Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a Senate panel yesterday that climate change “is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans.” If that sounds a little vague and non-specific, there’s a good reason — the White House refused to let her say what she wanted to say.
Testimony that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention planned to give yesterday to a Senate committee about the impact of climate change on health was significantly edited by the White House, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
Specific scientific references to potential health risks were removed after Julie L. Gerberding submitted a draft of her prepared remarks to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review.
Instead, Gerberding’s prepared testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee included few details on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease.
A CDC official familiar with both versions told the AP that Gerberding’s draft “was eviscerated.”
This might be amusing if a) it weren’t so serious; and b) it didn’t happen all the damn time.
No Trackbacks To “The administration’s war on science continues“
And here I was under the impression that this sort of thing was illegal. Silly me.
Well, if it isn’t in the speech, then it must not be reality! Wow, I’m soooooo glad we have a White House that cares about us clueless citizens - you see, by taking that stuff out, they’re showing they’re watching out for us and not bothering us with the pesky details on that pesky non-existent thorn in the side called “global warming.”
Thank you, George! What we do without you? Screw our health! Screw the future of our planet! With leadership like you and Dick at the helm, our last 20 years of breathing on our own without a mask will be the best there’s ever been!
War on Terror!!! And by “terror”, we mean science!!!
Let’s not forget that Dr. Gerberding clearly cares more about keeping her job than she does about the health of the public.
MargeAggedon @ 1:
“Illegal” is soooo pre 9/11, didn’t you get the memo? Dirty f**king hippie!
Now, wouldn’t anyone with a sense of decency and honor tender their resignation rather than go in front of Congress and give testimony that they knew was misleading?
Yeah, right…….
It’s clear that we won’t hear the whole truth about anything until Bush is out of office. Bush’s ego has gotten so out of control that he thinks he can change the weather. The effects of Global Warming will be apparent to everyone as they happen, and changing the wording in a few documents isn’t going to change that. All it’s going to do is make them look like idiots to future historians who look at those documents and compare them to the facts on the ground. You’d think that a president who is worried about his legacy would prefer to look like a visionary in the history books, instead of a blithering idiot
Of all the things to lie about. Of the very few things that couldn’t be be blamed solely on the WarPigs, other than ignoring the situation, climate change is not one of them. It is pretty much excepted that global warming and climate change is real and it’s happening faster than anyone thought. After all, Dumbya was still in college and developing his drug addiction when the first warnings of global warming were being made an issue. Maybe they are still in denial of it? I would have thought they were over that little game by now. Talk about being pathological liars. I guess it’s all too ’sciencey’ for their narrow little NeoCon minds. Keep it up Chimpy, we may get you and your boss Cheney impeached yet.
I wish someone would preface their speech with “This is as much as the WH will let me tell you about….” Then handout the redacted copies of their speech.
Since they didn’t classify her speech (at least we haven’t heard yet that they did) Why can’t she just release it to the press the way she intended it to be?
What good does it do to sugar coat this stuff and due to neglect and denial have to pay an even higher price to the piper later? That makes no sense. Tell us about the bad stuff coming and maybe we can prepare for it and actually avoid it being as bad as predicted.
Okay. Let’s concede that the Bush administration is going to lie to us about global warming. But lying about the health effects?
From the Washington Post article:
When would the health of the citizens of the U.S. not be a national priority of the administration?
I know. Dumb question.
Remember the fear factor of bird flu? Remember Mad Cow Disease? They didn’t mind talking about that back then even though we hardly hear of it today. Why would health threats due to global warming be hidden?
the rapture bunnies think their kids will “go to Hell” if they learn science. They deny global warming and evolution because they think it’s a “commie plot to make our kids atheists”
If Dr. Julie Gerberding was the director of the “Center of Intelligent [sic] Design”, the reich-wingers at the White House would be wanking off with delight to hear what she had to say.
The fuhrer’s White House will control the information that is disseminated to the masses.
We are now in a neo-fascist country. Is it finally time to do something about all of this? Or are we all going to be the “Good Germans” bush wants us to be?
Viruses….top dogs of the planet!
And to think there would have only been two of them on the ark!
I’m actually astonished that the “liberal” media are not focusing on the fact that her remarks had to be vetted by the White House prior to her testimony. Isn’t that at least a little unsettling to ANYBODY?
But I do not want to be as dumb as the people in the White House are. I want the truth.
