Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The CDC and Medical Censorship

Episode Date: December 21, 2017

The CDC was recently asked by the Trump administration to stop using seven terms like "fetus" and "transgender" in budget requests. But certainly there's precedent for this right? Certainly this happens all the time, right? RIGHT? This week join Dr. Sydnee and Justin for a history of the CDC and medical censorship. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. I'm for the mouth. Hello, everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a mayoral tour of Miss Guy to Medicine.

I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Sydney, the medicine was in the news this week. That's right, Jess. We always try to address when medicine is in the news. As long as it's an episode we haven't done before. A lot of times it's the one we've already done before. We want to say, hey, we've been doing this for a long time.

Over there, we've been in the game. But no, unfortunately, I always hate when science and politics start to get entertained. I think you actually very much like it, because you seem to get very worked up. OK, I do get very worked up about it. I do enjoy that part. But for me, it's always hard when science becomes political because there's truth that people don't want to hear because truth

is uncomfortable and apolitical. Yes, but somehow telling the truth is a political act these days. So I feel like we're about to enter the holiday season. We're in the holiday season. We're about to all take a break for the holidays and everybody's looking for light, things and fun. And I promise there will be plenty of that next week and probably in a lot of other podcasts. But this is your last dose of medicine before the holidays, your last sobering dose of reality. Is that okay?

Yes. I want to talk a little bit about the history of the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and then the elephant in the room, the supposed seven banned words that the CDC was told not to use. Which I use the term banned because that is the term that is appearing widely in the media. There's a lot more to it, obviously. Obviously. So we'll get into that.

All right. Justin, are you familiar with the CDC? Yes, vaguely. I am familiar with it, obviously, because I'm a doctor, but also I really wanted to work there for a very long time. Yeah. Since I was like 12. Diseases were one of the areas that you were interested in first.

How do you read the hot zone, right? Exactly. I was fascinated by the CDC. I used to want to do infectious disease before I became enchanted by family medicine. And so it was always kind of this magical, mythical place to me where... I think every little girl, the little boy, dreams of the magic of the CDC. I did, I did.

And I always thought someday I'll enter that amazing building in Atlanta and I will work with these brilliant scientists to fight disease across the globe. We were just down there, we should have gotten, gotten over there. I don't know the, they looked at this. Do they do tours?

That is, they probably do tours. There's probably other nerds like yourself. That is a fact. I did not uncover in my research whether or not they do tours, but if they did, I would take that tour. So the CDC, actually the story of the CDC dates back to 1942. The US military had a big problem, and that was malaria. Other big problems in 1942, I think you could say.

Yeah. But the one we're gonna talk about is malaria. Throughout, and it's important to remember, at this point in history, we always think of malaria, I think in the US as a tropical disease, something that happens other places, but does not happen here, it was very much a problem in the American South.

Yes, for a long time. So in 1942, malaria was an issue definitely in the American South, but it was also an issue for soldiers who were stationed in certain places across the globe because while you're trying to keep your troops in a state of readiness, if they're also getting sick for long periods of time, even if you have appropriate treatments and you're able to nurse people back to health. So even if you're not losing troops to malaria, you're losing a lot of work days and a lot

of time that these people can be healthy and help the cause. So to speak. So it was a big problem and we needed some sort of coordinated effort to try to fight malaria, not just treat it, not just kind of clean up after the problem has started, but to try to prevent so many soldiers from getting malaria. So that is the origin story, so speak, of the CDC. The first organization that was created was called the Malaria Control and War Areas. Okay, Malaria Control and War Areas. Or Gurk. Okay.

That's just called that MCWA. Malaria Control and War Areas. Does that really have a... It's not like, there's like a noun missing. Right. Isn't there like association or... Squad, something. Squad. The malaria control and war area squad. That would be better.

Yeah. So anyway, Makwa. Makwa. As everyone called it. Makwa was created just to focus on preventing and fighting malaria in these areas, largely through mosquito control. So, at this point, we knew malaria was spread by mosquitoes. Right.

