Cheney accused of suppressing testimony on climate change's public health risks

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, intervened to gag a senior official from testifying last year to the public health problems caused by climate change, according to a Bush administration whistleblower. In a letter released today, the former climate adviser at the US environmental protection agency (EPA) said Cheney's office pushed to delete "any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change" from testimony by America's senior disease control official. The testimony on climate change, given last October by the head of the head of the US centres for disease control (CDC), was ultimately cut from 14 to six pages. When CDC officials anonymously told the media that the White House had "eviscerated" the document, removing any mention of specific diseases caused by pollution, a spokeswoman for George Bush said the... [read full story]