Naomi Wolfe on facism.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/177.html
Speaking of ‘Health Issues’ and ‘Evisceration’, isn’t it about time for us scientific-minded (read ‘rational’) folks to do a little medical fine-tuning on the White House denizens?
Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, Impeach the Dummy and the Dick-Head.
So Sayeth Preacher Boob, ‘His’ alter-ego here on …(what planet is this?)
We, and anyone one with an ounce of sense, knows that the Bush Administration is behind these efforts to turn the–at this point–obviousness of global warming to something a little more…hypothetical.
That being said, why is it that people are still cooperating with them? I am not talking about those that have already drank the Kool-Aid, but the others. Why do they continue to tow the line? There will always be those that try to impose their will upon others, though the real problem comes when people–knowing full well that they are wrong–continue to cooperate with them.
If the United States is going to make a move toward full-blown fascism, this is how it will happen. Hitler, as an example, was only one man; it took millions of others, not directly involved, to make his insane vision a reality.
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
George W. Bush
“A lie, repeated often enough, will end up as truth.”
Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda (1933-1945)
There is no way we can allow conflicting information coming out of the government, is there?
Sticks and stones v ray guns?
3410 @ 4:
I second that - while Bush and Co. sucks, we need people to stand up and start taking action. Here she is, with this audience, and she still pulls the company line.
Reslugs show just how far they will bury their heads in bullshit to ignore the truth.
Aaron @ 23:
There is no way she has a mortgage or a kid in college, is there?
I mean i know all you concerned people out there are ready willing and able to walk off your jobs and start a National Strike to end this Administration’s tyranical rule (which at this point is what it would take) so you may as well call her a pussy, right?
Help me out. Besides sending the White House a copy to make it aware, why in the world would you give them a draft to amend?
16 pages to 6, that’s alot of things that we now have to await either a leak that may be debunked by White House propagandists as lies, or Dr. Julie Gerberding to come forward with the true facts on a cable news network. Which will probably be followed by Michelle Malkin parading outside her house to attack her treasonous comments. Hell, mass media will probably drop the story after today.
The control reaks of Cheney. Impeach the lunatic. He belongs in an asylum with a bald pet cat.
If the “Department of the Evisceration of Very Important Information” at the Whitehouse would stop burning science books, then that alone would greatly reduce global warming.
Oh, the irony.
The ‘White House Office of Management and Budget’, isn’t that where Perino works?
Is it possible that in addition to her heavy, heavy schedule of Non-Truth Telling, she actually has the time (and is capable of?) to read, and redact a paper containing the testimony of someone who knows the truth, and writes it?
And after a Truth-Testimony is redacted by an idiot-savant (she does comb her hair fairly well), is it still a testimony? Or merely more White House dreck?
xoites defends Constitution @ 21:
If the public could only hear these remarks would it cause the outrage necessary to remove him from power?
Why water it down, Bushies??? You love to scare!!! You wouldn’t hesitate a second to embelish a terror threat or sit on a Bin Laden tape until the most convenient time politically to show it (or in Fox News’s case, stupidity blowing up in your face by the need to be the first to report on a Bin Laden tape too soon).
So, why are you watering down global warming danger scenarios? Oh, I forgot - a burning planet is nothing more than an act of God. It’s His will and nothing should be done to prove God infalliable! Science has nothing to do with it because, well, science doesn’t exist!
I’m so stupid (head slap) stupid…(head slap)…stupid (head slap)…
If we can’t trust the administration on science issues, such as global warming, stem cell research, the air quality issue/lies from Ground Zero for first responders, and now the issue of disease from the CDC,
how can we believe the reports from NIST (an administration agency under the dept of Commerce), FEMA (well known for their bungling), and the 9/11 Commission (stacked with Bush appointees and myth-makers such as Zelikow) about the real causes of the collapses of the Twin Towers, and also of WTC-7/Solomon Bros. building on 9/11??
xoites defends Constitution @ 25:
She’s a doctor. Are you saying that if she chose to work somewhere other than as a shill for the Bush Administration her life would be over? I somehow doubt that. She’s educated enough that, I’d imagine, that she’d bounce back rather quickly if she resigned in protest (or something of that nature) because it is hardly unusual for government officials–which is not to say that I agree with it–to segue quite nicely into the public sector.
Unless she has been blacklisted, which is another matter entirely.
