Bush Administration Distorts Science, Group Says

[eaprez]

Bush Administration Distorts Science, Group Says

(2004-02-18)

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An environmental group on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of suppressing and distorting scientific findings on the environment, public health and safety that run counter to its own policies.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said in a report that the administration had suppressed research on global warming, air quality, sexual health, cancer and other issues.

It said there had been a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's supposedly independent scientific advisory system "to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda."

The group, which includes Nobel-winning researchers as well as environmental and political activists, said in its report that Congress "should ensure that this administration and future administrations reverse this dangerous trend."

The White House denied the accusations.

"I can assure you that this is an administration that makes decisions based on the best available science," President Bush's spokesman Scott McClellan said.

He also said that the Bush administration had "worked on an independent peer review process to look at how science is used in regulatory decisions."

The UCS reviewed a number of already published allegations, including complaints that the federal government had deliberately disregarded a worldwide consensus that human industrial activity is to blame for much of the steady warming of the planet's climate over the past century.

PUBLIC HEALTH

Groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the American Geophysical Union and the National Academy of Sciences -- itself an independent group appointed to advise the government -- all agreed that human-caused emissions must be curbed.

Officials changed an Environmental Protection Agency annual air pollution report to remove a section on climate change, and the group said investigations pointed to the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget as the source of the changes.

Similarly, it said, the White House manipulated EPA documents on mercury emissions and their effect on people, so frustrating Environmental Protection Agency employees that they leaked the originals to the media.

Public health groups have long complained that the White House changed advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support the administration's abstinence-only sex education policy.

They have said it removed from the CDC's Web site a CDC fact sheet on condom use as well as a report showing that abstinence-only education programs may not actually prevent pregnancies.

"At the behest of higher-ups in the Bush administration, according to a source inside the CDC, the agency was forced to discontinue a project called 'Programs that Work', which identified sex education programs found to be effective in scientific studies," the report reads

The group said it took a New York Times report and a public outcry to reverse a decision to post on the National Cancer Institute's Web site a report that falsely linked abortion to breast cancer.

It also said the administration appointed scientific advisers who were not fully qualified for their posts but who supported Bush policies, something the White House has also denied.

© Copyright 2004, Reuters

[Erika]

1. Science is not on Bush's Radical Agenda

If science goes against corporate interest or his radical right wingers religious beliefs, the science is just plain wrong and he has no qualms about falsifying reports and conclusions. He has no shame.