VIA Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog, we have some good news on the world health front:
The good news is that death of women due to pregnancy and childbirth continues to drop. That’s a good thing. Unless you’re an activist.
But some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview.
“I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict,” he said.
Dr. Horton said the advocates, whom he declined to name, wanted the new information held and released only after certain meetings about maternal and child health had already taken place.
He said the meetings included one at the United Nations this week, and another to be held in Washington in June, where advocates hope to win support for more foreign aid for maternal health from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Other meetings of concern to the advocates are the Pacific Health Summit in June, and the United Nations General Assembly meeting in December.
“People who have spent many years committed to the issue of maternal health were understandably worried that these figures could divert attention from an issue that they care passionately about,” Dr. Horton said. “But my feeling is that they are misguided in their view that this would be damaging. My view is that actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it.”
So hide the good news (the decline), so you can get more money. These people are in the dictionary next to the word cynical. And they wax so sanctimonious about bad guys in the private sector.
The comments at Pielkie’s are interesting. Apparently, even though he’s a professor, and it’s an “academic” blog, the majority opinion there is that most people would view success as a reason to provide more funding (the way it works in the private sector) rather than less (the way it works in government). In government, success is punished, and that’s precisely what these activists are afraid of.
And academics are still puzzled over why the Soviet Union collapsed.
Tags: Progressive Hypocrisy
