Just curious...has Congress ever attempted to investigate the Bush administration's history of watering down federal reports that don't fit into their political philosophy?
One of the things that came out of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona's testimony on the Hill yesterday, was his statement that top officials delayed (by years) and watered down Carmona's report on the effects of second-hand smoke.
From the
New York Times:
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. (More at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11surgeon.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1184195067-zLLQepJJtPwf/FI7rt+QFw&oref=slogin)
And this is not the first instance in which this administration watered down a federal report thatat might not have fight into their political or other views.
For example, a January 14, 2004
Washington Postarticle revealed that the White House edited a federal report on racial disparities in health care. According to the Post,
"a comparison with an earlier draft shows that the version released in December played down the imbalances and was less critical of the lack of equality."From the
Washington Post:
A federal report on racial disparities in health care was revised at the behest of top administration officials -- and a comparison with an earlier draft shows that the version released in December played down the imbalances and was less critical of the lack of equality.
Government officials acknowledged and defended the changes yesterday, even as critics charged that the department of Health and Human Services rewrote what was to be a scientific road map for change to put a positive spin on a public health crisis: Minorities receive less care, and less high-quality care, than whites, across a broad range of diseases.
The earlier draft of the report's executive summary, for example, described in detail the problems faced by minorities and the societal costs of the disparities, and it called such gaps "national problems."
-snip-
Government officials agreed that the tone of the report had been changed, saying the revisions reflected HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson's strategy of triggering improvement by focusing on the positive.
"That's just the way Secretary Thompson wants to create change," said Karen Migdail, a spokeswoman at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the HHS unit that drafted the report. "The idea is not to say, 'We failed, we failed, we failed,' but to say, 'We improved, we improved, we improved.'" (More at
http://web.msm.edu/OSP/OSP%20Blue/OSP%20Blue/Bulletinfiles/Racial%20Disparities%20Played%20Down%20At%20Request%20of%20Top%20Officials.doc)
Think Progress has documented many other instances as well:
The White House’s White-Out Problem
http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=1127We need to encourage Congress to get to the bottom of this.
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