US health agencies fail to address political interference

Four agencies within the US Department of Health and Human Services should adopt procedures for reporting and addressing political interference in scientific decisions, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concludes. The agencies—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response—have scientific integrity policies, but those policies do not define political interference, the GAO finds. The lack of a definition could explain why the agencies have not reported any internal allegations of political interference in scientific decisions for more than a decade, the GAO says. Employees at the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH told the GAO about incidents they perceived as political interference. But they did not report the incidents because they feared retaliation, did not know how to report them, or thought agency leaders were already addressing the issue, the GAO says. All four agencies train employees in scientific integrity, but only the NIH includes political interference as part of that training, according to the GAO.