So, largely through efforts to reduce the grounds in which mosquitoes lay their eggs, meaning, like, standing water, you know, the presence of lots of things with standing water in them in areas where troops were stationed, as well as spraying to kill mosquitoes. Right. So a lot of mosquito population control. And this group was comprised a lot of engineers and entomologists. We're really integral to this. Dan Swag just told them how to kill mosquitoes, the engineers made the big guns, shot them. It's perfect. It's perfect.

Hey, a perfect team. It's perfect. You really don't need doctors for that. No, not really. Not to kill bugs. So we had this organization. It's hard for an entomologist who's like, focused on like eliminating a lot of mosquitoes.

I wonder if that's an odd position to find yourself in. I wonder if that's how you've been in the front of us. I know how to wipe them out for sure. Oh, God, little grisly. I guess you just have to imagine it. I mean, especially it was a government base. Like you were doing it for the cause of the war and for. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying they're like bad people.

No, I mean, maybe that drove you to sure. I know what you mean, though. So after World War II ended, it was felt that even though at this point, this organization was kind of founded to help with troops who were stationed everywhere because of World War II, it was thought that we probably need to continue some sort of agency to talk about diseases. Right, to fight disease. And so from the from Muckwa, from malaria control in more areas, was born the original CDC, which used to stand for communicable disease center. Oh, This title has changed a little bit over.

It's all a variation of CDC though. It's always been CDC, even as the other words, the sea words change sometimes. Disease is pretty, it's pretty, like it's always there. Yeah. So on July 1st, 1946, the CDC was founded. And this was on the sixth floor of the volunteer building on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. And then they also had a satellite campus in Chambley, Georgia. So it was just this one floor of this building was the CDC.

That place we stayed in in Atlanta was on Peachtree Street, wasn't it? I think there's... Sounds familiar to me. I think it's a big street. I also think there might be more than one Peachtree Street. Hey, y'all, is that confusing? Seems like a big confusing. I also think there might be more than one peach peach tree street. Hey, y'all is that confusing? Seems like a big confusing for you. Maybe. I think I feel like that's a common anyway. I think it's also a really big street. All right. So the initial director was a Joseph Walter Mountain MD. He was a long time member of the United States

preventive public health service. So he was a really good guy. Let me say that to begin with. His job was to, go wherever he was sent to take care of people, and he was one of the early believers in like universal healthcare and health equity, and taking care of people who can take care of people.

So good guy. the good stuff. So a good guy. And like I said, the initial CDC was just this one floor of this building. And Atlanta was chosen to house this new organization, this new government agency. For a couple of reasons. One, the MCWA was already there. So it seemed like a good place to just let's just take that floor. And we've already got all the posters with pictures of germs. That's what you

need. So we'll just turn it into the CDC. The other reason is that as I already mentioned, malaria was still a big problem in the American South. So it made sense to station this communicable disease fighting office right there on the front lines right in in the South. And initially they focus largely on malaria. They would they did expand as they were called the CDC. They did expand to things like typhus and other sorts of infectious diseases, but the majority of their efforts were still focused very much on malaria at first. Okay. of their efforts were still focused very much on malaria at first. Okay. In 1947, it actually, because they realized pretty quickly this one floor of this building

is probably not going to be enough. There's a lot of diseases. Yeah, well, there were, heck, there's a lot of malaria to start with. And then also, yes, there are many other diseases. So it actually, the way that the CDC expanded was in 1947, they collected money from the employees to gather $10. So not a lot. Yeah. Every chipped in.

10 bucks. No, everybody didn't chip in 10 bucks. Everybody collectively chipped in 10 dollars. Collectively chipped in. I mean, I imagine everybody chipped in a few cents. Yeah. Well, in 1947 money. Yeah.

But anyway, they collected $10 from employees and paid Emory University for 15 acres of land on Clifton Road. And this is where the CDC still stands today. And it was obviously where they could build. They'll say prices back then, it's been pretty good. That it was $10 for 15 acres. Yeah. Well, no, that's not

really the reason this happened. There's a reason why they got all this land so cheaply and were able to at that this point build all the labs they needed, train a lot more employees, hire a lot more people, expand their scope to different diseases, and serve the needs of the entire country as opposed to just malaria and the South. The reason that this happened was because of Robert Woodruff. Derrador? No. Oh. The president of Coca-Cola at the time. Oh, he wasn't a reporter. No, that would have been a very heavy workload honestly, to do a water gate, but also to a also to run Coca Cola. Yeah, be tough. And he was he was a graduate of Emory and he was a huge donor and benefactor to Emory University. As you may imagine, he had a lot of money. He ran Coca-Cola. Yeah, pretty big company.

