Well let get those republicans out of office for our nations and our children health.Simple
17
This is the most disingenuous, hypocritical use of the concept of "transparency" I have ever seen.
13
Of course! Whatever the tweeter-in-chief can do to deny science he will do. What a disgusting excuse for a president.
9
Every city will look like Flynt Michigan. Republicans won't be satisfied until they kill us all.
9
What's next - burning witches at the stake?
8
WHERE IS THE LOUD protests / opposition of all concerned ( all of US, REALLY ! ) to the absurdity of these rules described in this article ?!
we need to hear the loud and clear protests of :
the American med. Asso.,
American Cancer Asso,
American heart and Lung Asso,
American pediatric Asso,
American nursing Asso,
and MANY MANY OTHER concerned organizations.
HOW could the public voice its protests ?! - please advise .
thank you to the NYT for being in the forefront of a potentially dire health catastrophe in the making !
8
I've often wondered if what we think of as true evil really exists in the world or just in metaphorical literature. Now we know that, with the Trump administration, true evil really does exist.
14
From the novel "1984" -
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
The new draft of the EPA's proposal "Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science" amply demonstrates the "ignorance in strength" phrase from "1984". The phrase means that the ruling class is able to maintain power and control by keeping the rest of the population ignorant. If the citizens are ignorant of the truth, they cannot challenge the government or the decisions made by those in power.
And that's exactly what the Trump administration is doing - and has been doing since January 20, 2017.
12
When will the american people wake up to the fact that the administration is threatening their health to the benefit of polluters?
8
Every news about environment is just convincing me that, trump is here to accelerate apocalypse but nothing.
What is the meaning of all these assaults?
Accelerating the end comes quicker.
4
A couple of comments:
If the medical records are protected by privacy laws: How would it be possible to allow the privacy to be violated in these scientific studies? Would it not be illegal?
Transparency is not negated because one does not know the individuals in the study. Educate your self on experimental studies. Review the study itself. Review the footnotes and review other studies on the topic. Ask questions. Has the study been duplicated? Review the motives of those who did the study and those who are criticizing. Who profits, who paid for it...?
A civil democratic society allows for different opinions but there is no place for derogatory or demeaning comments.
5
Out of the wreckage we will build a sane majority.
We will build an alternative energy infrastructure.
We will reduce atmospheric carbon.
We will reduce the size of the human population.
We will reduce species extinction.
We will eliminate war and superiority-based government.
We will expand the availability of education, adequate nutrition, medical care, freedom from fear, freedom from want.
We will stop making the same old nationalistic mistakes.
We will change the way we spend our wealth.
We will treat the Earth as the only place to live, a place that life designed over millions of years to be just the way it was 6,000 years ago, when the wrong paths were first taken. We didn’t know any better until very recently.
We know better now.
We will make the younger generation proud.
5
If Trump’s E.P.A. succeeds in its insistence all data from environmental studies be made public, then it should be subject to an analogous rule: their rule-making (or rule-altering) deliberations should be completely open to the public, with full records being made fully available without redactions or claims of executive privilege.
11
OK, so I'm not a scientist. But it seems logical to me that since results have to be reproducible, all that a study's designers would need to release would be their protocols and a generalized description of how they selected and monitored the individual participates. That should be enough for another organization to reproduce the study and see if the hypothesis holds up. They wouldn't need to dig down to individual bits of data. I'm all for transparency and an informed public, but obviously this administration is hiding behind "transparency," something which it itself is notably lacking.
10
Our only hope is that the Democrats win next November and these fools are cast out of the EPA.
11
Next time before else, vote..
2
These guys so seem to be carrying out precise instructions from the Kremlin, it's uncanny!!
7
The hypocrisy to outlaw the use of peer-reviewed scientific research as a basis for governmental policy in the name of transparency is staggering. Scientists must violate HIPPA laws, or their research will be rejected, because the White House can’t conduct their own evaluation of the research? And it’s retroactive. I suppose now they’ll say there is too little acceptable research for anti-smoking regulations, so let’s all light up in bars again. Scott Pruitt is the poster boy for Trump’s selection criterion for his Cabinet: a fox in every henhouse.
12
For a little of the backstory, check out the most recent John Oliver, who has now been released from the gag rules on his comedy take on Bob Murray, a former crony of Wheeler, who is not about protecting the environment, but about protecting dirty fossil and their investors. And lest you think coal miners benefited, no they didn't coal is all about trickle-up, and the workers are not supposed to complain when they sicken and die, let alone the trashed neighborhoods with high incidence of cancer and brain problems, and dead fish and the like. Watersheds poisoned, no problem, look at the profits today, especially for distant shareholders.
John Oliver roasts litigious coal titan in epic, squirrel-filled musical number https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2019-11-11/john-oliver-slapp-lawsuits-victorious-last-week-tonight-musical-ending
Well worth a view, fine entertainment.
And here's the NYT in early 2018 on Wheeler's connection (over $2 million's worth): Andrew Wheeler, New E.P.A. Chief, Details His Energy Lobbying Past
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/climate/andrew-wheeler-epa-lobbying.html
In some ways, Pruitt was better because his corruption was more obvious and therefore more easily set aside. Wheeler is dangerous to children and other livings things.
7
This is really bad news. The toxicological results that really matter are the health based ones, much more than animal studies. Because of the iron-clad rules for patient identity protection, it will be difficult to prove that many of these pollution practices have a human effect. A real "Catch 22" The American people should raise an outcry over the egregious behavior which benefits the greedy, wealthy few. There will be a price to pay. It may be something Trump, Wheeler and his gang don't expect: Elizabeth Warren.
5
A government that says that lies are truth was bound to say that science is a fairy tale.
6
Individual medical records are irrelevant in a study. It’s only when many are combined that there is useful data. But all those individuals are required to create the database. Who they are really doesn’t matter, so no invasion of privacy is needed.
What bothers me more is the continued obstruction and denial of science by this administration and republicans in general. I think all republicans share one brain.
4
How can the EPA possibly review all data to determine if the scientific conclusions are correct? Who can believe this is being done as a cost benefit analysis for the benefit of our citizens?
My next correspondence will be to the EPA. I suggest that the comments posted with the NYT does not end here.
2
Doesn't Trump want us to 'go to the moon on the way to Mars'? How does he step on Air Force One? How does he talk on the telephone? (And we know he loves to do that). How does he get into Marine One and a car? All done by science.
Yet air and water resources? Science is no good for them, huh?
These people are evil in their greed. Pure evil. And so illogical.
4
Wouldn't it be nice if the Trump administration was on the right side of an issue? Just one?
6
Although Trump's repudiation of science implementing government public health policy should not be surprising, given how he has been running the government thus far, it should be interesting to see how the right wing and his supporters react to this announcement. It really takes quite a hefty amount of spin to turn being against public health into something that your right wing supporters can cheer you on for doing. Leave it to Trump, and his Republican sycophants to turn the destruction of public health into something to brag about as a meaningful accomplishment. He's turning politics into a toilet bowl.
4
The article mentions the comment period has reopened for the change, but I cannot find an open comment period for it anywhere on regulations.gov or under its docket number. Does anyone have this information so we can submit comments?
The agency cannot pass the rulemaking unless they address every reasonable concern from the public submitted by comment in the Federal Register! Exercise your voice and write your opinion for the EPA to hear.
4
This is not "limiting" science in any way, to determine what to do about something you must understand it. Without the data you can't understand anything, you just trust the person doing the work. That is foolish or worse.
1
NYT, please give us some reporting on the legal ramifications of this. Just because Wheeler makes these pronouncements about nullifying all the rules does not mean he can legally do so, correct?
2
I would suggest that you rewrite the headline to say "EPA to Limit Facts Used" or perhaps "EPA to Limit Truth Used to Write Public Health Rules". While we're at it, how about "Do Away With Facts". That would be real reporting.
4
This is one more of many reasons why we need to have this know-nothing, science-hating, ignoramus-loving administration ended and Trump removed ASAP before his gang destroys everything good and great about our country.
3
The ultimate libertarian fantasy, de-regulation liberated from reality.
2
The only consistency in this mendacious administration, is their waking each day and saying amongst themselves, "Whose life can we ruin now?"
4
Milloy and Trump don't appear to get what being Republican means. Elsewhere in the news, we read about Trump talking with the vaping industry to see what he can personally mandate/regulate to solve a problem which is driven and solved by individual choice. Yet here, where most citizens don't have individual choice about their air and water sources and what's allowed to happen to them, well, that's the just the Republican way. They don't even know from Republican anymore.
2
I applaud the requirement to provide raw data when submitting evidence that leads to increased regulations (or decreases if necessary), at least to a body of scientists within the government so that conclusions can be confirmed. A study often starts with an assumption (hypothesis) that the scientist wishes to confirm. In those cases, conclusions may be made on a subset of data or study criterion that are selected to support the desired conclusion. One of the most famous is that of the scientist in the UK who published findings that vaccines cause autism; that conclusion was utterly false, but many still believe it today.
Obviously personally identifiable data must NOT be tied to the raw data; typically those doing studies assign a number or other indicator that cannot lead to the person being identified. However, our health information is now shared with HHS and insurance companies even though HIPPA required confidentiality because HHS changed the rules to accommodate items in the ACA.
Would have been much better to present pros and cons here vs. stating that the EPA was going to limit science; that's a bold face lie. Shame on the NYTimes.
1
@Ma
You evidently did not read this article or else you would have come to the same conclusion the writer did when she titled it: if the EPA is now going to limit the scientific research on which it will base future regulations by requiring scientists to provide all the raw data, which includes confidential medical records which inevitably includes personal data, so it can determine whether or not studies pass muster, then BY ALL MEANS will it limit science. It will also lead to an accumulation of massive amounts of personal data in the hands of this government. Do you really think HIPPA statues will stop this administration from doing this? I think not...
3
Quite simply this proposal is against the law. HIPAA regulations require that personal medical data be protected.
3
If EPA prevails and epidemiological data are excluded from regulation development, the EPA may be forced to issue more stringent environmental regulations -- not less. In the absence of human toxicity studies, the EPA has to rely on animal studies. It must select the most sensitive species from among all those tested (which may be more sensitive than humans). Then it has to adjust the "safe" concentration for that animal species downward, using safety factors that account for uncertainties including cross-species extrapolation. This ploy could very well backfire on the anti-reg strategists who thought it clever to play patient privacy protections against environmental protection.
2
@EAC - I'm ok with that, as long as the animal study follows established protocols, has good record-keeping and is transparent. Epidemiology studies are designed to look for associations and not cause-and-effect, since they cannot control the myriad confounding factors. They should never be given the same amount of weight as a controlled laboratory study.
@EAC
No, I do not think so.
This administration will apply the same standards to animal studies as human studies. So, all relevant animal studies that cannot provide the raw data required by this proposal will be judged not worthy for consideration. The "no harm, no foul" axiom will be upheld, as there will be no validated studies on which to base any regulations.
The word "science" is not in this administration's dictionary...
1
There is absolutely no good reason for raw data to be required with scientific findings. That data remains on file so that other researchers can try to replicate findings. That allows sensitive data such as personal medical history to remain protected even as other researchers work. The EPA under the Trump Administration is simply trying to shut down science under the guise of making it "transparent." It's a shameful fraud perpetrated on the American people and the world.
7
Raw data and analytical methods are absolutely necessary to judge the quality of different studies. There are many ways to sanitize personal and sensitive information, while still allowing other scientists to replicate study findings. The "raw data" to which you refer is patient information from epidemiology studies. Those studies should never be given the same weight as controlled laboratory studies.
@James Brotherton
And what do you think the studies mentioned in this article are? They are epidemiologic studies of populations that link air pollution to serious morbidity and mortality. Laboratory studies, purposefully exposing human subjects to high levels of air pollution and examining the results, would be banned by the IRB of any academic or scientific institution.
When it looks like a zebra and smells like a zebra....
1
Wonder if any Republican's have friends and family with asthma, or like somewhat clean water? Just the basics of sustainable life is in jeopardy with these characters. Unless Putin plans on assisting republican members of Congress too, the voters will hold them accountable come Election Day.
2
The entire scientific community needs to launch a year-long ad campaign that describes the damage this administration is doing to this earth, and all the people who live on it. That, along with an all-out voter registration program, would help put an end to the Trump administration in 2020 before it's too late.
3
@Action Tank, DC - What does this have to do with transparency in science? Are you against making raw data and analytical methods transparent?
This is part of the Administration playbook to destroy science and destroy institutions in order to promote a form of corrupted authoritarian governance that allows its leadership total freedom to dominate and exploit. The EPA is a problem in its own right, but also symptomatic of this much broader and deeper challenge to democracy.
1
“The reality is, standards are not going to be tightened as long as there’s a Republican in office,” he said. Hopeful for a new administration starting in 2021. One of the hopefuls has a tremendous track record towards the improvement of our environment. It would make sense to have him in a high position in the realm of the EPA, should he not become the nominee.
To earn a high level of trust, science needs to conduct itself with integrity and humility beyond reproach. That has most definitely not always been the case. To that extent, science has brought this upon us. The Trump administration has of course not helped on this or much of anything else.
1
This is just part of Trump's attempt to destroy this country's intellectual and scientific infrastructure – to make Putin and his Russia seem better or more advanced. If you can't improve on another's advantages and advances, you diminish them - to make you seem better off. He's consistent in this – throughout every aspect of what this country's accomplished.
Vile Republican lies PROPAGANDA is killing USA. We're choking to death from it.
4
Of course they did. Let's hope and pray that the impeachment process is successful or that we can evict Trump from the Oval office in 2020, eliminate his lackeys and return to normalcy and sanity.
5
Another crime from this despicable criminal administration supported by a criminal Republican Party. If you vote Republican you are a collaborator in the slow destruction of American democracy, morality and the environment you depend on for a healthy life.
8
There are no words...but there is a special place in hell for all those who support this policy.
4
What in the world???? This is insanity...vote these idiots out!!!! I have never been more disgusted and alarmed at the same time...
4
Some speak of leaving USA
That's a mistake, the whole world is in an uproar
Nowhere to go...
I am here for the duration
2
How do we let the EPA know we are against this proposed change? Where is the contact information?
5
@Claud Vee
Go to regulations.gov
Type in EPA-HQ-OA-2018-0259.
Currently, comments section is closed. Hopefully will be open after this week...
2
So we take the word of chemical and drug companies when they're trying to get a product to market (the FDA has basically been captured by the businesses it is charged to oversee). But we won't take the word of scientists who have peer reviewed studies and no commercial interest in the outcome.
I have a bridge to sell the EPA.
6
I have an idea. Anyone who supports this administration and backwards ideas in general are not allowed the benefits of science. No doctors for them - they can use faith healers. No fertility specialists if they can't have children - it's gods will of course. No technology or, heck, even electricity, running water or indoor plumbing because if god meant for us to have these things, the earth would have had them when he placed us here. No transport other than horses...you get the idea.
5
I totally agree. They have benefited from the scientific research that they now want to constrain - like so many whose families immigrated here want to close the gates on desperate migrants & refugees. These are the same ones who would push drowning people away from their half filled life boats.
1
The real purpose of this move is to outrage liberals. Destruction of the environment is just a bonus.
5
“Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.”
Seductive sounding words. But there’s an invisible subtextual sentence in the middle: “The oil & gas industry have paid millions to ensure that this Administration find reasonable-sounding ways to promote their economic interest and deregulation more generally, even if it requires both violating the basic rules of confidentiality among research subjects and deceiving the public in the name of ‘transparency’.”
Now re-read Wheeler’s quote. “Cynical” is an understatement.
6
Fake news as usual.
The truth of the matter is that all data is secret not available when, when there is a legal dispute.
As the regulations now apply any plaintiff is prohibited from obtaining, challenging or reviewing such data. .... allowing for errors, bias, wrong conclusions and a host of other abuses to not only go unchallenged... but even worse assumed to be valid.
Any other court case Would be automatically thrown out for failure to provide evidence.
@Obummer If one does not like the evidence, empirical evidence if it does not support that persons desired outcome, well, throw the evidence in the trash bin and call it fake.
Yup. Good solution.
Now, for the rest of your comment it is fake, fictional.
1
This is beyond outrageous. This attack on science by the current "administration" is way, way, way beyond the pale. It will take the scientific community at least months, if not years, to recover once the current occupant of the White House is gone. Climate change denial, removal of scientists at the Department of Agriculture. It just goes on and on and on and on. I, for one, just cannot wait for the day when someone else raises his or her hand for the presidential oath, and that had darn well be on January 20, 2021!
4
Mr. Trump can have my personal; medical records when he shares his tax returns with the voters.
7
Why do populations collapse? We're seeing another example of why.
5
Sharing scientific data with the people running the EPA is like pearls before swine. As with all current appointees of this administration, their purpose is to destroy the departments they have been assigned to. The science & technology committee is rife with people who have no science or technology education. As evidenced by James Inhofe's snowball, who was on the environmental committee.
2
“E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules”
This is an inappropriate headline, and a biased article. It is an example of why the New York Times has lost credibility with the large portion of the public that does not share the paper’s left-leaning political perspective. The EPA is probably correct on this issue, and should require independently verifiable science for highly consequential regulations.
Good science requires transparency and verifiability. For studies such as those described in this article, especially those funded by taxpayer money, it is reasonable to require that the data be made public, so that independent teams can analyze and validate the results.
