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The Bush administration's practice of turning the truth on its head is becoming increasingly flagrant. It has now taken an especially ugly turn towards racism. The practice of rewriting the findings of our national scientific institutions has become a tool for hiding the racism that affects the healthcare of millions of Americans.
In March of 2002 the Institute of Medicine issued "Unequal Treatment," a report on the disparities in healthcare suffered by racial and ethnic minorities. The original report clearly laid out the problems of unequal access and the effects of institutionalized racism on the quality of care received and the differences in the prevalence of disease in different communities and populations. This report said that there is no question that health disparities exist -- the challenge was to develop strategies to reduce and eliminate them.
On December 23, 2003 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released its report, "National Healthcare Disparities Report." This report used the same basic scientific findings as "Unequal Treatment" but came to completely different conclusions. However, comparisons of the final report (released in December) of "National Disparities" with the earlier draft of the same report (circulated in June) found that the main findings and conclusions had been drastically changed. The first draft had mirrored in many ways the report of the Institute of Health, discussing disparities and what to do about them. But by the time that Bush's staff had finished their revisions the report's finding were quite the opposite of both "Unequal Treatment" and the June draft of the "National Healthcare Disparities Report."
The rewriting of this important report was so blatant that members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, Asian Pacific American Caucus and others in Congress investigated and published their own report, "A Case Study in Politics and Science: Changes to the National Healthcare Disparities Report." (www.reform.house.gov/min).
You can read the report to find a long catalog of their findings. Two of their examples can provide a sample of how the process of rewriting science works. The scientists' executive summary concluded that "disparities come at personal and societal price," -- this includes needless disability, early death, and overall social loss of productivity. The final version does not recognize or discuss the costs of disparities to individuals or society. Bush's editing team replaces those findings with a conclusion that "Some priority populations do as well or better than the general population in some aspects of health care." The cost of discrimination and racism is wiped out with the wave of an editor's pen.
In addition to the politically driven rewrites, key findings simply disappeared between the original report and the final version. The "disappeared" findings include:
Minorities are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer and colorectal cancer compared to whites [as opposed to early diagnosis]
The use of physical restraints in nursing homes is higher among Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders compared with non-Hispanic whites.
Many racial and ethnic minorities and person of lower socioeconomic position are more likely to die from HIV.
Unfortunately the subversion of scientific findings is not limited to reports on healthcare. Representative Henry Waxman has sponsored a website that gives many examples of the twisting of scientific findings to fit Bush's political agenda. The site www.politicsandscience.org, describes the rewriting of other important scientific reports, such as the Environmental Protection Agency's "Draft Report on the Environment". The EPA was so appalled by the changes in the global warming section of that report that they finally decided that the only thing that they could do was to eliminate the entire section or become the laughingstock of the scientific community. For example, Bush's editors had replaced the indisputable fact that "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," with a virtually meaningless statement about the "complexity of the Earth system." Nothing to worry about folks, maybe we will all just get a nice tan.
It isn't just the reports about the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that receive the creative writing awards from Bush and Co., but virtually everything that is published by our national scientific intuitions. Beware the final published reports of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Education, and others -- they have all been given "the 1984 treatment."
[Margie Akin is an anthropologist and community activist in Riverside.]
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