Bill would bar doctors from asking about guns POLL TO FREEP AT LINK

CHESAPEAKE - A pediatrician who asks a child's parent about firearms in their home could lose his or her license or be disciplined under legislation being considered by a Senate committee today.

The bill would prohibit health care professionals from asking a patient about gun possession, ownership or storage unless the patient is being treated for an injury related to guns or asks for safety counseling about them.

Sponsored by Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Martinsville, the bill sailed through the House by a vote of 88 to 11 last week. A message seeking comment was left for the delegate; he did not return the call.

The legislation is opposed by The Virginia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics because it blocks a common practice by medical professionals to inquire about gun ownership and safety when they go over a safety checklist with parents during a child's regular checkups from birth to puberty.

"We saw the bill but presumed no one in their right mind would put it through," said Dr. Leslie Ellwood, chapter president. "We thought it was such an unusual bill that anyone with common sense wouldn't pass it."

Some local medical professionals are incensed by the bill and the rapid way it is moving through the General Assembly.

The bill also is opposed by several medical groups, including The Medic al Society of Virginia and nurse associations.

The National Rifle Association supports the bill because it will protect gun owners "from intrusive, unnecessary questions from medical professionals," according to the NRA Institute for Legislative Action Web site.

"We don't have an opinion or issue an opinion on guns," Ellwood said. "We don't say it is a bad thing to have around children. Our plan is always to find out how the guns are managed in the household so they are safe."

The national pediatric group puts out a guide on safety counseling for pediatricians under its injury prevention program.

The state-endorsed guidelines are used by not just doctors and nurses but by others whose jobs involve children.

Medical professionals are encouraged to use the routine safety survey to counsel parents about everything from car safety seats and child-proofing a house and backyard pool to bicycle helmets and fire safety once the child reaches the appropriate age.

Pediatricians use the checklist to curtail preventable injuries, such as poisoning by household cleaning products, not to be intrusive, say Virginia physicians.

"The bill hits at the heart and core of prevention and protecting our children," said Dr. Nancy Welch, Chesapeake Health Department director. "I am just amazed that it has gone this far and seems to be flying under the radar."

A board-certified pediatrician, Welch e-mailed three committee members from the South Hampton Roads delegation after being notified about the Senate committee meeting today.

Sen. Harry Blevins, R-Chesapeake, has a policy of giving each bill a fair hearing before commenting on it, said his legislative assistant, Karen Papasodora-Cochrane.

"I don't know how it even got out of the House because a person who is practicing the healing arts, if they really have a child's safety in mind, would ask that question and others," she said.

If parents think the question is intrusive, Lucas said they can always tell the health care provider: "It's none of your business."

THE POLL TO DATE:

Should the state disallow pediatricians from asking parents about gun ownership?

First there is no reputable medical study that says second hand smoke is harmful to any one. In fact, the most reputable studies on the subject say it is not.

Start looking here.

http://www.data-yard.net/43/1057.pdf

And then see this Enormous German study on passive smoke, cancer and cardiovascular disease that says: >NO CONNECTION< - April, 2003 -- Dating back one year, this milestone study published by the American Journal of Epidemiology has been so thoroughly ignored by the public health gangs and its media servants - it has escaped even our attention! The enormous study covers 37 years, during which thousands of filght attendans have been followed and monitored for cancer. Furthermore, this is not a study based on questionnaires asking whether uncle Jack smoked more or less in 1956, as it's the case for most antismoking junk science -- nor it is something started and finished in a few months. Finally, it is neither financed by the tobacco industry, the pharmaceutical industry, nor is it supported by "public health" funds allocated to produce scientific frauds to support public health's frauds on smoking. All that explains the results. Here is an excerpt that says it all:

"We found a rather remarkably low SMR [standardized incidence ratio] for lung cancer among female cabin attendants and no increase for male cabin attendants, indicating that smoking and exposure to passive smoking may not play an important role in mortality in this group. Smoking during airplane flights was permitted in Germany until the mid-1990s, and smoking is still not banned on all charter flights. The risk of cardiovascular disease mortality for male and female air crew was surprisingly low (reaching statistical significance among women)."

