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The CDC has instructed its scientists to retract or pause the publication of any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal, not merely its own internal periodicals, Inside Medicine has learned. The move aims to ensure that no “forbidden terms” appear in the work. The policy includes manuscripts that are in the revision stages at journal (but not officially accepted) and those already accepted for publication but not yet live.
In the order, CDC researchers were instructed to remove references to or mentions of a list of forbidden terms: “Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female,” according to an email sent to CDC employees (see below).”
The policy goes beyond the previously reported pause of the CDC’s own publications, including Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which has seen two issues go unreleased since January 16, marking the first publication gap of any kind in approximately 60 years. Emerging infectious Diseases and Preventing Chronic Disease, the CDC’s other major publications, also remain under lock and key, but have not yet been affected because they are monthly releases and both were released as scheduled in January, prior to President Trump’s inauguration. The policy also goes beyond the general communications gag order that already prevents any CDC scientist from submitting any new scientific findings to the public.
The edict applies to both any previously submitted manuscript under consideration and those accepted but not yet published. For example, if CDC scientists previously submitted a manuscript to Th
62 Comments
ggm
I'm assuming at this point refusing will be a badge of honour but one which is terminal for federal funding, in this 4 year term if not longer. You would need very high confidence in your future career trajectory to do that.
We had a mini storm over government censorship of CSIRO science in Australia and it got pretty ugly, but this is much uglier.
If they do the same for NSF, earth sciences, DoE and AGW it's going to be pretty nasty.
I don't even have to agree with the science. This kind of mass bad-topic-ban is really unhelpful. I wonder if the editorial boards are also going to put up a fight? I can imagine some kind of "retracted because of Trump policy, not because the peer review process asked for it" markers.
Genetics, and Lysenkoism comes to mind. A stain on soviet science which echoed down the years.
sambull
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sunshowers
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msie
The right: "free speech for me but not for thee."
arghandugh
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pixelesque
It's going to be NASA next isn't it, because of climate change and the need to remove any evidence of that and other environmental changes…
hn_throwaway_99
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zmgsabst
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userbinator
biologically male, biologically female
The trans stuff has definitely been controversial, but those phrases are definitely not "woke"?
rhinoceraptor
It's not "crimethink" anymore, it's "wokethink". It's not "Newspeak", it's "anti-woke"
tayo42
"woke" seriously broke the minds of the conservatives in America. Crazy to watch their reaction to this. They can't take their own advice and just mind their own business? Leave people alone?
The cdc is political and gets involved in cultural wars? This is already happening with this administration?
SlightlyLeftPad
What a terrible blow to US Constitutional rights.
peeters
It's a shame most of that research is digital, I'm sure they would have preferred a public book burning like in die gut old days.
resonious
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isodev
Remember how a few days ago, headlines were exploding how DeepSeek wouldn't answer questions about Tiananmen Square and other "sensitive topics"?
Well, welcome to the inside part of a great wall in the making. Thoughts and prayers y'all.
thedays
I am not a lawyer but this CDC order seems contrary to Trump’s recent Executive Order “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP”.
This Executive Order states in part: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
…
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
…
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech.
(a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/rest…
liamwire
Overtures of fascism. I expect we’ll see thinly-veiled euphemisms and rephrasings that just evade the banned list, if not outright refusal. Ultimately this falls short for the same reason that simple filters of all kinds fail in their (apparent) objective, to the extent that it doesn’t even feel like the point is to actually stop the discussion, but rather to send a message.
necovek
I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications?
I could imagine people moving away from CDC into private sector, and considering it's long been a "model" US view that things progress best when done in a free market, it might actually be a boon to medical research.
But, a couple of quick searches tells me 1/3rd of healthcare costs per person comes from the federal government (data from 2023), and NIH puts majority of it's $48B budget towards external (83%) and internal (11%) research.
Obviously, only some research would have (or need to have) the forbidden terminology, so perhaps nothing really happens.
Edit: and lest it remains unsaid, let's also take this with a grain of salt until it comes out from multiple sources or officially.
fishcrackers
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tenpies
> While the policy is only meant to apply to work that might be seen as conflicting with President Trump’s executive orders, CDC experts don’t know how to interpret that.
This seemed key to me. The managerial/editorial layer is acting in a way that any manager would when there is unclear interpretation: risk-adversity.
It's much easier to do than undo, so you stop until things are cleared up.
However, it seems the organizational layer whose work is being affected is assuming this risk-adverse interpretation is the new policy coming from the top. No doubt, legacy media will take the same interpretation.
If I were to approach this rationally, I would probably want to see clarification before running with the Hitlerian comparisons.
pjmlp
This is what happens when people decide for dictorship, hard times ahead, unfortunately saying we have told you so isn't going to sort out things now.
ConspiracyFact
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen a politician make an absurd campaign promise and then follow through on it successfully. I’d find it terrifying if it weren’t about the most first-world of all first-world problems.
coldpepper
Xi Jinping and his colleagues must be opening a champagne bottle over the US being this stupid. They could have never imagined an enemy so retarded
aaron695
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bruce511
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evo_9
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xcv123
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grahamj
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duxup
If the US chooses to opt out of science research, China and others will not.
