Republican science denialism is also far more dangerous because it can be promoted and sustained nearly ad infinitum by enormously funded special interests, for whom suppressing science is critical to their financial bottom lines. One of those special interests is the tobacco industry, which profited massively for decades—and continues to profit—by denying the science that’s long-proved the carcinogenic, life-threatening effects of their products.

The Trump administration stands out as the most anti-science in modern history. As of May 2019, according to Scientific American, the Trump administration had attacked science through its policies and pronouncements more than any presidency since the Union of Concerned Scientists began tracking.

Earlier this year, a large group of UCS scientists warned of the looming health consequences which would likely result from this deliberate, concerted rejection of science.

The Trump administration’s unprecedented record on science will harm people across the country, especially the most disenfranchised. While the sheer number of attacks on science is shocking, what a lack of science-informed policy means for our country is even more shocking. The administration’s rollback of protections from exposure to dangerous chemicals means that more people will become ill, develop chronic diseases or die from encountering these hazardous substances.

Last week, Donald Trump’s Environmental “Protection” Agency announced its plans to implement a policy to severely limit what kind of science it will deem “acceptable” in formulating all of its future regulations governing public health. Scientists told Newsweek that the proposal’s strategy is a familiar one.

The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to limit what scientific evidence can guide public health regulations echoes tactics used by the tobacco industry to invalidate science regarding the tobacco industry, scientists told Newsweek.

Thus, the federal agency charged with protecting the health and safety of the American people will now deliberately limit the information it considers to a narrow spectrum of “data” deemed “acceptable” by polluting industries and manufacturers of dangerous products such as pesticides. Specifically, the EPA will now require scientists involved in human health impact studies of such products to disclose all of their “raw” data before the Agency will even consider their findings. While couched in language of “transparency,” what this initiative really means is that scientific data incompatible with the administration’s, pro-industry “policies” will no longer be considered.

For example, when scientists conduct studies measuring the impact that known carcinogens will have on human populations, they often rely on confidential data about the human subjects involved in the studies. The data are “confidential” because they must comply with privacy laws protecting the identity and other personal information about those whose health is being evaluated. Despite the fact that these studies are thoroughly peer-reviewed (and thus considered methodologically reliable by the scientific community), manufacturers involved in the creation and dissemination of pollutants and poisons—from the tobacco industry to the fossil fuel companies—have long argued that such studies should not be considered in making regulatory policy. Their motives for this are self-evident.

If science based on confidential human health information couldn’t be used by the government, the tobacco industry likely never would have been subject to strict regulation, nor would companies like Philip Morris have had to pay billions to the people their products harmed.

As was pointed out by Clean Air Director and counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) John Walke, the strategy now being formally proposed by Trump’s EPA is identical to the strategy described in the infamous 1996 “smoking gun” memo authored by a tobacco industry lawyer and directed to R.J. Reynolds management, urging the adoption of this same anti-science strategy to hide the harmful effects of cigarettes from the public.

x Yes, here is the 1996 Ã¢ÂÂsmoking gunÃ¢ÂÂ memo from tobacco industry lawyer, Chris Horner, to R.J. Reynolds, laying out the identical strategy the Trump EPA is now using to attack & censor health/environmental science. https://t.co/4sKSMe9IEf Ã¢ÂÂ John Walke (@JohnDWalke) August 26, 2018

Never before has a wholly taxpayer-funded government agency—much less one literally responsible for protecting the health of all Americans—adopted as a formal policy this tactic of rejecting sound science, cynically cloaking it in the name of “transparency.” Since the people Trump has put in charge of his EPA are primarily concerned with promoting the interests and profits of industry, rather than Americans, it’s not surprising that they would adopt the same argument that R.J. Reynolds and Brown and Williamson once used to hide the deadly effects of their poisonous products from consumers.

"It was never about transparency," but about staving off science, Gretchen Goldman, the research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Newsweek about the tobacco industry's efforts.

David Michaels was the longest-serving head of OSHA, from 2009-2017. Last week he reacted to the administration’s proposal, calling it “weaponized transparency.”

x Call it Weaponized Transparency.



The Trump Administration has taken the tobacco industry's nefarious idea to block studies showing smoking killed non-smokers and will now apply it to ALL studies - future EPA regulations will rely only on industry data. https://t.co/UwKharl97C Ã¢ÂÂ David Michaels (@drdavidmichaels) November 11, 2019

But it gets worse—much worse. The EPA’s proposal would be retroactive, affecting not only future decisions regarding regulatory policy, but past ones as well. In other words, the EPA is fashioning a way to invalidate regulations passed before Trump even took office!

“This means the EPA can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.

As the Times emphasizes, current laws based on studies employing such “confidential” data could be deemed invalid at any time under this proposal. The real-world impact of this mendacious policy “adjustment” on Americans’ health would be staggering.

[S]tudies that have been used for decades — to show, for example, that mercury from power plants impairs brain development, or that lead in paint dust is tied to behavioural disorders in children — might be inadmissible when existing regulations come up for renewal.

Of course, the Trump EPA’s “proposal” will be challenged in court. That’s one of the reasons why the administration has been seeding the federal judiciary with fervently pro-industry ideologues, for whom the public health is little more than an afterthought. And while the American public is understandably fixated on the ongoing impeachment inquiry, these under-the-radar actions of Trump appointees are designed to ensure that whatever happens to Trump, his anti-science policies will continue to inflict harm on ordinary Americans for the foreseeable future.

In other words, impeachment won’t stop these people. The only cure for this type of poison is an election.