The word "surprisingly" even betrays the expectation of the researchers that passive smoke hurts - quite indicative of today's superstitions induced by the antismoking frauds: but the results betray politics. In spite of all the USSR-like suppression of positive information by the "public health" gangsters, therefore, more evidence that the nearly universal smoking bans on passenger airlines is unjustified comes from researchers who examined the specific health risks associated with working in commercial aviation. Banning smoking on airlines makes no more sense than banning smoking in a restaurant or office building. None of the studies on secondhand smoke have ever demonstrated the epidemiological existence of a risk.

Here’s the link to the study.

http://www.data-yard.net/39/cabin.pdf

See these also.

http://www.data-yard.net/35/krager.htm

http://www.data-yard.net/14/1666.htm

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/320/7232/417

http://www.data-yard.net/2/15/ala-ats2.htm

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/csd/Presentations/ETS_demo_rep_pop_MONTEREY_2000.pdf

I could give you plenty more, but if you will take the time to read these you will see that you are being duped by the MSM and the tobacco prohibitionists. You need to learn that the MSM should never be taken at face value.

It actually is extremely harmful. If I go into a bar that has 2nd hand smoke, I feel totally sick within a few minutes and feel sick the entire rest of the day and day after. It interferes with my training.

I also suffer monetary damages in that anything I was wearing has to go to the cleaners the day after. I must also shower to get the scent off of me.

It also totally messes up my allergies as my nose is runny and my eyes watery for days after. And I am not alone in this. It also stinks.

The result is I do not call for the gov'ment to get involved, I just don't go to places that allow smoking.

If there actually was real evidence (as if my personal experience is not enough), then would it be ok for the government to tell a restaurant owner he could not allow smoking?

That you think a good response to my question about the smoking ban in relation to the doctor's right to free speech is to explain that there is no evidence of health damage from 2nd hand smoke (even if that were true) suggests you aren't smart enough to engage in a discussion on property rights and liberties. Because based on your reasoning, if there WAS evidence of harm from 2nd hand smoke, then your argument against banning it would disappear.

You have a reading comprehension problem. I started my post to you by saying “First”.

I was refuting your fallacious claim about second hand smoke with the scientific facts. I was not addressing your straw man of equating smoking bans to baring doctors from giving professional advice in areas they are not qualified and trained to give advice in.

A doctor’s license gives him permission to give an opinion in an area where he has training and expertise. By accepting that license, he accepts the states right to make the rules about what advice he may and may not give.

A restaurant or bar’s license is to do business. I don’t agree they should need a license to do business. I do agree there should be laws baring them from passing off dog meat as pork or serving tainted food. I also believe there should be laws about them claiming their hamburger can cure cancer or whatever. That’s fraud.

A doctor, by virtue of his medical license is presumed to be qualified to give the advice he is dispensing. The state has an interest in maintaining the integrity and public trust in that license. Doctors mostly sell advice. True they also sell skilled services like setting a broken bone, but mostly they sell advice based on a presumed expertise.

There is a well documented and well organized movement in the medical community to spread false information about guns and gun safety. I’ll not post the links since you seem uninterested in facts and would rather try to debate theoretical points.

The doctor accepted the license. When he did that he recognized the states right to regulate his professional speech. In this case the state is not trying to regulate his political speech or his religious speech, etc. They are regulating his professional speech.

Personally, I’d rather hold the doctors accountable by reporting them for boundary violations and driving their insurance premiums through the roof. If they want to play games they need to be ready to pay the price.

You obviously didn’t read the risk management advice to physicians in my earlier post. Doctors and their insurance companies can be held liable if a doctor gives advice in an area he is not trained and qualified to give advice in.

Most malpractice carriers now specifically exempt coverage for torts in areas where a doctor has given advice in an area he is not trained and certified in. They also exclude coverage for doctors engaged in an activity the licensing agency bars.

This law is an attempt to counter an attack on the Bill of Rights by Doctors Against Handgun Injury, a gun prohibitionist coalition.

This coalition , which also includes the American Medical Association (AMA) and, not surprisingly, the strident American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and 10 other medical organizations reportedly comprising 600,000 doctors, is calling for a variety of patient privacy-invading measures in the name of gun safety. They are in bed with The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

This law is a little heavy handed for my taste, but it isn’t a free speech issue. The professional speech of a licensed professional may rightly be regulated by the licensing body.

