FOR YEARS the World Health Organization has enlisted US government scientists to attend WHO meetings or serve on its panels without first getting the approval of the federal government. That open relationship between the UN organization and scientists ended in April, however, when the Bush administration decreed that WHO must first clear appointees with the Department of Health and Human Services.
The administration defends this as a way to ensure that the WHO gets the best scientist to represent the US government. In the past, WHO has been free to pick the best scientist, period. Critics of the new procedure, such as Congressman Henry Waxman of California, fear it will give the Bush administration the opportunity to blackball any scientists who don't toe the administration line on controversial health issues. The administration should rescind the policy before it seriously interferes with the freedom of all government scientists to offer WHO their expertise.
In charge of the new policy will be William Steiger Jr., a special assistant to Tommy Thompson, the HHS secretary, and the son of a former Wisconsin congressman. Steiger, a godson of former President George H.W. Bush, sent WHO a letter establishing the new vetting policy in April. "Except under very limited circumstances," Steiger wrote, "US government experts do not and cannot participate in WHO consultations in their individual capacity." He said regulations "require HHS experts to serve as representatives of the US government at all times and advocate US government policies." An HHS spokesman said other international organizations will have to follow the same procedure.
The new policy is a textbook example of what the Union of Concerned Scientists complained about in a report issued in February on the politicization of science by the Bush administration. At that time, 60 of the nation's top scientists said the administration had systematically suppressed or misrepresented science. They called on Congress to hold investigative hearings.
The head of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Kevin Knobloch, called the new policy "more of the same intervention that wasn't there before." The administration's determination to vet scientists for international panels is sadly reminiscent of the workings of Eastern European countries, a point made in a Los Angeles Times interview by Dr. D.A. Henderson, an epidemiologist and former WHO official who ran the Office of Public Health Preparedness for the Bush administration and is now an adviser to Thompson. Henderson said the new approach is not "appropriate or constructive." Thompson should take his adviser's advice and let the WHO and scientists cooperate without the government butting in.