There is such a thing as a pack mentality, and it sometimes infects science; this can lead to incorrect conclusions. This has happened countless times in the history of science, all too often with serious, sometimes fatal, consequences. I’m not saying this happened here, but it is a possibility. The solution includes transparency, and making the raw data available for independent analysis.
When the raw data includes the identities of patients and survey takers, there are important safeguards that must be employed to protect privacy. These issues arise frequently, and there are well known tools for dealing with the problem, including deidentification, legally binding contracts, and limiting access to secure facilities.
In controversial domains such as this, transparency is the best approach.
1
Science is the foundation of our Nation’s competitive edge. Furthermore, the Trump administration is moving to control anything which conflicts with their world view.
When science is subjugated by politics can the freedom of expression be far behind ?
“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint. “ Alexander Hamilton
3
Republicans only care to make things public when they can use it to attack the messenger. You have cancer caused by pollution? Well that's not valid because you are an angry Democrat. Meanwhile... China has built the largest high speed rail system in the world that can go from about DC to Dallas in roughly 8 hrs. and is much cleaner than air travel or car travel. This is shameful, so much for the fantasy we heard as kids that the United States was the richest most prosperous country in the world. Now we get to start becoming the most polluted.
3
Availability of all relevant data to a scientific study is a necessity in the world of science and journals have begun to make that a requirement as noted below regarding the Data Availability Policy for BRAIN, a journal of neurology.
"To promote data transparency, on 1 June 2018, Brain introduced a policy on data availability and sharing. Authors are now required to include a data availability statement in their manuscript explaining where and how others can access the dataset associated with their work. The minimum dataset is that needed for independent verification of research results."
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/97173/why-don-t-researchers-publish-their-raw-data-for-the-advance-if-science
To ensure science is transparent and available.....I stopped reading right there. Another lie to justify deregulating industry. Years of attempts to clean our air, water, gone. Republicans have a lot to answer for.
3
You can boil down the entire article to its last line, “The reality is, standards are not going to be tightened as long as there’s a Republican in office,” he said.
Want clean air and water?
Make sure that there are no Republicans in office!
6
The war on Science. The assault on Reason. A return to the Dark Ages. The world is flat. Fascism.
4
The original birth control pill was approved for use by millions despite the small number of women; about 60-70 that lasted the whole year of the trial. Nobody was told until the breast cancer showed up, that the total at the beginning of the trial drug testing, there had been over 1000 women enrolled. 90% dropped out but were left out of application data.
Less than 10% could tolerate or properly use the drug yet it was approved.
Google CDC DES update and read how 8-10 million women and their offspring received this garbage made from coal tar sludge while in the womb between 1940-1971. Then ask how many births were in this period and does the damage pass to offspring?
There were 100 million births in this period and YES YES YES the damage from DES and other high dose estrogen has definitely been passed to subsequent generations. Many if not most idiopathic health problems today are DES inflicted damages.
You probably never heard how the AMA pushed this drug for twenty years-That is the point.
Had the full data been available it never would have been approved. Millions would be alive and well that are not now.
Really? Strengthening Transparency in Regulating Science? How about we first strengthen transparency on who serves on these EPA "fact"-finding boards and what criteria were used to select them. One suspects that having been a lobbyist for polluters gives an applicant a leg up.
2
Under Trump, EPA will stand for the Environmental Pollution Agency. Understanding environmental data requires a good knowledge of how the data was collected, how it was analyzed, and what conclusions can correctly be drawn from the analysis. This is a difficult enough task for peer reviewers, and these are often in short supply. It is not credible that the government could find competent reviewers without drawing on the same population that have already reviewed published data, rendering the proposal pointless.
2
Tillerson believes that global warming is the result of fossil fuels but he disbelieves that we can replace fossil fuels and sustain our way of life. So he sees all the worry as pointless. He represents the kind of thinking that opposes the efforts to preserve the environment by opposing existing uses of technologies by businesses. He represents the kind of minds who think Trump’s seeming ignorance about science which shows businesses models to be destructive of environments is a force for good in this imperfect world.
3
The thing is, Trump's and The GOP's supporters don't care. They will be told by Fox News that "liberals" are using fake research to justify EPA regulations. The farmers still support Trump in spite of hardships imposed by the tariffs. The coal miners still believe that coal is coming back and support Trump. Trump's supporters do not care what he does or has done or will do, they are fanatically loyal to Trump
Once climate change became politicized, we were going down this rabbit hole of non-scientists dictating policy that will affect everyone's health and longevity. We had better pray that whoever the Democratic nominee is, we win this next election and keep our fingers crossed that we will control both Houses of Congress. Our lives, our children's lives, and our grandchildren's lives depend on it. The caveat being that even if we do win the Presidency and control both Houses of Congress, the Judiciary is controlled from the very lowest court to the highest....
The 2016 election was the most consequential of our lives, and its impact will be felt for generations to come.
5
So Trump won't release his taxes to the courts and Congress to we can see if there's anything he doesn't lie about, but he wants to see our confidential medical records that are being used to try to save other lives and the planet. Sadly sounds about right for this administration.
5
"the latest version stipulates that all data and models used in studies under consideration at the E.P.A. would have to be made available to the agency so it can reanalyze research itself. The politically appointed agency administrator would have wide-ranging discretion over which studies to accept or reject."
This is the part that worries me the most. Not only would the data be reanalyzed by people potentially biased due to pressure from above to keep their jobs, but then also a political person who may or may not have any background in science or, more worrying, someone who has deep ties to industry, has the ability to reject studies they believe are flawed (even if the science shows irrefutable proof). And then to make it retroactive? Might as well just dismantle the entire EPA and discard all of it's regulations.
5
@Erin The point is to save industry money and to cripple governmental oversight. No doubt fueled by the Evangelical Rapture mentality that the sooner they can destroy the earth the sooner they will be extradited back to Heaven.
Compare this approach to the FAA, which outsources all safety studies to industry and washes its hands of all oversight and review.
1
I've got a good 40 or 50 more years to live, if I can escape heavy metal contamination, plastic in my seafood, glyphosate and chemicals found in all agricultural plants grown in the U.S., can find pure water packaged in glass, and untainted meats.
Its dangerous, however, to bath or cook with chemically contaminated water. It has become impossible to find pure water and clean air.
I want to live a long time, and I want a government that supports that ... not my early death.
Trump has created a new cabinet department, the Environmental Decimation Agency. He must have Senate approval for its creation.
The Senate will support him, but voters will have on record who prefers Big Oil and Chemical donors and their lobbyists, over the lives of constituents.
Useful for 2020.
4
Confidentiality is needed to protect people who would never get health insurance based on previous medical history. The administration would expose these people to life without insurance, especially since they are also working to rip away protections against this type of prejudice.
1
Dear Lisa,
I read your article and am struck by how different their approach is to the FAA, which seemingly has outsourced all safety studies to industries like Boeing and has washed its hands of any responsibility of scientific review or oversight. While at the EPA they claim the right to re-review all scientific studies!
The contrast could not be greater.
The underlying principle would seem to be to save industry money and to totally de-legitimize the role of government. I hope you can emphasize this contradiction in values.
Thank you for your astute article.
2
Re: E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules, NY Times 12 Nov, 2019 A1.
This is yet a another in a long list of Trump EPA outrages. As a former senior air policy analyst on the staff of the Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the EPA in the 1980’s, I can attest to the fact that the Harvard Six Cities Study and its replication by the American Cancer Society vitally underpin EPA's Criteria Air Pollutant regulations: fine particles, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. It is a decades-long piece of outstanding scientific research. It would be rejected by the Big Fossil appointed Wheeler regime at EPA on the basis of trumped-up excuses that because it relied on confidential medical data it could not be replicated. Not a day goes by without another assault on science by the Wheeler EPA. And as for one Steve Milloy quoted in the article -- he was a shill for Big Tobacco before he became a shill for Big Fossil.
5
What is the correct epithet for someone who sells out for personal gain the interests of those they have promised to represent? In legislative debate, if Republicans want to limit what scientific evidence should be allowed to bear on legislation because it could affect the financial interests of their donors, there is no better proof that their donors, known and unknown, have purchased the Republican party and it's individual members, lock, stock, and barrel.
6
Do Republicans know they drink the same water or are they okay with slowly poisoning themselves to own the libs?
4
Another day the Koch family woke up happy.
3
The Trump/GOP war on truth marhes on.
4
So trumpian!!
3
I am so ashamed of this government. I keep thinking the we've hit the bottom and then a policy like this is proposed. This isn't about politics, it's about the safely and well-being of people for generations to come.
167
@JoAnne Jones The point is to save industry money and to cripple governmental oversight, no doubt fueled by the Evangelical Rapture mentality that the sooner they can destroy the earth the sooner they will be extradited back to Heaven.
Compare this approach to the FAA, which outsources all safety studies to industry and washes its hands of all oversight and review.
The only common denominator is hatred of government and putting profits over people.
21
@JoAnne Jones I am ashamed at any organization that just thinks the conclusions are correct without checking the data, the methods, and the results. That would be totally against "science".
1
@vulcanalex Please learn about human subject protocols and peer reviews before posting an uninformed and deliberately misleading comment. Thanks.
21
It should be impeachable that this administration is actively trying to silence those who are willing to tell the truth.
5
Utterly shocking and disturbing, but hardly surprising. The Detrumpization of what used to be a great country will take a long, long time. Let's hope it can start next year at the latest and not only in 2024.
As a former student in the US who has met many great people across the pond, I can only shake my head in horror and hope this nightmare will end sooner than later. What has happened to you, America? I'm actually wiping a tear off my cheek as I'm writing this...
4
Our form of government is based on having reasonable and rational people, not Russian assets, in charge. Now the Trump administration has put lobbyists from the dirtiest and most polluting industries in charge of health and public safety regulations.
The most vulnerable amongst us - our children and those with chronic medical conditions, and older adults - will suffer and be harmed first under Trump's "no science" policy. Healthy individuals would be exposed to harmful pollution under this policy, until they become more vulnerable and ill as well.
6
Can it get any worse! How can we get this evidence of the dangerous path we are on to the general public? If this evidence does not open their eyes to the perilous situation in which we find ourselves, we have somehow failed to educate our population to think and reason.
3
I wonder: Do those Trump supporters who don't read the mainstream press ever find out about this kind of gutting of science in the EPA? Does the Trump media even pay attention to the ins and outs of how confidential medical information is used in scientific studies?
It's another instance of Republican "head in the sand" syndrome: Ignore the facts. Always.
I can't believe this is my country.
4
The article states that this proposal is open for public comment for 30 days, however when I search the EPAs website and regulation dot gov etc... by name and keyword all I'm getting is the closed 2018 version. Does anyone have a link to the current version for public comment? Thanks!
4
Yet more evidence Douglas Adams was spot on about the Golgafincham space ark B.
3
As we rush to our ultimate demise, I'm surprised that stupidity leads the way...
2
So basically now your telling me 2+2=5, the dumbing down of America. Sad!!!!
4
By this point, a policy this callous should come as no surprise. Every discontented reader should make a stand by purchasing affordable carbon offsets and by learning more at Project Drawdown:
https://www.carbonfootprint.com/
https://www.drawdown.org/
1
The phrase, "know nothings,” well fits the Trump administration and their fervent GOP followers who seem proud of their ignorance as found in the latest E.P.A. proposed agency rule restricting the science that can be used in drafting health regulations by requiring researchers to turn over confidential health data.
This is yet another dangerous and toxic policy designed by Trump/GOP to put blinders on/mislead the public to justify their plan to "take America back, make America Great again” by significantly limiting scientific and medical research that the E.P.A. can use to determine public health regulations.
This proposed rule well fits Carl Sagan’s related comment:"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
4
Republicans do not care about the environment.
4
This is America where the only immorality is unprofitability
3
I accuse the Trump led Republican party of conspiring to mass murder Americans with this and other other acts of premeditation.
2
Montana, red state, enjoy your "regulation free" water.
5
Toxin Protectionism?
Please let us know the link when Public Comment opens so we can voice our protest.
1
EPA: self-inflicted stupidity. Maybe if we make the environment really toxic, future generations will be too poisoned to notice?
2
From the administration that brought you the War on Truth, it’s the War on Science.
To submit a public comment:
https://www.regulations.gov
3
Happy yet, Trump voters? Never mind your kids, did you get yours? Feeling proud and patriotic and excited to have stuck it to your fellow citizens who, I don't know, care about facts and the future?
2
SNL's Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber is alive and well in the Trump administration.
4
This just makes me sick, figuratively and literally!
3
This, from the guy who tried to watch the solar eclipse with the naked eye. Doh !!! Bill Nye the science guy, Don Trump the science chump.
2
“But the fossil fuel industry and some Republican lawmakers have long criticized the analysis and a similar study by the American Cancer Society, saying the underlying data sets of both were never made public, preventing independent analysis of the conclusions.“.
Why throw away any more money on cancer research when the FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY and SOME REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS are doing everything in their power to create more cancer?
2
It's like these people don't breathe air or drink water. Don't they care about their children, or do they think they'll just buy their way out of the problem?
2
This is simply evil. It is extraordinary that a few people will act to injure millions of others.
Mr Wheeler’s name and reputation will go down in infamy.
Of course, medical studies involve private information.
3
This headline is misleading. Rather then "limit science" the rule would require the entire work of the science to be completely available to others. Science, by its very nature, should expose the facts. That demands full transparency.
Instead many seem to believe that science is a mysterious oracle that can speak only to the select high priests, who in turn feed the masses only that information deemed suitable for their needs and level of intelligence.
19
@johnlo
This policy sounds like that, but that is not the case. It is a disingenuous policy, meant to close down air quality and health standards, not to create transparency.
First, the core studies that Trump's no-science policy refer to have completely transparent methods - any scientist can recreate the study using data that they collect on health outcomes. This science is replicable, but the Trump administration knows that they will find evidence that the air quality standards are actually too weak to protect human health if they redo the studies, so they want to instead invalidate the studies by asking for the impossible - the protected health data that the two older studies are based on.
The article explains how key analyses of health impacts that led to standards on air pollutants that harm health, such as ozone, are over 20-years old and based on confidential medical data that went through thorough review by the scientist's Institutional Review Board. These scientists would never be allowed to work again if they handed over confidential individual-level health outcome data to Trump's industrial lobbyists at the Trump EPA.
73
@johnlo One of the foundations of modern medical science is the ability to gather, analyze and draw conclusions from patient data. By law today and by moral concerns for many years, the patient data has been masked in a way that kept the personal identity of the patient confidential while the pertinent parts of the record were public.
Should full transparency be required, down to the level of making each person whose data was used identifiable to the public, then this policy doesn't promote the use of science but is simply one more "transparent" attempt to void rational decision making processes and replacing them with regulations by fiat.
I think it highly unlikely that those who lead most agencies in this administration have the common good as their first consideration but rather the protection of moneyed interests.
68
At issue is whether you need to be disclosed publicly as a sick individual versus your data being aggregated anonymously to protect your identity. They want to know who you are, and if they can't then invalidate the science to allow the pollution. The science is disclosed, what they want is the name of the affected individuals which they know scientist can't disclose.
44
Look forward to the EPA's public comment board receiving thousands of comments, each claimed to be from a loyal/proud/supportive American man/woman, saying this new policy/rule is great/good/wonderful and should be implemented immediately/quickly/without delay.
The EPA will quickly point to this "grassroots" support, just as the FCC pointed to "grassroots" support for killing net neutrality. And, just as with the FCC comments on net neutrality, the grassroots will be as real as Astroturf.
This just makes it that much more important for people opposed to the new rules to comment on them. Don't let the bots be the only ones with a voice.
2
I can see this one being thrown out by the courts. The goal is clear and is against the mission of the EPA. Therefore, bring on the lawsuits.
It used to be that there seemed to be an attack by Trump on our country every single day. Now it is feeling like multiple attacks.
The 2020 election feels too far away.
2
Climate denying-medical insurance restricting-race baiting-and in this case pollution enabling. In considering these few of Trump's actions that harm our country, it raises the following question: As our enemy, what would Russia want by way of weakening the US at any level possible? So as a partial answer, if it turns out Trump is working for Putin in order to pay off his business loans, I won't be surprised.
2
There is nothing wrong with requiring scientists to prove what they claim. In fact, it is a hallmark of any peer review journal or scientific symposium. There is nothing in the administration's proposal that debunks science behind EPA regulations. To the contrary it strengthens the science. The EPA has been allowed to pick and choose findings that suit the liberal agenda for decades. It's time for a change.
2
@Kenneth Cowan "Liberal agenda"?
Sounds like you have an agenda of your own and it's not a good one. Your partisan bias has been noted.
1
@Roberta: By whom and you don't?
Lulu,
First, you say you should leave the US. Frankly, you can leave the US and you can give up your citizenship if you want. That is not the solution. Second, people need to know what the "experts" have in order to better know if the information being received is unquestionably correct. Too many times the "experts" have "doubts" but the "lay people" accept what is stated as exact and precise. Science is not exact and scientists are no more right than others. There are differences of opinions among scientists. All that is being asked is to have the disclosure of the research, etc., to see what is being used to have more rules and regulations. Too many times we find the regulations are not justified, and then it is stated that a mistake was made. Better to avoid the mistake upfront then on the back end.
