White House Scrubbed CDC's Climate Speech

The White House halved prepared testimony the CDC director gave to a Senate committee this week, zapping sections about diseases that might result from global warming. A Bush spokeswoman said the speech was not “watered down,” the AP reports, but sentences such as “scientific evidence supports the view that the earth’s climate is changing” were excised.

A CDC spokesman said the edits were “heavy-handed” by the White House’s standards; an anonymous official preferred “eviscerated.” Among the warnings scrubbed were vulnerability to air pollution, waterborne diseases, and frequent hot spells. Responded the CDC director: "I don't let people put words in my mouth, and I stand for science." (More White House stories.)