Nuclear Agency Is Criticized as Too Close to Its Industry

 

The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.

The plant’s owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick — less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness — would be good enough.

Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.

Exelon’s risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission’s inspector general.

Exelon’s penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations — a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general’s office who led the Byron inquiry. “They always say, ‘Oh, but nothing happened,’?” Mr. Mulley said. “Well, sooner or later, our luck — you know, we’re going to end up rolling craps.”

Critics have long painted the commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied. The concerns have greater urgency because of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which many experts say they believe was caused as much by lax government oversight as by a natural disaster.

The Byron pipe leak is just one recent example of the agency’s shortcomings, critics say. It has also taken nearly 30 years for the commission to get effective fireproofing installed in plants after an accident in Alabama. The N.R.C.’s decision to back down in a standoff with the operator of an Ohio plant a decade ago meant that a potentially dangerous hole went undetected for months. And the number of civil penalties paid by licensees has plummeted nearly 80 percent since the late 1990s — a reflection, critics say, of the commission’s inclination to avoid ruffling the feathers of the nuclear industry and its Washington lobbyists.

Although the agency says plants are operating more safely today than they were at the dawn of the nuclear industry, when shutdowns were common, safety experts, Congressional critics and even the agency’s own internal monitors say the N.R.C. is prone to dither when companies complain that its proposed actions would cost time or money. The promise of lucrative industry work after officials leave the commission probably doesn’t help, critics say, pointing to dozens over the years who have taken jobs with nuclear power companies and lobbying firms.

Now, as most of the country’s 104 aging reactors are applying for, and receiving, 20-year extensions from the N.R.C on their original 40-year licenses, reform advocates say a thorough review of the system is urgently needed.

The agency’s shortcomings are especially vexing because Congress created it in the mid-1970s to separate the government’s roles as safety regulator and promoter of nuclear energy — an inherent conflict that dogged its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

“It wasn’t much of a change,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former N.R.C. commissioner who now teaches at Vermont Law School. “The N.R.C. inherited the regulatory staff and adopted the rules and regulations of the A.E.C. intact.”

Mr. Bradford said the nuclear industry had implicitly or explicitly supported every nomination to the commission until Gregory B. Jaczko’s in 2005. Mr. Jaczko, who was elevated to chairman by President Obama in 2009, had previously worked for both Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat and longtime critic of the nuclear industry, and Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and current Senate majority leader who sought to block a nuclear waste repository in his state.

 

Nuclear Agency Is Criticized as Too Close to Its Industry

 

The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.

The plant’s owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick — less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness — would be good enough.

Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.

Exelon’s risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission’s inspector general.

Exelon’s penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations — a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general’s office who led the Byron inquiry. “They always say, ‘Oh, but nothing happened,’?” Mr. Mulley said. “Well, sooner or later, our luck — you know, we’re going to end up rolling craps.”

Critics have long painted the commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied. The concerns have greater urgency because of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which many experts say they believe was caused as much by lax government oversight as by a natural disaster.

The Byron pipe leak is just one recent example of the agency’s shortcomings, critics say. It has also taken nearly 30 years for the commission to get effective fireproofing installed in plants after an accident in Alabama. The N.R.C.’s decision to back down in a standoff with the operator of an Ohio plant a decade ago meant that a potentially dangerous hole went undetected for months. And the number of civil penalties paid by licensees has plummeted nearly 80 percent since the late 1990s — a reflection, critics say, of the commission’s inclination to avoid ruffling the feathers of the nuclear industry and its Washington lobbyists.

Although the agency says plants are operating more safely today than they were at the dawn of the nuclear industry, when shutdowns were common, safety experts, Congressional critics and even the agency’s own internal monitors say the N.R.C. is prone to dither when companies complain that its proposed actions would cost time or money. The promise of lucrative industry work after officials leave the commission probably doesn’t help, critics say, pointing to dozens over the years who have taken jobs with nuclear power companies and lobbying firms.

Now, as most of the country’s 104 aging reactors are applying for, and receiving, 20-year extensions from the N.R.C on their original 40-year licenses, reform advocates say a thorough review of the system is urgently needed.

