Gun Owners
December 31, 2000
Page 7

Doctors Against Guns
by Larry Pratt

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has embarked on a
strident campaign against gun ownership.

In an article appearing last year in the Medical Sentinel
published by the American Association of Physicians and
Surgeons, Dr. Timothy Wheeler explained what the AAP is
fostering among its members. (Medical Sentinel?s web site is
www.haciendapub.com. The editor, Miguel Faria, has run
several pro-gun articles over the years.)

The AAP is urging each of its member pediatricians to pry
into the private lives of their patients and ask if they
have guns in the home.

The pediatrician is urged to push on their patients the
?gun safety instruction? patient materials the AAP adopted
from Handgun Control, Inc. Since 76 percent of the
pediatricians responding to an AAP survey support a ban on
handguns, many parents are likely to encounter one of these
physicians with their disarming manners.

Dr. Wheeler explains that this prying behavior is a
boundary violation the same as doctor-patient sex. In other
words, it is a violation of physician ethics.

That means that there is something you can do about such a
doctor (besides walking out immediately). An aggrieved
patient can go to the Yellow Pages and find the phone number
of the state Medical Society and file a complaint.

The doctor may be exonerated, but it may also reduce his
ardor to confuse medicine with propaganda. And if several
patients file complaints, the number alone could endanger
his license to practice.

Keep in mind that the AAP is involved in a shameless
exercise of blame shifting. Physicians kill, according to
the Harvard Medical School, 98,000 patients a year through
malpractice. We are nine times as likely to be killed by our
doctor than someone murdering us with a gun. Spread the word
to parents-who have children under the care of pediatricians

Report Shows Doctors More Deadly than Guns

Causes Deaths
1. Heart disease 733,361
2. Cancer 539,533
3. Stroke 159,942
4. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 106,027
5. Medical mistakes 98,000
6. Accidents 94,948
7. Pneumonia & the flu 83,727
8. Diabetes 61,767
9. Motor-vehicle 43,649
10. Firearms 33,750

Figures for medical mistakes are taken from the Institute of
Medicine which is a division of the National Academy Of
Sciences. Estimates from the Institute of Medicine range
from 44,000 to 98,000 deaths per year (See “Medical Errors
Blamed for Many Deaths; as many as 98,000 a year in U.S.
linked to mistakes,” The Washington Post 11/30/99.) Other
figures in the table are from the National Safety Council
1999).