christiefan915
Catalyst
Quack, quack.
On Wednesday, pro-Trump website Breitbart published Dr. Jane Orient’s unfounded speculation that Hillary Clinton could be “medically unfit to serve,” referring to Dr. Orient as the “executive director of a physicians’ organization.” Dr. Orient is indeed the executive director of a medical organization but not a large one like the 200,000-member American Medical Association (AMA). Rather, she belongs to a small, Tuscon-based conservative nonprofit organization called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) which, at last estimate, had only 5,000 members—a number that Orient told The Daily Beast was “about right.”
AAPS is a small nonprofit organization with Tea Party ties that prioritizes “individual liberty, personal responsibility, [and] limited government.” Their journal, as Mother Jones reported, has published articles suggesting that abortion causes breast cancer, that vaccines cause autism, and that AIDS is not caused by HIV. (Breitbart, naturally, has published articles lending credence to at least two of these disproven theories.)
The AAPS also has a long history with the Clintons as well. The organization’s “About” page prominently features its opposition to the 1993 Clinton health care plan. In fact, the organization spent the better part of the ’90s embroiled in litigation against the former first lady, first suing her in 1993 to gain access to the records of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. Eventually, in 1999, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Clinton administration.
In her blog post, Orient repeats the usual conspiracy theories about the former Secretary of State’s physical condition. First, she comments on the photograph of Clinton supposedly having difficulty with a set of stairs, which was actually taken after an accidental slip. Instead of using the signature Trump phrase “many people are saying,” for example, Orient says that “it is widely stated that [Clinton] experienced a fall that caused a concussion” (emphasis added). She opines that certain videos of the Democratic nominee, “if authentic,” are “very concerning.” And she packs a mouthful of qualifiers into her claim that an object in a Secret Service agent’s hand “purportedly might have been an autoinjector of Valium” (emphasis added).
When asked about this phrasing, Orient told The Daily Beast, “If there is a sign of serious illness, it is irresponsible not to follow up even if evidence is equivocal.” In other words, there’s no proof for anything Orient says—and often, there’s evidence to the contradictory—but that didn’t stop Breitbart from lapping her words up and slapping it with the headline “Physician: Mainstream Media ‘Strangely Silent’ About Hillary Clinton’s Health.”
The reason for the silence is a complete lack of proof.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/12/the-doctor-behind-the-dyin-hillary-meme.html
On Wednesday, pro-Trump website Breitbart published Dr. Jane Orient’s unfounded speculation that Hillary Clinton could be “medically unfit to serve,” referring to Dr. Orient as the “executive director of a physicians’ organization.” Dr. Orient is indeed the executive director of a medical organization but not a large one like the 200,000-member American Medical Association (AMA). Rather, she belongs to a small, Tuscon-based conservative nonprofit organization called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) which, at last estimate, had only 5,000 members—a number that Orient told The Daily Beast was “about right.”
AAPS is a small nonprofit organization with Tea Party ties that prioritizes “individual liberty, personal responsibility, [and] limited government.” Their journal, as Mother Jones reported, has published articles suggesting that abortion causes breast cancer, that vaccines cause autism, and that AIDS is not caused by HIV. (Breitbart, naturally, has published articles lending credence to at least two of these disproven theories.)
The AAPS also has a long history with the Clintons as well. The organization’s “About” page prominently features its opposition to the 1993 Clinton health care plan. In fact, the organization spent the better part of the ’90s embroiled in litigation against the former first lady, first suing her in 1993 to gain access to the records of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. Eventually, in 1999, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Clinton administration.
In her blog post, Orient repeats the usual conspiracy theories about the former Secretary of State’s physical condition. First, she comments on the photograph of Clinton supposedly having difficulty with a set of stairs, which was actually taken after an accidental slip. Instead of using the signature Trump phrase “many people are saying,” for example, Orient says that “it is widely stated that [Clinton] experienced a fall that caused a concussion” (emphasis added). She opines that certain videos of the Democratic nominee, “if authentic,” are “very concerning.” And she packs a mouthful of qualifiers into her claim that an object in a Secret Service agent’s hand “purportedly might have been an autoinjector of Valium” (emphasis added).
When asked about this phrasing, Orient told The Daily Beast, “If there is a sign of serious illness, it is irresponsible not to follow up even if evidence is equivocal.” In other words, there’s no proof for anything Orient says—and often, there’s evidence to the contradictory—but that didn’t stop Breitbart from lapping her words up and slapping it with the headline “Physician: Mainstream Media ‘Strangely Silent’ About Hillary Clinton’s Health.”
The reason for the silence is a complete lack of proof.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/12/the-doctor-behind-the-dyin-hillary-meme.html
