The Demon-Haunted World Apparently, George Bush has highjacked the U.S. federal government for the fundamentalists.
Bush accused of stacking committees
A panel of scientists Thursday accused the Bush administration of loading scientific advisory panels with members who are supportive of the administration's agenda but who might have questionable scientific expertise.
"We have seen evidence this is occurring" in committees for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other advisory committees, said Lynn Goldman, who served as assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Prevention, Pesticide and toxic substances from 1993 to 1998.
"I suspect if we took a strong look across the government we would see much, much more of it," said Goldman, who is now with Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health.
"The administration is putting in people that assures they hear what they want to hear," said David Michaels, assistant energy secretary for environment, safety and health from 1998-2001 and now a research professor at George Washington University.
The issue is crucial because scientific advisory panels often are called on to address matters that affect the population at large, Goldman said. This includes everything from determining safe levels of chemicals in drinking water to removing lead from gasoline.
One notable example of this is the Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee, part of the Food and Drug Administration. It is the responsibility of of this committee to offer the FDA expert scientific and medical advice on the wide array of drugs used in gynecology and obstetrics. This includes all contraceptives and drugs used in medical abortions.
The recent appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to head this committee is particularly frightening. Not because he is simply a anti-abortion physician, as some conservative commentators claim, or because he is a Christian. It is frightening because Dr. Hager is a physician who does not hesitate to allow his religious beliefs to dictate both his medical practices and his scientific conclusions. He does not prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women, and he is the author of a book that proposes reading the Bible as a treatment for premenstrual syndrome.
Such an approach is perfectly acceptable within his own practice, but it is profoundly troubling that a man who advises reading the Bible as a medical solution to a problem is heading a very influential advisory body. If fact, from this position, he can affect not only contraceptives, but
also the drugs used in fertility treatments, hormone therapy and other drugs used on the practice of gynecology and obstetrics. His opposition to mifepristone (RU-486)--opposition which is based on his religious beliefs-- would endanger the development of this drug as a treatment for other medical problems.
Because the committee's charter had lapsed, President Bush was able to nominate 10 other members as well, some of whom share Dr. Hager's positions. In fact, one of the appointees, Dr. Joseph Stanford, reportedly refuses to prescribe contraceptives of any kind.
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