We should have known Donald Trump's pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services would have total quack ties. Rep. Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon, is apparently a respected member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Sounds prestigious, right? Wrong. It's the organization that served as a basis for all those Breitbart and InfoWars stories questioning why the media was "Strangely Silent" on Hillary Clinton's fitness for office. In other words, a total conspiracy theory propaganda organization that has also pushed anti-vaxxer theories, HIV/AIDS denialism, and spread other medical information. TalkingPoints Memo writes:
AAPS, established in 1943, aims “to fight socialized medicine and to fight the government takeover of medicine” and in its statement of principles urges members to refuse to treat Medicare patients, reasoning government involvement in healthcare is “evil” and “immoral." The group also rejects required vaccination programs in schools.
The group's publication, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, also has publicized a variety of dubious or debunked medical theories over the years. One 2005 article in AAPS' journal advocated for rescinding the citizenship of so-called “anchor babies,” or the children of undocumented immigrants, who it claimed were responsible for increased leprosy rates. Other articles pushed the myth of a link between vaccines and autism, suggested a link between abortion and breast cancer, and questioned the relationship between HIV and AIDS. The group also once urged the U.S. Supreme Court to release post-mortem photos of Vince Foster, the Bill Clinton White House counsel whose suicide conspiracy theorists believe actually was an assassination. An article separately posted on AAPS’ website even speculated that President Obama’s oratory could in fact be a form of hypnosis, suggesting that he won the presidency by hypnotizing impressionable voters like young people and Jews.
AAPS helped give credibility (a term I use loosely here) to early efforts to oppose Obamacare. Tom Price appeared at AAPS-sponsored rallies alongside the group’s president at the time, Mark Kellen. The group also played a role in defeating Hillary Clinton’s healthcare overhaul in the ‘90s, and it reportedly “requires members to sign a ‘declaration of independence’ agreeing to stop participating with any third-party payers—meaning not only government programs like Medicare, but private insurers, too.” Now one of their own will likely be in charge of the GOP-led effort to strip millions of people of their health care without a replacement plan in sight.