Romney keeps tight rein on Health Dept. (politics trumps science)

[rodeodance]

Things are a changing day by day-right under our eyes.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/09/10/romney_keeps_tight_rein_on_health_dept?mode=PF

Romney keeps tight rein on Health Dept.
Specialists assert politics playing role in key decisions

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | September 10, 2006

Four times during the past nine months, Governor Mitt Romney and his aides have reversed decisions by his public health commissioner or heavily influenced the adoption of policies consistent with the governor's conservative social views.

Those decisions involved issues such as abstinence education, stem cell research, and the sale of drug needles to prevent AIDS. In interviews, more than a dozen current and former Department of Public Health officials and other health specialists said the Romney administration has also exerted increasingly stringent control over the agency behind the scenes.
.......

Jean Flatley McGuire directed the department's HIV/AIDS Bureau for six years, but she left in 2003 in large part, she said, because of the Romney administration's interference with the DPH..........

In May 2005, the Department of Public Health provided testimony to the Legislature supporting over-the-counter sales of hypodermic needles to drug addicts as a way to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

Opponents of making clean needles available to addicts fear that the policy encourages drug use, but repeated, independent scientific studies have found no evidence of that. But Romney adamantly opposed over-the-counter sales, and a year after voicing support for the measure, the DPH reversed course.

[DeepModem Mom]

1. And this can happen in one of our most liberal states!

Some days you just get very discouraged....

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Our Apologies - It Won't Last Long

Willard "Mitt" Romney is a predatorial sleezeball thug that the good people of our state accidentally elected because he has good hair and a pleasant smile. But things have changed - hToday he couldn't even make a successful bid for dogcatcher in Massachusetts. His #2, Kerry Healey a.k.a. "Muffy", is running to replace him, and losing in the polls even in an imaginary race against a glass of tobbaco-stained saliva.

[liberalhistorian]

4. I certainly hope you're right! I couldn't

believe it when he was elected, I thought MA was a lot smarter than that.

[Ian David]

2. I hate Der Mittenfuhrer! n/t