Originally posted by: ITJunkie
Good article Gaard. I think a lot of people can see it but they don't really want to look at it. Hope that changes soon.
CAD & Co see it, fat chance. More from the article:
"As a result of private research, more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines already exist," he said. "They were created from embryos that have already been destroyed, and they have the ability to regenerate themselves indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for research."
Just one problem. It wasn't true ...
"By September of 2003, slightly over two years after the enactment of the funding policy, twelve of the eligible lines had become available to federally funded researchers," the Council concluded. This isn't a narrow discrepancy: 12, not 60.
The great crisis of the Bush presidency has been over just this --the charge that it corrupted intelligence and the intelligence process to make a dishonest case for war in Iraq.
In his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, the president said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Just one problem. It wasn't true...
See a pattern?
"There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies."
"There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter the administration's political agenda."
"There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented."
The government often relies on counsel from appointed advisory committees on technical science and health issues. One of them is the Center for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention.
The committee was considering setting more stringent standards of permissible blood levels for lead in children because of new evidence that even lower levels could be harmful.
A few weeks before the scheduled meeting, the CDC's controlling cabinet agency, HHS, bumped from the committee a pediatrician and researcher who had served for four years and two new nominees selected by CDC. In their place, HHS nominated three people with ties to the lead and paint industry. One of them wanted to raise permissible lead levels to two-and-a-half times what they were set at in the 1970's. All three are now on the committee.
In the other, two members of the President's Council on Bioethics who supported research on stem cells and therapeutic cloning, and thus were in the minority, were pulled off the panel, one by choice, one not. People whose views will put them firmly into the panel's majority will replace them.
None of this will come as a great surprise in light of what we now know about how the administration manipulated intelligence about Iraq. But it is chilling to realize that the arrogance and deception that went into the most important action of the Bush presidency also infect their system down to obscure science boards and policies.
Certain functions of government, much like the judicial system, are supposed to be insulated to as much as possible from partisanship and politics. This administration seems to have a pervasive and profound scorn for that idea. In its place, it has an abiding confidence in its own righteousness. And in this, President Bush leads by example.
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