Citation

Lawson WB. J. Natl. Med. Assoc. 2017; 109(4): 221.

Affiliation

Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin. Electronic address: william.lawson@austin.utexas.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, National Medical Association (USA))

DOI

10.1016/j.jnma.2017.10.002

PMID

29173927

Abstract

The need for medical knowledge and political expediency has often clashed. Usually the consequences have limited long term effects. However the lack of information can have important consequence for African Americans providers and patients, who have may disproportional access to medical service and newest treatment findings. Recently a massacre occurred in Las Vegas with over 500 people shot and 58 dead. Much of the debate has focused on whether the perpetrator was mentally ill, if restricting gun access would have prevented such a terrible act, or even whether such acts can be prevented. Examination of motive and data related to a single event will probably not lead to the findings can be generalized for such acts. However there is very little recent research on gun violence prevention in the United States. Part of the limited research is a result of the belief that such research should be looked at as a criminal justice issue or moral issue and not a public health issue. But a major factor that limited this research was political. In 1996, Congress threatened to strip funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unless it stopped funding research into firearm injuries and deaths because it was thought that such research promoted gun control. As a result, the CDC stopped funding gun-control research. The impact was felt beyond the CDC. The National Institute of Justice, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, funded 32 gun-related studies from 1993 to 1999, but none from 2009 to 2012, according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The institute then resumed funding in 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting the year before. Its not clear if further research might have produced findings that have prevented this tragedy. The important point is that as gun violence continues to be a major cause of death especially for African American males, it is one area of public health that has been under-researched. Moreover there remains a strong belief that such research is politically motivated. The Journal has dedicated this issue and a subsequent issue to violence. Hopefully the publication of such articles will encourage other researchers to develop approaches that can address the prevention and consequences of violence which can have applicability to all medical disciplines...

Language: en