Dude, you’re disagreeing with the American Academy of Pediatrics and every other medical organization tasked with overseeing the practices of healthcare for young children, not with DSeid in particular.
Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to disagree with them, indeed to shout from the housetops, should you so desire, “I think official pediatric guidelines for health supervision of young children are bullshit, and I, as a practicing lawyer, am a much better judge of what is and what isn’t a medical issue in pediatric care than the American Academy of Pediatrics is!”
But you should be aware that attitude makes you look like a delusional fuckwit, not like a thoughtful person expressing reasonable disagreement with a bold and controversial position.
Face it, the pediatric guidelines for helping new parents establish and maintain a safe and healthy home definitely do include questions about guns as a completely unremarkable routine issue. The pocket guide for pediatricians includes, along with questions like “Do you have pets at home? If you have cats, have they been tested for toxoplasmosis antibodies?” and “What emergency numbers do you have posted near your phones?” and “What thermometer do you use?”, other questions like “Do you keep guns at home? Are there guns in homes you visit (grandparents, relatives, friends)?”
This communication is a normal part of pediatric outreach to help ensure safe and healthy homes for kids. Sure, you can disagree with it if you want to, just like you can disagree with the unwarrantable government intrusion of putting pedestrian crosswalks on street corners and telling pedestrians to cross at the light. But you need to recognize that you come across as a somewhat reality-challenged loon rabidly grousing about an ordinary standard safety procedure.
Yeah sure, and the Kansas state legislature passed into law requirements that doctors have to give women various medically inaccurate information about abortion before they’re allowed to terminate a pregnancy. And other state legislatures have proposed relaxing vaccination requirements due to the entirely fictional belief that vaccinations are linked to autism. And so on and so forth.
What a state legislature decides to decree and what is medically sound or reasonable don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, so that feeble protest isn’t helping your argument any.
(And your appeal to the authority of the “learned Court” to support your loony contrarianism is irrelevant, since the courts decide only whether a law is constitutionally permissible, not whether it’s rational or advisable from a medical standpoint.)
Pediatricians, and most moral people for that matter, do take the problem of protecting children’s safety and health pretty seriously. The question is, why don’t you? :dubious:
Btw, don’t bother asking **Damuri **for help on that one. He has none to give.
Is it harder to become a doctor, or to become a pharmacist?
When you are sick or injured and require medical attention, do you go directly to a pharmacist? It sounds like you don’t see any reason for doctors to even exist based on this response, just go to Walgreen’s and ask the pharmacist right? They know so much more about medicine right?
False equivalency. Eye doctors would not be expected to perform abortions because babies don’t develop in people’s eyes. Geriatric physicians would not be expected to perform abortions because 75 year old people don’t get pregnant. Neurosurgeons would not be expected to perform abortions because pregnancy doesn’t occur within the brain. Doctors have specializations, pharmacists do not. Pharmacists dispense medication, and of course have to be knowledgeable about them and their dosage and interactions with other drugs, but there are not eye pharmacists, geriatric pharmacists, or neurosurgery pharmacists, are there?
Being a pharmacist who is unwilling to dispense certain drugs because of religion is exactly the same as a someone running a hot dog stand but refusing to serve hot dogs because pork is against their religion. Don’t accept a job that you cannot perform because of your religion. If your religion is that important, then choose a career that doesn’t require you to do things you morally object to. What is so hard about that? The only reason to go this route is if you want to impose your religious views on others, and you want to use your job to proselytize. That’s bullshit.
Oddly, when the American Pharmacists Association says that pharmacists should have the right to refuse to dispense abortion-causing drugs, and liberals disagree, it’s the liberals that are right?
Does the definition of “abortion causing drugs” include those that prevent implantation? Which is to say, a definition that is subject to considerable controversy, a definition that comports with the views of a strident and forceful minority?
Is it a definition that reflects the unanimous view of medical professionals everywhere? Or, in the absence of such certainty, where does your certainty derive? In the absence of certainty, who is to say that the liberals are wrong about this? A lawyer?
Is it certain that a gun in the house will be a cause of some injury requiring medical attention? No – not certain. But, magically, “certainty” has ceased to be a factor in that calculation.
You used the term “abortion causing drugs”. I asked for clarification of the meaning of the term, and you changed the subject. Find the question uncomfortable, do you, dude?
Not at all. The term “abortion” means a couple of different things. In the sense I used it, it refers to any substance which is taken with the intention of causing the death of an embryo, by means of preventing implantation or by inducing the body to terminate the life of an implanted embryo.
But you didn’t just ask for clarification of the definition:
And I responded by noting that the imposition of the requirement of “certainty” only arises when it helps you.
But one side wants the ability to use legislation to enforce their view and yet complains bitterly when the other side wants to use legislation to enforce its view.
My side – the correct one – eschews the legislation in each case. I disfavor the “Docs vs. Glocks” Florida law; I disfavor any law purporting to require pharmacists to dispense.
It’s political. Pure and simple. Guns in the home are not a high risk to kids. There are many other things that are much more of a risk such as drowning, suffocation and car accidents.
The only reason it would make sense for pediatricians to be asking about guns was if they were asking about many other things first.
But they’re not. They’re asking about guns because they are anti-gun.
My pediatrician asked about car seats. Then she asked about guns. When I said “Yes” that we owned guns she was visibly upset and didn’t even know what to say next.
It’s obvious what’s going on here. You can’t just handwave it away.
My opinion has come around 180 degrees since I first posted in this thread. My main concern is simply whether doctors are not already overwhelmed by the number of things they need to know and focus upon. It seems that doctors are being place in a role which in the past might have been filled by adults being responsible and teaching responsible practices.
My observation, anecdote, whatever, is that most people don’t have a good relationship with their doctors(s). They complain that they have long waits for doctors who are an hour or more late, the doctor breezes through the exam and is writing prescriptions within 5 minutes, and then is out the door. My doctors are not like that, and as a result I’ve developed a good caregiver-patient relationship. My doctors ask me about a lot of behaviors and activities, and I believe they’re asking it from the standpoint that they want me to stay healthy. I personally don’t mind their questions at all, in fact I’m happy to discuss with them. I realize that many might not be happy, but AFAIK there is no legal mandate to tell your doctor anything about your hobbies or sports.
Healing and prevention can be part of a doctor’s job, but again, with patient interaction time already quite low and paperwork/information overload quite high, I wonder if this could lead to a situation where doctors would really start to be overwhelmed.
When we did a similar thread earlier a poster summarized this well:
It’s a waste of valuable time.
Plus it poisons the relationship between doctor and patient. I want to get my kid’s health care taken care of. I don’t want to have a gun control debate.
Good Lord! You mean to say that anti-gun fanatics have infiltrated our medical schools with special emphasis on indoctrinating prospective pediatricians! I gasp with horror!