From EdgarSuter@aol.com Tue Mar 5 03:04:59 1996 From: EdgarSuter@aol.com Subject: Part 1 - lengthy DIPR NEWSLETTER - Disband CDC-NCIPC Content-Length: 23686 X-Lines: 446 Status: RO NEWSLETTER March 5, 1996 DOCTORS FOR INTEGRITY IN POLICY RESEARCH INC. 5201 Norris Canyon Road, Suite 220 San Ramon CA 94583 phone 510-277-0333 FAX 510-820-5118 e-mail EdgarSuter@aol.com ALERT: Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc. (DIPR), Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO), and Don B. Kates JD testify March 6 regarding CDC improprieties and substandard research Contents in brief: (1) background on the Centers for Disease Control - National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (CDC-NCIPC) (2) how to inform Congress of the need to disband CDC-NCIPC (3) brief update regarding allegations of gun research fraud by Gary Ordog MD and dangerous patient care recommendations made by the Journal of Trauma (4) suggested letters to the editor/op-ed exposing the "Pandemic of Propaganda" in the public health literature on guns and violence (5) obtaining Kleck & Gertz' National Self-Defense survey and other articles in the current issue of the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (6) Reorganization and Incorporation of Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc. We present the information on the CDC not merely for your passive edification and enjoyment. We provide the extensive background and documentation so that you may respond actively as we suggest in items (2) and (4). We also hope that you will support DIPR's work as suggested in item (6). (1) Background on the Centers for Disease Control - National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (CDC-NCIPC) In the last decade a large volume of material has been published in the medical and public health literature on the topic of guns and violence. Much of the material has been published in otherwise reputable medical journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Pediatrics, and the Journal of Trauma (J Trauma). Virtually all of the primary research has been funded with tax money funneled through CDC-NCIPC. Much of this flawed research has been uncritically accepted at face value and highly publicized by the anti-self-defense lobby and sympathetic media. The uncritical acceptance of the research and sound bites spun off from the research has compromised the ability to generate sound public policy. DIPR was organized to expose and correct flawed and politicized research that impacts on public policy, such as the medical and public health literature on guns and violence. Our article "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review" in the March 1994 Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia (JMAG) was not the first or the most comprehensive review of the exceptionally poor research funded by CDC-NCIPC. Our review was, however, the first such critical review to be published in the peer-reviewed medical literature. Two other articles followed, "'Assault Weapons' Revisited - An Analysis of the AMA Report" and "Violence in America - Effective Solutions." All three of these articles are available on-line by permission of JMAG. on the web at http://www.portal.com/~chan/ or by ftp at ftp://ftp.shell.portal.com/pub/chan/ As a brief aside not directly involving the CDC we note that in May of 1994 JAMA published an article by a group of New York City medical school academics [Adler KP, Barondess JA, Cohen JJ, Farber SJ et al. "Firearm Violence and Public Health: Limiting the Availability of Guns." JAMA 1994; 271(16):46-50.]. That article regurgitated the factoids and fallacies that have become the standard fare of the anti-self-defense lobby and their public health allies. Thirty-eight DIPR members, including medical school professors from several prestigious medical schools, authored a rebuttal, "Violence in America - Effective Solutions," that was submitted to JAMA. The piece was rejected by JAMA. After peer-review by JMAG, our article was accepted for publication. The then-editor of JMAG, Miguel Faria MD, also a Professor of Neurosurgery, insisted that _both_ sides of the argument be printed. With the permission of JAMA, JMAG published the original Adler article as well as our article. Immediately after publication, Dr. Faria was pressured into resigning as editor of JMAG. We are pleased to note that Dr. Faria is not so easily silenced --- he is now the editor of the Journal of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. Subsequently, in a meticulously documented 83 page article containing 368 references that certainly eclipses DIPR's work, three Harvard and Columbia Medical School Professors, a Professor of Biostatistics, and a criminologist scrutinized the medical literature. [Kates D, 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. --- available from the editor Ms. Micki Fox, Editor, Tennessee Law Review, U. Tenn College of Law, Dunford Hall, 