• Scientific Integrity
• Global Warming
• Clean Vehicles
• Clean Energy
• Nuclear Power
• Nuclear Weapons & Global Security
• Food and Agriculture

 Summer 2010

Newsroom 

• UCS Adds Sunshine to Health Care Menu
• Combating Global Warming in the Garden 
• A Briefing with the Brass
• Japan Proves Flexible on U.S. Nukes
• UCS Board Member Wins Environmental Award
• Scientists Sign Up to Slow Global Warming
• Helping Whistle-Blowers Be Heard
• Stay Connected While Saving Paper

 UCS Adds Sunshine to Health Care Menu
New law exposes medical conflicts of interest

UCS recently helped secure legislation that will help the public assess whether doctors’ decisions are being inappropriately influenced by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. The bipartisan Physician Payments Sunshine Act, part of the health care bill President Obama signed in March, requires companies to disclose consulting fees, gifts, travel, and other payments they make to doctors and hospitals. UCS encouraged several consumer, health, and government watchdog organizations to support the provision, and educated members of Congress about its importance.

The new law increases accountability and transparency in our health care system, and helps ensure that patient-care decisions involving prescription drugs and medical devices are based on the best available science, not the size of incentives offered by the manufacturer. For more information on our work to reduce conflicts of interest, see www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity.

Combating Global Warming in the Garden
Our latest report encourages greener thumbs

Gardeners know that even small shifts in weather can affect their outdoor plans. But scientists expect that unless we act today, global warming could fundamentally change weather patterns in many regions, resulting in droughts, floods, and conditions that favor certain garden pests and weeds.

In our new report The Climate-Friendly Gardener, UCS shows how you can create a healthy, beautiful landscape that also helps fight global warming. In addition to offering tips for the home garden—building healthy soil, choosing low-emissions tools and products, planting trees and shrubs, composting yard and food waste—we note where such practices can have a much larger impact: our nation’s farms. With 900 million acres of intensively managed soil, U.S. farms and ranches can play a truly significant role in curbing global warming. To commit yourself to climate-friendly gardening practices and encourage policy makers to reward farmers who adopt such practices, sign our online pledge at www.ucsusa.org/gardenpledge.

A Briefing with the Brass 
UCS gets a chance to shape space policy

Last February, UCS staff met with Air Force Brigadier General Jay Santee, who is guiding the Space Posture Review, a congressionally mandated outline of U.S. military priorities in space. We were hoping to influence the review in a way that ensures space remains secure and usable, satellites are kept safe, and military activities in space will not threaten security on the ground.

We found that General Santee shared a number of our concerns. Moreover, reports indicate that the interim version of the review includes provisions that reflect our own policy recommendations: increased emphasis on cooperation with allies, engagement with new space-faring countries, strategies for making U.S. satellite systems less vulnerable to interference, and recognition that unconstrained testing of anti-satellite technologies “challenges the security and stability of the space environment.” UCS will work to ensure that positive provisions included in the final review are fully implemented.

Japan Proves Flexible on U.S. Nukes
Our analysis rebuts argument against new policy

Because Japan’s national security depends to a large extent on the threat of U.S. nuclear weapons, American officials have long feared that Japan might develop its own nuclear weapons if it perceived any weakening of the U.S. nuclear “umbrella.” This argument posed a barrier to President Obama’s desire to reform U.S. nuclear weapons policy, so UCS sought to learn the Japanese government’s actual views on nuclear policy firsthand.

Gregory Kulacki, senior analyst in our Global Security Program, visited Japan four times over the past year, meeting with local defense experts, social activists, and leaders of the Diet (the country’s legislature). His subsequent report, Japan and America’s Nuclear Posture, documents continued opposition to nuclear weapons among the Japanese public and defense experts. It also describes how UCS and Japan’s arms control community spurred two important letters from Japanese politicians to their American counterparts: one repudiating claims that Japan would oppose significant changes in U.S. nuclear weapons policy, and one urging President Obama to restrict the purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons to deterrence against attack. These actions were critical in building support in Washington, DC, for the president’s policies.

 
Scientists Sign Up to Slow Global Warming
UCS leads twin letter-signing campaigns

UCS has mobilized scientists to push for federal climate action on two fronts. In April, The Scientists’ Letter on the Copenhagen Commitment for Tropical Forests called on Congress to ensure the United States keeps its promise (made at last December’s United Nations climate conference) to provide $1 billion for tropical forest conservation between 2010 and 2012. The letter, signed by nearly 200 individuals with advanced degrees in the social or natural sciences and forest-related expertise, was released at a congressional briefing co-sponsored by members of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees such funding. The text and list of signers can be read at www.ucsusa.org/forestletter.

The month before, USA Today, Reuters, and other media outlets covered our re-release of the U.S. Scientists and Economists’ Call for Swift and Deep Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which has thus far been endorsed by more than 2,000 Ph.D. economists and scientists with climate-related expertise. New signers can access the statement at www.ucsusa.org/climateletter.

Helping Whistle-Blowers Be Heard
Our support for scientists draws praise

Government scientists who report political interference in science face retribution from their superiors with few protections. UCS has pushed Congress to strengthen whistle-blower protection laws that would enable government scientists to safely report misuse of their work, and we were recognized for these efforts at a February event sponsored by the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization that has worked on such issues for more than 30 years. Some of the nation’s best known whistle-blowers spoke at the event, including Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the “Pentagon papers”) and former FDA Commissioner David Kessler (who exposed financial malfeasance at the University of California).

As Catalyst went to press, UCS staff were working with House and Senate champions on legislation that would protect scientist whistle-blowers; we remain hopeful that a final bill will be ready for the president’s signature by the end of the year. Follow our progress at www.ucsusa.org/whistleblower.