LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY liz_marcs)

Came across this in the course of my work today and found it interesting (and annoying and infuriating).

I was doing some research on a piece I was writing about physician specialty qualifications and I needed some quick and dirty information on what hoops pediatricians need to jump through in order to be licensed and receive specialty certifications.

Now, in the U.S., most specialties have a semi-official organization that spells these qualifications out. Approximately 95% of the time, it's something like, "American College of [Insert Your Medical Specialty Here]." It usually has links back to the American Board of Medical Specialities as well as links to physician educational and professional resources.

So, you'd think looking for the American College of Pediatricians would be a safe bet for me.

Right?

WRONG!



I was immediately tipped off that I had somehow took a wrong turn when I got a load of the homepage.

Compare and contrast time:

American College of Pediatricians (ACP) (Tag line: "The best for children!")

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) the actual official Website for the specialty (Tag line: "Dedicated to the health of all children.")

You'd think the tag line would've tipped me off that I had stepped through the looking glass. But no.

Instead, it was the lead article on the ACP's front page with a headline that screamed: "Pediatricians Defend the Family"

From what? I wondered. Surely they must be defending the family against disease, chronic health conditions, and illness.

No, my friends. Something much, much worse. They are defending children from *gasp* the destruction of the American Family! The ACP is exhorting its membership to fight for Federal Marriage Amendment, because everyone knows that children can only be happy in two-parent households headed by a man and a woman.

In fact, this Website seems to be positively obsessed with a few things:

Abstinance Only
Defending the American Family from those icky gays and single-parent households
Life Begins at Conception

Now, if you take a look at the AAP site, the actual official site, you'll see: sections for patients to get information, sections giving pediatricians links to educational and professional resources, a "members only" section that's closed to the public, and a clearly marked advocacy section that's also usually closed to the public, since it's all about the organization's wheeling and dealing on behalf of the membership.

The ACP site, but contrast, is all advocacy and no patient or professional information.

Check out the ACP's core values section. If that doesn't set your warning bells a-ringing, here's their press releases.

The links section is really where the ACP's true colors fly. There are an awful lot of links that lead right to...*insert drumroll here*...Focus on the Family and various associated organizations.

Oh, and there's a link to the Boy Scouts of America, but no link whatsoever to the Girl Scounts of America (I thought I'd just mention that as a side note).

Now either the ACP is a front for Focus on the Family, or they've got very close ties to the group.

What truly gets me, is this is very obviously an organization for Fundamentalist, Evangelical Christian pediatricians.

Okay, fine. Everyone has the absolute right to form a religious/professional organization.

However, the word "Christian" appears nowhere on the site at all (except under the links section where there's link to the Christian Medical and Dental Association. There's no statement of faith, no indication whatsoever what "qualifications" are needed to join beyond the normal professional ones.

In short, there's an effort (at least to an extent) to hide the ACP's Christian roots.

This, methinks, is not truth in advertising.

To add insult to injury, if you type in "pediatricians" into Google, and the ACP is the first Web site that comes up.

I apologize in advance for the pissy tone of this post, but this truly annoyed me to no end when I saw this today.