Time: Thu Oct 31 07:21:32 1996
To:
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: limiting the Scope of CDC-NCIPC - the Evidence
Cc:
Bcc: Nancy Lord,tab@hollyent.com
Roger Cravens, are you reading this?
"Tax money for political purposes."
/s/ Paul Mitchell
It is
>testimony before Congress by scholars and physicians organizations,2
>including our own, that eliminated NCIPC's ability to use tax money for
>political purposes. We and the others testifying (not even one of whom was
>from the NRA) provided irrefutable evidence that: (1) the CDC's goal of
>reducing the private ownership of firearms preceded CDC's published research
>by 7 years,3 (2) area research reviews4,5,6 show that a majority of
>peer-reviewed research invalidates the CDC's methodology and contradicts
>CDC's interpretation of their and others' research on guns, including the
>research cited in the Eastern Association of Surgery of Trauma report7 so
>favored by Trunkey, (3) CDC has illegally used tax-money for unabashed
>political purposes, including funding gun prohibition newsletters and a
>rally
>with Handgun Control Inc.'s Sarah Brady2 and (4) the published opinions of
>CDC and NCIPC Directors and researchers brandishing their personal hatred of
>firearms8 and their announced9 (but later recanted10) goal of
>"systematically
>build[ing] a case that owning firearms causes deathx We're doing the most we
>can do, given the political realities" makes them distinctly ill suited to
>their pose11 as objective scientists. The CDC-commissioned "independent"
>study of the "quality of research on firearm injury prevention"12 did not
>include even one critic of the CDC and, in a 23 page report, pretended to
>vindicate a decade of CDC-sponsored research on the subject without even
>discussing one of the peer-reviewed and published criticisms of CDC's
>methodology and interpretation. Withstanding CDC and CDC admirers' media
>blitz of "spin control," Congressional criticism and the overwhelming vote
>to
>reduce NCIPC funding and scope indicates that CDC's Directors and
>researchers
>were utterly unconvincing in their testimony or reports to Congress
>regarding
>their competence and objectivity in their research on guns and gun violence.
> That the CDC Director has retroactively attempted to pull funding of one of
>the political projects we exposed to Congress13 is additional evidence of
>the
>accuracy of our testimony. Every significant gun violence researcher
>sponsored by the CDC is either individually or institutionally a member or
>faculty of one or more avowed gun prohibitionist organizations such as Cease
>Fire or Handgun Epidemic Lowering Program.
>
>In a short report we cannot possibly detail all the CDC's transgressions,
>however "Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of
>Propaganda?",6 a peer-reviewed article of over 83 pages and 368 footnotes by
>two Harvard medical school professors, a Columbia medical school professor,
>a
>biostatistician, and a criminologist and published in the Tennessee Law
>Review, meticulously documented massive deviations from accepted scientific
>practice in the medical literature on guns and gun violence. These
>included;
>endemic fact errors -- even apparently deliberate falsifications of
>statistics and fabrication of reference sources; citations of reference
>sources for "facts" opposite to what the references actually said;
>conclusions based on "data" which the authors subsequently refused to
>divulge
>to scholars who desired to check them (particularly inappropriate behavior
>since these studies were funded with public tax money); assertions of "fact"
>buttressed by citations not to studies but to editorials, or publications by
>anti-firearms lobbying groups (whose partisan affiliation is not revealed);
>and wholesale failure to mention or deal with contrary studies or data. In
>summary the authors concluded that CDC-funded studies on guns promote "an
>emotional anti-firearms agenda" and "are so biased and contain so many
>errors
>of fact, logic and procedure that we cannot regard them as having a
>legitimate claim to be treated as scholarly or scientific studies."
>
>Continuing to ignore such extensive peer reviewed criticism of CDC's
>research
>methodology and interpretation,4,5,6 continuing to ignore the net benefit of
>firearms in America,14,15 and disguising politics in the robes of science
>will leave medicine's orthodox prohibitionists talking to themselves,
>ignored
>and unfunded by Congress and the people.
