Help with instances of Bush imposing moral views over science...

As most of you know, my biggest issue with the ideology of our current presidential administration is their imposing application of religious dogma to the process of government. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many others, this is a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.

Now, as religious fundamentalists in our country feel empowered by the recent election, they've set out to force us to accept their view of what it moral and what is not. Unfortunately, their "crusade" now has a bigger effect than just annoying us. With the Republican party now solidly in control of the Presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, the mission of these fake moralists is now violating our constitutionally protected civil rights.

Here are a few recent encroachments:

Druggists refuse to give out pill

Some pharmacists are refusing to fill birth control prescriptions based on their religious beliefs. In addition, they are often confiscating the prescription which prevents the patient from getting it filled at another pharmacy. Unfortunately, their are laws that allow this.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20041109/pl_usatoday/druggistsrefusetogiveoutpill

Women Wrongly Warned Cancer, Abortion Tied

Women seeking abortions in Mississippi must first sign a form indicating they've been told abortion can increase their risk of breast cancer. They aren't told that scientific reviews have concluded there is no such risk.

Similar information suggesting a cancer link is given to women considering abortion in Texas, Louisiana and Kansas, and legislation to require such notification has been introduced in 14 other states.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-abortion-cancer,0,4200544.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Other examples of how President Bush and his supporters distort scientific facts to promote their moral agenda include:

2 of Bush's science advisers say their board distorted facts
Report criticized for ignoring stem cell research

Two scientists from President Bush's top advisory board on cutting- edge medical research published a detailed criticism Friday of the board's own reports, and said the board skewed scientific facts in service of a political and ideological cause.
The authors -- one is a member of the president's Council on Bioethics and the other a renowned UCSF biologist fired from the council last week -- have accused the council's chairman, Leon Kass, of ignoring their scientific advice and refusing to include in the board's last report some information that would challenge Bush's restrictions on stem cell research.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/06/MNGVN5FO9L1.DTL

Bush Misuses Science, Report Says

The Bush administration has repeatedly mischaracterized scientific facts to bolster its political agenda in areas ranging from abstinence education and condom use to missile defense, according to a detailed report released yesterday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

It marks the launch of a new effort by Waxman and others in Congress to highlight simmering anger among scientists and others who believe that President Bush -- much more than his predecessors -- has been spiking science with politics to justify conservative policies in areas such as reproductive rights, embryo research, energy policy and environmental health.

"The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists," according to the report, posted yesterday at www.politicsandscience.org. "The subjects involved span a broad range, but they share a common attribute: the beneficiaries of the scientific distortions are important supporters of the President, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups."

Among the purported abuses documented in the report:

"Performance measures" used to determine the effectiveness of federally funded "abstinence only" sex education programs were altered by the administration in ways that made it easier to say the programs were effective.

information about how to use a condom -- along with scientific data showing that sex education does not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity in young people -- was removed from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.

In testimony before Congress, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton omitted -- and in at least one case misstated -- federal scientists' findings that Arctic oil drilling could harm wildlife.
The administration altered a National Cancer Institute Web site in a way that wrongly implied there was good evidence linking abortions to breast cancer.

The Education Department circulated a memo instructing employees to remove materials from the department's Web site not "consistent with the Administration's philosophy," prompting complaints about censorship from national educational organizations.

Bush has appointed to key scientific advisory committees numerous people with political, rather than scientific, credentials. For example, his appointee to a presidential AIDS advisory committee, marketing consultant Jerry Thacker, has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" and referred to AIDS as the "gay plague."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A31318-2003Aug7¬Found=true

If any of this disturbs you, I urge you to support the following organizations:

http://www.au.org/ Americans United For Separation of Church and State

http://www.aclu.org/ American Civil Liberties Union

And please add any other important links and things the Republicans are doing in this area.

Thanks!

"http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0441/lerner.php"

New ad campaign targets Bush record on birth control
The President vs. the Pill
by Sharon Lerner
October 12th, 2004 10:45 AM

.....Now, family planning advocates are working to let voters in on the president's little-known record. Planned Parenthood is running TV ads in swing states drawing the difference between John Kerry and Bush on abortion and birth control. And NARAL Pro-Choice America has its interim president, Elizabeth Cavendish, traveling the country explaining the ways Bush has attacked contraception. "When people hear about it, they really feel convinced that Bush is a menace to our rights," says Cavendish.