The agency’s shortcomings are especially vexing because Congress created it in the mid-1970s to separate the government’s roles as safety regulator and promoter of nuclear energy — an inherent conflict that dogged its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

“It wasn’t much of a change,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former N.R.C. commissioner who now teaches at Vermont Law School. “The N.R.C. inherited the regulatory staff and adopted the rules and regulations of the A.E.C. intact.”

Mr. Bradford said the nuclear industry had implicitly or explicitly supported every nomination to the commission until Gregory B. Jaczko’s in 2005. Mr. Jaczko, who was elevated to chairman by President Obama in 2009, had previously worked for both Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat and longtime critic of the nuclear industry, and Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and current Senate majority leader who sought to block a nuclear waste repository in his state.

View the original article here

Nuclear Agency Is Criticized as Too Close to Its Industry

The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.

The plant’s owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick — less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness — would be good enough.

Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.

Exelon’s risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission’s inspector general.

Exelon’s penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations — a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general’s office who led the Byron inquiry. “They always say, ‘Oh, but nothing happened,’?” Mr. Mulley said. “Well, sooner or later, our luck — you know, we’re going to end up rolling craps.”

Critics have long painted the commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied. The concerns have greater urgency because of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which many experts say they believe was caused as much by lax government oversight as by a natural disaster.

The Byron pipe leak is just one recent example of the agency’s shortcomings, critics say. It has also taken nearly 30 years for the commission to get effective fireproofing installed in plants after an accident in Alabama. The N.R.C.’s decision to back down in a standoff with the operator of an Ohio plant a decade ago meant that a potentially dangerous hole went undetected for months. And the number of civil penalties paid by licensees has plummeted nearly 80 percent since the late 1990s — a reflection, critics say, of the commission’s inclination to avoid ruffling the feathers of the nuclear industry and its Washington lobbyists.

Although the agency says plants are operating more safely today than they were at the dawn of the nuclear industry, when shutdowns were common, safety experts, Congressional critics and even the agency’s own internal monitors say the N.R.C. is prone to dither when companies complain that its proposed actions would cost time or money. The promise of lucrative industry work after officials leave the commission probably doesn’t help, critics say, pointing to dozens over the years who have taken jobs with nuclear power companies and lobbying firms.

Now, as most of the country’s 104 aging reactors are applying for, and receiving, 20-year extensions from the N.R.C on their original 40-year licenses, reform advocates say a thorough review of the system is urgently needed.

The agency’s shortcomings are especially vexing because Congress created it in the mid-1970s to separate the government’s roles as safety regulator and promoter of nuclear energy — an inherent conflict that dogged its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

“It wasn’t much of a change,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former N.R.C. commissioner who now teaches at Vermont Law School. “The N.R.C. inherited the regulatory staff and adopted the rules and regulations of the A.E.C. intact.”

Mr. Bradford said the nuclear industry had implicitly or explicitly supported every nomination to the commission until Gregory B. Jaczko’s in 2005. Mr. Jaczko, who was elevated to chairman by President Obama in 2009, had previously worked for both Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat and longtime critic of the nuclear industry, and Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and current Senate majority leader who sought to block a nuclear waste repository in his state.

 

China Creates New Agency for Patrolling the Internet

BEIJING — A powerful arm of China’s government said Wednesday that it had created a new central agency to regulate every corner of the nation’s vast Internet community, a move that appeared to complement a continuing crackdown on political dissidents and other social critics.

But the vaguely worded announcement left unclear whether the new agency, the State Internet Information Office, would in fact supersede a welter of ministries and other government offices that already claim jurisdiction over parts of cyberspace.

China’s State Council Information Office said it was transferring its own staff of Internet regulators to the new agency, which would operate under its jurisdiction. Among many other duties, the agency will direct “online content management;” supervise online gaming, video and publications; promote major news Web sites; and oversee online government propaganda. The agency will also have authority to investigate and punish violators of online content rules, and it will oversee the huge telecommunications companies that provide access for Internet users and content providers alike.

The State Council is a cabinetlike agency that effectively manages the government’s day-to-day operations. Two former officials at its Information Office will run the new agency, and executives from two central ministries — public security and information technology — will also serve in senior positions, the announcement stated.

