Science and the White House: of condoms and climate

A safety technician at a nuclear power plant--lets call him Homer--is monitoring the critical functions of the plant one day when a light warning of excessive temperatures flashes red. Homer, fearing he may be forced to address the problem, takes a screwdriver to the warning light and disables it.

Thankfully, this account is fictional, but the actions of George W. Bush aren't, and they are being revealed as equally reckless.

To push some of the more questionable parts of his agenda, Bush has dismissed and distorted the findings of science as cavalierly as Homer sabotaging the warning light. Over the past three years, science has been kneecapped--the casualty of an administration's preference for selected anecdotes over facts, wishful thinking over informed predictions, and ideology over reality.

Here's a bit of reality: teenagers have sex. We don't need a study to know this and to recognize there are significant consequences, such as in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease. But science can suggest what to do about it. The most effective, proven way to reduce pregnancy and disease among teens is to tell them how to do so: "Don't have sex, and if you do, protect yourself. This is a condom. This is what it does."

But the president is intent on pleasing the constituency his father failed to satisfy. In the first year of George W'.s term, his administration was faced with a dilemma: comprehensive sex-ed programs--ones that discuss safe sex as well as abstinence--reduce rates of intercourse and pregnancy (and, consequently, abortions). But there is no evidence that abstinence--only programs, which the president's strongest supporters favor, have any effect on behavior.

Did the Department of Health and Human Services (which is charged with advancing, not impeding, the nation's health) concede that a realistic approach to teens and sex is more effective than the head-in-the-sand strategy preferred by conservative Christian activists? No. Instead, it changed the definition of effective. It now measures success with factors like teens' "intention" to abstain from sex rather than actual abstinence.

And in a nod to George Orwell's 1984, the current Bush administration brought information-control techniques into the electronic age, deleting its own web pages on effective sex-ed programs and condom use.

"It's my expectation that science [will] not move backward in this administration," the president's newly nominated science adviser, John Marburger III stated in an interview with National Public Radio. (He was nominated a full eight months after Bush's inauguration, indicating how anxious the president was to get some scientific guidance. The adviser's appointment also came with an immediate demotion.) Marburger quickly added that he hopes science moves forward, but the real issue is whether the administration actually uses science to track the effects of policies and to advance the national interest. On this matter, the administration's actions are self-contradictory at best.

Earlier this year Bush announced a plan to send humans to Mars. As with "missile defense," much of the required science doesn't yet exist. So how will we get there? Is he going to invite the Christian Coalition to advise NASA on payload distribution or the appropriate layout of the astronauts' living quarters?

In all likelihood he will present NASA with the goals and the budget requirements and then let the scientists and engineers do their work. He realizes that, when it comes to achieving results--in this case, expanding the United States' presence in space--science is really the only game in town.

So the president is not against science per se. In fact, in his speech on space exploration, he proudly trumpeted its potential to spin off new technologies and to take Americans to Mars. It's just that his tolerance of science abruptly ends when it questions his policies here on Earth.

The administration's reaction to global warming demonstrates this well. While some of the science on its impacts is still preliminary, the consensus is solid on the fundamentals: the earth is heating up, due in large part to human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide. The consequences could be severe. The Bush administration did eventually acknowledge the scientific consensus behind global warming (the original tactic was to give equal weight to a handful of industry-connected scientists who doubted it), but it has been working to undermine science and the public's awareness of it ever since.

In one case, the president's advisers insisted on major revisions to a key environmental report. According to the New York Times, the section on global warming was altered so thoroughly that the Environmental Protection Agency asserted it "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change." The EPA pulled the entire section from the report to avoid publishing science that isn't credible. And in a blow to the conduct of the science itself, the State Department opposed the reappointment of the respected chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, offering no scientific rationale. The scientist was forced to step down.

Before taking office, Marburger had remarked, "The science [behind global warming] is clear, so the policy is going to follow" Since then, though, the administration has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol and offered no plan of its own for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

It's difficult to overestimate the significance of this, because there is a strong consensus among the world's scientists that unchecked global warming could be devastating for people and the economy. What would happen if the president refused to address a threat that military analysts agreed threatened the country? Congress would surely initiate impeachment proceedings. Bush's failure to respond to warnings from the scientific community is an equally serious dereliction of duty.

The administration's willful ignorance of, and interference with, science extends to numerous policies, most of which concern public health and the environment. According to a detailed report compiled by a congressional committee (minority staff), the Bush administration has: falsely portrayed abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer; suppressed investigations into the health impacts of perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel; stacked a committee that provides advice on environmental health with industry-connected individuals; obstructed the development of science-based policies and research on HIV/AIDS among the gay population; replaced qualified scientists on a committee studying lead in drinking water with consultants from the lead industry; and so on. In each case, the administration's actions run counter to scientific conclusions, attempt to prevent those conclusions from being made public, or work to completely replace scientific input with the wishes of industry.

What could possibly encourage the government of the most powerful nation in the world to relegate science (which was indispensable to its very success) to the status of a psychic adviser? Curiously, in the same interview, Marburger offered a hint. He explained, quite candidly, "There are lots of other competing interests; there are lots of reasons you do things other than science" These "competing interests" are apparently the companies and industries that benefit from the administration's disinformation campaigns and the far-right groups that comprise the president's base. They were crucial in electing him, and they are crucial to his next campaign.

Less critical to President Bush's reelection machine, though, are the groups put at risk by his continual obstruction of science. These groups include people who have (or might contract) HIV/AIDS, people who might benefit from stem-cell research, people who depend on the environment, children who drink water, teens and women.

Science is not just another special interest, as Marburger seems to imply. In fact, it is the most reliable tool for understanding the present and predicting the future. And while it can't contribute to every debate (whether prayer should be allowed in school, for example), it does provide a reality check on most policy, giving the public the rare opportunity to evaluate the actions of their government without the government's spin.

President Bush's record on science betrays two things: a fear of openness and a deep aversion to science and rationality. The former characterizes the despotic regimes of the communist bloc; the latter, Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s. That Bush's supporters and much of the mainstream media seem to tolerate these traits in the president of the United States is disconcerting and dangerous in this day and age.

But the voters are increasingly aware of how they are being handled and the lengths to which this administration goes to manage and control information. They will soon conclude, I believe, that in obstructing the most objective knowledge of all, the president has gone further than a free society can tolerate.

Chris F. Ryan is a freelance writer and photographer in Santa Cruz, California. He can be contacted at chris@viewsoftheworld.com.

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