Science-shmience

As I've said many times before, the current "ruling party" in the United States has not been particularly friendly towards science.

Today, the former Surgeon General of the United States testified that he was basically "muzzled" by the administration on a host of topics that they didn't want the American public to learn more about, from the very controversial (stem cell research) to the very well-documented (effects of secondhand smoke).

Here's a bit from the NYT article: (you might need to login)
"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.

Can you imagine, if C. Everettt Koop had been kept from talking about the spread of AIDS because Reagan thought homosexuality was immoral? (and there is some evidence that he thought this way, based on the letters that were just published. I can't find the reference right now, but I remember reading about it...)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ciao, Italia!

Image
Eating our homemade pasta at the Villa Third time's the charm, right? After two failed attempts to get to Italy (IXPUG Meeting in 2018, foiled by a Nor'easter, and May 2020 foiled by COVID) , we finally made it!  Friday, May 20: We were not the only ones in the airport with masks, but definitely in the minority. The flight to Dulles was uneventful, but the C and D gates at IAD were *packed*. Lots of school kids going to Europe.  We had the middle and window seats in the middle of the plane, but not in Premium Economy (which apparently didn't hold over from our tickets purchased 2 years ago). Ugh. The guy on the aisle was a fidgeter. And there were so many little kids on the plane! I felt bad - one of them cried for his mommy for about three straight hours. But I was also super grateful for my earplugs and eyeshades. The gluten-free food on the plane was HORRIBLE, btw. Do not recommend.  Saturday, May 21 I will say, when we arrived, it was the fastest passport check ever - E
Read more

I see London, I see France...

Image
Saturday, June 3: Landed in London on Saturday with only 2 hrs of sleep on the plane... which is what happens when you're seated right next to the restroom. Sigh. We dropped our stuff in the apartment and went to lunch with the parents, and then we went off to find the Polish museum - only open the first Saturday of the month. Of course, we went to the wrong tube stop and had to hike a million miles... The Polish gentleman who was the tour guide was a survivor of WWII, I think. He knew everything - and assumed that we knew nothing, especially about WWII, which is not a good assumption to make with our family. Anyway, John and I were totally exhausted after the museum, so we went back to the flat for a while. The 'rents had theater tickets, so John and I stumbled out to find dinner in the rain and ended up having burgers at GBK  in Earl's Court. I think the maitre'd was American. This was the start of my string of bunless burgers (gluten-free was hard to find) on this
Read more

Sixteen Days in the UK - Part 4

Image
Part 4: A little hiccup in our plans  On Wednesday , we slept late. We were exhausted from all of the travel and moving around and driving, so we took a lazy day. After breakfast, we did a little bit of shopping (Boots, Oxfam, and even a yarn shop) and took more photos. In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have started talking about how we couldn't wait to go home.  We had one thing on our calendar that had been scheduled since April - a tour of Castle Stalker , which was the castle out in the lake at the very end of " Monty Python and the Holy Grail ." The castle is a private residence, so they only do one tour a day, for 12 people. We had reservations for Wednesday afternoon. We decided to go see Dunstaffnage Castle on the way to Stalker, since both are near Oban.  Remember when we pissed off the faeries? Well, they were still mad.  We were finally motivated enough to leave at 2:30pm, at which point we discovered a flat tire - the front driver's
Read more