Response to NAS request for comment on S&T appointments (draft – KG 6 21 04 )

Remarks of Alden Meyer, UCS Director of Strategy and Policy Before the NAS Committee on Ensuring the Best Science and Technology Presidential and Federal Advisory Committee Appointments July 21, 2004 Thank you for the opportunity to share our views on your challenging task. It’s daunting to be the last speaker standing between you and Henry Waxman! Listening to this morning’s presentations and discussions, it struck me that there is a huge elephant sitting in the middle of the room – the mounting concern in the scientific community about the Bush administration’s suppression and distortion of scientific analyses, and its politicization of appointments to federal scientific advisory panels. These abuses affect many federal agencies across a wide range of issues. As Chairman Porter suggested, I’m not going to spend time recounting the details; these abuses have been widely reported in both the general and scientific press as well as in well-documented reports by UCS, Congressional offices, and many others. But the current dispute between the World Health Organization and political appointees at HHS is illustrative of the larger problem. HHS wants to control which of its scientists at NIH, CDC, FDA and other agencies under its control get to participate in meetings convened by the World Health Organization and other multilateral organizations -- presumably to ensure they adhere to the administration’s policy positions on controversial ...