The EPA is proposing a new rule, supposedly about “Transparency”, that will severely limit any scientific studies it considers when making regulations that affect health.
The new rule, called “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science”, would require EPA to only use scientific studies in which ALL data is in the public domain, including confidential health and medical data from people who are in the study. The EPA is also proposing that the rule be applied retroactively for any study EPA has considered in previous rule making decisions.
This proposed rule will effectively ban any scientific study from EPA’s use. There is no IRB (Institutional Review Board) in the country that would approve a study involving human health that does not protect confidential health data. Not protecting confidential health and medical data violates almost every ethical guideline for conducting human research. But that is what EPA is proposing.
EPA proposed a similar rule over a year ago and received 600,000 comments, the vast majority of the comments were negative. So now they are trying to do it again, and make it even worse for science.
We will post a link when this proposed rule is open for public comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/climate/epa-science-trump.html
