Nathan Walker, www.nathanwalker.net
During
his presidential campaign, George W. Bush said he supported
environmental policies that were “based on sound science.” If you’re
wondering what the Bush administration considers sound science, it’s
hard to find a better example than the story of Dr. Michael L. Dini. A
biology professor at Texas Tech University, Dini is being sued for
refusing, as a matter of policy, to write letters of recommendation for
students who disavow evolution.
Dini teaches in what is probably the center of the creationist
universe. The Texas Panhandle is rife with anti-Darwinist preachers
taking up the left end of the FM dial. Dini put a notice on his faculty
Web page informing students, “If you set up an appointment to discuss
the writing of a letter of recommendation, I will ask you: ‘How do you
account for the scientific origin of the human species?’ If you will
not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek
my recommendation.”
In most places in the world, this straightforward policy would be seen
as well within Dini’s traditional rights as a science instructor. In
Lubbock Texas, it was a red cape before the creationist bulls.
Enter Micah Spradling, a creationist Texas Tech junior. Represented by
the Liberty Legal Institute, a fundamentalist non-profit law firm,
Spradling claimed that Dini’s policy would require “denying my
Christian faith” and filed a complaint against Texas Tech in October,
following that with a formal complaint to the Justice Department in
January.
Spradling, who admits he never even enrolled in any of Dini’s classes,
is candid about his intent in filing suit: he wanted to strike a blow
for fundamentalist Christianity. Normally, his suit would go nowhere.
After all, Dini also rules out letters of recommendation for students
he doesn’t know well, and who haven’t earned an A in at least one of
his classes. This should have been just one more silly season story, a
flavor of the month to grace the front pages of daily papers on slow
news days.
Except that John Ashcroft is taking the case seriously. In January, the
head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Jeremiah
Glassman, announced that his office was actively investigating
Spradling’s claim and asked Texas Tech’s administrators to show him the
school’s policy on letters of recommendation. The school’s
administration is, laudably, standing behind Dr. Dini. The case may
come to naught. Still, as author Michael Bronski pointed out in a
Boston Phoenix column, it’s hard to imagine previous attorneys general
finding Spradling worth more than a polite form letter. Few parts of
science are as well established as evolution. All of biology depends on
it. And yet senior Bush administration officials are willing to
consider squelching the most basic expression of scientific integrity,
if that integrity stands in the way of White House goals.
Those pesky facts
To be sure, this isn’t the first administration to do so. Reagan’s two
terms of office were notable not just for the appointment of people
such as polluter-friendly EPA chief Anne Burford Gorsuch and
planet-unfriendly Interior Secretary James Watt, but for hundreds of
lower-level office-holders as well: his lasting legacy has been a hard
core of ideologically-driven middle managers who readily punish federal
scientists when their science becomes inconvenient. During the Clinton
years, science again lost out to expediency in fights over old-growth
logging, as well as solid waste incineration, fuel efficiency
standards, and grazing reform.
But where previous administrations at least took pains to cloak their
flouting of science in procedural or economic terms, the second Bush
administration seems willing to openly defy the scientific consensus to
the point where leading scientific journals decry its policies in
full-page editorials. On multiple fronts, from reproductive health to
climate change to wildlife biology to air and water pollution, the Bush
administration is treating science as its enemy, to be overruled and
overwhelmed. The result: a blithe discounting of mounting threats to
human health and the global environment.
The Bush team’s opposition to science comes out of the desire to
promote the interests of the administration’s core constituencies: the
far right—especially fundamentalist Christians—and the wide range
of corporations that profit from extraction of natural resources, from
real estate developers to energy and mining concerns. The flouting of
science manifests itself in a number of ways, from stacking of
scientific advisory panels to suppression of reports to harassment or
suspension of employees.
The scientific method consists of forming a hypothesis, examining the
evidence for and against, experimenting to derive more evidence, either
confirming or refuting the original hypothesis, and sharing your data
with other scientists so they can review your work. Activists sometimes
criticize scientists for undue caution in assessing threats to the
environment, but that same cautious, methodical science is proving a
serious thorn in the Bush administration’s paw.
As evidence mounts that our ever-accelerating development of dwindling
mineral and biological resources threatens an ecological meltdown
comparable to the great extinctions of the paleontologic record,
pressure likewise mounts to restrict the industry that does the damage.
When a majority of scientists reaches consensus that meltdown is
already in progress, any sane society would enact emergency measures
posthaste. The Bush administration, with a somewhat shorter time frame
focused on next-quarter profits, the upcoming elections, and the
Rapture just around the corner, indulges in a Bizarro-world scientific
method that makes up evidence, adjusts the hypotheses to fit, and
excludes scientists who might point out flaws.
