Today, while I was listening to Rush, Mr. EIB referenced a story from the Boston Herald that really grabbed my attention. The upshot of the story was that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the family doctor are in cahoots in an Orwellian scheme to get children to inform the authorities on the politically incorrect and/or criminal activities of their parents. Of course, El Rushbo put his partisan spin on the issue:
Graham makes a rather serious allegation, viz. that the AAP is blatantly advocating that pediatricians should interrogate children without parental consent and then duly report them as a way to pressure folks to adopt Progressive values and behavior. The AAP and pediatricians need to keep their socially activist tendencies tightly under control, or what is not now an Orwellian usurpation of parental rights and responsibilities may become so.
“When you socialize medicine, doctors can't help but become socialists themselves. This is the one angle of socialized medicine that I don't think we think about enough. Who's going to pay the doctors and what's going to be in it for them? Who will their bosses be? Federal government, state government, that's who they'll work for. Doctors won't tell parents when their 13-year-old is going to have an abortion, for crying out loud. Right now doctors are not allowed, if they find out, to tell the parents. But you get socialized medicine in there, and those people who run it, à la Mrs. Clinton, want to find out what you're doing at home. The best way to do it is to require the doctors, as part of an examination of your kids, to find out from them, and then they'll know. In this case, the instance of a mother whose daughter told the stories about guns in the home, all legal, they got the attention of the authorities with this.”
Still, the idea that a cabal of neocommunists entrenched in academia and the Democrat Party – especially in the era of Media Matters’ efforts to silence non-Progressive opinion and speech – didn’t seem too far beyond the pale. SO I did a little research. Sure enough, I found the Boston Herald op-ed by Michael Graham, as well as a couple of blog entries on the subject. (You can read them here and here.) I have excerpted what I believe to be the most salient paragraphs of Graham’s article below:
“Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad’s “bad” behavior. We used to be proud parents. Now, thanks to the AAP, we’re ‘persons of interest.’ The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore ‘legal barriers and deference to parental involvement’ and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.”
“Debbie is a mom from Uxbridge who was in the examination room when the pediatrician asked her 5-year-old, 'Does Daddy own a gun?' When the little girl said yes, the doctor began grilling her and her mom about the number and type of guns, how they are stored, etc. If the incident had ended there, it would have merely been annoying. But when a friend in law enforcement let Debbie know that her doctor had filed a report with the police about her family's (entirely legal) gun ownership, she got mad. She also got a new doctor.”
“In fact, the problem of anti-gun advocacy in the examining room has become so widespread that some states are considering legislation to stop it. Last year, my 7-year-old was asked about my guns during his physical examination. He promptly announced to the doctor that his father is the proud owner of a laser sighted plasma rifle perfect for destroying Throggs. At least as of this writing, no police report has been filed.”
Graham makes a rather serious allegation, viz. that the AAP is blatantly advocating that pediatricians should interrogate children without parental consent and then duly report them as a way to pressure folks to adopt Progressive values and behavior.
It is true that AAP guidelines call for doctors to assess “risk factors.” According to The Role of the Pediatrician in Youth Violence Prevention in Clinical Practice and at the Community Level, pediatricians are encouraged to assess families for the following traits or characteristics. I have highlighted those items with which I take particular issue.
“Pediatricians need to identify the risk factors for violence among their patients. Violence-related assessment and screening should focus on the following areas:
• history of mental illness, previous domestic violence, or substance abuse in the parents or other family members;
• family stresses that could lead to violence (e.g., unemployment, divorce, or death);
• appropriate supervision and care and support systems (e.g., child care arrangements, the family and social network);
• disciplinary attitudes and practices of the parents or caregivers (particularly about corporal punishment and physical/emotional abuse);
• exposure to violence in the home (domestic violenceor child abuse), school, or community;
• degree of exposure to media violence;
• access to firearms (especially handguns) in their or a neighbor’s home, or the community;
• gang involvement or gang exposure in family, school, or neighborhood;
• situations in which a child or adolescent experiences physical assault or sexual victimization from anyone;
• presence of signs of poor self-esteem, or depression; and
• other factors affecting risk, such as poor school performance and physical, emotional, or developmental disabilities.”
Obviously, the presence of guns is not an issue in and of itself, but rather it is a question of access to such guns. Responsible gun owners usually secure their firearms to prevent accidents, loss and theft. However, there is a well-documented sentiment among a sizable portion of the left-leaning population that automatically equates the presence of guns with the existence of violence. A rational person understands that guns do not themselves go about shooting people, or through some demonic influence force people to commit acts of violence.