The mushrooming growth of China’s Internet business has spawned a sort of land rush for regulatory turf by government agencies that see in it a chance to gain more authority or more money, or both. At least 14 government units, from the culture and information technology ministries to offices that oversee films and books, have some hand in what appears on China’s Internet. Others have interests in Internet-related ventures like the sale of censorship software that could prove to be lucrative sources of income.

Wednesday’s announcement indicated that the new office would work with other government units that regulate parts of the Internet, which could dilute internal opposition. But the sweeping nature of the announcement left some experts unconvinced.

“My guess is that it’s going to be quite a fight for these existing regulators to give up power, because it’s such a big and lucrative endeavor,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based independent analyst of the Internet industry, said an interview. “It’s not clear from this announcement, either in English or Chinese, whether the new agency is going to oversee them or coordinate with them.”

View the original article here

David J. Sencer, 86, Dies; Led Disease-Control Agency

His death, at Emory University Hospital, was caused by complications of heart disease, his daughter Susan said.

Dr. Sencer was the longest-serving director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency based in Atlanta, holding the post from 1966 to 1977.

Known as a personable, hands-on executive, he oversaw a substantial expansion of the agency as it dealt for the first time with malaria, nutrition, anti-smoking efforts, health education and occupational safety. Its greatest success under him was a program that eradicated smallpox, beginning in central Africa and eventually extending worldwide.

“I never asked him for anything that he didn’t deliver,” said William H. Foege, who led the smallpox eradication project at the C.D.C., as the agency is known, and who succeeded Dr. Sencer as director. “He said you couldn’t protect U.S. citizens from smallpox without getting rid of it in the world, and that was a new approach. People in the field got all the praise, but he was the unsung hero. He just kept providing what we needed.”

Dr. Sencer’s C.D.C. tenure was tainted in 1976 when a swine flu virus attacked more than 200 soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., causing severe respiratory disease in 13 of them and one death. Fearing a reprise of the flu pandemic of 1918-19, and urged on by President Gerald R. Ford, Dr. Sencer made the decision — critics deemed it rash and wasteful — that all Americans ought to be immunized.

The United States Public Health Service subsequently ordered the production of up to 200 million doses of vaccine, but the epidemic never materialized. Instead, a rare, potentially fatal nervous system disorder that causes paralysis, known as Guillain-Barré syndrome, appeared in rising percentages of the 45 million people who had been vaccinated, causing more than two dozen deaths. Dr. Sencer was vilified by some but defended by at least as many.

“Dave Sencer made a hard choice, and he did it for the right reason — to protect the American public,” said James W. Curran, dean of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, who worked at the C.D.C. with Dr. Sencer. “We didn’t always agree. I’m not saying we’d have been better off with a swine flu epidemic. He was trying to protect Americans had there been one, and absent one, there was bound to be criticism.”

The same year, 29 people who attended an American Legion convention in Philadelphia were killed by a mysterious ailment that quickly became known as Legionnaires’ disease. In an atmosphere of mounting public panic, Dr. Sencer, fearing an outbreak of swine flu or another infectious virus, dispatched 20 epidemiologists to the scene, but it took months for the agency scientists to determine the cause, which turned out to be a strain of bacteria found in the hotel air-conditioning system.

In the aftermath of both scares, and after Jimmy Carter succeeded Ford as president, Dr. Sencer was removed from the directorship by Joseph A. Califano Jr., President Carter’s secretary of health, education and welfare, as the Department of Health and Human Services was then known.

Dr. Sencer worked briefly in the private sector, but returned to public service in 1982 as health commissioner of New York City as the AIDS epidemic was taking root in the city. Admired by some for bringing doctors and public health officials together for weekly information exchanges, he was, as the leading health policy representative of Mayor Edward I. Koch’s administration, criticized by others, especially in the gay community, for dragging his feet.

“He and his reign accounted for one of the most disastrous experiences of public health anywhere in the world,” Larry Kramer, the AIDS activist and playwright, said in an interview. (Mr. Kramer’s play about AIDS in New York in the 1980s, “The Normal Heart,” has just opened in a Broadway revival.) “What did he do? He didn’t do anything. He had a mayor who said, ‘I don’t want to know,’ and Sencer fell into line.”

