17 September 2011 Phil Roe, Act like a doctor rather than a politician

Beneath is a letter I sent to our Congressman David Phillip Roe, teavangelist, 1st TN.  I left the contact information intact in case someone who reads this may have the same misfortune as to be "represented" by a man who cares about subsidies to energy companies and unseating a POTUS far more than about the actual well-being of his constituents.

419 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
fax: (202) 225-5714

Kingsport Office:
Office Located in the Higher Education Building 
P.O. Box 1728
Kingsport, TN 37662
423-247-8161
fax: 423-247-0119

17 September 2011 

Mr. Roe

          Michelle Bachmann used the platform of a political campaign pseudo-debate to stir up anti-vaccination fervor by condemning the Texas policy of requiring middle school aged females to receive a vaccine to prevent HPV infection. 

          The vaccine in question is intended to prevent infection with a virus implicated in cervical cancer in female populations and in genital warts in males and females.  It is intended to be used at the most effective time, prior to children becoming sexually active.  While Ms. Bachmann may not have been sexually active at 12 years of age; many young people choose to be, and many more are forced into such activity.  The 12-year-old time frame may actually be too late for many children.

          Bachmann further complicated the situation by claiming it to be about parental rights to refuse vaccination rather than about disease prevention.  Then she added a claim that the vaccine had caused “mental retardation” in one recipient, citing an unsubstantiated claim by the child’s mother. 

          Bachmann has no medical background knowledge.  She acted in a highly irresponsible manner, raising absolutely unfounded fears commonly used by anti-vaccination groups to obscure the facts about public health and national vaccination recommendations and requirements.

          Among other physician members of Congress is David Phillip Roe, Republican 1^st Tennessee Congressional district.  Mr. Roe, a retired OB/Gyn physician, has repeatedly claimed that his education and practice made him particularly able to provide rational and accurate input concerning the practice of medicine to other members of Congress and to his constituents. 

          My concern is this:  Mr. Roe’s particular practice should have made him well acquainted with the results of HPV infection in women, including the many infected innocently by marital partners, and with the lethal effects of such infection.  Mr. Roe, if he is truly concerned for his constituents and for actions by Congress and candidates that are based upon blatant lies, should have been first in line to publically call for Ms. Bachmann to retract the lie she broadcast.

          Why, Mr. Roe, did you not use your official capacity to correct this misconception?  Why did you choose to parrot teavangelist party line talking points in your weekly on-line propaganda piece, while leaving the great lie spread by Bachmann to grow among the poorly educated and misinformed voters of the GOP/teavangelist base. 

          I suspect, as do many others, that it is primarily about keeping up the myth that “abstinence only education policies” and using fairy tale religious indoctrination to deny the truth about when children become sexually active will keep the teavangelist base voting for the GOP.

          How can you, Mr. Roe, as a former physician,  not be alarmed at the use of fear mongering, intended to render ineffectual, public health campaigns to eliminate, or at least markedly decrease the incidence of potential lethal but largely preventable STDs.  Please don’t respond with arguments based upon religious prohibitions of sexual activity.  Your profession has provided you with far too many examples of how that brainwashing attempt has failed, as has mine.

          You’re quite willing to attack Mr. Obama and others who fail to provide accurate and honest information.  Should not Ms. Bachmann and the rest of the teavangelist caucus be held to the same standard they demand of Mr. Obama? 

          I look forward to reading your demand that Ms. Bachmann correct her lie and your education letter to your constituents concerning our chance to eradicate a public health risk by simple vaccination. 

           

          Unless we reject a political party and politicians who are making every effort to return the majority of the American populace to pre-20^th century economic and social conditions, the American middle class will vanish along with the working class American, fallen to the oligarchic and theocratic demagogues of the American Taliban.  Childhood diseases and STDs can be as much political weapons as biological.