Time: Sun Mar 16 12:25:48 1997
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Sun, 16 Mar 1997 10:17:19 -0700 (MST)
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 12:24:21 -0800
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Web of Fraud and Deceit (fwd)
<snip>
> WEB OF FRAUD AND DECEIT
>
>
>by Dr. Joanne D. Eisen and Dr. Paul Gallant
>
>1 A FLY IN THE OINTMENT
>
> "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we
> practice to deceive!"
>
> Sir Walter Scott penned those words 150 years ago. But he
>must have had a crystal ball to see into the 1990s, because he
>sure pegged the medical politicians of America's
>anti-self-defense lobby to a tee!
>
> We're going to untangle this web for you.
>
> One of the dictums of medicine has always been "Do your
>patient no harm". Yet, there are some doctors in high places
>who are doing just that. For there are medical "professionals"
>in this country who have, by their actions, truly aligned
>themselves on the side of the criminals who prey upon society,
>both the common street-variety of criminal, as well as the
>government-variety.
>
> They've done this by corrupting a once-prestigious body of
>medical literature with lies and fraudulent studies, in the name
>of "public health". They've suppressed and distorted legitimate
>research on firearms and violence when it disagrees with their
>own preconceived notions.
>
> They've even gone so far as to force the resignation of the
>only editor of a medical journal who dared print the truth ---
>Dr. Miguel Faria was editor of the Journal of the Medical
>Association of Georgia [JMAG] until the summer of 1995. Dr.
>Faria's resignation was forced, not because he was an
>incompetent editor, but because he refused to mix politics with
>medicine [see sidebar].
>
> These unscrupulous doctors have done all this to achieve a
>goal of civilian disarmament. Well, Hippocratic Oath or not, if
>they succeed, the medical politicians will have done irreparable
>harm to their collective "patient" --- America's law-abiding
>citizens.
>
>2 BLACK IS WHITE, RIGHT?
>
> Just as the spider meticulously spins his web, strand by
>strand, the medical politicians have used their journals ---
>JAMA, NEJM, Trauma, Pediatrics --- and some government agencies
>--- the CDC --- to spin their own intricate web of fraud and
>deceit. But the target of this web is a different sort of prey
>--- it's guns --- our guns! And gun-owners!
>
> Each strand in the medical politicians' web is another lie,
>couched in "scientific" language. Each lie is systematically
>leaked to willing accomplices in the media, and heralded as a
>great new medical discovery. Each lie is accepted, and repeated
>ad nauseum, until liberal folk who, often unfamiliar with
>firearms, become fearful of those who themselves, casually and
>naturally, regard firearms as tools, as beloved collectibles, as
>sporting equipment, and most importantly, as emergency
>equipment.
>
> Law-abiding American gun-owners have been told that WE are
>the murderers in society, that WE are responsible for all of
>America's problems. We're told guns are "dangerous", and that
>if you own a gun, it'll more than likely be used against you!
>We're told that if you own a gun, you're magically going to
>become transformed into some raging, homicidal sociopath. We're
>told, in short, that no thinking, caring, civilized person
>should even want to own one of these horrible things in the
>first place!
>
> And, to make sure we buy all this malarkey, the medical
>politicians whip up "studies" designed to "prove" their lies,
>and tell us black is white, and white is black.
>
> It is said that "figures lie, and liars figure", and while
>the anti-self-defense lobby relies on the "new" math to figure,
>the old math works just fine to debunk the figures of the
>medical politicians. Most of the tricks used to try to fool us
>are not difficult to understand. The tough part comes in
>identifying, in a particular study, just which tricks are
>employed by these charlatans to skew the results to their
>desired conclusion. Here's some of the "how".
>
>3 A SAMPLE OF BIAS
>
> As an example, scientific studies depend on sampling
>procedures --- that means taking a small portion of the whole,
>and using it to base conclusions about the whole from that small
>portion which was actually chosen. If that sample is large
>enough, and selected properly, it will represent the whole well
>enough for most purposes. But, instead of using scientifically
>rigorous representative samples, unscrupulous researchers often
>use small, carefully selected, non-representative samples, so
>that they can build their bias into the study from the very
>start. Then, by using data from those unrepresentative samples,
>they extrapolate their conclusions to the whole.
>
> Suppose, for example, we consider a shipment of "fruit",
>equally divided into apples and oranges. Apples are high in
>pectin, and low in Vitamin C. Oranges, on the other hand, are
>higher in Vitamin C, and lower in pectin. However, we could
>design a "study" which will "prove" that apples are as high in
>Vitamin C as oranges are. All we'd need to do is carefully
>select samples of the "fruit" in our shipment, making sure that
>we only choose the oranges, and use them as our "representative
>fruit sample". Once we determine the Vitamin C content of those
>oranges, we can then project the Vitamin C content of this
>"fruit" "sample" back to the entire shipment of "fruit".
>
> Voila! "New Medical Studies Prove Apples Are Just As Good A
>Source of Vitamin C as Oranges Are."
