Surgeon General Nominee 'Would Resign' If Pressured Politically

WASHINGTON — President Bush's nominee for surgeon general told senators Thursday that he would resign the post before yielding to White House political or ideological pressure to suppress scientific facts.

But James Holsinger, selected by Bush to fill the office left vacant last year when former Surgeon General Richard Carmona was not reappointed, said he'd take that step only after trying to "build consensus."

During an occasionally tense confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Holsinger also called for restrictions on drug company advertising and endorsed the use of condoms to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of disease.

The nomination of Holsinger, 68, former chancellor of the University of Kentucky medical center, has drawn fire because of a paper he wrote 16 years ago declaring that gay sex is unhealthy and unnatural.

But his confirmation hearing was dominated by reaction to a House hearing Tuesday where Carmona testified that when he was surgeon general, White House political operatives watered down a report on secondhand tobacco smoke and made important public health decisions on the basis of politics.

The White House has denied Carmona's charges.

Holsinger was asked by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, what he would do if he were pressured by the White House to "modify your medical advice in a way that politics is emphasized."

First, he said, he would "use the tried-and-true leadership techniques that I've used throughout my life, which is to bring people to consensus."

"Quite candidly, if I were unable to do that and I was being overridden, if necessary I would resign," he said.

He repeated the pledge several times when questioned by other members of the committee.

He was grilled by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., about his service as medical director of the Department of Veterans Affairs in the early 1990s.

Mikulski said Holsinger ignored congressional concerns about quality-of-care issues in the agency's hospitals and failed to vigorously respond to reports of sexual harassment at the VA hospital in Decatur, Ga.

"You resisted change and you were indifferent and dismissive to oversight when it came to health care for women veterans," Mikulski charged. She said his response to an inspector general's report on the Decatur affair was "to move people around."

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., injected a light note into the hearing when he noted that Holsinger said he was accompanied by his 98-year-old mother.

"I've looked all over for a 98-year-old woman, and I can't find one," Isakson said.

"There's a smooth talker," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chairman of the committee.

About 100 people attending the hearing then applauded as Ruth Leona Holsinger, 98, stood up.

Kennedy said Holsinger's 1991 paper on gay sex "cherry-picked" scientific reports and even misrepresented some of them in reaching the conclusion that the lifestyle is unhealthy.

"This is something that is enormously relevant," Kennedy said. "It raises serious questions about your willingness to use the best in terms of science (and) whether you have the kind of basic and fundamental integrity to speak truth to power."

Holsinger, an evangelical Methodist, wrote the paper for a church committee.

He said the article was not meant to be a scientific paper but was for a "lay audience," including pastors, ethicists and church members.

He also said the issue has changed in the last 16 years, "and I don't even think the same questions would be asked today."

Three candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd, serve on the committee, but none of them attended the hearing.