And he had noticed that malaria was a huge problem because he had a huge hunting ground area there. I'm assuming not in Atlanta. Probably in Atlanta. It was in Atlanta, yeah, nearby. We did these huge hunting grounds. And he noticed that on his hunting excursions that malaria was a big issue,

a lot of people would end up with malaria. And so he recognized through this activity through his kind of hobby, what a big problem malaria was. And so he had from that developed this strong desire to do whatever he could to personally fight malaria. See, this is, this is why we need the 1% so bad people like to try it, but sometimes the 1% will be on their hunting expedition on their private hunting grounds, and they'll notice that there's a problem with the common man.

We just have to hold it. That's like the more tax because we give them bigger hunting ground, the more problems they'll spot, the more problems they'll fix. It's trickling on the economics, it's obvious. Okay, I think this is an exception and not the rule. That being said, I still think we can give Robert Woodruff a little bit of credit. No, I'm just, I'm not giving him a boy a hard time.

I appreciate all the funding and what have you, for sure. And so he uses his influence... Jerry's charity. Exactly. With all the money and what have you for sure. So, and so he used his influence. Jerry's charity. Exactly. With all the money that he had given to Emory in the past. Some of your cynicism. No, no cynicism here. We don't do cynicism over here.

No. That's not our thing. So anyway, so he had given so much money to Emory. He had a lot of influence there as you can imagine. And so he was part of the reason that Emory decided to give so much land to the CDC for so little money. Does that make sense? Does that explain why this happens? Okay.

I think it still sucks that they, if they were going to do like a grand gesture of like 15 acres, I think it sucks that they still make the employees take up a donation. I don't, and let me say this, I don't know that they were forced to do so or if it was just a like, oh, they're going to, and I think it was also one of those token things. It's sort of like, you know, when you have to give somebody, you're going to give somebody your car, but you have to pretend like you sold it to them and so you sell it to them for a dollar. Yeah.

Yeah. I still don't understand why you have to do that, but I know that that's a thing. I feel like it was like that, except it was 15 acres of land, so we'll make it $10. But I think it was really just like, who's got $10? Let's gather that up. And here you go. Okay, great. Now we can build the CDC.

And as I said in the early years, they were still pretty focused on mosquito control, largely through the sprain of DDT. That was kind of one of the big things that the CDC did back then. They were, again, still largely, the employees were still largely made up of engineers and entomologists, and they did a lot of sprain of DDT, actually like six and a half million homes were sprayed with DDT by the CDC in the early years. by the CDC in the early years. And they actually, they were so, and half of their staff was engaged in the fight against malaria.

So half of the CDC's business at that point in time was just malaria. But they were the real hot shots. Probably. We're wearing the cool bomber jacket today. Right. They were the cool intomall. Top guns. The ones that were fighting malaria.

And then they even, actually at the time had an organizational chart drawn of the, you know, of the, of the structure of the agency in the shape of a mosquito. Oh, that's fun. I think it's pretty cool. I, you would, yeah, that tracks. I think that's very neat. That tracks with what I know of you, yes. Now, of course, over time, the CD's work expanded from malaria because there were a lot of other infectious diseases for them to spend their time on. And because malaria has since disappeared from the American South, at least, we don't see cases of malaria there anymore.

So that's good. Now, obviously, malaria, I don't want to, and we've done a whole episode on malaria before, and I don't want to say malaria isn't a problem. Malaria is a huge problem throughout the world. We don't, it's not a problem in the US anymore, but it is a huge cause of morbidity and mortality throughout many other parts of the world, large parts of Africa, definitely India.

So malaria is still a huge health concern, and the CDC is still involved in that obviously, but they are not 50% involved in malaria anymore. Got it. So they now include all infectious diseases as well as non-communicable diseases. So they changed the name? No.

