Census 101: What You Need to Know about the U.S. Census

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• published: 29 Aug 2015
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This is a recording of a conversation between a field worker employed by the U.S. Census and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to gather health information for the National Health Interview Survey. Participation is, according to the Census and CDC, voluntary; according to the field worker, there is no way to get out of answering the questions. According to the field worker training manual, a "no" is not acceptable and will not be honored. What you need to know about the U.S. Census is: 1. The decennial Census (the one taken every ten years) is mandatory--the United States Constitution requires that all citizens answer the decennial Census. The only answers that are required by law are to the question "how many people live in this household." You are not obligated even to name the residents. 2. The National Health Interview Survey and the American Community Survey are unrelated to the decennial Census, and they are NOT mandatory--which is why the 'invitation' letter states that the surveys are voluntary. It is your choice whether or not to participate; however, the Census, as you'll hear verbatim in this recording, "will not take no for an answer." 3. The National Health Interview Survey field rep in this phone call identifies himself as a medical doctor working on behalf of the CDC. In fact, he is a former plastic surgeon who was twice reprimanded by the Maryland board of physicians, and ultimately had his license to practice revoked. He was found guilty of repeated verbal abuse of patients, colleagues, nurses, and of malpractice, including disfiguring patients. The CDC approved his hiring, gives him people's personal contact information, including cell phone numbers and physical addresses, along with a CDC identification badge, and sends him to people's homes to demand responses to this survey. 4. The National Health Interview survey takes approximately one hour, and asks a number of intimate questions about participants' health, health care costs, and lifestyles, including sexual behaviors. It also asks respondents about their cell phone usage. 5. The American Community Survey asks a number of invasive questions, as well, including probing questions about health, lifestyle, and personal finance. 6. This information is maintained in a federal database with personally identifying information. While all this may seem innocuous, two things to consider--and you are forgiven if you think that "that would never happen here"; everyone to which the two incidents that follow happened thought the same. 1. The U.S. Census Bureau has been accused of turning over its records to the United States government in order to identify all Japanese Americans during World War II, so that they could be rounded up--exactly the way Nazi Germany rounded up Jewish people--and put them into 'internment camps.' The Bureau denied it until the statute of limitations expired and documents were made available and they were force to admit that they did, in fact, use Census data to identify citizens for the purposes of persecuting them. See Scientific American, 2007, for a reference. 2. The Census conducts the National Health Interview Study on behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1932, the CDC began a long-term study of syphilis, through which it enlisted doctors (who voluntarily violated their Hippocratic Oaths) to study syphilis among black/African American patients. All physicians who took part in the study agreed to mislead their syphilis-positive patients about their infection statuses, administer only placebo medication, and track the patients' gradual decline, including disabling symptoms, mental illness, and ultimately death. This was done in the name of science, and scientific journals published findings of this study. The study was conceived by and administered by CDC. Currently, the CDC website includes a timeline of the study--in which it carefully avoids taking responsibility for the inhumanity and unethical nature of it--and under "what went wrong?" the CDC writes "In July 1972, an Associated Press story about the Tuskegee Study caused a public outcry." To this day, the CDC will not hold itself accountable for the atrocity. The person in the recording--me--has Lyme disease, and Lyme disease is caused by a spirochete bacterium that is essentially a far more resilient form of syphilis. I did not know I had Lyme disease when I was so aggressively pursued to participate in this study. Tuskegee study: The CDC wanted to know the effects of untreated syphilis on human subjects. The CDC prohibited a select group of doctors from treating men who they knew were infected with syphilis with penicillin--which would have cured the syphilis. Lyme today: CDC guidelines prohibit doctors nationally from treating Lyme-infected patients with antibiotics for longer than 30 days--contrary to existing research, and even when patients test positive for Lyme infection.