The article, by a doctor named Robert Steinbrook, contains a very useful description of the federal advisory committee system, the so-called "Fifth Branch" of our government. These committees do not set policy, they make recommendations. There are about 1,000 of them at various agencies, the largest number (247) being within the Department of Health and Human Services. Over 50,000 people serve on these committees, and it costs $ 281 million to run them all.

Over the past several years, there have been widespread charges that the Bush administration has been trying to rig all of this by packing the various panels with friendly voices. Not only could this slant the groups' recommendations. It's also a relatively cost free way of awarding particular constituencies--particularly the religious right, which is of course going to get fired up when antiabortion types get named to committees.

Perhaps most notably, Steinbrook's piece contains a bit of news--namely, a new apparent politicization incident has surfaced, once again within HHS. To wit:

Dr. Gerald T. Keusch was associate director for international research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and director of the Fogarty International Center from October 1998 to December 2003. He is now assistant provost for global health at Boston University Medical Center and associate dean for global health at the Boston University School of Public Health. The Fogarty International Center Advisory Board is appointed by the secretary of health and human services and has about a dozen members. Keusch said in an interview that during the Clinton administration he proposed seven people for appointments to the board. All were approved by the director of the NIH and by Donna Shalala, the secretary, within a month. In 2001, during the first year of the Bush administration, Keusch proposed four people. After seven months, Thompson disapproved of three of the candidates. The total time that elapsed between the initial nominations and the final approval was nearly 14 months. "The function of the board was compromised during that period," Keusch said in an interview.

In total, during three years under the Bush administration, Keusch proposed 26 candidates, all of whom were approved by the director of the NIH. The secretary approved 7 of them, rejected 19, and also suggested alternative candidates, many of whom Keusch did not consider appropriate for the needs of the Fogarty International Center. According to Keusch, institute and center directors at the NIH are "in the absolutely best position to know their scientific needs and the scientific qualifications of the nominees for their advisory committees. Although the secretary makes the appointments, he or she is not in a position to judge the match between scientific needs and committee member capacity. Since these nominations are first reviewed by the NIH director's office, any further review at higher levels is unlikely to be scientific in nature."

In 1989, when President Bush's father was president, Louis W. Sullivan, the secretary of DHHS, tried to end a controversy over political tests for scientific jobs. The controversy had begun after candidates for leading positions were questioned about their views on abortion and research with the use of fetal tissue. Sullivan drew a line at the level of assistant secretary for health and said that below that level there would be no "ideological litmus test."

All in all, Steinbrook's piece notes, the current controversy suggests a bigger dispute over whether we value the views of experts in this country. Steinbrook quotes science policy scholar Sheila Jasanoff of Harvard, who has noted that by undermining the impartial role of experts on advisory committees, politicians are also challenging "almost the foundation stone on which the functioning of modern democracies has come to rest."

UPDATE: This post is getting a lot of pick up. See Political Animal, the Panda's Thumb, and Pharyngula.  
Posted by Chris Mooney at 11:09 AM Eastern | Comments


Those Wacky Swedish Stem Cell Lines
In my recent American Progress piece, I discussed the huge confusion over whether the Pentagon could legitimately fund stem cell research in Sweden. As I explained, there's no such thing as a "Sweden loophole"--a distinction between funding stem cell research at home and abroad. The Swedish lines in question were fair game not because they reside overseas, but because they were part of President Bush's original list.

But unfortunately, someone else has gotten confused. The Scientist has run a piece on the Sweden-Pentagon pseudo-controversy, containing this paragraph:

But federal funding of overseas stem cell research has raised a few eyebrows. In a letter to President Bush urging him to reconsider his position on federal funding for stem cell research, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey chided Bush for permitting the Pentagon's funding of the Swedish research group: “Citizens of this great nation deserve for American scientists to have the same access to government funding as their European counterparts.”

McGreevey's letter is here. Unfortunately, if you read the entire passage in question, it's clear that McGreevey, too, is falling for the bogus "Sweden loophole" theory:

At the same time, your policy on funding for stem cell research apparently only applies to research done within the United States. The U.S. Department of Defense recently granted $240,000 to a team in Sweden working on stem-cell research for Parkinson’s disease. Citizens of this great nation deserve for American scientists to have the same access to government funding as their European counterparts.

I hate to defend Bush here. But this misinformed criticism simply holds no water, based as it is on the erroneous notion that the president's "policy on funding for stem cell research apparently only applies to research done within the United States."

