Sunday Washington Post: Bush Aide Blocked Global Health Report for Not Being Political

[Bluebear]

Steiger

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the "Call to Action on Global Health" while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration's frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist... Carmona told lawmakers that, as he fought to release the document, he was "called in and again admonished . . . via a senior official who said, 'You don't get it.' " He said a senior official told him that "this will be a political document, or it will not be released."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/28/AR2007072801420.html?hpid=topnews

[SharonAnn]

1. They get paid for their jobs governing and administering government programs but they

don't want to do those jobs.

They only want to do political jobs.

How disgusting.

[Bluebear]

2. Republicans hate government. So they just use it for their party's purposes. nt

[IChing]

3. He is the godson of GHW Bush and said no relationship to junk food/Obesity

You know Bill Clinton's friend? George Herbert Walker Bush?

In a leaked confidential letter to the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Lee Jong-Wook, the US government has rejected decades of nutritional research and denied that there is any evidence of a link between junk food and obesity. The letter, from William R Steiger, special assistant at the Department of Health and Human Services and godson to George Bush Sr, is the United States' official response to an April 2003 report by the WHO and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). That report, entitled "Diet, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases," argues that governments should take steps to limit children's exposure to junk-food advertising, and says that added sugar should comprise no more than 10% of a healthy diet.

The report was released last spring, prompting American food manufacturers' groups to begin frantic lobbying in Washington. The Sugar Association wrote to Gro Harlem Brundtland, then WHO director-general, threatening to "exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature" of the report. Congressmen recruited by the food industry urged the Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, to cut off the $406 million annual US contribution to the WHO.


http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2004_02_15/features06.html

[Bluebear]

4. Good gravy, how much more? nt

[IChing]

5. Yes that bit of news I found almost should have its own thread

The junk-food obesity denial.. I found it when I was tracing who this guy was tonight
The rabbit hole is very very deep.