The Bush Administration's Dangerous Contempt For Science and Scientists Alike
by Deborah Newell Tornello
a.k.a. litbrit
Poison by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1984
"We would have been spared the ignominy and disgrace of great scientific men bending their efforts to defeat the purpose of one of the greatest laws ever enacted for the protection of the public welfare. Eminent officials of our Government would have escaped the indignation of outraged public opinion because they permitted and encouraged these frauds on the public."-- Father of the Pure Food and Drugs Act and USDA Chief Chemist Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, MD, in 1929, on what America might have had if the Act were enforced as intended.
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."-- Disgraced conservative activist and likely subpoena recipient Grover Norquist, on NPR's Morning Edition, May 25, 2001.
"Government is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex."--The late Frank Zappa
Adulterated grain products from China slip through Humvee-sized holes in America's regulatory safety net and proceed to sicken and kill thousands of pets. Counterfeit and toxic ingredients poison thousands of people worldwide and continue to threaten America's food supply. And tubes of toothpaste laced with the antifreeze diethylene glycol actually wind up on store shelves around the country before someone with authority can order them pulled, but not before the public learns that the scientists and analysts at our Food and Drug Administration are so underfunded, and stretched so thinly, they can inspect only 1% of imports, if that. All of which make recent revelations--to civilians like me, at least--that much more shocking, that much more illogical. For not only have the powers that be who control the FDA been shrinking its staff--today, the agency has over a 1,000 fewer scientists and analysts than in 1997 (despite the number of imported goods having skyrocketed during that time) and management wants to let go even more of these specialized personnel--they have also been furtively closing laboratories and setting forth plans to close yet more.
