In real life I am a teacher, researcher, and public health scholar. Over the past two years I have become increasingly angry and alarmed at the many instances in which the Bush Administration has sought to subvert science for political ends. Their willingness to do so has manifest itself in many areas, including but not limited to well-documented instances of the truncation and/or alteration of EPA reports, the shielding from liability of pharmaceutical corporations, the mischaracterization of the nature and purpose of therapeutic cloning and stem cell research, the conscious de-emphasis of the use of condoms as a method of controlling the spread of HIV in favor of fear and "abstinence only" programs, and the ongoing disinformation campaign concerning gays and lesbians and their ability to be "cured."
Fellow diary writer "Michael" has noted NIH employees' anxiety over the GOP's increasingly bold retrospective challenges to scientific investigations which have already attained NIH funding though competitive peer-review (a process which I can tell you from personal experience is quite intense). On July 11th of this year, the U.S. House of Representatives came within two votes of approving the 'de-funding' of five grants dealing primarily with the study of HIV and AIDS, "high risk" behavior, issues of sexual preference and people of minority backgrounds.
More recently, a chill has been cast over the public health research world as prominent researchers in these areas have been personally targeted for scrutiny by so-called conservative lobbying groups.
As with many recent reactionary programmes, two troubling aspects of this initiative are (1) the intensely anti-intellectual nature of the rhetoric employed and (2) the use of political gamesmanship and the tactics of personal intimidation in order to attain desired results outside the lawful legislative and regulatory processes.
On Monday of this week the Baltimore Sun and other papers reported the existence of a "hit list" of 157 prominent scientists working at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, UCSF, UCLA, Wright State University in Dayton, OH, and Michigan University, among others. The list was provided to Congress by the Traditional Values Coalition, whose web site prominently features photographs of briefcase-carrying men exchanging large stacks of $100 bills and tag lines describing the NIH peer-reviewed research as "questionable" and something "reasonable people, even those with no particular religious or political perspective, would view as prurient."
The GOP has sought to downplay the effect of the TVC's campaign:
"We are not targeting these grants," said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. "No hearings are planned. It's much ado about nothing."
However, it would be a mistake to underestimate the influence and effectiveness the TVC and other organizations like it in creating a climate in which there is a considerable danger to research into the transmission of HIV/AIDS and its prevention among at-risk populations. Ultimately, if researchers fear for their funding and careers, science will stagnate and the health of the public will suffer. Consider the ill-informed and combative nature of the
rhetoric used by groups such as the TVC:
"We know for a fact that millions and millions of dollars have been flushed down the toilet over years on this HIV, AIDS scam and sham," [TVC executive director Andrea] Lafferty said. "We know what it takes to prevent getting the disease. It takes not engaging in risky sexual behaviors."
Lafferty said she brought her concerns to Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
"He said they were looking into it," Lafferty said.
The NIH has contacted a number of the researchers and asked them to justify their work, which (again) has already been funded:
NIH spokesman John Burklow said his agency simply was responding to a request from Republican lawmakers who were given a list of the research grants .... Burklow said the calls were not intended to threaten researchers that they could lose their funding but to inform them that their names were on a list being circulated in Washington.
He said officials also were trying to put the research into the context of the agency's "scientific mission."
Democratic Representative Henry Waxman has voiced his displeasure, noting that "the phone calls from to the scientists are "sending a dangerous message" that research is being subverted to an ideological agenda."
While one Johns Hopkins researcher described the call as "informational," others in the research community feel that their current research, having already survived the rigorous and competitive peer-review funding process, is nevertheless in jeopardy, as are their chances to attain funding in the future.
Needless to say, the inability to attract funding can be a death knell for an academic or research career, to say nothing of the resultant damage to science and the health of the public.
While GOP politicians have sought to downplay the current uproar as a "misunderstanding" - claiming that only the list of the grants already under scrutiny was in fact intended for Congressional attention - one anecdote from the Baltimore Sun coverage offers a chilling, if indirect, rebuttal to that assertion:
Burklow, the NIH spokesman, said the agency asked congressional staffers for a list of questionable grants mentioned at an Oct. 2 hearing at which NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni testified. He noted that one congressman, New Jersey Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson, asked Zerhouni for a "written explanation for the medical benefit" of the studies on the list.
Commerce committee spokesman Johnson said that after the hearing, NIH called the committee asking for "the list," and a staffer sent the coalition list.
To me, the fact that the TVC hit list is prominent enough to be confused with
other lists of "questionable" grants gives credence to the notion that the threat to these researchers is real.
In its October 30th issue, the top journal Nature expressed concern that the ongoing scrutiny is creating a "climate of fear" among researchers and may stifle innovation, noting that
Congress has a right to ask questions about how well the peer-review process works. But applying such pointed scrutiny to individual investigators whose grants have already been funded will have a chilling effect, scaring scientists away from studying issues that may be crucial for the health and well-being of society as a whole.
The research community is already intensely competitive, and for a researcher to stay afloat his or her work must have considerable scientific merit and value. To say that "scrutiny" of this kind threatens the advancement of science and public health is, I fear, a considerable understatement. Consider the work and length of time for any research into HIV and AIDS to become prominent and acceptable to the mainstream public.
If a researcher feels that his or her grant proposal will be shot down due to political concerns, it simply isn't worth investing the considerable time required - usually hundreds of person-hours of work - to put a proposal together. Result: certain topics will simply go uninvestigated. Already, examples of this kind of suppression of certain investigations are being generated by the latest congressional scrutiny:
Dr. Liana Clark says she is reconsidering whether to seek federal financing for new research into birth control use among teenagers after Washington questioned the value of her initial study....
She had hoped for another NIH grant to study whether fears about being unable to get pregnant in the future discourage women from using birth control now.
"If politics is going to play a role in this, how can I go there?" Clark said.
On a personal note, I can report (from sources I regard as quite credible) that Bush Administration officials have been "observing" planning meetings attended by academic researchers at organizations such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, taking notes on the attendees and the items being discussed. Colleagues tell me that this has stifled the flow of information between scientists, as individual researchers pause to consider the potential implications for their institutions and their personal livelihoods.
My apologies for the excessive length of this entry. I know that this may appear alarmist - but as an informed observer, I can only tell you that the media coverage of this issue is at this point understated.
And consider: over the past twenty years progressives and moderate conservatives alike have made the assumption that the reactionary right was too extreme to attain meaningful influence over government policy in this country. To say that assumption has been in error would be a laughable understatement. It is my dearest hope that we will be roused by this latest assault on progress, and take action while the outcome remains in the balance.
- ryan b