Waxman: Politics and Science in the Bush Administration

From Scienticity

The draft of this article is incomplete.

On 6 Augsut 2003, US Representative Henry Waxman released a 39-page report, Politics and Science in the Bush Administration^[1], evaluating the treatment of science and scientists under the Bush Administration. The report was prepared by the staff of the Committee on Government Reform, Minority Office; Rep. Waxman is ranking minority member of the Committee. Release of the report was marked by the debut of a new website^[2] called "Politics & Science", maintained by the Committee's Minority Office, and devoted to presenting information about the topics investigated in the report.

The Waxman report was in the vanguard of those documenting the political manipulation of science by the Bush Administration, to be followed by related reports by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the American Civil Liberties Union and contributing to the impetus for the Science Besieged Project here at Ars Hermeneutica.

Contents 1 Findings 1.1 Overview 1.2 Abstinance-Only Education 1.3 Agricultural Pollution 1.4 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 1.5 Breast Cancer 1.6 Condoms 1.7 Drinking Water 1.8 Education Policy 1.9 Environmental Health 1.10 Global Warming 1.11 HIV/AIDS 1.12 Lead Poisoning 1.13 Missile Defense 1.14 Oil and Gas 1.15 Prescription Drug Advertising 1.16 Reproductive Health 1.17 Stem Cells 1.18 Substance Abuse 1.19 Wetlands 1.20 Workplace Safety 1.21 Yellowstone National Park 2 Reaction 3 Notes 4 Other Sources

Findings

Overview

From the Executive Summary:

The American people depend upon federal agencies to promote scientific research and to develop science-based policies that protect the nation’s health and welfare. Historically, these agencies — such as the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency — have had global reputations for scientific excellence.

Recently, however, leading scientific journals have begun to question whether scientific integrity at federal agencies has been sacrificed to further a political and ideological agenda. As the editor of Science wrote earlier this year, there is growing evidence that the Bush Administration “invades areas once immune to this kind of manipulation.”
[...]
The Administration’s political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists.
[...]
[T]he report identifies the three principal ways in which the Bush Administration has pursued its agenda: by manipulating scientific advisory committees, by distorting and suppressing scientific information, and by interfering with scientific research and analysis.

The report documents three principal ways in which the Bush Administration manipulates the scientific enterprise:

• Manipulating Scientific Advisory Committees by appointing nonexperts with strong ties to involved industries, appointing unqualified people with ideological agendas, stacking committees with policy partisans, and imposing political tests on candidates, all in an effort to direct committee recommendations in disregard of scientific findings;
• Distoring and Suppressing Scientific Information by witholding important scientific information, presenting incomplete or inaccurate information to congress and the American people, or skewing scientific results to support policy, in public announcements, statements, and agency reports; and
• Interfering with Scientific Research through increased and inappropriate scrutiny of ongoing research, obstruction of scientific analyses, judging programs based on political outcome, and blocking scientific publication.

Scientific results do not determine policy, but honest scientific results can help direct policy. As stated in the Introduction to the report:

There should be a clear line between the work of scientists, which is to assemble and analyze the best available evidence, and that of policymakers, which is to decide what the nation’s response to the science should be.

Please note that the following sections summarize findings at the time the report was released (in August 2004), and may not reflect current situations.

Abstinance-Only Education

Sex educations programs for teens that combine information about contraception and encourage abstinance "have been shown in scientific studies to delay the onset of sexual activity and can result in greater use of potentially life-saving condoms and other contraceptives."^[3]

Despite a lack of scientific evidence that abstinance-only education programs for teens have any effect on reducing teen sexual activity, teen pregnancy, or the transmission of STDs, the Bush Administration insists that sex education should be "abstinance only" to the exclusion of any other approach. Thus, between 2001 and 2004, Congress appropriated over $100 million in grants to organizations in support of these ineffectual programs.

To disguise the failure of the abstinance-only approach, the Bush Administration has stopped applying objective program metrics, developed by Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration, to assess the effectiveness of the anstinance-only programs, replacing them with subjective measures that do not measure actual results.

Until recently, the Centers for Disease Control

initiative called “Programs That Work” identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its web site to interested communities. In 2002, all five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only.” In the last year [i.e., 2003--2004], and without scientific justification, CDC has ended this initiative and erased information about these proven sex education programs from its web site.

Agricultural Pollution

Environmentally sensitive groups in agricultural states are concerned about the pollution caused by water runoff from fields treated with insecticides, and from land devoted to animal husbandry. Commercial agricultural interests in those same states are concerned about the cost of implementing regulations that would control agricultural pollution.

In a USDA memo dated February 2002, scientist's in the Department's Agricultural Research Service were advised that prior approval was required on all research manuscripts on "sensitive subjects", which included

Agricultural practices with negative health and environmental consequences, e.g., global climate change; contamination of water by hazardous materials (nutrients, pesticides, and pathogens); animal feeding operations or crop production practices that negatively impact soil, water, or air quality.^[4]

This directive was used in 2002 as a pretext to suppress the publication of research results of microbiologist James Zahn, who had discovered antiobiotic-resistant bacteria "in the air near hog confinements in Iowa and Missouri", according to the Des Moines Register.^[5] He was also not allowed to present his findings at a meeting in the same year. According to the same Des Moines Register article:

Zahn later found a fax trail showing that information about his planned appearance . . . first passed from an environmental advocacy group to a Des Moines TV station, then to the Iowa Pork Producers Association office. Someone there sent the fax to the National Pork Producers Council in Zahn’s building. A pork council worker contacted Zahn’s boss . . . to question the appearance, Zahn said. [His boss] then called his superiors in Peoria, who decided Zahn could not speak at the meeting.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

During Senate hearings about proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski posed a series of questions to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, a long-time supporter of the Bush Administrations oil-drilling plans. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service drafted responses to the questions, but these responses, which presented data showing that wildlife would likely be affected, were altered when delivered by Secretary Norton to say that wildlife would not be affected, and she withheld other important information from Congress concerning caribou herd birth rates.

