Bush ignores sound science

To the editor:

Sound science should guide policy -- especially for human and environmental health. Rules concerning air, food and water quality should be informed by reliable scientific research. By rejecting or suppressing scientific findings and scientific consensus and by evaluating appointees to advisory panels based on ideology rather than credentials, George Bush undermines our safety.

President Nixon's first EPA administrator, William Ruckelshaus, suggested that when analyses are flawed "a legitimate reason [exists] for not releasing [them]. But if you don't like the outcome that might result from the analysis, that is not a legitimate reason." Russell Train, successor to Ruckelshaus, stated: "From the beginning É the Bush administration É has É injected itself into the way the EPA approaches and decides the critical issues before it."

Former FDA commissioner Kennedy: "I don't think any administration has penetrated so deeply into the advisory committee structure as this one, and I think it matters. If you start picking people by their ideology instead of the scientific credentials you are inevitably reducing the quality of the advisory group."

Science advisor to Bush I, Bromley: "There are too many litmus tests."

Nixon-era director of the National Bureau of Standards Branscomb : "I don't think we have had this kind of cynicism with respect to objective scientific advice since I've been watching government."

American Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, National Academy of Science members and over 5,000 scientists signed an expression of concern about the Bush abuse of science. This must stop.

ALAN JOURNET, Cape Girardeau