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5/26/2021

An Open Letter to the American Medical Association

36 Comments

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An Open Letter to the American Medical Association
by
Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D.
 
Dear Sir and Madam,
 
I read with great disgust your "Organization Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity."  Seldom have I read a more destructive, divisive, and inflammatory document by a professional organization, and I have never been more ashamed of being associated with the American Medical Association at any time in my career.  
 
The suggestion that our country owes anyone "equity" because of "past injustices" is revolting.  My family arrived in this country in 1961.  We have not been a party to any of the injustices that occurred so many decades ago, yet you hold my family, my colleagues, and me in the same light that you hold the cruelest slaveholder.  How dare you say that I, a person who is forced to answer on a census form as being white/Caucasian, but who on a different question answers Hispanic/Latino/Cuban, should be in anyway held responsible for those who traded slaves and the African chieftains who willingly sold their tribesmen and women to the Europeans four hundred years ago?  
 
How dare you say that I, and every one of my colleagues who have spent our lives treating the poor, minorities, majorities, and anyone else who may stumble into our emergency rooms, legally or not, without bias or favor, and without any chance of being reimbursed for our training and our efforts, should be thought of as members of an oppressive consortium designed to inflict evil or inequity to those who we selflessly treat?
 
How dare you join the countless number of camouflaged communists who furtively and purposely try to confuse those around them by conflating equity with equality? Ours is a nation built on the premise of equal standing under the law and only that.  Everything else is to be achieved through excellence, dedication, training, and hard work.  
 
Equity, on the other hand, is achieved by fiat, by taking from some and giving it to others at the point of a gun.  Few better ruses exist for the state control of the means of production than through the illusory promise of achieving equity instead of equal standing under the law. This is a dangerous track you are entering from which you and the social system you seek may never be able to return. 
 
You claim that we live in a land that was taken from Native Americans hundreds of years ago.  That may be so, but you neglect that the same is true of all other civilizations on earth. The Babylonians invaded Israel. The Norwegians invaded England. The Visigoths invaded Rome.  Rome invaded Egypt and North Africa.  The Turks invaded Constantinople.  The Mongols invaded Europe.  The Germans invaded Russia.  The Russians starved their people.  The Germans committed holocaust upon the Jews.  The Calusas ransacked and sacrificed their neighboring tribes.  The Caribes attacked and imprisoned the Taínos.  The Mayans continuously conquered each other and tore their victims' hearts out while they were still beating.  Mao starved 69 million people and the People's Republic of China killed millions with their latest virus.
 
Every single civilization, even those in Africa and the Far East, have conquered and been conquered.  It is a fact of life and a staple of history.  Your skewed and biased view of the events that took place between the Europeans and Native Americans while ignoring every other injustice carried out throughout history upon the very groups against which you point an accusatory finger is ignorant, hypocritical, and insulting to the 100% of us living Americans who played no part in the invasion nor were victims of the conquests.  
 
You have abused your position as the self-proclaimed purveyor of the medical profession to promote a self-proclaimed social(ist) agenda against the will of so many of those whom you falsely claim to represent.  
 
I will oppose you with all my being, all my strength, my intellect, and my voice.  I will oppose you from here to the ends of the earth.  I will oppose you because of your disgusting abuse of the great privilege that has been bestowed upon you, and because of the great insult you asperse upon me by suggesting that I carry anything other than love, charity, and good will towards every human being that I meet and have treated in my 30 years of practice as a physician.
 
There is a magnificent document whose signers pledged their Lives, their Fortunes, and their Sacred Honor to a cause much greater than themselves.  Today, I pledge the same in opposition of you.  
 
Here's to seeing the end of your filthy, disgusting, and vile organization.  
 
Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D.
Former Florida State Representative
Former Congressional Candidate
 
 
Please support our ability to cover the events most important to you.   Click here to join The Founding Fathers Club or donate to The Federalist Pages.
 
