Bush Administration appointees have ensured, deliberately and repeatedly, that politics and ideology trump science. The result: Americans lose.

The administration’s low regard for science is there for all to see.

?In January, a National Institutes of Health official asserted that because of Bush Administration policies on stem cells we are “missing out on possible breakthroughs.”

?In 2006, NASA scientists said that the Administration had made it hard for them to speak forthrightly about global warming.

?In 2005, an assistant commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration resigned her post, citing political interference that was delaying approval of over-the-counter sales of Plan B, the “morning after” contraceptive. Political ideology, it seems, is father to many a child.

Now we learn that the administration is suppressing a report on global health, which was recently obtained by the Washington Post. The report was drafted by the former U.S. Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, a Bush appointee who served from 2002 to 2006. Dr. Carmona submitted the report in May 2006 to his superior, a Bush political appointee in the Health and Human Services Department. See the report on-line at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/CTAGlobalHealthdraft.pdf.

Why was the report not released? Because it lacked “scientific rigor,” according to this HHS official, William Steiger – who, not incidentally, has no training in science or medicine. But Carmona testified before Congress that a senior official told him that the report “will be a political document, or it will not be released.” Carmona also said the report was not released because he refused to sprinkle it with glowing references to the efforts of the Bush administration.

Have we lost anything by the blockage of the Surgeon General’s global health study?

Indeed we have. The report repeatedly underscores the dependence of Americans’ health on health conditions abroad and makes policy recommendations, derived from this dependence, to improve Americans’ health.

The suppressed report emphasizes that major flu infections have spread from other countries to the United States. Three influenza pandemics, all originating abroad, occurred in the 20th century – in 1918, when deaths numbered 20 to 50 million worldwide and 500,000 in the United States, and in 1957-58 and 1968-69, when thousands more Americans died. The current “bird flu” virus also originated abroad, and many experts think it likely that this virus will reach the United States.

The Surgeon General’s report also notes that HIV-AIDS, now the world’s fourth largest killer, has crossed national boundaries freely. HIV originated in West-Central Africa, spreading from chimpanzees to humans around 1930.

The suppressed report recommends ways to protect Americans from diseases originating abroad. It asks for U.S. approval of new International Health Regulations developed in May 2005 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The new regulations oblige countries to help contain infectious diseases by reporting suspected disease outbreaks promptly, sharing tissue samples, and establishing rigorous safety measures at airports and ports. The report also recommends strong U.S. support for other countries’ immunization campaigns.

The Surgeon General’s report further warns that food imports are sometimes contaminated and are vulnerable to poisoning in foreign ports by terrorists. Since the report was written, we have learned that in the first four months of 2007 FDA inspectors turned back 298 food shipments from China. The report recommends that we encourage other countries to implement more effective food export inspection practices.

To be fair, in 2003 President Bush got Congress to approve $15 billion to fight AIDS internationally, and this year he asked Congress for billions more. And in December 2006 – some 19 months after WHO finalized its new International Health Regulations – the U.S. accepted them.

Meanwhile, the Administration is ignoring another key recommendation of the report: that the U.S. ratify the WHO Convention on Tobacco Control, which obligates countries to publicize widely the deadly impact of tobacco use. The Convention would require, for example, that U.S. tobacco companies enlarge the danger warnings printed on cigarette packages.

Though WHO adopted this Convention in 2003, the administration still has not sent it to the Senate for ratification, so it has no effect in the U.S.

The Administration’s inaction almost certainly arises partly from the tobacco industry’s decades-long fight against publicity about tobacco’s dangers. Could the Administration’s desire for tobacco industry support also help explain its suppression of the Surgeon General’s report?

Until the Post released it last month, the Administration’s blockage of this report deprived Americans of guidance on ways to improve their own health by helping other countries improve theirs. So we are paying a price for choosing a president with low regard for objective scientific research. When politics trumps science, we all play with a losing hand.

Edwin Dean, an economist and seasonal resident of Vinalhaven, writes monthly about economic issues.