@John Samore, Jr. That's not all that's being asked and you know it. This is an attempt to politicize the EPA and monetized public health.
1
Trump will probably have the Surgeon General declare null and void the science linking tobacco smoke with cancer and heart disease. "Smoke more, folks, and the younger the better. Great for the economy in the Red States, folks." This is who he is.
2
Under a trump presidency, there is no more right to privacy. This is a classic dictator ploy.
Wake up voters.
1
One cannot help but ask: Who are these barbarians drafting these nihilistic legislation that can only lead to human misery?
Oh yes, I forgot to add - greater corporate profits and big payoffs for lobbyists.
1
@Commenters who claim this policy is all about “transparency”, please read beyond the title of the act.
The point of this new EPA policy is clearly to roll back existing protections. Because, what, they have sort of been working and we want to be sicker? No, the only explanation is corporate profits.
Peer review has worked for generations to keep American science legitimate and reproducible. Coupled with not allowing government scientists to travel to meetings, this is putting us back to 1970s China. Repressed and polluted. Also brainwashed,
2
Everyone at the White House has a copy of George Orwell's 1984. They keep saying, "Oh, that's a good idea!"
2
EPA is not a Public Health Agency. It's an environmental protection agency.
Just wait til the numerous agencies in Public Health get wind of this silly degradation of health science . Doctors and scientists of the world, unite!
1
If we were living in a movie - the plot might be going something like this: Alien or alien agent, elected as president in order to facilitate alien invasion of planet. Takeover requires elimination of life, as we know it, on planet earth and modification of climate/ecology to accommodate the alien beings. Alternately, greed rules as madness prevails.
2
Join Extinction Rebellion or another organization like it.
Go on Climate strike on Black Friday. Infinitely more important than getting another heap of cheap plastic toys from China that nobody really needs.
1
In doing this, we are literally endangering our health and the health of our children and future generations. We have a rapidly closing window of opportunity to act against the causes of the earth's rising temperature. What is it about the Republican brain that can't embrace science and fact based evidence?
1
Yes...but the Stock Market is doing just GREAT!! And isn't that all that matters??? Isn't that the way to garner all the votes he will need to win in 2020?? Who cares about breathing clean air and drinking clean water....we will all be WINNERS like him!
2
@Janet Yes, because all Americans have a 401k or invest in the stock market.
Sarcasm.
American oligarchy. With the scientific method under the control of Elites whose greed, hatred and ignorance knows no bounds
1
When did it become fashionable to purposefully destroy the environment with government policy? It's clear that the excuse of "good data" is a red herring and a lie. It is clear that republicans think their voting base thinks it's sexy to foul our collective nest for the sake of giving perceived liberals a black eye, even if it means poisoning themselves.
Republicans that support Trump get turned on by doing anything that upsets democrats or liberals. They cheer it, the brag about it, and they support it with the zeal of a rabid horde. Can this be undone? It's like the Yahoos in "Gulliver's Travels".
1
What must we do to stop this? Mass suicide? What on earth? Where are our own Hong Kong protesters when we need them, people of manifest courage?
1
The surprise expressed by many readers is the only surprise.
These are ignorant and evil people in power and control of our government.
We have three years of evidence.
1
Welcome to our latest episode of 'Donald Knows Best.' Ignorance begets ignorance and now we get to watch our country, our world, flushed down the toilet by an administration beholden to special interest instead of governance of it's constituents and resources. Not that the current administration has cornered the market on ignorance, graft and pandering... It's just blatantly overt about it.
We need to stand up and not allow the government that is meant to protect us from these threats to embrace ignorance for the sake of monetary and political gain, irrespective of party lines. If it's not clear that we're being subjugated by 'divide and conquer' tactics, what is clear?
2
When is this nightmare going to end?
2
This just in....Wolves have decided that lambs are for them only. GET OVER IT!
1
Destroying the earth, Trump’s and the GOPs greatest legacy for the history’s books. Impeachment? Russia? Fuggedaboudit....
1
Calling all whistle blowers at the EPA!
2
Disclosing raw data? Seems the real goal here is disgorging raw sewage.
And the hits just keep on coming...
1
I guess that Fox news will never allow this kind of info to be released.
Fake news!
America had better wake up before it's too late!
1
Americans will die if this is enacted. It is an absolute disgrace!
Is there truly no low to which the moneyed interests controlling the Republican party will not sink?
1
Is this even legal nevermind be ethical?
1
Time for some civil disobedience
2
We are doomed. America is finished
2
Where are the democrats?
This rejection of science is a cookie tossed by an adolescent tyrant to (1) “evangelicals” whose “god” is no deeper than a layer of paint on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and (2) profiteers whose ”god” is the money in the wallets of those same “evangelicals.” MAGA!
1
There is no real science without transparency of the data behind the "findings". Please remember how the public got mislead by "scientific" dietary data which turned out to be false and led to the current obesity problem. Also recall the false information about dietary fats which caused people to switch from butter to margarine , and other public health disasters caused by "scientists" with faulty research.
1
@Bob israel
So if you take part in a Scientific Study on the health effects of chemicals you have no problem with your medical records and care being in the public domain?
I have a major problem with that.
2
I’d like there to be a question about these proposed changes to the EPA at the next debate. Perhaps this way the entire country and world will be made aware of the efforts by this administration to throw us back to the dark ages.
1
So in a sense vaping could not be regulated due to HIPAA restrictions. Why would good science ever be ignore by the bureaucrats in Washington is beyond me.
Here is the mechanism that encouraged the management at Boeing to destroy 40 years of quality culture, and bankers to destroy housing wealth. It looks like a clever way to migrate control and understanding of the issues from civil servants and scientists to the successful and powerful - so to the wealthy it makes perfect sense.
Once regulation is undermined market forces encourage bubbles and subterfuge, and eventually illness, housing crises and plane crashes begin.
5
It's standard operations for this Administration. All you have to do is "follow the money" (and ego) in most of the discretionary regulatory changes.
The goal here is to enrich the rich donors, by reducing health and environmental standards for Trump's donors in large, dirty industries like coal and steel.
Then they save even more money by gutting or getting rid of ACA which would provide health coverage for the workers in these and other industries who will get sick 10 - 20 years from now from the pollutants.
3
If this stuff is not impeachable, what in the name of heaven IS?! Every day we allow him to remain in office is another day of the planet's habitable future lost. What are we waiting for???
2
Silly me. I thought that the “P” in EPA stood for Protection, turns out it now means Pollution. Nixon is spinning in his grave, and a lot more people will be entering theirs ahead of schedule.
4
The only ways to deal with this administration to to vote it out of existence, be active in local politics, counter the illogical with logic, and hit the streets to protest.
3
Another body blow to our abilities to curtail wild and unthinking corporatism in support of environmental health.
This POTUS and the blockheads running the EPA are little more than deranged menaces to society.
3
Putin must be very happy to hear that the USA environmental standards will become as low as toxic Russia, one of the 10 most polluted countries in the world including the OPEC nations. Trump continues to follow Putin's orders to destroy the USA from the inside.
3
I think this could very well backfire on the polluters if the scientists make their data available. The mountain of data that would have to be analyzed during lawsuits would most likely delay things indefinitely. The main problem is that the courts are being packed with right wing lackeys. Seems like another way to waste a lot of time and money on lawyers. It seems that lawyers are the biggest beneficiaries of Trump policies, the same as when he was a private citizen.
2
This is consistent with trump's approach to problem solving in every area: Turn a blind eye. If no one can see the problem then his puppet mastery can continue.
3
“'Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency [EPA] decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.'”
"Industry groups said the rule would ensure greater public understanding of the science behind regulations that cost consumers money."
This is absolutely incredible. How many members of the public are qualified to analyze scientific data when most people know so little about their own bodies that they don't even know what questions to ask their physician? And these people will help set public health policy? On the one hand the administration thinks the public can evaluate scientific studies, while on the other hand the administration thinks the public is stupid enough accept this proposal.
Allowing "stakeholders" to help set policy will give industry an even greater hold on our government. This idea, like so many that come out of this administration, is totally asinine.
Our democracy is in peril. There's no doubt that Trump is a fascist. That republicans will not stand up to him demonstrates their cowardliness. He and his republican enablers must be removed from office. The damage they are doing must stop.
2
Only defense here is to vote Trump and his corrupt cronies out of office. Register to vote and go to the poles next year and give this motley crew the boot. (Really like Anna Moneymakers photo in the digital edition; the photo is worth a thousand words)
1
Everything Republicans and this regime does focuses on killing more people, making themselves richer, and benefiting Putin.
2
Looks like current EPA leadership and all of GOP has life time of fresh water supply locked from some where on Mars.
Crazy, sick and criminal.. How can we put them in jail for not doing their job..?
2
I tried to find the place on the EPA website where to comment on this new rule, but could not. Can someone help?
1
Are we really surprised by this? Our country is now a banana republic.
2
So Trump supporters, this is what making America great again looks like?
3
Mr. President, why are you dragging us back to 19th century modi operandi? Are you ensuring - contra Lincoln - that government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations shall not perish? Incidentally, where is that exceptional healthcare plan that you trumpeted? Whither went our infrastructure? Evidence not gut, please!
1
Three words: kids with cancer.
4
"E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules".........
What is wrong with these people, the Trump people?..........
Is their goal to destroy the very planet, the very environment that supports us, enables us the human race to survive...........
Is $, making a buck that important to the Trumps?..........
And
if it is , there's no redeeming or remotely educating folk this totally greedy.......
3
With the EPA, Departments of Interior and Education, and Trump and his sharpie....who needs to worry about the climate change death knell?
1
Enough is enough! The attacks on facts, enabled by Fox News, Fakebook, Splitter, Citizens United, and the present day GOP incapable of understanding the role of good government have got to go — hosed down and sanitized at the local waste water treatment plant before disposal.
2
The Great Disaster Machine that is the Trump Administration, seemingly fueled by greed, stupidity, recklessness, and Russian design, has no off switch. It’s the ignorant that fear science. It’s the greedy who choose profit over public welfare. Impeachment hearings, public scandals, a 2 million dollar fine for ripping off Veterans and breaking finance laws, lying, lying about lying, etc. The list has no end. Personally, I’m exhausted. Every day is a new tragic low. Dear Santa, please make it stop.
1
Other people's children... other people's illnesses... other people's death... other people's healthcare... other people's medical information... sounds like more EPA Superfund sites, just like the good old days, more Flints, all to conceal the harmful effects of corporate waste. Mercury, lead, arsenic, insecticides, herbicides, plastics, mine tailings, radioactive materials, sewage.
Republicans think protection of human life ends at birth. After that you're on your own.
5
These people who support this man and his republican lackeys
Will never quit this dictator. This country is going down the tubes
Rapidly and if he is elected again we are finished. Look what he has done in less than 3 short years.
1
Trump wouldn’t feel more comfortable with this kind of idea.
In fact for him ignorance is bliss, the perfect tool to consolidate his power over gullible people prone to believe more to any stupidity coming out from the head of a crazy man than from an objective study of a scientist.
Trump’s irresponsibility is beyond any imagination.
1
What does Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the CDC have to say about this??
Utterly ridiculous that this circus is still running loose. Get these dangerous people rounded up and shipped out as soon as possible.
Come one America, wake up, your life is being threatened.
2
"E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules" -- What mad world do I live in where this is a headline?
2
Trump is committed to destroying the world by any means possible. In some ways subtle and in other ways overt, he won't be happy until millions of Americans and billions around the world are choking, drowning, coughing and dying. This is what abject sadism looks like. Will no one stop this evil juggernaut?
2
If ever there was a case for voting Trump and his minions out in 2020, this news article is it. Vote, because your vote and your voice matters!
3
As much as I support Medicare for All, the life of our planet really is the most important issue facing us and all mankind.
Maybe dealing with Climate Change should be the main emphasis of the Democrat's message.
3
And how do we do this if each of us is so stressed with medical care. The countries dealing the most effectively have universal health care. We also spend billions paying arms manufacturers. We also have a oligarchy. We need to dismantle this anti democratic funding of elections. This is priority. We cannot fight the climate w the industries fighting it with propaganda and dumbing down half the nation. Half the nation does not even believe in climate change. It’s tragic really.
1
@Lulu Do some homework...Universal care for 340 M is far different than 30 without 40% obesity. In other systems the wait or access to care is very limited. In Quebec, 11 months for an MRI and 7 months to see a Urologist. Very few specialists and limited access to them Very few drugs on formulary so if you do not respond, just too bad.
Good when you hit a tree , for sure, but waiting 6 weeks for a biopsy result will not please most people here.
@Lulu
You are correct that there are other important issues like Universal Health Care that need to be addressed. However, the survival of the planet is so fundamental that it may be the most urgent of all. I do not claim to know how to win an election which is why I wrote "maybe".
1
Senator Warren receives a lot of criticism when she points out that our democracy has been corrupted by the rich and powerful like the petroleum industry. This column demonstrates the warping of EPA to be a cover for those well versed in environmental malfeasance. We can expect more Love Canals (the response to cleaning up the canal generated the EPA), Flint and Newark public waters tainted with lead, coal mining refuse in our rivers, and algae blooms along our lake and ocean coasts. We have Alfred E. Newman running the EPA now; "What? Me worry!"
7
This is all part of a larger pattern where facts and truths tend to get in the way. If that's the case then we ignore them and make up a 'reality' that we desire.
8
You say “we”. Does that mean you’re a republican? This behavior is not happening equally on both sides of the aisle.
@Rich I wasn't even thinking in party political terms when I wrote this, I was thinking of our wider culture where facts and truths are being increasingly devalued. Without doubt, the resident of the White House is a ring leader, with the party of which he is part surrendering integrity and following robotically in his footsteps. For your information, my political convictions are such that I have limited commonality with either -- I have no desire to belong to either of their teams/tribes; I suppose you could say neither has really had a place for me in years.
Has everyone forgot grade school math class and the teacher told you "show your work"
The EPA is now asking for scientist to "show their work" and people are claiming that this weaponizes scientific transparency.
We ask lawyers to show their work, we ask the police to show their work, we ask doctors to show their work, we ask engineers to show their work, the list could go on. Why all of a sudden are these people exempt from "showing their work".
For science to progress there needs to be an open, transparent and frank discussion of the research. How many scientific things that we were told were "facts" only to be told those facts were wrong.
3
@scott allen We don't ask lawyers to show their work and we don't ask doctors to show their work. We don't ask police to show their work.
1
The EPA shows it's work. What it doesn't show is confidential records of private citizens that it used in that work.
Requiring the EPA to share those documents after it signed non-disclosure agreements or dismissing its studies is no different from saying you won't believe a double blind study unless you talk to the actual patients involved.
1
The EPA frantically had to save their data when Trump was elected. They don’t want to share the work, they want to dismiss it and toss it out. Since when did the trump administration care about science?
How can you trust this administration?
2
Base administrative decisions on science, on facts, on laws of nature. Oh no, just base decisions on what your top 1% wealthiest people want to exploit.
6
For anyone who knows how studies are actually done, this article is misleading. All protected medical information is de-identified with strict codes and access restriction. Confidentiality means nothing as a term as no one can use any descriptor that leads back to the individual. So, wanting the full data to redo the statistical analysis is simply what is done in all objective peer review. This article is slanted to make a common place scientific review standard seem a weakening...just the contrary.
2
So I should ignore the 600,000 complaints from scientists and trust that you know what you are talking about.
2
The former EPA were ordered to destroy data and had to export it so it was saved he also cleaned out the EPA, I met a man working for the EPA right after Trump was elected. Do more research before dismissing a trusted publication that prints facts and does their due research. I have another friend that works for NASA and then ended funding for their climate study. Your trust in this administration is hurting the planet.
2
@Joel Levine
You are correct. Thanks for the comment.
Diabolical. Trump's not even man enough to make a transparent profits and jobs over public health argument. Rather, he hides behind muddied waters and smoke screens, which, if he had his way, would not merely be metaphorical.
He's like 'The Simpsons's Montgomery Burns, but without the wit and warmth...
5
He certainly is a two dimensional cartoon made out of paper.
As a scientist this is beyond unbearable. I am aghast. I can’t hide my distain for this administration. They obviously don’t care for anyone, only money. Americans, I would argue aren’t lost, if the comments are any indication, but the administration that took advantage of the voters.
7
If you're unhappy with this - as most comments are - then please take action: contact your representatives and other officials to let them know you're angry about it, support environmental orgs that will sue the Trump administration for its illegal maneuvers, get out the vote. Complaining here isn't enough. This can be stopped if people take action.
6
“The reality is, standards are not going to be tightened as long as there’s a Republican in office,” he said.
Applies to everything wrong in our nation. Dems need to use this as their slogan when running for office.
4
This is beyond preposterous. How can you ignore science and medical information and write effective public health regulations that protect people? The regs will be based on nothing but personal opinion and political leanings. We are going backward instead of into the future.
4
Where would we be today if the medieval church were still in charge of determining scientific truth? In the Middle Ages, where Trump and his Republicans are taking us.
5
With Trump at the helm of this administration, the agency might as well change its name to “Environmental Polluting Agency” instead of Protection.
5
Here in Canada we went through such decisions when Stephen Harper was prime minister, fortunately we got rid of this retrograde form of government. I wish you sincerely that you do the same in 2020.