 
 
Dr. Julio Gonzalez is an orthopaedic surgeon and lawyer living in Venice, Florida.  He served in the Florida House of Representatives.  He is the author of numerous books including  The Federalist Pages, The Case for Free Market Healthcare, and Coronalessons.  He is available for appearances and book signings, and can be reached through www.thefederalistpages.com.
 
 
 

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36 Comments
Katarina Lindley DO
5/26/2021 08:05:19 pm

Very well said Dr. Gonzalez. AMA has stopped representing most physicians long time ago.

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Duke Sommerset
5/27/2021 07:47:34 am

Sounds like the AMA "represents" physicians like the ABA "represents" lawyers: that is to say, only if they're card-carrying leftists!

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Matt Rowe
5/29/2021 10:27:26 am

You can add the CDC, NIH, and a whole list of other institutions to this letter

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Jenny H
7/3/2021 04:21:49 am

I couldn’t agree more!

Richard Mazur
5/27/2021 03:34:55 am

👏!!!

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Cristine White
5/27/2021 03:37:53 am

WOW! Excellent. You are a rock star!

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Carol Rains link
5/27/2021 04:15:15 am

So very true and well said!

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Candy Mausser
5/27/2021 04:33:31 am

The AMA is following the same ignorant and woke path as NIKE, Coca Cola, American Airlines and Major League Baseball, not to mention BLM and now our overseas US Embassies. None of them are listening to our citizens. Well said, Dr. G.

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Susan Kollmar
5/27/2021 05:25:14 am

Well said. I agree!

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Mike Hill
5/27/2021 05:31:45 am

You are right on target, Dr Gonzalez. Thank you for taking a courageous and vocal position against this nonsense from the Marxist left.

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Robert Greenwald
5/27/2021 05:35:11 am

Ditto all of the above and I would be shocked to see U being criticized for your brave and erudite writing to the AMA. We can only hope that you are not a voice in the wilderness of your profession. I suspect that letter should be in letters to the editor of your AMA journal and will be interesting to see if you can develop a ground swell of good against the further raping of your profession and our country.

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Captain Nathan
5/27/2021 08:07:34 am

Brilliantly written and a lesson all the “woke” out there need to read.

I have posted similar comments about world history relating to invasions, slave holding since time began. I often get the typical response of “racist” from our criminally uneducated.

Keep fighting Dr. Gonzalez.

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James A
5/27/2021 09:00:22 am

I left AMA in 2010. After a decade-plus of developing meaningful healthcare reform policy the gave it all up and caved to Obamacare. That's when I knew their seat-at-the-table strategy was a loser. They're like the teachers union, lots of money and power; so much that the politicians can't take them on. We have to do it. Keep fighting.

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J Segraves
5/27/2021 11:47:42 am

Very well said, Doctor. With you 100%.

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Margaret Elizabeth Yerman
5/27/2021 12:26:26 pm


"Physician heal thyself." Sage advice for the AMA. Kudos to Dr. Gonzalez!! In my 18th year of teaching, I resigned from the NJ Teachers Union. It made no sense to me to be told to vote for democrat candidates who were fully in support of abortion. Our very jobs depended upon children being safely born. Needless to say, there was hell to pay; but I was represented by lawyers from The Christian Coalition. I did prevail and retired as a NJ Governor's Teacher of the Year. This honor was voted upon by colleagues
Hang in there doctor!! Like me, you'll have others inspired by your example.

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Janis G Chester M.D.
5/28/2021 06:54:25 am

Thank you for writing this strong and courageous letter. I hope you (and all like minded Americans) will join the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Membership is free for non-physicians. We still stand for Hippocratic Medicine.
www.aapsonline.org

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MelBou
5/28/2021 10:27:57 am

Dear Dr Gonzalez, thank you for writing this important and eloquent letter. I'm a Canadian physician and I know the CMA will follow soon with the same kind of BS. Is there any way we could contact you to help us write a letter to our own organisation?

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Mike Hutchinson
5/29/2021 05:39:44 am

Thank you for taking a stand against this ridiculousness!

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David H Villarreal
5/29/2021 08:31:34 am

Very well said. Agree 100%

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Angela Damiano
5/31/2021 01:21:31 pm

thank you! well said

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Abigail Roofner
6/7/2021 06:57:51 am

Very well said! Thank you for fighting!

