Not What The Doctor Ordered

Today's New York Times is running a fairly scathing report of Administration attempts "to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations" during Dr. Richard H. Carmona's four year tenure as Surgeon General.

According to the Times, those reports included such topics as embryonic stem cell research and "a landmark report on secondhand smoke [that] concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm."

Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the moral status of human embryos. As such, that issue, itself, is a legitimate policy matter for the Bush Administration. What is not a legitimate policy matter but a purely scientific question is whether or to what extent embryonic stem cells are essential or vitally important in medical research. Again, one might hold that human embryos being persons, no medical advances would justify their intentional destruction, but we should at least know as best we can what the likely payoff of such research would be and what, if any, alternatives exist.

So, too, many have questioned the scientific validity of the aforementioned study on secondhand smoke. I haven't read the study or the criticism, so I won't offer an opinion beyond acknowledging skepticism about the sweeping nature of some of the claims reported in the press. Be that as it may, scientific research needs to be made available precisely so it can be challenged scientifically. Ethical and policy concerns remain, but we should at least have the benefit of a full examination on the scientific merits of such studies first.

Beyond that, though, it seems clear to me that if the nation is going to have a Surgeon General at all, the office must be accorded greater independence from both political branches of government. As matters stand, the office falls under the Department of Health and Human Services which is, frankly, a prime target for political manipulation regardless of the party controlling the White House.

Conversely, we could simply eliminate the office or relegate it to its primary function as head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and create some independent medical advisory authority in its place. Science and health policy is properly the responsibility of policy makers, not of scientists and physicians, themselves. But it is equally true that the soundness of the scientific or medical research required to make those policy decisions must remain in the unfettered province of the scientific and medical community, itself.

Oh, and for goodness sakes, drop the silly uniforms.