In Congressional committee hearings held July 10, former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona shed new light on how far the Bush administration has gone in suppressing scientific health reports in order to impose their Christian fundamentalist ideology on government policy.
The New York Times reported on July 11:
Dr. Carmona, who served as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, said
White House officials would not allow him to speak or issue reports
about stem cells,
emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global
health issues because of political concerns. Top administration
officials delayed for years and attempted to “water down” a landmark
report on secondhand tobacco smoke, he said in sworn testimony before
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.He was
ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of every
speech he gave, Dr. Carmona said. He was asked to make speeches to
support Republican political candidates and to attend political
briefings, at least one of which included Karl Rove, the president’s senior political adviser, he said.And
administration officials even discouraged him from attending the
Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s
longtime ties to the Kennedy family.“I was specifically told by a senior person, “Why would you want to help those people?” ” Dr. Carmona said.
The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people.
Dr.
Carmona joins a list of present and former Bush administration
officials who assert that politics often trumped science within what
had previously been nonpartisan government health and scientific
agencies……
On issue after issue, Dr. Carmona asserted, the Bush administration
made decisions about important public health issues based solely on
political considerations, not scientific ones.“I was told to stay away from those because we”ve already decided which way we want to go,” Dr. Carmona said.
He described attending a meeting of top officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. The other officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said.
“And
I said to myself: “I realize why I”ve been invited. They want me to
discuss the science because they obviously don’t understand the
science,” ” he said. “I was never invited back.”He said the science is clear that effective sexual education efforts must offer what he called a “comprehensive approach.”
“However, there was already a policy in place to only support sexual education efforts that discussed only abstinence, he said.
Bush has nominated Dr.
James W. Holsinger Jr. to be the new Surgeon General. Holinger is a
perfect fit for Bush’s fundamentalist ideology; in 1991 he wrote a
report which concluded thathomosexual sex is unnatural and unhealthy.