10
Research performed with secret data isn't science. Findings from such research aren't replicable. Must every subject now be seen through a political lens? Can readers of the NYT consider the substance of an issue aside from its politics?
1
Trump will pick on anyone he thinks he can beat. Most likely he was the guy who slammed nerds into lockers in high school.
So smart people who have been pushed around too long, step up and stop this aberration. It's time to outsmart Trump et al, which should not be that difficult. Maybe the courts? Maybe he needs to be charged with Crimes Against Humanity?
It's time for a current version of Revenge of the Nerds. I look forward to the ending. Trump behind bars.
3
Unless this administration is voted out of power, we can say goodbye to clean air and water, to pristine national parks, and to a healthy life.
I should by now not be surprised by greed, but where do these people think they will be breathing and what will they be drinking as the future loom upon us?!? Cake and soda?!?
3
This ruling at the EPA is producing a great opportunity for some one to start a bottled air business. This administration is MAKING AMERICA SICK AGAIN!
2
American students score at the bottom in knowledge of science compared to other countries in the world, and students from the Red States score at the bottom among Americans. Unfortunately, these "students" grow-up and become Republicans, and even Presidents.
6
Why don't we just shut down universities and research institutes, and turn our entire technology over to the creationists and other Luddites? Then we can be completely beholden to China and Europe for all our advances, while the billionaires get richer destroying the planet. It is unbelievable that this country is allowing such venal ignorance to take over.
7
There are no spines left in DC. This administration is literally killing the planet for profit. How does any Republican look their family in their eyes and not feel a shred of guilt? Trump has normalized corruption.
6
This is "Idiocracy" and we are all extras.
6
This request by the EPA violated HIPAA regulations. No researcher can legally access identifying information when doing research using secondary data. Absurd and illegal. They would need informed consent from every individual whose data is being used. What kind of nonsense is this?
5
We are destroying our home the earth. We are overpopulating, creating materials that don't decay (plastic), we are expanding into formerly inhabited nature zones, we are polluting our environment with terrible chemicals, we are poisoning insects we rely on (bees), we are poisoning our air with too much car exhaust and airplane fuel exhaust and on and on. The list is just too long to detail. And for greed, money for a few, now we are being subjected to fewer controls, more harm, more destruction, more danger, more cancer..is this right??? NO! We must stand up and tell them NO! Save the planet now!
3
So much anger...so little time to express it!
1
Every day that goes by shows that our “ leader” is a menace to society.
4
I've had a disturbing epiphany. Our civil war resolved itself to our detriment. We should have split then. This large nation is too large. I have no identity in Trump's America, None. I don't even want to co-exist with them.
Can we now resolve this rift peaceably?
8
I am an epidemiologist. People who altruistically participate in research and in so doing enable scientists to review their personal and medical information to better understand the impact of the environment on their health will not be prepared for that data to be given to the government. Nor would an ethical review board be able to approve such a scenario without extensive information on what the fate of that information, once inside the walls of government, was going to be. Funding agencies will be reluctant to fund research that will never be used to inform government decision making. This is the death nell for serious epidemiological research. Oh my.
13
@Louise
I agree and I find it offensive that if I join a scientific study to research a disease or a link between medications and or environmental causes for any danger to humans that information would be in the public domain.
That's horrifying and being someone who values my privacy I find this disgusting. I am sure I am not the only person to feel this way.
Then there is making this information as a part to reverse rules and guidelines endangering so many is an assault on the scientific community and common sense.
The longer this Administration is in power the more terrified and disgusted I get. And I think back to when Mr Trump was elected I actually (even though I did not support him) thought things might get better.
I have been labeled as an optimist. And I have tried to be fair but this and the destruction of most Federal Agencies that were established to protect us and encourage a level playing field just sickens me.
I am super terrified of where my country is going.
Just an old white man's opinion based on observations.
1
Everyone will be able to get leaded paint in asbestos buckets soon.
"An E.P.A. spokeswoman said in an emailed statement, “The agency does not discuss draft, deliberative documents or actions still under internal and interagency review."
And why not. This is supposed to be a protection agency. Full transparency is the cornerstone of scientific research and environmental protection. Essentially the results of every bit of research that provides environmental and health data should be included on the EPA's rule making...and now that will be gone.
I suspect the backstory was full of closed door meetings on how to suppress scientific research. We need another whistle blower.
17
Having studied history, several things are amazingly obvious.
1. The ignoring of past lessons
2. The repetition of various history events (plagues, wars, etc.)
3. All things are temporary and change is ongoing
4. The rise to power (elected or not) of dictators, the "kneeling" by sycophants and the visual rapture of followers
What does surprise me during the past 3 years is how a nation that was far and away doing economically better than every other nation, had not suffered from wide spread plagues or starvation, was not embroiled in a large scale war could literally vote (thanks to the electoral college) to literally destroy all that has been built up since WW2: govt. and NGO institutions, rules of law, trade that benefited the majority, scientific discovery, a free media.
To what end? What comes after all is destroyed?
The past 3 years has proven thus far that the govt and society that has been built through 240+ years of intellect, effort, caring and investment has very fragile underpinnings and relies very heavily on the honor, ethics, morality of our elected officials.
Vote in 2020 like your life and those of your decedents depends on it. It truly does.
21
Say "hello" to the Environmental Decimation Agency.
Throughout U.S. history, Presidents have determined the roles of various cabinet departments, with the consent of the Senate.
They have, overall, acted for the American people, and not urged death and destruction on the U.S. environment, humans, plants, animals, waterways or air.
And, always, the Senate must approve a new Cabinet department.
The Senate has not voted on the Environmental Decimation Agency. It must do so to validate its new function.
It may be that Big Oil and Big Chem have been generous Republican donors, and that their lobbyists write legislation for Congress, but the Senate still must validate this new Cabinet Department and its role -- Environmental Decimation.
8
It’s long past the time for a “fight fire with fire” strategy. I’d like to see a campaign led by academics in every Congressional District where the Republican lead was 10% or less. The basic message?
“If your child or grandchild or sibling or spouse or younger friend or older relative dies or gets asthma in the next 10 years, be sure to thank President Trump for his thoughtful gift - and for making it possible. On , President Trump’s EPA ended the use of established scientific practices to measure harm from and so gutted the .
"Now, wasn’t that a beautiful gift for your district’s loyalty to them? Won’t Rep X, Sen Y and President Trump deserve your heartfelt thanks for destroying the people you love? So, don’t forget to vote for both of them. They need to be in power for at least 4 more years so they can harm more of your family over the next 20 years. After all, why stop at 10 years of harm?
"This message is brought to you by professors from every major university in the country - including . Politics and greed should never trump science.”
As an asthmatic, I would contribute a lot to keep such a commercial going right up to the elections.
Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and Howard Schultz: Making such a campaign happen will make you American heroes, not your vain efforts to become the next president.
17
Im sorry you suffer in their ignorance. I hope you get your wish.
This will not only limit the use of research that has already been done, but will discourage people from volunteering to participate as research subjects. The privacy of subjects must be respected. The data are just as valid, whether labeled as "subject 403" or "Mary Jones."
12
So many of these deregulation policies seem aimed at shortening the life expectancy of mostly poorer people. I suspect this is an unspoken deliberate action to save on Social Security and Medicare payouts. This maybe a cynical way to save these two entitlement programs. Yes, the deregulation helps the related industries, but this is another "benefit".
15
We can't get rid of Don Trump and his corrupt administration soon enough. Every single day they are attacking the institutions that the American people depend on.
21
As someone who reviews health effects documents for EPA and has for many years, the intent of this action is clear.
So, then shouldn't we also be getting all the raw data from industry studies used in these health risk assessments for transparency?????
25
Well, this aligns with the anti-science/facts mindset of the conservatives running the GOP these days. Related to the core reliance on faith of the quasi-religious, exemplified by the support by (mostly white) evangelicals of Trump, despite his personal disdain for everything they claim to revere. It is fundamentally related to the penchant for conspiracy theories of the Trump supporter. Trump's mindset isn't congruent with this; he might know a conspiracy theory is hokum, but he'll promote it if it riles up his base.
Thing is, some Republicans know better. They use the mindset of their voters to manipulate them, in order to stay in power and thwart any attempts to limit that power.
This new EPA policy follows the same tactics that pro-lifers like Brett Kavanaugh and Republican majority state legislatures now use to get around Roe v Wade: find grey areas or technicalities in laws or policies to effectively cripple them to the point that the law or policy is ineffective for addressing what they were created to address. The same tactics being used to fight the Trump impeachment process. Abortion legal? Then cast doubt on the doctors or facilities that perform them. Research findings inconvenient? Make it difficult to use those findings to create policy.
Basically, sow disorder in the system. Promoting anti-science is promoting ignorance, and an ignorant populace is easier to manipulate.
Kinda evil.
17
While congress is planning to impeach Trump now they must add charges crimes against humanity. This toxic waist is so deadly with cadmium ,lead arsenic all ending up in this pond. Then it goes in the ground water in time and all of us are stricken with cancer. Why are there so many Americans supporting this from the Catholic Churches to ordinary people. Pope Francis recently said to an oil man meeting you harm the environment you harm humanity. We must add charges in this impeachment for
TRUMP crimes against humanity. By doing nothing that mentally unstable party the GOP will truly finish us all off.
13
Unregulated scientists, America's scourge, including the laureates, they need to be voted out of their jobs.
1
Regulating scientists. Scientists should only devote their efforts to knowing the right things about reality? What might be those right things?
1
Well that's just 'brilliant'.
What's next? Outlaw science as unnecessary?
This administration is ruining our democracy, the Constitution as our guide and base for law, the Rule of Law, the middle class (and all who aren't super wealthy), our children's' education, healthcare, world markets for farmers.. the list is astounding.
9
Ah, Mr. Trump's love of ignorance reaches in to every person and every place in the country. Heaven forbid that knowledge should ever be applied to any governmental decision.
Mr. Trump seems determined to ruin the planet and now your health care. I assume he and all his staff take no medications since they are based those fake grounds called science.
Let ego reign and knowledge be erased.
10
I never thought I'd say this, but in 2020, I will be a single issue voter. That issue will be to get trump out of office. Same goes for his Republican lackeys in the House & Senate.
Democrats aren't perfect. The party may have its flaws. But let's be realistic. No matter who the candidate is, a Democratic win in 2020 is a step in the more preferable direction ... far more preferable than the road the country will go down if an unchecked trump holds onto power.
Do we really want another 4 years of people like Wheeler contaminating our drinking water? William Barr wasting taxpayer money chasing after conspiracy theories in service to trump? Sean Hannity advising on domestic policy? Rudy Giuliani influencing foreign policy? Jared Kushner selling himself to the highest bidder and compromising US interests? Pompeo cozying up to murderers like MSB? Betsy DeVos trying to defund public education? Stephen Miller screaming about immigrants? Putin smirking over all the winning at our country's expense?
No thanks. Vote them all out.
I refuse to throw my vote away to trump and his lawless administration by staying home on election day or voting 3rd party in 2020. Dangerous times times call for desperate measures. Make no mistake... trump will be even more dangerous if he wins a 2nd term. By not voting blue, I'm putting my country in danger.
Get trump out of there. Only then can we realistically start to fix what's wrong with the system. Only then can we start focusing on true reform.
22
Is this a direct result of a bunch of old rich Republicans wanting to die richer regardless of how much they mess up the planet for their children and grandchildren? Or is this the direct result of electing a president who could barely pass math and science in high school?
12
@Jeff : Indeed. They are likely under the impression also that they are immortal and will live forever -- and I guess it's why they need all that money - although they forget that even immortals will likely need to drink clean water and breath fresh air.
6
Toxic America in the 21st century
Republicans are allowing this administration to destroy our fragile environment. This situation is dangerous and deadly.
8
We should stop blaming the lackey politicians of the corporations that seek to poison our people and environment for cash. The greedy corporatists are the real problem.
7
True. But they are enabled by politicians who the captains of industry buy with campaign contributions. We are returning to the days of unregulated industry since now the industries control government who let them have unbridled control.
1
If we ignore the truth, reality will just disappear. Sure.
6
For those wondering how any voters could support something like this, bear in mind how Trump and the GOP sell it to them "We're bringing back jobs by killing the useless regulations that were killing our great industries!" I've heard declarations like this at Trump rallies, and the very people who live in the areas that will be most impacted by this filth, well they whoop and holler and wave their MAGA signs in the air.
And then you know what? When the jobs never come back, their whole family is sick and their town is too toxic to live in, they'll go and sit in some diner and tell a reporter about how it's the Democrats who "abandoned America's white working class."
14
This is only being done to hurt America. Trump wants to watch the world burn. What are we willing to do to stop this evil?
9
I have an idea. Let's set up water fountains and limit them to Trump and all who support him and the Republican Vile Administration. To make sure no one else is allowed to drink from them they need to show their identity. Make sure that they are filled with only the Best most Vile Pollutants. The rest of us are allowed the best filtration system . Seriously we need to rise up against this polluted administration. Vote Blue 2020!
4
I'm dumbfounded. Every single day the president of the United States undermines the will of the majority of Americans.
8
The Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) should change their name to the Environmental Destruction Agency (“EDA”)!
8
An excellent and long overdue rule.
It it bad science to make decisions without access to the raw data.
Otherwise it can be fudged, and frequently has been.
I tried, for example, to use NASA/EPA historical temperature data to see if there really is a "hockey stick" visible.
There is, in fact, one visible in what I found ... but the break
is in the mid 1980s, not what was publicised. However ... after lots of work, although listed as "unadjusted" that
was not true ... it was not adjusted after the "collection"
into one data set, but had been before that. Without descriptions of the exact apparatus used, and site descriptions, its meaningless.
The same applies to lots of other kinds of data.
Historical temperature data are not the same as medical research data. Those who allow their personal medical records to be used in medical/scientific studies are given the assurance of privacy. This is an ethical requirement. Without the guarantee of privacy, the research can not be approved. There are many reasons for this. We saw the result of industry having unrestricted access to personal data with Cambridge Analytica, the company that had private online data on thousands of people. That data was used to micro-target political ads that influenced election results in dozens of countries, including the election of Trump in the US.
So imagine if your insurance company could get ahold of your private medical records. If you are taking part in a medical study, it likely means that you have some medical problem. Do you think you could get medical insurance? What if you applied for a mortgage and the bank could get your medical data as well as your credit record? Or landlords or future employers?
Making personal records available means eventually anyone with money could buy your medical data for any reason. It would mean the end of privacy.
It would also mean people wouldn’t agree to be part of medical research which would stop research into new treatments for diseases like cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease. Does anyone you love have a medical condition? They, and eventually you, will not have new ways to fight it.
This is catastrophic in so many ways.
3
It's not unreasonable that if a study is to be relied on to formulate public policy, the underlying data should be made available. It's basic transparency.
2
Even if the basic data includes things like people’s names and health info?? You want this to be made available to the general public??
2
@a reader - names can be redacted. You know that.
1
At the end it says "The proposal gives the public 30 days to offer comments on the changes to the EPA's plan". How does one go about giving public comment? I'd like to share it with my friends as well. Hopefully, a vast amount of opposition would make them rethink this decision
10
It isn’t just Trump and his band of corporate criminals. We’ve been leading up to this for 30 years.
1
I guess we have been dying too slowly. Trump's EPA would like to step up the pace. I say, let them drink some of that water. We will all have to breath the air.
Really, folks, the Republicans have a death wish. The climate emergency just isn't happening quickly enough for them. The only question is, who profits? Are these regulations written by disaster contractors or hospital associations in need of more patients?
One thing we know for sure: the health of American citizens are their absolutely last concern.
12
This is not a surprise....Trump appointed Andrew Wheeler, in the wake of Scott Pruit's demise, to head the EPA.
He's a former coal lobbyist who remains loyal to his former bosses and not the American people for whom he now works. Interesting to note that his first job was as special assistant to the Information Management (!) Division Director in the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, working on toxic chemical, pollution prevention, and right-to-know issues. Apparently he didn't learn anything there.
9
''The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, ''
Thoughts and prayers for the victims followed by a prayer circle should be enough. Knowing that shareholder value was enhanced should ease their affliction, and bankruptcy due to lack of medical insurance.
When this is over lets have dunking stools in the most polluted of ponds for those that formulated these regulations. Followed by bible study groups that explain to them their tumors are due to insufficient religiosity. No nedd for science based medicine.
2
No scientific data, what are they going to do? Next, they’ll be evaluating the mythical world of prayers and thoughts to confirm rules. Geesh!
4
Science is always the embodiment evidence of crimes so it comes as no surprise that these science assaults are part of the Republican program of premeditation of their planned future crimes.
2
Surely the Trump Administration understands confidentiality agreements and would not like any of them broken. I know the Stormy Daniels case was not about climate, but still...
4
I'm confused. Don't Republicans breathe, drink, eat? Why are they ok with poisoning the environment and putting health at risk, while also reducing access to health care? Good reasons to vote blue no matter who!
5
The message from this action and the many like it the Administration has already taken to undermine climate action, clean air, clean water, and human health is simple: vote in 2020 as if your life and the lives of all you care about, including your fellow Americans, depended on it -- because it does.
