Scientists ask Bush to end what they call anti-science policies

Saturday, October 16, 2004
John Mangels
Plain Dealer Science Writer
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/109791910483181.xml

Four internationally known scientists, three of them Nobel Prize 
winners, made an impassioned plea in Cleveland Friday for an end to what 
they and many other researchers see as a pattern of scientific 
misconduct by the Bush administration.

Speaking to an audience of more than 200 at Case Western Reserve 
University, the panelists accused the Bush White House of anti-science 
decisions and policies. They said the administration and the federal 
agencies it controls have discounted, altered and suppressed scientific 
information that doesn't fit President Bush's political philosophies in 
such areas as global warming, stem cells and missile defense.

<http://filtergate.com/fi.html>

"I've never seen the scientific community so roiled up," said Leon 
Lederman, director emeritus of the government's Fermi National 
Accelerator Laboratory and winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in physics.

"This is not a partisan group," said Lawrence Krauss, the event's 
organizer and chairman of Case's physics department. "It reflects deeply 
and broadly the scientific community in the U.S. It's about science, but 
in an election year, everything's political."

More than 5,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National 
Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of 
Sciences, have signed a letter asking the president to halt what they 
say is distortion of scientific information for political purposes.

Bob Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House's Office of Science and 
Technology Policy, said the president has been a "strong and generous 
supporter of science," citing a sharp increase in federal research and 
development spending - much of it defense-related - and Bush initiatives 
for fuel cells, nanotechnology and space exploration.

Bush's science critics, particularly the advocacy group Scientists and 
Engineers for Change that helped fund the Case event and similar ones 
around the country, are the ones politicizing science, Hopkins said.

Peter Agre, co-winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in chemistry, spoke of his 
concerns about the Justice Department's prosecution of Thomas Butler, a 
top plague researcher.

Butler, a former Case faculty member, became the target of an FBI 
bioterrorism investigation in 2003 when he reported that 30 vials of 
plague germs were missing from his Texas lab. Though acquitted of the 
most serious charges, he was found guilty of theft, embezzlement and 
fraud and sentenced to two years in federal prison.

Agre, who has donated some of his Nobel money to Butler's defense fund, 
said his friend is the victim of post-9/11 fears and the government's 
overzealous use of the Patriot Act. Agre said Butler was jailed for days 
without bail, intimidated during questioning, signed a statement of 
culpability without a lawyer present, and that prosecutors piled on 
unrelated charges.

He and other scientists say the case could discourage important 
bioterrorism research. "I've never been a political activist before," 
Agre said. "If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would not be 
pleased with what we're doing to Tom Butler."

Sidney Altman, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for chemistry, said he is 
worried by the prospect of additional limits or an outright ban on 
research involving stem cells. Bush has ordered that federally funded 
research be limited to a handful of existing stem cell colonies created 
from human embryos.

Altman said he fears the president or Congress may go further, 
forbidding so-called "therapeutic cloning" of human embryos to harvest 
stem cells. "I find this a frightening proposal," said Altman, who 
opposes reproductive cloning. "Having a law that bans [basic] research - 
not applied research - in any area is an extremely bad precedent."

Earlier this year, the administration removed a respected scientist from 
the President's Council on Bioethics who had objected to Bush's 
limitation on stem cell research. The White House has said politics did 
not play a role in the decision.

© 2004 The Plain Dealer.

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