Political climate
The best-known example of Bush’s Bizarre Science came at the behest of
the energy industry. As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that
human-caused emission of gases into the atmosphere—primarily carbon
dioxide from burning fossil fuels—is already changing the planet’s
climate. Unhappy with the IPCC’s work and feeling pressure to defend
the energy industry from burgeoning global criticism, Bush directed the
US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2001 to review what was known
about humanity’s effect on global climate.
Despite the all-American makeup of the NAS, this was a mistake on
Bush’s part. The NAS report’s opening sentence: “Greenhouse gases are
accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities,
causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to
rise.” The report went on to further undermine administration climate
policy.
Bush learned from this mistake. A year later, when the EPA published a
watered-down summation of US climate policy that said people were
probably responsible for some climate change, Bush was incensed.
Answering a reporter’s question about the document, Bush sniffed, “I
read the report put out by the bureaucracy.” His statement was not
entirely accurate: he hadn’t actually read it. These days, the
administration does what it can to negate emissions standards,
interfere with global agreements on climate and promote expanded
exploration for and use of fossil fuels. (A description of the
potential results of this policy can be found in the article on page
26.)
Case studies
Scientist Ian Thomas was a victim of the push for expanded oil
exploration. A cartographer who worked as a contract employee for the
US Geological Survey (USGS), Thomas had published literally tens of
thousands of maps on subjects ranging from fires in Timor to refugees
in Kosovo to songbird distribution in Washington, DC. In March 2001,
Thomas added a seemingly innocuous wildlife distribution map to his
collected works: a map of caribou breeding grounds on the Alaskan North
Slope. A week later, he was unemployed. His map indicated that areas in
the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge slated for oil exploration under
Bush administration proposals were prime breeding grounds for the
caribou. (See Autumn 2001 EIJ for Thomas’ first-hand account of his firing.)
After Thomas’ termination, the caribou map Web page was replaced by a
disclaimer that read, “The contents of this Web site are undergoing
review and will be reposted once their scientific credibility has been
ensured.” Not one of the more than 20,000 maps Thomas had previously
published apparently warranted such scrutiny. A year later, Interior
Secretary Gale Norton ordered other USGS scientists to revise a report,
based on a twelve-year study, that said drilling in ANWR would likely
hurt caribou. Norton’s rewrite took less than a week.
The end result was a document that said drilling probably would not hurt caribou.
Farther south, as Norton and other Bush administration officials
rallied behind the farmers of the upper Klamath Basin as they fought to
irrigate their fields, a team of scientists from the National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS) studied the watershed’s coho salmon fishery,
the largest in California. The Klamath, which flows through southern
Oregon into far northern California, is a classic oversubscribed river.
Farmers pull water out of the river basin, leaving little for the
renowned wildlife refuges downstream, not to mention the fisheries in
the lower river. The NMFS team determined that the federal Bureau of
Reclamation’s ten-year plan for the Klamath Basin shortchanged the coho
and other fish, and recommended more water be left in instream flows to
support them. The Justice Department ordered Michael Kelly, lead
scientist on the NMFS team, to rewrite his report. He did so, but
despite Ashcroft’s instructions, his second draft cited additional
research and case law supporting his team’s original contention: the
fish needed more water. Reclamation rejected the NMFS report and
continued sending Klamath water to farmers, with instream flows a mere
43 percent of what Kelly’s team recommended. In late 2002, as many as
50,000 salmon died in the lower reaches of the Klamath, killed by the
warm temperatures characteristic of insufficient water levels.
Stacking the jury
Thomas and Kelly, and dozens of other scientists who’ve found their
work made Bush II uncomfortable, are just the latest in a long
tradition of whistleblowers. Previous administrations suppressed their
own whistleblowers as well; the conduct of the Bush team differs
greatly, but mainly in scale. But where Bush’s Bizarre Science policy
really shines is in the arena of scientific advisory committees.
Hundreds of these committees, set up to jury issues from workplace
ergonomics to municipal drinking water standards, traditionally advise
government on the best, most recent science available, and provide peer
review for research funding proposals. These committees have long been
the scene of pitched battles among competing points of view: this
diversity has often served to make sure committee recommendations are
defensible, “good” science.
But no longer. More than any previous administration, Bush II has
stacked these advisory panels with vociferous industry representatives,
religious activists, and political allies, in many cases going so far
as to apply crude litmus tests during interviews of potential members.
William Miller, a psychologist at the University of New Mexico, told
reporters that his 2002 interview for a slot on an advisory panel to
the National Institute on Drug Abuse veered into some odd territory.
After being quizzed on his views on abortion, said Miller, the
interviewer asked whether he had voted for Bush in 2000. Miller hadn’t.
“Why didn’t you support the President?” came the reply.
Exchanges more closely related to the panel’s purview were equally
upsetting. When Miller said he supported needle exchanges as a way of
controlling disease among drug users, the interviewer said, “That’s a
problem.” Bush opposes needle exchange.
