Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has written several letters to Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) disagreeing with “a new HHS policy requires the World Health Organization to submit all requests for expert scientific advice to political officials at HHS who pick which federal scientists will be permitted to respond.”

The two letters are worth reading in full (first letter and second letter) to understand the details of Representative Waxman’s complaint.  In short, Representative Waxman expresses concerns that the new policy will (1) limit access by the WHO to U.S. experts, (2) cause delays in the sharing of expertise, and (3) provide the U.S. a means to delay consideration by the international community of controversial health topics.

For its part, the HHS observes in its letter to the WHO announcing its new policy (included with the first Waxman letter) that “U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and U.S. Civil Service regulations require HHS experts to serve as representatives of the U.S. Government at all times and advocate U.S. Government policies.”

So, does the HHS policy amount to a misuse of science?  

To answer this question we might draw on the report from students in my Maymester course this past spring who characterized four categories of misuse of science by presidential administrations: mistake, mischaracterization, arguing politics or morals through science, and delegitimization.

The answer is “Yes.”  It seems abundantly clear that the HHS decision, while apparently not illegal, does serve to delegitimize science in the sense that it puts a political filter in between the WHO and U.S. government scientists.  When implemented the HHS policy also runs the risk of arguing politics/morals through science if HHS selects scientists to provide information to WHO according to their political perspectives.  I am unaware of any other agency that has implemented such a policy.  Of course it is important to acknowledge that if WHO is free to pick and choose which scientists they seek out for information or advice, then WHO could just as well select particular scientists according to certain political perspectives.

I am sure that many reactions to the HHS policy will focus on trying to “let scientists talk about science” or somehow cleanly separate out science from politics.  Of course, such clean separation is not possible.  It seems to me that if the Administration wishes to place government scientists on a tighter leash (and it is not clear to me why this would be necessary), then a policy that would be more legitimate would allow WHO to choose HHS experts, but require these government scientists to acknowledge the official U.S., government policy on a particular topic whenever they discuss specific policy issues related to their expertise.  More along these lines can be found in this essay.

Congressman Waxman has requested a reply from HHS by July 7, 2004 and it will be interesting to see what HHS says.

(Note: Thanks to Chris Mooney for blogging on this topic and to several Prometheus readers for calling it to my attention!)