But James Colgrove, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Public Health and the author of the recently published book “Epidemic City: The Politics of Public Health in New York,” gave Dr. Sencer credit for amending the city’s codes so that AIDS cases were treated confidentially, defending the right of children with AIDS to attend public schools, and being an early advocate for a city-sponsored needle-exchange program.

Dr. Sencer was rightfully criticized, Mr. Colgrove said, for not being a better public educator. He failed, for example, to produce and distribute guidelines for sexual risk reduction for gay and bisexual men and did not reassure the public early on that AIDS was not spread by casual contact, Mr. Colgrove said.

“On the other hand, there was a lot of uncertainty at the time about how the virus was transmitted,” Mr. Colgrove added. “And you have to keep in mind he was working in extraordinarily difficult conditions. The health department had been gutted by the city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s and had lost about a quarter of the staff. He helped strengthen the department, especially in areas like epidemiology and bio-statistics. But once AIDS emerged, it overshadowed everything else.”

David Judson Sencer was born on Nov. 10, 1924, in Grand Rapids, Mich., where his father, who died when David was a boy, was in the furniture business. He was raised by his mother, Helen Furness, and earned scholarships to the Cranbrook School, near Detroit, and Wesleyan University. He left Wesleyan before graduating to join the Navy, which sent him to medical school at the University of Mississippi. He completed his medical degree at the University of Michigan, and later earned a master’s in public health at Harvard.

While at Michigan he spent a year and a half in the hospital with tuberculosis, and his first job with the Public Health Service was screening migrant workers in Idaho for the disease. He joined the C.D.C. as assistant director in 1960.

Dr. Sencer lived in Atlanta. In addition to his daughter Susan, a pediatric oncologist in Minneapolis, he is survived by his wife, Jane Blood Sencer, whom he married in 1951; another daughter, Ann, an oncology nurse practitioner, of Atlanta; a son, Stephen, general counsel for Emory University, and six grandchildren.

While at the C.D.C., Dr. Sencer was instrumental in starting Emory’s program in public health in 1974; by the 1990s it had evolved into the Rollins School.

“Dave Sencer was a public health giant,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the current director of the C.D.C. “And until the end he continued to be a thoughtful and vibrant member of the public health community. At the height of the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, he was here full time, and I said, ‘Can I pay you?’ He said, ‘No, this is a labor of love.’?”

 

China Creates New Agency for Patrolling the Internet

BEIJING — A powerful arm of China’s government said Wednesday that it had created a new central agency to regulate every corner of the nation’s vast Internet community, a move that appeared to complement a continuing crackdown on political dissidents and other social critics.

But the vaguely worded announcement left unclear whether the new agency, the State Internet Information Office, would in fact supersede a welter of ministries and other government offices that already claim jurisdiction over parts of cyberspace.

China’s State Council Information Office said it was transferring its own staff of Internet regulators to the new agency, which would operate under its jurisdiction. Among many other duties, the agency will direct “online content management;” supervise online gaming, video and publications; promote major news Web sites; and oversee online government propaganda. The agency will also have authority to investigate and punish violators of online content rules, and it will oversee the huge telecommunications companies that provide access for Internet users and content providers alike.

The State Council is a cabinetlike agency that effectively manages the government’s day-to-day operations. Two former officials at its Information Office will run the new agency, and executives from two central ministries — public security and information technology — will also serve in senior positions, the announcement stated.

The mushrooming growth of China’s Internet business has spawned a sort of land rush for regulatory turf by government agencies that see in it a chance to gain more authority or more money, or both. At least 14 government units, from the culture and information technology ministries to offices that oversee films and books, have some hand in what appears on China’s Internet. Others have interests in Internet-related ventures like the sale of censorship software that could prove to be lucrative sources of income.

Wednesday’s announcement indicated that the new office would work with other government units that regulate parts of the Internet, which could dilute internal opposition. But the sweeping nature of the announcement left some experts unconvinced.

“My guess is that it’s going to be quite a fight for these existing regulators to give up power, because it’s such a big and lucrative endeavor,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based independent analyst of the Internet industry, said an interview. “It’s not clear from this announcement, either in English or Chinese, whether the new agency is going to oversee them or coordinate with them.”