You might not think of ergonomics as a particularly hot political
potato, but Bush’s Bizarre Science has its repetitive-motion-stressed
fingers in that pie too. The National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health has a panel of experts that peer-reviews research grant
proposals, and which has traditionally been staffed with leaders in the
occupational safety field. But in 2002, three experts in ergonomics
were rejected for the panel by Health and Human Service Secretary Tommy
Thompson, who reached national prominence as the service-slashing
governor of Wisconsin. During the interviews, potential panel members
were quizzed about their views on ergonomics. At least two of the
rejectees supported a national ergonomics standard, which Bush opposes
as too unfriendly to business.
Lead astray
The Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead
Poisoning Prevention has also been targeted for revamping by the
administration. The committee studies current data on lead toxicity and
testing, and sets allowable blood lead level limits. Lead toxicity is
of special concern in young children, whose physical and mental
development can be seriously harmed by even small amounts of the heavy
metal. Environmental sources of lead include metal smelting,
remediation work at old industrial sites, old house paint, and ambient
environmental lead left over from decades of its use as a gasoline
additive. Urban and poor children are at special risk of lead
poisoning. In 1991, the Committee cut acceptable blood lead levels from
25 to 10 micrograms per deciliter based on its study of new information
on lead toxicity.
And the Bush administration didn’t like that. Michael Weitzman, a
University of Rochester pediatrician with extensive expertise on lead
toxicity, was kicked off the committee in 2002 after five years of
service. Nominees Bruce Lanphear and Susan Klitzman, authors of many
peer-reviewed articles on lead poisoning, were rejected for membership.
Who was nominated instead? Well, there’s William Banner, who advocates
raising the acceptable blood lead level to 70 micrograms per deciliter—seven times the current standard—and who denies that lead
poisoning affects mental development in children, yet has done not one
bit of research on lead toxicity in humans. There’s Joyce Tsuji, a
scientist-for-hire at Exponent, a consulting firm that counsels
companies being sued over lead contamination. There’s Kimberly
Thompson, who teaches Risk Analysis and Decision Science at the Harvard
School of Public Health
an impressive-sounding post until you learn
that its affiliated Harvard Center for Risk Analysis is funded in part
by corporations with lead-poisoned Superfund sites.
A particularly laughable example of Bush panel stacking is embodied in
one W. David Hager, an OB/GYN named last Christmas to head up the FDA’s
Reproductive Health Advisory Committee. The committee advises the FDA
on contraceptives, abortion, pregnancy, and other related issues, such
as the currently controversial hormone replacement therapy. Hager,
whose résumé describes him as a University of Kentucky professor (he
actually has a part-time unpaid position working with interns at the
University hospital) refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried
women. He has unusually few publications on his curriculum vitae for a
leading medical professional, the most prominent among them being a
book entitled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now.
In his private practice, Hager recommends specific readings from the
Bible for patients who suffer from PMS or headaches.
A handmaid’s tale of terror
As one might expect, the Bush approach to reproductive health isn’t
limited to putting faith healers on advisory boards. Distribution of
accurate information on science and health to the general public are
special targets of the administration, especially when that information
counters fundamentalist religious doctrine on matters sexual.
A Centers for Disease Control fact sheet that mentioned condoms as an
effective way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS was quietly yanked from
the CDC’s Web site in 2002, replaced with an abstinence-only message.
Reference in the earlier version to a study showing that condom
education does not encourage youth sex apparently spurred Executive
Branch ire.
Bush and company are pushing for more federal funding for
abstinence-based sex-ed programs, despite the fact that studies of
abstinence-based teaching methods fail to show any effectiveness
whatsoever in reducing teen sexual activity, pregnancy, or disease.
Another fact sheet, this one disproving an alleged link between
abortion and breast cancer, was revised by the National Cancer
Institute in November 2002. An 1997 article in the New England Journal
of Medicine reported on a registry study of 1.5 million women in
Denmark, which showed that women who had abortions had no greater
incidence of breast cancer than women who had no abortions. The 2002
revision of the NCI factsheet omitted any mention of the Danish study.
In November, the peer-reviewed British medical journal The Lancet wrote
a remarkable editorial lambasting the Bush administration and its
ideological approach to science. “The current US Administration is
certainly pro-industry,” the editors wrote, “pro-family, and on the
religious right. Any threat to impartial science-policy advice
will
harm most those whose voices are unheeded by the right-wing—the
poor, minorities, those without health insurance, those living in the
shadow of polluting industries, those at risk of sexually transmitted
infection (especially young people), young people who need realistic
contraceptive advice, single mothers, and intravenous drug users.”
You can add the salmon in the Klamath River, Arctic caribou, and anyone living at sea level to that list.
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