What was said on Facebook?
My training as a diagnostic radiologist included the critical component of studying medical images published both in textbooks and online. I have myself authored and published educational material that teaches medical imaging to medical students and doctors. Of the thousands of medical images I have published I have taken care to maintain patient privacy. Several years ago I made some comments about these images that were insensitive to the seriousness of what the images revealed. Soon thereafter, I removed those images and comments, again several years ago. For them to be published in a much more public context now, by a political adversary who would rather declare war on doctors than answer serious questions that Kansans have, is truly sad. However, my mistakes are my own and I take full responsibility for them. I have said throughout this campaign and long before it began that I bear the scars of taking the Oath to my patients. When I was 15 years old, I stood at my father's bedside, himself a rural doctor, and watched him take his last breath. It was at that moment that I knew I would take his torch and dedicate my life to serving patients in need. I'm reminded just how extraordinarily difficult the burden is when I have failed to live up to his example. It is an incredible honor and an enormous burden to work shoulder-to-shoulder with dedicated people who every day run towards the screaming instead of away. The cumulative effect of day after day, year after year, witnessing so much human suffering, so much tragedy, takes its toll. I've seen the burdens of practicing medicine tear apart families and drive good people to vice and as great as the honor is to serve, I would still not wish the burdens of it upon anyone. To those I have offended, I am truly sorry and I ask for your forgiveness. And now, years later, because I have declared that I am willing to stand up for my country, Senator Pat Roberts wants to attack me as a doctor rather than giving Kansans a reason to vote for him. It's sad. Pat Roberts has not been able to identify a single issue on which he thinks I am wrong and so he's doing things the Washington way: character assassination. Kansans should know that I will not be intimidated by their bullying. I did not back down when Barack Obama's IRS audited me and I will not back down from the desperate attacks of a 47-year Washington insider either.I am sure a lot of us have done dumb things. That doesn't make us bad people.