 

David J. Sencer, 86, Dies; Led Disease-Control Agency

 

His death, at Emory University Hospital, was caused by complications of heart disease, his daughter Susan said.

Dr. Sencer was the longest-serving director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency based in Atlanta, holding the post from 1966 to 1977.

Known as a personable, hands-on executive, he oversaw a substantial expansion of the agency as it dealt for the first time with malaria, nutrition, anti-smoking efforts, health education and occupational safety. Its greatest success under him was a program that eradicated smallpox, beginning in central Africa and eventually extending worldwide.

“I never asked him for anything that he didn’t deliver,” said William H. Foege, who led the smallpox eradication project at the C.D.C., as the agency is known, and who succeeded Dr. Sencer as director. “He said you couldn’t protect U.S. citizens from smallpox without getting rid of it in the world, and that was a new approach. People in the field got all the praise, but he was the unsung hero. He just kept providing what we needed.”

Dr. Sencer’s C.D.C. tenure was tainted in 1976 when a swine flu virus attacked more than 200 soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., causing severe respiratory disease in 13 of them and one death. Fearing a reprise of the flu pandemic of 1918-19, and urged on by President Gerald R. Ford, Dr. Sencer made the decision — critics deemed it rash and wasteful — that all Americans ought to be immunized.

The United States Public Health Service subsequently ordered the production of up to 200 million doses of vaccine, but the epidemic never materialized. Instead, a rare, potentially fatal nervous system disorder that causes paralysis, known as Guillain-Barré syndrome, appeared in rising percentages of the 45 million people who had been vaccinated, causing more than two dozen deaths. Dr. Sencer was vilified by some but defended by at least as many.

“Dave Sencer made a hard choice, and he did it for the right reason — to protect the American public,” said James W. Curran, dean of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, who worked at the C.D.C. with Dr. Sencer. “We didn’t always agree. I’m not saying we’d have been better off with a swine flu epidemic. He was trying to protect Americans had there been one, and absent one, there was bound to be criticism.”

The same year, 29 people who attended an American Legion convention in Philadelphia were killed by a mysterious ailment that quickly became known as Legionnaires’ disease. In an atmosphere of mounting public panic, Dr. Sencer, fearing an outbreak of swine flu or another infectious virus, dispatched 20 epidemiologists to the scene, but it took months for the agency scientists to determine the cause, which turned out to be a strain of bacteria found in the hotel air-conditioning system.

In the aftermath of both scares, and after Jimmy Carter succeeded Ford as president, Dr. Sencer was removed from the directorship by Joseph A. Califano Jr., President Carter’s secretary of health, education and welfare, as the Department of Health and Human Services was then known.

Dr. Sencer worked briefly in the private sector, but returned to public service in 1982 as health commissioner of New York City as the AIDs epidemic was taking root in the city. Admired by some for bringing doctors and public health officials together for weekly information exchanges, he was, as the leading health policy representative of Mayor Edward I. Koch’s administration, criticized by others, especially in the gay community, for dragging his feet.

“He and his reign accounted for one of the most disastrous experiences of public health anywhere in the world,” Larry Kramer, the AIDS activist and playwright, said in an interview. (Mr. Kramer’s play about AIDS in New York in the 1980s, “The Normal Heart,” has just opened in a Broadway revival.) “What did he do? He didn’t do anything. He had a mayor who said, ‘I don’t want to know,’ and Sencer fell into line.”

But James Colgrove, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Public Health and the author of the recently published book “Epidemic City: The Politics of Public Health in New York,” gave Dr. Sencer credit for amending the city’s codes so that AIDS cases were treated confidentially, defending the right of children with AIDs to attend public schools, and being an early advocate for a city-sponsored needle-exchange program.

Mr. Sencer was rightfully criticized, Mr. Colgrove said, for not being a better public educator. He failed, for example, to produce and distribute guidelines for sexual risk reduction for gay and bisexual men and did not reassure the public early on that AIDs was not spread by casual contact, Mr. Colgrove said.

