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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (367208)	6/2/2010 7:18:47 PM
From: FJB	3 Recommendations Respond to of 793817

Political Activism at the National Cancer Instituteby Central Illinois 9/12 Project On May 17th, President Obama announced that he would nominate Harold Varmus, MD as the next director of the National Cancer Institute. Given the President’s commitment to the passage of universal health care reform and his promise to “restore science to its proper place,” we could reasonably expect the new appointee to be a faithful advocate for cancer research and betterment of health for Americans. However, given the radical backgrounds of many of this administration’s appointees (John Holdren, Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, etc.), we thought we would take a look into the background of Dr. Varmus. In 2009 Dr. Varmus was serving on the advisory board of an organization called the “Campaign to Defend the Constitution.” Interesting. This group was started in 2005 by the Tides Foundation, well known for funding various progressive groups. The Campaign to Defend the Constitution, also called DefCon, was established to support the constitutional separation of church and state and to oppose what it perceived as the growing influence of the religious right. The DefCon website is no longer operational, but you can view a final archive right here>>> . Leftist law professor Erwin Chemerinsky even celebrated the founding of the group in the Huffington Post, stating that: I believe that the greatest threat to liberty in the United States is posed by the religious right, largely comprised of Christian fundamentalists. Whether sympathetic with the religious right or not, one must conclude that DefCon was clearly a political advocacy group, and a very biased one at that. In addition to his association with DefCon, Varmus has been on the board of directors for Scientists and Engineers for America, whose mission encourages and facilitates scientists and engineers to be politically involved. Furthermore, he has been selected to be co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. It appears that Dr. Varmus is not only politically active, but quite ideological as well. (more…) biggovernment.com