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Thomas Wiener, MD
6/7/2021 02:08:48 pm

Dr. Gonzalez
I join you. I have never been, and never will be a member of the AMA due to their self-serving programs.
At this time, I, and some other surgeons, are battling the American College of Surgeons, who are trying to fall off the same cliff as the AMA. God help us.

Tom Wiener, MD

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Debbie Scrivner link
6/21/2021 01:56:40 pm

The only thing missing from this very well stated letter/position is that Black Africans enslaved other Black Africans for hundreds of years before the slave trade began. Slavery (also seen in many other countries over certain people groups by other groups) continued long after slaves from Africa ceased in Europe and North America. Indeed, some Blacks presently in the US are relatives of those very slave owner/gatherers. For these facts alone, reimbursement is completely wrongheaded.

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Mark J Janicki MD
6/25/2021 02:11:49 pm

Words I wish I had spoken!

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Dr. Bob Hansen
6/28/2021 02:25:05 pm

This validates my decision decades ago to not participate in the AMA.!!

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Jennifer H
7/3/2021 04:19:37 am

One of the best exegesis on what has happened to our medical (and other) professions and society that I have ever read. Thank-you for using your incredible experience and education to stand up and fight this tyrannical agenda!

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Robert Bowden Jr MD
7/3/2021 09:52:36 am

Sir, I totally agree and unfortunately other specialty groups are following in lock step.

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Jack Buckley
7/4/2021 09:31:47 am

Very well written...hope it gets the readers necessary to begin straightening out some of the idiocies of today's so-called leaders...

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Paul Malbon
7/7/2021 06:36:00 am

I read your very truthful letter. Your letter needs to be read by all races, Senators and Congress members in America.
Thanks for saying what needed to be said..

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scott w
7/25/2021 04:12:19 pm

An epic piece of writing. Very well said. Thanks for speaking up!

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Evelyn
7/27/2021 05:00:49 pm

Bravo! and thank you for saying what so many believe
Please continue

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Jerome R. Cronk link
8/10/2021 09:44:50 pm

