—– Original Message —–
From: Helen Faria
To: Undisclosed recipients
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 6:57 PM
Subject: Organized medicine’s campaign for gun control

Dear Jack,

Thank you for sending me a copy of the letter you wrote to Dr. Ray. You are right. I think this politically correct campaign from the AMA to score public relations points is going to backfire on organized medicine. My articles on public health and gun control that were originally published in the Medical Sentinel have been reprinted, in part or in full, in a number of publications, including Ideas on Liberty, The New American, Human Events, and most recently on NewsMax.com, which is the second largest independent internet newspaper in the world. Stories about my articles in NewsMax.com have been written up in CNSNews.com, WorldNetDaily.com (number one internet newspaper), The Washington Times, and discussed in FoxNews.com. I was called by 60 Minutes, but I deferred to Timothy Wheeler, MD, one of my authors in the Medical Sentinel. The links to my latest articles on this issue are: “The AMA, Ethics and Gun Control” at http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/5/3/23021.shtml; “Doctors to Spy on Patients’ Gun Ownership” at
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/25/152621.shtml; and “Public Health and Gun Control—A Review (Part II): Gun Violence and Constitutional Issues at http://www.haciendapub.com/v6n1.html.

I also have an exchange, a “Point/Counterpoint,” on this issue coming in The Western Journal of Medicine. So, if physicians, from the AMA down to the state medical societies, get involved in this campaign, they are going to get creamed. The NRA with over four million members is one of the most influential organizations in Washington, while the AMA has become daily less and less relevant.

With warm regards,
Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.
Editor-in-Chief, Medical Sentinel of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)
Contributor, NewsMax.com

P.S. Incidentally, although advance copies of my book, Cuba in Revolution—Escape From a Lost Paradise, will not be available until October 2001 (actual publication date January 31, 2002), I’m already getting orders through our website at http://www.haciendapub.com.

*****************

July 22, 2001

Walker Ray, MD
President MAG

Dear Walker,

I have said it before and I want say it again with emphasis: Physicians have no business getting involved in the political realm of arguing one way or the other about the recent moves toward abolishing gun ownership. Gun ownership is not our medical responsibility and even if we were considered responsible, I do not believe that physicians in general have enough expertise in weapon ownership or use. Therefore on both counts they should stay out of that arena.

Even if dabbling into “guns” were OK for physicians, we must be aware that doing such politically endangers the medical profession unnecessarily. We really should strategically keep our mouths shut on an issue that is based more upon political choice and individual perceptions than it is of rational evaluation of statistics. To dabble there will weaken our effectiveness in other areas where we really can have some important effect with regard to the nation?s health.

Here below I am summarizing an excerpt from an August 2001 issue of a magazine, that my seventy something mother-in-law subscribes to, entitled The Official Journal of the National Rifle Association?. along with a great many other citizens across the country, who form a sufficiently large voter interest to have swayed the last national election under the leadership of NRA president Charleton Heston.

In that issue was a vicious attack upon our AMA president, Dr. Richard Corlin, and the point is well made, not so much that Corlin is wrong, but that the NRA is going to defend itself against the AMA or whoever else it must and in the process the NRA will do whatever it takes to do so. Some real statistically based plausible points were made in that journal article with regard to the number of accidental deaths by firearms as opposed to the accidental deaths at the hands of physicians, “death by doctor”: 120,000 deaths of patients per year from physicians versus only 1,000 per year from the 60 million firearms (including self-inflicted deaths). Moreover the NRA points out that because of the possession of firearms as self-defense weapons some 2.5 million lives are saved a year by citizens who are simply exercising their Second Amendment rights of gun ownership.

Regardless of the pile upon pile of argument some intellectual physicians can generate against the NRA in disputing certain statistics and in creating much verbiage exposing holes in their “proofs”, there is no amount of reason that will overcome the emotions behind the perceived right of the people to possess firearms for self-protection. They are already paranoid enough about government, crime, and HMO?s, and there is no reason why they will not come forward vociferously and even begin to put blame on physicians themselves for things going awry. They will start with HMO?s and blame physicians for caving in on that issue by not standing up “FOR THEIR RIGHTS” in the first place. There is no reason why citizens won?t turn on physicians as defense-averse (or incompetent) wimps for not standing up against the government, or whoever else, was “laying a trap and sucking them into their clutches” in the beginning and even more for physicians now siding with evil and endangering the public by impeding the citizens ability to just stand up for themselves.

I just do not see where we as physicians, most of whom probably have never even fired a weapon, can so dogmatically mouth off so “authoritatively” in this highly charged mainstream American issue. Certain physicians (a vocal minority) seem to think they are going to solve this issue for America and they are intensely prone to interject themselves into this huge whale of a political argument. The medical profession has a history of going good, but so does the United States of America, and that good originally started out by citizens brandishing weapons in self-defense. Please let us just stick with medicine and let the citizens battle it out about the gun issue. As physicians have learned (or should have) so many times before, THEY WILL BECOME the problem if they don?t watch out.

If some physician feels that he has a valuable argument, then I believe he needs to leave the doctor part of his name out of it. He must go out there and voice himself as John Q. citizen. There is nothing about his credentials (as a crutch) that is pertinent to this political issue and nothing that should give him any more weight than the next guy. A vote is a vote. A bullet is a bullet. A doctor should just be a doctor, do what works and do what matters and tend to his own backyard and clean up the 120,000 accidental patient deaths that occur each year, if that is true. If that isn?t a true statistic then someone of us should go and refute those numbers. Maybe it was only 55,000 per year, the total number lost in the Viet Nam War.

Physicians are not good politicians, not good businessmen, and not good warriors. We are immodestly extending ourselves way beyond our abilities to contribute valuably in this gun issue. Someone needs to get those amongst us to pipe down if they are falsely claiming to represent the medical profession in general) or they will hurt us all and our profession, which is ailing as it is.

Thomas Jackson Tidwell, MD, FACRO
The Tidwell Radiation Oncology Center