The Bush administration is overhauling scientific advisory committees that were reaching conclusions contrary to its political objectives, according to a recent article in the Washington Post. Findings by these committees, which are made up by private experts and are found at virtually every agency, frequently form the foundation for regulatory action, which the administration seems determined to avoid at all costs. Not surprisingly, the administration is moving to stack the deck in favor of its predetermined views. Specifically:

• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently disbanded a committee that had recommended regulation of genetic testing, which reads DNA to suggest a person’s chances of getting a disease. Currently, companies are marketing tests for genes, frequently through the Internet, even where there is no established link to disease, needlessly worrying consumers and conning them out of their money. As a result of the committee’s recommendations, FDA initiated a rulemaking during the Clinton administration to oversee the marketing of such testing. However, this rulemaking has now been abandoned, according to the Post, along with the committee.
• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently scrapped a committee that had recommended new protections for human research subjects, tightening up conflict-of-interest rules and putting in place new restrictions on research involving the mentally ill -- recommendations that drew scorn from the pharmaceutical industry. Perhaps the death knell came when the committee failed to support the administration’s effort to include fetuses under a regulation involving research on newborns, angering religious conservatives. According to the Post, HHS officials plan to name Mildred Jefferson, a founder and former president of the National Right to Life Committee, as head of a reincarnated version of the committee.
• The administration put 15 new members on an 18-person panel advising the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Environmental Health -- a move environmental health advocates charge stacks the deck in industry’s favor. In particular, the new committee includes Dennis Paustenbach, who conducts paid risk assessment for industry and testified on behalf of Pacific Gas & Electric, which was ultimately found guilty of poisoning drinking water, in the trial that made Erin Brockovich famous; Roger McClellan, the former director of the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology; and Becky Norton Dunlop, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation and former head of Virginia’s natural resources department, where she aggressively fought against environmental protection.