Unfortunately, The Scientist compounds the problem in its report, relying on McGreevey as its key example of a critic of the Pentagon's funding. The article's subtitle read, "Some criticize move by Dept of Defense to award $240,000 to Lund University researchers." But once you subtract one confused New Jersey governor, it's not clear that there are any remaining critics of this action.

So the hubbub continues over a stupid Reuters report that planted the erroneous idea that the Pentagon was doing something controversial. For me, the bigger lesson here is that very few people really understand Bush's stem cell research policy, or how and why it has restricted research. If they did, perhaps they would be even more outraged. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 10:31 AM Eastern | Comments

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

That Mercury News Editorial
Below I linked to a story about how Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, was shut down when she tried to distribute a San Jose Mercury News editorial to her House colleages. Since we're opposed to censorship here at The Intersection, here's the editorial she was trying to pass out. It's dated March 15, 2004:

The Bush administration has the manipulation of scientific data down to a science.

When it comes to imposing his ideology on the work of world-renowned scientists, the president is an equal opportunity meddler. Global warming. Stem cell research. The quality of our drinking water. Health issues (particularly those related to women's health). Nuclear weapons. Agricultural practices. Those are just a few of the areas in which Bush routinely uses politics to cater to big business or the religious fundamentalists.

Congress last fall asked the General Accounting Office to investigate. If the GAO's report, due in April, confirms a similar investigation conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Congress should immediately begin holding hearings aimed at ending future presidents' ability to distort and suppress science for political gain. And the scientific community's outrage over the administration's actions should be raised when judging the presidential candidates' credibility.

Consider the array of scientists and federal officials opposed to the administration's actions. Twenty Nobel laureates. Dozens of prominent scientists who cover the political spectrum. Even a collection of federal officials who served in Republican administrations, including President Nixon's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, William Ruckelshaus. It's also significant that no prominent scientists are surfacing to defend the Bush administration.

But it's difficult to defend distortions such as the National Cancer Institute's suggestion on its Web site that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer. The Institute posted that information despite the objections of Centers for Disease Control staff. Numerous examples of suppression or distortion of scientific data are contained in the Union of Concerned Scientists' report.

Bush has been quoted as saying, "Science and technology have never been more essential to the defense of the nation and the health of our economy."

Too bad his actions don't live up to his words.

The piece can also be read here. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 11:54 AM Eastern | Comments


13,000
March has been, by far, the most successful month yet for "The Intersection." Although it's not yet over, I have already amassed 13,000 unique visitors this month and 25,000 page views, according to StatCounteX. While still a modest total in comparison to some of the big blogs, this is more than three times the traffic when this blog first started, and shatters all my previous monthly totals. Clearly, there's plenty of interest out there about science and policy matters--especially as they relate to the Bush administration. And rest assured, I will stay on the beat. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 11:46 AM Eastern | Comments


The New York Times' Marburger Profile
The Times has now done a massive piece on Jack Marburger. There's no doubt it's high time for a profile; as writer James Glanz puts it, Marburger has become the "first line of defense against accusations that the Bush administration has systematically distorted scientific fact and stacked technical advisory committees to advance favored policies on the environment, on biomedical research and on other areas like the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq."

Interestingly, lots of high level members of the administration talked to by Glanz are singing Marburger's praises and saying the president likes him a lot--which may or may not be true. These are the same people who told the press repeatedly--and in retrospect unbelievably--that the President was "agonizing" over his stem cell decision.

What's most odd is that there's no mention in the piece of Dr. Marburger's promised response report to the charges against the administration made by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The closest thing is a vague mention in a quote:

Speaking directly about Dr. Marburger, Dr. Branscomb added, "I have a great deal of sympathy for his position, because I don't believe he has the authority, the power, to go back into all the agencies and unearth all the facts about all these cases."