Oh. Well, yeah, I mean they did they, they did change it from the original. Now it's the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They did the communicable hours on the day. Yes, yes, exactly. I got you. I thought you meant recently. No.

Yeah, so no. So they control disease and they added the prevention because that really is, in a lot of cases, what they're trying to do is not just, I mean, when you talk about something like vaccines, there's the disease control element because if one sick person enters a herd of vaccinated people, they're not all going to get sick.

So that's control of the disease. But it's also prevention of disease. Right. Which is why the CDC does do research and create policy statements on things that are not infectious disease. I think that's a, I've seen that argument a lot in the wake of this recent kind of scandal controversy, so to speak, is that why does the CDC even need to talk about certain things?

Those aren't infectious diseases. And that's a misunderstanding of what the CDC does. They are involved in injury, environmental health, health statistics, occupational health, all of those things now fall under the blanket of the CDC. So and the CDC in case you didn't realize answers directly to the Department of Health and Human Services. It's like a branch of the HHS. And also I thought this was kind of weird. The land that the CDC is on is going to be officially annexed by the city of Atlanta on January 1st.

It's not actually in Atlanta. Oh, it is right there. I mean, it's right there, but it's not. It's in the county, I guess, but it's going to be part of the city in a couple of weeks. I just want to put it in the brochures. I guess. I don't know. I'm sure I'm sure that there are financial reasons. I don't really understand that kind of thing. Anyway. Police and fire, maybe. Now, that's really interesting. I think the history of the CDC is really cool and interesting. But what everybody wants to hear about is a controversy today.

All right, let's go. I'm going to tell you about that before we're going to go to the building department. Ah, got me again. All right, let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you lift my car before the mouth. So I said, you're going to tell me about censorship. So the reason that there's so much controversy right now is the idea that

the CDC or scientists, I think when we talk about big organizations, we kind of lose the meaning of this. Scientists who are supposed to be doing scientific research, which means an unbiased search for truth, have been told not to use certain words, which could limit the truth, truthiness. Truthiness. Which could limit how honest the results are if you find yourself trying to do some sort of language dance instead of just saying what you found out. And my question before I started kind of posing what my thoughts on this were, my question

was, is there a precedent for this? Is this common? Do presidential administrations commonly sit down with people from the CDC and tell them what words they think they should or shouldn't use? Does this happen? So I started to look into kind of the history of medical censorship. And it's hard because there isn't a lot, especially in modern times, of this direct interference, you know, kind of actually stating what you want to, to the scientific community. Now, if you go back in history, of course you're going to find a lot of censorship based on religious and moral grounds, depending on what era we're talking about. So, you know, in times when the church and the state were closely linked, obviously, things like sex and contraception and discussing things like abortion or sexually transmitted

infections, all of those things were censored largely by, you know, if you're practitioner, if you're the doctor you were seeing was also a priest, you can imagine that you're you're only getting certain information. So this kind of, I don't want to say it's indirect censorship because it was, it was quite direct, but it wasn't, it wasn't independent scientists being told not to do something. It was just the nature of the profession. And it was set within that culture and time. Does that make sense? Uh-huh. Yeah. A pregnancy was like that for a long time, where a lot of things weren't spoken of or you didn't talk about it, you didn't reference it because it was kind of taboo to even acknowledge.

Yeah, you'd say some is in the family way, right? Yeah, exactly. That kind of thing. And so it wasn't, it wasn't direct censorship as much as it was just culturally not spoken of. Sure. A good example of this, I think, closer to modern times, because if we go through ancient history, obviously, that a lot of things are different depending on where and when you're talking about. So let's go for a slightly more recent example, the Comstock laws. What are those? So in 1873, Congress passed a law that made it illegal for the United States Postal Service to distribute any kind of sexual material.

Now this was kind of posed as we don't want you mailing porn. Right. Right. That was probably those were probably speeches that were given, right? We don't want our young people exposed to pornographic material or our male people. Or our poor male people, unless they want to. Yeah, but like, they shouldn't be forced to.

