NPR Features Opinion By Former Assistant Surgeon General Urging Obama To End Bush 'Subversion' Of Scientific Research

Main Category: Sexual Health / STDs
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Women's Health / Gynecology;  Public Health
Article Date: 13 Nov 2008 - 8:00 PST

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President-elect Barack Obama should "[s]top the government subversion of scientific research that has been going on for the last eight years" under President Bush, Douglas Kamerow -- former U.S. assistant surgeon general and a family physician -- said Monday in an opinion piece on NPR's "Day to Day." Kamerow pointed to the areas of women's health and contraception, saying that the Bush administration has "insisted on and publicized the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education despite a lack of evidence for it. It posted erroneous data linking abortion and breast cancer on the [CDC] Web site." The Bush administration also "distorted evidence on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission" and delayed for more than three years FDA approval of over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive Plan B, "despite overwhelming evidence of its safety and effectiveness." Kamerow continued that while he understands that each president in office will promote his own political agenda to some degree, Bush's order ending foreign aid support to family planning programs that use their own funds to counsel patients on abortions "was at least presented as a policy decision, not a scientific one."

The administration's "distortion and withholding of scientific evidence in the service of ideology" was not "simple 'spin,'" Kamerow said, adding, "Friends and former colleagues throughout the government have told me that the extent of falsification and suppression of scientific evidence by this administration is unprecedented." He suggested that Obama in his first week in office issue an executive order "supporting unimpeded scientific research, the primacy of peer review and the freedom of government scientists to submit their research results for publication." Obama also should "pledge not to interfere with the scientific processes and activities of government agencies," Kamerow said, concluding, "This is a low-cost change in policy that has a good chance of improving the health and health care of all Americans" (Kamerow, "Day to Day," NPR, 11/10).

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