Donald Trump to review CDC scientific papers before publication: Report
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is withdrawing all of its papers under consideration for journal publishing so that they can be reviewed by the Donald Trump administration.
Newsweek contacted the CDC for more information about the order via email.
Why It Matters
The order symbolizes the new scrutiny that federal agencies face from the new administration. Trump has had a difficult relationship with the CDC in the past, often clashing with the agency’s leadership over the severity of the COVID pandemic during his first administration.
What To Know
The CDC’s chief science officer received orders to withdraw all papers being considered for publication in external medical journals in order to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender and sex, according to Reuters.
The order, issued on January 20, states that the federal government will recognize two sexes: male and female.
The order was revealed in a blog post on the Inside Medicine Substack, which said that federal officials had been given a list of words to remove in the communications review, including “gender, transgender, LGBT, and nonbinary.”
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The policy shift goes beyond the orders of the federal government, which only told agencies to pause public communications, rather than halt all scientific publication.
The order applies to all papers that were written or cowritten by CDC employees. Additionally, CDC scientists who coauthored papers that originated outside of the agency have been asked to take their names off the paper.
What People Are Saying
In a statement on the changes to gender language policy, President Donald Trump said: “Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.
“This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”
What Happens Next
Trump’s administration is continuing to make significant changes in several policy areas via executive order. His pick for Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, is currently awaiting Senate approval before he can take office.
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