Six reasons to stop Satcher

When asked before the Christmas break whether the Senate would confirm President Clinton's surgeon general nominee, Dr. David Satcher, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R.Miss.) said, "I assume his nomination will be confirmed , but after the first of the year."

Lott must have been tired and not thinking very clearly after presiding over the many long sessions at the end of the term.

As Senate leader, Lott can single-handedly block Satcher's confirmation as surely as Sen. Jesse Hehns (R.N.C.) single-handedly blocked the ambassadorial confirmation of former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (R.). On the other hand, if Lot backs Satcher's confirmation, he could find himself occupying the inferior moral and political ground, allied with President Clinton, in all-out political combat against the conservative base of his own party.

Here are six reasons Lott should join the good fight to stop a bad doctor:

1. Satcher is pro-abortion.

In response to written questions posed by Sen. Dan Coats (R.-Ind.), Satcher said, "I believe that the decision to have an abortion should be between a woman, her conscience and her doctor, and that abortions should be safe, legal and rare:' Decent doctors neither do abortions, nor advocate their legality.

2. Satcher is pro-partial-birth abortion.

Satcher told Sen. Coats, "I support the President's position" on partial-birth abortion. That puts him to the left of Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (N.Y.), who describes this procedure as "close to infanticide," and at odds with the American Medical Association, which has endorsed the partial-birth abortion ban that Clinton vetoed.

3. Satcher approved research that allowed babies to be exposed unnecessarily to the AIDs virus.

As director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Satcher approved research in Africa and Asia that treated HIV-positive pregnant women with useless sugar pills, instead of the anti-viral drug AZT that could have decreased by two-thirds the likelihood that those women would transmit HIV to their babies. A Sept. 18, 1997, editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine branded this research as unethical and accurately compared it to the notorious Tuskegee study in which African-American men, suffering from syphilis, were denied penicillin.

4. Satcher equivocates on the issue of parental notification before a minor child can undergo an abortion. In response to Sen. Coats, Satcher wrote, "I believe that ideally parents should be involved in decisions about their unemancipated minors use of birth control or whether to have an abortion. It is unfortunate that we still have many situations in this country where youth are not fortunate enough to have responsible parents, or in some cases, no parents at all. Because some teenagers are not equally endowed with responsible parents, it is important that local communities be allowed to develop strategies for meeting the needs of all of their youth." But doesn't "responsible" parenthood mean protecting your children from government agencies and officials who want to peddle them condoms and abortion?

5. Satcher squandered $800,000 in tax dollars on vulgar TV ads promoting condom use among teenagers.

One of Satcher's first acts as Clinton's CDC director was to broadcast primetime television ads, featuring rock stars and television personalities, explicitly promoting condom use for extramarital and homosexual activity. "We've got to be more aggressive," Satcher said, defending his tax-funded air raid on traditional family values. "What are we going to tell our children and grandchildren when they ask us why we allowed political, cultural and religious differences to prevent us from attacking this problem?" The real question for American parents, of course, is what to tell their scandalized children about Satcher's scandalous ads.

6. Satcher's well-deserved rejection by the U.S. Senate can ignite a much-needed debate on medical ethics in America.

Dr. Satcher has abandoned well-founded principles of ethics endorsed by good doctors since the days of Hippocrates, the 5th-Century B.C. Greek physician who composed the famous oath in which physicians pledge, "I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give a woman a pessary to produce abortion." Every point of this pledge is now dishonored in the breach by unscrupulous doctors, who are giving their great profession a bad name.

Why put one of them in the bully pulpit of the surgeon generalship?

From the HMO that treats your grandmother like a dangerous drain on corporate profits, to the local abortionist who covers the mortgage on his suburban palace by butchering babies every Saturday, to the white-coated researcher in an Ivy League tower who reduces Third World peoples to human laboratory rats, there is a moral crisis in the practice of medicine in the United States of America.