The thing is, what we are normally talking about here are “well-baby checkups”, where there isn’t anything particularly wrong, but the doctor is just making sure that everything is going OK with the growth and development of the child, and that the home environment is such that everything will continue to go OK. Most parents want to make sure they are doing things right.
Well-baby checkups are usually scheduled about every three months for the first few years of life.
Big T you are not familiar with “Well care appointments” obviously. Not every pediatric visit is for a sick complaint. This is about preventative care. When we discuss diet and nutrition, normal development and behavior and what is and is not normal, what to expect coming up, sleep habits, and so on. How help your child stay healthy in general.
I suspect there is a high correlation between people who are upset when their doctor asks basic questions about their health and people who eat a lot of Cheetos.
Also, I find it hard to believe a doctor got fired for asking questions about holistic well-being of her patients. I find it much easier to believe that some guy on the Internet would make that up to enhance a boring anecdote.
Stories may be, because the press creams themselves anytime they get a juicy gun story, but the reality is that while gun ownership is as high as it’s ever been, accidental shootings by children is as low as its ever been. It’s pretty far down the list as far as stuff that kills kids - an order of magnitude lower at least than more common stuff like pools and toxic chemicals.
As for the rest of you - you risk alienating reasonable people when you treat the gun issue in such an arrogant, cut-and-dried way and talk about guns rights advocates as if they were as stupid as birthers. Support for gun rights is actually fairly broad based - there’s certainly a strong element of far right people, but there are a whole lot of centrists and even leftist people who advocate gun rights.
Now you say “this thread is about a specific bad law, not gun rights in general” but that’s not true - if you read the first few posts in the thread you can clearly see people talking about gun rights advocates as if they all agreed with this bill in lockstep and they were all hard-right retards and such.
Your derision alienates people who might otherwise be politically sympathetic to you. Gun control is a losing issue for the democrats exactly because it isn’t something that only offends the hardcore republican base. More than that, it alienates people who are supportive of gun rights but have to be treated like they’re mouth breathing fascist stormtrooper retards for thinking so, like in this thread.
It would benefit you, and reasonable and civil discussion, to not treat people who are gun rights advocates like birthers. If you wanted to talk about how dumb a law this was (and it is), that’s fine - but immediately the “oh the retarded gun nuts are at it again, I’m sure they’re all in lockstep on this issue” bullshit came out about a bill that doesn’t even seriously seem like it has a shot at becoming law, and certainly wouldn’t have lockstep support from all the gun rights advocates.
Incidentally, I do think the AMA and perhaps other political groups made up of doctors have a hardon for guns, because they’re often hawking bad epidemeological studies to bash gun ownership when it’s really none of their business. Does that extend down to the individual doctors, or is that an artifact of politics? I don’t know. Do pediatricians raise the gun issue in accordance with its relative danger to stuff like pools, car seats, etc, or do they have a special hardon for it? If it’s the latter, people are right to get irritated and admonish the doctor and find a new one if necesary, but of course if it is indeed the role of a pediatrician to ask about non-medically-related dangers in the home (I really have no idea if this is the case), then it’s silly to make a law barring them from it.
If accidental shootings are down, it’s because of proactive, preventive action by people like doctors who try to educate gun owners.
At least I can be glad that with this law, the kids of these gun nuts will be more likely to be shot and killed.
I hope you’re joking.
If you’re happy with being an immoral asswipe for being happy about children dying because you dislike their parents then more power to you.
Not to rain on your parade of abominable behavior, but people who are all about leaving guns unsecured around their homes are typically not the people who are interested in gun safety in the first place. So their physician speaking to them about it is highly unlikely to have any significant affect, especially on the society-wide level.
Sure, and people like gun enthusiasts who actually run 99.99% of all the gun safety classes, created all the educational material, and developed various products that make it more easy to secure your firearms.
I know that not listening is one of the biggest complaints I hear people come up with against their physicians, and based on what you’re saying to me in this thread I can see why people talk about it being such a problem.
