Science Policy: The Man Behind the Memos (RE Steiger @ HHS)

[struggle4progress]

<edit: oops. forgot body of post>

(Science, Vol 305, Issue 5690, 1552-1553 , 10 September 2004)
Jocelyn Kaiser

... William R. Steiger, the point person on international health for HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, has made a name for himself everywhere--from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the halls of academia. Then again, not many bureaucrats would want the kind of attention he's received.

Steiger, 34, a political appointee who has close ties to the Bush family, has brought an unprecedented level of oversight to HHS's international activities--and it has made him a lightning rod for critics. When HHS clamped down on foreign travel by its scientists, Steiger began personally approving each trip. When industry groups criticized a World Health Organization (WHO) report on nutrition, Steiger slammed it as scientifically flawed. When the department declared that it would choose which U.S. scientists WHO could invite as expert advisers, Steiger signed the memo. <snip>

Steiger grew up in Washington, D.C., the son of Representative William A. Steiger from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a moderate Republican who gave Vice President Dick Cheney his first political job. Representative Steiger died in 1978. Godson of former President George H. W. Bush, the younger Steiger completed a dissertation on Brazilian history in 1995 before he was tapped to be education policy adviser to then-Wisconsin governor Thompson. When Thompson became HHS secretary in 2001, he brought his protégé to Washington as part of his management team and gave him the job of overseeing international affairs.

Steiger was soon named Thompson's representative to the WHO board, the World Health Assembly, despite his lack of health experience. HHS also revamped the entire U.S. delegation, which in previous years had included representatives from the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Public Health Association (APHA). They were not invited, although a nurse from the National Right to Life Committee was added. (Steiger explains that AMA and APHA "go anyway" on their own, and Thompson wanted to "include real people who might not have had a chance to go in the past.") <snip>

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/305/5690/1552
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(Science, Vol 305, Issue 5680, 29 , 2 July 2004)

The Bush Administration wants to pick the government experts advising the World Health Organization (WHO), a change in existing practice that critics see as the latest example of the politicization of science.

The new policy, laid out in a 15 April letter to WHO from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), explains that having WHO invite scientists to serve as consultants "has not always resulted in the most appropriate selections." Instead, says William Steiger of the HHS Office of Global Health Affairs, WHO must now submit its request to his office, which will then make the call.

In a 24 June letter to HHS, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) calls the policy "a raw attempt to exert political control over scientists and scientific evidence." He likens it to HHS's decision to curb the number of staff members attending the international AIDS meeting in Bangkok this month (Science, 23 April, p. 499). But HHS spokesperson William Pierce says the objective is "to make sure that WHO is getting the best we have to offer."

WHO has asked the United States to reconsider the policy, because it invites experts "for their personal knowledge," not as government representatives, says spokesperson Ian Simpson.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/305/5680/29b?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Steiger+HHS&searchid=1095380837294_4644&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&tocsectionid=special%2FnewsAORBn-weekAORBn-focusAORBs-scopeAORBr-samplesAORBn-commentAORBnewsAORBr-news&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=9/30/2004
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(Science, Vol 303, Issue 5665, 1747 , 19 March 2004)

The budget-conscious U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has decided to slash its delegation to the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok in July. Stunned staffers were told last week that HHS will send just 50 people to the meeting, compared to 236 who attended the last meeting in Barcelona. Cost concerns drove the decision, says HHS, rejecting reports that HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson soured on the conference after he was heckled in Barcelona in 2002.

According to HHS spokesperson Bill Pierce, the $3.6 million spent last time to send 236 people and for other meeting support was "an excessive amount," a view echoed by Republicans in a recent House Government Reform Committee report. This time, HHS will spend just $500,000. Pierce says the 50-person cap--with exemptions for staff in Southeast Asia--is actually 10 more than HHS policy allows for an international delegation. Although well-placed sources told Science that HHS official Bill Steiger informed agency AIDS leaders that the cut was due in part to Thompson's heckling, Pierce says this "is completely incorrect." <snip>

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/303/5665/1747c?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Steiger+HHS&searchid=1095380837294_4644&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&tocsectionid=special%2FnewsAORBn-weekAORBn-focusAORBs-scopeAORBr-samplesAORBn-commentAORBnewsAORBr-news&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=9/30/2004
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SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT: HHS Intervenes in Choice of Study Section Members
(Science, Vol 298, Issue 5597, 1323 , 15 November 2002)
Dan Ferber

<snip> In a letter in this week's issue of Science (p. 1335), epidemiologist Dana Loomis of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, charges that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is playing politics with the membership of a study section that reviews research grants on physical injuries in the workplace for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). In the past few months, says Loomis, the department has rejected three people who were proposed by science administrators at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which manages the study section--"at least one" for her support of an ergonomics rule that was overturned last year by the Bush Administration. Knowledgeable agency staffers confirm the account. HHS spokesperson William Pierce declined to discuss specifics, saying that HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson is simply exercising his prerogative to be involved in the choice of advisers.

The department's role in appointing study section members follows other recent changes to federal science advisory committees, which are set up to provide federal agencies with independent scientific advice for policy decisions (Science, 25 October, pp. 703 and 732). The NIH peer-review process "really works, and I think meddling with it by inserting any sort of political test really endangers the entire endeavor," says molecular biologist Keith Yamamoto of the University of California, San Francisco, who chaired an advisory panel that helped NIH fine-tune its respected peer-review system. "I can't imagine that this has ever been done before," says Linda Rosenstock, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, who directed NIOSH during most of the Clinton Administration. <snip>

The rejected panelists--ergonomics experts Laura Punnett of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Catherine Heaney of Ohio State University, Columbus, and Manuel Gomez, director of scientific affairs at the American Industrial Hygiene Association--say they are surprised at the furor surrounding their nominations. Loomis says he had put forward Punnett and Heaney because "we needed the ergonomic expertise badly." Punnett, in particular, has testified publicly in favor of the ergonomics rule and in lawsuits by carpal-tunnel-syndrome patients against keyboard manufacturers. "I was shocked," she says about being rejected. "I think it conveys very powerfully that part of the goal is to intimidate researchers and limit what research questions are asked." Gomez says he is "baffled" as to why his nomination was rejected. Heaney could not be reached for comment.

One nominee who was recently screened for the panel says that she was asked politically charged questions by a member of Thompson's staff. Pamela Kidd, an expert in injury prevention and associate dean of the College of Nursing at Arizona State University in Tempe, says that the staffer called in September and asked if she would be an advocate on certain issues involving ergonomics if appointed to the panel. <snip>

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5597/1323?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Steiger+HHS&searchid=1095380837294_4644&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&tocsectionid=special%2FnewsAORBn-weekAORBn-focusAORBs-scopeAORBr-samplesAORBn-commentAORBnewsAORBr-news&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=9/30/2004
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[whistle]

1. Just who is Steiger@hhs ?

...holy shit, this DU is so slow when I brought up the post, the attached remained blank and so when I did'n't see anything below the title line for about 15 seconds, I posted the question. I'll read the post now that it has come up. DU moderators, have the techies found anything yet? Maybe it's one of KKKarl Rives used condoms that he had one of his operatives throw into the server drive.....I can't even post this response now.....nope, spell check not responding....here goes the post attempt....

[struggle4progress]

2. "William R. Steiger, the point person on international health ...

for HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson ..."

<edit:> As soon as my reply posted, your edit appeared.