Doctors target gun violence as a social disease

[Akston]

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/he ... page=2&c=y

From this article in today's Star Tribune: "_Disease patterns, observing how a problem spreads. Gun ownership — a precursor to gun violence — can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore."

I'm off to the doc to get checked out. I expect doc will suggest I cancel my subscription.

[beachbum17911]

I saw this article on google news. Considering google is liberal, you can bet most of their articles are too. Guns lower crime and are not a disease. "Guns kill people like spoons making people fat."

[EJSG19]

BS.

Humanity has had this "disease" since not long after... Creation.

Guns were invented to be able to kill better than the guy trying to kill you with a sword.

Before guns people were still killing, just less efficiently. It was going to be a blade, blunt object or with bare hands. Not much difference, people still kill people.

Effing doctors are wasting time and money with this "profound research" garbage. We have known this since the cavemen were walking around.

[Hmac]

This is just a couple of doctors with a temporary national stage getting some post-Aurora/post-Milwaukee media face time to shoot their mouths off about their personal views. Nothing new here. It's true, however, that there are some activist doctors that would like to restrict gun ownership just as there are physician professional organizations that have "position statements" on the issue. But those "position statements" certainly aren't binding on their members in any way and generally don't reflect a very large segment of the group. No different, and probably less effective than the efforts of the International Association of Chiefs of Police who would like to do the same. As a rule, doctors are generally poorly organized and pretty apathetic to most political issues. Those guys in the article, and those national physician organizations don't reflect the attitudes of all doctors any more than the IACP represents the attitudes of all cops. Doctors in general are a pretty independent-minded bunch. Getting them all, or even the majority, on the same side of any given issue is a lot like herding cats.

What you DO want to worry about is the Federal Government using doctors as agents of federal policy. As the Feds mandate implementation of electronic health records, they are also tying physician reimbursement issue to performance data that goes in those records. Right now it's stuff like smoking, alcohol, asking about your last screening colonoscopy etc but we're not that many steps away from them tying reimbursement to whether the doctor asks about guns in the home - if the doctor doesn't document that, he doesn't get paid. In fact, that is already showing up in most of the more prominent electronic health care record software as a check box option, same as whether or not the patient smokes or uses alcohol. It's a chilling trend, and one that has implications for government intrusion into people's lives that goes far beyond the simple issue of gun ownership.

[Nat]

...Considering google is liberal, you can bet most of their articles are too...

Not trying to call you out here - but as an ex google employee, my google co-workers were better armed than any job before or since.

[WalkingEagle]

I think we need to be very careful of what we say to doctors.This guy said the wrong thing and lost a very sizable gun collection:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/i ... t_02142012

[Hmac]

I think we need to be very careful of what we say to doctors.This guy said the wrong thing and lost a very sizable gun collection:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/i ... t_02142012

It would be interesting to hear the other side of that story.

[Spinner]

Maybe medical malpractice is an epidemic to be investigated?


Spinner

[Lunchbox]

Really makes me wonder what isn't a disease nowadays?

There's a lot of things that are classified as dieases that are nothing more then a personal choice taken to extremes.

[goalie]

I saw this article on google news. Considering google is liberal, you can bet most of their articles are too. Guns lower crime and are not a disease. "Guns kill people like spoons making people fat."

This is false. Guns don't lower or raise crime. There is a huge difference between correlation and causation. There are simply too many variables to weed out, and too many examples for either side to use to make discussing the inanimate object instead of the act of violence worthwhile.

And, no, John Lott couldn't find his ass with both hands if you gave him a map and a one-hand head-start. He treats statistics the same way the left does.......however suits his agenda.

[jshuberg]

How did it ever happen that all kinds of non-biological conditions have become diseases? Isn't this just a politically correct way of absolving a person from the consequences of their behavior by declaring their behavior a "disease"?

The medical industry has always been full of quacks and charlatans. Apparently requiring a formal education and state licensing isn't enough to keep the quacks from becoming doctors.

[Hmac]

Nobody is calling it a "disease" (except perhaps an ignorant reporter). They are labeling it a public health issue, something the Centers for Disease Control already did more than 15 years ago. That's their job...to identify situations that negatively impact the health of US citiizens. Alcoholism, obesity, West Nile virus, automobile, teen violence, firearms deaths

As a public health issue, how could they not look at firearms deaths? There were almost as many gun related deaths in 2010 as there were motor vehicle deaths, (31,000 vs 34,000) and that makes the USA a distinct outlier for firearms deaths among the world's developed nations. So yeah...it's a pubic health issue. Is it a disease? No. Perhaps you are confused by the concept that they (CDC) are using disease modeling to try to develop statistical evaluation of the the problem. You should be happy about that. Their most recent results have shown that gun control laws in the US have no effect on firearms deaths.

[jdege]

I've been reading quite a lot about low carbs, the lipid hypothesis, and the abysmal quality of the "science" that convinced the public health community that fat in the diet caused heart disease.

We should make it clear - observational studies are not science. They can suggest connections, but any attempt to draw conclusions from them regarding cause and effect are improper.

We rant and rave about guns, and how this small group of anti-gun "researchers" keep putting out these studies, and then rant and rave about how a complicit press pretends that their "conclusions" are backed by science.

But in truth, it's pretty small potatoes.

Back in the late sixties and early seventies, the public health community did exactly the same thing with regard to fats, and the "healthy" benefits of a low-fat diet. And the result sentenced millions to heart disease, diabetes, and premature death.

[adoptedson]

Is this why the nurse asks if you have firearms at home? First time I was asked at a routine doctors appointment it caught me way off guard.

[Hmac]

Is this why the nurse asks if you have firearms at home? First time I was asked at a routine doctors appointment it caught me way off guard.

Tell her you consider that irrelevant information and don't answer.