As for corporal punishment, spanking does not equate to child abuse. I tend to be in agreement with those who feel that if more parents had ignored Dr. Spock, and engaged in a little corporal punishment to enforce discipline, we might not have the level of societal narcissism and attendant preoccupation with (undeserved) self-esteem.
Aside from these two points, I do not necessarily think it’s a bad thing for the family doctor to have an idea of what home factors might affect a child’s health. That being said, pediatricians are not mental health professionals, nor should they be social workers.
I disagree with the entire premise of the AAP publication, in that violence prevention is not the purview of pediatricians, beyond a responsible role in pointing out such factors to patients and their families. When doctors cease to be concerned primarily about the physical health of their patients, and suffer a sort of “mission creep” that puts them in the role of psychologist and social worker, I must object. The doctor who reported to the police the fact of a family’s ownership of firearms as if it were a crime is clearly someone who should not be practicing medicine. Perhaps a career change should be in order? Of course, if there is a clear-cut case of child abuse or neglect, then the doctor may have an ethical responsibility to report the matter, but short of that, it’s no one else’s business.
What about the statement that the AAP “encourages doctors to ignore ‘legal barriers and deference to parental involvement’ and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get?” This particular statement is not to be found in the AAP guidelines, rather they are drawn from a prepared statement to the House of Representatives by a Dr. Renee Jenkins. Since so many in the MSM these days are so often guilty of quoting out of context, I have included the entire paragraph from which this quote was taken”
“Since the involvement of a concerned adult can contribute to the health and success of an adolescent, policies in health care settings should encourage and facilitate communication between a minor and her parent(s), when appropriate. However, concerns about confidentiality, as well as economic considerations, can be significant barriers to healthcare for some adolescents. For example, the potential health risks to adolescents if they are unable to obtain reproductive health services are so compelling that legal barriers and deference to parental involvement should not stand in the way of needed health care for patients who request confidentiality.”
This quote specifically refers to the ugly and contentious issue of confidentiality for teens that want abortions. Thankfully, in Ayotte vs. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England the Supreme Court did not grant minors a blanket right to secretive abortions, sidestepping the issue and leaving it up to the respective states. Personally, I find it alarming that so many states allow a child to undergo a major medical procedure with such profound and contentious moral and ethical aspects and implications (not to mention serious psychological and physiological after-effects and/or consequences) without even notifying the parents, let alone requiring their consent. Nevertheless, Dr. Jenkins argues in favor of contravening “legal barriers and deference to parental involvement” when a minor seeks “reproductive health services.” A step in the direction of, but still a far cry from shaking down children for information about their parents.
Graham closes his article with a statement with which it is hard to disagree:
“Of course doctors have a choice. They could choose, for example, to ask me about my drunken revels, and not my children. They could choose not to put my children in this terrible position. They could choose, even here in Massachusetts, to leave their politics out of the office. But the doctors aren't asking us parents. They're asking our kids. Worst of all, they're asking all kids about sexual abuse without any provocation or probable cause. The American Academy of Pediatrics has declared all parents guilty until proven innocent.”
And that is the problem of political correctness: assumed guilt instead of presumed innocence. For example, men are often vilified, simply because they are men. Likewise, parents who don’t adopt the politically correct liberal orthodoxy in their parenting styles are also criminalized without a fair say. Because of this frightening tendency in today’s society, Graham might be forgiven for his perception of this issue, although it is clearly overblown and more than a little paranoid.
Bottom line: Doctors should ask about environmental threats to their patients’ health, but assuming criminality and going to the authorities without first confronting the “accused,” purely on the basis of one’s political viewpoint, rather than upon any objective or legal standard, is beyond their competence and expertise.
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wickedwolfj- wickedwolfj
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reminds me of this story:
Pavlik Morozov, supposedly killed by "kulak" relatives for denouncing his father to Stalin's secret police (OGPU-NKVD), was adopted as a patron saint by the "Young Pioneers," the Soviet equivalent to the "Boy Scouts." His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to become informers, even at the expense of family ties."
Although, I must say, it was mostly wishful thinking of Commies, it's telling how all left-wing politicians in the world tend to reproduce the same model: destroy the existing state and society in the name of "freedom", and then build a new state, with no freedom at all.
BTW, may I ask you, what are your political sympathies, in the US' and in the rest of the world? (It's funny how little one can understand in our times from mass-media about what people REALLY think in other countries.)
