The headline on the Associated Press story about a new executive order requiring four huge government agencies to become transparent about the cost of the health care they pay for cries out for a tweak. It read: Bush Seeks Better Health Care Cost Info.”
Good for him. But wouldn’t it have been a better story if “Bush Seeks Better Health Care Info?” A number of people might have coronaries if such a fantasy came true, because there has been no administration so hostile to transparency about health itself. From AIDS prevention, to contraception, to tobacco regulation, to food safety, to pollution and to the health effects of climate change, the administration has hidden, ignored and just plain dissembled about scientific conclusions that don’t fit its ideology.
What does it matter if the administration gives you cost — but not condoms; transparency — but not truth?
The government should develop a pseudoscience education agency that will publicly offer legitimate scientific information AND also provide information about pseudoscience so that people are able to easily access information that will allow them to see through all the crap that’s out there and find information that is accepted by the scientific community.
I would also love it if this agency arrested those pseudoscientists out there making millions by exploiting those who don’t know any better, an example being the elderly who are throwing there health medication away because Kevin Trudeau says that eating an apple a day will cure every disease known to man.
Alas, seeing Kevin Trudeau sent to jail for fraud is only a dream of mine…