Gun-Control Doctors - Part Deux

Two days ago --- TWO DAYS! --- I posted an article about "Gun-Control Doctors" with what I though were appropriate warnings, which most of you ignored.

I could hear you out there, sitting in front of your computers in your wife-beater t-shirts and swilling down beer with one hand and chomping on Pork Rinds with another, muttering "It cain't happen HERE, you right-wing nutjob!"

Don't hate me because I'm prescient, but today an article about JUST THIS SORT OF THING happened to show up in [gasp!] The Main Stream Media ... The Boston Herald for crissakes.
(H/T Sondra K, "Welcome to Hillarycare")

An Op-Ed by Michael Graham titled: "Doc, what's up with snooping? (Pediatrician paranoia runs deep)" offers anecdotal evidence in support of my claims that some physicians have become so convinced of their own righteousness that they are willing to go to any length, including subterfuge and mendacity, in support of their hidden agenda.

Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad’s “bad” behavior.
...
The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore “legal barriers and deference to parental involvement” and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.

And that information doesn’t stay with the doctor, either.

Debbie is a mom from Uxbridge who was in the examination room when the pediatrician asked her 5-year-old, “Does Daddy own a gun?” When the little girl said yes, the doctor began grilling her and her mom about the number and type of guns, how they are stored, etc.

If the incident had ended there, it would have merely been annoying. But when a friend in law enforcement let Debbie know that her doctor had filed a report with the police about her family’s (entirely legal) gun ownership, she got mad. She also got a new doctor.

In fact, the problem of anti-gun advocacy in the examining room has become so widespread that some states are considering legislation to stop it.

As titillating as this article is, I'm still not prepared to accept The Boston Herald as a sole source for evidence of a Jekyll/Hyde symposium in the AMA. Instead, I'm going to talk to some doctors who find this kind of physician misconduct unethical, reprehensible, illegal and unhelpful to their patients. In a word, doctors who agree with me.

The Clairmont Institute's "Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership" project (DRGO) has been headed by a California surgeon since 1984, and they have made themselves the answer to the question "Who shall Guard the Guardians?" Here's what they have to say about your doctor advising you not to have guns in your home:

Some medical organizations have urged doctors to tell their patients about the dangers of guns. We all know that misusing guns can be dangerous, but the risks of guns have been blown way out of proportion by groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Even worse is the tendency of some medical organizations to inject their political views favoring gun control into patient education. That's simply unethical.

Here are the applicable passages from the Official Policy of the AMA in regards to the Fundamental Elements of the Physician-Patient relationship:

(3) The patient has the right to courtesy, respect, dignity, responsiveness, and timely attention to his or her needs.
(4) The patient has the right to confidentiality. The physician should not reveal confidential communications or information without the consent of the patient, unless provided for by law or by the need to protect the welfare of the individual or the public interest.

(Note: if this link doesn't work directly, go to the AMA Advocacy page, click on Policy Finder, then accept the terms & conditions. On the resulting search page, click "code of medical ethics (A-07), and then click on E-10.00 Opinions on the Patient-Physician Relationship
Finally, click on E-10.01 Fundamental Elements of the Patient-Physician Relationship)

You can see from the AMA's own published policy that a family physician who indulges in a 'fishing expedition' into a family life style, unless seeking information which may explain a perceived medical condition, fails in regards to respecting the patient. Most egregiously, a lapse of confidentiality is entirely unethical and may in fact be actionable in this litigious society.

So what about the AAP, mentioned in the Clairmont quote?

I wrote about them last year. But I didn't really do a lot of detailed research. This year, I went to their home page, and clicked through ADVOCACY until I found a link to their Community Pediatrics Policy Statement. At the bottom of the policy summary I found a click to "Clinical Pediatrics", which I followed until I found a search engine, where I entered the search argument 'guns'.

There were 29 articles found, and without a subscription it's impossible to read the archived articles. However, the context of some of the article key-word/phrases suggested that it is common practice for pediatricians to question the children about 'non-clinical' situations in their home. Note that these questions are not necessarily asked in the presence of the parents, nor have the parents necessarily been given the opportunity to give their informed consent for this kind of questioning:

...Parental Attitudes Toward RB and Pellet Guns Dorothy T. Damore MD Pediatric Emergency...perceptions of the dangers of BB and pellet guns. A convenience sample of three groups...children had been injured by BB or pellet guns; the gun group, which consisted of...

... and ..

...they never used. Now, the bullies have guns. So do the psychopaths, the schizophren...campaign slogan in 1996, "It's the guns, stupid!" The U.S. has the highest...suicides and accidental injuries from guns. The presence of Clin Pediatr. 1999...

... and ...

..temperature (<120?>guns. These areas were chosen because of...detector on each floor?" ? "Are there guns in your home?" If yes, "Do you use...tap water temperature, storage of guns, and use of automobile child restraints...

... and ...

...Diego (continued) Injury prevention Gun safety Educational materials and discussion around gun trigger locks, lock boxes for guns, and overall prevention and gun safety Resident obtained AAP CATCH grant to expand work. School success Project looking at...

Sentence fragments taken out of context are not proof of intrusive questioning or gun-control advocacy, true. But some of the examples shown here make it difficult not to jump to conclusions.

One article is seemingly devoted entirely to questions about guns in the home and parental attitudes toward them. The next equates firearm ownership with 'psychopaths and schizophrenics', openly citing political campaign slogans (as if that has anything to do with child health care) and dubious statistics.

The third article appears to outline a flow-chart for grilling children about guns in the home: '" Are there guns in your home?' If yes ... ".

The fourth article focuses questions about 'gun safety' around ways to render home firearms inoperable or inaccessible in case of a home-intrusion emergency.

Nothing in the available summaries suggests the possibility that a home can be safe to children if a firearms is present. I suspect that many who read this article grew up in a home where firearms were an unremarkable fact of life, with no accidental child death to mar a bucolic childhood.

We know that we have politicians who are physicians; witness Howard Dean.

Unfortunately, there are far too many physicians in this country who fancy themselves politicians and in the process abuse their position of trust to advance their own private agenda. Worse, their professional associations not only fail to curb these excesses but encourage, aid and support them.

If that's right, when your children catch a cold, you should ask the owner of your local gun shop for medical advice. Which is not entirely facetious, because he is probably as likely to cure the cold as is the pediatrician.