They shouldn't be forced to. But what this was expanded to do was to censor any kind of contraceptive information, information about safe sexual practices, information about sexually transmitted infections, perhaps information related to abortion. Anything like this was also censored by the Comstock laws. And at first I thought, so you just can't mail them,

but it wasn't exactly like we had the internet. Right. So how else were you going to distribute this information, especially to people who were living in more rural areas? If you were living in a big city, I could see that you might have access to this kind of information directly in other ways, but for a lot of people who might need this information, well, which everybody, right? Everybody.

Pretty much everybody needs information. They're not going to have access to it if you can't mail it. This even in some cases interfered with the mailing of anatomy texts. Wow, really? Two medical students. There were cases where they weren't receiving anatomy textbooks because they were sexual. Can I on a side note, can I tell you, I have looked at a lot of anatomy textbooks in my career. They're not sexual at all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not. A lot of bisected humans. Yeah, they're not sexual. I have seen anatomy texts. I have seen pornography in my life. I don't know that I would ever confuse the two. Fair.

Fair. Uh, so I think this is a really, and obviously the CompSoc laws are not still in effect, but I think this is a really good example of, you know, this was this censored medical communication very clearly. Again, this is largely based on like moral kind of, we don't want our, we don't want people seeing naked people. Right. They're all naked at home, but we don't want them to see it.

In more recent years, there is, the censorship is more subtle. There's not so much the overt medical censorship that you see like from monarchs or churches or governments or that kind of thing throughout ancient history. There are a lot of large studies, especially to like the efficacy of a new drug that are funded by drug companies. They have to be. They have the money. There's, I mean, a lot of this is practicality. A small research lab that develops a new drug is going to have a lot of difficulty doing the kind of clinical trials that they need

to do to prove that the drug is safe and efficacious. So you need the money from big format to fund that. Okay. Which, let me, and let me be clear, that doesn't mean that the drug company is going to mess with that data. That's a huge critique to level to say that every time a drug company sponsors a drug study, you can't trust the data. Well, no, it does mean you need to think critically about the study that you're given, which is

something that we're taught, is to not just read the conclusion of a medical study and go, well, that must be it. We're taught a lot of boring statistics so that we can read the entire paper and say where their methods appropriate, did they show bias in the way that they collected information or what information they decided to get rid of during the study, who they didn't mention, who they didn't include in the data. And we have to disclose things like conflicts of interest. Even when I give a grand round speech, I would have to stand up and say if I was giving, if I was getting money from a drug company or something,

like a medical equipment company or something like that, I'm not. But I would have to disclose that kind of thing. And you can find that at the end of any published article here, all the conflicts of interest of everybody who was involved in this, including who paid for it. Right. Right. So there is this suspicion and this general, I don't want to say skepticism, but you look at everything with a critical eye. Because obviously, if you are a drug company who is invested, millions, even billions of dollars into the creation of what is supposed to be a groundbreaking medication, you really hope that data shows that it works.

Right. And we would all be naive to say, there isn't going to be an interest in that. Right. So, that is one thing that if we're thinking about medical censorship that we look at with a critical eye, the other thing is that journals choose which articles to print.

And so then you could level criticism at the board of different medical journals and say, why did you choose to print that article? That would sway opinion this way, but you didn't choose to print this article that would sway opinion a different way. But again, these are more theoretical kind of, there's no evidence that there's direct censorship of medical information going on in any of these cases. These are just ideas kind of if you're worried about the truth of the...

It's more like selection bias than it is censorship. Exactly. Exactly. And it's important to note that the term medical censorship, as I was trying to research this in recent times, the term medical censorship has also been used to describe the decision not to report information that is not true. Okay. So what I mean by this is let's say that a medline, which hosts a lot of different medical journals, they do not host certain journals.

For instance, what's medline is like a it's like a it's a site that hosts a bunch of different medical journals. They do not host certain journals. For instance, it's like a, it's a site that hosts a bunch of different medical journals. So they don't host, for instance, fluoride, which is the Journal of the International Society for Fluoride Research. Good title though, I will give them that. Because it is not generally accepted that all of this information is evidence-based. So they don't host it. Same thing for the Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons, which is the Journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. That sounds like a harmless organization, correct?

