Apparently, two Surgeons General were censored by the Clinton administration, but the censorship of the Surgeon General under the Bush administration is much worse than in previous administrations. Dr. Koop, Surgeon General under Reagan, was famous for speaking out on controversial public health issues. The issue was raised during a hearing yesterday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (Click here to go to the Committee webpage for the hearing.)
The Surgeon General is the head of the Public Health Service, a uniformed service of the United States Government. I believe it should be his judgment, informed by his staff and public health advisors, as what public health messages are important to give out to the public, not the judgment of non-public health specialist politicians. Professional judgment is needed to evaluate the credibility of the scientific evidence, the seriousness of risks to public health, and the capabilities of the health services system to respond.
I am sufficiently outraged by this testimony to quote at length from the article:
(Former Surgeon General) Carmona, a Bush nominee who served from 2002 to 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that political appointees in the administration routinely scrubbed his speeches for politically sensitive content and blocked him from speaking out on public health matters such as stem cell research, abstinence-only sex education and the emergency contraceptive Plan B.
"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried," he said. "The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds."
In one such case, Carmona, a former professor of surgery and public health at the University of Arizona, said he was told not to speak out during the national debate over whether the federal government should fund embryonic stem cell research, which President Bush opposes.
"Much of the discussion was being driven by theology, ideology, [and] preconceived beliefs that were scientifically incorrect," said Carmona......'This is a perfect example of the surgeon general being able to step forward, educate the American public.' . . . I was blocked at every turn. I was told the decision had already been made -- 'Stand down. Don't talk about it.' That information was removed from my speeches."......
Carmona said that when the administration touted funding for abstinence-only education, he was prevented from discussing research on the effectiveness of teaching about condoms as well as abstinence. "There was already a policy in place that did not want to hear the science but wanted to just preach abstinence, which I felt was scientifically incorrect," Carmona said......
He (Carmona) is the latest in a string of government employees to complain that ideology is trumping science in the Bush administration.
In January, the leader of the National Institutes of Health's task force on stem cells, Story Landis, said that because of the Bush policy -- which aims to protect three-day-old embryos -- the nation is "missing out on possible breakthroughs." And in March, NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni called the Bush policy "shortsighted."
Last year, NASA scientist James E. Hansen and other federal climate researchers said the Bush administration had made it hard for them to speak in a forthright manner about global warming. In 2005, Susan F. Wood, an assistant FDA commissioner and director of the agency's Office of Women's Health, resigned her post, citing her frustration with political interference that was delaying approval of over-the-counter sales of Plan B.
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