That doesn’t bode well for the US.
duxup
Why is this submission flagged?
have-a-break
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Taniwha
Why is this flagged? this is important news
bufferoverflow
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KevinMS
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garbagewoman
Bannons "flood the zone with shit" in action. How much hysteria can we drum up with something that will essentially go nowhere?
Androth
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Mistletoe
I’m living in 1984 and this isn’t a drill. I’ve never seen anything like this.
tarkin2
So the US government is cancelling federal research that uses terminology it doesn't like?
Isn't this sending an Unamerican view of freedom of thought and expression? And a very dictatorial view of the American government and institutions?
All future research must abide by whatever histrionic whim the president has? I could imagine this being news from Belarus
yujzgzc
Actual cancel culture
djfobbz
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gmd63
Which ten regulations did they cut to introduce this anti-free speech one?
impossiblefork
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nobodywillobsrv
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jmward01
We are now at the digital equivalent of book burning in the 1930's. The parallels are pretty clear. This is the moment in history class that someone raises their hand and asks 'but why didn't anyone stop them?'.
Chance-Device
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0xbadcafebee
If everyone at the CDC quit tomorrow, how hard would it be to create a non-profit and staff it entirely with CDC personnel and resume work? Assuming somehow funding could be acquired. What else would be a barrier? Research labs? Some kind of logistical, organizational, etc partnerships? Access to data? What else? I'm half serious.
neilv
Think of all the people who dedicated their working lives to improving the US and world, and even gave their lives defending the US in wars… for a wrecking crew to just come in, and shamelessly go down a checklist of every fascist dictatorship stunt they've ever heard of.
Perenti
Freedom of Speech.
Democracy.
Equality.
Equity.
I used to know what these words meant, but it seems the old definitions are no longer fit for purpose.
peignoir
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throw_a_grenade
> Meanwhile, chaos and fear are already guiding decisions. While the policy is only meant to apply to work that might be seen as conflicting with President Trump’s executive orders, CDC experts don’t know how to interpret that. Do papers that describe disparities in health outcomes fall into “woke ideology” or not? Nobody knows, and everyone is scared that they’ll be fired. This is leading to what Germans call “vorauseilender Gehorsam,” or “preemptive obedience,” as one non-CDC scientist commented.
This stuff about fear is the underlying reason, and very much by design I believe. Opponents of the woke were for some time suppressed and in fear about their jobs if they even thought somethin unapproved by the DEI department. Now that the pendulum swung the other way, the people who are there (majority of whom must have signed DEI statement as part of thei recruitment) are realising that the fear can also work the other way.
> Meanwhile, chaos and fear are already guiding decisions. While the policy is only meant to apply to work that might be seen as conflicting with [Code of Conduct], [DEI] experts don’t know how to interpret that. Do papers that describe […] fall into “[nazi]” or not? Nobody knows, and everyone is scared that they’ll be fired. This is leading to what Germans call “vorauseilender Gehorsam,” or “preemptive obedience,” as one non-CDC scientist commented.
Because this is what was happening for quite some time.
jl6
The search and replace they want researchers to do:
gender -> personality
transgender -> trans-identifying
pregnant person -> pregnant woman
pregnant people -> pregnant women
LGBT -> LGB (or LGB and T separately)
transsexual -> ??? presumably trans-identifying
non-binary -> ??? presumably something to do with personality
assigned male/female at birth -> male/female
biologically male/female -> male/female
rich_sasha
If your thesis is that Trump is awful and will be ousted, and the general public, even the MAGA crowd, will recoil at the devastation he unleashed, I suppose at least it's all mercifully quick. At this rate the US might be in a major recession this year already, with healthcare in disarray and everything else too.
Not something to relish, but I suppose better than slogging it out for years. At least he's accelerating the timeline.
Of course the alternative is that he's here to stay, in which case the accelerated timeline means more damage.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
nitwit005
Given the costs involved in all the back and forth that a typical retraction involves, I can't see the journals wanting to deal with it.
scirob
interesting link but too bad that Hacker News can't stay clean of politics. I always come here to chill out and read about peaceful computers
lifeisstillgood
I am truly utterly dismayed that any fool could attack the very foundations of science like this.
The only interesting thing is how a Supreme Court might react to a scientist challenging this blocks his right to free speech. The test would be which is greater – the ideology or the law …
noobermin
This is literal political correctness. I guess when it's your censors in power, big government is fine and dandy.
xanderlewis
There’s more censorship in this comments section than anywhere else.
wesselbindt
Where they burn books, they will burn people too in the end.
concerndc1tizen
Does this mean that they also have unconstrained control over the weaponized diseases created and stored in laboratories?
Should I be concerned that they may break all treaties and engage in biological warfare with the EU?
aithrowawaycomm
PG needs to comment on this, since a few weeks ago he was actively rooting for an authoritarian crackdown on wokeness:
https://paulgraham.com/woke.html
Is this what he wanted?
gtsop
The most amusing part about all this, is watching the akward shocked reaction of all the people who (for some reason?) believed and stated that Amurika is a somehow a free/free speech country for the ordinary folk. For everyone else, these sort of developments were as predictable as the fact that the sun will rise, because it is so freaking obvious that noone in power cares about your freedoms, not now, and not when they allowed the gender politics to flourish, and not ever.
locallost
Is this the part of Trump being a leader when his enterprise goes bankrupt?