The Bush administration’s bad medicine

As the Bush administration, isolated but not, sadly, without weapons, draws to its shameful end, recent testimony by former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona before a Congressional panel this week helped bring home just how rigid the regime’s quackery has been when it comes to matters of medical science over the last several years.

Among the points that Dr. Carmona made with relation to how he was told to do his job during his 2002 to 2006 tenure (that is, as the leading spokesperson on matters of public health for the administration) are the following:

• Dr. Carmona was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of every speech he delivered.
  
• On the topic of sex education, Dr. Carmona’s suggestion that the use of contraceptives be included was met with a refrain that the Bush government wanted to promote “abstinence only.”
  
• Global warming was dismissed as a “liberal cause.”
  
• Dr. Carmona was advised not to testify at a U.S. government racketeering trial of the tobacco industry by an administration that was simultaneously telling the government lawyer in the case that he, Dr. Carmona, was not competent to testify.
  

Quite a way to treat a double Purple Heart United States Army Special Forces veteran, no?

It’s good to know, as one of the 48 million Americans without health insurance, that the Bush administration had its priorities straight.