915 Volunteer Blvd., Knoxville TN 37996-4070, phone 615-974-4464] They concluded that the medical literature displays "an emotional anti-gun agenda" and the studies 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 literature." Documented deviations from scientific practice include: endemic fact errors; conclusions based on "data" the authors subsequently refuse to divulge to scholars who desire to check it; assertions of "fact" buttressed by citations not to studies but to editorials, or publications by anti-gun lobbying groups (whose partisan affiliation is not revealed); and wholesale failure to mention or deal with contrary studies or data. Some anti-gun medical articles go to the extreme of falsifying facts and fabricating references to support them. CDC directors and CDC-funded researchers are among those criticized in the "Pandemic of Propaganda" article. Besides the CDC's funding of biased, politicized, substandard research, CDC directors such as Mark Rosenberg MD and James Mercy PhD have been boldly and unrepentantly participating in gun prohibition strategy meetings not only with public health gun prohibitionists, such as Katherine Kaufer Christoffel MD of Handgun Epidemic Lowering Program (HELP), but also with Sarah Brady of Handgun Control Inc. (HCI) and other prominent and not-so-prominent prohibitionists. For example, Dr. Rosenberg is listed as a member of Cease Fire, the Children's Defense Fund project that is responsible for the anti-self-defense Public Service Announcements that have been appearing on television and in movie theaters around the nation. Dr. Rosenberg and his colleagues at the CDC still maintain a media pose that they are merely objective researchers and concerned scientists. The 104th. Congress is not so easily deceived. DIPR, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO), and other organizations and individuals have worked for several years to educate Congress to the politicized, substandard research that is wasting _millions_ of tax dollars. We have also educated Congress to the gross evidence that CDC directors are using tax money to pay for political organizing, lobbying and strategizing. The CDC and their allies have nurtured the image that it is an NRA plot to unfund the CDC's NCIPC. CDC has pretended that DIPR (inaccurately described by the New England Journal of Medicine as NRA "surrogates") does not want any gun research conducted, implying that we are afraid of the results of honest gun research conducted by the "objective" scientists at the CDC and that we have a callous disregard for the lives of children lost. Our January 1, 1996 letter to Senator Specter, who chairs the committee overseeing CDC funding, sets the record straight. On March 6, 1996, the Eastern Director of DIPR, William C. Waters IV MD, DRGO's President, Timothy Wheeler MD, and others will be testifying about the outrageous [perhaps even criminal] activities of the CDC. Though we respect the traditional role of the CDC, the investigation and control of epidemics, we believe that the NCIPC is so contaminated and compromised by bias that it must be unfunded, dissolved, and any legitimate gun research activities be assumed by the National Institute of Justice, an agency that has been studying gun violence for decades before the CDC. January 1, 1996 The Honorable Arlen Specter Chairman Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Washington , D.C. 20510 Dear Senator Specter, I am writing on behalf of our organization to share with you some insights regarding the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC). Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research is a non-profit association of physicians from academia and the private sector which monitors federally-funded research to ensure that flaws in same do not adversely affect American public policy. While our organization has high regard for the traditional CDC and fully supports responsible, objective research concerning firearms violence, we have grave concerns regarding the activities of the NCIPC. Many members of the U.S. Senate have expressed to you their concern that activities and the design and conduct of research at the NCIPC seem to be affected by or based upon the political expedient that firearms control/prohibition is inherently desirable. In expressing their alarm, the Senators join a growing number of scholars from a variety of disciplines who are aware of the bias that seems to be prevalent within the NCIPC, and who are deeply concerned that unscientific bias will lead us to public policy disasters. We are aware that you have queried Dr. Satcher about this, and are familiar with his response. The basic complaint of our organization is that the NCIPC is not doing the job with which it was charged by Congress: to scientifically investigate the causes of violence and to propose solutions. We believe that it fails to do so because of unscientific bias. This bias is demonstrated in two