American Association of Physicians and Surgeons

The Tucson-based group, founded in 1943, bills itself promisingly as “the only national organization consistently supporting the principles of the free market in medical practice”. It’s published material favorable to liability reform in its Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (formerly Medical Sentinel). Before citing to AAPS publications as one might cite to JAMA or […]

The Tucson-based group, founded in 1943, bills itself promisingly as “the only national organization consistently supporting the principles of the free market in medical practice”. It’s published material favorable to liability reform in its Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (formerly Medical Sentinel). Before citing to AAPS publications as one might cite to JAMA or The Lancet, however, it would be wise to read this and learn more about the group’s indulgence for anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridation and anti-gay crankery, as well as what one of its contributors regards as the superiority of “the creation religion of Jehovah” over the “religion of evolutionary humanism”. On the vaccine issue, at least, “the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons [has been] transformed into one of the primary media allies of litigators and plaintiffs seeking to review medical care after the fact, and find legal fault with physicians, vaccine developers and public health authorities who exercised accepted standards of care prevalent at the time they made their decisions.” (Kathleen Seidel, Mar. 12).

5 Comments

  • The AAPS is not “consistently supporting the principles of the free market.” It has nary a bad word to say about medical licensing, which economists have long said leads to higher costs, lower quality, reduced availability, and retarded innovation. AAPS also supports both prescription drug laws and drug prohibition — so long as the doctors aren’t targeted for arrest. The group’s web wite says that its members will cooperate with law enforcement in helping to catch patients who allegedly break drug laws. Finally, AAPS has never criticized coercive psychiatric practices, which allow physicians to participate in detaining, imprisoning, drugging, and inducing convulsions in individuals without their consent.

    What the organization means is that it supports what it labels the “free market” so long as it affords physicians special powers and privileges.

    Socialism for me, but not for thee.

  • The Neurodiversity article you cited is an amateurish hatchet job against the AAPS. I am not a member of the AAPS, but I learned about them when researching hepatitis B vaccination recommendations. The AAPS was the only medical professions group that opposed the CDC-recommended vaccination of newborns against hepatitis B, a disease that is transmitted only by sharing contaminated needles or having sex with a hepatitis B carrier. Neither are common activities for infants or young children. Newborn babies do not even have the ability to make antibodies against viruses, which is why (until hepatitis B) no vaccines were ever given to infants less than 2 months old. However, the CDC (apparently in bed with the vaccine companies), the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and other groups who stood to make money from vaccinations supported this recommendation (which became mandatory in most states).

    I honor the AAPS and its president, Jane Orient, for standing up in Congress and opposing this harmful policy.

  • I’m assuming the link to the “neurodiversity” article as well as the first comment are supposed to serve as a crash course in the application of classic truth suppression techniques. Just to review:

    1.)Wax indignant. This is also known as the “how dare they?” gambit. 2.)Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspect of your opponent’s weakest arguments. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike. 3.)Call the opponents names like “conspiracy theorist,” “nut,” “ranter,” “kook,” “crackpot,” and of course, “rumor monger.” Be sure, too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their arguments and defending the “more reasonable” establishment and its defenders. 4.)Carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own “skeptics” to shoot down. 5.)Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize your opponent by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money. etc……

    It’s a shame they couldn’t come up with anything more imaginative than simply regurgitating these tired and sophomorish elementary level propaganda techniques. These people are clearly not interested in having an intelligent discussion. I certainly don’t agree with many of AAPS’s stances but I really get aggravated when the sanctimonious politically correct “tolerance & diversity” types show themselves to be the absolute least tolerant people in existence. Their bottom line is simply “blindly agree with us, or be labeled a nut”.

  • Why on earth would you reference such a blatantly biased and poorly constructed “progressive” screed? I usually like the work you guys do here, but this is just a hateful attack piece against this AAPS group. You don’t get any lower than the argument “anyone who disagrees with me is obviously insane”. Kool-aid anyone?

  • You really have to read their website very, very closely to find the sorts of things he finds objectionable. The typical article on the website is something like “AAPS urges Congress to adopt stronger patient privacy measures in Patriot Act” … There’s one article: “AAPS tells Docs: Get out of Medicare”. If you read it, they state the reasons for their views straightforwardly: “An AAPS survey of doctors reveals that Medicare rules and government threats to prosecute doctors make it more difficult for seniors to receive appropriate, necessary and timely medical care because doctors are afraid to treat tricky cases or take on new patients. Doctors spend less time practicing medicine and more complying with incomprehensible government regulations — more than 110,000 pages….”