Why would Glanz downplay Marburger's promise to issue a refutation, especially in such a lengthy profile as this? It's quite clear, after all, that such a refutation, if it ever comes, may be the key standard by which Marburger will be judged. And if it doesn't come...well, Marburger will be judged on that basis instead. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 11:13 AM Eastern | Comments


Zoe Barred
The Republicans seem to be getting a little testy about the critique of the president's science policies, at least according to this report.... 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 5:13 AM Eastern | Comments





Monday, March 29, 2004

A Plug
I've been meaning to give a shout out to The Panda's Thumb, a group of (mostly) scientists who are on the Intelligent Design beat 24/7. I think it's very important to see all this intellectual firepower lining up to combat the ID movement, which is finally being recognized for what it is--a true threat to science education in this country, and one on a par with the creationism of yore. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 2:18 PM Eastern | Comments


Fishy Behavior
Okay, so here's the latest. Yet another group of scientists claims their views were censored from a government agency report, this time at the National Marine Fisheries Service. From Friday's Los Angeles Times:

Six leading marine scientists, who were hired as government advisors only to find their recommendations stripped from an official report, went public today with their views — that federal action is urgently needed to protect more than a dozen populations of West Coast salmon and steelhead trout from the threat of extinction.

The scientists published their recommendations in today's issue of the journal Science after their advice was dropped from a scientific review of salmon recovery methods commissioned by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"We were trying to do an honest job and we were called radical environmentalists," said Ransom Myers, a fisheries biologist from Dalhousie University in Canada. "It was troubling to administrators we objected to the policy that habitat did not need to be protected. There was a clear implication if we continued to talk about policy, the group would be disbanded."

Now note, there's already an official response on the record disputing what the scientists say, from NMFS director William Hogarths. Hogarths says the scientists wouldn't separate out policy recommendations from hard analysis, and so the agency's actions were appropriate. For those who want to claim the Bush administration doesn't politicize science, it will be easy to simply opt to side with Hogarths' account.

But unfortunately, that's the head in the sand approach. There have been so many of these incidents by now that any reasonable person would agree that there's something systematic going on. That's the view of Science editor in chief Donald Kennedy, as quoted in the Times:

"This administration has developed such a reputation for scientific censorship that it wouldn't be a surprise if this had been ordered removed from Washington," said Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford University and now editor of Science.

Kennedy described the six scientists as top-notch and noted that their article easily withstood review by scientific peers before publication.

"Differences on scientific issues should be argued on the merits," Kennedy said, "and censorship isn't the way to conduct an honest debate."

This dispute, as with many others, goes back to the hotly contested Endangered Species Act, which has been on the front lines of the science wars. I should have more on this subject relatively soon...... 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 7:40 AM Eastern | Comments





Friday, March 26, 2004

That Salon Piece
Tons of people yesterday sent me this Salon article, by Farhad Manjoo, which discusses the Bush administration's stifling of stem cell research. Perhaps seeking to be contrarian, the piece also defends Leon Kass and the President's Council on Bioethics against the charges levied by Elizabeth Blackburn.

I totally agree with Manjoo's deadly condemnation of Bush's stem cell policy. But I wasn't at all convinced by the supposed Blackburn takedown. A couple of reasons:

1. Manjoo writes, "the council's reports--particularly its lengthy inquiry into stem cell research, which the council released in January--bear none of the biases [Blackburn] has accused the council of harboring." That's nonsense. I haven't read the stem cell report, but I've read Blackburn's critique of the "Beyond Therapy" report as well as the chapter of that report that she doesn't like (which is on aging). The critique totally nails the chapter, which offensively pretends that scientists seeking to give people longer healthier lives are hubristically chasing after immortality. For more on this, see here.

2. Manjoo writes of the President's Council on Bioethics that it "can't be called a conservative group." Once again, that's nonsense. It can and has been called that repeatedly--and that was before Kass added three pro-lifers. See here.

3. Manjoo says Blackburn was isolated in her feeling that Leon Kass was unwilling to "accept competing views." "None of the members of the council, even those on Blackburn's side of the debate, would corroborate this view for Salon," Manjoo writes. Yet in the very next paragraph, he notes that Blackburn's critique of the council reports was co-authored with another council member, Janet Rowley. Furthermore, Rowley has been outspoken in her criticisms of the way Blackburn was treated. So Manjoo's attempt to suggest that Blackburn doesn't have any allies or sympathizers isn't at all convincing.

4. Manjoo asserts that the Elizabeth Blackburn case isn't what has been claimed: Another chapter in the Bush administration's politicization of science. In the process, he conveniently fails to mention the most controversial part of the Blackburn story--that she and another pro-research member of the council were replaced by three pro-lifers. And that anti-abortion groups love it. The Bush administration's ideological stacking of advisory panels has been one of the chief complaints against it, of course, and there's no disputing that that's what happened in this case.

