The Orbis

Distorted breast cancer claims:

Clarifying claims from social conservatives that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, the Web site of the National Cancer Institute stated that current evidence from numerous correlational experiments failed to generate a link between abortion and breast cancer. However, in Nov. 2002, the Bush administration replaced this posting with a new fact sheet that mistakenly claims the issue is still uncertain due to evidence supporting both sides. The administration has also been pushed by social conservative to require doctors to “counsel” women seeking abortions about the risk of developing breast cancer. The director of epidemiology research for the American Cancer Society has stated regarding the dispute: “This issue has been resolved scientifically...This is essentially a political debate.”

Perchlorate in drinking water:

In 2002, EPA proposed a limit in drinking water of one part per billion of perchlorate, “the main ingredient in solid rocket fuel, [that] alters the production of thyroid hormones and poses special health risks to developing fetuses and infants.” Such low limit levels would have required substantial cleanup efforts at numerous sites operated by the Department of Defense or its contractors. Instead of pursuing detoxification endeavors or further investigation, the “administration proposed legislation to provide liability protection for the Pentagon and its contractors from claims related to perchlorate,” while “the Pentagon dropped plans to require definitive perchlorate testing at all active and inactive sites.”

Mis-identified aluminum tubes in Iraq

In the justification for the war in Iraq, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Vice President Cheney and President Bush all cited that Iraq had attempted to acquire 100,000 high strength aluminum tubes supposedly used in the enrichment centrifugation of uranium for use in nuclear weapons. The claims were made both to the United Nations General Assembly and to Congress during the president’s State of the Union address. The questionable claim was not whether Iraq had attempted to acquire the tubes, but whether they could actually be used for the centrifugation of uranium. The CIA argued they could be used based on the specifications, but technical experts from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge, Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories all disagreed and argued the dimensions of the tubes were “far from ideal for this purpose.” They alleged the tubes were meant for short-range rocket motor casings, especially since the tubes were identical to the tubes acquired by Iraq in the 1980s for this very purpose. The DOE experts pointed out two other pieces of evidence contradicting the CIA’s interpretation: “...the Iraqis had developed and tested centrifuges before the first Gulf War that were much more capable than those that could have been built with the imported tubes” and “that if these tubes were actually intended for centrifuges, there should be evidence of attempts by the Iraqis to acquire hundreds of thousands of other very specific components, but no such evidence existed.” The assertion that the aluminum tubes were to be used for nuclear weapons served an integral part of Powell’s presentation to the UN that Iraq had or was developing weapons of mass destruction. Terrifyingly, he knew about the extreme controversy surrounding the issue, but chose to ignore it.

Censorship of global warming data

Climate change information has been the victim of egregious censorship and repression by the White House. The EPA’s Draft Report on the Environment is the worst of numerous instances of repression and unsubstantiated alteration of sound scientific data. This report includes a section on global warming that conclusively found a link between human activity and the warming of the earth. The information was corroborated by a National Academy of Sciences report on the same subject – a study Bush himself requested after coming to office. Interviews and an internal EPA memo reveal that the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget demanded significant revisions, including the following:

“The deletion of a temperature record covering 1,000 years in order to...emphasize a recent, limited analysis [that]                 supports the administration’s favored message. The removal of any reference to the NAS review...that confirmed human activity is contributing to climate change. The insertion of a reference to a discredited study of temperature records funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. The elimination of the summary statement—non-controversial within the science community that studies climate change—that ‘climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.”

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