Trump EPA’s ‘Secret Science’ Rule Would Dismiss Studies That Could Hold Clues to Covid-19

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07042020/epa-secret-science-coronavirus-covid

By Marianne Lavelle
Apr 8, 2020


In 2018, scientists published a study showing that doctor visits for respiratory infections increased with the air pollution that periodically settled into the urban valleys of northern Utah—research that could prove relevant as researchers try to unlock the mysteries of Covid-19.

But if the Trump administration succeeds in finalizing a new rule that would place limits on the science used by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Utah study is exactly the kind of research that would be given less weight—or possibly ignored—in future U.S. environmental decision-making.

To many in the scientific community, the Covid-19 crisis is driving home the potential consequences of the proposal, which is now on a fast track. The proposed rule is called "Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science"—a name that has an Orwellian ring in the view of agency critics, who argue that it treats protection of patient confidentiality as if it were secrecy that undercut the value of the science. By eliminating from environmental decision-making studies that rely on patients' anonymous medical data they say, the rule would knock out some of the most valuable human health science. And the Trump EPA is pushing forward with the plan at a time when the entire health science field is at the front line of what the president himself has called a "wartime" effort to control the coronavirus.

•••••

As early as 1996, Christopher Horner, a lawyer-consultant for the tobacco industry, suggested a tactic to use against the EPA: attack the science by employing a buzzword like "transparency" and raise doubts about whether studies were "able to be reproduced," according to documents made public in litigation against the industry.

Big Tobacco at that time was facing the prospect of EPA second-hand smoke regulation, but Horner suggested that challenging the EPA science process would be a more winning strategy than engaging in a fight over the substance of the science. Horner, who more recently has worked for groups funded by the fossil fuel industry, served on the Trump transition team at EPA.

•••••