major ways. First is the overt political activism of the NCIPC staff and their federally-funded researchers (see attachment). Second, as noted above, is that there seems to be a tacit assumption - perhaps even foundational concept - among many public health researchers that firearms prohibition/control provides a ready solution to many of society's ills. We believe that this view is expressed in the NCIPC's approach to the problem of violence, since the research performed is fantastically narrow in scope, excludes most of what is known about violence in human societies from consideration or study, and is often performed using abysmally poor methodology (see attachment). We have been extremely forthright and detailed in our criticisms of the public health research - among which that of the NCIPC (please see attached reprints) [included DIPR articles(1) Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review, (2) Assault Weapons Revisited - An Analysis of the AMA Report, and (3) Violence in America - Effective Solutions --- all three articles available on the web at http://www.portal.com/~chan/ or by ftp at ftp://ftp.shell.portal.com/pub/chan/] - regarding firearms and firearm violence, but no substantive defense has been offered, as would usually be the case in honest scientific discourse. We find Dr. Satcher's response to your inquiry to be similarly inadequate. What is being questioned is the basic quality and integrity of the research, not the desirability of studying firearms violence. There seems to be a tendency on the part of those defending the NCIPC to simply reiterate figures depicting the problem of firearms violence/injury as justification for the agency's existence. But there is a major difference between simple citation of firearms injury statistics and demonstration of a cogent plan of scientific intellect and labor to understand and deal with such a problem. Dr. Satcher's assertion that NCIPC research is peer-reviewed does not reassure those of us who understand the substantive issues at hand regarding bias and quality; indeed, quite the opposite sentiment is elicited. If partisan bias directs investigation into violence and other injury research in a skewed direction, flawed policy will result. If flawed policy obtains, public health will suffer. It is, then, not surprising that many concerned scientists and other scholars have sought to bring the NCIPC under control, with some calling for removing the funding of that division. It is crystal clear that profound changes within that section of the NCIPC dealing with violence are long overdue. We have provided below specific criticisms of the NCIPC for your review, as well as reprints of articles which we have published. We are happy to provide further commentary or to answer any questions which you or your staff may have. Sincerely, William C. Waters, IV, MD Eastern Director, DIPR Representative Criticisms Regarding the NCIPC NCIPC staff and funded researchers are quite active in meetings and organizations which are unequivocally political in nature. * For example, at the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP) conference in 1993 and again in 1995, NCIPC researchers and staff were faculty for this strategy conference, described by its organizer as uniting "concerned professionals" to assist in making it "socially unacceptable for private citizens to have handguns." * The University of Iowa hosted a conference in 1992 on firearms violence, the faculty of which were largely NCIPC employees or funded researchers. There were two striking features of this conference: 1. The conference was funded in part by CDC/NCIPC funds which were originally awarded to study rural and farm injuries. 2. The single non-academic conference faculty member was Sarah Brady. Basic information is not always accurately represented by NCIPC staff. Please see many examples in the attached "Comments by CDC Researchers and Employees Suggesting Bias in their Attitudes Regarding Firearms." NCIPC funds are used to support anti-firearms advocacy publications and activities. One example is the Injury Prevention Network Newsletter, which is published by the Trauma Foundation and supported by NCIPC/CDC funds. In the Spring, 1995 issue is found a number of disturbing items. One is the statement by its editor that the "shattered structure of the Federal office building in Oklahoma City bears mute testimony to how one segment of the pro-gun fringe intends to fight gun control." Another is a set of suggestions for anti-gun activists, including guidelines for picketing gun manufacturers, encouraging local support for gun control, etc. NCIPC researchers, breaching accepted practice in the scientific community, refuse to release their publicly-funded, original data to other scientists for critical review. Please see Kates, DB, et al. Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda? University of Tennessee Law Review. 