5
Wow they are really setting up a perpetual cycle in which to bleed all common citizens of their money. They will make everyone sick and then continue to inflate the cost of treatment and medicine for the diseases they created. What a huge win for the health care and pharmaceutical industries/corporations while allowing manufacturing corporations that generate the pollutants to save millions in compliance costs. Way to go USA!
5
How will this be discussed by Sean Hannity or ANY FOX reporter? The reality is...It won't. trump supporters and the vast majority of Republican voters won't even hear about this. trump supporters love him for his deregulation but they would not know a single regulation that has been undone.
4
This horribly wrong and bizarre edict is a stalling mechanism which allows Big Oil and Chem. to pollute more before they are forbidden to do so.
Trump is once again lurching out of his Executive branch purview, where he has little power to act without the approval of Congress, and expert opinions from his cabinet, or in this case -- sychophants.
It is to the Legislative branch to preserve and uphold science. (Art. 1, Sect. 8, No. 8) The Executive, technically, has nothing to do with it. Normally, the head of the EPA is PRO-environment, and fights to protect humans, animals, water, and air, not preserve revenue stream for polluters.
Further, though it is possible to duplicate the myriad longitudinal studies showing negative impacts of heavy metals, chemicals and fossil fuel pollution on all life forms:
1) the data already exists and has been replicated, and
2) it may not be possible to find subjects willing to have their health data exposed to the world, where insurance companies refuse to cover pre-existing conditions, and imbecilic, non-scientist Congresspeople will use the information to twist and block real science.
Who changes the mission of the EPA -- Trump? Is it to now be the Environmental Decimation Agency?
4
Does that include data that proves that the solar system is heliocentric and the earth is round?
7
We are dealing here with a vast criminal conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of our health and were being.
2
There is a great Navajo saying: When mankind has caught the last fish and cut down the last tree, then they will realize they cannot eat their money.
8
This is horrifying. It's all a ploy to roll back regulations that protect the public. How anyone can support this administration at this point is beyond me.
3
What else can you expect from the party that thinks Ayn Rand actually makes sense.
4
This bad dream that we’re all sharing just continues day after day after day. Somehow we are expected to respect the opinions of those who cheer this constant attack on our collective house and engage them in discourse, something which ha been made impossible today. The President is being protected by the vast majority his Republican Party - by men and (a few) women who either continue to remain silent or worse, those who actively speak up for him no matter how vile his proclamation or directive of the day might be. These Congresspeople, who are always quick to ship our youngsters halfway around the globe to fight and die, lack the courage to challenge our wannabe dictator because why? They may not be re-elected? They may be forced to go back to work for their old law firm, or take that lobbyist gig?
And after 3 years of this madness we are faced with the possibility that the President may be re-elected. How can this be?
4
What the Trump administration wants is an Environmental Destruction Agency - one which certifies the right of huge corporations to pollute our air, water and climate with no consequences.
The disregard of this administration for the welfare of actual human beings is breathtaking - literally.
It is a life and death priority for the country to get this disastrous, destructive President out of office as soon as possible. In the meantime, we have the courts. Volunteer, organize, donate and vote.
3
How about applying this transparency standard to Trump’s taxes?
6
This is just another vivid example of a presidential that lives for finding a conspiracy theory to fit his political agenda. There is no climate change in Trumpland, he lives in the 1950s and wants all of us to turn back the clock to his vision of the Good Old Days.
Science is like voodoo to him - what’s the big deal over a bit more toxic waste?
Just totally unhinged leadership designed to kill the EPA.
3
"Verified independently" by the sycophants Trump has put in these rolls to protect our environment. Talk about independence. When am I going to awaken from my nightmare.
2
I thought Trump’s take on the climate crisis was that he was instead focused on “clean air” and “clean water.” Looks like he’s mostly focused on the clean flown of short term profit.
2
Americans have done this to themselves. Isn't it just easier to admit that the Trump administration, and everyone in it, is simply evil? And what does that say about the millions who continue to support this man?
4
Nihilism and insatiable greed for power defines this administration. The fact that Evangelicals support him confirms my intuitive distrust and disdain for “Evangelicals”.
3
Great way to run a country, on non-intellectually based decision making.
Just another example of the government being run the wrong way.
2
I understand the EPA will be issuing an RFP on using sheep's bladders to predict hurricanes and earthquakes.
And corrections to textbooks erroneously claiming 2+2=4.
3
When hard evidence gets in the way of policy-making, destroy the evidence. Smart!
3
It appears that Trump and his cronies are on some foreign country's payroll. Either that, or he is so delusional about what Americans want in the way of clean air, clean water and a healthy environment that he is ready to continue to line the pockets of his big business friend by revoning restrictions that might be costing them money. Anything for a buck, eh Donnie?
2
Unbelievable. I'd call it Machiavellian if I thought Trump knew who Machiavelli was. Just when you think we can't sink any lower...
2
Trump wants all his tax records, all his personal records and all his conversations as President kept confidential and out of the public spotlight. But when it comes to rolling back science based health regulations he and his flunkies insist on violating the medical confidentiality of millions of hypocrites. He and his rich backers will stop at nothing to poison the planet as long as they can add another dollar to their bank account
2
This “confidential data” gambit is also used by climate researchers.
How about a pharmaceutical company asking for an FDA approval but refusing to turn over data supporting the new drug as confidential?
What would be your reaction?
2
So, where’s the source code for all those electronic voting machines?
Occasionally, I see a request for people to send in a comment on a pending regulation. My usual thought is, "why bother"? It won't do any good. Now I see that I've been accurate - they received 600,000 responses to their previous draft and they *ignored* them.
2
The key issue seems to be making public the raw data of people to whom confidentiality was promised. The article doesn't come straight out and say it and so I am uncertain and still have this question: Does this mean the people's names connected with the raw data would also be made public? When the article mentions the cost to the EPA of redactions, is it personal information that they would be redacting?
The more times and in the greater detail that the data is reviewed the more sure we can be of the conclusions of scientific studies, so this sounds like a good thing, as long as people's personal information still remains private. If this new regulation only means it will be revealed that person X had gall bladder surgery and person Y had breast cancer, then I see no problem. But if it reveals the people's actual names and other personal information then I see big problems.
1
Why doesn’t the country go crazy when they hear this kind of thing? That the government is officially politicizing science for the benefit of corporations. I realize it’s been creeping up for a while, I remember the CDC being forbidden to investigate aspects of gun death, the scientists studying climate change being silenced, and even the recent brouhaha over weather forecasting in Alabama.
It’s incomprehensible to me that there isn’t mass outrage by everyone with the smallest claim to education. It’s almost worse than okaying someone being shot on Fifth Avenue. After all there are gun outrages everyday anyway.
Denying science and muzzling scientists is a shocking crime. Right up there with caging babies and denying medicine to the dying.
5
Well, well, well. If the EPA truly believes the following statement, and I hope they do, then they will have the fossil fuels industry provide the same information showing that their industry does not adversely affect the air we breathe and the water we drink nor the land we live on.
“We are committed to the highest quality science,” Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, told a congressional committee in September. “Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.”
5
I agree with the writer of this article when she feels as if America lost and or misguided. I also agree with my fellow readers who agree that most of us are to blame. Why would so many people give Donald Trump the keys to the future. Trump and associates(Enablers) have done more harm then good. Even in the first sentence of the article it states"The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations" and etc. That's just one example of this. It's truly sad of what has become of America.
2
The name change is now official. The Environmental Protection Agency has become the Environmental Pollution Agency. When will the nightmare end?
9
@Christy
When we do as others do in countries around the world: demonstrate en masse.
Millions of people in the streets would make them far less bold.
1
30 days? That’s all we have to comment on this? That is not nearly enough time to educate everyone about it. And that’s what Trump and Wheeler are counting on.
When will the public comment period take place? Most likely during the holiday season, when everyone is distracted. This strategy is intentional. They pulled the same stunt last year when asking for public comments on a copper mine proposed to be built within a watershed on the edge of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. Comments were so low, and resulted in an end to the ongoing environmental impact study and a green light for the mine to be built three miles from the Wilderness edge.
They don’t want our comments. They don’t want us to know what they’re doing. It’s up to everyone reading this piece to take action and educate your friends and neighbors. We can’t sit here and do nothing or we’ll be complicit in this all out assault on public health, science, and our environment. Women’s march? How about a national environmental march? Where is the outrage that will spark this?
What has happened to the environmental movement? Why does it no longer feel like a movement? Where are the Julia Butterfly Hills?
Where is the passion? It’s up to us commenting here to step away from our distractions, step up, and do what needs to be done. This administration has started a literal war. This is not the time to relax.
Bring on the Monkey Wrench Gang.
11
@Rikki Jensen
I know how you feel, in spades, but I don't agree with calling out the Monkey Wrench Gang. Demonstrations yes, but not that sort of violence. Yet.
1
I agree with you. They don’t want us to know what hurts our environment just as they don’t want us to know what we pay and get for heathcare. Their mantra is to distract and destroy every progressive move done in the past few decades to improve our environment and our health. All in the name of corporations with deep pockets and an anti government attitude that goes against the grain of commonsense. We are paying dearly for the malfeasance, dishonesty and selfishness of this administration. Every article that our major newpapers and media outlets can put out there to inform us about what they do behind our backs each day is another day that we need to get out the vote to get rid of them in 2020 and overturn everything they have done to hurt us. Watch what they do!
1
It's natural. Don't look (and it's corollary, you won't find). These are standard Republican (and 'moderate' Democratic) ways of going along to get along. And a quintessentially conservative (now there's a word that has completely changed its meaning over time) method of dealing with uncomfortable facts.
4
You offer no factual basis for this ad hominem attack upon your fellow citizens. This is unhelpful. What is helpful is support for legal challenges and a massive effort to alert as many people as possible. We can all submit comments.
"Academics are not typically required to turn over private data when submitting studies for peer review by other specialists in the field, or for publication in scientific journals, the traditional ways scientific research is evaluated. "
If no reviewer currently has access to the underlying data, then on what basis, exactly, have any of these studies every truly been reviewed? Even assuming that unpaid peer reviewers have the time and interest to evaluate a particular study deeply, rather than at a cursory level, how would they be able to detect errors if they do not have the data?
Moreover, are the models currently used by researchers fully transparent even to peer reviewers, or are those similarly a black box that must be accepted on faith?
6
@Bob
First, the raw data is accepted on faith, the faith that should the research prove not to be reliable because of faulty raw data the findings of that research would not be repeatable and the competency, and even the honesty, of the researcher would come into question. And the future career of the offending investigator brought into jeopardy.
1
@Bob All of these things are already answered and established. The RELEVANT data is available and public, excluding personally identifying information (“PII”). This new demand is to strip away the privacy of participants.
There is a big difference between “secrecy” and “privacy.” Conflating the two shows a lack of understanding.
1
@Bob
They do not need the raw data. All studies aggregate it for analysis. Peer review analyses both the methods of data gathering and the statistics used for analysis. It is sound. This stuff is not.
This move is not intended to clarify; it is intended to clog the arteries of research so we do learn about harm until long after it has been done.
Libertarians in the fossil fuel industry are just plain sociopaths with a reckless disregard for the welfare of others. Greed has eaten their hearts, if not their brains as well. They are the face of evil.
1
"The proposal gives the public 30 days to offer comments on the changes to the E.P.A.’s plan. Agency officials have said they hope to finalize the measure in 2020."
So who do we contact to protest? The EPA?
10
@Amy
Would not a change in administration cancel this ridiculousness?
2
Science should be pure and transparent. Why hide data. Personal data can be used without naming people.
6
By definition, personal data is identifiable. So what they’re essentially ruling is that every individual involved in any research study should have their name and health data placed into the public domain.
2
Which is the current situation, and has been for quite awhile. What is being changed is that the data would be linked to the individuals.
1
@Nathan Not my definition. My weight, blood pressure, etc can be included in an analysis without naming me. It is done all the time in double blind studies.
1
This is among the most absurd policy making that has ever been. The reason scientists analyze data and use it to synthesize information is that data analytics is not in the lay person’s skill set. It requires computations by computer that are based in statistical formulae that would take a long time for an average person to understand and compute by hand. I don’t think that EPA administrators (and certainly not DJT) are familiar enough with these techniques to make sense out of large pools of data. It is not a matter of guesstimating, it’s a matter of rigorous scientific analyses. What we have here is an attempt to blur scientific research to match one’s preconceived ideas. Again, the most anti-scientific administration is trying to hoodwink the populace.
24
I'm not sure this is legal. I have been involved in medical research for a long time, and served on several institutional review boards. Identifiable patient data is protected by law. There are some exceptions which allow some pubic health agencies, Medicare and funding agencies such as the NIH to have access to it, but I'm not aware that the EPA has access.
But more to the point, the idea that health regulations shouldn't use the best available science is insane.
28
Time for the media to stop referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. Keep EPA, but substitute pollution for protection. I would suggest that a new panel should be established to test exposure to these chemicals - chemical company executives and lobbyists. If they want to claim they are harmless, let them have a little skin in the game.
14
Is this the scientific method? Determine the goal - increase business profit. Ascertain a method - reduce government regulations. Identify evidence supporting those regulations - eliminate incriminating data. Remove the regulations, increase profits. Mix in sophistry. QED
6
Releasing patient confidential information is a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, an actual law (not just an agency policy) passed by Congress. Wheeler's new policy will be challenged in court and will lose.
15
Nobody is talking about identifiable information. Just anonymous raw data. It’s not clear what the objection to making the data available for validation. That’s one of the fundamental principles of science. Conclusions are replicable.
2
@Tim Kulhanek Sir, the raw data is precisely what contains personally identifiable information. Hence the comment that the EPA would have to spend a lot of money to redact personal identifiable details from that raw data they want.
You seem to agree with the scientific community on this one.
3
@Tim Kulhanek
Individual level data predicts nothing. It has to be aggregated to be meaningful.
2
There is a reason that scientists use vetted data, data analysis, and peer review before their results are used to treat people, or write legislation. Raw data includes the early trials where you were working out your effective concentration range, or where your colorimetric reagent had expired. Science involves a lot of stumbling before the test parameters start to work reliably. The "stumbling" isn't a source of reliable data.
Everything about this proposal is disingenuous. Scientists aren't in business to fool people. They are in business to get answers. Any rational person should want those answers to be true.
22
Meanwhile back at the ranch in the US the EPA is being gutted (already air quality is plummeting), the CFPB is being dismantled, Dodd–Frank is being compromised, the deficit is going through the roof, the wholesale sell off of huge swaths of public lands, world free trade seriously assailed and markets for farm produce gutted, the justice department is being revamped with a slew of GOP biased judicial appointees, and all while the nation’s intelligence agencies and the FBI are being disemboweled.
28
Lots of appropriate outrage in these comments. However, the ONLY way this changes is if everyone gets involved in action from the people. Sitting on the sidelines won’t help. Instead, get involved in national and local environmental groups, educate your friends, family, and neighbors - and most importantly get out there and vote for change!
Regarding voter messaging - this is non-partisan and applies to everyone, regardless of Socioeconomic status or where you live: is your vote for or against a healthy environment, your health, and the health and wellness and security of your children and their children? It really IS that simple!
14
Come on- many of us have been involved for years and years. Stop right there. Go to Kathmandu and see what life is like without pollution regulations that are enforced. Children wearing masks, their respiratory system compromised.
I met a man who worked for the EPA at my local park right after trump was elected. They were frantically trying to save Data. They got rid of so many people and put a gag rule on the rest.
This is earth killing authoritarianism. It is not our fault - well it is the fault of the people who voted for Trump and these foul festering lying sleazy republicans.
1
Instead of killing us off slowly, why doesn't the Trump administration simply shut down the EPA? All of those silly rules and regulations! Who needs that? Just shut it down, let corporations run rampant and pollute the water we drink, the air that we breathe, and the land that grows our food.
Or we can elect government officials who care about Americans and America and will make the EPA strong and successful.
On election day, we can make this happen. #VoteBlue
19
@Larry - Ban health care, doctors and medicine, don't
need them, they won't work - let the mass poisoning
begin.
2
So the government and corrupt officials are dictating which information is valid, and furthering their own agendas? Make Orwell fiction again!
19
This feeds into the polarization of our democracy. We need to step back and assess the proposed protocol on its merits instead of automatically jumping to the conclusion: "Trump bad". Let's step back a moment and re-frame the issue; why wouldn't we want a larger set of eyes to validate scientific data? If the issue is privacy, can we work with lawmakers and the organizations to safeguard as much private information as possible while still giving access to the raw data to ensure accuracy, objectivity and the best science possible? Realize that all media (Fox, NYTimes, et al.) relies on triggering that part of our brain that notices the negative because it's more profitable to do so. Let's take step back and start thinking for ourselves. Let's take a step back and realize that this country is not going to get any better if we don't start dialoguing with each other.
4
@AL At the same time, does the EPA have enough trained people to do the review of all this raw data?
4
Because the validation, scrutiny and verification of the data sources and processing should be done during the peer review process, as it has been done for decades with good results --not by a government agency in a way that suspiciously serves to undermine regulations useful to all but a few industries.
7
@AL It’s difficult to dialogue with people who have such limited understanding of science and how it works. This is why basic education is so important. Now we have to explain basic principles of research and peer review to adults who make policy decisions. Terrifying.
3
Hypocrisy and censorship at the nth power.
