HEALTH WATCH : Blind Eye to Gun Injuries

Those of a suspicious nature might wonder about the timing of a letter from 10 U.S. senators that was made public last week in the national debate about firearms. The action followed last month’s National Rifle Assn. contention that the National Center for Injury Prevention (NCIP), part of the federal Centers for Disease Control, had no business doing research into how to prevent injuries caused by guns. Such injuries are criminal, not scientific, matters, the NRA said in claiming that the center had an “overtly anti-firearms bias.” The NRA is backing an amendment, now in the Senate, killing all NCIP funds, including those to study injuries from traffic and water accidents, falls, fires and other causes.

Now the 10 senators, including Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), have backed that proposed cut--in the process putting the lie to any avowals that they are beyond the reach of special interests.

“We are absolutely committed to getting the politics out of the NCIP’s work,” they said in the letter. The center’s research into accidental murders, suicides and injuries caused by guns, they aver without substantiation, is evidence of its “enthusiasm to promote a political agenda against gun ownership.” The pleased-as-Punch NRA quickly put the letter onto the far-reaching Internet.

Nearly 150,000 fatal injuries occur each year in the United States, 38,000 of them involving guns. Federal law already exempts firearms from consumer safety regulation; now the NRA and some in Congress want to end research into gun injury prevention. See no evil. . . .