Yep. This is an ultra-conservative organization that has in the past endorsed such beliefs as autism is linked to vaccines, HIV doesn't cause AIDS. There's a link between abortion and breast cancer and being a gay man reduces your life expectancy by 20 years. It does not seem like a good squad. They are considered a fringe medical organization.

Their journal is not hosted because we cannot trust what they are publishing because we feel it is more politically motivated than scientifically based. And people who believe in those kinds of things will decry medical censorship because their journals aren't getting tied. They also won't publish different bones people don't know about, which is a journal that I publish monthly, where I talk about some of the bones that science doesn't want to acknowledge they're in there. And I've been squelched by the entire sort of medical industrial complex. Medical and thank you Sydney. I forget the name it sometimes I get so worked up about my great journal.

It's called bones people don't know about four kids with a Z because there's lots of pictures and stuff too, but they were even talked to me about hosting it. Or print it for me or write it for me. It's the man. I know. The man's always holding you down. Classic. On an interesting note, Tom Price, the shortest serving, HHS Secretary in history. I'm only going to refer to him that way from now on. He's no longer the Secretary of... Right. ...because of the jet thing. Yeah. Okay. He was a member of this Association of American physicians and Just on a side note

Not my publication The the reason the one that didn't The one that didn't, the one that held hell all those fun beliefs on their team. The recent FDA announcement that it's going to crack down harder on certain homeopathic products, especially stuff that is harmful or things that are touted as cancer cures. So the FDA has recently announced that they're going to regulate this stuff more strictly. I guarantee you this is gonna be spun as medical censorship. Yes.

By some groups. Thank you to the people who tweeted that story at us by the way. It was like a breath of fresh air to read some like not totally horrific news coming out of the government organization. Yes. Yes, thank you.

So all this is to say that as far as I can tell the recent news that a meeting took place between administration officials and people of the CDC analysts and officials at the CDC that provided them with some words that were actually written down I guess and then some words that were spoken in the meeting. So not all seven words were actually, I don't think it was a printed list is what everyone is saying. It was somewhere written and then some were just said that you should not use these words in budget requests. As far as I can tell, it's fairly unprecedented. Every political administration chooses their language carefully.

That's, it would be a lie to say otherwise. Every politician, I mean, it's why, it's why you get the difference in the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare, which are the same thing. But, but of Affordable Care Act was largely supported and Obamacare was not by many people who didn't realize they were the same thing. But that's why that kind of language exists is to create division and to trick people into, to believe in what you're saying.

Got it. Death tax, estate tax, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't, I cannot find evidence that this has been done before in terms of scientific research. The seven words that were mentioned in this meeting that were suggested not to be used in budget requests for funding of research were fetus, transgender, diversity, vulnerable, entitlement, science-based, and evidence-based. So I think if you look at this list, you can see where some of this is coming from the same place that the comm stock laws came from, right? Right. It's like this perversion of morality.

I have my religious beliefs are such, so I believe I will censor everyone else from using these terms or from discussing these things. But I mean, the problem with that is the word fetus and I can only imagine this was discouraged because of the thought that it will be linked to abortion research. The word fetus is a term. It's a thing.

A thing. I have one inside me currently. What? It's a fetus. That's what it is. Congratulations, Mr. McA I, it's a fetus. That's what it is. Congratulations. It's a fetus. It's a word.

We're not going to get any funding now because I said it, but we have a fetus. I mean, that's a word. That's a medical term. The word transgender means something. If you use other words, if you try to skirt the word transgender, what you're doing is erasing the existence of transgender people. Yes. That's what you're doing by eliminating that word. And I don't even think we should do that. Honestly, if we're voting, and we did, I guess we did vote because it didn't go great. As I was reading different articles about this, and as one scientist said, if you start asking me to say things like men who now dress

and live as women or something like that, none of it. That's not the same thing. That's the same thing. That isn't what transgender means, and it negates the existence of a transgender individual, and it prevents you from doing research into the, into transgender individual, and it prevents you from doing research into the, into transgender

populations because you can't submit anything with the word transgender in it. I do. I do actually would kind of like to see the sort of like back flips. They have to do to avoid fetus like. So um, the study is about small inside babies. Well, do you see what word you just used several times? Babies. That's why fetus is included.