The health and wellness of Americans have been trashed by an administration that believes only in predatory capitalism .
Have we reached yet the bottom of this dangerous swamp ?
8
America is so lost. How could so many people give the keys to the future to a man like Trump and his enablers? How can anyone be republican at this point. And for all of you that saw the personal financial gains in voting for Trump, shame on you. Shame on you for doing this to the planet and the future of life on earth.
I know that what America does affects the entire planet but I need to leave this country. I do not believe in America. It’s the people that support him that scare me the most.
539
@Lulu ~
Powerful comment and I totally concur.
As for "How could so many people give the keys to the future to a man like Trump and his enablers?"
You probably meant this rhetorically but two thoughts. Many of his supporters get all of their so called news from Fox so they don't know what is going on. Then there are those who enjoy the spectacle of trump running roughshod over presidential traditions. The rich and Congress people who are willing to sell their souls for money and power is a whole other story.
Thank you for your comment.
104
Don't leave. We outnumber trump supporters by millions and if we hold together we will defeat them, restore sanity to this nation and possibly save the world from disaster and tyranny again. Now is not the time to surrender, it's time to stand your ground.
67
@Mary Ann Donahue
I think most of us have had the same thought of hightailing it out of Gilead while we still can at least once over the past three years. The problem is if we follow through on that who will be left.
The US is too much of a global threat at this point to be left in the hands of these felons. Its not just us we have the fight for, its the whole planet.
57
This is outrageous. I am beyond words. I think we need sustained massive protests to voice our objection. Don’t tell me that Trump supporters are in agreement with these roll back.
11
Meanwhile, the low price of green energy and technology is disrupting the old school businesses that Trump’s appointees bow down to. And, in his great wisdom, DJT is opening the door to global tech and energy businesses while his backers hamstring America.
6
This is irrefutable proof (if any more were needed) that this regime is totally comprised of malevolent ignoramuses, misanthropes, psychopaths, and sadists (not to mention bigots). By extension, this also includes their sycophants, enablers — and "base".
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
— Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
15
One wonders, at times, if those crazy stories about lizard aliens is true! Are they of this ecosystem and planet ? I would love to stick them all out into deep wilderness, with the basic tools of survival and see what happens. They couldn’t last an hour without the falsity that holds them up. They are completely out of touch with the very biological being they are.
Plastic, money, oil - is this what runs through their veins and pumps their hearts ? It appears so.
2
I read the story and the corresponding document that was brought up that linked to the draft proposal. That document states that they are requesting comment on 3 alternative options including it not applying potentially to studies before 2018, or those with data that could not be made anonymous or with proprietary company information. Perhaps I misunderstood the story but it made it sound like the decision to take the option that would “broaden” its scope had been made. Please understand I am not defending the actions of the EPA, I am simply seeking to understand exactly what the draft is doing based on its language vs the reporting of the writer.
4
this is what happens in a system where land labor and resources are dedicated to the private accumulation of capital and when the state is controlled by those who accumulate the most capital
5
Outrageous! The NYT should print this story with a Second Coming headline, as should all written media. If the EPA were bombing us now, you'd get our attention. Well, they're bombing our children and our grandchildren.
4
Wheeler should be held legally responsable for any illness and/or deaths caused by these deregulations.
This should be considered a criminal act!
5
This is a disgrace. The Trump Administration and GOP want our country to function in ignorance instead of knowledge. They want our families and our future to suffer. This must not stand.
4
We have evil incarnate in the White House. And much the same in the majority in the Senate, exemplified by McConnell, Graham, Rubio, Cruz, Inhofe. Every one of us has to do everything we can to produce an overwhelming turnout next November to rid us of this utterly horrible people.
5
Or storm Washington in masses. We need a revolution. This government is not working.
Trump is, in fact, the devil, and his supporters are his acolytes.
5
It really is a shame that this country is so corrupt especially now when it is nothing more than a vast criminal enterprise.
7
“We are committed to the highest quality junk science,” Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator,"
Now that I put the word junk in, it makes more sense.
4
@William People pushing for full transparency on data, models, and methods, are rarely the ones supporting "junk" science. People screaming and waving their hands about how outrageous it would be to make them reveal their raw data, statistical analysis, and model assumptions for open review are rarely on the side of good science.
Let the EPA spend money to de-identify the data to make it HIPAA compliant, and then let people have at it. If the various analyses have all been done right, then that would be wonderful. If they have not, then that would be well worth knowing before using those results to enact regulations. Everyone gains from transparent (de-identified) data.
2
@Bob except it it is junk science Republicans are spouting.
@William If you are concerned about junk science, then you should be supporting this EPA initiative. If you don't believe me, then imagine a situation in which the EPA allows for free dumping of cyanide, based on a study showing that ingestion of large amounts of cyanide is not harmful to humans. The data used on this particular study are invisible. The statistical methods used in this study are not clear. The models used in the study are not transparent either. Only the results are transparent. Would this situation make you happy or unhappy? If unhappy, would it make you feel better if the data in this study were declared to be proprietary, or if it would be really, really expensive for the data to be de-identified using HIPAA compliance software?
Data, math, and model transparency are the antidote to junk science. Declaring otherwise is simply Orwellian. If the Six Cities study and others are sound and without error, then a blast of sunshine will not harm them in the least.
This is why I am giving money to the legal groups filing legal actions against Trump/GOP actions on the environment and health. Democrats might want to up the EPA on their agenda.
2
Banana Republic, here we come.
5
Better to rely on reading tea leaves for hard facts! You just can’t make this stuff up!!
3
Just when I think we hit bottom...we hit yet another bottom. Science is science and our US politics are garbage.
This is the 21st century and we are limiting the use of science, worshipping beings in the sky, watching capitalism run amuck, and letting impoverished and mentally ill fellow citizens rot in the streets. What planet am I living on?
8
You know the amount of time we have spent annihilating the natural world is not that long. How long did it take ? A couple of hundred years of industrial/ technological “advancements” to wipe out, millions of years in the making, species, of Ecosystems, and a stable climate. Watching evolution videos helps, the earth has been a ball of Fire before, it has been a snowball in the past, it has had very little life and then exploded with life. Just 200,000 years ago we became what we are today.
I’m just 200 of those years our arrogance combined with this judeochrisitian/ Greek “ I think therefore I am”, supremacy over nature is what will kill us all in the end - and take everything we possibly can with us. In the end the money will rot and burn also.
Was it worth it?
This administration, constructed with lies upon lies, continues to build a house of cards on a "foundation" of revisionist "truth." Meanwhile, we and the rest of the world are sacrificed on an altar of quick profits by evil people in expensive suits. The thin excuse that this is simply "a step toward transparency" is just another whopper of an "alternative fact." Trump's polluted wastewater is washing our country down the drain. I don't care how we get rid of this evil clown and his politburo, but he has to go before he takes our nation and our planet down with him.
5
And Trump’s terrestrial horror show continues.
4
Another skirmish in Trumps war on the health of the republic.
2
No one should let this man get away with claiming that he is pro-life.
9
@Beverly, no one should let this man get away with anything!
6
Keep voting. Explaining the facts will not save us. Corporate sponsored GOP enablers do not like to be told what to do by science wielding subjects. The religious leaders should preach to Wheeler, but they are in partnership with the state to enslave the subjects of this dangerous civilization we are growing.
"Soylent Green is made from people."
3
Meanwhile, Warren and Sanders are being pegged as being "progressive and far left wing", and the media is partly to blame. How about "anti-regressive and near future wing"?
They have been branded so much that if they were to actually being specifics up to a demographic that will be affected by all of this (which is essentially everywhere), the public may consider it to be "bloviating" and "fear mongering". but the Dems need to do it anyway, in great detail, and not worry about talking down to anyone.
Many of these people who vote for trump et al have very ingrained false belief systems, and are hard to break through to them. They have been exposed to tons of inadmissible evidence and are like a juror who is zapped into having a brain worm. Swing voters hopefully have some fissures, and if we lay it all out in black and white, we may be able to get through. Environment is a great way to do it. No punches pulled!
3
The GOP oligarchy realized they have someone in the Whitehouse that is really is completely clueless when it comes to science and research. This exploitation will not go away quickly. Damage is too easy and fixing that damage is always so much more difficult.
4
Another case of Trump and his minions more devoted to their donors than to to the American people's wishes. Sickening.
7
This is the work of an administration that prides itself on their study of the Bible, their belief in a divine creator? Who seek to be evangelists for 'their' God?
Racking my brain to think of any gospel that exhorting us to end our stewardship of that which was entrusted to us by God; that tells us to open the temple to moneylenders and thieves, and praises the efforts of fools and charlatans.
Where do these twits think they're going to spend their money?
The moon?
9
Read this article and you can clearly (and literally) say to Trump fans, “Pick your poison.”
5
Trump, Republicans and Evangelical Christians destroy the earth as readily as they have destroyed decency and attack our Constitution...
They do not care about anything other than their warped and immoral bubble that they live in.
9
Are they going put the lead back in gasoline?
11
Now that trump, 73, has opened the federals lands and parks to corporate pillaging of natural resources, the corporations want those pesky regulations that make drilling and mining those locations more expensive out of the way. Corporate Profits Today are the administration's mantra, and the public will be stuck with trying to clean up the toxic corporate pollution sometime in the future.
9
Data sharing or the sharing of raw data has been a requirement of the National Institute of Health and major biomedical journals for years. I have no issues with requiring scientists to disclose their raw data for the sake of transparency as long as the data are shared with all. I'm not sure what would be accomplished by sharing confidential medical records. This is a laborious process that goes beyond the norms of scientific inquiry. It would require scientists to redact all protected health information from the medical records to ensure patient confidentiality. It would require the reviewing agency, such as the EPA, to abstract the data from each medical record in a rigorous manner. The requirement to share medical records reeks of this administration's distrust of the scientific community and provides an unnecessary barrier to enact sound policy from these studies.
8
The work of polluted minds and souls.
6
What in god's name is wrong with these people?
9
He’ll be gone soon enough.
Hang tight, everyone. The next 12 months are gonna be tough.
4
@John, do you really think that we can wait for 12 months?
Perhaps someone should bottle up some of the water pictured with this article and send it to the White House.
5
Where is Pelosi in all this?
3
One word: UNBELIEVABLE
7
And yet the liars in the Republican Party and the White House have the audacity to claim California is not meeting clean air standards when they want to get rid of all of the standards and wallow in the trough of greed and selfishness..
6
As many others have said, these guys are just pure evil.
6
I can't honestly believe this is happening in the U.S. To blatantly and maliciously attack science & promote religious bigotry, to weaken protections for the basics like water, air, and earth & promote short-term greed, to act as if this administration has a mandate with the majority of Americans behind them & yet not getting anywhere near the popular vote in the last Presidential election. If this isn't a wake up call I don't know what is. And since the Republicans have abandoned the majority & support this current President only the Democrats can reverse this course. Obi-wan-kenobi, you're my only hope.
7
This is the inevitable result is a culture that values personal opinion beyond insight, study and facts.
Case in point: Don’t believe in vaccinations? Don’t worry, no one will make you use them.
And America let’s this bogus hot air fill the airwaves and internet without any concern.
2
Since this administration does not believe or rely on science, how are they going to evaluate scientific reports? Are they going to apply the same kind of knowledge exhibited by their leader? The damage that these people are doing to the country not only continues but increases with each day. If we are so unlucky as to have to deal with this bunch for another four years, we will soon be back to the 19th century.
4
Good. More common sense. It’s rare in government these days but Mr. Trump seems to have it.
1
@Thor Please keep that in mind when the air and water become too polluted to breathe.
8
Just look at the air in Mumbai and cities in China to see what we are in for
2
@Thor, I really hope you are being facetious. I'm really afraid that you aren't.
This administration doesn't understand science, but it also doesn't understand research ethics. It took decades and lots of scientific missteps to get us the ethical codes that protect research subjects from disclosure of their identities. These ethics were the response to a lot of bad science; removing them is what will give us the purported "junk science," not leaving them in place. Democracy's "epistemic authority" is now being replaced with conspiracy theorists like Mr. Milloy.
I wonder: What happens when mercury starts falling on Canadian and Costa Rican children? When dead zones affect the industry of other countries? Pollution doesn't fall solely on its source; it becomes ubiquitous in the environment. Can they sue us?
They certainly should.
9
I don't want to hear anyone from a Red State/Battleground State complaining 10-15 years from now when their children and grandchildren have various "mysterious" cancers or cancer-clusters unexplained...because there was no science involved in mitigating identifiable causes:
This...is the government YOU have doomed all of us with...because you couldn't stand the thought of a Democrat becoming our president; and a woman. Instead, you doomed us with a shiny-but-useless object.
16
@Candlewick
Some of the responsibility for this has to be assigned to Clinton herself. After all more Americans voted for her then voted for Trump. If only she had spend some time campaigning in those three pesky states that delivered the 70,000 votes that gave Trump the Electoral College. As an afterthought: What would have been the result had the DNC had let the Democratic base choose the candidate?
1
@Orin T
Please; those people heard her message. After thought? You're asking me to provide you an answer about "had the DNC let the Democratic base choose the candidate"... What does that have to do with the here & now? Hypothetical questions are fairly useless...
@Orin T
Nope. This is not on Hillary.
It's on every single voter who did that incredibly stupid thing and voted for Donald Trump AFTER he revealed to the entire world that he had all the red flags for malignant narcissism.
Now the USA has become a pathocracy. Deal with it.
This is pathetic. It appears that Trump's minion, Mr. Wheeler, will stop at nothing in undermining EPA standards protective of human health in his effort to pander to his former industrial clients and keep monies flowing to Republican super PACs.
6
What is the matter with them?
4
What’s wrong with these people ?
6
I don't understand how people support him. This is sickening.
7
Trump was put in place to destroy our government. Voter apathy was his great ally. Trump is also busy destroying the planet. Will young voters take the time to get out the vote against Trump and his Republican lackeys in order to save their own skins? Only time will tell.
3
One can only imagine the stress, the chore, the job of trying to kill Democracy and America with one twisted mind, but that job was filled when Putin cast his eye upon Trump, finding a willing servant to evil, and so the rest is history...bad history...sick history.
3
Trump and his band of marauders hate all children not just the ones they’re locking up in cages at the border. Poison them now and save money later by not having to fund so many public schools. For your next summer vacation why not let the kiddies enjoy frolicking in coal fly ash slurry ponds?
Seriously, when will the insanity stop? !
4
This is a nightmare.
5
The path to totalitarianism. Discredit the free press then destroy scientific advancement. Assure that the truth is obscured and everyone follows dear leader. It's already happened.
7
Revolution 2.0 can't be far away.
2
I gave blood yesterday. Science figured out blood types, that we replenish blood, and how we could take blood, store it and use it to save lives. The church condemned the science of Galileo. Now our President condemns science, the new Middle Ages.
9
When is capitalism ALWAYS right?
When is Trump EVER right?
4
I haven't had water contaminated by these cold-blooded killers, but I'm sick to my stomach of the trump administration's mind-blowing evil. Dear God, please make him go away asap.
7
Now Trump and his know-nothings are trying to limit the science which can be used? Is this a joke? What is going on? The lunatics are literally running the asylum.
6
The new obscurantism.
1
Who will benefit from the change in the method of using heretofore acceptable data? Who makes more money as a result? It seems clear who will suffer - the rest of us.
The rationale for the change strikes me as Orwellian. Will the courts side with the EPA after litigation? If yes, the strategy of packing the courts with right wing judges was brilliant; every facet of life will be skewed.
3
Does anyone think that having non-scientists make decisions on the validity of scientific data make any sense? Would the lawyers in Congress and Judges think that non-lawyers determine the interpretation of laws? I think not! This proposed regulation has nothing to do with transparency - it is all about allowing industry to pollute with impunity and to allow Trump to weaken air and water quality standards w/o scientific dissent. Implementation of these regulations also have the potential of conflicting with federal HIPPA and ethical standards pertaining to confidentiality of medical information. These take us back to the "good old days" of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.
“The reality is, standards are not going to be tightened as long as there’s a Republican in office,” -- that's the real point of this new regulation. Another reason to vote Trump and his Republican sycophants out of office. Then Steve Milloy, Trump and the Reps can move to New Delhi to enjoy their wonderful air!
8
Science and science literacy were the great hallmarks of a modern public education when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. A post-WW2, forward-looking march into the coming 21st century. That we now are "debunking" or simply sidelining science as a way to implement a politically-protected corporate profit agenda which pollutes and destroys at the expense of our future, that there is a renewed push to add creationism to science classrooms, that we have people out there who argue in favor of a flat Earth (!), that we have made science a partisan argument in terms of climate change study... and so many other anti-science views, is very telling in terms of how far the United States has fallen as a leader in the world. It's beyond sad, it's just appalling.
4
When one dominant political party and 40% of the voters cannot differentiate between scientific facts and political opinions, we are in danger of harming ourselves, our progeny and the planet beyond repair in this century.
3
This is insane. How can nonscientists evaluate a scientific study? I have worked in specialty medical news since 2002 and I have to admit that although my understanding is much deeper than it was, I am not a scientist or a statistician and never will be.
4
who are these horrible people? what is happening to our country?
