Case Scenario: NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS: Cheney's Staff Cut Testimony on Warming Members of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official about health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said yesterday. In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett said an official from Cheney's office ordered last October that six pages be edited out of the testimony of Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gerberding had planned to say that the "CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern." Frank O'Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said the revelations confirmed that the vice president has been steering environmental policy during President Bush's tenure. "For years, we've suspected that Cheney was the puppeteer for administration policy on global warming," O'Donnell said. "This kiss-and-tell account appears to confirm the worst." Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, July 9, 2008
1. Discuss how headlines such as this affect your opinion of politicians.
2. Assuming a cover-up, discuss how the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence apply.
3. At the end of our days, the most basic principles of life-trust and survival-are on trial. What is your verdict, if indeed there was a cover-up?