Bush does not accept evolution, the central coordinating concept of modern biology. According to the New York Times (October 29, 2000), he believes that "the jury is still out" on evolution, and moreover, the Times reports, he "doesn't really care about that kind of thing."
In March, the Pentagon terminated the contract of the "Jason" panel ? an advisory group composed of forty to fifty elite scientists. John Marburger, Bush's science advisor, describes the group as "working scientists ? top-notch people who are experts in their fields". One member suggested that the termination Jason followed from an attempt by the Bush administration "to place political appointees to [the] scientific panel." (NY TIMES, 3/23/02)
Critics of Bush's "National Missile Defense System" face retaliation by the administration. Two critics in particular are worthy of note. The published and public dissents of Dr. Theodore Postal of MIT have cost him federal research grants, along with threats of research cutbacks to MIT. In addition, Dr. Nira Schwartz, a scientist and computer expert, was fired by the defense contractor, TRW, immediately after determining that the design of the defense missiles (i.e., "kill vehicles") was fatally flawed. In early march, the General Accounting Office confirmed her findings.
In a quixotic decision in August, 2001, Bush "in effect banned federal funding for human embryo stem-cell research" (Bioethicist, Arthur Caplan). In a monstrous concession to his right-wing constituency, Bush proclaimed that all human embryonic life (i.e., "babies") is sacred and thus beyond the reach of medical research, however valuable that research might prove to fully formed (post-born) human beings, and notwithstanding the fact that otherwise thousands of embryonic cell samples, fated to be discarded, would be available for research. As a result of Bush's decree, the vanguard of medical research may move from the United States to Europe.
Last month, the US Geological Survey submitted the results of a twelve year study which concluded that oil exploration in ANWR would adversely affect the habitat of the wildlife of the region. In the spirit of "don't come to me unless you have the ?facts' I want," Interior Secretary Gail Norton ordered a reassessment and, sure enough, in just a week got the desired result: arctic wildlife just love oil rigs.
Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends."
<regarding 9/11> Despite the Environmental Protection Agency's claims that air quality was safe, Kevin refused to return and we closed the office. Many workers did not have that option; their employers relied on the EPA's nine press releases between September and December of 2001 reassuring the public about the wholesome air quality downtown. We have since learned that the government was lying to us. An Inspector General's report released last August revealed that the EPA's data did not support those assurances and that its press releases were being drafted or doctored by White House officials intent on reopening Wall Street.
I also recall the case of Dr. James Zahn, a nationally respected microbiologist with the Agriculture Department's research service, who accepted my invitation to speak to an April 2002 conference of more than 1,000 family farm advocates and environmental and civic leaders in Clear Lake, Iowa. In a rigorous taxpayer-funded study, Zahn had identified bacteria that can make people sick--and that are resistant to antibiotics--in the air surrounding industrial-style hog farms. His studies proved that billions of these "superbugs" were traveling across property lines daily, endangering the health of neighbors and their herds. I was shocked when Zahn canceled his appearance on the day of the conference under orders from the Agriculture Department in Washington.
The Administration has taken special pains to shield Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, which is part of an industry that has contributed $58 million to Republicans since 2000. Halliburton is the leading practitioner of a process used in extracting oil and gas known as hydraulic fracturing, in which benzene is injected into underground formations. EPA scientists studying the process in 2002 found that it could contaminate ground-water supplies in excess of federal drinking water standards. A week after reporting their findings to Congressional staff members, however, they revised the data to indicate that benzene levels would not exceed government standards. In a letter to Representative Henry Waxman, EPA officials said the change was made based on "industry feedback."
But suppressing or altering science can be a tricky business; the Bush Administration has found it easier at times simply to arrange to get the results it wants. A case in point is the decision in July by the EPA's regional office overseeing the western Everglades to accept a study financed predominantly by developers, which concludes that wetlands discharge more pollutants than they absorb. There was no peer review or public comment. With its approval, the EPA is giving developers credit for improving water quality by replacing natural wetlands with golf courses and other developments.
In a similar case, last November the EPA cut a private deal with a pesticide manufacturer to take over federal studies of a pesticide it manufactures. Atrazine is the most heavily utilized weedkiller in America. First approved in 1958, by the 1980s it had been identified as a potential carcinogen associated with high incidences of prostate cancer among workers at manufacturing facilities. Testing by the US Geological Survey regularly finds alarming concentrations of Atrazine in drinking water across the corn belt. Even worse, last year scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Atrazine at one-thirtieth the government's "safe" 3 parts per billion level causes grotesque deformities in frogs, including multiple sets of organs. And this year epidemiologists from the University of Missouri found reproductive consequences in humans associated with Atrazine, including male semen counts in farm communities that are 50 percent below normal. Iowa scientists are finding similar results in a current study.
The Bush Administration reacted to the frightening findings not by banning this dangerous chemical, as the European Union has, but by taking the studies away from EPA scientists and, in an unprecedented move, giving the chemical's manufacturer, Switzerland-based Syngenta, control over federal research. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sherry Ford, a spokesperson for Syngenta, praised without irony the advantages of having the company monitor its own product. "This is one way we can ensure it's not presenting any risk to the environment."
Most federal employees have gone along with the Bush Administration's wishes, but a few have tried to stand up for sound science. The results are predictable. When a team of government biologists indicated that the Army Corps of Engineers was violating the Endangered Species Act in managing the flow of the Missouri River, the group was quickly replaced by an industry-friendly panel. (In an unexpected--and fortunate--development, the new panel ultimately declined to adopt the White House's pro-barge-industry position and upheld the decision to manage the river to protect imperiled species.) Similarly, last April the EPA suddenly dismantled an advisory panel that had spent nearly twenty-one months developing rules for stringent regulation of industrial emissions of mercury
The Bush Administration appointees all had coal industry pedigrees. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (the wife of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate's biggest recipient of industry largesse) appointed Dave Lauriski, a former executive with Energy West Mining, as the new director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which oversaw the investigation. His deputy assistant secretary was John Caylor, an Anamax Mining alumnus. His other deputy assistant, John Correll, had worked for both Amax and Peabody Coal. Oppegard, the leader of the federal team, was fired on the day Bush was inaugurated in 2001. All eight members of the team except Spadaro signed off on a whitewashed investigation report. Spadaro, like the others, was harassed but flat-out refused to sign. In April of 2001 Spadaro resigned from the team and filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Labor Department. Last June 4 he was placed on administrative leave--a prelude to getting fired. Bush Administration officials accuse Spadaro of "abusing his authority" for allowing a handicapped instructor to have free room and board at a training academy he oversees, an arrangement approved by his superiors. An internal report vindicated Spadaro's criticisms of the investigation, but the Administration is still going after his job. "I've been regulating mining since 1966," Spadaro told me. "This is the most lawless administration I've encountered. They have no regard for protecting miners or the people in mining communities. They are without scruples."
Now Congress and this White House have used federal power for the same purpose. Led by the President, the Republicans have gutted scientific research budgets and politicized science within the federal agencies. The very leaders who so often condemn the trend toward moral relativism are fostering and encouraging the trend toward scientific relativism. The very ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have now institutionalized dishonesty and made it the reigning culture of America's federal agencies.
The Bush administration has distorted scientific fact leading to policy decisions on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry, a group of about 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization, also issued a 37-page report, "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," detailing the accusations. The statement and the report both accuse the Bush administration of distorting and suppressing findings that contradict administration policies, stacking panels with like-minded and underqualified scientists with ties to industry, and eliminating some advisory committees altogether.
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