“On the other hand, there was a lot of uncertainty at the time about how the virus was transmitted,” Mr. Colgrove added. “And you have to keep in mind he was working in extraordinarily difficult conditions. The health department had been gutted by the city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s and had lost about a quarter of the staff. He helped strengthen the department, especially in areas like epidemiology and bio-statistics. But once AIDS emerged, it overshadowed everything else.”

David Judson Sencer was born on Nov. 10, 1924, in Grand Rapids, Mich., where his father, who died when David was a boy, was in the furniture business. He was raised by his mother, Helen Furness, and earned scholarships to the Cranbrook School, near Detroit, and Wesleyan University. He left Wesleyan before graduating to join the Navy, which sent him to medical school at the University of Mississippi. He completed his medical degree at the University of Michigan, and later earned a master’s in public health at Harvard.

While at Michigan he spent a year and a half in the hospital with tuberculosis, and his first job with the Public Health Service was screening migrant workers in Idaho for the disease. He joined the C.D.C. as assistant director in 1960.

Dr. Sencer lived in Atlanta. In addition to his daughter Susan, a pediatric oncologist in Minneapolis, he is survived by his wife, Jane Blood Sencer, whom he married in 1951; another daughter, Ann, an oncology nurse practitioner, of Atlanta; a son, Stephen, general counsel for Emory University, and six grandchildren.

While at the C.D.C., Dr. Sencer was instrumental in starting Emory’s program in public health in 1974; by the 1990s it had evolved into the Rollins School.

“Dave Sencer was a public health giant,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the current director of the C.D.C. “And until the end he continued to be a thoughtful and vibrant member of the public health community. At the height of the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, he was here full time, and I said, ‘Can I pay you?’ He said, ‘No, this is a labor of love.’?”

 

David J. Sencer, 86, Dies; Led Disease-Control Agency

 

His death, at Emory University Hospital, was caused by complications of heart disease, his daughter Susan said.

Dr. Sencer was the longest-serving director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency based in Atlanta, holding the post from 1966 to 1977.

Known as a personable, hands-on executive, he oversaw a substantial expansion of the agency as it dealt for the first time with malaria, nutrition, anti-smoking efforts, health education and occupational safety. Its greatest success under him was a program that eradicated smallpox, beginning in central Africa and eventually extending worldwide.

“I never asked him for anything that he didn’t deliver,” said William H. Foege, who led the smallpox eradication project at the C.D.C., as the agency is known, and who succeeded Dr. Sencer as director. “He said you couldn’t protect U.S. citizens from smallpox without getting rid of it in the world, and that was a new approach. People in the field got all the praise, but he was the unsung hero. He just kept providing what we needed.”

Dr. Sencer’s C.D.C. tenure was tainted in 1976 when a swine flu virus attacked more than 200 soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., causing severe respiratory disease in 13 of them and one death. Fearing a reprise of the flu pandemic of 1918-19, and urged on by President Gerald R. Ford, Dr. Sencer made the decision — critics deemed it rash and wasteful — that all Americans ought to be immunized.

The United States Public Health Service subsequently ordered the production of up to 200 million doses of vaccine, but the epidemic never materialized. Instead, a rare, potentially fatal nervous system disorder that causes paralysis, known as Guillain-Barré syndrome, appeared in rising percentages of the 45 million people who had been vaccinated, causing more than two dozen deaths. Dr. Sencer was vilified by some but defended by at least as many.

“Dave Sencer made a hard choice, and he did it for the right reason — to protect the American public,” said James W. Curran, dean of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, who worked at the C.D.C. with Dr. Sencer. “We didn’t always agree. I’m not saying we’d have been better off with a swine flu epidemic. He was trying to protect Americans had there been one, and absent one, there was bound to be criticism.”

The same year, 29 people who attended an American Legion convention in Philadelphia were killed by a mysterious ailment that quickly became known as Legionnaires’ disease. In an atmosphere of mounting public panic, Dr. Sencer, fearing an outbreak of swine flu or another infectious virus, dispatched 20 epidemiologists to the scene, but it took months for the agency scientists to determine the cause, which turned out to be a strain of bacteria found in the hotel air-conditioning system.

In the aftermath of both scares, and after Jimmy Carter succeeded Ford as president, Dr. Sencer was removed from the directorship by Joseph A. Califano Jr., President Carter’s secretary of health, education and welfare, as the Department of Health and Human Services was then known.

