Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Prying Pediatricians

re: David Mills: "While I'm reading Lydia McGrew's posts, here is a shocking one: No Pediatricians. She reports, from an article in the Boston Herald (link in her article) that the American Academy of Pediatricians //start quote//has issued "guidelines" to its doctors suggesting that they ask scary-crazy questions of children during routine checkups. And in the case of teenagers, these questions are to be asked if possible without parents present. The questions include how much the parents drink, whether they have a gun in the house, and (this is the worst of all) whether teenage girls' fathers "make them feel uncomfortable." Let me emphasize: These are not cases where there is probable cause of abuse. The doctor is supposed to ask these questions routinely of girls who come to him for, say, a sports checkup for school. // end quote //She expresses, as a "proto-anarchist," "some sympathy" with a father who decked the doctor. I have every sympathy with a father who decked the doctor, because that doctor has assaulted his child. He has assaulted her mind, her understanding of the world and the family, and he has assaulted the relation with her father crucial for her health and growth. /And he does so from a position of authority and trust that the poor parents have taught their children to give him. Which means, now that I think of it, that he has betrayed their trust as well. Not honorable. And no more honorable because he thinks he's doing a good deed..."...