Science at the White House: A Political Liability

by Edward J. Burger Jr.

Overview

Originally published in 1980. In 1973 the US president's Office of Science and Technology was eliminated, a victim of its own incongruity. It was not, as was popularly proclaimed at the time, simply because the Nixon administration was particularly hostile to the scientific and academic communities. It was eliminated, argues physician-scientist Edward J. Burger Jr., because the office had tried to do its job too well—and had become a political liability. Science at the White House takes a critical look at the role of science advisers to the president and recounts the many conflicts that occurred as science and politics converged. Burger draws on his own six years of experience in the White House Office of Science and Technology in the 1970s. His book is filled with firsthand descriptions of the government's handling of such issues as national health care, environmental regulation, population control, and biomedical research.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421434544
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	206
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dr. Edward Burger Jr. spent several years at Harvard University, where he held joint appointments in the Harvard School of Public Health and the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was a member of the White House Office of Science and Technology for six years and a member of numerous advisory committees to the government and the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a professor of community and family medicine at the Georgetown University Medical Center. His other works include Protecting the Nation's Health: The Problems of Regulation.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Don K. Price
Preface
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Science Advice for the President: A Perspective
Chapter 3. National Health Policy
Chapter 4. Health-Related Research and Development
Chapter 5. The Environment, Health, and Regulation to Protect Health
Chapter 6. Population and Family Planning
Chapter 7. Some Additional Issues
Chapter 8. Summing Up
Appendix A. Report of the Domestic Council Health Policy Review Group
Appendix B. The White House: Press Release Febrnary 18, 1971
Appendix C. Proposal for PSA C Panel on Biological and Medical Science
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Dr. Burger has done us a service with his fascinating account of . . . the inevitable infusion of politics into the setting of science policy.
—New England Journal of Medicine

From the Publisher

Dr. Burger has done us a service with his fascinating account of . . . the inevitable infusion of politics into the setting of science policy.

New England Journal of Medicine