3
Its about time we stopped using science to back up public health rules, i long for the days when we used tea leaves and the entrails of dead chickens to forecast the weather, predict what enemy armies would do, predict if my wench would have a boy or girl child, warn of impending doom, read the minds of the gods, sort out my old age pension, determine what i have for dinner on the 3rd Monday in June and tell me if i will die from consumption or malaise. We all know that this mumbo jumbo science brings us nothing but trouble.....and the tears of the sun god...and maybe TV.
9
To not use science to run the country really is going to make America the most stupid place on earth, and good luck living to a ripe old age with the pollution in the ground, water and air. Glad I'm not American. Although one hopes this stupid government will be gone next year and basic things like using science to make decisions will be reinstated. Good Lord! The Trump government would have Americans back in the dark ages.
5
OMG can't use science to make decisions about policy. We are going back to the dark ages. Vote Blue in 2020 like your life depends on it!
10
@Nina because it does.
1
Vote. Trump. Out.
(I’m speechless).
8
Could it be that the Liar will cancel all medical related matters since science is not good for the American population?
2
As California and Australia burn... and the seas rise... and the hurricanes intensify... and the air turns a bright shade of green... and tap water corrodes water pipes and poisons children... the "responsible" Trump administration and the Republican Party rise to the crisis...
By sticking their fingers in their ears and singing LALALALALALALALALALALA WE CAN'T HEAR YOU!
Next November, vote as if your life depended on it. It does.
4
How is it possible that this administration does everything wrong?!
3
Not prudent, but reckless
2
Jill Stein Voters...still feeling good about your principled stance in 2016?
8
Stop the griping, this is what Americans voted for. It isn't a secret that Republicans want to roll-back all health and safety regulations, they cost businesses money.
1
Please NTY, publish again every Senator and Congress persons email, physical address in their state and Washington, fax, and phone number. I KNOW anyone can look it up, but make it simple for folk to contact all of their representatives and voice, write, email their dismay.
3
Hey: All you lotus-eaters out there in TV land or with your heads in the sand (or elsewhere), this is entirely believable and to be expected. Had you been paying attention you would know that.
2
It is time for a consciousness raising for the rural folks and lower class, poor city folks, who most often keep their heads down and avoid conflict to get by. These people are always the ones affected by anything that goes wrong after environmental protections are lifted. The profiteers depend on subservience and lack of confidence.
Enough of that.
Better education of mind, body and soul is required to fight this.
The current American government is not for the people.
3
If we didn't have to breathe the air and drink the water, we could stand back to appreciate with wonder at just how naked these actions are. Not only has Trump walked us out of the Paris Agreement (effectively killing it), but decapitated the EPA, whose job is to safeguard our environment for future generations. Each agency head picked by Trump is installed specifically to tear it apart, from State to HHS to EPA -- a nightmarish drama, except that it's real. Even as impeachment looms, Trump is determined to sow the last seeds of doom that he can.
6
Sorry to be so harsh but his supporters dont care!! we are raising kids 15 years old to 45 that actually get their news from Facebook and instagram!!
3
We need a new rule to stop "unindicted co-conspirators" from dictating law in this country formerly known as a democratic republic.
3
Unconscionable, Irresponsible, and a great tragedy for generations to come. We have to stop this disgusting
administration. NOW! Enough damage. Enough Lies.
America, we are better than this. VOTE him out and do
whatever you can to convince your friends, family and neighbors
that this behavior is not normal.
2
Each and every Republican voter should be held responsible for the harm they are causing to their children and their children's children.
6
Republicans have, very intentionally, destroyed the EPA. It has become nothing but a sick joke, the opposite of what it is supposed to be. No, it's not just Trump: it is Republicans. This is who these people are.
4
I will be happy on the day that Trump and his mean-spirited and, in many ways, reality rejecting administration will be gone. Trump is ignorant. In my 85th year, Trump is the first President whom I see as truly evil.
8
"A plague on all their houses".
This shameful excuse of an administration must be replaced.
4
Sue them.
2
Wish I could say unbelievable.
2
Oh, it's ok...
They are committed to the highest level of service.
There is simply no shame anymore. These clowns will do anything.
2
This is all about money. Money the Kochs and industry paid to purchase ignorant REPUBLICAN politicians. Want to see cheap lax standards. Go to a third world city and experience the pollution, garbage, and lack of access to opportunity and education.
Republicans want to return to feudalism.
There is no excuse for their undermining public health.
4
Is anyone really surprised by this?
4
News Flash: AMA to Limit Science Used to Treat Disease, Sickness and Suffering.
Hey Trumpers, how does that one grab ya?
5
This is disgusting. Public health is an important government service. Protecting people from harmful, careless, irresponsible activity by companies is vital to everyone's else. There must be rules about disposal of hazardous materials and ensure that companies, city leaders take actions to protect their residences. How many people will get sick and not be able to afford the care necessary care or to move? How many companies will be liable for negligence? Don't call it the EPA anymore. Call it "We have sold our souls to greed and you are on your own." Better yet get these people out of office in 2020! This is Trump corruption!
3
Just when you think they can't go any lower ..... they do. The ignorance and greed of today's GOP leave me speechless.
5
Many of the legitimate concerns aired here could form part of an agenda to advance in conjunction with Earth Day "50" coming up on April 22, 2020...
2
Do we need and example of evil? This is it.
6
This might be better for the environment than one would think. John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor of medicine, claimed in 2005 half the results in peer-reviewed scientific journals are probably wrong. Researchers confirmed have since this. "Fraud in the Lab" a recent book by Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis describes the fabrication, falsification and plagiarism in today's research. Bad research may do more harm to the environment that no research.
Yeah let’s see the raw data before we accept the conclusion!
Start with the raw data of Trump’s tax returns.
5
Fraud is rampant in American universities! Climate data has been proven time after time to have been completely fabricated when compared to satellite information.
Allowing full transparency is the only way to have truthful verification. Not surprising that NYT and academics are outraged that their cottage industry of using bad science to bolster their even worse theories and policies has been exposed.
Kudos to real empirical transparent science!
As we soon will be choking on our air, gaging when drinking our water and watching the rivers burn or become free of fish, many will still proclaim MAGA.
Sadly, those Trump supporters and those who encourage the "rollback" of environmental regulations have little clue the removal of those rules will affect them also.
But, the emails, the server, Benghazi and Bernie along with the Bidens is much more important than rules that protect us and the environment we leave our children and their children.
5
AAArghhhh! The whole point of the EPA is maintaining human health. Once again, this administration has turned the mission of a government agency completely on its head and turned it into a mechanism for validating the destruction of human health and the environment at the hands of polluting industries. My thanks (and sympathy) to those dedicated scientists at the EPA who still work for the benefit of us all.
3
This takes my breath away (maybe literally.) These types of changes will impact all lives negatively. No matter your politics, we should all unite to save our fellow humans and our environment.
7
Research is very often manipulated to reach the goal of an interested entity. In studies which have an Introduction, followed by the abstract (all facts and figures often quite long and tedious) then comes the conclusion. The conclusion is often where the deception is found. It does not follow the information in the abstract and draws a deceptive summary. Hard facts and objectivity are buried and lost.
Will big pharma also be held to the same burden of proof?
By the same logic, won't we need to recall all recently approved medications where we don't know all information about the test subjects?
It will be hard circle to square for this admin. Shameful hippocracy.
7
Trump didn’t like the rules in effect
And looked for some his pals could reject
So he banned all studies
Except from his buddies
Indifferent to the planet he wrecked
4
Out and out now. GOP is dead; this is rank corruption and the path to a failed state; impeach, remove and bring dignity back to the U.S.A.
4
Stick a fork in us. We're done.
5
What is most depressing is that all this simply doesn’t exist for Fox News viewers. They live in a different world
9
No surprises here, only a vast disappointment that science has so shamelessly whored itself to the plutocrats. How many millions of Americans are still drinking water tainted with hexavalent chromium, for example? A toxin not even on EPA's radar despite Erin Brockovich...there is no hope for a country that has taken the express lane of the capitalist road and whizzed toward self-destruction and obscene profits for a few.
2
Inasmuch as the administration is no longer accepting educated advice, scientific analysis, nor adhering to long established public and constitutional norms, may we citizens expect a return to 'running out of town on a rail', tar and feathering, scarlet letters, bleedings with leeches, iron masks with rats, guillotines and witch trials?
2
Re one potentially confusing reference in this excellent article: it might be worthwhile to clarify for readers that the American Chemistry Council is a trade group, not a scientific body.
7
Is it finally the right time for a General Strike?
9
well, at least they will still make sharpies to correct the scientists
1
Back to horse and buggy universe. Time when we died early - and that's what they are after for PROFITS reason only. Pesticides and alike will be more protected ans so Money money money talks
2
Ahh yes, the voiceless environment. The perfect victim for trump.
8
When trump and his minions, like Wheeler, have their inevitable heart attacks, will they go to a barber or a trained surgeon?
3
As a retired nurse as well as an environmentalist ..... does HIPPA prevent this latest affront on raw science and data. ???
Any answers on this. ?
1
In the little hamlet of Shrub Oak, NY a trumpy political operative was just elected for town supervisor, GOP Matt Slater. This Matt Slater comes from the Trumpy playbook where one of the biggest employers in Yorktown is IBM. This Slater character has no expertise in anything but being a hack for many failed Republican elected officials. What concerns locals is he has no agenda when it comes to our local drinking water, and we have the best which supplies NYC. He has no environmental agenda, but his propaganda includes jobs. Who can take someone seriously who has never had a real job before.
3
All his policies are anti American. Check them out. He needs to be imprisoned for crimes against America and Americans.
7
Another shadow government policy brought by Putin's stooge. Investigate this one. Come out of the shadows Environmental Protection Agency Patriots.
3
This is not new for EPA. When EPA was formed under Nixon and Ruckelshaus out of agencies from the U.S. Public Health Service I was working in the air pollution control program. The new management joked then that the new mission had been downgraded from protecting people to now protecting birds and bunnies. See documents at
https://www.legalreader.com/50-years-of-legal-climate-change/
1
I'm an American and Trump is my enemy.
10
“..regulations that cause consumers money.” is what this is all about. They care nothing of “transparency.”
2
This is insanity. Limiting science means those placing the limits don’t want the truth. Galileo’s heresy trial—he told the world about the moons of Jupiter that he could see through his telescope, something in direct contradiction of the Bible—comes to mind.
4
This should help Republicans in the suburbs. You know, with the Mom vote. Moms love to see corporate lobbyists (especially those appointed agency heads) have their way in the poisoning of their children. C'mon, what's a little lead paint dust. It's just harmless particulate!
2
Is there no limit to the evil these people are willing to commit?
I detest trump voters with every fiber of my being. You own this. You did this to us and to the poor planet. May you personally reap what you have sown.
5
What's next? An End Childhood Hunger Act allowing the government to kill poor kids so we won't have alot of hungry children to feel bad about? Where does this end?
5
Forget the tweets, the bragging, and the bluster from our carnival-barker-in-chief. This is the reason we need change. A vote for trump is a vote to poison our waters, our air, ourselves, and our children.
4
This is the true damage Trump is doing - something that sadly will be felt for decades - his dismantling of the EPA and his dismissal of science in general is devastating. Yet another reason this greedy, ignorant corrupt con man needs to go. Please vote him out in 2020! Our children & grandchildren deserve a chance at clean air and clean water. Not more money for billionaire buddies of Trump.
5
It is the height of hypocrisy and overt cynicism that Trump calls the press “the enemy of the people.” The United States has no greater enemy than the POTUS and his fraudulent courtiers.
3
So, public input does not really matter; science does not really matter. Sadly, all those Trump supporters who are blindly following this ignorant, mentally lazy man who thinks he knows more than any expert will, down the road, be loudly asking why the "government doesn't do something" when their kids or grandkids are living in a toxic environment and suffering from a host of maladies. Meanwhile, the business and government execs who make the bottom line more important than the health of the people will be living in safe enclaves laughing all the way to the bank.
5
So how the new "experts," government administrators, essentially laymen, will take on the position of reanalyzing old data and throwing out anything that doesn't meet "Evo" Trump or his pseudoscientific minions' prejuducial notions. Hogwash.
2
This rule should be an impeachable offense as it endangers Americans. Republicans in this administration who have been corrupted by business should be publicized as they come up for election, and sued by communities whose air and water have damaged. Why not just declare a dictatorship of liars and be done with it?
3
Note, elections matter and for the millions who stayed home versus vote for HRC, you reap what you sow.
3
It is real simple to understand. Trump knows everything. No one is smarter than the stable genius. For him, who does not have one, Ph.D. stands for Phoney Diploma. Of course there is no reason to listen to anyone like that. Q.E.D. (and that does not stand for Quintessentially Emperor Donald).
3
Hooray! We get to poison our water and air. Makes one feel proud ... says no one. So why is this happening?
3
Trumpublican propagandists on Fox “News” will support coal lobbyist Wheeler’s gibberish about wanting “transparency” and many millions of ignorant viewers will nod their empty heads up and down.
3
Yes, it's awful. What's new?
Just one of the many issues that will require an immediate course change on Jan 21, 2021. We're less than a year from the election. Stay focused on beating him and everyone of his Senate lickspittles at the ballot box. Get a walking list from your local Dem Party headquarters and knock on doors in your neighborhood. Better yet, pick a neighborhood with low voter turnout and knock on those doors.
This is how we change the EPA rules.
1
Trump brings pollution. There was never any doubt.
3
i had to read this twice, especially the conclusion of the EPA 's scientist ( just kidding, they are not supporters of the scientific method). Rachel Carson must be turning over in her final resting place
1
What on God's green Earth does Trump have against clean air, clean water and good health? And how can anyone of any party justify going along with this nutty, destructive plan? Do Republicans think their kids and grandkids won't get lead poisoning or cancer from polluted air and water?
2
So I have written to my congressman about this. What else can I do?
1
The photo of Wheeler and Trump that accompanies this article reminds one of the toxic effects of lead, mercury and aluminum.
3
Science? The enemy of the people.
The free press? The enemy of the people.
The truth? Is met with a tsunami of gaslighting and misdirection.
1
This is another one for the courts. What about HIPPA? Remember those personal rights which must be obtained before releasing health data to anyone, including another physician? Remember standards for conducting ethical research?" Informed consent? Standards for research data? NYT, please explain exactly what is proposed. No one wants to go back to the Tuskegee days, correct?
1
Normally, I would care, but by now it is an utter forlorn and futile waste of time. Don't worry about the grandkids, there won't be any.
This 'sentient' species is already doomed. It is far too stupid to save itself. At this point, the EPA might as well be populated by shamans, catholic bishops, TV evangelists, astrologers, etcetera for all the difference it would make.
The population explosion (7.7 billion, grows 80 million annually), and the global heating, climate crisis, perma-frost melt, resource depletion, pollution, et cetera, plus the coup de grace: the multitude of variegated looming catastrophes already on a roll, increasing over time, and baked in for decades to come will cause homo sapiens to become extinct.
This has to be the most bought and paid for administration in the history or America.
3
There is denial based on greed and denial based on fear. These people are children. They can't wrap their minds around the consensus that climate change is a grave threat to our planet. It is too complicated, too much responsibility, and too scary. Our president is one of these children. Their defense is to create a simpler, more appealing reality.
1
While I'm also outraged, it's important to remember that none of the people in this administration or its industry friends care. They are fine with killing people to increase their profit margins, especially if those people are poor. It's not surprising at all.
2
No surprise here. The republic party's mantra has been unwavering for years: "Science? We don't need no stinkin' science. All we need to know is in the Bible. Examples: the earth was created before the sun. The moon gives off its own light. All creation, which is no more than 10,000 years old, was completed in 6 calendar days. The universe is static, not expanding. Woman was created with Adam's rib. The Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood. Etc. etc.
1
Dear NYT, when you publish articles such as these, would you, please, if possible, include information about what we, as citizens, can do about such proposals under debate? Likewise, if there is nothing we can do, please say so. Thank you!
2
All waste water from mines and human waste should be pumped into all of Trump's hotels for their guests to bathe in and to drink. The same for his personal sink and shower at the White House. This is justice at its core.
1
Can this president and administration get any more despicable? You think not and then they keep sinking lower and lower and lower.
1
Why? Why? Why? Someone please explain why....
1
Just now in my way of transiting from deep sleep to coffee, I realized precisely why the Republicans are and have been packing the courts of law with servants;
The Republicans fully intended to break the laws of our nation.
After having their political power bought for them by the wealthy class, the Republicans have been repealing far reaching laws and regulations. Everyone's outrage is slowly evoked day to day with dangerous actions. The Republicans not only wanted in-the-pocket Judges to get away with their agenda of deregulation and power grabs. They fully intended to pack the courts by premeditated desires to break the laws.
We will no longer have truthful redress in the courts, including the packed Supreme Court that is in on this.
3
The entire government, and especially the republican majority in the Senate, must be deeply ashamed of this outrageous regulation. The government is by the people and for the people. But the current rulers believe that the government is there for the powerful, the rich and the polluters. They are not interested in the welfare and health of the population.
For God's sake, vote this clique completely away at the next election!