SB, yes, as noted Child Access Prevention to Firearm (CAP) laws have been effective. Florida’s own strict law has cut accidental firearm deaths of children by over 50%. (I know, the NRA wants Eddie Eagle to get the credit.) Also greater awareness of the need for firearm safety pushed across the country (by those who some on the gun rights side characterize as anti-gun for promoting safety measures) has gotten some to keep their weapons more securely stored even in states without CAP laws. Media attention may be exploitive, but it has influenced some gun owners’ behaviors. Maybe even some anticipatory guidance has helped …
I have already admitted that in my suburban Chicago area practice I spend little energy on firearm safety issues. I have other issues that I am more fixated on emphasizing. But different communities may be best served with a different emphasis.
In rural areas like most of Florida, the 4 deaths per 100,000 under 19 due to firearms are not as likely due to homicide, like the same roughly 4/100,000 are in urban areas. They are more often due to accidents and suicides, with most-rural areas having 5 times the accidental gun death rate as most-urban areas. It is in precisely those areas that gun safety should rise to hardon levels, because yes it is the pediatrician’s role to advise about risks in the home and community environment, and of course that is where this silly law is going to bar them from doing it. Next they’ll outlaw pediatricians asking about diet, exercise, sunscreen, and keeping pools gates locked. None of our business. After all, how many kids drown every year?
Martin I don’t think you are listening. I’m bitching about this law. The rest is really a hijack from my POV. I know you care only about what you think, but I don’t.
Cite (for the bolded).
Also, a working definition of “gun enthusiast” that is more refined than “gun owner.”
The irony here is that when in another thread, you were talking about the OMG EPIDEMIC OF SCHOOL SHOOTINGS KILLING EVERYONE and I said a few over a decade is really a miniscule amount of fluke occurances that don’t require a drastic policy response, you gave me the old “OMG YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN WHO DIED OMG OMG OMG” hysterical reaction.
I guess dead kids can be good, so long as you don’t like their parents.
The NRA does promote some good gun safety rules, some aimed for parents -
Why do they want to make pediatricians saying the same thing a crime?
SB to portray my side of this discussion as represented by those just making stupid comments like YogSosoth’s or even those who wish to, less inappropriately, extrapoloate that “The Right” falsely portray’s healthcare reform as getting in the middle of the doctor patient relationship, yet does it itself in a very direct controlling way here, is a bit disingenuous.
I will leave it that I am glad you agree that this is a silly law and are not trying to defend it. Yes, if you don’t like how your doctor advises you, then find a new one. Don’t make it illegal for the doctor to practice that way. Vote with your feet.
Cool, then feel free not to address my posts. This is a free forum and discussions can and do evolve. I said my piece with no expectation of response from anyone. Here’s how I work though, if you’re going to reply to me (and you did) then do not correct me by saying “but this law actually says” when in my previous posts in this very thread it is **abundantly obvious I know exactly what the law in question says. **I do not take kindly to being corrected when my plain text shows I was not in the wrong in the first place.
I’m nor sure if I’m parsing this correctly, but I do think it exposes a familiar hypocrisy regarding the role of government and its intrusion in our lives, one which the right – scare quoted or not – is content to be completely unreflective on, just as they complain about government while championing government intrusion into our lives when it comes to who you marry, who lives in your uterus, etc.
No.
Oh noes, people are hypocrites. We all know only one side of the political spectrum engages in hypocrisy.
Actually some pediatric interventions are evidence based as effective:
And some not significantly so.
OTOHbrief community based efforts have some effect.
Not knowing ≠ stupidity. A little information sometimes can be put to good use.
As to your other comments, I addressed your points. Excuse me for not only addressing your points. Yes, I know you do not support this idiotic law. I know you know what the law says. Sometimes knowing still = stupidity.
And if I understand the rules correctly, I can say this: Hug off.
