Saturday, the term “abortion” was unblocked as a search term in the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health database, following public outcry and after the dean of the school asked that search results with the term be unblocked.
The school banned the word from their POPLINE, which stands for population information online, in February, over worries that USAID would have cut funding to the school. The federal agency had expressed concern that some Web sites that turned up when one searched for abortion information were advocacy Web sites, the Foodconsumer.org Web site reported.
“I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore 'abortion' as a search term immediately,” Dr. Michael J. Klag, dean of the school, said in a statement, according to the Associated Press. “The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.”
According to Foodconsumer.org, Gloria Won, of UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion, was the first to realize the difference in the number of search results on March 31 and emailed the POPLINE Database Manager/Administrator Debbie L. Dickson, who admitted to the change.
“As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now,” Dickson had written back in an email that is now on the University of Vermont Web site.
Health advocates and librarians called the move censorship, the AP reported.
“Removing abortion as a search term on a publicly funded reproductive health database is clearly a decision driven by ideology — and not based on the medical or scientific needs of the reproductive health professional community the database exists to serve,” Wayne Shields, president and CEO of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, told the AP.
If you take federal funds, you risk having the feds tell you how to use the funds. This rises periodically. Still, one wonders when ideology will cease to be the dominant decision force for some people.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.”
Regardless ot whether the school receives public money or not, this is definitely limiting the schools information, so I am happy the website was unblocked. There are always at least two edges to this long-held debate about public money and what is acceptable and what is not.
The big problem with Bush & Co and science is that they don't believe in it. It's just a tool to bend and manipulate as a traditional prop. They place their real faith in bullying and controlling.
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