>
>Typically, articles in the medical literature on guns begin with an
>emotional
>recitation of contrived rank-orderings and statistics claiming an "epidemic"
>of gun violence when the data actually show a stable to declining trend of
>violence for all demographic groups except teens and young adults involved
>with the predatory drug trade.5,6,15 Then, typically, researchers whose
>membership in prohibitionist organizations is a matter of public record have
>misapplied epidemiologic methodology to criminological and sociological
>problems and accepted their marginal results as proof of the desirability of
>draconian gun restrictions. They often accept unrepresentative sources of
>data16,17 and then attempt to defend their conclusions18,19 - ignoring the
>most basic tenet of research, that scientific truth cannot be teased from
>unrepresentative samples using misapplied methodology (a principle
>colorfully
>memorialized by the acronym "GIGO": garbage in = garbage out). They ignore
>the enormous body of research that invalidates the medical literature's
>orthodoxy and exposes transgressions of all the scientific canons, including
>the exposure of outright scientific fraud.5,6,15 Unlike the editors and
>CDC-sponsored researchers who have vilified the physicians and others who
>dare to doubt their politically correct views in ad hominem attacks20,21,22
>that do not examine or even acknowledge any of the inconvenient, but
>pertinent, evidence we cite, Congress examined the evidence offered by the
>prohibitionists and found it wanting. Congress examined the evidence
>offered
>by us and other scholars - missing from Trunkey's "report" - and found it
>persuasive. The vote to reduce NCIPC funding and scope only reflects
>Congressional rejection of CDC's unethical and illegal use of tax money to
>cloak politics in the robes of science.
>
>In 1974, realizing that each Presidential administration seemed to be
>sequentially appointing its own director of that institution, the Dean of
>American epidemiologists and former Chief Epidemiologist at the CDC,
>Alexander Langmuir, said in a February 9, 1977 Atlanta Constitution
>interview
>that "this is politicization of the CDC, and every important man is going to
>leave as fast as he can find a new job." His concerns about politicization
>were confirmed by such statements as those by Dr. David Satcher, the new
>director of the CDC appointed by the Clinton administration. The Atlanta
>Constitution reported on 8/21/93 that the CDC's new director "says the
>agency's ....mission will be an essential ingredient of president Clinton's
>health care reform program." The Clinton administration places stringent
>gun
>control at the centerpiece of its legislative and campaign agenda and it can
>be fairly observed that the CDC, under direction of prohibitionist
>ideologues, has advanced a results-oriented research agenda. Science as a
>handmaiden of politics is science not at all.
>
>Front page exposure of CDC's exaggeration of AIDS risk for heterosexuals to
>obtain increased federal funding,23 CDC Director Satcher's involvement with
>the Clintons' socialized medicine proposals, as well as CDC's politicization
>of gun violence research only underscore our greatest concern - that
>recognition of the politicization of the CDC will terminally undermine the
>credibility of the CDC even in it's traditional role in the study of
>epidemic
>disease. If we ever have to confront a nightmarish epidemic of Ebola
>Hemorrhagic Fever, will the CDC have any remaining credibility?
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Edgar A. Suter MD
>National Chair
>Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc.
>5201 Norris Canyon Road, Suite 220
>San Ramon, CA 94583 USA
>
>1 Trunkey D. "Trauma Systems at Risk." JAMA. September 25, 1996; 276(12):
>944-945.
>
>2 Waters WC IV, Faria MA, Wheeler TW, and Kates DB. testimony before the
>Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related
>Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations. March 6, 1996. Hearing Volume,
>Part 7: 935-970.
>
>3 Fingerhut LA and Kleinman JC "Firearm Mortality Among Children and Youth".
>Advance Data #178. Washington DC: NCHS Nov. 3, 1989.
>
>4 Kleck G. Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. New York: Aldine de
>Gruyter. 1991.
