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Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
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The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit organization founded in 1943. The group had approximately 4,000 members in 2005.
Notable members include Ron Paul and John Cooksey. The executive director is Jane Orient, professor of clinical medicine at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. AAPS publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, which has been criticized by the medical community for alleged inaccuracies, poor research, and quackery.
ng the winter of 1943, the Lake County (Indiana) Medical Committee decided to take action against the Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, proposed legislation that would provide government health care for most U.S.
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Encyclopedia
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit organization founded in 1943. The group had approximately 4,000 members in 2005.
Notable members include Ron Paul and John Cooksey. The executive director is Jane Orient, professor of clinical medicine at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. AAPS publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, which has been criticized by the medical community for alleged inaccuracies, poor research, and quackery.
History
During the winter of 1943, the Lake County (Indiana) Medical Committee decided to take action against the Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, proposed legislation that would provide government health care for most U.S. citizens. Also opposed to the bill was the conservative National Physicians Committee. The committee began a membership drive in February 1944. By May 1944, the AAPS claimed members from all 48 states. A 1944 Time article reported their aim was the "defeat of any Government group medicine". In 1966, the New York Times described AAPS as an "ultra-right-wing... political-economic rather than a medical group," and noted that some of its leaders were members of the John Birch Society.
Positions
AAPS is generally recognized as politically conservative, though it describes itself as "non-partisan". The organization opposes mandatory vaccination, universal health care and government intervention in healthcare. The AAPS has characterized the effects of the Social Security Act of 1965, which established Medicare and Medicaid, as "evil" and "immoral", and encouraged member physicians to refuse to accept or participate in Medicare and Medicaid. AAPS says that medical care is not a right, and that a government-mandated entitlement to medical care is unconstitutional and immoral; hence they oppose efforts to implement a national health plan. The organization also opposes mandated evidence-based medicine and practice guidelines, criticizing it as a usurpation of physician autonomy and a fascist merger of state and corporate power where the biggest stakeholder is the pharmaceutical industry. Other procedures that AAPS opposes include abortion and over-the-counter access to emergency contraception.
Legal activism
In 1975, they went to court to block enforcement of a new Social Security amendment that would monitor the treatment given Medicare and Medicaid patients. With several other groups, AAPS filed a lawsuit in 1993 against First Lady Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala? over closed-door meetings related to the 1993 Clinton health care plan. The AAPS sued to gain access to the list of members of President Clinton's health care taskforce. Judge Royce C. Lamberth found in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded $285,864 to the AAPS for legal costs; Lamberth also harshly criticized the Clinton administration and Clinton aide Ira Magaziner in his ruling. Subsequently, a federal appeals court overturned the award and the initial findings on the basis that Magaziner and the administration had not acted in bad faith.
The AAPS was involved in litigation against HIPAA, arguing that it is violates the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution by allowing government access to certain medical data without a warrant. In 2004, AAPS filed a brief on behalf of Rush Limbaugh, opposing the seizure of his medical files in an investigation of alleged misuse of prescription drugs. In 2006 the group criticised what it called sham peer review, claiming it was a device used to punish whistleblowers. The next year, the AAPS helped appeal the conviction of Virginia internist William Hurwitz, who was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for prescribing excessive quantities of narcotic drugs after 16 former patients testified against him. Hurwitz was granted a retrial in 2006, and his 25-year prison sentence was reduced to 57 months.
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS), until 2003 named the Medical Sentinel, is the journal of the association. Its mission statement includes "… a commitment to publishing scholarly articles in defense of the practice of private medicine, the pursuit of integrity in medical research … Political correctness, dogmatism and orthodoxy will be challenged with logical reasoning, valid data and the scientific method." The publication policy of the journal states that articles are subject to a double-blind peer-review process.
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is not listed in the major literature databases of MEDLINE/PubMed nor the Web of Science. Articles and commentaries published in the journal have argued:
A series of articles by pro-life authors published in the journal argued for the existence of a link between abortion and breast cancer; such a link was rejected by the U.S. National Cancer Institute and is not recognized by major medical organizations such as the American Cancer Society or World Health Organization.
A 2003 paper published in the journal, claiming that vaccination was harmful, was criticized for poor methodology, lack of scientific rigor, and outright errors by the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics. A National Public Radio piece cited inaccurate information published in the Journal and wrote: "The journal itself is not considered a leading publication, as it's put out by an advocacy group that opposes most government involvement in medical care."
Quackwatch lists JPandS as an untrustworthy, non-recommended periodical. An editorial in Chemical & Engineering News described JPandS as a "purveyor of utter nonsense." Investigative journalist Brian Deer wrote that the journal is the "house magazine of a right-wing American fringe group [AAPS]" and "is barely credible as an independent forum."
Leprosy errors
In a 2005 article published in the Journal, Madeleine Cosman argued that illegal immigrants were carriers of disease and that immigrants and "anchor babies" were launching a "stealthy assault on [American] medicine." In the article, Cosman claimed that "Suddenly, in the past 3 years America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy" because of illegal aliens. The journal's leprosy claim was cited and repeated by Lou Dobbs as evidence of the dangers of illegal immigration.
However, publicly available statistics show that the 7,000 cases of leprosy occurred during the past 30 years, not the past 3 as Cosman claimed. James L. Krahenbuhl, director of the U.S. government's leprosy program, stated that there had been no significant increase in leprosy cases, and that "It [leprosy] is not a public health problem—that’s the bottom line." National Public Radio reported that the Journal article "had footnotes that did not readily support allegations linking a recent rise in leprosy rates to illegal immigrants." The article's erroneous leprosy claim was pointed out by 60 Minutes, National Public Radio, and the New York Times among other sources, but has not been corrected by the Journal.
External links
- - Association of American Physicians and Surgeons home page
- - The first journal published by AAPS, now renamed to the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
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