Perhaps they do not understand this:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The only way is their way, This Government is actively eroding the mechanism of Checks and Balances:
A chief aim of the Constitution as drafted by the Convention was to create a government with enough power to act on a national level, but without so much power that fundamental rights would be at risk. One way that this was accomplished was to separate the power of government into three branches, and then to include checks and balances on those powers to assure that no one branch of government gained supremacy. The powers of each branch are enumerated in the Constitution, with powers not assigned to them reserved to the states.
1
Herr Trump's vision of making America great:
-Air that you can't breath without choking or eventually die from airborne carcinogens.
-Water that is toxic and unfit for any form of life.
-Food that is poisoned by seepage of toxic chemicals from various industries.
I don't know how much more of this greatness" I can take I am so overwhelmed.
3
The sad jokes keep piling up. Nothing is funny, though, about the destructive path of everything Don the Con touches.
His legacy is simply that. Trump is willing to destroy anything to make money and he cares nothing about the air we breathe since he probably thinks he's safe since he doesn't have to live in the Rust Belt. Having played golf about 280 times in the past three years, we know his thinking by now that pollution is a hoax when he sees blue sky.
The Biggest Joke is the group of people who know better yet support this abomination of a man and president. They fulfil his corrupt intent with not even a second thought.
1
Since when has the definition of "confidential" come to mean "public"? Are these proposed rules meant to stop citizens going to a doctor? And/or stop partaking in clinical trials?
Has the U.S. path to authoritarianism no end? Or should we invite Queen Elizabeth and the U.K. back over here to rule?
1
Reminds me of the quote from George Orwell's novel, 1984:
"War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength."
When fact becomes fiction, what is left?
2
Evolution in action! I' a scientist, and I detest the GOP's sustained attack on science. That said, like the antivax thing, and people living in coastal plains who deny climate change -there's a corrective feedback mechanism in this one. Now, if only we could find a way to protect the innocent while Mr. Darwin works...
There is absolutely no good reason to require the disclosure of individual or personal information when looking at the "big picture" of an issue like environmental protection. This new rule is just another way the Trump administration is pandering to the business interests who profit from fewer real health and safety regulations. A disgusting display of greed and misuse of power.
1
Donald Trump once said climate change is a “hoax.”
Yet, “Nearly all publishing climate scientists (97–98%) support the consensus on anthropogenic climate change, and the remaining 3% of contrarian studies either cannot be replicated or contain errors.”
This article includes Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, told a congressional committee in September. “Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny.”
Fair enough, whose science is “good science”? That of almost all climate scientists or that of Donald Trump?
2
I guess they’ll use the magic 8-ball to make important decisions on how much is too much. Science is sooo hard. (Eye roll)
1
I hope Democrats will talk about these sorts of perverse actions by the Trump administration as well as their plans to address climate change in the debates to come. I have to think most people care about clean air and water. Trump claims to want manufacturing to come back to America. Doing so while simultaneously undermining environmental protections will not be a good combination. Our air and water will soon look like India’s and China’s. I myself don’t want to wear a face mask as I go about my daily activities.
5
@Citizen-of-the-World Yes, we have plenty of ammunition to tell it like it is to the voting masses. It needs to be laid out in black and white---many of these affected areas are in trump land. Instead of stump speeches, lots of specific details should be expressed. Sometimes I feel like the Democrats don't want to "talk down" to the public, and they approach matters like these things are already a given and that people know about them. No! That's not the case!
1
This is just about as short sighted as it gets, when those who legislate are either not knowledgeable enough or use incomplete data from which to draw up regulations.
Now, as case in point, if the legislators were to agree to have their personal exposure to domestic services consist of a hybrid of the exposures of all types of their constituents, they might take a more balanced and thorough look at the situation.
Then, if they were to refuse to do so, they can hardly claim to act without bias in their favour.
While we are about this, why not add all the services for all the legislative buildings in Washington to this balance.
Work arounds like bottled water should be off limits too.
Finally, someone is sticking it to those greedy scientists who obviously have an agenda of controlling the country through their secret cabal of "peer review" via the nation's environmental policy!
5
The GOP's motto should be "We are ignorant and proud of it!"
Their contempt for science is breathtaking. By punishing or marginalizing scientific inquiry rather than rewarding it, we guarantee that our students fall behind other nations in science & technology. Such a sacrifice would be deemed reckless by any objective observer. But today's GOP is completely owned by the fossil fuel industry, who value their profits over the health of our nation.
5
"Industry groups said the rule would ensure greater public understanding of the science behind regulations that cost consumers money." So the idea is to save us money while they kill us. How thoughtful! Don't any of these people have families?
7
More madness from the Radical Right. Human health takes a back seat to corporate profits. The Republican Party has sold its soul to the fossil fuel industry.
5
There is no legitimate reason for the Trump Administration to roll back EPA guidelines except to line the pockets of polluters. Nobody in the public sphere is crying for more air pollution of more toxins in our water supply. This president cares nothing for the will of the people or the public good. He cares only for the money he can make for himself while in office.
8
> Protection:
1. a person or thing that prevents someone or something from suffering harm or injury.
2. a criminal enterprise based on extortion
~ aka; "racket", especially when tolerated or supported by government authority
2
Are we a third-world country yet? Forget science. Forget the rule of law. Forget pollution. Forget climate change. Just let me make a buck or a million or a billion.
5
This article is emblematic of the total sheer destruction that the Trump administration is perpetrating on the American people. The backstory is what is really dangerous about Trump, the stuff going on in the background that is a true danger to us all, but because of the juicier chaos we see and hear about on media, our attention is diverted.
5
Please look at it from their side. The world is overpopulated and someday there may not be enough resources to go around. Life on Earth will become a matter of survival of the fittest, and they consider themselves the fittest by the most objective measure of all, money. Their wealth will insulate them from whatever adverse effects their actions will cause, while the rest of us finish out our nasty, short, brutish lives. They don't need Planet B, they just need to get the undeserving off planet A.
The Christmas season seems like the perfect time for them to begin to reduce the surplus population. Unfortunately for us, we're a few ghosts short this year.
6
“’We are committed to the highest quality science,’ Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, told a congressional committee in September.’”
All these Ayn Rand cult members in positions of immense power is a bad, bad thing for our nation.
4
This administration feels it important to limit the source of scientific study. It does not want to know all of the truth, just the truth it approves of. This is good for industry and cheaper for the government. Our environmental regulators don't have to waste time looking for many dangerous chemicals in our environment. If the EPA doesn't know the chemicals are there, we don't have to do anything about them. It is a win win. Then it is up to God whether we survive or not. Companies will make more money. The government will spend less money. You and I can pray to God if we get cancer or some other horrid disease from a chemical the government is ignoring. Life and death is to to God, not the EPA
4
I'm surprised this administration isn't proposing blood-letting, leeching and consulting astrologers. Oh, and Trump could set up a commission to study turning lead into gold. i'm sure that would be his highest priority.
4
It’s a sad day in the brave new world of data that the Administration prefers to create fake news and fables rather than using real scientific and medical research to make America a laughing stock. We must all tell our elected leaders that we take pride in those dedicated scientists and living in the dark ages is not an option.
3
It's super adorable that the EPA is doing this to become a more transparent agency, while their actions cause our water and air to be less so.
4
So the say of those who profit from pollution will now have more weight than those who profit nothing from it but better health for the planet. This is what happens when truth is for sale. This is what happens when we obscure fact, say truth isn't true, and pay equal attention to those who profit from selfishness as we do to those who simply believe in goodness.
4
The year of my daughter's birth, 1984 came and went. Some of us breathed a sigh of relief, things weren't great, but at least George Orwell was wrong. Turns out he wasn't wrong just early.
4
I am a public health epidemiologist. I could estimate the number of fetuses, babies, small children, adults in prime of life, and old people who would die or become dependent on medical care to continue living, should this rollback of protective regulations occur. I would assume a defensible range of increases in pollutants and use the dose/response relationships established over the past three decades.
Make no mistake. This administration engages in mass murder and crippling, the same as if it sent the military out to wage war on the American people.
8
As an environmental scientist who evaluated the impacts to human health due to exposure to toxic substances this latest move comes as no surprise. After witnessing the hollowing out of monitoring for permit compliance by not funding these efforts beginning with the Reagan administration and the efforts to skew the results of the Agent Orange study for the VA I have no illusions about the lengths that industry will go to to protect their interests to the detriment of public health. However I have never seen anything the likes of what is happening under this current administration. It will not be long before we see the results of this short sighted, self serving policy. When we can no longer ignore the increase in cancer clusters, birth defects and infant mortality there will be a hue and cry from the public questioning why our leaders are not protecting their communities. Think Flint, Michigan, Love Canal etc. Rachel Carson must be rolling in her grave. This move to eviscerate public health protections through regulation supported by science has been the plan all along.
21
Welcome to the Democratic Republic of North America where the entire country will become an environmental justice area of concern.
Again, keep your seat belts fastened because the race to the bottom is accelerating, the ride getting bumpier, and we are no where even approaching the finish line.
So much winning I’m pulling out the remainder of my hair.
10
Well, at least this may produce a trade surplus in pollution – a beautiful, giant trade surplus :(
6
This is what Democratic candidates and media need to be talking about instead of 24/7 on Medicare for All. If the Republicans are allowed to poison the planet to the extent they want, there isn’t any health care plan in the world that can save us.
30
It's no longer the Environmental Protection Agency; it's the Pollution Protection Agency.
19
@Tom - I think that's really true, except its the polluters they are protecting... I will be paying attention to which companies follow the actual science to safeguard the public and our environment, and which do not.
5
Trump should be "transparent" about his tax returns long before requiring this sort of "transparency" - if I understand correctly, RETROACTIVELY making public private information that was given based on confidentiality agreements???
Scientific inquire is constantly evolving, is not always correct, and discussion is reasonable. But it is clear that the purpose behind this is to allow profit from pollution without regard for the health of the planet or its future inhabitants. It's all about the near-term profits of people who know they will be dead and gone in a few decades, and care about nobody but themselves and their current excessive pleasures.
15
Does the rule require individualized or aggregated data? Given the outcry I assume “raw data” means just that - anyone can obtain an individual’s health records that were used for studies supporting health or environmental regulations. That’s in conflict with laws (mostly state-level) addressing the protection of health records (electronic and hard copy). But even that information can be released in other contexts if (a) the records are redacted to remove identifiers; or (b) the recipient agrees to be bound by a confidentiality agreement or protective order. All of this is risky and will add significantly to administrative burden. Ordinarily any effort to improve regulatory and research transparency is regarded as a good thing. If this idea were proposed by anyone but a Trump appointee, would the reaction be different? Because the problem here is simply that critics don’t trust the administration’s motivations, period.
2
@MWR The lack of trust is justified.
Hand picked "transparencies". Average citizens' personal medical records or the president's tax returns? The dismantling of our democracy continues.
18
Interesting that a definition of high crimes and misdemeanors doesn't include deliberately threatening the health and safety of U.S. citizens. The plans for this rule have been in place for months, and we haven't been able to stop it. How about now establishing a class action suit by all of us against the Trump administration? And no, I am not kidding. How do we get started?
20
Health data is subject to strict privacy regulations, enforced by the Department of Health and Human Services. This is just another one of Trump's diversion tactics, so frustratingly effective with his base I want to scream. He has learned that saying he doesn't agree with the science doesn't make him look smart. So instead, he is going to pass a rule that will essentially prevent new health regulations from being passed and render in force regulations invalid because the data supporting the regulation cannot legally be made public.
The fact that he withheld military aid approved by Congress from the Ukraine in direct contradiction of the interest of the US as a country and in furtherance of his own is what the impeachment inquiry should be about, and instead, Republicans are trying to make it about the process.
The strategy is the same with every crisis. We need to wake up and start paying attention to the issue at hand, instead of the hand Trump is madly waving to make us look away.
7
The most insidious part of this is that on the surface it seems so reasonable. Who isn't for transparency! Since it is up to the administrator to accept or reject studies, I could see a never ending stream of requests to the scientists of a study for more data, down to the most granular, to stonewall acceptance. There is a bit of devious brilliance to this plan!
2
What the article does not say is whether the health data would be redacted to remove any information that would identify the individuals.
If this information is not removed, the new regulations are unconscionable. If the information is removed, there are still issues (algorithms might be usable to identify people), but there is a valid argument that the raw data should be available.
1
Milloy's admission that this was all inspired by desire to block EPA from further citing just 2 studies underpinning the particulate air pollutant regulation is just what many ceitics long claimed. Had Trump's transition team been more familiar with workings of rulemaking, they could have much more easily simply ordered that all EPA regs be based on the peer reviewed scientific studies that are no more than 10 years old.
Scientific knowledge is constantly evolving and so it is ridiculous for EPA to keep citing studies like Harvard 6 Cities done decades ago when so many new studies are published every year. If the old findings are still true, new studies should be replicating their results, but if they don't, shouldnt EPA stop citing them? Americans have very different health issues today than in 1970s and 80s, and they lived in a very different environment.
1
"...That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.” For "stakeholders" just plug in corporations that don't want to be liable or profit-limited from environmental and health-damaging practices.
In just one term the trump administration is destroying years and years of work to protect the environment.
9
There are ways to protect the individual and publish data. This lack of transparency in areas where studies cannot be accurately duplicated is what causes the Media to declare coffee a deadly toxin one month and months later say it is a wonder cure.
If the research was paid by taxpayer funds, the data is supposed to be made available to the public. This could further advance science and knowledge. Here is what needs to go along with this legislation, strict codes of conduct regarding the use of the data that carry felony penalties with decades long sentences. In the case of industry paid for research, if the industry wants legislation passed based upon studies, then the data becomes public with the same privacy requirements and punishments for misuse.
The only people who will cry over this are researchers doing shady research who really do not want transparency and industry groups. If one wants to look at data regarding lead in drinking water in Flint, there is data available, you just need to know where to look and take responsibility for privacy protections.
2
So, apply the same regulation to the FDA. Rescind the approvals of all approved medications because the identified personal health information from clinical trials wasn’t made available to ex-lobbyist lawyers with no medical training. Get rid of protection against contaminated food because the names of victims of food poisoning weren’t released.
To apply the word ‘transparency’ to anything done by the current administration is beyond ironic.
47
This new proposed regulation which insists that scientists turn over the confidential information behind their data is a blatant attempt to silence those scientists.
As the article points out, much of that information is gathered under confidentiality agreements with personal/business related individuals who would be exposed to retaliation if they were made public.
This is the same tactic as "outing the whistleblower." Instead of dealing responsibly with the information gathered, the industries which cause damage to the environment and the anti-science cultists will penalize the persons from whom the information came.
It's despicable.
23
These peopłe have neither the brains nor heart of the 21st century. Can we put them on an island by themselves with no modern science? Any endeavor, any ambition, that does not make money is not within their realm of understanding.
31
"The reality is, regulations are not going to be tightened as long as there is a Republican in office." tell you all you need to know. Vote them out!
31
Obviously the administration secretly agrees that over population is a major problem and are acting accordingly.
8
If it is any consolation, when sea levels rise dramatically, one of the first locations to become submerged will be Mar-a-Lago.
19
Dictatorship, no other way to explain what is going on in this country.
19
This anti-Science regime in Washington has got to go.
Lord willing, this corrupt to the core administration will be GONE in 2021.
13
Have they forgotten the name is “environmental protection” not “environmental pollution?” Why, oh why do we have to wake up each day to more world destruction?
16
Depleting our Mother Earth of all Her resources for profit of the few is the reason.
The only power we have to save our home is casting our vote 11-2020 and firmly ending this nightmare of destruction we are all living. It is imperative.
11
Call trump's EPA mumbo-jumbo what you will but it is another attack on Science, common sense and decency. It is surprising how many people still support this madman.
13
The Trump Administration will lead to species extinction, and damage to human health as well. It's BiffWorld from "Back to the Future."
8
I wonder if the tobacco industry can use this to prove smoking is good for you. And maybe opioid addiction is not really a problem after all. Seems there could be no end to the number of scientific conclusions that rely on confidential medical data.
6
Somebody in their 'infinite wisdom' at work. Can America sink any lower?
3
Huh?
As the founding member of an Environmental group our community required to stop pollution of our drinking water ,this article had me stunned.
So now the EPA will not rely on the Centers for disease Control or the Agency for Toxic Substances and disease Registry is being stymied.
I mean really. We want all human non billionaire class to succumb to disease as quickly as possible. ???
I hope “we the people” are up for the next 5 election cycles. It will determine our very existence once they remove Medicare and Social Security and government programs for the common man.
Lowering the threshold on standards of data is a gut punch to America by trump and his coup and our leaders just support every dumb move made.
9
Elected GOP officials now have a choice of signing on to a suicide pact or standing up for science. Trump wants to take us back to before the Enlightenment. Really, this is completely irrational. What do these fools think is the end point of their efforts?
6
In my fifty-eight years on this planet I have never seen truth from the government. As I have seen it, everyone who tells the truth, stands for peace and or the people has been murdered or assassinated. Believe nothing from this current so called government. This government will kill us all with air, water and food. Mother Nature will clear this selective-ignorance from the planet with extinction.
3
How can this POSSIBLY be good for anyone? Let us start a class action lawsuit against Dotard Trump and his disposable enablers.
11
Outrageous and deceitful, just extortion. Access to raw data probably should be encouraged but any demand for personally-identifiable medical records adds nothing to verification and scientific inquiry beyond confirming these patients actually exist. This SCAM is little more than almost criminal extortion.
4