So in summary: The Salon piece is good on the subject of how stem cell research has ground to a halt. I have no idea why it's so weak on the Blackburn question.  
Posted by Chris Mooney at 10:16 AM Eastern | Comments


Timing is Everything
Earlier this week, Senators Joe Lieberman and Dick Durbin demanded that the Office of Management and Budget kill its controversial peer review proposal. The proposal would only help the White House continue its science games, they write:

The Bulletin would also enable the Administration to further politicize science, by giving the White House unfettered power to expedite or delay the release of scientific information and to influence the manner in which it is reviewed by agencies. Not only will the OIRA Administrator have power to waive peer review when the Administration determines that immediate release is desirable, but the Administrator would also be empowered to impose this OMB-supervised process of peer review - including the requirement that the agency consult in advance with OIRA and the White House science and technology office concerning the review - whenever the Administrator asserts that the information is "relevant to an Administration policy priority." This White House has already built a very troubling record of distorting regulatory science for political ends over the past three years. For example, it stripped critical data on climate change from an EPA report earlier this year and prevented EPA employees from disseminating their best professional advice regarding air quality around Ground Zero in Manhattan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Last month a group of 60 prominent scientists, including 20 Nobel Prize winners, released a statement criticizing the Administration's handling of scientific information, stating, "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice." The OMB's proposed rules, by institutionalizing the requirement that expert agencies work with the White House in conducting scientific reviews, would further undermine the public's confidence in the Administration's handling of scientific information.

What's interesting is, OMB proposed this peer review policy in late September. The office has already received ton of comments on it, many of them extremely critical--especially from the scientific community. I have to think that by releasing this demand now, Lieberman and Durbin are trying to block the release of a finished peer review policy from OMB, which they must know is in the works. It will be interesting to see whether despite all the criticism, OMB stays the course. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 9:48 AM Eastern | Comments





Thursday, March 25, 2004

At American Progress
I've done a piece for the Center for American Progress today, which can be read here. It's about how badly the press covers cloning and stem cell research, and the political consequences of this coverage. Here's how it starts:

Last week some journalists thought they had found a juicy story, full of conflict: The military was doing an apparent end run around the Bush administration's restrictive policy on stem cell research. "The Pentagon has granted $240,000 to a Swedish team for embryonic stem-cell research linked to Parkinson's disease... despite U.S. government limits on stem-cell research," reported Reuters on March 17. The president may have curtailed research "in this country," noted MSNBC host Keith Olbermann in reaction to the news, but he "never mentioned Sweden." "Let's see if we got this straight," added the Dallas Morning News. "An injection of federal money triggers the restrictions on [stem cell] research at American universities... So the Pentagon finds a university in Sweden that is happy to conduct the research."

Um, no. The supposed "Sweden loophole" - a distinction between using federal funds for American university stem cell research and research abroad - is nonsense. Despite the misleading Reuters report, the Pentagon was in fact supporting research on two stem cell lines that had been derived by Swedish researchers before the president's August 2001 deadline and were therefore eligible for federal funding. This non-story created considerable confusion, however, and underscores key deficiencies in the way journalists have covered stem cell and cloning issues in the United States. These failings aren't trivial: They've often helped to mask serious flaws in the president's policies.

The rest is here. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 11:29 AM Eastern | Comments


New GOP Talking Points (Same as the Old GOP Talking Points)
God, don't you just love it when Republican strategy memos suddenly pop up in the media? The latest one is particularly choice. Here's how it says to spin global warming:

Memo: Global warming is not a fact. "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." (Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen)

The memo even provides a handy contrarian expert to refer to and everything. And it's pretty consistent with the previously exposed Luntz memo, which also outlines a strategy for engaging in scientific disputation on the climate issue. Luntz's take on the whole thing, though, is rather cynical. But here, at least, there's no reason to doubt that the memo author actually believes what he or she is saying. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 8:17 AM Eastern | Comments





Wednesday, March 24, 2004

How the Other Side Thinks
Yesterday I attended this event hosted by the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank that approaches issues at the intersection of science and politics in a very different way than I do. Marshall had assembled a panel to rebut the recent move by the Union of Concerned Scientists (and a number of distinguished scientist signatories) to expose the Bush administration's alarming record on the politicization of science. Marshall's response in a nutshell? UCS and its allies are themselves science politicizers--and anyway, they're don't understand the fundamental distinction between science and policy in the first place.

The Marshall Institute folks were very friendly to me at the event; the goal of this post is not to slam them. Still, I want to provide a brief record of the emerging arguments from the other camp and offer some reasons why I don't find them very persuasive. That's particularly important as we await both the delivery of Bush science adviser John Marburger's rebuttal to UCS's charges (about which more here) and a Senate hearing on the whole matter.

