Surgeon General calls out Bush

rhadamanthus · Jul 11, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/w...b777967cf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

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By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: July 11, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“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, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

In response to lawmakers’ questions, Dr. Carmona refused to name specific people in the administration who had instructed him to put political considerations over scientific ones. He said, however, that they included assistant secretaries of health and human services as well as top political appointees outside the department of health.

Dr. Carmona did offer to provide the names to the committee in a private meeting.

Bill Hall, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the administration disagreed with Dr. Carmona’s statements. “It has always been this administration’s position that public health policy should be rooted in sound science,” Mr. Hall said.

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said the surgeon general “is the leading voice for the health of all Americans.”

“It’s disappointing to us,” Ms. Lawrimore said, “if he failed to use this position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation.”

Dr. Carmona is one of a growing list of present and former administration officials to charge that politics often trumped science within what had previously been largely nonpartisan government health and scientific agencies.

Dr. Carmona, 57, served as surgeon general for one four-year term, from 2002 to 2006, but was not asked to serve a second. Before being nominated, he was in the Army Special Forces, earned two purple hearts in the Vietnam War and was a trauma surgeon and leader of the Pima County, Ariz., SWAT team. He received a bachelor’s degree, in biology and chemistry, in 1976 and his M.D. in 1979, both from the University of California, San Francisco. He is now vice chairman of Canyon Ranch, a resort and residential development company.

His testimony comes two days before the Senate confirmation hearings of his designated successor, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr. Two members of the Senate health committee have already declared their opposition to Dr. Holsinger’s nomination because of a 1991 report he wrote that concluded that homosexual sex was unnatural and unhealthy. Dr. Carmona’s testimony may further complicate Dr. Holsinger’s nomination.

In his testimony, Dr. Carmona said that at first he was so politically naïve that he had little idea how inappropriate the administration’s actions were. He eventually consulted six previous surgeons general, Republican and Democratic, and all agreed, he said, that he faced more political interference than they had.

On issue after issue, Dr. Carmona said, the 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 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.”

Dr. Carmona testified under oath at a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California. The topic was strengthening the office of the surgeon general. Dr. C. Everett Koop, surgeon general in the Reagan administration, and Dr. David Satcher, surgeon general during the Clinton administration and the first year of the administration of George W. Bush, also testified.

Each complained about political interference and the declining status of the office. Dr. Satcher said that the Clinton administration discouraged him from issuing a report showing that needle-exchange programs were effective in reducing disease. He released the report anyway.

Dr. Koop, said he had been discouraged by top officials in the Reagan administration from discussing the AIDS crisis. He did so anyway.

All three men urged major changes in the way the surgeon general is chosen and the way the office is financed.
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Color me not surprised.

wnes · Jul 11, 2007

Misleading thread title -- should've been Former Surgeon General. Then again, I'd thought it was Joycelyn Elders.

nyquil82 · Jul 11, 2007

Caring for sick people has a liberal bias.

Sishir Chang · Jul 11, 2007

I didn't notice it in the article posted but in the report I saw about Dr. Satcher's testimony on ABC news said that the Clinton Admin. tried to supress a report he was doing on premarital sex during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

rhadamanthus · Jul 11, 2007

wnes said:

Misleading thread title -- should've been Former Surgeon General. Then again, I'd thought it was Joycelyn Elders.
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True. Probably should be "Bush admin" too.

Invisible Fan · Jul 11, 2007

It comes to a point where I think Bush believes in the garbage he's spewing, and that those again' him are the ones living in a pipe dream.

CBrownFanClub · Jul 11, 2007

I was going to post this too, it makes me insane. Pretty damning testimony - all the SGs had some political obstacles, but this seems far worse.

Carmona is the real deal too, youngest of a zillion kids, put himself through med school, has a record of impeccable military service - pissing on people like this is a disgrace, not to mention their work - e.g. presenting an actual Fair and Balanced scientific perspective on important health issues.

They tried to surpress a report on secondhand smoke? What the hell kind of whores are these people?

Clinton goofed with this stuff too - he's not exempt. But from the testimony, this is - as is everything with this groundbreaking crew of whoring miscreants who could give a rats ass about science, facts, evidence and respect for dissent - remarkable. I suggest people read his actual testimony, it is amazing. Maybe this administrations comic-if-it-weren't-ruining-the-planet disregard for integrity will actually motivate the media, the public and future generations of leaders into checking itself and being more vigilant against political machinations and outright lies that we have been through this administration - and previous ones. People actually die because of this stuff - a surgeon generals report can make a huge difference in NIH funding, private research and public awareness.

I just don't get the smoking one. Whores.

Sishir Chang · Jul 11, 2007

Invisible Fan said:

It comes to a point where I think Bush believes in the garbage he's spewing, and that those again' him are the ones living in a pipe dream.
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I think he and many of his supporters have always thought that way.

NewYorker · Jul 11, 2007

Just one more institution Bush has destroyed.

SamFisher · Jul 11, 2007

This story is NOT that remarkable for what it is.

However it is remarkable as a microcosm and exemplar of the absolutely unbelievably insane level of incompetency and hackery that is symbolic of the Bush White House.

He has really transcended from the point of mediocre to near-unanimously disgraceful. I mean he is reaching down to Buchanan-A.Johnson-Pierce-Harding territory.

He seems now in speeches to allude to his place in history to explain his smashing unpopularity. Well, history is going to have something to say all right....

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