Anyone who doubted that the medical profession has become little more than a tool of left-wing politics should look at the ongoing American Medical Association yearly conference.
This week, the AMA, the nation’s largest professional organization for doctors, approved several new advocacy positions that differ little from Democratic Party talking points.
Here is a sample from the medical-news website MedPage Today, which reported from the AMA conference this week:
- Dr. Jack Resneck, a dermatologist from San Rafael, California, became the AMA’s new president. In his inaugural speech, he shared that he took the job with some trepidation. He noted that doctors who 0entered medicine likely didn’t expect to see “government criminalizing routine and vital healthcare … enshrining discrimination against our LGBTQ+ patients … or attacking a woman’s right to control healthcare decisions that should only be between her and her doctor. No, this is not exactly the race we trained for. But this is the race we are in.”
He also recalled that he grew up in Louisiana and that in 1987, at 16, he wrote a letter to his local paper calling for the city to tear down its Confederate monument.
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He also said that he “won’t give up on our AMA efforts to stop the public health crisis of gun violence, demanding waiting periods, universal background checks, red flag laws, and bans on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
- Accordingly, the AMA’s House of Delegates passed a resolution “calling on all candidates for public office to refuse contributions from any organization that opposes public health measures to reduce firearm violence.”
Ryan Englander, who represented a group of medical students among the delegates said, “Now is the time to speak out. Now is the time to make our position plain. America must treat gun violence like the public health crisis it is and take commonsense measures to combat it. Asking political candidates to refuse political donations from groups that oppose these measures is the next logical step. The AMA must add our voice to the chorus calling for change — not in 6 months, not in a year, now.”
Dr. Lonnie Bristow, a former AMA president, called the resolution “excellent.” “We should back up what we say we are with proper action. “This is the American Medical Association, not the American Hunting Association or the American Gun Owners Association. We deal with the consequences of guns,” he said. “Guns kill. The American Medical Association ought to be standing on the side of those things that will protect our patients.”
- The AMA also adopted a resolution that demanded health and life insurance companies to divest holdings in fossil fuel companies.
- And the AMA also endorsed another resolution that declared voting a “social determinant” of health. The CDC defines these as “non-medical factors that influence health outcomes.” They can include things like where you live or work, or your education level. But it can also include factors such as climate change, racism, economic policies and “social norms.”
Jasmin Eatman, another medical student who spoke on behalf of the AMA’s Minority Affairs Section, said, “School children are being murdered by weapons of war. Women are being forced to surrender their very own bodies to the state. In some places, providing water to an individual waiting in line to vote can earn you jail time. Despite these undemocratic efforts, we believe that there’s still power in the ballot.”
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Dr. Dionne Hart, who discussed the issue on behalf of the American Psychiatric Association, suggested it was time for doctors to tell people how to vote. “Physicians are one of the most trusted professions in the country and are well suited to educate our patients on the interface between voting and health access and outcomes,” Hart said.
Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, a delegate for the American College of Physicians, chimed in, saying this move by the AMA was an “urgent matter.”
“Voting is a social determinant. I come from Georgia, and I will tell you to watch what has happened to Georgia to repress the votes of people in the black and brown community — so that they won’t vote for their own welfare, their own health, their own status. [It] is absolutely reprehensible and inexcusable, and there’s no excuse for what’s going on,” he said.
“[Voter] intimidation is rampant. It is ramping up, and we have to stand strongly to say that ‘This is not acceptable,’ and if we can’t say that intimidation doesn’t affect social determinants, then shame on us.”
- Finally, the AMA seemed poised to join the body positivity movement.
The group adopted a proposal to study whether to stop using body mass index, or BMI, as a diagnostic tool for obesity. The CDC says that BMI can “indicate high body fatness.” And fatter bodies are more susceptible to a host of adverse conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, risk of stroke, high blood pressure, even mental illness.
Yet that AMA is evaluating whether to “recognize the significant limitations and potential harms associated with the widespread use of BMI in clinical settings.”
Dr. Luis Seija, who also spoke for the AMA’s Minority Affairs Section in favor of the resolution, argued BMI “was created by a group of white mathematicians, not physicians.”
The index “promotes race-based medicine, which our AMA is actively working to dismantle.”
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