Dr. Sencer worked briefly in the private sector, but returned to public service in 1982 as health commissioner of New York City as the AIDS epidemic was taking root in the city. Admired by some for bringing doctors and public health officials together for weekly information exchanges, he was, as the leading health policy representative of Mayor Edward I. Koch’s administration, criticized by others, especially in the gay community, for dragging his feet.

“He and his reign accounted for one of the most disastrous experiences of public health anywhere in the world,” Larry Kramer, the AIDS activist and playwright, said in an interview. (Mr. Kramer’s play about AIDS in New York in the 1980s, “The Normal Heart,” has just opened in a Broadway revival.) “What did he do? He didn’t do anything. He had a mayor who said, ‘I don’t want to know,’ and Sencer fell into line.”

But James Colgrove, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Public Health and the author of the recently published book “Epidemic City: The Politics of Public Health in New York,” gave Dr. Sencer credit for amending the city’s codes so that AIDS cases were treated confidentially, defending the right of children with AIDS to attend public schools, and being an early advocate for a city-sponsored needle-exchange program.

Mr. Sencer was rightfully criticized, Mr. Colgrove said, for not being a better public educator. He failed, for example, to produce and distribute guidelines for sexual risk reduction for gay and bisexual men and did not reassure the public early on that AIDS was not spread by casual contact, Mr. Colgrove said.

“On the other hand, there was a lot of uncertainty at the time about how the virus was transmitted,” Mr. Colgrove added. “And you have to keep in mind he was working in extraordinarily difficult conditions. The health department had been gutted by the city’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s and had lost about a quarter of the staff. He helped strengthen the department, especially in areas like epidemiology and bio-statistics. But once AIDS emerged, it overshadowed everything else.”

David Judson Sencer was born on Nov. 10, 1924, in Grand Rapids, Mich., where his father, who died when David was a boy, was in the furniture business. He was raised by his mother, Helen Furness, and earned scholarships to the Cranbrook School, near Detroit, and Wesleyan University. He left Wesleyan before graduating to join the Navy, which sent him to medical school at the University of Mississippi. He completed his medical degree at the University of Michigan, and later earned a master’s in public health at Harvard.

While at Michigan he spent a year and a half in the hospital with tuberculosis, and his first job with the Public Health Service was screening migrant workers in Idaho for the disease. He joined the C.D.C. as assistant director in 1960.

Dr. Sencer lived in Atlanta. In addition to his daughter Susan, a pediatric oncologist in Minneapolis, he is survived by his wife, Jane Blood Sencer, whom he married in 1951; another daughter, Ann, an oncology nurse practitioner, of Atlanta; a son, Stephen, general counsel for Emory University, and six grandchildren.

While at the C.D.C., Dr. Sencer was instrumental in starting Emory’s program in public health in 1974; by the 1990s it had evolved into the Rollins School.

“Dave Sencer was a public health giant,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the current director of the C.D.C. “And until the end he continued to be a thoughtful and vibrant member of the public health community. At the height of the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, he was here full time, and I said, ‘Can I pay you?’ He said, ‘No, this is a labor of love.’?”

 

Democrats Sue to Force U.S. Election Agency to Reveal Political Donations

 

The lawsuit seeks to close “a major loophole” that allows private companies and nonprofit groups to operate “under a veil of anonymity” in raising money for political work, said Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who brought the lawsuit along with lawyers for several liberal groups.

In another push for greater disclosure, President Obama is considering issuing an executive order that would require contractors with federal business to report their political donations. “His goal is transparency and accountability,” said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney.

A surge in corporate spending on political causes — the result of a Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case in January 2010 — became a major issue in the Congressional races that year and promises to be important in the 2012 presidential race.

Some Democrats attributed their loss of the House majority in November to the flood of largely anonymous spending by conservative groups. They have been unsuccessful in rolling back aspects of the Citizens United decision in the courts or in Congress, where Senate Republicans last year blocked a measure known as the Disclose Act, which Mr. Van Hollen sponsored.

As a result, Democrats are turning to other regulatory and executive branch measures — tactics that conservatives said Thursday smacked of political desperation as the presidential election nears.