REBUTTAL TO GONZALEZ OPEN LETTER TO AMA
An extraordinary letter, bitterly attacking AMA’s “health equity plan,” has been circulating around the Internet. It has drawn high praise as “strong and courageous,” “eloquent” and “cogent” in comments on the websites Federalist Pages, City Data.com and Free Republic. This letter has warmed the hearts of many racism skeptics — those who disavow responsibility for the plight of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other marginalized people. It deserves thorough reading, analysis and scrutiny.
Dr. Julio Gonzalez, a Venice, Florida, orthopedic surgeon and lawyer and former Florida state representative, on July 23, 2021, wrote an open letter to the A.M.A, expressing his feelings of disgust, outrage and shame for the AMA’s “Organization Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity." He lambastes the AMA plan as “destructive, divisive, and inflammatory” and he blasts the AMA as a “filthy, disgusting, and vile organization…” (This rhetoric is eloquent and cogent?)
The open letter is not well organized. It jumps around from one issue to another and back and Dr. Gonzalez does not articulate the fundamental, underlying principles he is relying on. Tellingly, nowhere in all of his 754 word letter does Dr. Gonzalez provide any facts or reasoning supporting or explaining his fervent opposition to the AMA plan. His anger is clear but his logic and proof is not. He thrives in hyperbola, political jargon, pejorative labels and name-calling — empty slogans that excite and inspire those who adhere to his dogma, but he does not explain or support his opinions in terms that would be clear to most thinking people. Using labels in political commentaries, condemning opposing views as “socialist,” or “communist” is simply a refuge for weak or ill-informed speakers to avoid giving reasons for their beliefs that they don’t have. Same with hyperbola. But, some may say the logic is there somewhere, they understand it, the superlatives, the political hyperbola that Dr. Gonzalez thrives on, but he is not favoring the rest of us with express logic or reason.
Dr. Gonzalez makes several claims. Each one should be put to the test — a test that
when reasonable minds, on both the left and the right, could agree on. I will try to articulate the meaning he implied — a meaning that he fell short on stating expressly.
His first claim is a major one. He essentially asserts that we in America today do not have any duty to try to remedy the wrongs of our ancestors; that we have no responsibility today to lessen the harms that have been passed down through generations to Americans living today. This he says is because we had nothing to do with causing those harms. He makes an historical argument, that throughout history terrible wrongs, injustices and atrocities have been inflicted on certain peoples by war and conquest. All of these events, he is saying, are just in the regular course of human history. He sees this as the existing reality that we all have inherited. He thinks we simply have to accept what history has dealt us and that we have no duty to undo it.
Some, by the way, want to quarrel with Dr. Gonzalez’s history lesson, but I won’t do that because it doesn’t matter. What does matter is this:
Whether we must accept modern conditions as they are and that we have no duty to correct the injustices of past generations, no duty right wrongs that we, living today, did not cause— that is the issue.
The answer to that, I would say, depends. It depends on whether the injustices our ancestors inflicted on others are still harming today's descendants of those who were the victims of wrongdoers — the slaveholders, segregationists, lynch mobs and some of their witting and unwitting accomplices. And if we benefit today from the forced labor and sacrifices they unwillingly gave up, we have a duty to try to mitigate and offset today’s consequences that are traceable to yesterday’s wrongs. This is quite different from saying that because the wrongs of the Visigoths, or the Turks or the Mongols can't be undone or the consequences can’t be measured that we should just accept the modern realities. It should be obvious how irrelevant Dr. Gonzalez’s historical argument is. What I mean is that there are no Romans living today who are suffering because the Visigoths sacked Rome. According to this argument, though, we are not obligated to offset past wrongs even though they can be linked to current conditions.
So, what is relevant is that there are many African-Americans today who are suffering from or have been disadvantaged by the consequences of slavery, and, following reconstruction, Jim Crow policies, segregation, discrimination in employment, education and housing, denial of

Reply
Tom Wiener, MD
8/11/2021 02:19:19 pm

A rebuttal to a rebuttal

Mr. Cronk

I read with interest your reply to Dr. Gonzalez’s open letter to the American Medical Association. I am a physician. I understand what Dr. Gonzalez was saying because medicine has been my life for the majority of my existence. What Dr. Gonzalez is upset about, and justifiably so, is the thought that the AMA, and now the American College of Surgeons, is under the assumption that racism is rampant in medicine, that our patients are mistreated due to their race.

Is there the possibility of that occurring in a small number is instances? Of course. But it is not pervasive. I have never witnessed an incident of racism toward a patient, medical student, resident, or colleague. That’s not to say it hasn’t occurred behind closed doors in rare instances. There are times when medical education is dead serious. A wrong medication order, missing a critical lab result, or anything that might cause harm to a patient, may at times lead to a physician getting upset with a resident or medical student or younger colleague. And now, in a time where people need to scamper to their safe space if they are yelled at, imagine this scenario. In my training, I recall a few episodes of being yelled at, embarrassed, or made to correct my errors. Not fun, but I needed it and deserved it. That’s how I emotionally understood that incident. Take a small percentage of an emotionally labile black resident or medical student. Would they feel the same way that I did? Would they feel they deserved that embarrassing episode? Or would they pick up the training that you feel is needed? That they are being marginalized because they are black? That they are being mistreated because they are black? That they are a victim of white racism, institutional racism because they are black? Interesting how things change depending on the tint of the glasses one wears.

You mentioned that Dr. Gonzalez’s letter “warms the hearts of racism skeptics.” No, it warms the hearts of institutional or systemic racism skeptics, “those who disavow responsibility of the plight of black, marginalized, latinX, etc.” These statements give insight into the mind of the author and those like him. Elitist, holier-than-thou, liberal, wealthy, northwest U.S. cultured, and often, white. To take up the standard of the term latinX alone gives this away. A term not even accepted by a minority of hispanics. Is this a personal attack on you, Mr. Cronk? Only if you take it as such. It is an attack on the fundamental idea that the white liberal is the one who can save the poor, oppressed black, and only by accepting that white liberal mantra will the oppressed black be saved.

