"The A.M.A. is a self-serving political whore. I've been practicing medicine for 26 years and I've yet to hear anything really substantive (that I agree with) come out of that forum." ~ Dawgmeister
You, and most other informed people who don't have a personal agenda to advance.
Shrinking AMA Calls the Shots on Anti-gun Policy
WASHINGTON – Despite a declining membership, the American Medical Association is having significant success with its campaign to infuse politically correct anti-gun propaganda into the mainstream of the medical profession.
Many patients are startled to find their doctors asking them if they have any guns in the house. Because this is a matter related less to medicine and more to politics and household safety, many patients are simply refusing to answer. In some cases, they are telling their doctors to back off, according to letter writers responding to NewsMax.com’s previous report on the issue.
Falling Membership
Compounding the irony is that this entire campaign is driven by an organization whose numbers are shrinking. AMA, once the respected voice of the mainstream of the medical profession, has become just another left-wing interest group. Declining membership does not prevent AMA from presuming to speak for all doctors or from aggressively weaving its leftist dogma into the doctor-patient relationship.
Dr. Lyle Thorstenson, an ophthalmologist from Nacogdoches, Texas, told Physician’s Weekly that AMA gains 30,000 members a year and loses 33,000. At this rate, he says, it will be left with no members by 2023.
Further, recent trends have indicated that of those enrolled in AMA, only about 60 percent have been full members. The rest are mostly students and residents, says the weekly.
Michael Perrone, an assistant to a member of the New Jersey Legislature, tells NewsMax.com that his own investigation revealed AMA's membership has nose-dived (in part because of scandals that have wracked the organization) from a huge majority of the nation’s doctors in the 1960s to only about 30 percent today.
And even that low figure, he says, is inflated with "thousands of free memberships, including thousands of medical students.”
A Good Way to Lose Business
What, then, would motivate an organization that has its hands full with internal problems to stick its nose into whether you opt to exercise your Second Amendment rights to own firearms and keep them in your home for your own protection? In some instances, doctors who have followed AMA’s line have lost patients in the process. [snip] Click link below to continue.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/5/201025.shtml
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com Wednesday, March 6, 2002
This happens most often with pediatricians, who have one of the wussiest medical organizations.
You might be surprised to know that virtually no doc is happy about this--and you might be surprised how many docs, at least in the past, used to pack heat under the white coats in the ER.
Here's a clue about all medical organizations--they are made up of the doctors who are dying to get away from clinical work--they don't want to see patients. So, they try to find a related job in admin, business or politics. Most docs hate the politics part, so they don't pay much attn to it. And there's always that power trip--"I get to tell other docs what to do."
Well, no. They don't have much authority--except in setting standards of care. That's why you find docs asking questions they don't really want to ask--they fear someone accusing them of not providing proper standard of care.
Don't take these orgs as representing anything other than busybodies who don't like doing real doctor work.