>
>5 Suter E. "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review."
>Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. March 1994; 83: 133-48.
>
>6 Kates DB, Schaffer HE, Lattimer JK, Murray GB, and Cassem EW. "Guns and
>Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda." Tennessee
>Law
>Review. Spring 1995; 62(3):513-596.
>
>7 Violence Prevention Task Force of the Eastern Association of Surgery of
>Trauma. "Violence in America: A Public Health Crisis - the Role of
>Firearms."
>J Trauma. 1995;38:163-168.
>
>8 Rosenberg M, Director CDC-NCIPC. avowing his desire to create a public
>perception of firearms as "dirty, deadly -- and banned." in William
>Raspberry, "Sick People With Guns." Washington Post. Oct. 19, 1994, p. A23.
>
>9 O'Carroll PW, Acting Section Head of Division of Injury Control, CDC.
>quoted in Goldsmith MF. "Epidemiologists Aim at New Target: Health Risk of
>Handgun Proliferation." JAMA. 1989; 261: 675-676.
>
>10 O'Carroll PW, Acting Section Head of Division of Injury Control, CDC.
>Correspondence: CDC's Approach to Firearms Injuries." JAMA.
>1989;262:348-349.
>
>11 Satcher D. Director, CDC. "Gunning for Research." Washington Post.
>November 5, 1995. page c2.
>
>12 Tarlov AR, Cook PJ, Kelsey J., and Moore M. "Firearm Injury Prevention:
>Report of the Special Panel to Evaluate the Quality of Research on Firearm
>Injury Prevention that has been Supported by the National Center for Injury
>Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." Atlanta
>GA: CDC. November 1995.
>
>13 Satcher D. Director, CDC. letter to Rep. Sam Johnson. February 28, 1996.
>
>14 Kleck G and Gertz M. "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and
>Nature
>of Self-Defense with a Gun." J Criminal Law & Criminology.
>1995;86(1):150-187.
>
>15 Suter EA, Waters WC IV, Murray GB, et al. "Violence in America -
>Effective
>Solutions." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. June 1995; 84:
>253-263.
>
>16 Weil DS, Knox RC. "Effects of Limiting Handgun Purchases on Interstate
>Transfer of Firearms." JAMA 1996;275:1759-1761.
>
>17 Kellermann AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB et al. "Gun ownership as a risk
>factor for homicide in the home." N Engl J Med. 1993; 329(15): 1084-91.
>
>18 Weil D. Firearm Design and Firearm Violence." JAMA 1996;276:1036.
>
>19 Kellermann AL. "Correspondence: Guns in the Home." NEJM. 1994; 330:368.
>
>20 Kassirer JP describing peer-reviewed publications critical of
>CDC-sponsored research as "howls of protest. from the National Rifle
>Association and its surrogatesx" in "A Partisan Assault on Science: the
>Threat to the CDC." NEJM. 1995;333793-794.
>
>21 Kellermann AL stating "Edgar Suter is philosophically closer to the
>militia movement than he is to the scientific community.". in McDonald RR.
>"Are Guns a Health Menace?" Atlanta Journal-Constitution. August 27, 1995.
>pages Q1-Q2.
>
>22 Kellermann AL stating "Had you bothered to ask any of a number of
>experts
>to review Kates' manuscript prior to publication, you would have learned
>that
>his views are closer to the militia movement than the mainstream scientific
>and legal communityx.You have embarrassed the University of Tennessee." in
>letter to Mahoney LA, Editor in Chief, Tennessee Law Review, responding to
>her offer of publication of a rebuttal to the Kates et al. "Pandemic of
>Propaganda" article [reference 6 above]. December 22, 1995.
>
>23 Bennett A and Sharpe A. "Health Hazard: AIDS Fight is Skewed by Federal
>Campaign Exaggerating Risks." Wall Street Journal. May 1, 1996. pages A-1 &
>A-6.
>
>
>
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