Editorial: Distorting the truth

Thursday, Aug. 2, 2007 | 7:56 a.m.

The Bush administration in 2006 withheld a surgeon general's report outlining how the United States should address global health problems because it wasn't political enough.

Richard Carmona, who was U.S. surgeon general from 2001 through 2006, wrote the unpublished report, which was obtained by The Washington Post and detailed in a story on Monday. The document shows links between poor health and poverty and says that U.S. foreign policy should include efforts to fight widespread disease. It also called on corporations to improve health conditions in the foreign countries in which they operate, the Post reports.

In a House committee hearing in July, Carmona said his "Call to Action on Global Health" was suppressed by a senior official in the Health and Human Services Department who said that the report did not fit Bush's political agenda and that it "will be a political document, or it will not be released."

Officials who helped Carmona prepare the report told the Post that the senior official who withheld the document was William Steiger, head of the Health and Human Services Department's global health affairs office since 2001. Steiger, whose background is in education and Latin American history, has long-standing ties to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Post reports.

Carmona told lawmakers that he refused to make the changes and told of similar conflicts over other scientifically based reports on matters of public health, including one on the health of prisoners that never was published. Carmona was not reappointed when his term ended in 2006.

The scope of such suppression is breathtaking - but it is, unfortunately, not surprising given the Bush administration's track record of favoring political loyalty over science or any other proven facts.

Bush's twisted view of government also has polluted decisions regarding the release of new prescription drugs, medical research, the environment and, most recently, the fate of U.S. attorneys across the country. At least seven were fired for reasons that turned out to be political.

When political loyalty is all that matters, it makes government weak. And it is a desperately poor manner in which to run a country.