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Cdc - Blog Posts
Most important piece of info here: The CDC’s claims that no vaccines have been “known” to cause fertility problems are interesting given that the HPV vaccine has been linked to irregular periods and Premature Ovarian Insufficiency (POI). POI is when the ovaries of women under 40 stop working.
149/365 - the final version of my ninja cat for Character Design Challenge 😺
Good Research Practice and Academic Freedom
There's a lot to discuss about what's going on in the United States, but we all have limited time and capacity, so it's important to focus on some aspects that you feel you can address or help mitigate. It's also important not to judge others on which aspects they choose. Anyway.
Scholarly and Science Communication
I'm an expert in scholarly and science communication, so I was particularly alert to the news that not only future, but also already submitted and even accepted manuscripts by CDC researchers would have to be reviewed and cleaned of certain terms.
"CDC Researchers Ordered to Retract Papers Submitted to All Journals — Banned terms must be scrubbed from CDC-authored manuscripts" https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/114043
The Terms
Unfortunately, the terms in question did not surprise me. They are all related to trans and gender diverse people. There are so many layers to unpack and be outraged about. I want to focus on two and end with a third.
The Aspects
The first is good research practice. Censorship aside, it can be argued that, at the very least, it is not good research practice to replace accurate and medically correct scientific language with language that is very likely to be inaccurate or at least ambiguous, leaving room for misunderstanding. This is highly dangerous and damaging to the global scientific knowledge base. I must therefore question whether these articles can be accepted for publication or published at all.
Without ignoring censorship, the second aspect is that this is the beginning of the end of academic freedom, not just for the CDC, but for the whole country. They're restricting language and science.
The third is just to make it very clear that this is harmful to so many people. They're erasing people.