A prime example is the "faith-based" health plan for federal employees unveiled late last month, which specifically excludes coverage of contraception. Tailored to fit the tenets of the Catholic Church, the new plan will deny assistance with artificial insemination, sterilization, and abortion. Though it reduces the number of procedures covered by insurance, Kay Coles James, director of the Office of Personnel Management, told The New York Times the plan gave federal employees "more opportunities to make choices." ......

Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
Posted by: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility - archive
Posted on: Nov 8, 2004 @ 1:06 pm

Press Release

For Immediate Release: Monday, November 8, 2004
Contact: Chas Offutt (202) 265-7337

FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE FIRES PANTHER WHISTLEBLOWER
Agency Does Not Dispute Orders to Suppress Scientific Findings

Washington, DC — The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has decided to terminate the biologist who publicly challenged its reliance on flawed studies about the habitat and population of the endangered Florida panther, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The agency’s action comes ten weeks after a federal court found the agency guilty of scientific fraud on the same grounds raised by the now-former employee.

Andrew Eller, Jr., an 18-year FWS biologist, had spent the past ten years working in the Florida panther recovery program. This spring, he filed formal charges that studies relied upon by the Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) to make decisions about proposed development in Southwest Florida inflate panther population and inaccurately minimize habitat needs. One week after that filing, the agency proposed his termination. On Friday, November 5th, FWS finalized its termination of Eller.

“This case is about whether scientific dissent will be tolerated under the Bush Administration,” stated PEER General Counsel Richard Condit who will be leading Eller’s legal challenge of his firing. “A federal court found the agency knowingly used junk science to okay projects, but the official committing the fraud gets a commendation while the one who exposed it is fired.”

Contending that its actions were motivated solely by the timeliness of Eller’s work, FWS officials did not reply to Eller’s affidavit citing evidence of retaliation, including --

· Threats by supervisors for voicing biological concerns about the effects of development projects in panther habitat;
· Orders to delete “jeopardy” findings from biological opinions; and
· Ignoring scientific flaws that Eller raised, including unrealistic assumptions about panther reproduction rates and kitten survival.

Many of the assignments cited by FWS involve the controversies surrounding the science on the endangered panther and other threatened species in one of the fastest growing areas of the country, known as the Western Everglades. Considered among the most endangered mammals on the planet, there are only an estimated 87 of these big cats left in existence.

PEER and Eller have 30 days to appeal the termination to the federal civil service court called the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). MSPB can also immediately restore Eller pending final resolution of the matter. In the meantime, FWS has yet to act on Eller’s charges of scientific fraud against it. A three-member review committee empanelled by FWS is slated to make findings later this fall.


http://www.ems.org/nws/2004/11/08/fish_agency_does

This doesnt surprise me, just another example of the Rethugs using govt to impose their ideas on society.

Jesus and the FDA

A quiet battle is raging over the Bush Administration's plan to appoint a scantily credentialed doctor, whose writings include a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, to head an influential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on women's health policy. Sources tell Time that the agency's choice for the advisory panel is Dr. W. David Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also wrote, with his wife Linda, Stress and the Woman's Body, which puts "an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome. Though his resume describes Hager as a University of Kentucky professor, a university official says Hager's appointment is part time and voluntary and involves working with interns at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself. In his private practice, two sources familiar with it say, Hager refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager did not return several calls for comment.

FDA advisory panels often have near-final say over crucial health questions. If Hager becomes chairman of the 11-member Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee, he will lead its study of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, one of the biggest controversies in health care. Some conservatives are trying to use doubts about such therapy to discredit the use of birth-control pills, which contain similar compounds. The panel also made the key recommendation in 1996 that led to approval of the "abortion pill," RU-486—a decision that abortion foes are still fighting. Hager assisted the Christian Medical Association last August in a "citizens' petition" calling upon the FDA to reverse itself on RU-486, saying it has endangered the lives and health of women.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,361521,00.html

Public health experts and advocates have expressed serious concern over conservatives' ongoing attacks on the efficacy of condoms. Seen as a strategy to further an abstinence-only-until-marriage agenda, these efforts clearly seek to undermine the public's confidence in condoms' effectiveness in protecting against HIV and other STIs.

Beginning with the removal of the "Condom Fact Sheet" and "Programs That Work" from the CDC's Web site, recent efforts by the Bush administration to disparage condoms have gone global, as supporters of abstinence-only-until-marriage successfully included a "conscience clause" in the recent global AIDS bill that would allow organizations to receive funding even if they refused to discuss condoms as a way to protect against HIV/AIDS. Supporters of abstinence-only-until-marriage assert that providing information about condoms gives people false hope since they are not 100 percent effective.

http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/youth/advocacy/condoms.htm
http://www.actupny.org/reports/ideology.html