strongly against the depiction of violence and sex in video games.

You might be thinking of Hilary Clinton?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protect...

I didn't say anything about the left. The comment I replied to mentioned the right pretends to care about freedom of speech until they have real political power. From my perspective they don't care about it regardless of their political power and they don't even pretend to.

So what? The GP said the right pretends to care, I say they don't even do that. Other views on the political spectrum have nothing to do with this.

I just wanted to say one thing and I will be quiet because I think the ban on these words is totally uncalled for period but the use of wikipedia for an example is not a credible source as it is written by anyone and may not be factual at some point I would look for more evidence-based material LOL