Fergie's Tech Blog

Politics: White House Cut Warming Impact Testimony

An AP newswire article, via The New York Times, reports that:

The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Atlanta-based CDC, the government's premier disease monitoring agency, told a Senate hearing that climate change ''is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans.''

But her prepared testimony was devoted almost entirely to the CDC's preparation, with few details on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease. Only during questioning did she describe some specific diseases that likely would be affected, again without elaboration.

Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance.

''It was eviscerated,'' said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process.

posted by Fergie @ 10/23/2007 10:33:00 PM