While the issue is old hat among progressives, it's worth asking whether there's political potential in the administration's dishonesty about science and its irresponsible public health policies. The appalling details, rehearsed at length in Michael Specter's March 13 New Yorker cover story, suggest some possibilities.

The obstacles to such political payoffs (and to policy change) are obvious; even the detail-obsessed Clinton administration refused to follow the evidence and fund needle exchange programs, either because of anxiety about the social conservatives that would have a field day with such funding or, if you want to believe their own account, because it would have sent the wrong message to children.

But it's become a commonplace in political circles that conservatives don't want Roe v. Wade overturned because the silent pro-choice majority would make the Republicans pay dearly at the polls. The same logic could apply if we lost some of our reticence about discussing anything that even relates to sex. Sure, there may be a way to get global warming to work for us politically, or, better yet, to get conservatives on our side about that issue. But first things first. There is no way the Bush administration and its social conservative base would not be harmed politically if the policies that are, in effect, causing health problems and indirectly killing people were explained simply and clearly to a broad audience.

In addition to prohibitions on needle exchange programs, there's abstinence-only sex ed and the prohibition on family planning funding among organizations that may mention abortion, interference with scientists' international consultation about AIDS (in one case, "their decision came after the organizer of the conference refused a request by the U.S. to invite the evangelist Franklin Graham to give a speech promoting faith-based solutions to the AIDS epidemic") ... the list of distortions and manipulation, some cases more serious than others, could go on and on. On some of these issues, conservatives will try to use a variation on Bush's famous "fuzzy math" defense that the then-governor employed disarmingly in the 2000 debates when challenged on tax policy. But the exodus of manipulated scientists from the government and the exposes of falsified data should to an extent inoculate us against this tactic. And that's leaving aside the prospect of alliances with medical research-related industry interests being abandoned by the administration's just-say-no and attitude to "offending" research that could save lives and will find a market abroad, as Specter makes clear. The stakes are major; the trend toward denigrating and distorting science must be stopped before its success under President Bush's tenure gives it an accepted place in the GOP repertoire, at either a policy or a political level.