Trump’s HHS Nominee Is An Anti-Vaxxer Who Says Obama Hypnotized American Voters

Georgia Congressman Tom Price, who has been named to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services by President-elect Donald Trump is, to put it mildly, a real piece of work. He supports repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), thinks Medicare and Medicaid should be eliminated, and is also a proud homophobe.

Price, an orthopedic surgeon by trade, also belongs to what sounds like an impressive group known as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). The AAPS is a far right group of Tea Party crazies who, among other ridiculous beliefs, has said that President Obama hypnotized voters into casting ballots for him in 2008 and 2012. Mother Jones reporter Stephanie Mencimer researched and wrote about the AAPS in an article entitled, “The Tea Party’s Favorite Doctors,” and this is part of what she found:

“The docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society. Think Glenn Beck with an MD. The group (which did not return calls for comment for this story) has been around since 1943. Some of its former leaders were John Birchers, and its political philosophy comes straight out of Ayn Rand. Its general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis. The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is ‘evil’ and ‘immoral’ for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, and its journal is a repository for quackery. Its website features claims that tobacco taxes harm public health and electronic medical records are a form of ‘data control’ like that employed by the East German secret police. An article on the AAPS website speculated that Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing voters, especially cohorts known to be susceptible to ‘neurolinguistic programming’—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.”

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg for this extremist collection of so-called doctors. Mencimer also reveals this about Price’s shadowy group:

“(The AAPS practices) dangerous medical quackery, such as antivaccine pseudoscience blaming vaccines for autism, including a view that is extreme even among antivaccine activists, namely that the ‘shaken baby syndrome’ is a ‘misdiagnosis’ for vaccine injury; its HIV/AIDS denialism; its blaming immigrants for crime and disease; its promotion of the pseudoscience claiming that abortion causes breast cancer using some of the most execrable ‘science’ ever; its rejection of evidence-based guidelines as an unacceptable affront on the godlike autonomy of physicians; or the way the AAPS rejects even the concept of a scientific consensus about anything.”

So Tom Price is in line to be in charge of health policy in the United States. Take a good look at this charlatan and ask yourself this: Would you want your child or loved one to be under the care of this hack? Personally, I wouldn’t take a mangy cat to this asshat quack. The Senate should reject him.

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org

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