One Fish and Wildlife offical was quoted in the Washington Post story^[6] that provided the details:

If Congress is going to have a serious discussion on the future of the Arctic refuge, it ought to have the whole story, not a slanted story . . . . We tried to present all the facts, but she only passed along the ones she liked. And to pass along facts that are false, well, that’s obviously inappropriate.

Breast Cancer

Until the summer of 2002, the National Cancer Institute had posted on its website an analysis concluding that there was no link between abortions and breast cancer:

The analysis explained that after some uncertainty before the mid-1990s, this issue had been resolved by several well-designed studies, the largest of which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997,^[7] finding no link between abortion and breast cancer risk.

However, in November 2002, this analysis was replaced with one that obfuscated the previously clearly stated conclusions of the best scientific analyses, promoting in its place the idea that confusion and controversy still existed over a possible link:

Some studies have reported statistically significant evidence of an increased risk of breast cancer in women who have had abortions, while others have merely suggested an increased risk. Other studies have found no increase in risk among women who have had an interrupted pregnancy.

Members of Congress protested the change, with the result that the

NCI convened a three-day conference of experts on abortion and breast cancer. Participants reviewed all existing population-based, clinical, and animal data available, and concluded that “[i]nduced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk,” ranking this conclusion as “well-established.”^[8] On March 21, 2003, the NCI web site was updated to reflect this conclusion.^[9]

Condoms

Before 2002 the Centers for Disease Control website offered a fact sheet about condoms, Condoms and Their Use in Preventing HIV Infection and Other STDs, which included information about how to use condoms properly, their rates of effectiveness, and noted that “a World Health Organization (WHO) review . . . found no evidence that sex education leads to earlier or increased sexual activity in young people.”^[10]

In 2002 this was replaced with Male Latex Condoms and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, which lacked instructions on condom use, lacked details on effectiveness, instead emphasizing condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinance. In similar manner, in 2003, of two documents describing the effectiveness of condoms on the website of the State Department's USAID (Agency for International Development), one was removed from the website and one had its conclusions about condom effectiveness severely weakened.

The report adds that

The Bush Administration has also promoted unscientific positions on condom use internationally. In December 2002, the U.S. delegation at the Asian and Pacific Population Conference sponsored by the United Nations attempted to delete endorsement of “consistent condom use” as a means of preventing HIV infection. U.S. delegates took this position on the grounds that recommending condom use would promote underage sex.^[11] Contrary to these U.S. claims, scientific studies have shown that comprehensive sex education delays the onset of sexual activity. The U.S. opposition to “consistent condom use” was rejected, 32–1.

Drinking Water

In 1997, the Department of Defense initiated studies of the toxicity of perchlorate contamination in drinking water. Perchlorate is the main ingredient in solid rocket-fuel, and poses serious health risks to fetuses and newborns. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency incorporated the results of the DoD studies in proposing a limit of 1 part-per-billion perchlorate in drinking water, a level that would have required extensive cleanup efforts by the DoD or its contractors.

Subsequently, the DoD dropped all plans to that might have led to definitive perchlorate site testing cleanup. Instead,

the Administration proposed legislation to provide liability protection for the Pentagon and its contractors from claims related to perchlorate.^[12]

Education Policy

Environmental Health

Global Warming

HIV/AIDS

Lead Poisoning

Missile Defense

Oil and Gas

Prescription Drug Advertising

Reproductive Health

Stem Cells

Substance Abuse

Wetlands

Workplace Safety

Yellowstone National Park

Reaction

Notes

1. ^ Special Investigations Division, Minority Staff of the Committee on Government Reform, US House of Representatives, "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration", "prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman, August 2003.
2. ^ "About Politics & Science: The State of Science Under the Bush Administration", August 2003.
3. ^ Footnote in original: D. Kirby, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy, at 78 (May 2001).
4. ^ Footnote in original: USDA, List of Sensitive issues for ARS Manuscript Review and Approval by National Program Staff — February 2002 (revised) (Feb. 2002).
5. ^ Footnote in original: Ag Scientists Feel the Heat, Des Moines Register (Dec. 1, 2002).
6. ^ Footnote in original: Departmental Differences Show over ANWR Drilling, Washington Post (Oct. 19, 2001).
7. ^ Footnote in original: M. Melbye et al., Induced Abortion and the Risk of Breast Cancer, New England Journal of Medicine, 81–85 (Jan. 9, 1997).
8. ^ Footnote in original: National Cancer Institute, Summary Report: Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer (Mar. 4, 2003) (online at http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/ere-workshop-report)
9. ^ Footnote in original: National Cancer Institute, Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk (Mar. 21, 2003) (online at http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage). [hyperlink updated]
10. ^ Footnore in original: CDC, Condoms and Their Use in Preventing HIV Infection and Other STDs (Sept. 1999).
11. ^ Footnote in original: U.S. Stance on Abortion and Condom Use Rejected at Conference, San Jose Mercury News (Dec. 17, 2002).
12. ^ Footnote in original: Pentagon Hid Pollution Report, Lawmakers Say, Wall Street Journal (May 19, 2003); “Defense Transformation for the 21st Century Act of 2003,” S.927, section 301 (Apr. 28, 2003).

Other Sources

• Rick Weiss, " Bush Misuses Science, Report Says: Democrats Say Data Are Distorted to Boost Conservative Policies", originally Washington Post, 8 August 2003, reproduced by Common Dreams NewsCenter.