‘This will be a political document, or it will not be released’

July 29, 2007

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee earlier this month that he wanted to use his stature as the “nation’s doctor” to speak out on public health issues, but the Bush gang wouldn’t let him: “Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological, or political agenda is ignored, marginalized, or simply buried.”

Here’s Exhibit A.

A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Carmona was reportedly told that he had strayed from the White House script. A “senior official” told him, “You don’t get it…. This will be a political document, or it will not be released.” Carmona balked at the proposed changes, and the report was shelved.

This wasn’t just another addition to the list of the Bush gang politicizing science; this report, the culmination of a broad effort involving governmental and non-governmental work, was going to be an important contribution to the international discussion on public health.

In 65 pages, the report charts trends in infectious and chronic disease; reviews efforts to curb AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; calls for the careful monitoring of public health to safeguard against bioterrorism; and explains the importance of proper nutrition, childhood immunizations and clean air and water, among other topics. Its underlying message is that disease and suffering do not respect political boundaries in an era of globalization and mass population movements.

The report was compiled by government and private public-health experts from various organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, the Catholic Medical Mission Board and several universities. Steiger’s global health office provided the funding and staff to lead the effort because the surgeon general’s office has no budget and few staff members of its own.

“It covered all of the contemporary issues of public health, from environmental health through infectious disease transmission,” said Jerrold M. Michael, a former assistant surgeon general and a former longtime dean of the University of Hawaii School of Public Health, who worked on the report. […]

Three people involved in the preparation of an initial draft in 2005 said it received largely positive reviews from global health experts both inside and outside the government, prompting wide optimism that the report would be publicly released that year. The Commissioned Officers Association, a nonprofit group representing more than 7,000 current and retired officers of the U.S. Public Health Service, organized a global health summit in June 2005 in Philadelphia where Carmona was expected to unveil the report in a keynote address — but he was not cleared to release it there.

Richard Walling, a former career official in the HHS global health office who oversaw the draft, said Steiger was the official who blocked its release. “Steiger always had his political hat on,” he said. “I don’t think public health was what his vision was. As far as the international office was concerned, it was a political office of the secretary. . . . What he was looking for, and in general what he was always looking for, was, ‘How do we promote the policies and the programs of the administration?’ This report didn’t focus on that.”

Another gem for the Great List of disappeared information over the last six and a half years.

Bush and his gang of sycophants just create “truths” as they go along. He has never, until now, been held accountable for such irresponsible behavior. But this time, even if we the American people do nothing, mother nature will.

Katrina is a good example. Bush did not personally physically suffer for Katrina, but it’s competing for the lowlight of his career, and a man with such an out of control ego… that’s gotta hurt.

I suspect that he will be hounded for the rest of his life for his bungling and inaction with regard to public health and safety. He’ll enjoy less respect, as a former president, than Nixon. If he were Japanese, he’d probably want to commit seppuku.

  • I thought Congress had passed legislation blocking all funding for the offices of “political appointees”. Just when does it take effect?
    Also, when there is a change in the administration, will we be rid of all these political appointees haunting our federal agencies.
    These political hacks are just blocks to progress and should have their properties confiscated and then let them go through political appointees to get them back.

  • I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that, across the board, there’s more going on than denying inconvenient truths in favor of manufactured “truths.” I’m coming to think that this is all part of the desire for permanent, one-party rule. By infesting every level of government with ideologues, asserting unlimited executive authority, taking over the courts, neutering the legislative branch, ignoring laws that stand in their way, rigging elections, and manipulating the public through a compliant press, these folks are creating an authoritarian state that appears on the surface to be a democracy.

  • beep’s got it.

    Anyone familiar with the history of the early USSR will see the similarities between the “loyal Bushies” and how Stalin consolidated political control and institutionalized his dictatorship through the 1920s. It was easier there than here, of course, because our safeguards against that sort of thing, while imperfect and malfunctioning, still exist and at times render some service. And Stalin was a lot more charismatic, intelligent, focused, and motivated than Bush. (This isn’t a moral comparison–much as I loathe Bush, I’m absolutely certain he isn’t the deranged monster that Stalin was–but Stalin was also a more effective head of state, in terms of achieving his goals.)

    But the approach is really the same: subvert the bureaucracy to the will of one individual or clique, exercise absolute control over its actions and the information it disseminates, don’t allow it to do anything that doesn’t serve the larger political agenda.

    And it’s gotten worse. Remember a few years ago when the EPA (I think) released a study on climate change that Bush dismissed as “the report put out by the bureaucracy”? That report probably could never get past the gatekeepers now.

    I just wish the supine media would press ALL the candidates, Democratic and Republican alike, to promise not to politicize the government the way these bastards have done. I am honestly worried that the more it seems Bush has gotten away with this, the more appealing it will be to future presidentials with similarly imperial tendencies.

  • One more time; an abstract from The Mission of the Surgeon General, taken from his HHS home page:

    “The Surgeon General serves as America’s chief health educator by providing Americans the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury…”

    I guess that if America’s chief health educator comes up with something that isn’t good news for Bushco or casts big Pharma or big Ag in a bad light then that something gets buried – whether it leads to better health or not.

    Should a Democrat be elected President, they will be faced with the daunting task of weeding out every incompetent ideologue appointed by Bushco. That will naturally lead to the Noise Machine braying about partisanship and the politicizing of appointments. Look forward to “honorable public servants”, “unprecedented numbers of firings”, “weakening the War on Terror”, etc., richocheting around the Beltway.

  • Beep 52 nails it. Here it is explained in a bit more detail 40 years ago:

    Richard Hofstadter on the pseudo-conservative (i.e. what is today’s movement conservative)

    “It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ
    the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions”

    “Their political reactions express rather a profound and largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence … The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows ‘conventionality
    and authoritarian submissiveness’ in his conscious thinking and ‘violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere…… The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.'”

  • urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy,

    Not a priority, for them.

    this report, the culmination of a broad effort involving governmental and non-governmental work, was going to be an important contribution to the international discussion on public health.

    Ha! Waste the achievement of mankind- beneficial technical know-how- and the resources (man-hours of trained individuals, office supplies and equipment, funds for the telephone calls ,and use of computers it takes to produce a coordinated effort like this) devoted to producing the fruits of that achievement (beneficial knowledge- a recommendation on how we should use our vast national resources/wealth to best benefit the general welfare).

  • Two stories this weekend presented different faces on the unwavering – and perhaps criminal – zeal of the Bush White House to acquire and maintain power. On Friday, PBS Now reported how a massive Republican “vote caging” scheme drove targeted minority (read Democratic) voters in key 2004 battleground states. And today, the Washington Post revealed that Bush HHS appointee William R. Steiger blocked the release of Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s 2006 global health report for purely political reasons.

    For the details, see:
    “Suppressing Votes – and Science.”

  • Again, I understand and somewhat feel for the Surgeon General and what he had to go through.

    But the fact that he waited until he left office to spill the beans does no service to the people. If he had any real concerns about honesty and the ability of his office to spread ‘non-faith-based knowledge,’ he should have rebelled and ran for the microphones. As it is, it’s too little, way too late.

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