In "the latest instance in which the Bush administration has been accused of allowing politics to intrude [3] into once-sacrosanct areas of scientific deliberation," the Health and Human Services Department [4] asked the World Health Organization to allow the Department's secretary to review meeting invitations. The WHO refused, claiming that changing its long-standing practice of directly inviting individual scientists could "compromise the independence of international scientific deliberations." A spokesperson for Department Secretary Tommy Thompson [5] said, "The World Health Organization does not know the best people to talk to, but HHS knows."