Story
AMA Hemorrhages Members
NewsMax.com
Monday, July 10, 2000
The American Medical Association, once the powerhouse in the world of medicine, has lost half its membership over the last 30 years and is still hemorrhaging thousands of its members every year. Today a mere one-third of American doctors now belong to the organization.
According to the Cato Institute’s Steven Milloy, writing for Fox News, there’s a good reason why more doctors are heading for the doors: "The AMA has turned goofy: now the association is asking the Food and Drug Administration to make homes safer for germs."
Milloy notes that the AMA has gotten black eyes over a string of goofs such as:
Having to cough up a cool $10 million to Sunbeam Corp. for welshing on a deal to endorse one of the company’s products;
Publishing a survey during President Clinton's impeachment reporting that college students didn't think oral sex was really sex;
Having to fire the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) for running the piece, widely seen as a defense of Clinton’s behavior.
The latest AMA foray into the world of junk science is an attempt to shift the blame for the shocking increase in the number of drug-resistant bacteria from doctors who, as Fox reports, "hand out antibiotics like candy" by blaming household cleansers.
The growing increase in the number of drug-resistant bacteria has alarmed the World Health Organization, which notes that such once-treatable diseases as gonorrhea, tuberculosis and malaria could become incurable as a result. The WHO says that food poisoning, for example, is now more difficult to treat with antibiotics. Hospital infections, which kill an estimated 88,000 patients annually, often resist at least one antibiotic.
Says Fox News: "The bacteria streptococcus pneumoniae, the cause of most acute ear infections in U.S. children, was susceptible to all penicillins and cephalosporins until 1974. By 1996, 21 percent and 9.3 percent of pneumococci resisted those drugs."
Although the problem of drug resistance isn't new, the WHO's sense of alarm points the finger of blame at what it says is one of the major causes of the problem: physicians who prescribe unnecessary antibiotic drugs.
The WHO says haphazard prescribing causes drugs to lose effectiveness almost as quickly as they are discovered. David Heymann, WHO's communicable disease program chief, told Fox News, "[we] may only have a decade or two to make use of many of the medicines presently available to stop infectious diseases."
The AMA’s prescription to eliminate drug resistance: a campaign to get the FDA to speed up regulation of such germ-fighting consumer products as hand lotions, soaps and body washes even though there isn’t a shred of scientific evidence these products have caused any increase in the growing drug resistance.
Said Dr. Charles Gerba, professor of Environmental Microbiology at the University of Arizona and a world renowned expert on bacteria. "The American Medical Association's caution to consumers about using anti-microbial soaps and washes is a mistake," he told Fox.
"It is irresponsible for credible medical professionals to dismiss the entire category of anti-microbial products that fight disease-causing germs based on speculative scientific theories.
"Such products dramatically reduce the risk of contracting infections from common bacteria, such as salmonella or E. coli, in the home," Gerba added.
Fox reports that the AMA is fully aware of the problem of antibiotic drug overuse. They note that a study in JAMA recently showed that doctors wrote 12 million antibiotic prescriptions for colds, bronchitis and other respiratory infections over the course of just one year. And the study noted that more than 90 percent of such infections are caused by viruses immune to the effects of antibiotics.
Yet another recent study in JAMA concluded as many as half of all antibiotic prescriptions are not needed.
"The major problem is the overuse of antibiotic [medicines]," said Dr. Stuart Levy of Tufts University Medical School in Boston. Levy has been warning about the problem of drug-resistant germs for more than a decade.
"We've been fighting germs since Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease in 1864, and enjoying tremendous success," Milloy concluded. "Now we need to solve the problem of antibiotic resistance. But instead of fighting bacteria by educating its members, the AMA has opted to befriend bacteria by fighting home hygiene."
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~USP
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998
[This message has been edited by USP45 (edited July 10, 2000).]
AMA Hemorrhages Members
NewsMax.com
Monday, July 10, 2000
The American Medical Association, once the powerhouse in the world of medicine, has lost half its membership over the last 30 years and is still hemorrhaging thousands of its members every year. Today a mere one-third of American doctors now belong to the organization.
According to the Cato Institute’s Steven Milloy, writing for Fox News, there’s a good reason why more doctors are heading for the doors: "The AMA has turned goofy: now the association is asking the Food and Drug Administration to make homes safer for germs."
Milloy notes that the AMA has gotten black eyes over a string of goofs such as:
Having to cough up a cool $10 million to Sunbeam Corp. for welshing on a deal to endorse one of the company’s products;
Publishing a survey during President Clinton's impeachment reporting that college students didn't think oral sex was really sex;
Having to fire the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) for running the piece, widely seen as a defense of Clinton’s behavior.
The latest AMA foray into the world of junk science is an attempt to shift the blame for the shocking increase in the number of drug-resistant bacteria from doctors who, as Fox reports, "hand out antibiotics like candy" by blaming household cleansers.
The growing increase in the number of drug-resistant bacteria has alarmed the World Health Organization, which notes that such once-treatable diseases as gonorrhea, tuberculosis and malaria could become incurable as a result. The WHO says that food poisoning, for example, is now more difficult to treat with antibiotics. Hospital infections, which kill an estimated 88,000 patients annually, often resist at least one antibiotic.
Says Fox News: "The bacteria streptococcus pneumoniae, the cause of most acute ear infections in U.S. children, was susceptible to all penicillins and cephalosporins until 1974. By 1996, 21 percent and 9.3 percent of pneumococci resisted those drugs."
Although the problem of drug resistance isn't new, the WHO's sense of alarm points the finger of blame at what it says is one of the major causes of the problem: physicians who prescribe unnecessary antibiotic drugs.
The WHO says haphazard prescribing causes drugs to lose effectiveness almost as quickly as they are discovered. David Heymann, WHO's communicable disease program chief, told Fox News, "[we] may only have a decade or two to make use of many of the medicines presently available to stop infectious diseases."
The AMA’s prescription to eliminate drug resistance: a campaign to get the FDA to speed up regulation of such germ-fighting consumer products as hand lotions, soaps and body washes even though there isn’t a shred of scientific evidence these products have caused any increase in the growing drug resistance.
Said Dr. Charles Gerba, professor of Environmental Microbiology at the University of Arizona and a world renowned expert on bacteria. "The American Medical Association's caution to consumers about using anti-microbial soaps and washes is a mistake," he told Fox.
"It is irresponsible for credible medical professionals to dismiss the entire category of anti-microbial products that fight disease-causing germs based on speculative scientific theories.
"Such products dramatically reduce the risk of contracting infections from common bacteria, such as salmonella or E. coli, in the home," Gerba added.
Fox reports that the AMA is fully aware of the problem of antibiotic drug overuse. They note that a study in JAMA recently showed that doctors wrote 12 million antibiotic prescriptions for colds, bronchitis and other respiratory infections over the course of just one year. And the study noted that more than 90 percent of such infections are caused by viruses immune to the effects of antibiotics.
Yet another recent study in JAMA concluded as many as half of all antibiotic prescriptions are not needed.
"The major problem is the overuse of antibiotic [medicines]," said Dr. Stuart Levy of Tufts University Medical School in Boston. Levy has been warning about the problem of drug-resistant germs for more than a decade.
"We've been fighting germs since Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease in 1864, and enjoying tremendous success," Milloy concluded. "Now we need to solve the problem of antibiotic resistance. But instead of fighting bacteria by educating its members, the AMA has opted to befriend bacteria by fighting home hygiene."
------------------
~USP
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998
[This message has been edited by USP45 (edited July 10, 2000).]