U.S. Charged With Silencing Scientists

[kittykitty]

Now the bushes are going to censor scientific participation in AIDS research???


From Medscape (you must registe(
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U.S. Charged With Silencing Scientists


WASHINGTON (Reuters) Jun 25 - The U.S. government is making it harder for scientists to speak to their global colleagues and restricting who can attend an upcoming major AIDS conference, a congressman charged on Thursday.

Rep. Henry Waxman said he has a letter showing that the Health and Human Services Department has imposed new limits on who may speak to the World Health Organization.

Under the new policy, WHO must ask HHS for permission to speak to scientists and must allow HHS to choose who will respond.

<snip>

"Under the new policy the administration will be able to refuse to provide any experts whenever it wishes to stall international progress on controversial topics."

An HHS spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Waxman also complained that HHS had cut back a list of scientists planning to attend the International AIDS Society conference in Bangkok, Thailand, next month. The conference is considered the premier meeting for AIDS experts.

Waxman said that 40 presentations scheduled for the conference were withdrawn after HHS decided that only 50 U.S. scientists could attend.

"The scientific community was outraged by this pullback," he wrote.

<snip>

[shraby]

1. What in the hell will we do if

we suddenly have a pandemic??? Wait for only authorized people to address the situation?

[UpInArms]

2. I thought it was Saddam Hussein that

prevented the Iraqi scientists from speaking freely in scientific forums?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This is an atrocity.

This cabal needs to be forcefully evicted from our house and its hallowed halls.

These things are disgustoids.

:argh:

[natrat]

3. these people are

unreal. I thought America was about freedom of expression. They really are fascists in the making.

[Angelus]

4. God save us.

This is really pathetic. It's starting to turn into Nazi Germany. What will the administration do if there is an epidemic here in the U.S.?

[Tom Kitten]

5. like someone posted here over the weekend...

If it disagrees with fundamentalist views it's junk science and it is to be dismissed with a wave of the hand...Creationism, however, is something we must teach in our schools!

[Elwood P Dowd]

6. Okay, I registered and logged in.

Now where is the article hidden on their site?

[Fridays Child]

8. Here you go.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/481837?src=search

[KT2000]

7. Corporate control

Corporations have been trying to control WHO for years. They have been successful in controlling working groups and have successfully taken over the cancer arm of the WHO.

Health effects from chemicals and other corporate cash cows? Health effects of toxins on the developing fetus? Forget about it -corporate "scientists" will see that it never comes up.

[GoBlue]

9. Waxman's letter to HHS

pdf file

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs_108_2/pdfs_inves/pdf_health_hhs_who_policy_june_24_let.pdf

[WindRavenX]

10. Bush has enraged the scientific community

Not only with his refusal to accept the reality of global warming, but with stem cell research. He's pissed the scientists of the nobel prize winners enough that they wrote him a letter.
And now this.
Seems like he's doing an awful good job of pissing off every possible group of citizens out there....

[jmm]

11. Once again he's putting his agenda before

the lives of people around the world. I don't even want to count how many rights they'd have to violate in order to enforce this illegitimate policy.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Half-wits! Cretins! Here's an article referring to the same strange news

06/26/04-06/28/04

Lawmakers say Bush administration forced 28 CDC researchers out of AIDS conference

U.S. representatives Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) on Thursday sent a letter to Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson claiming that the Bush administration forced 28 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers off a list of agency employees scheduled to attend the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, next month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The scientists were cut from the travel list to keep the number of CDC researchers attending the event to just 20, in order to adhere to a mandate by Thompson that only 50 U.S. government officials and researchers attend the international conference. "By grounding these experts, you are keeping them from learning from their peers across the world, and you are depriving the world of the scientific leadership of the United States," Waxman and Slaughter wrote. They also say that keeping the scientists from the conference will deprive the other thousands of attendees of key information from the researchers' studies on HIV prevention, drug-resistance monitoring, and fighting bacterial infections in AIDS patients.

Thompson earlier this year decided to limit the number of U.S. scientists and policy makers attending the conference to just 50, down from 236 sent to the 2002 International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain. Thompson claims the reduced number is part of cost-cutting moves at the department, but AIDS activists say the limited number was due to criticism of Bush administration proposals at the conference and the fact that Thompson was heckled while giving a speech at the 2002 event. By limiting the number of U.S. researchers attending the conference, Waxman says, more than 40 papers by U.S. scientists expected to be presented at the Bangkok conference have been withdrawn, 37 of them by CDC researchers. HHS spokesman Bill Pierce says the United States will be "well-represented" at the conference, adding that telephone conference calls, e-mails, and media reports will help distribute important information presented at the conference to researchers and AIDS advocates around the world.
(snip/)

http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?ID=12917&sd=06/26/04-06/28/04

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Here is the Reuters article from CNN you can read if you aren't registered to read it from the original link:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/06/25/aids.scientists.reut/

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On edit:

Adding Atlanta Journal-Constitution article:

U.S. cuts 28 CDC experts at forum

By JEFF NESMITH
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/24/04


WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has forced 28 researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cancel presentations at an international HIV/AIDS conference next month, Democratic members of Congress charged Thursday.

A spokesman for Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said the Atlanta-based center had overbooked the conference in violation of new restrictions on travel by HHS employees.

Twenty other officials from the CDC, which is part of HHS, will attend, along with 30 from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and other HHS agencies.

The CDC employees were scheduled to present the results of 37 studies of various aspects of the AIDS epidemic at the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, said Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).

"By grounding these experts, you are keeping them from learning from their peers across the world, and you are depriving the world of the scientific leadership of the United States," Waxman and Slaughter said in a letter to Thompson.
(snip)

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0604/25aids.html
(Free registration required)