It should also be noted that AIDS research and social service programs get far more government money (per person afflicted) than any other disease.

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20040628073329-32157.pdf

Clearly, the Obama Administration is going to have a lot of cleanup and fence-mending to do in the aftermath of the outgoing administration. Given the apparent near-term hatchet-burying on the part of President Elect Obama, it will be interesting to see just how much of that cleanup gets done before the right-wing starts to cry foul or play victim triggering a pull-back by the Obama Administration and the Democratically controlled congress. They are going to be very sensitive to being perceived as “over-reaching” in the interest of giving Democrats an ongoing majority in Congress and Obama an 8-year run. The Republicans for their part, still smarting from being soundly defeated in the ‘08 elections, are going to be looking for opportunities to play both sides of any hot-button social issue.

Striking many of the Bush Executive Orders will be a lot easier because congress is out of the loop for the most part on that. Nevertheless, the wing-nuts will be watching for their opportunity to trot out a boogie man. Every undoing of the advancements made by the right will attract their rapt attention and be used as an excuse to call Obama a left-wing radical. There will be no end to Gay health issues being used as political footballs in the foreseeable future

Clearly, science needs to be left in the hands of scientists and not extreme right-wing ideologues. Let’s hope that Committee on Government Reform has the courage and political will to work with Obama to clean up the mess left by Bush.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, had accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment back in August 2003, just after your opening incident.

Presently under the Environment Waxman’s office lists these four “Fact Sheets and Reports.”
See: http://oversight.house.gov/investigations.asp?id=121

White House Asserts Executive Privilege over Environment Documents

Committee Report: White House Engaged in Systematic Effort to Manipulate Climate Change

But Waxman isn’t that into calling the Administration on anything scientific in Health Care or with HIV/AIDS at the present time. He used to have a Website up which listed the Bush Administrations intrusions into the scientific community, but that is now gone.

But it was Waxman who on Thursday, August 14, 2003 Asked Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to explain what appeared to be selective audits on government-funded HIV/AIDS prevention programs (see: http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20040628072552-54941.pdf – abt.500K PDF).