You mentioned the letter was not well organized and doesn’t articulate the fundamental principles, and that the logic and proof are not clear. It is more than clear because he explains his objections to the AMA statement. That is the purpose of the letter. Along the same line of insult to Dr. Gonzalez is your statement of “condemning opposing views as socialist or communist is simply a refuge for weak or ill-informed speakers.” It would have made a shorter statement, Mr. Cronk, just to say “I hate Trump.” That’s what your statement says. It is not hard to make statements of socialism or communism when the people pushing these agendas call themselves socialist and communist. Bernie Sanders, AOC, and friends.

Your letter has presuppositions that are hidden but still visible. Such as “are past injustices harming today’s descendants” presupposes that everyone’s family was a slaveholder or member of a lynch mob. Most American families did not own slaves- the cost was too high even if they had wanted. All of the population of the U.S., aside from displaced Native Americans, are immigrant, and most of them did not commit the original sin of owning slaves or trading in slaves. That is the de facto issue that we are supposed to believe.

You state that “there are no Romans living today who are suffering because Visigoths sacked Rome,” and you counter Dr. Gonzalez by stating according to his logic we are not obligated to offset past wrongs even though they can be linked to the present. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is convenient and distant. Do you, Mr. Cronk, purchase your automobile based on such reasoning? Have you ever driven in or owned a Ford, a Mercedes, Volkswagen, or Porsche? Knowing that Henry Ford penned a number of anti-semitic letters, that German car companies used slave labor and helped commit atrocities, do you let your conscience intervene from sitting in those beautiful and plush seats in that Mercedes sedan?

You presuppose that Blacks are suffering still due to slavery, Jim Crow, etc. What about policies instituted (institutionalized) by liberal politicians to “help” the condition of the poor black? Such as chi

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Tom Wiener, MD
8/11/2021 02:35:51 pm

Mr. Cronk
here is the last section of my letter above, cut off due to length:

You presuppose that Blacks are suffering still due to slavery, Jim Crow, etc. What about policies instituted (institutionalized) by liberal politicians to “help” the condition of the poor black? Such as child tax credits, a.k.a. payments to keep having babies because it becomes more financially lucrative to have another child than it is to go to work. Such as policies to put the poor in a home they can’t afford, and to initiate financial collapse, rather than understand that not everyone can or will afford their own house, and that some people are okay living in a rented apartment. There are many examples of liberal policy pretending to help the poor, and specifically the poor black, that only creates a dependent population, dependent on the very government that pretends to give them the means to a better life.

Mr. Cronk, my statements are not because I hate you as a person. I don’t know you. You may be a good guy to have a beer with or wet a fishing line. But the liberal policies are creating a system that cannot sustain itself and does harm to those that it claims to help. So these are my thoughts, and as a more conservative thinker, I encourage conservatives to speak up at the same volume as our liberal friends. That’s what makes Dr. Gonzalez’s letter seem so abrupt. It is routine to see liberal writings espousing anything, yet when a conservative speaks up, it is an anomaly.

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Jerome R Cronk link
8/11/2021 05:16:37 pm

Reply to Dr. Wiener, and to others who may have seen my critique of Dr. Gonzale's open letter to the AMA.
This is not a good format to carry on a productive conversation. From what you say, Dr. Wiener, we might be able to exchange valuable ideas through email. That works best for me. The problem with websites like this is the space limit. My rebuttal document was six pages long and I don't think they carried it all. These are involved and nuanced issues that are very difficult to intelligently or adequately deal with in abbreviated format. I am very interested in exploring your point of view. Anyone who wants to contact me please do so to: [email protected]. Or give me your email so I can fully respond to your thoughts.

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Tom Wiener
8/11/2021 05:29:04 pm

Jerry
agreed. Solutions can't be reached with one sided thinking. I'll contact you by email Friday.
Tom

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