Politics, climate change, and health
Posted by Lance Gravlee on October 24th, 2007 |
Thanks to David for bringing my attention to this story about the politics of climate change and health. Yesterday Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. She reportedly told Senators that climate change “is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans.” But the written testimony she entered into the record contains few details to support that claim. According to the Associated Press, here’s why:
The White House significantly edited testimony prepared for a Senate hearing on the impact of climate change on health, deleting key portions citing diseases that could flourish in a warmer climate, documents obtained by The Associated Press showed Wednesday.
The White House on Wednesday denied that it had “watered down” the congressional testimony that Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had given the day before to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
But a draft of the testimony submitted for White House review shows that six pages of details about specific disease and other health problems that might flourish if the Earth warms were not delivered at the hearing.
In a Wall Street Journal report, Dr. Gerberding denies that the White House diluted her testimony, calling such allegations “ridiculous.” It’s hard to know what really happened, but at least the media coverage of this controversy highlights the political context of scientific debates.
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I found this particular article every interesting considering the fact that I just finished reading the paper on Bidill, the race specific heart pill and which showed how the government/commerce and science are all interconnected. I find this article to be another great example of the above mentioned interconnection. I mean just the fact that Julie Gerberding, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had to defend her congressional testimony on the health effects of climate change because the white house decided to water down her testimony to better fit their needs is just preposterous. Stuff like this just makes me wonder even more just how much more stuff the government is “watering down”.
Scienceprogress.org recently posted Julie Gerberding’s unredacted testimony. Its incredible how the core of the report was completely cut out, making it rather vague and meaningless. I also found it interesting how the assessment paid good attention to the psychological effects, its not often that researchers focus on that.
http://www.scienceprogress.org/2007/10/redacted-testimony-of-cdc-%20director-julie-l-gerberding/
I cant beleive that the government had the guts to change Julie gerberding’s testimony. There are obviosly things writtin in her testimony that they dont want the people to know. Aside from this incident, i feel that the government does this with alot of other things to. I think that they change things, publish things, and hide things from us in order to manipulate us to buy more things or use certain products. Its just kinda scary to think what they are hiding from us, or the kinds of things they could be “watering down” to benefit themselves.