OSHA Nominee Threatens Our Freedom From, Um, Safety

[maha]

You can find no end of juicy stuff in WorldNutDaily. Today they've got professional tough guy Chuck Norris whining about how the government is taking away his freedoms. Great stuff, but for now I want to skip to near the end of the rant, where Chuck complains that the Gubmint is gonna take away our right to carry a firearm to work. Like we all want the hothead in the mailroom to be packing, right?

Anyway, the complaint is aimed at one of President Obama's nominees. Here is some background:

A few days ago, on November 19, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) approved the nomination of epidemiologist David Michaels, Ph.D., to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Dr. Michaels' nomination now can be confirmed by a vote of the full Senate without the public hearings that the Right wants to turn into a reprise of the Salem witch trials.

The Right hates Dr. David Michaels. The Washington Times calls him an "occupational hazard." Iain Murray of the Weekly Standard calls him a "safety zealot" (that's bad?) who plans to take up the "lost causes" of the Clinton Administration. Corporate interests want to stop the nomination because Dr. Michaels long has battled to get dangerous products off the market. Right-wing ideologues see Dr. Michaels as an agent of Big Government because he wants to keep firearms out of workplaces.

Dr. Michaels currently directs the doctoral program of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH) at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Service. He has personally studied of the health effects of exposure to toxic substances such as asbestos, which causes deadly lung disease mesothelioma. He is well respected among public health professionals, and he is best known for his opposition to what he calls "mercenary science."

What is mercenary science? Let's say scientific studies show a drug or product is unsafe and needs to be taken off the market or heavily regulated. And let's say the science behind these studies is pretty solid and cannot easily be refuted. A manufacturer who wants to keep his product on the market will hire other scientists to "evaluate" the data. The job of the mercenary scientist is to find some reason to doubt the data. “Their conclusions are almost always the same: the evidence is ambiguous, so regulatory action is unwarranted,” Dr. Michaels wrote. ("Doubt Is Their Product," Scientific American, June 2005)

For example, in the 1970s data emerged that showed the drug phenylpropanolamine (PPA), a decongestant, caused hemorrhagic strokes in young women. PPA was used in some popular over-the-counter drugs. The trade association representing PPA's manufacturers hired scientists to cast doubt on the data to prevent the FDA from banning it. For this reason, it took 20 years to ban PPA. After it was banned, the FDA estimated the drug had been causing between 200 and 500 strokes a year.

Now that a leading whistle-blower on the practice of mercenary science has been named to head a federal agency, how does the Right respond? By painting Michaels as an enemy of science, of course. Wrote the Washington Times: (Link)

The president's nominee to head the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), a virulently anti-business epidemiologist named David Michaels, is one the nation's foremost proponents of allowing junk science to be used in jackpot-justice lawsuits.

Huh? You may ask. The "junk science" claim rests on Michael's opposition to the use of the "Daubert standard" to determine what scientific testimony may be heard at trials. The complex background of Daubert, rendered simply, is that in 1993 the Supreme Court ruled in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that judges should be gatekeepers of scientific evidence in trials and admit only evidence “relevant and reliable.” That sounds sensible, but in practice it has meant valid scientific evidence is sometimes ruled inadmissible because judges, who are not scientists, didn't understand it or didn't like it.

You can read about Daubert in detail in "Daubert: The Most Influential Supreme Court Ruling You’ve Never Heard Of" by the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, coordinated by the Tellus Institute. This document says that Daubert "has become the latest and most effective tool used by tort defendants to protect themselves from product liability and personal injury cases. Polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products are successfully using Daubert to keep juries from hearing scientific or any other evidence against them."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several trade associations, including the Food Marketing Institute and the National Association of Home Builders, are opposing Dr. Michael's nomination and demanding that the Senate hold hearings on his confirmation, no doubt hoping to turn the hearings into something like witchcraft trial. Recently, Senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chose to bypass a full hearing in favor of written questions and answers.

The Chamber and other associations are not backing down, however. R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the Chamber, said to the Senate: “Michaels is a high-profile advocate for more regulations, even when the science and data that is available to support such regulations may be inadequate or uncertain.”

As for the issue of guns in the workplace -- over the past several years firearms lobbyists have eliminated restrictions on carrying firearms in state after state, and now they're gunnin' for the workplace. The NRA argues that the Second Amendment protects a person's right to bear arms even on the job, against his employer's wishes. Several states have written laws that protect an employee's right to keep a firearm in his car while parked in the company lot.

Note that, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 16,459 people died from workplace shootings between 1980 and 2006. The Bureau of Labor Statistics sas that workplace homicides are the second leading cause of death among women in the workplace and the fourth leading cause of death among men in the workplace. To any sane person, firearms are a legitimate workplace safety issue.

During the Bush Administration, OSHA was less engaged in protecting worker than in protecting employers who don't protect workers; see, for example, Stephen Labaton, "OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry," the New York Times, April 25, 2007. Dr. Michaels promises to return OSHA to being an agency that protects the safety and health of workers, and the Right does not like that one bit.

[Omaha Steve]

1. Great post

K&R!