Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune - November 29, 2004
But those decisions need to be based on sound and unbiased information. Scientists have to be allowed to do their best investigative work, even on volatile issues, so Congress and the White House can make informed decisions on matters of health and the environment.
Some of the nation's top scientists and engineers have raised disturbing questions about how much of a role politics is playing in science, starting with the selection of scientists and engineers to serve on the some 500 committees that advise the White House and federal agencies in various scientific fields.
Over the past year, scientists and others have complained about the political vetting of advisory committee nominees, especially in controversial areas such as climate change and reproductive medicine. The Union of Concerned Scientists is one of the critics. More than 5,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel Prize winners, signed a letter charging the Bush administration has undermined the scientific advisory process.
The National Academy of Sciences, chaired by former Republican U.S. Rep. John Porter of Illinois, issued a report earlier this month criticizing the practice of political vetting as inappropriate. Scientists who are nominated to serve on those committees should be selected for their scientific expertise, their professional credentials and their personal integrity, Porter said.
It's also very troubling that Dr. David Graham, a 20-year veteran of the Food and Drug Administration, said last week that he's getting pressure because he told members of Congress at a recent hearing that the FDA ignored his warnings about the drug Vioxx. Graham said he's being "exiled" from his job in the Office of Drug Safety.
A related dust-up concerns Dr. Curt Furberg, a prominent drug safety expert and professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest University. He was removed from an FDA advisory panel meeting scheduled for next year on Vioxx and other arthritis drugs because of comments he made earlier this month suggesting that the entire class of medications may be unsafe.
Furberg interpreted the move as an attempt to silence his criticism. An FDA spokeswoman insisted his removal was a "routine procedure" that resulted from an "intellectual" conflict of interest. That was an odd pronouncement, since the airing of intellectual differences is supposed to be the point of advisory committee hearings.
After the Wall Street Journal reported on Furberg's exclusion from the committee, Dr. Lester Crawford, the acting FDA commissioner, issued a statement. "The advisory committee preparation process is still under way," it said, and therefore it was "premature" to suggest that Furberg could not participate. A spokesman for White House science adviser John Marburger also insisted that the administration has no intention of stifling scientific dissent. That's somewhat reassuring. It is also the law. Federal law requires that advisory committee membership reflect a balanced viewpoint and independent judgment.
That has to be the rule, not the exception. The Bush administration needs to keep politics out of the scientific advisory process.
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