513 (1995). The NCIPC approach to firearms/violence research is highly exclusionary, narrow in its focus, utilizes research models inappropriate to the subject under study, and thereby seems designed to produce preordained conclusions. Please see the attached reprints for background information. also, see Kates, et al as cited above. Comments by CDC Researchers and Employees Suggesting Bias in their Attitudes Regarding Firearms "Firearms play a central role in interpersonal violence" - Dr. Mark Rosenberg (Head of Injury Control Division) in Health Affairs, Winter, 1993: 11 [Of course, guns are used in 60-65% of murders, but this is a numerically small number of violent crimes. Guns are used in less than 13% of the 6.7 million rapes, robberies, and assaults - a statistic unreviewed by Dr. Rosenberg] "Since the early 1970s the year-to-year fluctuations in firearm availability has (sic) paralleled the numbers of homicides." - CDC researcher D.P. Rice, et al: Cost of Injury in the United States: A report to Congress (CDC, 1989): 23. [Of course, this is incorrect during many periods of recent US History. For example, the period 1974-88 was witness to a 69% increase in handgun ownership with a concomitant 14.2% decrease in homicide] "Handguns account for only 20% of the nation's firearms yet account for 90% of all firearms [mis]use, both criminal and accidental." - CDCs Diane Schetsky in vol. 139 American Journal of Diseases of Children (1985): 229. [This statement, which is patently false, was cited as having been extracted from the FBI's UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS. This is impossible, since this entity catalogs no data on gun ownership or gun type. It appears that this statement was fabricated, as no citation can be provided to substantiate the claim. One might presume that Schetsky was aware of this at the time.] "Guns also accounted for 97% of the huge increase in violence among men ages 15 to 19 from 1985 to 1991, Dr. Rosenberg said" As reported by Fox Butterfield, The New York Times, Oct 16, 1994: A23. (Regarding interview with the head of the CDCs Injury Control Division, Dr. Mark Rosenberg) [One of the central questions in the issue of firearms and violence is whether the presence of guns plays any role in homicide and other violent crimes. Stating the matter as Dr. Rosenberg did leaves one with the impression that it is a foregone conclusion that guns "account for" violence - hardly a defensible comment. We feel that this demonstrates the mind-set that "guns cause crime & violence" and the lack of a sophisticated approach to the problem of violence in the Injury Control Division of the CDC. Dr. Rosenberg said nothing about the guns in private hands during that same period which saved lives, nor did he mention that the groups in America which have the highest incidence of gun ownership have also the lowest rates of homicide.] ......regarding the same data: When the CDC released the data which are the basis of the above graph, they did not break the data down by race. This, according to Dr. Rosenberg, was because the CDC "did not want to give the impression that 'this is a racial problem. It is a national problem,' he said, 'with the same trends for whites and blacks, and the curve looks the same.'" The reader should have a look at the above graph and decide if Dr. Rosenberg is correctly representing the data and the issue at hand. [At public health-oriented gun control strategy meetings, such as the HELP conference in Chicago (at which both Dr. Rosenberg and the heavily CDC-funded Dr. Kellermann were speakers), one of several key conceptual topics was the need to make the firearms problem appear to be everyone's problem, and not just limited to certain socioeconomic groups. Since Dr. Rosenberg - even in this same article - decries firearms violence as an "epidemic," it strikes us as odd that he would wish to fail to identify the group affected by the "epidemic," leaving us to conclude that it may be because it is wished to advance the notion of a widespread problem.] Also regarding the above data, Dr. Rosenberg reassured readers that the enormous increase in homicide as depicted above "is not an epidemic of some vague evil or immorality, but it is specifically a problem of firearms deaths among young people." "Teen-age homicide rate has soared" The New York Times, Oct. 14, 1994, pg. A22. A CDC employee, (and then acting section head of the Division of Injury Control at the CDC) Dr. Patrick O'Carroll, insists that he was misquoted by the straightforward statement in that publication when the same JAMA article as cited above reported: "Bringing about 'gun control,' which itself covers a variety of activities from registration to confiscation, was not the specific reason for the section's creation, O'Carroll says. However, the facts themselves tend to make some form of regulation seem desirable, he says: 'The way we're going to do this is to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths.'" [We