>Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 15:39:41 -0400
>
>Subject: The new California.
>
>You won't believe this...
>
>http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-weizner061201.shtml
For the Children
Legislature to ask Golden State docs to help curb violence.
By Judith Weizner, a writer living in New York June 12, 2001 9:30 a.m.
ncouraged by its recent success in securing the medical establishment's
cooperation in reducing gun violence, the California State legislature is
currently considering a bill that would require doctors to question their
school-age patients about the prevalence of risky leisure-time behaviors in
their homes.
Rep. Barbara Medlar, sponsor of the Golden State Childhood Medical
Practitioner Assistance Act (GSCMPAA), says the law would compel
pediatricians to ascertain each patient's injury-probability index by means
of a questionnaire to determine whether the youngsters engage in dangerous
activities when they are not in school.
"Childhood play injuries cost taxpayers and insurance companies
$154,000,000,000 every year, and if we are to rein in health costs, we must
get a grip on this problem," Ms. Medlar says. "But this isn't just about
dollars and cents. Our government has a duty to protect its children."
While some doctors are afraid the law's requirements would be burdensome,
Ms. Medlar insists that isn't the case. "It will just mean a few more
questions while they're asking the kids about their pets, online habits,
friendships, sexual activities, their parents' eating, drinking and reading
preferences, and the presence of guns in their homes," she said.
Referring to the recently imposed schoolyard ban on tag, dodgeball,
hide-and-seek, and hopscotch, Ms. Medlar added, "Very few parents realize
how dangerous certain activities are because they have a benign image. We
need to be sure kids aren't doing things at home that they're not allowed
to do on the playground. If it's not safe at school, it's not safe at home."
Citing a case in Almohada where a five-year-old was brought into the
emergency room after inhaling a feather during a pillow fight, Ms. Medlar
explained, "Many people actually encourage their children to take out their
aggressions with pillows, but this case made it clear that fighting with
pillows is unacceptable. If that child's doctor had known the family
permitted pillow fighting, he could have had a conference with the parents
to explain the potential danger and spared the child a terrible trauma -
not to mention saving the cost of the ambulance and emergency room
treatment."
While there was some opposition initially to the idea of requiring doctors
to delve into the details of their patients' family lives, resistance all
but disappeared following passage of the Complicity in Child Abuse Act
(CCAA), which made it possible for an adult to be charged with child abuse
if he knew or could have known about the presence of firearms in a child's
home yet failed to report it to the child's teacher.
The first person charged under CCAA, Hector Flores, was a deliveryman for
NotFauna.com. Two years ago, while carrying a heavy vase of flowers into
the home of a paraplegic customer, he was squirted by one of the customer's
kids with a water pistol. The customer apologized and Flores forgot about
the matter, but subsequently, when the same child squirted a pizza-delivery
man, who reported the incident, the ensuing investigation uncovered the
previous assault on Flores. Flores was charged with child abuse for having
failed to report the episode, which might have prevented the attack on the
pizza deliverer. Convicted and sentenced to two years in a facility for
child molesters, Flores appealed, arguing that the law referred only to
actual firearms, not to purple water pistols. The court ruled that although
the language of the statute read "firearms" and not "actual firearms," the
prosecution had nevertheless acted reasonably in extending the state's
school policy of zero tolerance to the home.
After his release, Flores will be required to register as a child abuser
wherever he lives while serving his 19 years' probation. The child will be
returned to his family later this year when his parents have completed the
state's Violence Begins in the Home crime-prevention program.
Ms. Medlar says she has been very encouraged by the legislature's response
to the GSCMPAA. "So often attempts to improve safeguards meet resistance
from extremists who see everything government tries to accomplish as an
infringement on their personal liberties. It is really high time that we
stopped permitting these people to endanger our children."
Although Ms. Medlar did not refer to it directly, she was undoubtedly
thinking of the public-safety improvement program that was the backbone of
her reelection campaign. The program suffered a setback last year when she
was unable to convince the governor to sign the Hair Safety Act.
Ms. Medlar had introduced legislation to eliminate hair as a causative
factor in accidents following publication of a study in the Journal of the
California Association of Public Health Medicine, which showed hair to be a
significant contributing factor in as many as 43% percent of all injuries.
The study, conducted over an 18-year period, followed 70 men and women as
they went about their daily activities. During that period, 12 participants
were hospitalized for hair-related traumas. One female subject is still
recovering from serious injuries sustained in a high-speed accident that
occurred when she sought to change lanes on a freeway and discounted the
'shadow' in her peripheral vision, thinking it was her own hair, when in
reality it was a dark brown SUV attempting to pass her.
When the study's results became the subject of a two-hour special on CNN,
Ms. Medlar drafted a bill seeking to limit licensed drivers in California
to hairstyles not exceeding two-and-a-half inches in length. The bill
squeaked through the legislature, but the governor vetoed it, explaining
that although he personally favored public safety, he doubted he would be
reelected if he signed a law regulating hairstyles in California.
Notwithstanding that minor setback, Ms. Medlar is optimistic that the
Childhood Medical Practitioner Assistance Act will become law. "People are
always complaining that medicine has become too impersonal," Ms. Medlar
says. "And they're right. In an earlier time, doctors knew how their
patients lived because they made house calls. This law will restore caring
to the practice of medicine."
Second Amendment Coalition of Florida
Community email addresses:
To Post message: SACFLA@onelist.com
To Subscribe: SACFLA-subscribe@onelist.com
To Unsubscribe: SACFLA-unsubscribe@onelist.com
List owner: SACFLA-owner@onelist.com
Shortcut URL to this page:
http://www.onelist.com/community/SACFLA
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
-------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 20:42:39 EDT