Typically, the US delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) takes its marching orders from the NGOs and assists them in pressing their unscientific, but lucrative, anti-whaling agenda. The delegation's activities cause little stir in Washington because, though the NGOs are all enemies of the Bush Administration, no-one frankly cares much about whaling policy so the children are left alone to play in their irrelevant little sandbox.

However, as children will occasionally do, they stray and are punished for it. In 2002, the US delegation let its pro-NGO enthusiasm get out of hand and it lost the Inupiat bowhead quota. Mr. Schmitten and his colleagues returned to DC to face the wrath of the Alaska Congressional delegation and they still smart from the harsh lesson that, in US politics, the power to intimidate and punish often lies more with the executive than the legislative branch of government. They will not want to repeat the experience.

All of which places the US delegation in a ticklish position in Sorrento because, after years of delaying, Washington has finally been obliged to supply DNA data - albeit incomplete data - about the bowhead population to the IWC Scientific Committee. Expert analysis of this data now reveals that there is not a single, bowhead population but at least two, and possibly more, populations. If the Scientific Committee gives credence to this analysis, there is only one credible outcome - the bowhead quota will have to be recalculated downwards.

None of us should expect to see the US delegation "take the high road" on this question. The Alaska delegation has ordered them to come home with the bowhead quota intact or not come home at all. We must expect that, once again, science will be subverted by politics only with one delicious difference - until now science has been perverted to suggest that plentiful, unendangered cetacean species are, in fact, marginal and threatened. Now the shoe is on the other foot and science will be perverted in order to suggest that a truly endangered species is plentiful and hide the fact that the US, one of the chief bloviators in the anti-whaling debate, intends to continue killing a cetacean that it knows to be truly endangered.

As if further irony were needed, the US will, doubtless, seek the assistance of its friends, the NGOs to fend off scientific concerns regarding the bowhead harvest and, equally doubtless, they will respond. And thus, we will all have come full circle - IFAW, Greenpeace et al, in order to "save" whales that are not endangered, will have to conspire in the killing of whales that are truly endangered. Granted, the IWC has become a massively dysfunctional organization but doesn't someone here at least have a trace of a sense of humor?