Which is not to say that it would necessarily go that far, after all, after the scandal of the fired Attorneys General, I suspect the Bush Administration would be leery of firing someone along what are ideological lines.
Trust me, when we’re finally done with bushco and its minions, then the Doctor Gerberlings - freshly out of a cushy, high-paying, guvment job - will come clean with their ‘tell-all’ books. I don’t care what in hell you’ve got on the line with expenses, when your supposed to be looking after the country health and well-being you damn had better show some honor and integrity or else you’ll never work again. Tell me, just who’ll hire the woman when the truth comes out about what she did to ‘go along’? And just what is Christine Whitman doing these days?
3410 @ 4:
Someone commented at the carpetbagger about that. Why didn’t she just give her full report in the first place? They couldn’t throw her in jail or (could they)? So what if she loses her job, working for the CDC she is probably a medical doctor and not a PhD, so she shouldn’t have any problem finding lucrative employment elsewhere. Maybe she was paid off to to tote the line? Everyone has their price you know. I’d like to see the actual report.
The White House has been vetting scientific papers for a while. Remember the fuss about George Hansen - a political hack without a college degree, let alone scientific credentials - editing James Hansen’s speech? It smacks of the Soviet Union and zampolits (political officers) editing/writing materials to conform with party ideology.
But ‘climate change’ does not exclusively mean ‘global warming’ - if, as the frogs-in-a-pot crowd believe, there is no global warming, we must nonetheless address a drought in Georgia, the aftermath of flooding by Katrina, the tinder-dry hillsides that are burning in California (and, probably mudslides come the rains), and other consequences of nature - whether aided by human activity or not.
xoites defends Constitution @ 25:
Thank you. While I agree that if a person had unwavering ethics they would walk away, how many of us really have balls that big or can even afford to wear them?
3410 @ 4:
If she presented the report she originally intended, the public would still get the President’s version of it.
CafeenMan @ 36:
Seriously, are any of you going to walk away from your job every time you face ethical crisis? Jebus, this time of “thinking” should be reserved for the reich-wingers. She accepts the fact that globing warming has severe consequences on public health. Having someone in her position that accepts this fact is important regardless if the nimrods in the WH won’t hear her. She can and will continue to fight for what his right.
The Bush White House has a history of public attacks and personal destruction.
They could put things in her record that would come up in criminal background checks. They could prevent her from flying on aircraft. They could have Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michelle Maulkin and Ann Coulter go after her.
They could tell all prospective employers that they let her go because of associations with known terror suspects.
She could quickly find that she cannot legally work with prescription medications.
A CDC official familiar with both versions told the AP that Gerberding’s draft “was eviscerated.”
This might be amusing if a) it weren’t so serious; and b) it didn’t happen all the damn time.
Is this not what this present Administration does to everything that might cause their friends in the Corporate World have to control their filth?
I hope most of America is Fed-Up with the Republicans. They have reversed themselves. They used to be the Party who stayed out of peoples business and preached “Small Government”.
They have done more to harm America than any Administration in 50 years or more. Why they are still pandering to the Theist Right-Wing I don’t know, for it is that group who has help destroy what we once had, them and the NeoCon group with their “Project for the New American Century” fired up by Bill Kristol.
I can tell you this from where I am now (out in the World) … The Rest of the World is Sick to Death of this Administration. America is now looked at much like Iran, China, Russia or any other BULLY Nation.
Take back America.
(Bob in Pai, North Thailand)
3410 @ 4:
I hate to think along this line, but I wonder if, instead of fear that she will lose her job, she fears for her life. I put nothing past the war criminals in the WH.
Now that Bushism is NOT funny. It is the means…the administrations mantra. Yes, this quote should be broadcasted again and again.
What is the point of asking these people to testify if all they can tell us is what Bush thinks we should hear? It’s actually worse than not having anyone testify, because Bush controls the message and can claim that he’s just listening to what the CDC (or the generals, or whomever) tells him.
xoites defends Constitution @ 25:
No one is calling anyone a pussy, but you. I think the greater point here is that she is a person in a position to influence public health, and as such, there is a certain obligation through her profession to practice that; not what an administration says.
I’m sure there is more to the story then what we know of, and I’m unsure what her situation is. I don’t see how making a point translates into an ad hominem-like comment.
StirFry @ 42:
And the problem is that many people ARE like that, they will believe what they hear more than a few times without doing any research. It’s tooth Fairy Science.