Given my earlier posts, I would have thought it obvious where my political sympathies lie, but here are the results of a couple of political quizzes I took that I think fairly show the answer:
You Are 32% Politically Radical
You've got a few unusual political ideas, but overall you're a pretty mainstream person. Chances are that you're turned off by both the radical right and loony left.
Your Political Profile:
Overall: 85% Conservative, 15% Liberal
Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
I'm firmly anti-socialist, anti-communist, anti-fascist and anti-Islamist.
I'd be curious to know what you think of Mr. Putin's latest moves to stay in power and to resurrect the Cold War.
yes, the "anti-" part was quite obvious to me. I was curious to know about the positive program, so to say..., like, do you support the mainstream RP and GW Bush in particular, and what do you think about such figure as Buchanan, with his pessimistic book?
I initially found your LJ following a link from some anti-islamist european site, and, I mostly share their pessimistic view on things (like, fjordman#s blog). So, for me personally, the only problem with conservatism is - it might be too late. Well, there's another one - I believe that most conservative politicians today are fake. This is why I find it really hard to position myself on the conventional conservative-liberal grid. Definitely anti-islamist, anti-commie, mildly anti-socialist, but with strong simpathy to nationalism in its anti-etatist, democratic form.
Now about the Putin thing. I am really against him and his policies, but to explain why is not so straightforward to a westerner. I guess, in the West there are lots of stereotypes about him, which are often wrong. For example, he's described as anti-Chechen, anti-terrorist, and "nationalistic" leader. In fact the truth is nearly opposite, and that's what I hate - he's flooding the country with drug dealers and islamists, but manages somehow to maintain an image of a tough anti-terrorist patriotic guy. Here comes the answer to your question: his regime needs more legitimacy in the eyes of the people; what's the best way to achieve that than by uniting everybody against a common enemy, not a real one, but shown on TV. But, let's be honest, don't you think that some american politicians would be happy with a new Cold War, too?
I am for a national federal government that concerns itself only with things that serve the whole (interstate highways, national defense), but does not seek to micromanage at the local, state or regional level. I am an “original constructionist” with regard to the US constitution, but not a libertarian.
Accordingly, I am for a republican form of government rather than a direct democracy. I think the term democracy is too often misunderstood and misused.
I am for self-reliance and individualism and personal integrity, honor and virtue. I believe that neither a state nor a person should carry excessive debt. I am for developing alternative energy sources. I am for responsible capitalism – capitalism that is self-regulating, where people eschew greed because they recognize its detrimental effects.
I am for a nation in which people come together for the common good when necessary, but do not try to mind each other’s personal business. I disagree with any form of state-enforced discrimination (either against or in favor of) any given race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference, but I also believe that we should all be allowed to have our own opinions. Individual merit trumps any of the preceding categorizations. Tolerance does not mean homogenizing opinion and thought, nor does it imply permitting any and all behavior. No one has a right not to be offended, but they do have a right to ignore or oppose that which they find offensive. No one has a right to kill or harm someone because that someone disagrees with or harbors opinions that are offensive to him or her.
I believe in the right of a state to control its borders and deny entry to whomever they so choose. Illegal immigration and/or unchecked legal immigration without assimilation are a plague that will obliterate the West and its unique political culture and history, as we have known it.
I am not a fan of Buchanan (haven’t read his books, and usually only get about halfway through his articles), and I am not a fan of the Republican Party. For me it is like choosing the lesser of two evils every election. The Democrat party has been taken over from within by radical socialists and neocommunists and needs to be marginalized, like any fringe or extreme group. We need a strong third party that will unite rather than divide most Americans. The ideas of socialism (Marxism/Leninism/Maoism) are dead wrong, and need to be expunged from the political consciousness of the West.
I cannot speak for all Western politicians. I know some people who preferred the seeming simplicity of a bi-polar world, but I also remember the dread of MAD, and the surreal silliness of hating each other and trying to dominate each other when we could have simply left each other and the rest of the world alone. That said, I knew clearly which side I was on, and that it was the Soviet government and not its people that needed to be defeated – not to dominate, but to liberate them. Bill Clinton had a golden opportunity to help Russia and to develop a strong ally, a partner for good in the world and he blew it completely by ignoring and dismissing Russia. States, like people, need to operate by rules of mutual respect and civility until and unless a state or alliance of states violates these rules in a way that threatens the existence and /or identity of the others. Just war is not an evil, anymore than chemotherapy is evil.