A No-Show in Politics

Whining and righteousness get you no place in politics. Nevertheless, those are the pop-gun responses of mainstream science to the Bush administration's persistent moves to stack federal science-advisory committees with appointees friendly to its conservative agenda. Here and there, a protesting letter to the editor, a bit of irate testimony on Capitol Hill, preachments to the faithful via an editorial in Science. But when it comes to real politics--raising money and running ads for friendly candidates, ringing doorbells, propagandizing the public--science is a no-show on the political landscape, in last November's Congressional elections, as in past elections. Not so lawyers, teachers, physicians, real-estate agents, pharmaceutical drug manufacturers, loan sharks, and polluters. In science and healthcare politics, the administration remains virtually unchallenged, and it's moving aggressively on many fronts. That means appointees opposed to abortion, family planning, and sex counseling beyond the charming notion of abstinence until marriage in sex-charged America. The ideological selectivity also extends to appointments that undermine strict enforcement of federal environmental and consumer-safety laws, protection of human-research subjects, and a host of other federal programs targeted by the right-wing core of the president's party and its corporate backers. Most of the carnage is concentrated in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), but it extends to many parts of government. At an accelerating pace, there's a demolition of committee memberships inherited by the administration and rightward recruiting of replacements. Thus, the administration has dropped 15 of 18 members of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Center for Environmental Health (within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), replacing many of them with chemical and petroleum industry scientists on record against forceful government regulation. The person first reported as interim chair of the Reproductive Drugs Health Advisory Committee at the Food and Drug Administration is an obstetrician-gynecologist opposed to abortion and fond of faith healing; but, after an eruption of outraged comments, the administration changed its mind. The advisory committee drew the ire of the right-to-life camp two years ago when it recommended approval of mifepristone (RU-486), the so-called morning-after abortifacient. Abolition is the fate of the HHS Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing, which earned the enmity of the booming home-kit testing industry by expressing qualms about the reliability and utility of their products. Also abolished was the Human Research Protections Advisory Committee, which angered the pharmaceutical industry with recommendations for stricter observance of patient protection in clinical drug trials. The committee that advises federal health officials on childhood lead poisoning has been enriched with several appointees drawn from industry; reappointment was not offered Michael Weitzman, a University of Rochester pediatrician long in the vanguard of lead-reduction measures. In addition to the ideological appointments, there's programmatic carnage that includes crippling restrictions on federal support of stem-cell research, a chimerical indifference to global warming, and opposition to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, despite reliable studies showing that undetected cheating is virtually impossible. Defenders of the administration correctly point out that changes of party control at the White House are customarily accompanied by new appointments and course changes. A few months after Bill Clinton moved into the White House, an angered Vice President Al Gore accelerated the previously planned departure of a senior Department of Energy official who did not share his high concern about global warming. Doubting the loyalty of the corps of science advisers left over from the Johnson administration, an irate Richard Nixon abolished the White House Office of Science and Technology and its many advisory committees. Politics in science is nothing new. What is new with the current administration is an emphasis on ideological purity that goes beyond the usual interest in party affiliation, plus its persistent deference to corporate interests, with lesser concern for scientific and technical capability. Advisory committees, which often drone on for long hours of technical discussion, rarely receive close attention of the press but can be extremely influential in shaping the policies and practices of federal agencies. For undermining long-standing federal programs in reproductive health, environmental protection, consumer safety, and numerous other areas, capture of the advisory structure is a critically useful step. In the politically aware ranks of science, the assault has not gone unnoticed. In an Oct. 25, 2002, editorial in Science, "Advice Without Dissent," 10 academic scientists observed that prior administrations, while making their own appointments, recognized the value of diversity. But noting the thrust of the Bush administration's appointments, they concluded, "Regulatory paralysis appears to be the goal here, rather than the application of honest balanced science." Is anyone outside of science registering these protests? Yes, but faintly. The concerns expressed in the Science editorial resonated on Capitol Hill, where 12 House demo-crats, in a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, deplored science policy "driven by ideology rather than by science." But in a body of 435 members, the showing was not impressive. When it comes to politicking about heartfelt matters, mainstream science can be highly effective. Mainly, however, these heartfelt matters concern money for science. Fresh from the successful outcome of its long campaign to double the budget of the National Institutes of Health over five years, the biomedical research community is pounding the corridors of Capitol Hill on behalf of another swift doubling. Taking a cue from the triumphant bioscientists, beneficiaries of the National Science Foundation have won Congressional endorsement--though not yet the money--for their own doubling campaign. The pursuit of money intensely energizes the leaders and masses of science. The corruption of the science-advisory system apparently disturbs only a few. Daniel S. Greenberg, a Washington journalist, is author of Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

A No-Show in Politics

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