-Caveat Lector- http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/5/3/23021.shtml The AMA, Ethics and Gun Control Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. Thursday, May 3, 2001 Part I: Full AMA Coffers to Push for Gun Control The AMA is joining the gun prohibitionist movement in full force. Led by the long-time speaker of the AMA's House of Delegates, now president-elect of the AMA, organized medicine has joined the gun control movement full steam ahead. This new leader, Richard F. Corlin, M.D., will call for the AMA to increase funding to "study data on firearms injuries" at its June 20 annual meeting. (1) The fact is that the public health establishment, incarnated in the CDC, other government agencies and the myriad of schools of public health, has been sponsoring and conducting "gun research" for nearly two decades that has been found to be biased, result-oriented, and based on what has been characterized by a number of serious investigators as junk science. (2) The AMA, using its publication empire, has been publishing this "research" in its journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Essentially only those researchers who embraced the politically correct, preordained conclusions that "easy gun availability results in crime" and that "guns and bullets are pathogens that must be eradicated" were published. Contrary views have been censored. The monolithic wall of censorship was only breached by the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia (JMAG) while I was editor from 1993-1995. I recounted the story of my travails in a chapter entitled "Censorship and Editorial Lynching in the Deep South" in my book, "Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine" (1997, www.haciendapub.com). The wall cracked further with the advent of the Medical Sentinel, which is the official, peer-reviewed journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS; www.aapsonline.org). So I know this subject well from personal experience and 10 years of research into this subject. (3) In the spring of 1996, Drs. Timothy Wheeler (Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership), William Waters IV (Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research), myself (as editor of the then newly founded Medical Sentinel), and the legal scholar Don B. Kates testified before a congressional subcommittee about this biased, result-oriented research conducted by the CDC and its politicized branch, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), and as a result the latter entity was ordered by Congress not to conduct tainted gun control research at taxpayers' expense. (4) The story about how that episode came about was published in the Medical Sentinel in my four-part article (Spring and Summer 1997) entitled "The Perversion of Science and Medicine" (http://www.haciendapub.com). (5) I can testify that the AMA has been moving steadily to the left in a variety of issues, from the perversion of medical ethics to gun control. (6) Yet it has not always been that way. In "Medical Warrior" I also described how, over the years, the AMA tried to please everyone but has ended up pleasing no one! The AMA has tried to be all things to all people, pragmatic at all costs, whether in discussion of socioeconomic policies or medical ethics. (7) I have been told, by at least one AMA defender, "It's just politics." That may be, but when dealing with ethics and constitutional issues, principles should not be compromised by playing politics. There is simply too much at stake! But now the AMA is moving definitely to the left. No wonder President George W. Bush refused to deliver the traditional first health care address to the AMA. Nevertheless, while AMA membership remains low, its coffers remain full. The AMA has plenty of money to fund gun control efforts and ingratiate itself with the establishment's media and the liberal left camp, which lately it has joined. Indeed, the AMA's finances are said to be in the best shape that they have been in over 15 years, despite dwindling membership and questionable relevance to health care policy and medical affairs. In the March/April 1998 issue of the Medical Sentinel, we reported that in 1996, three AMA officers were paid more than $200,000 for their time "playing politics" within organized medicine. AMA reimbursement figures then, according to Physicians Weekly, were: AMA Officers Position held in 1996 Reimbursement Figure Dr. Nancy Dickey Chairman $ 258,790 Dr. Lonnie Bristow Immediate Past Pres. $ 229,540 Dr. Daniel Johnson Jr. President $ 221,970 Dr. Percy Wootton President-elect $ 168,720 Dr. Thomas Reardon Vice-Chairman $ 147,929 Dr. Robert McAfee* Immediate Past President $ 135,440 Dr. Yank Coble Jr. Trustee $ 105,915 Dr. Randolph Smoak Jr. Secretary-Treasurer $ 99,087 Dr. Regina Benjamin Trustee $ 91,716 Dr. Timothy Flaherty Trustee $ 90,792 Dr. John Nelson Trustee $ 90,405 Dr. Donald Lewers Trustee &nbs <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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