The Most Powerful Medical Association In The U.S. Gears Up To Fight Congress Over Guns

[deminks]

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/06/15/3788662/ama-gun-violence-research/

The largest medical organization in the United States, the American Medical Association, passed a historic resolution last night in response to the weekend’s mass shooting. After years of tiptoeing around the topic of gun control, AMA leaders voted to officially call gun violence a public health issue — and respond accordingly. That means flexing the organization’s powerful political muscle on Capitol Hill to refocus federal funds toward studying gun violence.

To see this through, however, Congress would need to lift a 20-year-old ban that blocks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding any research related to gun violence. But the AMA, with one of the largest political lobbying budgets of any organization in the U.S., appears ready to fight.

“Even as America faces a crisis unrivaled in any other developed country, the Congress prohibits the CDC from conducting the very research that would help us understand the problems associated with gun violence and determine how to reduce the high rate of firearm-related deaths and injuries,” said AMA President Dr. Steven Stack, in a written statement.

“An epidemiological analysis of gun violence is vital so physicians and other health providers, law enforcement and society at large may be able to prevent injury, death and other harms to society resulting from firearms,” he added.

(snip)

This 1996 funding block, also known as the Dickey Amendment, was heavily lobbied for by the National Rifle Association, who saw any negative research on guns as an attack on their industry. Since its initiation, the number of gun-inflicted homicides in the U.S. has continued to skyrocket far beyond other advanced democratic countries.

(end snip)

[Hoyt]

1. Good. Sort of like fighting anti-vaxxers.

[aikoaiko]

2. Haven't heard much from the AMA since that vote last month.

maybe they are planning something.

[Squinch]

3. That rule AGAINST research, AGAINST unbiased answers to the question of the damage done by

guns, is just insane.

[aikoaiko]

4. The rule was against anti-gun propoganda -not research per se.

And it was just with the CDC. NSF and NIH could find grants. Any university could do this research.

[Squinch]

5. No. It's against research. By the CDC, NSF and NIH. The logical organizations to do such research.

The NRA is frightened of the fact that the truth about the real cost of guns will be "anti-gun propaganda."

[aikoaiko]

7. I don't think so. Let's look at the text of the Dickey Amendment

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/pdf/PLAW-104publ208.pdf


From page 245:

Provided further, That none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control:

No mention of research, no mention of NSF, and no mention of NIH.

I do realize that it had a stifling effect on research at the CDC, but it was really a choice they made not to do or fund research. They could have published on their website the methods and data without any conclusions and let others analyze the data and make the case for policy implications.

[Kang Colby]

8. Do you hear that?

It's the sound of crickets.

[Initech]

6. About damn time!