George W. Bush’s War Against Science – A Personal Perspective [View All]

[Time for change]

As a scientist who has worked for the federal government (Food and Drug Administration) since 1999, I have thought a lot about this issue over the past several years, and I can tell you that I am not alone in saying that the enthusiasm I have for the work I do has declined greatly as a result of the war against science conducted by the Bush administration. An e-mail that I received recently from my union, the National Treasury Employee Union (NTEU – the largest independent federal union in the U.S., representing 150,000 federal employees) gives me hope that there may be many more government scientists out there than I realized who are as upset about this as I am.

Of course, the Bush administration’s war against science is not limited to the FDA. In addition to Bush’s recent squelching of embryonic stem cell research, there are countless other examples: Earlier this year he tried to silence Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA on the issue of global warming, following Dr. Hansen’s December 2005 lecture calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in order to reduce global warming. And I know of a woman scientist who recently quit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because of the Bush administration’s continued obstruction of public education regarding the use of condoms to prevent sexually transmitted disease, in favor of its religiously motivated abstinence only approach. In short, whenever scientific truth conflicts with George W. Bush’s religious ideology or the potential of his wealthy benefactors to reap profits at the expense of everyone else, science is always the loser. But I digress


NTEU press release warning of the politicization of the FDA

In the e-mail I received from the NTEU, they say that they will soon be putting out a press release commending the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) “for calling attention to critical gaps in the scientific integrity and lack of resources” at the FDA. In the press release, the NTEU notes the results of a survey of approximately 1,000 FDA scientists, co-sponsored by the UCS and by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), in which less than half of the surveyed FDA scientists believe that the FDA is providing the public with complete and accurate information on issues for which it is responsible. Related issues covered in the press release include:

 The politicization of science at the FDA
 Resulting morale problems
 Negative effects on protecting the public’s health – which is the responsibility of the FDA
 Pressuring of FDA scientists to concur with political opinions mandated from above
 The efforts of the Bush administration to privatize the scientific functions of the FDA

And the press release concludes with the NTEU saying that it intends to fight for a work environment where science takes priority over politics.


Some background on the FDA

In order to better appreciate the meaning of the Bush administration’s politicization of the work of the FDA, some brief background is in order:

President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the fact that powerful corporations, including those that manufactured food and drugs, posed a substantial danger to the American public because there were few if any safeguards to ensure the safety of their products. Consequently, he proposed and steered through Congress the Pure Food and Drug Act, which was enacted in 1906 for the purpose of protecting American consumers against dangerous foods and drugs manufactured by U.S. industries, and which was later expanded to address biological products and medical devices.

It is certainly possible, as George Bush has done, for a U.S. President to appoint political hacks to high level positions in purportedly scientific federal agencies such as the FDA. However, it is a much more difficult task for a president to infiltrate the many thousands of lower level science positions with political hacks. One major reason for this is that it has long been recognized that extensive education in the science of Public Health is required of scientists who fill scientific positions in federal public health agencies such as the FDA. Schools of public health throughout the United States educate aspiring scientists in the liberal tradition of using science to develop policies that will improve the health and quality of life of people. Consequently, by the time these people join the work force they have an outlook on their work that makes it extremely difficult for idiots appointed by the likes of George W. Bush and his minions to convince them to subvert their work to the dictates of political ideology or opportunism. And that is a major reason why the FDA has had a long history of effectiveness, which incited Dr. Howard Markel to editorialize in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

The FDA represented everything despised by the modern conservative movement. The FDA was a science-based policymaking agency, but its logic and evidence often failed to resonate with ideology-based policymakers and leaders. The FDA also was quite good at confronting businesses and reigning in their profit-seeking behavior if their interests conflicted with the public interest.

Some personal insights into the politicization of the FDA

I mentioned morale problems earlier in this post. One reason for morale problems is that FDA scientists sometimes work for months in evaluating a product for potential FDA approval, conclude that it is too dangerous to be approved, and then are simply over-ruled by higher level FDA managers, who have little or no understanding of the product and give no reasons for their decision. FDA managers often trip all over themselves to make sure that the representatives of powerful industries are happy with them. They wouldn’t think of making a major decision on a product without first inviting representatives of the applicable industry to meet in person with them, and yet the same courtesy is rarely afforded to consumer groups.

I was an FDA manager myself until a couple of years ago. Things were beginning to get somewhat tense, and then my supervisor informed me that from now on my performance evaluation would include the extent to which I enthusiastically described, to the scientists under my supervision, the programs supported by FDA management. I asked if that meant that I would be expected to pretend enthusiasm to my employees regarding programs with which I disagreed. The answer I was given was no (what else could my supervisor say to that), but the provision remained in my performance evaluation contract.

Then the FDA decided to pull a scientific article that I wrote that was about to be published in a widely read medical journal. The article had already been cleared by the FDA, but when the manufacturer of the medical device in question complained about the article to the Bush appointed FDA Commissioner, Lester Crawford, the FDA had second thoughts about it. Needless to say, I was not unhappy when someone leaked the story to the Wall Street Journal, where it appeared on their front page.

Another example of the FDA’s subservience to industry is its eagerness to approve silicone breast implants, a product with a rupture rate estimated at 30% to 70% (despite claims by the manufacturer that the rate is 1%), the common occurrence of serious clinical problems, and the frequent need for repeat surgery to address those problems. And then there was the scandal where the FDA ignored the warnings of Dr. David Graham about the lethal effects of the drug Vioxx, until publicity on the matter forced them to stop ignoring the situation.


One concluding remark

The Bush administration’s war against science is not unlike its decision to pressure the CIA into furnishing it with intelligence data that would provide political cover for its decision to invade Iraq, rather than intelligence data that could legitimately be used to assess the actual situation in Iraq. Like everything this administration does, it is just one facet of its much wider war against truth of any kind that interferes with its ideology or the profits of its wealthy benefactors.