>
> We could devise a similarly dishonest "study" to "prove"
>that apples and oranges have the same pectin content.
>
> Honest researchers take into account the entire shipment.
>Dishonest ones generally don't. And, they won't tell you that,
>either!
>
>4 OF DARKNESS AND ICICLES
>
> Another example of the statistical chicanery used by the
>medical politicians is called the "post-hoc" fallacy. This
>trick is often camouflaged by a wealth of impressive, but
>irrelevant, statistics cited within a study. The post-hoc
>fallacy goes like this: If "A" follows "B", then "B" has caused
>"A". A variation of this occurs when there may be some
>legitimate relationship between the variables "A" and "B", but
>it is not possible to be sure which is the cause, and which is
>the effect.
>
> For example, it is always darker on each successive 3rd
>Thursday between the months of October and December. Suppose we
>measure the temperature on each 3rd Thursday of these months ---
>it is highly likely that the 3rd Thursday in November will be
>colder than the 3rd Thursday in October, and the 3rd Thursday in
>December will be even colder.
>
> Voila --- "Researchers Make New Discovery: Studies show
>that the darker it is, the colder it is!" Just think of the
>money that the manufacturers of energy-efficient [plugless]
>refrigerators could rake in by marketing a large, dark box!
>Sounds silly? Well, when the equation reads "more guns = more
>crime", the logic's the same, but that one apparently doesn't
>sound quite so silly to some people.
>
>5 WHO'S LYING HERE?
>
> Sometimes, finding the truth can seem an almost impossible
>task. Sometimes, it's a matter of one person's word against
>another, with no other witnesses to help set the record
>straight. Today, we have two camps of medical scientists, and
>each tells a different story. One side says guns are bad. The
>other says guns are only tools --- it's some people who are bad.
>If one camp is telling the truth, the other must be lying. But
>which one?
>
> Sometimes, it's easy enough to tell who the liar is, and
>one doesn't need 20/20 vision, or a PhD, to see through the web
>--- just some plain, old-fashioned common sense.
>
> In 1986, a study by a Dr. Arthur Kellermann was published
>in the New England Journal of Medicine [NEJM] which claimed
>something rather incredible to us gun-owners --- this study said
>that "a gun-owner is 43 times more likely to kill a family
>member than an intruder." Yet, another group of medical
>scientists said this was simply not true.
>
> Who's the liar? You make the call. Hint: The authors of
>this study used the bad-guy body-count as the sole measure of
>the protective benefits of guns --- totally ignoring the lives
>saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs saved, and the
>property protected by the presence of a gun.
>
> Just 5 years later, in 1991, another study appeared in the
>NEJM authored by Colin Loftin, PhD, which, to us gun-owners,
>told another incredible tale --- it said that in Washington DC,
>the city's ban on all handguns, rifles and shotguns, led to a
>reduction of violent crime in the nation's capitol. And, again,
>another group of medical scientists said that this was simply
>not true.
>
> Who's the liar here? You make the call. Hint: Just 2 years
>after the NEJM published this "study", the mayor of Washington
>DC proposed that the National Guard be called in to patrol the
>streets of Washington D.C. to keep what little was left of the
>"peace".
>
> Fast forward to 1993. Yet another study appeared in the
>NEJM, also authored by Arthur Kellermann, claiming this time
>that "a gun-owner is 2.7 times more likely to kill a family
>member than an intruder". And, again, another group of medical
>scientists said this was simply not true, either.
>
> Who's the liar? Again, you make the call. Hint: Kellermann
>lumped the good guys with the bad guys, and called the bad guys
>"victims". Kellermann had the unmitigated chutzpah to label
>perpetrators killed by the police, in the line of duty, as
>"victims"!
>
> The claim that a firearm ban could somehow lower the rate
>of violent crime in Washington DC was outrageous. That "a
>gun-owner is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than
>an intruder" was equally so. In hoping to create a more
>plausible hoax, Kellermann merely re-cooked the statistics on a
>lower flame in order to come up with his "2.7" number.
>
> What gave Kellermann the confidence to think he could get
>away with the perpetration of such a hoax? Banking on the high
>esteem most Americans hold their doctors in, Kellermann betrayed
>this trust, and in the process, gave Americans corrupted,
>statistical and scientific horse-puckey!
>
> One additional hint --- a week after publication of this
>study, during his presentation to a firearm-prohibition advocacy
>group, Kellermann made an emotional admission of his already
>well- known anti-gun bias!
>
>6 NOT ALL THE SAME
>
> In this indictment of the medical politicians of the
>anti-self-defense lobby, we'd hate to leave you with the
>impression that all doctors come from the same mold as the
>Kellermanns and the Loftins. They don't. In fact, there are
>some true American patriots within the medical community in the
>vanguard of the counter-assault against the web of fraud and
>deceit of the medical politicians.
>
> In stark contrast, Dr. Edgar Suter is a once-unassuming
>family doctor from California. Now, Dr. Suter is the
>outspoken, foremost expert on firearms and violence in the
>medical literature on firearms today. He is, not so
>coincidentally, also Chairman of Doctors for Integrity in Policy
>Research.