At the event yesterday, a brief introduction by Marshall Institute president William O'Keefe, former chief operating officer of the American Petroleum Institute, set the tone. O'Keefe called it "no mere coincidence" that the UCS foray came in an election year, strongly suggesting that the report represented nothing more than a political attack. But I'm afraid I just don't buy it. First of all, scientists don't mobilize easily around political issues, and they didn't mobilize in this way against either Reagan or Bush I.

Rather than being a political stunt, it's clear to me from my reporting that anger at the Bush administration in the science community has been building for several years now. It takes time for such outrage to accumulate, and for the administration to rack up such a poor record that it can be charged with systematic abuses. And even so, the UCS report wasn't launched particularly close to the election--it came out some eight months prior and had been in the works for quite a long time before that.

Another point made by O'Keefe was more intriguing. "Much of the recent commentary has dealt with disagreement over policy" rather than over science, he said. This was a consistent theme at the Marshall press conference. From the event, you would hardly know that in their statement denouncing the Bush administration, the scientists assembled by UCS had themselves carefully outlined the distinction between pure science and policy:

Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences. Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies.

In other words, nobody disagrees about this. So I found it a tad unfair for the Marshall Institute to accuse the other side of not grasping a core distinction that's fundamental to any discussion of the politicization of science.

The speaker after O'Keefe was Adam Keiper, managing editor of The New Atlantis, a relatively new conservative publication that debuted with a big essay by our friend Leon Kass. Keiper unhelpfully began by discussing the well known cold fusion fiasco of a while back, remarking that some people still believe in cold fusion and then adding that we're now faced with a "new sort of conspiracy theory"--the idea that the Bush administration is conducting a war on science. Comparing the twenty Nobel laureates who signed the UCS statement to cold fusion believers is simply laughable, and I will let it pass without other commentary.

Keiper then continued by stating that the "facts really don't support" the anti-Bush case on a number of issues. In particular, he cited arsenic in drinking water, the recent controversy over the President's Council on Bioethics, and stem cell research. I'm not particularly knowledgeable on the arsenic issue, but I have shown here that the facts do support the charges on the latter two topics. In particular, I can't help noting that while Keiper drew a distinction between eligible and available stem cell lines, he failed entirely to mention the recent news (PDF) suggesting that only 23 stem cell lines will ever be available under Bush's policy--far fewer than the president promised. Misstating the number of available stem cell lines is a misrepresentation of scientific information, not a matter of policy upon which reasonable people can disagree.

Other speakers then followed Keiper, most prominently Robert Walker, former chair of the House Science Committee under Newt Gingrich. Walker again stressed the "extremely complex" interrelationship between science and politics and said the UCS report failed to grasp that dynamic. But in fact, while there were several attempts to rebut specific cases cited in the UCS report at the Marshall event, it was never clearly shown that UCS had weighed in on disputes strictly involving policy instead of on apparent abuses of science. Just labeling UCS as liberal--which, to be fair, it is--doesn't prove that the group fails to grasp this elementary distinction.

In conclusion, let me say that I have no particular brief for the UCS report, which I haven't even read cover to cover. Still, I find it curious that so much energy is being devoted to refuting this document, while no one has even bothered to refute the earlier, and arguably stronger, Waxman report. The strategy certainly makes sense if you're trying to minimize the extent of the current controversy, but as I explain here, it simply isn't going to cut it in the long run. The scientific outrage today is far more significant than the UCS report alone, and concerns a number of issues not even mentioned there. Even if the report was an utter sack of garbage filled with nothing but lies, the scientific case against President Bush would remain extremely strong. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 6:48 AM Eastern | Comments

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Gained in Translation
Well, here's the first known reference to my work in Portugese:

Mas a questão tornou-se mesmo notícia e é pouco provável que desapareça rapidamente da ribalta. Um jornalista "free-lancer", Chris Mooney, está mesmo a preparar um livro sobre a politização da ciência na Administração Bush (Mooney tem um blog, consultável em http://www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp ).