reiterate that Dr. O'Carroll said, in a later letter to the editor, that he was misquoted. However, he does not claim to have been misquoted in that same article when he said that "We're doing the most we can do, given the political realities." - JAMA, February 3, 1989; 261 (5):675.] Dr. Katherine Christoffel is not CDC funded or supported. She is, however, an anti-firearms activist who has occasionally published in the Pediatric/Public Health literature. She is known for the statement that "Guns are a virus that must be eradicated. We need to immunize ourselves against them." and "Get rid of the guns, get rid of the bullets, and you get rid of the deaths." ** She is also the founder of the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP) network, an organization which consists of "like-minded individuals who represent organizations ...[the goal of which is to] ..use a public health model to work toward changing society's attitude so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have handguns." [Personal communication (letter) to Edgar A. Suter MD, National Chair of DIPR, Sept 29, 1993.] We mention her to forward the following points: 1. About Dr. Christoffel and her efforts, Dr. Rosenberg, head of the CDCs Injury Control Division, said "Kathy Christoffel is saying about firearms injuries what has been said for years about AIDS: that we can no longer be silent. That silence equals death and she's not willing to be silent any more. She's asking for help." ["Gun Control as Immunization," American Medical News; January 3, 1994: 7] 2. Dr. Rosenberg and Dr. Kellermann (a very heavily CDC-funded researcher) were, as we mentioned above, both invited speakers at the first HELP conference in Chicago. 3. The reader should decide whether there is a uniformity of thought between comments made by Dr. Christoffel: "It is possible to ban guns. There's a precedent in cigarette smoking." ["Gun Control as Immunization," American Medical News; January 3, 1994: 7] and those of Dr. Rosenberg: "We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes.' "Now it is deadly, dirty, and banned." [ Quoted in William Raspberry "Sick People with Guns;" Washington Post, October 19, 1994, pg. A23.] CDC researchers Fingerhut and Kleinman commented in their 1989 study of deaths among children that "The Public Health Service has targeted violence as a priority concern.....There is a separate objective to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership..." Fingerhut LA and Kleinman JC; Firearm Mortality among Children and youth. Advance Data #178. NCHS November 3, 1989. In the late 80s a number of works appeared, authored by CDC employees, which concluded and estimated, prior to any thorough research on the topic, the numbers of lives and dollars saved by restricting access to firearms. These authors have gone on to do firearms research for the CDC, with one of them becoming section head. - see Rosenberg, ML, et al "Violence: Homicide, Assault, and Suicide," in Health Policy Consultation, eds. Closing the Gap. New York: Oxford, 1987: 164-178, and Rosenberg, ML, et al "Interpersonal Violence: Homicide and Spouse Abuse," in J.M. Last, ed. Public Health and Preventive Medicine, 12th Edition. Norwalk, Conn.: Appleton Century-Crofts: 1399-1426. Also, see Rice, DP, et al Cost of Injury in the United States: A report to Congress. Atlanta, CDC, 1989. parts 2-6 follow From EdgarSuter@aol.com Tue Mar 5 03:05:02 1996 From: EdgarSuter@aol.com Subject: Part 2 - lengthy DIPR NEWSLETTER - Disband CDC-NCIPC Content-Length: 11238 X-Lines: 276 Status: RO NEWSLETTER (continued) (2) how to inform Congress of the need to unfund CDC-NCIPC Please contact each and every member of the House Appropriations Committee listed below advising them of the CDC's political lobbying and substandard research on gun violence. Tell them that the CDC's NCIPC should be disbanded and their gun violence research should be conducted by the National Institute of Justice. A sample letter follows: Dear Rep. Livingston, I support the disbanding of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), reassigning current NCIPC funding and research responsibilities to more competent and less politicized agencies. There is considerable evidence that Directors at the CDC and NCIPC are illegally lobbying for gun control using tax money. For example, Mark Rosenberg MD, Director of the NCIPC, is listed in his official capacity as a member of Handgun Epidemic Lowering Program (HELP), a political group dedicated to eliminating private handgun ownership. He has also participated in his official capacity in gun prohibition strategy planning conferences and lobbying with HELP, Cease Fire, Handgun Control Inc., and other such gun prohibition lobbying groups. On at least one occasion, he has used diverted funds intended for the study of farm injuries to pay for promotion of a gun control conference. Additionally several articles in the peer-reviewed