They want you to say unborn child. Right. Because that is a politically charged term that makes it harder to justify abortion if you, baby, that is why fetus is in there. But this is a budget request, right? This is a budget request, but. It's not a forward, not a public facing thing, typically, right? Like, it's more like,

I mean, you can find these grant requests that are put, what they're gonna be put before Congress and the administration. And in the current Congress administration, we're just trying to help them out. Like, listen, we got a lot of creeps of ways in there. And here's some terms you're going to want to avoid if you want to get any funding. Well, but by said, I mean, that is what they're, that is the argument that's being made is that they were just saying the current administration and Congress are not going to

be receptive to budget requests that have these words in them. So don't. But they included in there, first of all, the word diversity, which I mean, I don't even know where to start. Obviously, aside from the racist overtones of that, of which there are. Yes. The word diversity also means things. There's there's genetic diversity. There's there's words that we use that mean things and studies. Vulnerable and entitlement, I mean, the idea that you can not talk about vulnerable populations when in terms of different disease research, that's ludicrous. Of course, you do. If they can't say entitlement, how are they going to do any research on millennials? Millennials, you know, I'm just having so fun. Okay, we're just trying to lighten the mood a little bit.

Millennials, we have a lot of fun here, okay? We just learned that we qualify as exenials. Yeah, exenials or anything else. Whatever the heck we are. It's just a joke, millennials. And then finally, the hidden thing in here was the science based and evidence based. I didn't see them getting quite as much play initially in the announcement, but the idea that we can't say that something is science-based or evidence-based.

First of all, it undermines everything I do. My entire career is based on... The idea of science. I mean, it undermines, literally, what it is. It undermines the idea of science. Yes. And that's the only way we know what's true and what we can trust.

If something isn't evidence-based, that now again, there are lots of things, I'll tell patients, especially when it comes to supplements and things, I don't have any evidence. I don't have the science, nobody's done the study. So I can't look at you and say, that doesn't work, but I can't tell you it does, and I can't tell you if it's safe because we have no evidence.

This, I've got evidence for, that is the nature of science, is to find the truth and then hopefully be able to share what that is. If you can no longer say that something is evidence-based, there is no truth. There is no untruth. There is, it is all weird. It's almost like a misdivuncertainty. It's almost like it's a systemic attempt to dismantle the idea of truth and make it a

malleable thing. People have used the word or wellian a lot in the last year. Yeah. I think sometimes it's a bit of an overstatement. I think that perhaps it may apply. Now, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't say the HHS and the CDC has said that this is a mischaracterization. This is not what the meeting was about. The Washington Post got it wrong. This was reported by the Washington Post, by the way. There's been picked up by every organization since then, but they've said that no one directly told them that these words were banned. Nobody said these words were banned, which is probably true.

I don't think anybody walked in the room and said, here are your banned words. Don't say these words. That would be, I mean, especially made a list of them and you just publish that and that's a big, that's a big scandal. The, so they said it's a mischaracterization, the director of the CDC, Brenda Fitzgerald, which by the way, that is a position that is appointed by the president and is not subject to congressional approval. Got it. Just throw that out there.

Stated that as part of our commitment to provide for the common defense of the country against health threat science is and will remain the foundation of our work. CDC has a long standing history of making public health and budget decisions that are based on the best available science and data and for the benefit of all people and we will continue to do so. That in no way refutes any of the story. Right. Other than she did come out later in tweet, because Twitter is how we communicate, important public policy now, she did tweet that the CDC has not banned any words. So again, no words were banned. They were suggested that they do not use them if they wanted to get their research funded, which is as good as, I mean, that's

a, it's a, it's a, that, that's what I mean, there's a, it's sort of like that lie where they say, oh, you'll always have access to healthcare. You just won't be able to pay for it. Right. But it is access because there is like a doctor in your city so that counts as access, even though there is no way you can ever afford it. It's like that lie. Got it. It's the same kind of thing. And they did offer alternative phrasing in certain cases.