Now broadcasting worldwide.... 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 9:35 AM Eastern | Comments


CQ Weighs In
You can't get it because it's behind a subscription wall. But Congressional Quarterly has now done a big weekly cover story on the politics of science. I'm just going to comment on a few of the more interesting parts. First of all, I greatly appreciated this quote from climate science contrarian Patrick Michaels, who really tells it like it is:

"Sound science is whatever I believe and you don't," said Patrick J. Michaels, a University of Virginia professor, fellow at the libertarian CATO Institute and climatologist who is one of the country's best known skeptics of global warming. "Sound science is usually used in a context that means anything but."

Amen to that. The following, however, is total nonsense, as an article I'm currently working on will show:

In some cases, the influence of sound-science arguments has exposed weaknesses in the research used to back up major laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, which now may be overhauled after years of conflict with developers and property owners.

I'd like to see the GOP try to overhaul the Endangered Species Act in an election year. Furthermore, it's a hoax to claim that "sound science" proponents have exposed problems with the use of science in the ESA. That claim is largely based on a single case that's been misinterpreted. See here for more on that.

Meanwhile, this reference to the strategic use of the phrase "sound science" is the earliest that I'm aware of:

In a September 1981 news release on the prospects for future federal regulation, the president of the National Agricultural Chemicals Association "emphasized the continuing need for the application of 'sound science' to risk assessment decisions, including legislation which would create an 'independent panel of scientific experts' to assess and advise regulatory agencies on the risks of pesticides and other chemicals."

Interesting that it goes back that far... 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 7:13 AM Eastern | Comments


A Strawman
I know this isn't on science but I couldn't resist. David Brooks writes:

If you believe that the separation of church and state means that people should not bring their religious values into politics, then, if Chappell is right, you have to say goodbye to the civil rights movement. It would not have succeeded as a secular force.

Excuse me: Does anyone think that's what the separation of church and state means? As a strong disestablishmentarian, I don't recognize my views at all reflected in what Brooks writes. Of course people can bring their religious values into politics. But the government can't officially write those values into policy or privilege one religion over another. Duh. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 6:41 AM Eastern | Comments


Pay Attention to the Problem
This piece from The Scientist discusses the growing ecological problem posed by invasive species--the number one cause of extinctions after habitat loss--and our government's failure to do much about it. This screw-up is particularly noteworthy:

Government agencies are not only failing to cooperate, but, in some cases, are even working against each other, said Ann Bartuska, deputy chief for research and development at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service. For example, while the National Park Service was attempting to prevent buffelgrass, which was intentionally introduced into the southwest United States as a source of hardy vegetation, from spreading to parklands and pushing out native plants, the USDA was simultaneously developing a hardier, cold-resistant buffelgrass strain.

A few months back, living in New Orleans, I was dismayed to see the bayou of City Park completely choked by invasive water hyacinth (I think that's what it was), which had spread like a sheet across the entire waterway. I won't torture you with a nature lover's dirge about how the plant discouraged ducks from swimming there, or anything like that. I'll just say that it was very depressing. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 6:29 AM Eastern | Comments





Monday, March 22, 2004

Chewing on the Fat
In an editorial that seems to have arrived about a week late, the Washington Post says it isn't ready for obesity lawsuits. But the paper does suggest looking closely at some other actions to curb the fat epidemic:

More ambitious regulatory action ought to be seriously considered to answer questions such as these: Should junk foods be so readily available in schools? Should the government require food labeling at fast-food restaurants?

It seems to me that the junk food in schools issue is a political no-brainer (just as any issue that turns on protecting kids usually is). A Democratic administration would, at the very least, be proposing something along these lines at this point. Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to hide behind "personal responsibility" and a weak proposal to rejigger food labels--hardly the kind of actions that one would usually take to combat a public health emergency. 
Posted by Chris Mooney at 6:41 AM Eastern | Comments


Bush's Confusing Stem Cell Policy
Last week, a dumb Reuters report made it seem like the Pentagon was doing an end run around the Bush administration's stem cell policy (something I blogged about here). In the "Progress Report," the Pentagon funding was even dubbed "an act of stunning hypocrisy."

But as Longevity Meme points out (citing this report), this is all a big confusion. The Pentagon funding went to research on stem cell lines that are fair game for federal funding under Bush's policy--i.e., they were derived before August of 2001.

Still, I don't really blame Reuters very much for what happened. Sure, reporters should do their homework. But what kind of modern country decides that it's okay to conduct research on a stem cell line if it was derived from an embryo on one day but not if it was derived on another? When you think about it, it's Bush's policy--not the Reuters screw-up--that's truly lampoonable.  
Posted by Chris Mooney at 12:24 AM Eastern | Comments