medical, legal, and criminological literature (such as the articles by Kates et al. in the Tennessee Law Review and by Suter et al. in the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia) have demonstrated an unbroken pattern of politicized and substandard research on gun violence promoted by NCIPC and funded with tax dollars. It is no accident that NCIPC-funded research marches in lockstep with the political views of Drs. Rosenberg, Mercy, and Satcher at the CDC. Though the research has been funded with tax money, CDC's researchers, such as Dr. Arthur Kellermann, have repeatedly refused to make "their" data available for peer scrutiny. I support gun violence research, but believe that it should be conducted under the auspices of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). NIJ has decades of experience in conducting such research competently and without political bias. Other areas of injury research such as traffic or farm injuries are duplicated by NCIPC. As the National Institute of Justice is best qualified to study vehicle injuries, I believe that the Department of Agriculture is best qualified to study farm injuries, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration is best qualified to study vehicle injuries, and Occupational Health and Safety Administration is best qualified to study work-related injuries. Again, I urge you to disband the NCIPC and transfer the research funding and responsibility to agencies that can competently perform the research without the political taint that has irreparably stained the NCIPC. Thank you. Respectfully yours, Your name (and degrees and affiliations, if any) Please write, FAX, or e-mail: Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) Chairman, House Appropriations Committee US House of Representatives Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-3015 FAX 202-225-0739 e-mail not listed Rep. David R. Obey (D-WI) Ranking Minority Member, House Appropriations Committee US House of Representatives Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-3365 FAX not listed e-mail not listed Correspondence to Chairman Livingston and Rep. Obey should be directed to the committee address above. The Congressmen below should be contacted at their private offices. Rep. John Edward Porter (R-IL) (Rep. Porter was thanked by HCI in their most recent newsletter for saving NCIPC! As Chair of the subcommittee overseeing CDC funding, his help was invaluable to NCIPC. NCIPC would already be gone if it were not for Rep. Porter) 2373 Longworth House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-4835 fax & e-mail not listed Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX) 1427 Longworth House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-4511 fax 202-225-2237 e-mail not listed Rep. Ernest Jim Istook (R-OK) 230 Cannon House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-3772 fax 202-226-1463 e-mail istook@hr.house.gov Rep. Dan Miller (R-FL) 2205 Rayburn House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-2095 fax 202-226-0828 e-mail not listed Rep. Jay Dickey (R-AR) 230 Cannon House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-3772 fax 202-225-1314 e-mail jdickey@hr.house.gov Rep. Frank Riggs (R-CA) 1714 Longworth House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202- 225-3311 fax 202-225-7710 e-mail not listed Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS) 206 Cannon House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-4306 fax 202-225-3549 e-mail not listed Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young (R-FL) 2407 Rayburn House Office Building Washington DC 20515 phone 202-225-5961 fax 202-225-9764 e-mail not listed (3) brief update regarding allegations of gun research fraud by Gary Ordog MD and dangerous patient care recommendation made by the Journal of Trauma Knowledge of the incredibly poor quality of the research being used to promote gun prohibition is growing, particularly in the academic community. The popular press is only beginning to recognize the extent of the problem. In a soon upcoming newsletter, DIPR will expose one of the most recent and most egregious frauds to come to light --- the total fabrication of "data" for an article on guns in the journal, Academic Emergency Medicine [in this case, the research was not funded by CDC] by one of the most prolific of the medial literature's gun researchers, Gary Ordog MD. Though Ordog's research has been extensively and justifiably criticized previously, the Journal of Trauma, where many of Ordog's articles have been published, has refused to publish the criticisms. The Journal of Trauma has also been criticized for publishing recommendations for dangerous and substandard care of "assault weapon" wounds, but the current editor, Basil Pruitt MD, has refused to correct the dangerous and discredited recommendations. These issues will be explored and documented by DIPR in the next newsletter. 