CDC is a medical body dedicated to “protecting the health and safety of all Americans.”  It seems like an obvious corollary then that medical science should be the guiding force in all of its work.  If this doesn’t happen, CDC would appear to be derelict in its duty to pursue its mission.  So CDC has done the right thing in choosing to investigate the events in which politics firmly vetoed the presentation of medical science at a conference on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), preventing a discussion of documented failures in the abstinence-only sex education programs promoted by the Bush Administration. 

While CDC may have done well in choosing to investigate, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IL), who appears to be responsible for pulling the panelists, continues performing poorly.  Martin Green, spokesperson for Rep. Souder, is ready to admit that politics should not have sway over CDC.  But rather than issue an apology, he took a message to the press suggesting not that Souder’s office had sought to “remove politics from the panel” by manipulating its presentation. 

Nonsense!  A politics-free peer-review process selected the panelists for each of the presentations at the conference: other doctors & scientists selected the censored panel based on its scientific merit.  If phone calls between politicians were the causes of censorship—which Green does not seem to be contesting—how can Rep. Souder’s office begin to say they weren’t being political?  It was politics alone that appears to have guided them, with the only qualification being that it was their politics.

Somewhere along the line, it became acceptable for right wing activists to claim that they are innocent of politics.  They want “strict constructionist” readings of the constitution that only yield rulings in their favor, and they defame judges who decide against them for abandoning the constitution.  They seek to revoke abortion rights in as many cases as possible, often citing the influence of pro-choice groups on public policy as reason enough to abandon those policies and make new ones in their own image.  Now, Mark Souder claims he did not do anything “political” in censoring a scientific panel and replacing it with applause for abstinence-only policy that has been highly criticized for its overtly political nature and its proven failures. 

Representative Souder is a politician.  There should be no shame, then, in admitting he is political, right?  Is his position and his job really that terrible that he won’t be identified with his trade?