1984: Thread

[grarpamp]

The CDC Puts Itself In Charge Of Language Too

https://brownstone.org/articles/cdc-in-charge-of-language/
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/cdc-principles-to-avoid-wrong-speak

Authored by Robert Malone via The Brownstone Institute,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has come out with
a guide for how we are all to speak and write. This can be found on
the website titled, “Preferred Terms for Select Population Groups &
Communities.” It is clear that this list is being read and distributed
broadly – from medical institutions, hospitals, scientific
communications, doctor’s offices, schools and universities, as well as
other US Government agencies and institutes.

The CDC is the arm of the US Government tasked with disease control
and prevention. It is not tasked with correcting wrong-speak.

Now, how exactly this guide fits in with the CDC mission is beyond me.
Here is what the CDC lists as their mission on their website:

Do you read anything in the above that suggests that political
correctness or correcting wrong-speak is part of the CDC mission? When
did the CDC decide that they should take on the progressive left’s
cause to reshape American language (oh, I used that “forbidden” word
-”America”, which according to Stanford University- that is now
verbotten).

I dunno – Maybe there should be some sort of jail penalty for those of
us who just can’t get it right. Or maybe, the government should just
revoke social media “privileges” or stop people from being allowed to
make payments via internet banking services, such as PayPal has done
on occasion.

According to the website, the CDC has put together this very extensive
“list” to protect people from “stigmatizing language.”

The problem is that the CDC evidently believes that there should be no
social stigmas. That if one commits a crime, is in prison, is an
addict, or is involved in behaviors that most find offensive or are
illegal, it is not ok to use a term to directly describe that activity
because societal judgment might hurt someone’s feelings.

So, the CDC is apparently afraid that we might hurt people’s feelings
by using unapproved terms, and that this would lead to a threat to
public health. This comes down to a new, popular opinion among mental
health care professionals that “Harmful language ultimately increases
stigma on the individual, which reduces one’s belief in the ability to
change as well as their motivation to ask for help.” I went to Pubmed
and tried to find data to support this hypothesis.

A quick review of Pubmed shows that it has over 1,300 publications
with the keywords “stigmatizing language.” What I found was a lot of
first-person stories and case studies about how healthcare
professionals have either witnessed or been harmed by hurtful words.
But what I didn’t find was clear evidence that calling someone an
addict, prisoner, smoker, handicapped, underserved, rural and a vast
myriad group of words that are now labelled as being inappropriate by
the CDC actually do harm. Now, there must be studies out there? But I
couldn’t actually find any, so I couldn’t evaluate the quality of the
research. My basic search does imply that whatever evidence is out
there isn’t very strong or it would be cited by a multitude of
studies.

The article “Words Matter: Addiction and Stigmatizing Language: When
it comes to addiction, stigmatizing language shouldn’t be the norm.”
is a fairly typical example of the articles and studies I found. This
article is in a large, mainstream magazine (Psychology Today) and is
all about the feelings and beliefs of health care professionals about
the harms of stigmatizing language. Yet, not a single study is cited
in the article.

So, let’s take a closer look at this list of words from the CDC
website and compare them to real-life examples at the CDC. The
question being: does the CDC use the forbidden words on their own
list? The answer is an unequivocal ”yes,” they do and they use them a
lot. Another case of “good for thee but not for me.” An internet
search shows that their website and spokespeople have no issues using
these words themselves. Seems to me what is good for the goose should
be good for the gander.

Some examples.

According to the CDC, we are no longer to use the word “smoker,” as it
might offend those who smoke.

Yet, here are images from the CDC website – using the word “smoker.”
In fact, they even have a registered trademark for the phase:

So, please folks – don’t do like the CDC. The proper term is “people
who smoke.” We wouldn’t want to offend smokers…

The CDC’s attempt to be non-judgmental for people who are addicted is
also interesting. As they now categorize addiction as a disease, this
means any reference to people who are addicted being called “addicted”
is wrong-speak. For instance, instead of “relapse,” we should say
“people who return to use.” Because relapse implies that the behavior
is stigmatizing and we shouldn’t stigmatize disease.

But the CDC conflates the fact that addiction and addicts hurts
society, families and individuals. Being an addict is not healthy and
is harmful.

The CDC has even developed a special abbreviation for injectable drug
addicts (I mean people who inject drugs):

As a society, as individuals, we have every right to judge those who
hurt families, children, communities and themselves. Addicts hurt
themselves and others. Let’s not sugarcoat it. Yes, there are addicts
who are mentally ill, but it is often a self-inflicted wound.

Many treatment programs and practitioners do insist that the addict
confront themselves and the damages done by their addiction. This is
not a malicious or bad thing. Not “sugarcoating” addiction is often
part of the treatment and healing process.

“Person who relapsed” versus “person who returned to use.” Why?
Because we wouldn’t want to put any judgement on addiction? Where does
their idiocy end?

Then of course, there are all those tried and true public health
phrases that aren’t supposed to be used anymore.

Except the CDC uses these terms also. From the CDC website:

Another group of words what are now wrong-speak is how people who are
incarcerated are to be discussed:

>From the CDC Website:

The CDC believes that people who are incarcerated will be offended,
and they might have their mental health status endangered by using
terms such as inmate, prisoner, convict, ex-convict, criminal, parolee
or detainee.

Because we wouldn’t want someone detained or convicted of a murder to
have their feelings hurt, would we?

So, calling Bryan Kohberger a “detainee” for the murder of four
innocent college students would be considered a wrong-speak crime.
Good to know.

There are many words that are truly offensive. We all know of them.
None of those words made it to the CDC list.

Please, go to the CDC website and read for yourself. Their list of
unapproved versus approved words and phrases is quite remarkable.

Where does this end?