4) suggested letters to the editor/op-ed exposing the "Pandemic of Propaganda" in the public health literature on guns and violence We believe that it is important to widen understanding of the flawed medical literature on guns. As one facet of the education campaign, we propose a campaign to generate letters to the editor and guest editorials ("op-ed" pieces) _even_in_small_newspapers. Generally, one merely needs to mail, fax, or e-mail the letter for consideration of publication. For op-ed pieces, however, it is particularly efficacious to call the op-ed editor of the newspaper in which you want your piece published. This calls attention to your piece, increasing your chances of publication and also offers an opportunity for you to politely inform that editor about these issues. We offer the following "boilerplate" letter: Dear Editor, I have long been puzzled by the increasing divergence between criminological findings on gun control and the invariably anti-gun articles in medical journals. Criminologists conclude gun control has limited value and that outright gun bans are actually harmful: The dangerous people whom it is desirable to disarm will not comply, the law abiding who will comply are not dangerous, and disarming them only leaves them defenseless against felonious attack. These points are summarized in Professor Kleck's POINT BLANK: GUNS AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICA, a book the American Society of Criminology hailed as the premier work of criminological research so far in this decade. In contrast, the anti-gun medical literature is the subject of a very negative evaluation by a criminologist, a biostatistician and professors from Harvard and Columbia Medical Schools. They find that anti-gun medical articles display "an emotional anti-gun 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 literature." Documented deviations from scientific practice include: endemic fact errors; conclusions based on "data" the authors subsequently refuse to divulge to scholars who desire to check it; assertions of "fact" buttressed by citations not to studies but to editorials, or publications by anti-gun lobbying groups (whose partisan affiliation is not revealed); and wholesale failure to mention or deal with contrary studies or data. Some anti-gun medical articles go to the extreme of falsifying facts and fabricating references to support them. This evaluation is provided in an article titled "Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda" which takes up 83 pages (with 368 footnotes) of the TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW, v. 62, # 3 (1995). Copies of the entire issue (a symposium on gun control which includes articles by criminologists and constitutional scholars) are available from Tennessee Law Review, Dunford Hall, 901 Volunteer Blvd., Knoxville, TN 37996-1800. Respectfully, Your name (and degrees and affiliations, if any) (5) obtaining Kleck & Gertz' National Self-Defense survey and other articles in the current issue of the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology This issue of the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology also includes the McDowall, Loftin, & Wiersema article on Concealed Carry Reform and Northwestern University Law Professor Daniel Polsby's rebuttals. This issue and the issue of the Tennessee Law Review (which also includes Cramer & Kopel's article on Concealed Carry Reform and can be obtained as noted above) will frame the gun debate for the next decade. To be an effective activist you _need_ both these symposia. Request the Volume 86 #1 issue and send $10 to: Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology Northwestern University School of Law 357 East Chicago Avenue Chicago IL 60611-3069 (6) In 1995 Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, Inc. became a 501c(4) non-profit corporation. To simplify management of the corporation we eliminated dues and membership (previously $100 per year). As a practical matter, of course, we need supporters and donations. While we are increasingly relying upon e-mail, the Worldwide Web, and other Internet services, most of our correspondence and reprints are hardcopy and are distributed by expensive postal and express services. Archiving materials is now a nearly unmanageable problem. We are already invested in Macintosh technology and are in need of upgrades as well as a scanner, high-end scanning software (for journal articles), and magneto-optical storage. We badly need your donations (Sorry, not tax deductible. 501c(4) corporations can lobby). No donation is too small. Any donor of $100 or more will receive a packet of DIPR reprints. Please note our new suite number. I thank you and I apologize in advance for the "SPAM." Edgar A. Suter MD National Chair Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc. 5201 Norris Canyon Road, Suite 220 San Ramon CA 94583 USA phone 510-277-0333 FAX 510-820-5118 e-mail EdgarSuter@aol.com