CDC reportedly instructed to ban words, including ‘gender’ and ‘transgender’
Multiple reports claim the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has instructed its researchers to pause or retract any periodical or journal article that references specific LGBT topics, with agency staff allegedly being provided a list of words that must be removed from all publications.
According to the Washington Post and Inside Medicine, those terms include “gender,” “transgender,” “non-binary,” “nonbinary,” “assigned male at birth,” “assigned female at birth,” “biologically male” and “biologically female.”
The list of terms applies to “any medical or scientific journal, not merely its own internal periodicals,” Inside Medicine said it learned, citing an internal CDC email and a statement from an anonymous official. Articles subject to the potential ban include material currently under consideration for publication, as well as new manuscripts submitted to journals.
“For example, if CDC scientists previously submitted a manuscript to the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association or any other publication, the article must be stopped and reviewed,” Inside Medicine wrote in its report.
The scope of the order is broad and can have consequences that reach beyond President Donald Trump’s executive order that ends “all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology.” The official who spoke to Inside Medicine noted there are papers being flagged over standard demographic tables, as the sweeping pause is impacting scientific works without consideration of context.
According to the Washington Post, which first broke the story, the guidance was issued last week, under the authority of the Office of Personnel Management. Currently, the agency’s homepage has a banner that reads “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
It’s not clear what, if anything, has been outright retracted or banned at this point, as this is a developing story. HealthExec has reached out to the CDC for comment.
Chad is an award-winning writer and editor with over 15 years of experience working in media. He has a decade-long professional background in healthcare, working as a writer and in public relations.