>
> In the June 1995 Journal of the Medical Association of
>Georgia, Dr. Suter wrote:
>
> It is increasingly common to hear that 'guns are a
> virus', or discussion of the 'bullet as pathogen'. As
> appealing as the claim may be to some, guns are not
> pathogens, and crime is not a disease. Crime is a
> social problem that does not lend itself to analysis
> or treatment under the medical model.
>
> Treating crime as a disease --- the essence of the
> 'public health' approach to gun violence --- is as
> illogical and ineffectual as the converse --- treating
> disease as a crime. It is a distorted concept,
> indeed, that the rights of good people, the most
> virtuous and productive citizens, should be defined
> --- or more precisely, restrained --- by the criminal
> actions of predators in our society."
>
> In 1994, there was a study published in the Journal of the
>Medical Association of Georgia, authored by Dr. Edgar Suter:
>Guns in the Medical Literature --- A Failure of Peer Review".
>Calling most of the medical literature on firearms "politicized,
>incompetent results-oriented research", Dr. Suter concluded:
>
> Errors of fact, design, and interpretation abound in
> the medical literature on guns and violence. The
> overwhelming preponderance of data we have examined
> shows that between 25 to 75 lives may be saved by a
> gun for every life lost to a gun. Guns save far more
> lives than they cost.
>
> Again, another group of medical scientists says that this
>was simply not true. Who's the liar?
>
> Go ahead --- you make the cal
>"death-wish"!
>
> The Centers for Disease Control's National Center for
>Injury Prevention and Control [NCIPC] is funded by you and me.
>Since 1992, millions of the CDC's annual budget for injury
>prevention and control have gone to "research" on gun injuries
>and studies on how handgun availability affects homicide rates.
>Even more specifically, over the last few years, the CDC has
>funded the politically driven, scientifically-corrupt
>firearms-related "research" of Dr. Arthur Kellermann with over
>$1.7 million of YOUR money! The CDC also funds newsletters that
>urge people to lobby for "gun-control".
>
> A 1989 article in JAMA quoted a CDC official's statement
>that his work there involved "systematically building a case
>that owning firearms causes death." And, in the words of NCIPC's
>own director, Dr. Mark Rosenberg, he "envisions a long term
>campaign, similar to tobacco use and auto safety, to convince
>Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health
>menace." It couldn't be stated more plainly.
>
>2 A DIFFERENT BREED
>
> In contrast to the phonies like Kellermann and Rosenberg,
>there are some concerned medical doctors out there who do take
>the Hippocratic Oath to heart, and put their patients' welfare
>above all else. These are "working" physicians --- they have
>practices to tend to, and real patients to care for. Their
>activities to preserve our Constitution and its Second Amendment
>are funded, in contrast, by their own incomes, and by
>individual, concerned private citizens, not by government grants
>that allow them to sit in an office all day and think up ways to
>do us gun-owners in.
>
> Some of the medical doctor-players in the fight against the
>politicization of American medicine:
>
> Dr. Edgar Suter is a family doctor, and the Chairman
> of Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, a
> nationwide group of health- care professionals --- the
> name says it all!
>
> Dr. Miguel A. Faria, Jr. is a Prof. of
> Neurosurgery and Adjunct Prof. of Medical History at
> Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon,
> Georgia. Dr. Faria fled the shores of Castro's
> persecution, and knows, firsthand, all about the price
> of Liberty and freedom.
>
> Dr. Martin Fackler is the foremost authority on wound
> ballistics. He is a tenacious fighter against the
> tide of politically-correct medical "opinion" when it
> comes to the diagnosis and treatment of gun-shot
> wounds.
>
> Dr. Timothy Wheeler is Chairman of Doctors for
> Responsible Gun Ownership, a California-based
> nationwide group of like-minded physicians.
>
> Dr. Sarah Thompson is Executive Director of Women
> Against Gun- Control. Unlike the other "Sarah", Dr.
> Thompson does not pull in thousands of dollars every
> time she opens her mouth in public. When not treating
> patients, Dr. Thompson works tirelessly on our
> behalf.
>
>
>3 NO, NOT "TEFLON BULLETS"
>
> Spiders are usually helpful to man --- their webs catch
>insects which are ultimately harmful to our food crops. In this
>case, however, the web's function is less benevolent, for this
>web is spun to catch and destroy the truth, and our guns, in the
>process.
>
> The web of fraud and deceit is badly in need of a teflon
>coating, so the lies can't stick anymore. But a good,
>Dr. Paul Gallant is engaged in the private practice of Family
>Optometry, Wesley Hills, NY. He is Chairman, Committee for Law-
>Abiding Gun-Owners, Rockland [LAGR], a 2nd Amendment grassroots
>PAC based in Rockland County, NY.
>
>The authors may be reached at: LAGR, P.O. Box 354, Thiells, NY
>10984-0354.
>
> --- --- ---
>COPYRIGHT 1997 by Conservative Consensus (unless otherwise
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Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S. : Counselor at Law, federal witness
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