January 12, 2004
Orchestrating Emergencies
Now this will really make me feel safer:
Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.Undoubtably this will lead to more results like this:The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety and the environment.
In the same release, a section that said, "Even at low levels, EPA considers asbestos hazardous in this situation" was deleted and replaced with a section that read, in part, "Short-term, low-level exposure of the type that might have been produced by the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings is unlikely to cause significant health effects."Do you really want Karl and w deciding on the language and timing of emergency press releases?
There might be a bit more merit to a few aspects of this part of the OMB proposal:
The OMB also wants to manage scientific and technical evaluations - known as peer reviews - of all major government rules, plans, proposed regulations and pronouncements.I would not want OMB micro-managing peer reviews for each agency but it might be reasonable for them to set guidelines for the agencies to use. The guidelines should be consistent with standards and practices of the relevant scientific disciplines and should probably include a requirement something like: no more then 1/3 of the peer reviews can be done by scientists employed by businesses involved in the area being studied.
Via Metafilter.
Posted by Steve on January 12, 2004
