[Peace-discuss] Bush's war on science

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

 Bush's War on Science
by Gov. Howard Dean M.D.
 

I write this week's column as a physician.

The Bush administration has declared war on science. In the 
Orwellian world of 21st century America, two plus two no 
longer equals four where public policy is concerned, and 
science is no exception. When a right-wing theory is 
contradicted by an inconvenient scientific fact, the science 
is not refuted; it is simply discarded or ignored.

Egregious examples abound. Over-the-counter morning-after 
contraceptive sales are banned, despite the recommendation 
for approval by an independent panel of the Food and Drug 
Administration review board. The health risks of mercury were 
discounted by a White House staffer who simply crossed out 
the word "confirmed" from a phrase describing mercury as 
a "confirmed public health risk." A National Cancer Institute 
fact sheet was doctored to suggest that abortion increases 
breast-cancer risk, even though the American Cancer Society 
concluded that the best study discounts that. Reports on the 
status of minority health and the importance of breast 
feeding are similarly watered down to appease right-wing 
ideologies.

What about global warming? After withdrawing from the Kyoto 
Treaty, the Bush administration distanced itself from a 
climate report the Environmental Protection Agency wrote, 
because it affirmed the potential worldwide harm of global 
warming, the existence of which Bush had denied. The global-
warming section of the 2003 EPA report on the environment was 
extensively rewritten, then dropped entirely.

Fighting HIV? Bush's initiative to help fund HIV efforts in 
Africa was trumpeted by the press, while the National 
Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control quietly 
removed information on the benefits of condoms and safe sex 
education from domestic HIV Web sites.

Presidential scientific commissions have long enjoyed 
relative immunity from politics. Presidents of both parties 
have depended on impartial, rational advice from such groups 
for decades. Yet under the Bush administration, there has 
been a concerted effort, led by Karl Rove and other political 
ideologues based in the White House, to stack these 
commissions with Republican loyalists, especially those who 
espouse fundamentalist views on scientific issues.

Recently, a scientist and a bioethics professor were 
dismissed from the blue-ribbon Council on Bioethics when they 
disagreed with the Bush administration's proposed ban on new 
stem-cell line development to cure a variety of diseases. In 
a similar vein and an unusual move, the nomination of public-
health experts to a CDC lead paint advisory panel were 
rejected by Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy 
Thompson, and replaced with researchers with financial ties 
to the lead industry. The Union of Concerned Scientists, with 
20 Nobel laureates and several former scientific advisers to 
Republican presidents, has issued its scathing Report on 
Scientific Integrity condemning these practices.

Is it any wonder that these outrages have been perpetrated on 
an unsuspecting public and an enfeebled press? Not when you 
consider that this is an administration that has put forth 
deliberately misleading proposals like the Healthy Forests 
Initiative, which removes barriers to clear-cutting, and the 
Clear Skies Initiative, which weakens existing safeguards on 
mercury, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants dumped into the 
air by power plants. When the oil industry writes national 
energy policy and the HMOs and drug companies draft our 
Medicare legislation, who is looking out for truth, 
scientific integrity and the public interest?

Will it be long before a prominent panel of fundamentalist 
theologians, conservative columnists and a few token 
scientists take up the question of whether the theory of 
evolution should be banned from the nation's classrooms? Stay 
tuned. In George Bush's America, ignorance is strength.

Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, is the founder of 
Democracy for America, a grassroots organization that 
supports socially progressive and fiscally responsible 
political candidates. Email Howard Dean at 
howarddean at democracyforamerica.com. 
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-328-4064
homepage: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ppatton/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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