It’s been reported that the Trump administration has identified seven words that can no longer be used in official budget documents for the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The forbidden words appear to include, “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.” In addition, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) dropped questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in two recent surveys and has since removed information about LGBTQ Americans from its website. Furthermore, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has gradually erased mentions of “climate change” from government websites, and U.S. national park climate-related tweets were deleted. There is clear and growing evidence that Donald Trump is trying to muzzle government scientists on a number of major issues by controlling messaging.
It wasn’t that long ago in Canada in 2006 that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper attempted to do something similar. Indeed, scientists from sixteen federal agencies and departments were instructed that all communications with the Canadian public had to first go through the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for approval. This raised the ire of the scientific community, especially when it came to addressing issues surrounding climate change, which the former Conservative government argued was not partly human made. Government scientists could not publicly release science-based reports or speak at scientific forums without prior PMO approval. By controlling the messaging, Harper was obviously trying to influence the public perspective on key issues for political reasons.
The same is the case in Trump’s administration with its recent edicts to government agencies such as the CDC, HHS and EPA. The control over messaging doesn’t just mean a change in vocabulary, but is also an attempt to make a radical change in the focus of entire agencies. Now, the views of U.S. government scientists are being similarly altered by controlling who they’re allowed to talk to, what vocabulary they can use and how they can talk about their own research. It’s a sad state of affairs when politicians attempt to control public views on important environmental, social and health issues through a deliberate form of “mind-control”. As was the case in Canada, the American scientific community and the public must demonstrate against such attempts as they violate fundamental elements of free speech and the principles of “evidence-based” research. After all, what comes next after this form of Trumpism? Perhaps another form of early 1950s “McCarthyism”. I’m fearful that time will only tell. Unfortunately, too much is at stake!
FROLITICKS 
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