One of the officials who was present at the meeting said that they said, instead of evidence-based or science-based, you could say CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. If you Okay. Okay. If you are doing, I'm Justin.

I'm a layman. If we're doing any kind of discussion of science, and at some point in any context, someone's like, can we work wishes in? I think everyone in the room should just scream. Like scream, scream, scream, real out until the meeting is over. Does the only thing you could do? Like wish. I mean, I know that they're not magical wishes they're talking about, but could we not? Could we not bring wishes into it? And I mean, this is this is ridiculous, obviously, from a truth and science standpoint.

But also, I wish that bacon was better for you. Yeah. It doesn't make it better for you. It's a good part to me. Yeah, part to you. No, but I mean, I, I, I, there are a lot of people who have been able to quit smoking who really wish that smoking wasn't bad for you because they like doing it, but they know that it was wrong because we have like doing it, but they know that it was wrong because we have evidence that told, or they know that it was bad, they know it was dangerous.

I don't mean wrong, not making a moral judgment, but it's dangerous for your body. And they knew that, and so they quit smoking because no matter how hard they wished that it wasn't bad, it was bad for their lungs so they did.

At least we, at least we got the head of the CDC to look out for us, keep pushing back against this right, Sid. I'll reserve comment. Come on, Sid. Trying to go. I know. I know you're trying to bait me. You can do your own research into that. As I said, it is a, uh, the current director of the CDC was appointed in July of this past year by the current presidential administration. And again, that is an appointed position. It is not subject to any congressional approval. the CDC was appointed in July of this past year by the current presidential administration. And again, that is an appointed position.

It is not subject to any congressional approval. No one has to. It's not about current things, any current like ethics investigations or anything. Into any stock holdings and to major research areas like cancer opioids that you could therefore never make comments on publicly because you hold stocks in those arenas. You can do your own research to figure that out. Anyway, it worked. So what, there has been an unnamed health and human services official who's come out and made more comments, an unnamed source, so take it for what it's worth, but they

have made more comments about it and say the meeting did take place. There was guidance provided, suggestions, if you will. There are different ways to say things without necessarily compromising or changing the true essence of what's being said This was all about providing guidance to those who would be writing those budget proposals and it was very much You may wish to do this or say this but there was nothing in the way of forbidden words So saying basically what we all kind of thought which is We're not telling you not to we're just telling you you won't get any money if you use them so Very troubling cool not telling you not to, we're just telling you, you won't get any money if you use them. So very troubling. Cool.

Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.

Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. about that concerned you, this would be a good one. This would be a good one.

There's many. Oh, there's so many. Where do we start? I know what a something here. I know the tax bill has just passed and you may be feeling a little deflated because that has passed. But here's a new, here's a new thing. It's a new thing that we can variety.

They say he said, is this spice of life. Oh God. But do but do not trust people who tell you don't trust anybody. Apparently, apparently, sitting for these controllers. We're back to working against our interests. We're back to the 70s. Right. Don't trust anybody over 30. Is that us too? Yeah, that's us. Sydney. Don't trust us either. I don't know. All you millennials figured out we had our shot. Listen, I'm 37. I have my kids. I will promise you this everything for Nader in 2000. I'm sorry. I will promise you this. Max Fun has never issued to me a list of words I can't use or suggested to me a list of words I shouldn't use. And everything I say to the best of my abilities is always evidence-based

So that's the only that I can promise you that so Well, that's gonna do happy holidays everyone. Everyone has this joyous Camel likes we'll talk about some silly stuff next week Yeah, I think just ended ended. Did it? Yes. So, but yes, have a joyous holiday season. New year. Let's make this one better than the last. We'll be back with you again next week.

I believe. I understand, Karakla. With our candleknights episode. With our candleknights episode. So make sure you join us for that. Thank you to the taxpayers for letting us use their song Medicines is the intro now, Trevor, program. Thanks to Max Fun for having us on their network

And thanks to you for listening We love you very much and we will speak with you again next week But until that blessed time my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy and as always don't drill a hole in your head Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and culture, Artistone, Listener Supported. fun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

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