{"id":19,"date":"2016-06-28T21:27:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T21:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/?p=19"},"modified":"2017-09-17T21:27:58","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T21:27:58","slug":"the-ama-should-forget-the-dickey-amendment-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/2016\/06\/28\/the-ama-should-forget-the-dickey-amendment-for-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The AMA Should Forget the Dickey Amendment \u2014 For Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published on June 28, 2016, on the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics\u00a0Bill of Health<\/a>\u00a0blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

Recently, the American Medical Association (\u201cAMA\u201d)\u00a0passed an emergency resolution<\/a>\u00a0at its annual conference declaring gun violence a public health crisis and calling for both restrictions on access to firearms and increased research into gun-related violence. In its\u00a0announcement<\/a>, the AMA noted that it plans to \u201cactively lobby Congress to overturn legislation that for 20 years has prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from researching gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AMA\u2019s decision to publicly take a strong stance on gun violence could have a substantive impact on the national conversation. The group represents one of the most powerful voices in health care policy. According to the\u00a0Sunlight Foundation<\/a>, the AMA is a\u00a0\u201cpolitical powerhouse,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0raising $1.3 million through its PAC during the 2014 election cycle and spending almost\u00a0$22 million<\/a>\u00a0on lobbying in 2015 alone. To put that in perspective, the\u00a0National Rifle Association<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the nation\u2019s foremost gun rights organization \u2014 spent\u00a0$3.6 million<\/a>\u00a0on lobbying that year. Admittedly, the AMA \u2014 unlike the NRA \u2014 is a multi-issue organization, and it remains to be seen whether it will throw its financial heft behind this new position, but the fact that there is a powerful new party at the table has made\u00a0some hopeful<\/a>\u00a0that members of Congress will start to think more seriously about finding ways to reduce gun violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the AMA\u2019s\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0has come as a welcome boost to proponents of gun control and gun violence research, it plays into a common misconception of existing law, which may raise unnecessary barriers to increasing CDC research in this area. The law the AMA is targeting as \u201cprohibit[ing] the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from researching gun violence,\u201d is the so-called \u201cDickey Amendment\u201d \u2014 a budget provision passed in the federal government\u2019s 1997\u00a0omnibus spending bill<\/a>. The problem with the AMA\u2019s framing is that the Dickey Amendment doesn\u2019t actually bar the CDC from researching gun violence. Rather, it bars the CDC from using any federal funds to \u201cadvocate or promote gun control.\u201d While this misconception regarding the Dickey Amendment is common \u2014 many\u00a0mainstream<\/a>\u00a0media<\/a>\u00a0outlets<\/a>\u00a0have referred to the provision\u00a0as a ban on gun violence research \u2014 it\u2019s counterproductive and potentially harmful in the fight to promote more robust public\u00a0research.<\/p>\n

From a practical perspective, this framing is unfortunate because it implies that the Dickey Amendment has to be repealed for the CDC to conduct gun violence research, which \u2014 as Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) noted in his\u00a0recent letter<\/a>\u00a0to the CDC \u2014 is simply not the case. The CDC can and does perform\u00a0firearm-related violence research<\/a>. The main obstacle to more research is not the Dickey Amendment \u2014 it\u2019s the fact that Congress no longer appropriates enough money\u00a0to the\u00a0CDC for\u00a0these studies. As CDC spokeswoman Courtney Lenard\u00a0put it<\/a>, \u201cIt is possible for [the CDC] to conduct firearm-related research\u2026But our resources are very limited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Convincing Congress to allocate sufficient funds to the CDC for\u00a0gun violence research \u2014 something that hasn\u2019t been done in 20 years \u2014 will be a hard enough mountain to climb. Repealing the Dickey Amendment is a noble goal, but it\u2019s a battle that need not be fought, and it may even make securing funding more difficult, as moderate congressmen could have concerns that research performed without the safeguard of the Dickey Amendment could become too political. Instead of waging a two-front war, the AMA should focus on securing funding for gun violence research and leave the Dickey Amendment for another day.<\/p>\n

The more troubling problem with the mischaracterization of the Dickey Amendment as a ban on gun violence research is rhetorical. In equating \u201cadvocat[ing] and promot[ing] gun control\u201d with \u201cresearching gun violence,\u201d the AMA plays into efforts by gun control opponents to construe objective analysis of the societal impact of firearms as political propaganda. While stricter gun laws may be the natural conclusion from the results of CDC gun studies, it\u2019s important to separate the acquisition of knowledge from the use of that knowledge to advance a normative position. Examining the impact of firearms from a public health perspective is not an argument for or against anything. It is simply a means by which arguments can \u2014 and should \u2014 be informed.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that scientists and researchers are completely disinterested. There are plenty of forces that distort what studies are done and which of those are\u00a0published \u2014 and I imagine these forces are even stronger when it comes to government research. However, the overt politicization of knowledge \u2014 the conflation of answering an empirical question with making a normative argument \u2014 is damaging to our national discourse, and it hinders our ability to make informed decisions as a society.<\/p>\n

The newly announced position of the AMA on gun control could be a substantial step towards mitigating the gun violence epidemic, and that in and of itself is something to applaud. However, by refining its position with respect to the Dickey Amendment, the AMA could streamline its efforts towards securing funding for research the CDC is already empowered to conduct, and it could avoid furthering the harmful rhetoric conflating gun violence research with anti-gun advocacy.<\/p>\n

The Dickey Amendment should absolutely be repealed someday, as the CDC should be able to advocate for sensible gun control policies, but the perfect\u00a0shouldn\u2019t be the enemy of the good.\u00a0The CDC could be doing potentially lifesaving research as we speak, and the AMA should sidestep the rhetorical trap set by gun control opponents and focus on funding that research before wading into the far more contentious battle over the Dickey Amendment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published on June 28, 2016, on the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics\u00a0Bill of Health\u00a0blog. Recently, the American Medical Association (\u201cAMA\u201d)\u00a0passed an emergency resolution\u00a0at its annual conference declaring gun violence a public health crisis and calling for both restrictions on access to firearms and increased research into gun-related violence. In its\u00a0announcement, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8887,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8887"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shailin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}