That is a very weak and very flimsy argument. It assumes that a state liscence is necessary, it assumes that the state has total control over how the doctor and his patient choose to practice medicine if a liscence is granted, and the differentiation between a restaruant liscence (because smoking isn't a 'food????') is also very, very weak.

You are not familiar with how restaurant inspections work. The environment of the restaruant is considered - I just read today of a restaraunt being cited because of stained ceiling tiles. 2nd hand smoke is much worse than stained tiles. I could and an unlimited number of others could testify how hazardous 2nd hand smoke is to us. By your reasoning, this would allow the government to terminate someone's property rights.

This law continues to open the door to limit freedoms and personal property rights.

There is no evidence that a doctor causes any actual violation of any right whatsoever by asking the question. You mention malpractice - that is a civil litigation matter and the right place to dispute this - a doctor giving bad advice.

Your attempt to stretch the 2nd amendment right into this is as bad or worse than the stretching of the commerce clause to limit guns within proximity to a school. And like that law, this one is probably also going to be ruled unconstitutional - correctly so.

As I said in the beginning, you are an anarchist who would be happier in Somalia. Doctors aren’t regulated there. Anyone who wants to can call himself a doctor and practice any way he wants.

The scientific evidence means nothing to you and you seem to be intellectually incapable of comprehending the difference between property rights and regulating professional services. Nor does it seem that countering Doctors Against Handgun Injury and The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (or whatever they are calling themselves this week) is important to you.

Regulating professional speech and services has nothing whatever to do with property rights. It is no more a violation of property rights than banning hollering “FIRE” in a crowded theater. I’m sorry that you are not able to comprehend this, but you are free to hold any opinion you want, just as you are free to disbelieve the vast majority of scientific evidence and people are free to believe the world is flat.

Have fun trying to convert our republic form of government to anarchism.

On the other hand, it criminalizes the mere asking of a question, and to that extent reminds me of ominous trends in Left-wing legislation, such as laws prohibiting landlords from asking certain questions of prospective tenants. So this cuts both ways, in my opinion.

There are many thousand times as many people who die from medical mistakes in hospitals than who die from accidental gun shots.

Are we allowed to ask how many have died in the hospital, where he practices, and what is he doing to stop these accidental deaths?

He should stick to his field, and not get sidetracked.

Are we allowed to ask how many have died in the hospital, where he practices, and what is he doing to stop these accidental deaths?

You certainly are!

He should stick to his field, and not get sidetracked.

Right. But it's not any of government's business if he likes to politic while he's sticking a tongue depresser down your throat. You can find another doctor.

This is identical to the courts requiring Wal-Mart to stock kill pills in their pharmacy.

You are right about political speech vs. professional speech. However, the question is asked in conjunction with others about safety hazards and child development. It is part of the American Academy of Pediatrics plan to promote the lie that homes are safer without guns.

The group suggests doctors ask about guns: "To promote public safety, health professionals and health systems should ask about firearm ownership when taking a medical history or engaging in preventive counseling." . . ." Patients should be provided with information about the risks of having a firearm in the home, as well as methods to reduce the risk, should they continue to choose to keep them."

This is a breach of traditional medical ethics, and as such, has insurance companies worried. Most will not cover a doctor for liability from advice they give about gun safety even if he has training and certifications in it. They do cover them for advice about nutrition, medication, exercise, etc.; because these are areas the doctor is trained in and there is not much chance the doctor will make the patient and his family less safe by his advice.

I doubt that it is ethical for a doctor to campaign for a political point in a regular checkup, but doubt that could be banned. However, it is unethical for doctors to involve themselves in gun safety questions if they are not trained and certified in the field. It is a serious boundary violation.

Almost all states will pull a doctor’s license to practice for repeated boundary violations. This law just makes what is already unethical, unlawful as well. It will make it easier to keep the nut jobs from making families unsafe.

The best thing to do, however, is to report any doctor who asks the question in the context of safety issues. If he is in an HMO or a PPO, etc., report him there too. If you can find who carries his malpractice insurance report him there as well.

Also carry one of the Physician Qualifications forms with you and ask the Doctor to fill it out and sign it before you will discuss gun safety with him. If he refuses to sign it, initial it and hold it for evidence.

By getting the word out we can stop the anti-civil rights doctors from making people and their homes less safe.

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