A Chokehold on Scientists
If a scientist gets his paycheck from the government, should his boss control what he says about science? To scientists, the answer is a no-brainer. However, respect for scientific inquiry has not been a hallmark of the Bush administration. A case in point: A Department of Health and Human Services order issued in April -- but little noticed then -- gives the administration tight control over which government scientists may sit on expert advisory panels of the World Health Organization.
In the order, a top HHS official wrote that all WHO requests for scientists would be approved by an administration appointee. Included was a reminder that government scientists “serve as representatives of the U.S. government at all times and advocate U.S. policies.” Of course, this is the same government that wants to send high-priced pharmaceuticals to Africa to fight AIDS instead of proven, cheaper generic drugs.
The WHO, the United Nations body that recently sponsored a global AIDS meeting in Thailand, had previously barred scientists from receiving government instructions and extended invitations to its forums based on the merits of an expert’s research. On July 6, however, the WHO laid down its guns and essentially said OK to the U.S. demand. Now, who knows what could happen? The HHS could load panels with scientists who favor abstinence-first education to quell the AIDS epidemic or with those who side with industry on environmental rules.
Scientists inside and outside government are, not surprisingly, in an uproar. An HHS spokesman derides the complainers as “whining scientists,” among whom he would have to include Dr. D.A. Henderson, an advisor to HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. Henderson told Times staff writer Tom Hamburger “this [rule] is not the most appropriate or constructive thing to do.”
The WHO has long kept governments away from its expert panels, though governments later interpret the panels’ conclusions and form policy. Governments aren’t bound to restrict formaldehyde because of a WHO panel’s conclusions that it is a carcinogen, for example. The administration used that freedom to reject the panel’s conclusion.
The new HHS rule is so out of step it might have sprung from the old Soviet Union or today’s mullah-ruled Iran. Had propaganda/documentary maker Michael Moore featured it in a movie, no one would have believed him.
A go-it-alone foreign policy is one thing. Scientific isolation and scorn are another.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush said: “Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now, more than ever ... government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance.” What a difference a presidential generation makes.