“This is a sign of weakness by a group that’s afraid they’re going to lose, and lose big,” said Bradley A. Smith, a conservative lawyer and former Federal Election commissioner who leads the Center for Competitive Politics, a conservative advocacy group.

“Again and again, you see evidence that their real purpose is to try to shut down their political opposition,” Mr. Smith said. He and other conservatives argue that disclosure requirements pushed by Democrats amount to a chilling of free speech.

Mr. Van Hollen said in an interview that the lawsuit reflected an effort to use “all available options” to reduce the influence of anonymous corporate money.

In his lawsuit, Mr. Van Hollen noted that a number of the most prominent conservative nonprofit groups spent a total of more than $65 million on political activities in the 2010 races without disclosing any of the donors who financed their activities.

He singled out, among others, Crossroads GPS, a conservative group tied to Karl Rove, who was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush; Americans for Prosperity, financed by the billionaire brothers who lead Koch Industries; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has increased its political spending significantly in the face of threatened regulatory restrictions on American businesses.

The chamber charged Thursday that the lawsuit, along with Mr. Obama’s consideration of disclosure rules for contractors, were part of a “witch hunt” by Democrats meant to punish their “political foes.”

Specifically, the lawsuit seeks to reverse a 2007 Federal Election Commission regulation requiring companies and groups to name only those donors who gave at least $1,000 specifically for the purpose of financing political activity. Mr. Van Hollen said the agency overstepped its authority in enacting the regulation because it “gutted” disclosure requirements that Congress had put in place in 2002.

The commission declined to comment on the lawsuit.

 

Democrats Sue to Force U.S. Election Agency to Reveal Political Donations

 

The lawsuit seeks to close “a major loophole” that allows private companies and nonprofit groups to operate “under a veil of anonymity” in raising money for political work, said Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who brought the lawsuit along with lawyers for several liberal groups.

In another push for greater disclosure, President Obama is considering issuing an executive order that would require contractors with federal business to report their political donations. “His goal is transparency and accountability,” said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney.

A surge in corporate spending on political causes — the result of a Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case in January 2010 — became a major issue in the Congressional races that year and promises to be important in the 2012 presidential race.

Some Democrats attributed their loss of the House majority in November to the flood of largely anonymous spending by conservative groups. They have been unsuccessful in rolling back aspects of the Citizens United decision in the courts or in Congress, where Senate Republicans last year blocked a measure known as the Disclose Act, which Mr. Van Hollen sponsored.

As a result, Democrats are turning to other regulatory and executive branch measures — tactics that conservatives said Thursday smacked of political desperation as the presidential election nears.

“This is a sign of weakness by a group that’s afraid they’re going to lose, and lose big,” said Bradley A. Smith, a conservative lawyer and former Federal Election commissioner who leads the Center for Competitive Politics, a conservative advocacy group.

“Again and again, you see evidence that their real purpose is to try to shut down their political opposition,” Mr. Smith said. He and other conservatives argue that disclosure requirements pushed by Democrats amount to a chilling of free speech.

Mr. Van Hollen said in an interview that the lawsuit reflected an effort to use “all available options” to reduce the influence of anonymous corporate money.

In his lawsuit, Mr. Van Hollen noted that a number of the most prominent conservative nonprofit groups spent a total of more than $65 million on political activities in the 2010 races without disclosing any of the donors who financed their activities.

He singled out, among others, Crossroads GPS, a conservative group tied to Karl Rove, who was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush; Americans for Prosperity, financed by the billionaire brothers who lead Koch Industries; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has increased its political spending significantly in the face of threatened regulatory restrictions on American businesses.

The chamber charged Thursday that the lawsuit, along with Mr. Obama’s consideration of disclosure rules for contractors, were part of a “witch hunt” by Democrats meant to punish their “political foes.”

Specifically, the lawsuit seeks to reverse a 2007 Federal Election Commission regulation requiring companies and groups to name only those donors who gave at least $1,000 specifically for the purpose of financing political activity. Mr. Van Hollen said the agency overstepped its authority in enacting the regulation because it “gutted” disclosure requirements that Congress had put in place in 2002.

The commission declined to comment on the lawsuit.